How to help America
A WHILE ago the US government was offering good prices to the owners of old jalopies so they could be taken off the road and junked. The idea was to stimulate the economy by lifting the motor industry as the beneficiaries bought new cars.
It seems the tactic might be repeated. Reader Ron Duckworth has received the following from a friend in the US:
"Sometime this year, we taxpayers may again receive an economic stimulus payment. It is an exciting programme.
"I'll explain it using the Q and A format:
"Q: What is an economic stimulus payment?
"A: It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.
"Q: Where will the government get this money?
A: From taxpayers.
"Q: So the government is giving me back my own money?
A: Only a smidgeon.
"Q: What is the purpose of this payment?
A: The plan is for you to use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.
"Q: But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A: Shut up!
"Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending your stimulus cheque wisely:
• If you spend the stimulus money at Wal-Mart, the money will go to China.
• If you spend it on gasoline, your money will go to the Arabs.
• If you purchase a computer, it will go to India.
• If you purchase fruit and vegetables, it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala ..
• If you purchase a car, it will go to Japan or Korea.
• If you purchase useless stuff, it will go to Taiwan.
• If you pay your credit cards off, or buy stock, it will go to management bonuses and they will hide it offshore.
"Instead, keep the money in America by spending it at yard sales or going to ball games or spending it on hookers or beer or tattoos. (These are the only businesses still operating in the US).
"Conclusion: You can help America by going to a ball game and drinking beer all day with a tattooed hooker you met at a yard sale."
Romantic
LAST week's mention of a 1922 report on the warming of the Arctic reminds Norman Maurice, an avid reader of MAD magazine, of a cartoon in July 1982, almost 18 years ago.
A couple are parked in Lovers' Lane and the guy is saying to his girlfriend: "Look at the full moon glowing through our rapidly dissolving ozone layer and forming the deadly greenhouse effect … look at the trees, still damp from the gentle mist of acid rain …"
She says: "Oh Joe, you're such an incurable romantic!"
Digitally unsavvy
IAN GIELINK says his son has installed an aeroplane simulator programme on his computer. He let his going on four-year-old grandson Robbie have a go at flying the plane, a Cessna, when he got bored with TV.
He crashed it a few times then got bored with this as well and asked: "Grandpa, please take the plane out of the computer so I can play with it."
Well, why didn't he take the plane out of the computer so the boy could play with it? Or am I betraying my ignorance of computers and things digital?
Reclusive writer
JD SALINGER, writer of The Catcher in the Rye, one of the most successful novels of the 20th century, has died aged 91 at his home in New Hampshire.
He became a recluse not too long after the book - his only full-length novel - was published in 1951. Other brief fragments - Lift High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction - showed the same quirky brilliance.
Why did Salinger shut up shop like that? What did he do otherwise over almost 60 years? Surely he didn't spend his time just staring at the wall. If the 1940s could generate something as innovative and paradigm-shifting as The Catcher in the Rye, what of the decades that followed? Is something more about to emerge, a posthumous blockbuster? We wait with interest.
|
Tailpiece
Q: What do a tornado and a redneck divorce have in common?
A: In the end, someone is going to lose a trailer.
Last word
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
Will Rogers
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
No comments:
Post a Comment