Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion.

My house should have between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of thses options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has.

I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularily the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
From: watkins@mojo.dartmouth.edu (Rick Watkins)

Turmoil rocked Heaven this morning as allegations arose that God had had an affair with a former worshiper. The scandal was begun when a 21 year old woman, known only as Mary, claimed that she had given birth to God’s “only son” last week in a barn in the hamlet of Bethlehem. Sources close to Mary claim that she “had loved God for a long time,” that she was constantly talking about her relationship with God, and that she was “thrilled to have had his child.” In a press conference this morning, God issued a vehement denial, saying that “No sexual relationship existed” and that “the facts of this story will come out in time, verily.”

Independent counsel Kenneth Beazulbub immediately filed a brief with the Justice department to expand his investigation to cover questions of whether any commandments may have been broken, and whether God had illegally funneled laundered money to his illegitimate child through three foreign operatives identified only as the “Wise Men”. Beazulbub has issued subpoenas to several angels who are rumored to have acted as go-betweens in the affair. Critics have pointed out that these allegations have little to do with the charges that Beazulbub was originally appointed to investigate, that God had created large-scale flooding in order to cover up evidence of a failed land deal. In recent months, Beazulbub’s investigation has already been expanded to cover questions surrounding the large number of locusts that plagued God’s political opponents in the last election, as well as to claims that the giveaway of a parcel of public land in Promised County to a Jewish special interest group was quid pro quo for political contributions. Some journalists have speculated that the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gommorah may have been to divert attention away from God’s political problems.

If these allegations prove to be true, this could be a huge blow to God’s career, much of which has been spent crusading for stricter moral standards and harsher punishments for wrongdoers. Known for his fiery oratory, God has sometimes been criticized for his political theatrics, as when he introduced the bill he styled “The Ten Commandments” by appearing as a burning bush on the Senate floor. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, however, it is unlikely that a sitting God can be removed from power. Most legal scholars are in agreement that indicting God would constitute taking God’s name in vain.

Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
From: larry@birdsong.sunnyvale.ca.us (Lawrence T. Hardiman)

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a popular psychometric instrument popularized by Kiersey & Bates in “Please Understand Me”.

The following was emailed to me by a colleague. Those familiar with MBTI will get a giggle out of it.

[BTW. I'm an ISTJ. ... To the max!]

MBTI Types Prayers

ISTJ

Lord help me to relax about insignificant details beginning tomorrow at 11:41.23 am e.s.t.

ISTP

God help me to consider people’s feelings, even if most of them are hypersensitive.

ESTP

God help me to take responsibility for my own actions, even though they’re usually not my fault.

ESTJ

God, help me to not try to run everything. But, if You need some help, just ask.

ISFJ

Lord, help me to be more laid back and help me to do it exactly right.

ISFP

Lord, help me to stand up for my rights (if you don’t mind my asking).

ESFP

God help me to take things more seriously, especially parties and dancing.

ESFJ

God give me patience, and I mean right now.

INFJ

Lord help me not be a perfectionist. (did I spell that correctly?)

INFP

God, help me to finish everything I sta

ENFP

God,help me to keep my mind on one th-Look a bird- ing at a time.

ENFJ

God help me to do only what I can and trust you for the rest. Do you mind putting that in writing?

INTJ

Lord keep me open to others’ ideas, wrong though they may be.

INTP

Lord help me be less independent, but let me do it my way.

ENTP

Lord help me follow established procedures today. On second thought, I’ll settle for a few minutes.

ENTJ

Lord, help me slow downandnotrushthroughwatIdo

Amen.

Why I eat meals with milk and meat:

Dialogue while Moses is at the top of Sinai….

God: And remember Moses, in the laws of keeping Kosher, never cook a calf in its mother’s milk. It is cruel.

Moses: Ohhhhhh! So you are saying we should never eat milk and meat together.

G: No, what I’m saying is, never cook a calf in its mother’s milk.

M: Oh, Lord forgive my ignorance! What you are really saying is we should wait six hours after eating meat to eat milk so the two are not in our stomachs.

G: No, Moses, what I’m saying is, don’t cook a calf in its mother’s milk!!!

M: Oh, Lord! Please don’t strike me down for my stupidity! What you mean is we should have a separate set of dishes for milk and a separate set for meat and if we make a mistake we have to bury that dish outside….

G: Moses, go do whatever the hell you want….

