An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor's job at a large firm and easily passes the aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, "you will be hired at a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. Let me have your email address so we can get you in the computer. Our system will automatically email you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day."

Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an email address. To this the manager replies " you must understand that to a company like ours that means you virtually do not exist. Without an email address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day."

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmers' market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family.

During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day. By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly. Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him. By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse which his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage. The tomato company's payroll has put hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed a million dollars.

Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his email address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn't have time to mess with a computer and has no email address, the insurance man is stunned, "What, you don't have email? No computer? No Internet? Just think where you would be today if you'd had all of that five years ago!"

"Ha!" snorts the man. "If I'd had email five years ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and making $5.15 an hour."

Which brings us to the moral:

Since you got this story by email, you're probably closer to being a janitor than a millionaire.

Sadly, I received it also.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship. It was also before commercial fertilizer's invention, so large shipments of manure were common. It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas.

As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen. Methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern, BOOOOM! Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was determined just what was happening. After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term "Ship High In Tra nsit" on them which meant for the sailors to stow it high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.

Thus evolved the term "S.H.I.T," which has come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day. You probably did not know the true history of this word.

Neither did I. I always thought it was a golf term.

1. It is important to find a woman who keeps a neat home, who cooks, and has a job.
2. It is important to find a woman who can make you laugh.
3. It is important to find a woman who you can trust and who doesn't lie to you.
4. It is important to find a woman who is good in bed and who likes to be with you.
5. It is very important that these four women don't know each other.

Two families move from Saudi Arabia to America. When they arrive, the fathers make each other a bet -- in a year's time, whichever family has become more American will win.

A year later when they meet again, the first guy says, "My son's playing baseball, I had McDonald's for breakfast and I'm on my way to pick up a case of Bud Light for tonight. How about you?"

The second guy says, "Fuck you, rag-head!"