After many years of illness, Ronald Reagan was very ill and it appeared that he might not pull through. Obviously, Nancy and the rest of the family were at his side, as well as the family minister. Knowing that his time might be short, they asked if there was anything he wanted.

"Yes," he replied, "I'd like very much to have Bill and Hillary Clinton at my side before I go."

They were all amazed at this request and several assumed his memory was failing even worse than they had suspected. Regardless, they went ahead and forwarded his request to the former first family.

Within hours, the former president and first lady arrived at his bedside, courtesy of the loan of Air Force One. For a time, no one said anything. Bill and Hillary stood, one on each side of the bed, and were touched and flattered that Ron would ask them to be with him during his final moments. They were also puzzled - obviously they were of different political parties and had thrown barbs in one another's direction over the years. Why not George H. W. Bush, G.W. Bush or some of Reagan's many Hollywood friends? He had never given the Clintons any indication he particularly liked either of them.

Finally, Bill spoke up and asked, "Mr. President, why did you chose the two of us to be at your bedside at this critical moment?"

The former president mustered up some strength and said very weakly, "Jesus died between two thieves... and that's how I want to go, too."

A woman goes to her boyfriends' parents' house for dinner. This is to be her first time meeting the family and she is very nervous.

They all sit down and begin eating a fine meal. The woman is beginning to feel a little discomfort, thanks to her nervousness and the broccoli casserole. The gas pains are almost making tears come to her eyes and she eeks out a dainty fart, poooof. It wasn't loud, but everyone at the table heard the poof.

Before she even had a chance to be embarrassed, her boyfriend's father looked over at the dog that had been snoozing at the woman's feet and said in a rather stern voice, "Skippy!".

A couple of minutes later, she was beginning to feel the pain again. This time, she didn't even hesitate. The dog was taking the heat. She let a much louder and longer fart, riii-i-i-ip-p-p. The father again looked at the dog and yelled, "Dammit Skippy!"

Once again the woman smiled and thought "Yes!". A few minutes later the woman had to let another one rip. This time she didn't even think about it. She let rip a fart that rivaled a train whistle blowing.

Once again, the father looked at the dog with disgust and yelled, "Dammit Skippy, get away from her before she shits on you!"

Some things to consider...

America has engaged in some finger wagging lately because:

California doesn't have enough electricity to meet its needs. The rest of the country (including George W. Bush's energy secretary Spencer Abraham, who wants Californians to suffer through blackouts as justification for drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) seems to be just fine with letting Californians dangle in the breeze without enough power to meet their needs. They laugh at Californians' frivolity.

Well, everybody. Here's how it really is:

• California ranks 48th in the nation in power consumed per person.
• California grows more than half the nation's fruit, nuts and vegetables. We're keeping them. We need something to eat when the power goes out. We grow 99 percent or more of the nation's almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwi fruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins and walnuts. Hope you won't miss them.
• California is the nation's number one dairy state. We're keeping our dairy products. We'll need plenty of fresh ones since our refrigerators can't be relied upon. Got milk?
• We Californians are gonna keep all our high-tech software in state. Silicon Valley is ours, after all. Without enough electricity, which you're apparently keeping for yourselves, we just plain don't have enough software to spare. We're keeping all our airplanes. California builds a good percentage of the commercial airliners available to fly you people to where you want to go. When yours wear out, you'd better hope Boeing's Washington plant can keep you supplied. There isn t enough electricity here to allow us to export any more planes than we need ourselves. And while we're at it, we're keeping all our high- tech aerospace stuff, too, like the sophisticated weapons systems that let you sleep at night, not worried you might wake up under the rule of some foreign kook.
• Oh, yeah, and if you want to make a long-distance call, remember where the satellite components and tracking systems come from. Maybe you could get back in the habit of writing letters.
• Want to see a blockbuster movie this weekend? Come to California. We make them here. Since we'll now have to make them with our own electricity, we're keeping them. Even if we shot them somewhere else, the labs, printing facilities, editing facilities, and sound facilities are all here.
• Want some nice domestic wine? We produce over 17 million gallons per year. We'll need all of it to drown our sorrows when we think about the fact that no matter how many California products we export to make the rest of America's lives better, America can't see its way clear to help us out with a little electricity. You can no longer have any of our wine.
• You all complain that we don't build enough power plants. Well, you don't grow enough food, write enough software, make enough movies, build enough airplanes and defense systems or make enough wine.

