Voice from the Funny Side

Recently, in a large city in France ,

a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym.

It said, "This summer,

do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

A middle-aged woman,

whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster,

responded publicly to the question

posed by the gym.


To Whom It May Concern,
Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans.)

They have an active sex life,

get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp.

They play and swim in the seas,

seeing wonderful places like Patagonia ,

the Bering Sea

and the coral reefs of Polynesia .

Whales are wonderful singers

and have even recorded CDs.
They are incredible creatures

and virtually have no predators

other than humans.

They are loved, protected and admired

by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don't exist.

If they did exist,

they would be lining up outside the offices

of Argentinean psychoanalysts

due to identity crisis. Fish or human?

They don't have a sex life

because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex?

Just look at them ... where is IT?

Therefore, they don't have kids either.

Not to mention,

who wants to get close to a girl who smells

like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me:

I want to be a whale.

P..S. We are in an age

when media puts into our heads

the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends.

With time, we gain weight

because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads

that when there is no more room,

it distributes out to the rest of our bodies.
So we aren't heavy,

we are enormously cultured,

educated and happy.
Beginning today,

when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good grief, look how smart I am!¨

Voices from the UK

Listen to the dulcet tones of Dan Wood and his weekend morning show on Metro Radio. Free to listen, use Winamp or Windows Media Player.

Electronically Challenged Seniors

Things are spiraling out of control. I think I have become lost in a world of electronic madness.

One of my sons informed me this week that my cell phone has become obsolete and I must head down to the Cell Phone Store and get a phone that is contemporary with the time.

I pointed out that the fancy Razor/Slim line phone with camera built in that he made me trade my perfectly good flip-top Motorola cell phone for two years ago still works perfectly fine. Well, except for the camera thing. Never could figure that out.. Even the few times I actually did take pictures I couldn’t figure what to do with them and gave up.

That is except when I would push the wrong button and take a video of the ceiling or my feet.

Seems the issue is that I am unable to text with the tiny little 3-character buttons. "Hi, son," would come out looking like, "Gh, Qmo." My grandkids have even spoken to my wife about Poppa’s crazy text messages. Give me a break. Whatever happened to actually talking on a phone? Isn’t that what they were invented for?

They want me to get one of those phones that you can turn upside down and sideways and has a typewriter keyboard with keys about one-eighth the size of my pinky finger.

One of my four sons is a realtor whose real occupation is fly fishing.

"Way to go, son." Or in my text language, "Xbz um Io, rmo."

We were floating the Yakima River in his guide-quality

drift boat south of Ellensburg, Washington.

We were miles from anything remotely resembling civilization.

Rock canyon walls were on either side of us.

Bear with me as I try to explain this strange thing.

His "Blackberry" rang. It was blue and I asked him why it wasn’t called a Blueberry. He shook his head with that “dealing with an elder” despairing look I often get these days. It was another realtor who called to say that the sellers he represented had agreed to my son’s client’s changes and he had the signed documents in hand.

My son told him to FAX the papers to his office and he would get them signed and Faxed back, to close the deal that morning. A minute later the phone rang and he hit a few buttons and looked over the FAX, that was now on the Yakima River with us.

He then called his clients and told them he was Faxing the papers to them to sign and asked them to FAX them back to his office. While he was waiting, he hooked into a fat Rainbow and was just releasing this 22-inch beauty as his phone rang again with the signed FAX from his clients.

He called the other realtor and told him he was sending the signed papers back by FAX.

The deal was closed. He smiled and just said, "You are a little behind the times, Dad."

I guess I am.

I thought about the sixty-million-dollars-a-year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter.

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grandkids and 2 great-grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific, Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something called 'TWIT' that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue Tooth [it’s red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble, talking to my wife as everyone within 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and I got a little loud.

The GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, "Re-calc-ul-ating." You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then when I would make a right turn instead, it was not good.

When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GSP lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I'm still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for four years, but I still haven’t figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have to run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves, but this sudden, "Paper or Plastic?" every time I check out just knocks me for a loop.

I bought some of those cloth re-usable bags to avoid looking confused

but never remember to take them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?"

I just say, "Doesn’t matter to me. I am bi-sacksual."

Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank look.

~Author, Unknown