Humour VIII

On the bright side, the roll bar works.

Only Leftists have a sense of humour. Rightists are the jokes.

I hear people talking about, "waaaay back in the eighties." Half the time I'm still thinking of the eighties as the future.

I am reminded of Bing Crosby in Going My Way: Which brings me to Beyonc., et al. and their backup dancers who do the same moves for every song. (Or maybe every song IS saying the same thing.)Which reminds me of Jed Clampett singing, "Well Baby Oh Baby Yeah Baby." (You can find it on YouTube.)Which reminds me of Fred Flintstone, as Hi-Fye, singing, "Listen to the rockin' bird."Which reminds me....

When you're little, you slip and fall on the ice and you cry because it's the end of the world. Luckily, the end of the world doesn't last long.When you're a little older, you slip and fall on the ice and you say, "Hey, that's fun!" and you do it again on purpose.When you get a little older, say pre-teen, you slip and fall on the ice and you're embarassed. You look around to see if anybody noticed.When you get a little older, you slip and fall on the ice and you're angry. "Why doesn't somebody put some salt on that?"When you get old, you slip and fall on the ice and before you get up you stop and check whether anything is broken. Do you have any new aches and pains that you didn't have five minutes ago?You don't get any older than that.

In other words, humans who thought they communed with God, like you.

Bullshit.As I said, your so-called "communion" is nothing but imagination. You don't even accept the "real" historical Jesus.

When Prime Minister Trudeau speaks in Parliament, he does a paragraph in English and then the same paragraph in French. But the interpreter tramples on the French with a translation into English. I feel like yelling at the TV, "I already heard the English! I don't need your second-hand second-rate version."(One thing that interests me about French-to-English translations is the use of the word "population". French Canadians tend to say things like, "The population likes ice cream," where English Canadians say, "The people like ice cream," and reserve "population for the number of people.) I have some movies that I downloaded (from possibly questionable sources) that have Portuguese subtitles. I do feel compelled to read the subtitles and it is a bit of a distraction. But I can tell Portuguese from Spanish.

Small World Department:My ancestors were Mennonites - German-speaking pacifists - who came to Canada before WWI. They weren't popular during the war so they decided to leave Canada, to "find freedom" I guess.They moved to Paraguay.

I got my pension information from the government, so now I can do my taxes. It seems I get a retirement benefit and a post-retirement benefit. Hmm.... I would have thought that retirement was the period of time in which I have been retired - and post-retirement is the period of time since I retired. I'm not quite clear on the distinction.This year's tax return has 48,000 lines. (There may be some numbers missing - I didn't count them.)I have to enter two numbers: old-age security and Canada Pension Plan - or maybe three numbers if I have to keep retirement and post-retirement separate. Then I have to add them together.Then I have to enter zeroes on all of the other lines and add them together and subtract them from my total income to get my taxable income. Then I have to multiply by some percentage to get the amount of tax I owe. If it's less than $48,000 (it is), I enter zero and I get a refund of all the taxes I have paid in (zero).I had a heck of a time finding the provincial tax forms. For a minute I thought they had stopped collecting taxes. (How will they survive without my zero dollars?) But I found them in the back of the "guide", which rivals War and Peace in size. I have to enter the total income from the Federal form and then a lot of zeroes, etc. etc. to find out that I get a full refund of the provincial taxes that I paid in (zero).Then they calculate it all for themselves in Ottawa and tell me what mistakes I made, which change my refund from zero to zero.

I learned what a googolplex was in first-year university when I accidentally bought the wrong math textbook. (For the youngsters out there, that's long before Google.)

It's what separates us old guys from the ones who can see.