This is your last warning, America. Lighten (us) up before it's too late.

               Love,

                    The Californians

I hope that each one of you will take a minute, go look in the MIRROR, then come back and read this.

This poem appeared when an old lady died in the geriatric ward of a hospital near Dundee, Scotland. It was felt that she had left nothing of value. Then the nurses, going through her possessions, found this poem. Its quality so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital. One nurse took her copy to Ireland. The old lady's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the North Ireland Association for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on the poem.

A Poem

What do you see, nurses, what do you see,
what are you thinking when you're looking at me?
A crabby old woman, not very wise,
uncertain of habit, with faraway eyes.
Who dribbles her food and makes no reply
when you say in a loud voice, "I do wish you'd try?"

Who seems not to notice the things that you do,
and forever is losing a stocking or shoe.
Who, resisting or not, lets you do as you will
with bathing and feeding, the long day to fill.
Is that what you're thinking? Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse; you're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am as I sit here so still,
as I use at your bidding, as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of ten with a father and mother,
brothers and sisters, who love one another.
A young girl of sixteen, with wings on her feet,
dreaming that soon now a lover she'll meet.

A bride soon at twenty -- my heart gives a leap,
remembering the vows that I promised to keep.
At twenty-five now, I have young of my own
who need me to guide and a secure happy home.
A woman of thirty, my young now grown fast,
bound to each other with ties that should last.

At forty my young sons have grown and are gone,
but my man's beside me to see I don't mourn.
At fifty once more babies play round my knee,
again we know children, my loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead;
I look at the future, I shudder with dread.

For my young are all rearing young of their own,
and I think of the years and the love that I've known.
I'm now an old woman and nature is cruel;
'tis jest to make old age look like a fool
The body, it crumbles, grace and vigor depart
there is now a stone where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells,
and now and again my battered heart swells.
I remember the joys, I remember the pain
and I'm loving and living life over again.
I think of the years; all too few. Gone too fast
and accept the stark fact that nothing can last.

So open your eyes, nurses, open and see, not a crabby old woman; look closer -- see ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an old person. We will one day be there too.

A blonde, wanting to earn some money, decided to hire herself out as a "handy-woman, and started canvassing a nearby well-to-do neighborhood.

She went to the front door of the first house, and asked the owner if he had any odd jobs for her to do. "Well, you can paint my porch," he said. "How much will you charge me?" The blonde, after looking about, responded, "How about $50?"

The man agreed, and told her that the paint and other materials that she might need were in the garage.

The man's wife, inside the house, heard the conversation and said to her husband, "does she realize that the porch goes all the way around the house?" The man replied, "she should, she was standing on it. Do you think she's dumb?"

"No... I guess I'm guilty of being influenced by all the "'dumb blonde" joke e-mails we've been receiving".

A short time later the blonde came to the door to collect her money. "You're finished already?" the husband asked. "Yes" the blonde replied, "and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats". Impressed, the man reached into his pocket for the $50.00.

"And by the way," the blonde added, "it's not a Porch, it's a Lexus."

Try this one - Don't be tricked AND Don't cheat!

You're driving a bus that is leaving from Pennsylvania and ending in New York.

To start off with, there were 32 passengers on the bus.

At the next bus stop, 11 people get off and 9 people get on.

At the next bus stop, 2 people got off and 2 people got on.

At the next bus stop, 12 people got on and 16 people got off.

At the next bus stop, 5 people got on and 3 people got off.

What color are the bus driver's eyes?

STOP HERE... don't go any further yet until you

THINK,

THINK,

THINK,

THINK,

THINK.

The key to understanding the problem is focusing on the right information. If we assume it is critical to keep track of the number of people getting on and off the bus, we focus on information that turns out to be unessential. It distracts us from the important information. The answer to the problem is found in the first sentence.

YOU are driving the bus so the color is, of course, the color of YOUR eyes.

If you didn't get it right, don't worry. The majority of people don't answer correctly. If you got it right, you have exceptional listening and problem solving skills.

