Actually, before we get started on those jokes, I want to share with you some weird discoveries I made in the recent past. First, there is a very useful bowl that fits onto your hitch...

Then, there are also quite weird bugs around us. No, no, we are not talking about Microsoft or Avant! software here, those bugs are alive! Check out this Tarantula Hawk Wasp. You have to click on the picture to see the story.

Chris' Favorite Jokes

It's always hard to translate jokes into other languages because so many then don't work anymore. For instance here's one which probably doesn't work in any other language, but English. I picked it up while traveling 53(!) hours by Greyhound from San Francisco to St. Louis.

Joey (a cowboy - the name is very important!) is riding on the back of his horse to Memphis. He arrives on Friday, spends three nights there, has some drinks and leaves Memphis on Friday.

This seems to be a little bit odd, but it worked. The question is: HOW?

Answer: The horse's name was "Friday".

The Pope Joke

During a Papal audience, a business man approached the Pope and made this offer: Change the last line of the Lord's prayer from "give us this day our daily bread" to "give us this day our daily chicken." and KFC will donate 1 million dollars to Catholic charities. The Pope declined. 2 weeks later the man approached the Pope again. This time with a 50 million dollar offer. Again the Pope delcined. A month later the man offers 100 million, this time the Pope accepts. At a meeting of the Cardinals, The Pope announces his decision in the good news/bad news format. The good news is... that we have 100 million dollars for charities. The bad news is that we lost the Wonder Bread account!

The President Joke

President Clinton is out jogging, and he encounters a man with some puppies. Clinton asks the man what kind of puppies they are, and the man responds, "They're Democrat puppies, Mr. President." Clinton thinks that is so great that the next day he brings the first lady to see these puppies for herself. He asks the man to tell Hillary what kind of puppies they are, and the man responds, "They're Republican puppies." The president looks puzzled and says, "Yesterday, you told me they were Democrat puppies." The man smiles and says, "Yesterday, they were. But today, they have their eyes open!"

The ___GRESS Joke

If "CON" is the opposite of "PRO", what is the opposite of PROGRESS?

The Too-Long-in-Japan Test

You KNOW you've been in Japan TOO long when...

• you find yourself bowing while talking on the phone.
• you think US$17 isn't too bad for a new paperback.
• you wait for the first day of summer to wear short sleeved shirts.
• you ask a gaijin colleague wearing short sleeves in October, "Aren't you cold?"
• you don't think it's unusual for a truck to play "It's a Small World" when backing up.
• you phone an English speaking gaijin friend and somehow can't bring yourself to get to the point for the first three minutes of the conversation.
• you automatically remember all of your important year dates in Showa numbers.
• you think Masako is beautiful and Hillary is cute.
• you notice 7-11 changed its onigiri wrapping housiki for the third time,
• you develop a liking for green tea flavored ice-cream.
• you talk to your mother on the phone and she asks what "genki" means.
• you master the art of simultaneous bowing and hand-shaking.
• you think four layers of wrapping is reasonable for simple merchandise.
• you immediately know you will get the mail of the new gaijin who just moved into the neighborhood.
• you enter a train with a number of gaijin on it and feel uneasy because the harmony is broken.
• you name is known by the local Yakult lady.
• you aren't surprised to find, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, without any visible means of power supply, a drink vending machine.
• you think nothing of it when that lonely vending machine says "Arigatoo gozaimasu" after you buy a coke.
• you take fifteen seconds of deep thought to recall the first name of the President of the United States.
• you get up and move when a gaijin sits down next to you on the train. You are not prejudiced but who know's what they might do.
• you feel stress when gaijin are around.
• you have only 73 transparent plastic umbrellas in your entranceway because you have donated 27 to JR and various taxi companies in the past months.
• you agree it is perfectly reasonable for the post office to designate you as the local redistribution agent for all letters addressed in English.
• you can't have your picture taken without forming the peace sign.
• you rush home from work to catch the last few minutes of sumo.
• you can't find the open and close buttons in the elevator because they are in English.
• you sympathize with your Japanese friend because her daughter is baka - for wearing spring tops with winter skirts - and you sit down to try and see what can be done with this wild child.
• you run for the Yamanote line, pushing people right and left, leap into the train and hold the doors open long enough to get your bag in because you know there will not be another train for an entire minute.
• you accompany your "no" by waving your hand in front of your nose.
• you find yourself apologizing at least three times per conversation.
• you find yourself asking all your foreign acquaintances what their blood types are.
• you find yourself practicing golf swings with your umbrella on the train platform.
• you think that "Lets SPORTS yOUNG gAY CluB" is a perfectly normal T-shirt logo for a middle aged lady.
• you find all references to money coming out in Japanese even though you are speaking in English.
• you go to a book shop with the full intention of reading all the interesting magazines and putting them back on the shelf.
• you reserve all your December Sundays for bonenkai hangover recovery.
• you go to a coffee shop in your home country and order American coffee.
• you take three tries to fill out a check correctly.
• you have to think to remember what a "check" is.
• you wait patiently outside a taxi in your home country, expecting the door to swing open.
• you spend all your time trying to think of reasons you've been too long in Japan.

A horrible train through the window

It is actually recommendable to know a little German to understand the "real" meaning. Its a letter from a of a girl (blonde?) to her English friend.

Dear Peter,

you will bevoiced know, how it me hewent, after I had you in London good-bye said. I travelled still three days through Kent. My god what was I ready, when I from England to home came. Bynear all people on board were seasick. They musted themselves on the running band overgive.

I had such a fear before the English kitchen. All half so bad. I liked the beafsteak only then not, when it the quality of a good leather-saddle had. On the last day was it me too colourful, and I asked the upper in the restaurant: When will I become a soft steak? I hope never, said he, and there was I with my Latin at the end. But I could die for your puddings, for apple pie can I all stand and lie let. Your tea drink I day and night.

In the last night I had a room, in which it like pike-soup pulled. I could and could not insleep. What should I the landlord say? I took my German-English wordsbook out the pocket and fumbled this together: There comes always a horrible train through the window; when you me not an other ceiling give, undress I soforth.

Knows the fox, what the landlord therefrom understood has. Everyfalls looked he me with cow-great eyes on. On the next day made I me on the socks and turned England the back; not for always I hope.

Your Gisela.

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