A woman was waiting in the check-out line at a shopping
center. Her arms were laden with a mop and broom and other
cleaning supplies. By her actions and deep sighs, it was
obvious she was in a hurry and not happy about the slowness
of the line.
When the cashier called for a price check on a box of soap,
the woman remarked indignantly, "Well, I'll be lucky to get
out of here and home before New Years!"
"Don't worry, ma'am," replied the clerk. "With that wind
kicking up out there and that brand new broom you have
there, you'll be home in no time."
"Thanks for the harmonica you gave me for Christmas,"
little Joshua said to his uncle the first time he saw
him after the holidays. "It's the best Christmas
present I ever got."
"That's great," said his uncle. "Do you know how to
play it?"
"Oh, I don't play it," the little fellow said. "My mom
gives me a dollar a day not to play it during the day
and my dad gives me five dollars a week not to play it
at night."
What do you say when you get a gift you *Really Don't Like*. (And
does this work for Fruitcake too?)
10. "Well, well, well, now, there's a gift!"
9. "No, with all the hostile takeovers this year, I missed the big
Ronco/K-Tel/Ginsu merger. Would you just look at that! What will
they think of next?!"
8. "Hey, as long as I don't have to feed it, or clean up after it, or
put
batteries in it, I'm happy!"
7. "No, really, I didn't know that there was a Chia Pet tie! Oh, wow!
It's a clip-on too!"
6. "You know, I always wanted one of these! Jog my memory --
what's it called again?"
5. "You know what? -- I'm going to find a special place to put this!"
4. "Boy, you don't see craftsmanship like that every day!"
3. "And it's such an interesting color too!"
2. "You say that was the last one? Am I ever glad that you snapped
that baby up!"
And the number one thing to say about the Christmas gifts you didn't
like is: "You shouldn't have! I mean it -- you really shouldn't have!"
A couple were busy making their holiday dinner. The wife instructed her
husband to
remove the ends from the ham. He questioned - "why do you do that?". She
responded...
"well that's just how it's done... it's tradition.... that's how my Mom
always did it". Not
satisfied with her response, the husband called his mother-in-law and
asked her... "your
daughter insists that the ends of the ham be removed before it goes into
the pan - why is
that?" She responded... "that's tradition.... that's how my Mom always
did it". Still not
satisfied, the husband decided to call Grandma. He asked Grandma....
"your daughter
and your grand-daughter both insist that you remove the ends of the ham
before you
put it in the oven... why is that??" Grandma paused and said....
"I don't know why they do it, but I did it because the ham was too big
for the pan!"
After much research, we present the annual aeronautical
engineers report on the theory of Santa:
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are
300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified,
and while most of these are insects and germs, this does
not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa
has ever seen.
There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the
world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the
Muslim, Hindu, Jewish & Buddhist children, that reduces
the workload to 15% of the total -378 million according
to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)
rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million
homes. One presumes that there's at least one good child
in each.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due
to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth,
assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).
This works out to 822.6 visits/second. That is to say
that for each Christian household with good children,
Santa has .001 second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump
down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the
remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks
have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the
sleigh and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly
distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to
be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will
accept), we are now talking about .78 miles/household,
a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to
do what most of us do at lease once every 31 hours, plus
eating etc. So Santa's sleigh must be moving at
650 miles/second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For
purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on
earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4
miles/second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15
miles/hour.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element.
Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a
medium-sized Lego set (2 lb.), the sleigh is carrying
321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably
described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer
can pull no more than 300lb. Even granting that "flying
reindeer" (see #1) can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we
cannot do the job with 8, or even 9, reindeer. We need
214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the
weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. This is four times
the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth.
353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles/second creates
enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in
the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's
atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3
QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short,
they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing
the reindeer behind them and create deafening sonic booms
in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporised
within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa, will be
subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater
than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa, being very conservative in
terms of guessing Santa's weight, would be pinned to the
back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force. If Santa ever
DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
A Merry Christmas to one and all!!