|
Placing your order
A friend and I were standing in line at a fast-food restaurant, waiting to place our order.
There was a big sign posted. "No bills larger than $20 will be accepted."
The woman in front of us, pointing to the sign, remarked, "Believe me, if I HAD a bill larger than $20, I wouldn't be eating here."
Purchasing a turkey
A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store, but couldn't find one big enough for her family.
She asked a stock boy, "Do these turkeys get any bigger?"
The stock boy replied, "No ma'am, they're dead."
Purchasing mailing lists
With more than twelve billion catalogs being mailed annually, it's little wonder that marketers are distributing mailing lists anywhere possible. In one particularly cruel move, the proprietors of a chocolate catalog purchased the mailing list of a weight-loss organization. Chocolate sales rose almost immediately, but the weight-loss group wised up and now keeps it clients' names to itself.
Purchasing power of burgers
Cologne, May 27 dpa - The U.S. dollar is undervalued against the Deutsch-mark based on how many "Big Mac" hamburger sandwiches the two currencies can purchase, said one of Germany's leading institutes.
The Institute of the German Economy (IW) in Cologne noted that the popular sandwich by the McDonald's restaurant chain is increasingly being used by economists around the world as a measure of currencies' relative purchasing power.
The institute said that currency exchange rates are often unreliable as an instrument to measure purchasing power. At the same time, "baskets" of products used to arrive at comparative purchasing power are complicated to compile.
A simple alternative, now that McDonald's has spread to virtually every country on earth, has become to look at what a Big Mac costs, the IW said.
"A particularly hungry American can buy five Big Macs for 11 dollars. If he exchanged the money into Deutsch-marks, his 18 marks in Germany can just barely obtain four Big Macs," the IW said.
Conclusion: based on the Big Mac index, the dollar is undervalued, the institute said.
Americans can get their best Big Mac buy these days in Moscow, where one sandwich costs only about 59 cents.
But Russians must "work nearly two days in order to afford this meaty capitalist achievement - longer than people in any other country", the IW said.
Sorry for eating the peanuts
A man visits his aunt in the nursing home. It turns out that she is taking a nap, so he just sits down in a chair in her room, flips through a few magazines, and munches on some peanuts sitting in a bowl on the table.
Eventually, the aunt wakes up, and her nephew realizes he's absentmindedly finished the entire bowl. "I'm so sorry, auntie, I've eaten all of your peanuts!"
"That's okay, dearie," the aunt replied. "After I've sucked the chocolate off, I don't care for them anyway."
Studying the twinkies
In an effort to clarify questions about the purported durability and unusual physical characteristics of Twinkies, we subjected the Hostess snack logs to the following experiments:
Exposure
A Twinkie was left on a window ledge for 4 days, during which time an inch and a half of rain fell. Many flies were observed crawling across the Twinkie's surface, but contrary to hypothesis, birds, even pigeons, avoided this potential source of substance. Despite the rain and prolonged exposure to the sun, the Twinkie retained its original color and form. When removed, the Twinkie was found to be substantially dehydrated. Cracked open, it was observed to have taken on the consistency of industrial foam insulation; the filling however, retained its advertised "creaminess"
Radiation
A Twinkie was placed in a conventional microwave oven, which was set for precisely 4 minutes - the approximate cooking time of bacon. After 20 seconds, the oven began to emit the Twinkie's rich, characteristic aroma of artificial butter. After one minute, this aroma began to resemble the acrid smell of burning rubber. The experiment was aborted after 2 minutes 10 seconds when thick, foul smoke began billowing from the top of the oven. A second Twinkie was subjected to the same experiment; this Twinkie leaked molten white filling. When cooled, this now epoxylike filling bonded the Twinkie to its plate, defying gravity: it was removed only upon application of a butter knife. Extreme Force
A Twinkie was dropped from a ninth-floor window, a fall of approximately 120 feet. It landed right side up, then bounced onto its back. The expected "splatter" effect was not observed. Indeed, the only discernible damage to the Twinkie was a narrow fissure on its underside; otherwise, the Twinkie remained structurally intact.
Extreme Cold
A Twinkie was placed in a conventional freezer for 24 hours. Upon removal, the Twinkie was not found to be frozen solid, but its physical properties had noticeably "slowed". The filling was found to be the approximate consistency of acrylic paint, while exhibiting the mercurylike property of not adhering to practically any surface. It was noticed the Twinkie had generously absorbed the freezer
odors.
Extreme Heat
A Twinkie was exposed to a gas flame for 2 minutes. While the Twinkie smoked and blackened and the filling in one of its "cream holes" boiled, the Twinkie did not catch fire. It did, however produce the same "burning rubber" aroma noticed in the irradiation experiment.
Immersion
A Twinkie was dropped into a large bucket filled with water, the Twinkie floated momentarily, then began to list and sink. Viscous yellow tendrils ran off its lower half, possibly consisting of a water-soluble artificial coloring. After 2 hours, the Twinkie bloated substantially. Its coloring was now a very pale tan - in contrast to the yellow, urine-like water that surrounded it. The Twinkie bobbed when touched, and had a gelatinous texture. After 72 hours, the Twinkie had increased roughly 200 percent of its original size. The water had turned opaque, and a small, fan-shaped spray of filling had leaked from one of the "cream holes". Unfortunately, efforts to remove the Twinkie for further analysis were abandoned when, under light pressure the Twinkie disintegrated into an amorphous cloud of debris. A distinctly sour odor was noted.
Summary of Results
The Twinkie's survival of a 120-foot drop, along with some of the unusual phenomena associated with the "creamy filling" and artificial coloring, should give pause to those observers who would unequivocally categorize the Twinkie as "food". Further clinical inquiry is required before any definite conclusions can be drawn.
Wise cooking advice
This weekend, I discovered a cooking tip I haven't seen listed in any cookbooks.
While you are preparing the food, and after the guests have arrived, you contrive to fill the house up with smoke, preferably enough to get at least two smoke detectors going.
Then you go rushing about the house, opening all the windows, setting up fans, and generally doing everything short of calling the fire department.
Let the guests sit for about 1/2 hour at 50 degrees (as a result of opening the windows) and serve the food.
By this point, you have established expectations in your guests' minds that you can't fail to exceed!
You can now eat your own plate
Taipei, Taiwan (AP) - Diners tempted to lick a plate after a delicious meal can now go a step further - eat the plate.
Chen Liang-erh, 50, an amateur inventor, announced Friday that he had perfected an edible plate made from wheat grain, and that he planned to mass-produce it and other edible crockery including cups, bowls and food containers.
Chen spent six years developing the plate, which he said would retail at about 7 cents each.
Diners who don't want to eat the items - which taste like unsalted popcorn - can boil them for a nutritious meal for animals, he said.
Chen said this can help reduce pollution caused by discarded crockery. The only disadvantage, he said, is his crockery cannot be washed and reused.
You should learn to be more polite
One day, Bill and Tom went to a restaurant for dinner. As soon as the waiter took out two steaks, Bill quickly picked out the bigger steak for himself.
Tom wasn't happy about that: "When are you going to learn to be polite?"
Bill: "If you had the chance to pick first, which one would you pick?"
Tom: "The smaller piece, of course."
Bill: "What are you whining about then? The smaller piece is what you want, right?"
1
2
3
New
|
