2/10/2010 – Editorials

By Richard Peterson

This was termed the World’s Easiest Quiz in an e-mail sent to me. It’s supposedly the easiest because passing requires only four correct answers.
1) How long did the Hundred Years’ War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get cat gut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7) What was King George VI’s first name?
8) What color is a purple finch?
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?
Extra Credit for those who goof up 10 out of 10: Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb? 
Remember, you need four correct answers to pass.
Here are the answers:
1) How long did the Hundred Years War last? Answer: 116 years.
2) Which country makes Panama hats? Answer: Ecuador.
3) From which animal do we get cat gut? Answer: Sheep and horses.
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? Answer: November.
5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of? Answer: Squirrel fur.
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? Answer: Dogs. (Check it out on Wikipedia!)
7) What was King George VI’s first name? Answer: Albert.
8) What color is a purple finch? Answer: Crimson.
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from? Answer: New Zealand.
10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane? Answer: Orange (of course).
Extra credit: if you missed all or most of the above, maybe you got this one right?  It’s Grant, of course!
What do you mean, you failed? Me, too.
—000—
 Here’s another e-mail on the subject: Don’t mess with old people.
The IRS decides to audit Grandpa and summons him to the IRS office.
The IRS auditor was not surprised when Grandpa showed up with his attorney.
The auditor said, “Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I’m not sure the IRS finds that believable.”
“I’m a great gambler, and I can prove it,” says  Grandpa. “How about a demonstration?”
The auditor thinks for a moment and said, “Okay. Go ahead.”
Grandpa says, “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye.
The auditor thinks a moment and says, “It’s a bet.”
Grandpa removes his  glass eye and bites it. The auditor’s jaw drops.
Grandpa says, “Now, I’ll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye.”
Now the auditor can tell Grandpa isn’t blind, so he takes the bet.
Grandpa removes his dentures and bites his good eye.
The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Grandpa’s attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.
“Want to go double or nothing?” Grandpa asks. “I’ll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between.”
The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there’s no way this old guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again.
Grandpa stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can’t make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he pretty much urinates all over the auditor’s desk.
The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win.
But Grandpa’s attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.
“Are you okay?” the auditor asks.
“Not really,” says the attorney. “This morning, when Grandpa told me he’d been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you’d be happy about it!”
—000—
Harold was an old man. He was sick and in the hospital.
There was one nurse that just drove him crazy. Every time she came in, she would talk to him like he was a little child. She would say in a patronizing tone of voice, “And how are we doing this morning,” or “Are we ready for a bath,” or “Are we hungry?”
Old Harold had had enough of this particular nurse. One day, at breakfast, Old Harold took the apple juice off the tray and put it in his bedside stand. The next morning he was given a urine bottle to fill for testing.
So you know where the juice went!
The nurse came in a little later, picked up the urine bottle and looked at it. “My, it seems we are a little cloudy today.”
Hearing this, Old Harold snatched the bottle out of her hand, popped off the top and drank it down, saying, “Well, I’ll run it through again. Maybe I can filter it better this time.”