Useless Facts

[01dragonslayer]

1. Valentine Tapley from Pike County, Missouri grew chin whiskers attaining a length of twelve feet six inches from 1860 until his death 1910, protesting Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency.

 

[01dragonslayer]

Two ladies, a Yankee and a Southern Belle, are sitting next to each other on a plane. The Southern Belle turns to the Yankee and asks, So, where yall from?
The Yankee replies, I am from a place where we do not end our sentences with a preposition.
Without missing a beat, the Southern Belle bats her lashes and asks, So, where yall from, bitch?

 

[01dragonslayer]

WE, the People of the broad, brown land of Oz, wish to be recognized as a free nation of blokes, sheilas and the occasional trannie.
We come from many lands (although a few too many of us come from New Zealand) and, although we live in the best little country in the world, we reserve the right to bitch and moan about it whenever we bloody like.



We are One Nation but we're divided into many States.
First, there's Victoria, named after a queen who didn't believe in lesbians. Victoria is the realm of Mossimo turtlenecks, cafe latte and grand final day. Its capital is Melbourne, whose chief marketing pitch is that it's "livable".
Next, there's NSW. It is the realm of pastel shorts, macchiato with sugar, thin books read quickly and millions of dancing gay-boys. Its mascots are Bondi lifesavers who pull their Speedos up their cracks to keep the left and right sides of their brains separate.



Down south we have Tasmania, a State based on the notion that the family that bonks together stays together. In Tassie, everyone gets an extra chromosome at conception. Maps of the State bring smiles to the sternest faces.
South Australia is the province of half-decent reds, a festival of foreigners and bizarre axe murders. They had the Grand Prix, but lost it when the views of Adelaide sent the Formula One drivers to sleep at the wheel.
Western Australia is too far from anywhere to be relevant in this document.
The Northern Territory is the red heart of our land. Outback plains, sheep stations, kangaroos, jackaroos, emus, Ulurus and dusty kids with big smiles. Although the Territory is the centrepiece of our national culture, few of us live there and the rest prefer to fly over it on our way to Bali.
And there's Queensland. While any mention of God seems silly in a document defining a nation of half-arsed agnostics, it is worth noting that God probably made Queensland. Why he filled it with dickheads remains a mystery.
We, the Lullaby League of Oz, are united, primarily by the Pacific Highway, whose treacherous twists and turns kill more of us each year than die by murder.
We are united in our lust for international recognition, so desperate for praise we leap in joy when a ragtag gaggle of corrupt IOC officials tells us Sydney is better than Beijing.
We are united by a democracy so flawed that a political party, albeit a redneck gun-toting one, can get a million votes and still not win one seat in Federal Parliament. Desirable, sure. But fair? Not when you consider Brian Harradine can get 24,000 votes and runs the bloody country. Not that we're whingeing.
We've chucked out the concept of "fair go" in the downsized '90s. Instead, we want to make "no worries" our national phrase.
We love sport so much our newsreaders can read the death toll from a sailing race and still tell us who's winning, in the same breath.
We treasure our politicians, who talk about listening with such persistence it's hard to get a word in. We tolerate our Prime Minister, who is not only short but a Methodist, hanging offences in decent countries. And we like watching Parliament on TV because Natasha Stott Despoja is a total spunkrat.
We, the wicked witches of the land of Oz, want to make it clear this continent is ours and always has been. Mind you, Liberal Party polling shows that there were some people here before Captain Cook so we should address the issue once and for all.
While possession is nine-tenths of the law, our ancestors were fortunate enough to discover that genocide, cultural extinguishment, baby theft and flour poisoning make up the other tenth.
So Oz is now ours and that's that. Our midget Methodist master says we have no reason to feel sorry for killing more Aborigines per capita than the Nazis did Jews and Liberal Party polling says we're OK with that.
Why don't we say sorry? In the words of our PM - because, because, because, because, because. Now, can we just drop the whole thing before the Olympics start?
Phew, with that nasty bit out of the way, we the Brain, the Heart and the Nerve of Oz, want the world to know we have the biggest rock, the tastiest pies and the worst-dressed Olympians in the known universe.
We don't know much about art but we know we hate the people who make it. We shoot, we vote. We are girt by sea and pissed by lunchtime. And even though we might seem a racist, closed-minded, sports-obsessed little People, at least we're better than the Kiwis.

 

[01dragonslayer]

Ten signs you're not getting a christmas bonus
10. Co-workers refer to you as "the ghost of unemployment future"

9. The last time you saw your boss was when he testified against you at the embezzlement trial

8. On your door, you find a lovely wreath of pink slips

7. What you call "my new office," everybody else calls "the supply closet"

6. Boss's Christmas card says, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out"

5. You keep getting memos reminding you that employees are required to wear pants

4. When your boss came over for Thanksgiving, he was crushed under an avalanche of stolen office supplies

3. Whenever you ask for a raise, a guy shows up at your house and breaks your jaw

2. In your most recent performance evaluation, the word "terrible" appeared 78 times

1. You're the starting quarterback for the New York Jets

 

[01dragonslayer]

There are two kinds of people. Those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good morning, Lord," and those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good Lord, it's morning.

 

[01dragonslayer]

Fifteen minutes into the flight from Kansas City to Toronto, the captain announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, one of our four engines has failed. There is nothing to worry about. Our flight will take an hour longer than scheduled."

Thirty minutes later the captain announced, "Our number two engine has failed and the flight will take an additional two hours. But don't worry ... we can fly just fine on two engines."

 

[01dragonslayer]

Theorem: 1$ = 1c.
Proof:
And another that gives you a sense of money disappearing.
1$ = 100c
= (10c)^2
= (0.1$)^2
= 0.01$
= 1c
Here $ means dollars and c means cents. This one is scary in that I have seen PhD's in math who were unable to see what was wrong with this one. Actually I am crossposting this to sci.physics because I think that the latter makes a very nice introduction to the importance of keeping track of your dimensions.

 

[01dragonslayer]

My kids love going to the Web, and they keep track of their passwords by writing them on Post-it notes.

I noticed their Disney password was "MickeyMinnieGoofyPluto," and asked why it was so long.

"Because," my son explained, "they say it has to have at least four characters.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. Most Egyptians died by the time they were 30 about 300 years ago,

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. For some time Frederic Chopin, the composer and pianist, wore a beard on only one side of his face, explaining: "It does not matter, my audience sees only my right side."

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. 1 in every 4 Americans has appeared someway or another on television.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. 70% of all boats sold are used for fishing.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. Studies have shown that children laugh an average of 300 times/day and adults 17 times/day, making the average child more optimistic, curious, and creative than the adult.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

 

[01dragonslayer]

The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. You were born with 300 bones, but by the time you are an adult you will only have 206.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. If you go blind in one eye you only lose about one fifth of your vision but all your sense of depth.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. The strongest muscle (Relative to size) in the body is the tongue.

 

[01dragonslayer]

1. A Boeing 747's wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.