               By Tom McNichol

The day Lisa Shaw's son Tyler came home from school with tears streaming down his cheeks, the 34-year-old Crawford, Texas, homemaker, knew things had gone too far. "All of Tyler's varying and sundry friends was making fun of the way he talked," Shaw says. "I am not a revengeful person, but I couldn't let this behaviorism slip into acceptability. This is not the way America is about."

Shaw and her son are two of a surprising number of Americans who speak a form of nonstandard English that linguists have dubbed "Bushonics," in honor of the dialect's most famous speaker, President George W. Bush. The most striking features of Bushonics - tangled syntax, mispronunciations, run-on sentences, misplaced modifiers and a wanton disregard for subject-verb agreement -- are generally considered to be "bad" or "ungrammatical" by linguists and society at large.

But that attitude may be changing. Bushonics speakers, emboldened by the Bush presidency, are beginning to make their voices heard. Lisa Shaw has formed a support group for local speakers of the dialect and is demanding that her son's school offer "a full blown up apologism." And a growing number of linguists argue that Bushonics isn't a collection of language "mistakes" but rather a well-formed linguistic system, with its own lexical, phonological and syntactic patterns.

"These people are greatly misunderestimated," says University of Texas linguistics professor James Bundy, himself a Bushonics speaker. "They're not lacking in intelligence facilities by any stretch of the mind. They just have a differing way of speechifying."

It's difficult to say just how many Bushonics speakers there are in America, although professor Bundy claims "their numbers are legionary." Many who speak the dialect are ashamed to utter it in public and will only open up to a group of fellow speakers. One known hotbed of Bushonics is Crawford, the tiny central Texas town near the president's 1,600-acre ranch. Other centers are said to include Austin and Midland, Texas, New Haven, Conn., and Kennebunkport, Maine.

Bushonics is widely spoken in corporate boardrooms, and has long been considered a kind of secret language among members of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon. Bushonics speakers have ascended to top jobs at places like the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services. By far the greatest concentration of Bushonics speakers is found in the U.S. military. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig is only the most well known Bushonics speaker to serve with distinction in America's armed forces. Among the military's top brass, the dialect is considered to be the unofficial language of the Pentagon.

Former President George H.W. Bush spoke a somewhat diluted form of the dialect that bears his family's name, which may have influenced his choice for vice president, Dan Quayle, who spoke an Indiana strain of Bushonics.

The impressive list of people who speak the dialect is a frequent topic at Lisa Shaw's weekly gathering of Bushonics speakers. That so many members of their linguistic community have risen to positions of power comes as a comfort to the group, and a source of inspiration.

"We feel a good deal less aloneness, my guess is you would want to call it," Shaw says. "It just goes to show the living proof that expectations rise above that which is expected."

Some linguists still contend, however, that the term "Bushonics" is being used as a crutch to excuse poor grammar and sloppy logic.

"I'm sorry, but these people simply don't know how to talk properly," says Thomas Gayle, a speech professor at Stanford University. Professor Gayle was raised by Bushonic parents, and says he occasionally catches himself lapsing into the dialect.

"When it happens, it can be very misconcerting," Gayle says. "I understand Bushonics. I was one. But under full analyzation, it's really just an excuse to stay stupider."

It's talk like that that angers many Bushonics speakers, who say they're routinely the victims of prejudice.

"The attacks on Bushonics demonstrate a lack of compassion and amount to little more than hate speech," says a prominent Bushonics leader who spoke on the condition that his quote be "cleaned up."

Increasingly, members of the Bushonics community are fighting back. Lisa Shaw's Crawford-based group is pressing the local school board to institute bilingual classes, and to eliminate the study of English grammar altogether. "It's an orientation of being fairness based," Shaw says. A Bushonics group in New England has embarked on an ambitious project to translate key historical documents into the dialect, beginning with the Bill of Rights. (For instance, the Second Amendment rendered into Bushonics reads: "Guns. They're American, for the regulated militia and the people to bear. Can't take them away for infringement purposes. Not never.")

Bushonics activists say they'll keep fighting as long as there are still children who come home from school crying because their classmates can't understand a word they're saying. Lisa Shaw hopes that every American will heed the words of the nation's No. 1 Bushonics speaker, and vow to be a uniter, not a divider.

