Jokes From The Land Of The Flu

Things here are still basically the same in the Land Of The Flu . Moe and I are struggling to keep things up around the Condo . We had to call in reinforcements this week to help us out with the shopping , our son . That turned into a wonderful bonus because not only did he do the shopping for me , but then he cook a huge pot of chicken soup with all sorts if yummy veggies in it . I haven't had to cook for several days now and it sure was a big help.

Our son has always enjoyed cooking . He had his own cook book when he was just a little guy . He would always want to help out in the kitchen when I cooked ,as a little boy . The rule was , when you were tall enough to be able to look into the tallest pot sitting on the stove , then you could do some actual cooking over the fire ... with supervision of course .

Moe used to take the kids with him to work, to one of our restaurants in Houston, once in a while . They would come home with all sorts of adventures to share with me . They had learned how to peel garlic , or almost got locked up in the wine cellar, or the chief threatened to cut their ears off if they didn't stop nagging him for shrimp ,or in our youngest ones case , lime sherbet ! They were spoiled rotten by all the staff . 

The best part was they learned to enjoy all sorts of new foods that most childern their ages never tasted . They LOVED escargot , frog leggs , and Beef Wellinton . They had to be on their best behavior and were taught wonderful table manners so we could take them into any resturante and not annoy the other patrons dinnig there also . They loved these experences and it has helped them later in other life situations .

Now to change the conversation ...... I got this in a email today and liked it . Thought you might like it too . Have a great day !

If you're not familiar with the work of Steven Wright, he's the famously erudite scientist and comic who once said: "I woke up one morning and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates."

Here are some of his gems:

Borrow money from pessimists -- They don't expect it back.

99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.

All those who believe in psycho-kinetics, raise my hand.

The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

I almost had a psychic girlfriend.....but she left me before we met.

OK, so what's the speed of dark?

How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

Hard work pays off in the future, but laziness pays off now.

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.."

Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.

Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film.

If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

And there were thes3e gems too !

 
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts.

If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation?

How come abbreviated is such a long word?

I went for a walk last night and my kids asked me how long I'd be gone. I said, "The whole time."

Is it true that cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny?

Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery's dead?

Why do banks charge you a "non-sufficient funds fee" on money they already know you don't have?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?

Why is it, when a door is open it's ajar, but when a jar is open, it's not a door?

Do married people live longer than single people or does it just SEEM longer?

Every so often, I like to go to the window, look up, and smile for a satellite picture.

I bought a self learning record to learn Spanish, I turned it on and went to sleep, the record got stuck, the next day I could only stutter in Spanish.

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

I filled out an application that said, "In Case Of Emergency Notify". I wrote "Doctor"... I mean .... What's my mother going to do?

TV Exercies & Cathy & Me

My cousin Cathy and I were virtually sisters since we were only nine months apart in age and she a only child , while I might as well have been one also because my sisters were so much older then I . There fore , Cathy and I spent a lot of time together growing up . We got along as sisters do , sometime it was honey , as they say here , and sometimes we had a lot of crying onions , but for the most part we rubbed along well together .

We got into a lot of " adventures" that I am quite sure our mothers would have rather we hadn't but mostly we were good girls .In the summertime I would go stay at my cousins house with her since her grandmother lived next door to her and could keep a eagle eye out on us while our mothers worked .

My aunt used to have all over her house all these fragile glass knick knacks on every available surface and in the most dangerous places for two growing children to avoid breaking at all times .A complete disaster waiting to happen at any moment . They usually did, like the day we decided that we would do the exercises we saw on TV .

The TV was in the living room and so were all those dainty knock knacks of my aunts , all over the place . The man on the TV told us to get something , anything , that had some sort of weight to it and do arm lifts while holding the heavy objects in our hands . We tried the handy encyclopedias that Cathy had , but they were way too awkward to hold and lift at the same time . Then we tried pillows but they had no weight at all ! What to do ? By this time that man in TV had moved on to bigger and harder exercises and we were trying to catch up with him . He wanted us to run in place , fast ! We tried but kept bumping into the coffee table and knocking over those little thing a ma bobs of my aunts .Well ,that wouldn't do at all .He moved on to a really tricky exercise now .... we had to lift something heavy over our heads and swing our arms around in the air .Oh boy !

I can't remember who's idea it was to fill the plastic bags up with the ice cubes but it seemed like a good idea at the time , you know what I mean ? So , here we are , in a tight confined space , with things that break real easily , swinging plastic bags full of ice cubes , with gusto at that and laughing the whole time because it was sooo fun !Whoosh , whoosh , whoosh , around and around we swung our little arms with total abandon giggling and having a ball doing our exercises with the man on TV cheering us onward to do more .

We did . I personally think it was one too many whooshes that did it , although Cathy claimed later that it was the flimsy plastic bags that gave out , but what ever it was , the bags in our hands broke together at the same time .Ice cubes went flying like bats outta hell all over the place ! Up, up into the air , arching ever so lightly , then crashing , slamming into everything in it's way . A lamp teetered crazily on the end table . I made a dash for that and managed to stop the crash .The little glass knick knacks on the tables didn't make out so well . A little glass dog lost a leg , a clown was smashed into smithereens . My aunts favorite tea cup was broken in two .When we saw that , we KNEW we were dead !

We rushed around gathering up ice cubes and throwing them away into the kitchen sink to melt there harmlessly , while we tried to get all the broken glass cleaned up before my aunt came home from work . She would be home in one hour . We hide the broken glass in the trash bins out in the back yard .Swept the floor . Mopped up any water from melted ice cubes and broke out the GLUE ! My cousin was a whiz when it came to gluing things back together since she was always bumping into something and breaking it .Most of those things in the living room had already been broken at least once . We figured that if we could get everything glued back together BEFORE my aunt came home , well hey , she would never know !