    : Hi, I'm about to install SCO Unix. But I heard that any Unix is full
    : of daemons or demons. I uninstalled Linux because of that reason and
    : because I had a lot of trouble since having installed it.
    : As a Christian user I don't wanna have to do anything with Satan and
    : his daemons. Is the only alternative for me Windows NT ?

I’m afraid that all platforms have daemons running somewhere. To see NT’s, right click on the task bar, select “Task Manager” and you’ll see all the programs running in the background.

The solution to your problem is not to switch to NT but to upgrade to a new personal operating system that does not require the fear of daemons. I recommend Judaism 1.0 which had been offering an un-advertised competative upgrade for the last 6,000 years. Check your phone directory for the address of your nearest authorized services center for details.

There are many other advantages to an upgrade to Judaism 1.0.

• Thousands of local authorized services centers (temples).
• Expert consultant at every services center (rabbi).
• User group meetings every Saturday.
• Advanced Study Centers (Yeshivah).
• Annual reboot ceremony (Yom Kippur).
• Economical. Does not require a large Vatican MIS department.
• Flexible development, arguing and porting environment.
• Runs most compatible jobs and careers without modification.

To aid in the upgrade, Judaism 1.0 comes with a complete documentation package, including:

• Source Code (Torah).
• Translation to English (Old Testament).
• Annotated release notes (Talmud).
• Getting Started guide (Mafsir).

There are some details which must be known before upgrading. Due to reliability considerations, multiple personal operating systems are not supported. Therefore, the upgrade is actually a total replacement. Fortunately, the tested in-place-upgrade preserves everything and does not require unloading assets and starting over.

Although there are no license fees, maintenance charges (tithe) or upgrade charges, donations are usually requested at the Saturday user group meetings, and after the annual reboot ceremony. There are media charges for printed documentation. Some minor accessories (yamekah, talis, t’fillin) may need to be purchased.

Once the Judaism personal operating system is installed and properly licensed, you are allowed to make backup copies for all your child processes. However, they will be running “Judaism Lite” until age 13 when the full personal operating system may be safetly installed (Bar Mitzvah).

There are a number of holdays, festivals and events which may involve some downtime. These are explained in the documentation in excruciating details. The lunar calendar is non-standard but conversion utilities are available.

Judaism 1.0 is compatibile with both Unix and NT. It involves no fear of daemons, numbers (666) or scientific notation. Many features of the beta versions of Judaism were cloned by your existing personal operating system. Reliability is greatly enhanced by 5,758 years of experience as compared to only 1,997 years for your current installation. This allowed time to do testing and avoid squabbles over standards as is currently underway in Ireland.

Judaism 1.0 is an impressively powerful personal operating system, but with an installed base of only 3% of the US population. This small but fanatically loyal user based has resulted in extremely low turnover. This also yields exellent system reliability, honesty, survivability and high net worth benchmark results.

Having run Judaism 1.0 for the past 49 years, I can testify as to all the above advantages. I have never experienced a system crash, hang, purge or pogrom that could be attributed to a bug or glitch in the personal operating system. I highly recommend installing the upgrade.

acw@MIT.EDU wrote:
CONGREGATION AGUDATH ISRAEL OF MONSEY

To address simultaneously two long standing problems in the orthodox community, the lack of decorum and the lack of funds, our synagogue is pleased to provide you with the following schedule of unacceptable behavior and fines for violations:

BEHAVIOR                                                       FINES
Sleeping during the Rabbi's Drosha                          $   36
        Surcharge for snoring                                   54
Checking watch during Drosha, Rabbi facing your direction       72
Cinspicuously reading unrelated Sefer during Drosha            180
Drosha longer than Davening ---------------------------------- 270
Announcements longer than Davening --------------------------- 360
Leaving lollipop stick on carpet -----------------------------  18
Leaving lollipop stick on carpet, candy still attached -------  54
Finish Amidah after Rabbi ------------------------------------  72
Duchening - socks not fresh ---------------------------------- 180
Duchening - no socks ----------------------------------------- 360
Starting the wave -------------------------------------------- 900
Removing the good stuff before throwing the candy bag --------  36
Harmonizing with Baal Tefillah off key -----------------------  36
Singing with Baal Tefillah, different melody -----------------  54
Complaining about the air-conditioning, non-member ----------- 180
Taking seat of person called to Torah ------------------------  72
Taking seat of Rabbi during Drosha --------------------------- 360
   (Fine waived if Drosha is longer than 30 minutes)
Nudging Gabbi for Aliyah within 5 years of last Aliyah -------  36
Kiching person out of your seat (arrival during Mussaf) ------  90
     Surcharge if evictee uses cane --------------------------  90
     Surcharge if evictee uses walker ------------------------ 180
Saving seat for someone coming during Mussaf -----------------  90
Saving a seat for someone you know is not coming ------------- 180
Talking ------------------------------------------------------  36
Talking Lashon Hora ------------------------------------------  54
Talking Lashon Hora, person two seats away can't hear --------  90
Remaining in Shul with crying baby
    First minute ---------------------------------------------  54
    Next 60 minutes ------------------------------------------  72
    Kol Nidre surcharge --------------------------------------  36
Communicatibg with spouce across the mechitza
    Hand signals ---------------------------------------------  18
    Shouting -------------------------------------------------  36
    Smoke signals (Shabbos) ----------------------------------  54
Placing Tallis in bag before end of davening -----------------  36
Placing someone else's Tallis in your bag --------------------  54
Leaving lipstick imprint on suddur ---------------------------  54
Leaving lipstick imprint on siddur, men's section ------------ 108
Having a child bring in coat before Aleinu
   1 coat --------------------------------------------------- Free
   2-4 coats -------------------------------------------------  36
   Wrong coat ------------------------------------------------  54
   Wrong child -----------------------------------------------  72