"We shouldn't be cutting down the pie smaller," Shaw says with quiet dignity. "We ought to make the pie higher."

It is with deep regret, hesitation, and contrition that I, The President of the United States of America, offer apology to the Chinese nation and its peoples.

I apologize for the heinous act performed by our large, sluggish, propeller driven, airplane when it got in the way of your highly maneuverable, supersonic, technologically superior, jet aircraft.

Furthermore, I sincerely regret the fact that by flying in international airspace, we afforded your "highly competent" pilot the opportunity to fly his aircraft into our own, causing him to spiral to his death into the ocean.

We regret the choice made by said pilot when he used deficient judgment in electing to attempt aerial intimidation upon our slower moving, unarmed, surveillance vehicle.

This situation brings to mind a similar episode when I was in grade school and my face got in the way of the school yard bully's fist. He broke a bone in his hand and I felt as compelled to apologize for that incident as I do for this one.

Let me summarize by stating that it is our sincere hope that you accept this "heart felt" and "sincere" apology for the actions committed by your pilot.

We are sorry that we got in the way. We are sorry that we were forced to leave international airspace and land in Chinese territory. We are sorry that you were forced to provide food and housing for our military personnel.

Most of all, we are sorry that you have, in your possession, some of our most technologically advanced surveillance equipment on the planet.

I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive us. I hope that soon you will be compelled to release our men and our property. Because I really don't want to have to apologize again when we have to kick your ass!!

               Sincerely,

                    George W. Bush
                    President of the United States

Dear China,

We're sorry that you don't train your fighter pilots better. As a token of our apology, here's a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000.

We're sorry that you're front-line fighter planes can't outmaneuver a 35 year old prop-driven airliner. Perhaps you'd like to consider purchasing some surplus 1950's era Lockheed Starfighters from Taiwan. (Who just replaced all theirs with shiny new F-16's)

We're sorry that you believe your territorial waters extend all the way to Australia. For future reference, here's an American 6th grade geography textbook. (Please take note of the Copyright information printed inside the cover.)

We're sorry that you can't seem to see your part of this incident. We know that it may seem easier to blame others than to take responsibility. Consider this while we build several new Aegis destroyers for our friends in the Republic of China (Taiwan).

We're especially sorry for treating you with such respect for the last 20 years. We'll definitely rethink this policy, and will probably go back to treating you like a common untrustworthy street gang very soon.

We're very sorry for ever granting you Most-Favored-Nation trading status. This will be rectified at the soonest possible opportunity.

               Sincerely,

                    The United States of America

A computer was something on TV,
From a science fiction show of note,
A window was something you hated to clean,
And ram was the cousin of a goat.

Meg was the name of my girlfriend,
And gig was a job for the nights,
Now they all mean different things,
And that really mega bytes.

An application was for employment,
A program was a TV show,
A cursor used profanity,
A keyboard was a piano.

Memory was something that you lost with age,
A CD was a bank account,
And if you had a 3-in. Floppy,
You hoped nobody found out.

Compress was something you did to the garbage,
Not something you did to a file,
And if you unzipped anything in public,
You'd be in jail for a while.

Log on was adding wood to the fire,
Hard drive was a long trip on the road,
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode.

Cut you did with a pocket knife,
Paste you did with glue,
A web was a spider's home,
And a virus was the flu.

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper,
And the memory in my head,
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash,
But when it happens they wish they were dead.

A woman was sitting at a bar enjoying an after-work cocktail with her girlfriends when an exceptionally handsome, extremely sexy, young man entered. He was so striking that the woman could not take her eyes away from him. The young man noticed her overly-attentive stare and walked directly toward her. Before she could offer her apologies for staring at him, the young man said to her, "I'll do anything, absolutely anything, that you want me to do, no matter how kinky, for $20, on one condition." Flabbergasted, the woman asked what the conditionwas.The young man replied, "You have to tell me what you want me to do in just three words."

The woman considered his proposition for a moment, withdrew from her purse and slowly counted out four $5 bills, which she pressed into the young man's hand along with her address.

She looked deeply into his eyes and slowly, meaningfully said...

"Clean my house."