This article brought to you by Prime Properties, The Real Estate Place
Good morning… I welcome survivors of the heat to another column. I’m not sure how many of us are left, but, wow… heat. Hot. Swelter. Those are the only words that come to mind. Roads, fine… but scorching, blistering, heat… that’s everywhere. Weather prognosticators are saying that today should be a little cooler, though… let’s hope.
Oh, yeah, roads: Hot. No real hazards, just hot. Definitely no snow or ice, fo’ shizzle. Shizzle my sizzle… which reminds me that there’s also no drizzle.
Today is National Tell a Joke day… unfortunately, we don’t do jokes here. As a column driven to provide the hardest hitting serious journalistic content, jokes would simply be out of place. My apologies to all who are disappointed, but we’ve got to maintain the integrity of the column here.
It’s also National Roller Coaster day. This day has its highs and its lows, and might start out a little slow, but things will pick up. It might throw a few curves at you, and even if it makes you say, “Geez,” it’ll give you negative G’s, at some point. It might make you loopy, or it might even make you sick, but whatever it does for you, please make sure that it has come to a complete stop before you disembark.
Say… do you know how the amusement parks came up with the “acceptable height” for children to ride the roller coasters? Experience.
Today is also National Rum day… have a shot, whether it’s Bacardi, Ron Rico, or Captain Big M/little organ.
Okay… to hell with integrity… let’s celebrate National Tell a Joke day after all.
There once was a land of talking hamsters. Each wore a tiny shirt to designate their class in this very caste-oriented society. The grey shirts were for the criminal types… the gangsters, the thieves, the convicts and the drug addicts. The yellow shirts were for the poorest of the poor… the street beggars, the homeless, the vagrants. The blue shirts were for the working class… not wealthy, but those who were able to get by, even if only through the means of menial labor. Finally, purple shirts were for the upper crust… the aristocracy.
It was rare that any hamster ever left his own class in an upwardly mobile direction. And it was absolutely forbidden to wear the colors of another class. The only way for one of the lower class members to move up was by being recommended by a member of a higher class. Sadly, this rarely happened, as the upper class shunned the lower class.
One day, though, Herbie had had enough. He was by birthright a member of the grey-shirt dirtbags… but he wanted out. He was honest, and wanted to work hard, and desired a better life. So, he sought out members of higher classes.
Seeing no meaningful upward mobility in trying to become a yellow shirt, he skipped that class, and first approached a blue shirt… but the blue shirt, middle-class hamster told him, “Go away… if I’m even SEEN talking to you, I would be banished from my group! I cannot be your friend!”
The dejected hamster decided that he had nothing to lose by seeking out a purple shirt… and, by odd chance, the FIRST purple shirt he came across was the king himself!
Herbie humbly approached the king and asked, “Can we be friends?”
To his utter amazement, the king heartily agreed… and just like that, Herbie and the king were friends.
Well, the king asked, “Herbie, what would you like to do on the very first day of us being friends? We could go to the fair, or we could go to the carnival… your choice!”
Well, Herbie checked his smart phone, looking for information on both… he learned that there were 1,000 hamsters at the fair, but only 500 at the carnival. “Let’s go to the carnival,” he said, “Way less hamsters… shorter lines!”
Off the new pair of friends went.
They entered the carnival, and the king asked, “What shall we ride first… the carousel… or the roller coaster?”
Herbie again checked his phone… “Well, the line for the carousel is 30 minutes… but the roller coaster line is only 10 minutes. Let’s do the roller coaster!” And off they went.
After the roller coaster, the pair decided to get some refreshments. The king asked, “Should we get some rum… or some punch?”
Herbie checked his phone. He said, “Well, there is a line of 20 hamsters to get rum…”
But there is no punch line.