So , here we were busy gluing stuff together, trying to get it to stick together , scared to death that we would get killed if my aunt ever found out . We had been given a warning already for breaking Cathy's bed the week before, by her , yes , really her , jumping up and down on it . That's another story , so anyway ,we were afraid and trying to hurry up get this all done before my aunt came home . We did , yeah !!! Just as we glued the last piece into place , my aunt drove up in the drive way .Phew , that was soo close !

Aunt Betty comes in and takes one look at our very nervous faces and asks us how our day went . She knew something was up but what it was she didn't know ... yet ! She probes us on our activities for the day even though she has called us off and on all day and had grandma look in on us too, she knows something is fishy .

She goes into the living room , which was reeking with glue ,turns to stare at us and asks us have we done anything ?Of course not we chimed in unison ! We were perfect little angels all day long . We just watched TV that's all nothing else . Hum she said , well how come I smell glue then ? Are you sure nothing got broken today ? OH NO !!! We assured her , nothing !She looks around closer this time and sees a ice cube we had missed in the race against time to clean up the mess peaking out from under the couch . OMG !!! She walks over , picks it up , looks at us again and says um hum !I thought Cathy and I were gonna faint right then and there ! She knew , oh yeah , she knew alright ! We were dead !So then she starts to touch things .Not saying a word while we stood holding our breaths hoping against all hope she wouldn't notice the glue oozing out from hair line creaks in her favorite tea cup she had on display on the book shelf behind her .

She finishes her look see and didn't thankfully notice anything amiss .That was a close call we were thinking when disaster struck . As Aunt Betty was walking out of the living room past the book shelf , the tea cup , being the last thing we glued and the least thing we glued together well , decided to come apart . It made a very small tinkling sound as it fell apart on to it's saucer .She heard that noise and turned to see it happen . She then turned to glare at us with a look on her face that was just scary !!!

We froze like deer in head lights . We were doomed ! What would she do ? My mother and my aunt never hit us in our entire lives . Would this be the first time ?Would we be grounded for life ? Even worse , would we have TV privileges taken away ?It was summertime and TV was a important part of summertime activities , remember what got us into this mess to begin with ? The TV exercise man .

She told us to go to our room we shared .She said she would come to talk to us after she had calmed down . We had to sit waiting for a half hour thinking all sorts of horrible things would happen to us while she cooled off in the other part of the house . Finally we knew what our fate would be .She came in , sat on the edge of the bed where we had been crying worriedly about our doomed life and told us for the next week we would have to spend all our time with grandma next door and do EVERYTHING she told us to do .

That was a fate worse than death because grandma hated little kids and especially us because we once scared her prise laying hen so badly that she stopped laying eggs for a week .I hated chickens because they would peck you when you tried to gather their eggs . Cathy hated the geese because they chased you when you went into their pen . And we knew that grandma knew this too and would make us do those things to get even with us . She did . We spent a miserable week under her very watchful eye . After that we NEVER did exercises in the house no matter what that man on TV told us to do !

Talks on Prisoners Release

I hesitated to write on this subject knowing full well I might be opening Pandora's box of very nasty surprises , but I felt I had to comment on Libya's proposed action to release some Islamist rebels from prison . Saif Al Islam Ghaddafi , chairperson for The International Foundation, is currently in negotiations with an Al Quada- affiliated Islamist rebel group to release some of it's members that are in prison .

As a foreigner living here , married to a Libyan , mother to Libyans , grand mother to Libyans , I am frightened to know this may come about . Used to be , being a Muslim was a natural thing here . There was no compulsion in religion to be extreme . I mean everyone is Muslim here . The Christain foreigner's working here , or the occasional Christian married to a Libyan are the exception to the rule , but they are treated with respect and are allowed to worship as they wish . They are not allowed to evangelize though . But more and more on the streets here in Tripoli you will see men with short Arabic style dress , all rumpled , many times not too clean looking even though the clothing most be clean to pray in , short pants , long unkempt breads , menacing glares towards people in general , women singled out for the " special " look . If you try to engage them in a conversation they act as if you are the bane of Righteousness . Sometimes in tow , you will see a woman covered from head to toe in swaths of BLACK material ,with a veil shielding her face from view . This is a relatively new affection one didn't see here in Libya before maybe the mid 1990's . Women dressed however they felt like either traditionally or "western" , the same for men .They still do , don't get me wrong . But this growing group is pushing this form of dress on others , onto people that don't necessarily agree with them . Much like the Taila-bad in Afghanistan did with the baraka .

This is alarming ... WHY ? Because these people ( here I loosely use this term ) are generally the NEW MUSLIM RIGHT and they , I have noticed when ever I have occasion to engage them in conversation, are the Extremist that want radical change in the Muslim world , if not the entire world . They are NOT tolerant of other views , cultures , or religions .They think like many other closed minded groups through out history , that if you are not with them , then you are their enemy .

Where ever they have the power ( Pakistan , Afghanistan , Iran etc....) then chaos follows in government and civilian life , with the collapse of the economy . Women and children seem to pay the price with loss of simple freedoms such as education and for some reason , medical care . I find the frequency of the NEW MUSLIMS RIGHT converts down right scary . They are so black and white in their dealings and thoughts with the world ,no grey anywhere . No give or take with them . I am not alone in this feeling. This isn't just a foreigners feeling either . I hear Libyans expressing their concern also .They are too cautious to vocalize loudly their fears due to their concern over this groups growing power in the society . This is a potential future problem taking root now .Hopefully it can be worked out without jeopardizing religious freedoms we have now .