December 13 -2000 - All the Rest

For the Advent season there will be a change on this section of the DM.
There will be a trivia question related to Christmas (not Biblically related)
The Christmas fact will appear on the Advent page - along with a Christmas Inspiration and a Christmas Quotation.


Christmas Trivia

In this section there will be a brief question about the secular side of Christmas. The answer will appear the following day.

TODAY'S QUESTION

What crooner and former movie partner of Jerry Lewis died on Christmas Day 1995?

Previous Question and Answer:

Question: Charleston, South Carolina's Spoleto Festival is a world-famous celebration of art and music. What noted composer introduced the festival?

Answer: Gian-Carlo Menotti, famous especially for his Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors

Questions and answers from: J. Stephen Lang, The Big Book of American Trivia (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1997).


A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22 (NIV)

TOP ELEVEN REASONS TO ADOPT A DOG INSTEAD OF A CAT:

11. Dogs come when you call them.
Cats take a message and get back to you.

10. Dogs look much better at the end of a leash.

9. Dogs will let you give them a bath without taking out a contract on your
life.

8. Dogs will bark to wake you up if the house is on fire.
Cats will quietly sneak out the back door.

7. Dogs will bring you your slippers or the evening newspaper.
Cats might bring you a dead mouse.

6. Dogs will play Frisbee with you all afternoon.
Cats will take a three-hour nap.

5. Dogs will sit on the car seat next to you. Cats have to have their
own private box or they will not go at all.

4. Dogs will greet you and lick your face when you come home from work.
Cats will be mad that you went to work at all.

3. Dogs will sit, lie down, and heel on command.
Cats will smirk and walk away.

2. Dogs will tilt their heads and listen whenever you talk.
Cats will yawn and close their eyes.

1. Dogs will give you unconditional love forever.
Cats will make you pay for every mistake you've ever made since the day you were born.

From: (Gag-O-Matic Joke Server)

One of my all-time Favorites

The church steeple on the Old Church is very high and was being painted on a rather hot day. The painter was about half way down and, as the steeple was widening out, was taking more paint. The painter felt that he might not have enough paint to finish. Since he was hot and tired, and did not care to make another trip to the ground, he decided to stretch the amount of paint by adding some paint thinner to it. When finished, he lowered himself to the ground and went about cleaning up. Then he looked up to see the results of his work and noted that the area with the thinned paint looked decidedly different. He was pondering about what to do about it when the sky turned dark and there was a lightning flash and loud thunderclap.

Then in a loud, booming voice from the sky came the words, " REPAINT AND THIN NO MORE !"

Chocolate Please!

A man goes into an ice cream parlor and says, "I'd like two scoops of chocolate ice cream, please."

The girl behind the counter says, "I'm very sorry, sir, but our delivery truck broke down this morning. We're out of chocolate,"

"In that case," the man says, "I'll have two scoops of chocolate ice cream."

"You don't understand, sir," the girl says. "We have no chocolate."

"Then just give me some chocolate," he says.

Getting angrier by the second, the girl says, "Sir, will you spell VAN, as in vanilla?"

The man says, "V-A-N."

"Now spell STRAW, as in strawberry."

"OK. S-T-R-A-W."

"Now," the girl says, "spell STINK, as in chocolate."

The man hesitates. Then he says. "There is no stink in chocolate."

Sound of Silence...

Two intrepid explorers met in the heart of the Brazilian jungle.

"I'm here," declared one, "to commune with nature in the raw, to contemplate the eternal verities and to widen my horizons. And you, sir?"

"I," sighed the second explorer, "came because my young daughter has begun violin lessons."

What's in a Name?

Walking through Chinatown, a tourist is fascinated with all the Chinese restaurants, shops, signs and banners. He turns a corner and sees a building with the sign, "Hans Olaffsen's Laundry." "Hans Olaffsen?", he muses. "How the heck does that fit in here?" So he walks into the shop and sees an old Chinese gentleman behind the counter.

The tourist asks, "How did this place get a name like "Hans Olaffsen's Laundry?"

The old man answers, "Is name of owner."

The tourist asks, "Well, who and where is the owner?"

"Me, is right here," replies the old man.

"You? How did you ever get a name like Hans Olaffsen?"

"Is simple," says the old man. "Many, many year ago when come to this country, was stand in line at Documentation Center. Man in front was big
blonde Swede. Lady look at him and go, "What your name?" He say, "Hans Olaffsen."

Then she look at me and go, 'What your name?'"

"I say, Sem Ting."

TRUE FACT ...

Humans begin laughing at two to three months of age. Six year olds laugh about 300 times per day, while adults laugh from 15 to 100 times per day.

SOURCE: NYT, Dr. William F. Fry, Stanford University

'Twas The Night Before Christmas
As Written by Congress

was the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence,kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.

T

he prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.

H

astening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen - "Now Dasher, now Dancer..." et al. - guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.

A

s I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved - with utmost celerity and via a downward leap - entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

H

is orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

C

lenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

W

ithout utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."

Copyright Information: Phillip Bower is not the author of the humor, and does not claim to own any copyright privileges to the jokes. Sources of jokes are listed when known. Birthday's and Happenings for the date, and quotations are public knowledge and collected from numerous sources. Quotations are public knowledge and sources are listed when known. Weekendspirations are written by Tim Knappenberger who has copyright privileges. Cathy Vinson authors Whispers from the Wilderness and owns copyright privileges. Weekendspirations and Whispers from the Wilderness are used with permission by the respective authors. Other devotions are written by Phillip Bower unless otherwise stated. In all cases credit is given when known. The Daily Miscellany is nonprofit. Submissions by readers is welcome.

THE REST – December 13

Today's Quotations — Diets and Eating

Today's Word – NOEL

Today's Fact