1. Don’t let worry kill you — let the church help.
2. Thursday night – Potluck supper. Prayer and medication to follow.
3. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.
4. For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
5. The rosebud on the alter this morning is to announce the birth of David Alan Belzer, the sin of Rev. and Mrs. Julius Belzer.
6. This afternoon there will be a meeting in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends.
7. Tuesday at 4:00 PM there will be an ice cream social. All ladies giving milk will please come early.
8. Wednesday, the ladies Liturgy Society will meet. Mrs. Jones will sing, “Put me in My Little Bed” accompanied by the pastor.
9. Thursday at 5:00 P.M. there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers Club. All wishing to become little mothers, please see the minister in his study.
10. This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Lewis to come foreward and lay an egg on the alter.
11. The service will close with “Little Drops of Water.” One of the ladies will start quietly and the rest of the congregation will join in.
12. Next Sunday a special collection will be taken to defray the cost of the new carpet. All those wishing to do something on the new carpet will come foreward and do so.
13. The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind and they may be seen in the church basement Friday.
14. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
15. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be “What is Hell?” Come early and listen to our choir practice.

Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
From: rolfe@ieway.com (Tim Rolfe)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 3:20:00 PST

SCHIZOPHRENIA: Do You Hear What I Hear?

MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER: We Three Kings Disoriented Are

DEMENTIA: I Think I’ll Be Home For Christmas

NARCISSISTIC: Hark, the Herald Angels Sing About Me

MANIC: Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Busses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and . . .

PARANOID: Santa Claus Is Coming To Get Me

PERSONALITY DISORDER: You Better Watch Out, I’m Gonna Cry, I’m Gonna Pout, Maybe I’ll Tell You Why

DEPRESSION: Silent Anhedonia, Holy Anhedonia, All Is Flat, All Is Lonely

OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER: Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, …….. (better start again)

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PERSONALITY: On The First Day of Christmas My True Love Gave To Me (and then took it all away)

BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire.

[Note - making the rounds unattributed - ed.]

From: ronnie@cisco.com (Ronnie B. Kon)

At an orthodox wedding, the bride’s mother is pregnant

At a conservative wedding, the bride is pregnant

At a reform wedding, the rabbi is pregnant

“On Yom Kippur, we need to search our hearts and recognize our wrongs (the hardest part!), then…ask…forgiveness:

    For the sin which we have committed
        by responding too often,
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by not posting at all when we have something valuable to say;

    For the sin which we have committed
        by responding angrily in haste,
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by posting private email in a public forum;

    For the sin which we have committed
        by misinterpreting others' words,
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by not expressing ourselves clearly;

    For the sin which we have committed
        by being sarcastic to other list members,
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by not being tolerant of their positions;

    For the sin which we have committed
        by not explaining technical terms,
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by assuming others know as much as we do;

    For the sin which we have committed
        by posting announcements directly,
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by posting subscription commands to the list;

    For the sin which we have committed
        by forwarding messages without introduction
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by cross-posting our own messages to many other lists;

    For the sin which we have committed
        by not using an appropriate subject line,
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by having a long .signature file;

    For the sin which we have committed
        by quoting others' posts in their entirety,
    And for the sin which we have committed
        by not providing context to our replies;

    For all of these, Forgiving One,
    Forgive Us, Pardon Us, and Grant Us Atonement."

                         -Mark Frydenberg