A Witless Sampler

"Sweets for the sweet..." and nuts for the nut

So pick from the ones that are left:

• Fred's Favorite Road Jokes
• Two Cartoons from Too Far North
• Laughing His Head Off - A Crude "Flash"® Animation
• Quotations from Chairman Mike
• Wacky in a Winter Wonderingland and Other Non Sequiturs
• At Last!  The True Meaning of Life in Twenty-five Words or Less!

[Featuring our new attribution policy.]

Q:  Why did the chicken cross the road?

A:  It was too far to walk around.  [Three Hearts and Three Lions, by Poul Anderson]

A:   For some fowl reason.  [unknown]

A:   Do I look like some kind of chicken psychologist? How the heck should I know?!  [Fred Herring]

A:   To get to the other side.  [unknown, but probably Vaudeville; the original is still the greatest!]

Q:   Why did the chicken go half way across the road? 

A:   She wanted to lay it on the line.  [any second grader]

Q:   Why did the punk rocker cross the road?

A:   He was stapled to the chicken.  [my kids who got if from who knows?]

Q:   Why did the turkey cross the road?

A:   To prove he wasn't chicken.  [my kids who got if from who knows?]

Q:   What do you get if you cross a road with a chicken?

A:   A bunch of bad jokes.  [Fred Herring, unfortunately]

Q:   What do you get if you cross a rooster with another rooster?

A:   A mighty cross rooster.  [unknown, or chooses to  remain anonymous;  this attribution thing seemed like a good idea at the  time, but enough is enough!]

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Go to Tom Duck and Harry's Alaska Connection to see more of these.

[In fact, these old cartoons were colored and updated during the pandemic and can be seen along with two dozen more cartoons in the updated 2nd edition of Too Far North and, along with extensive commentary and other information about life in rural Alaska, in Living Too Far North. - ed.]

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One and One Half Wits included an animation, which we haven't figured out how to add using this web builder template.  Instead, we've created the slide show below to give you an idea how it looked, only it's too slow and not as effective.  [How we can apply "effective" to this with a straight face is beyond me. - ed.]  We have no control over the speed of this template, so you can wait for the frames to advance, or you can click the forward arrow each time.

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[Sorry, Mike, but you weren't around to say, "You want to publish WHAT?! " - Fred]

To a certain degree, this website owes its existence to our friend  Michael Jaffe, without whose unfaltering example and unintentional encouragement none of this would have happened.  Ironically, it was Mike who said, "I owe my existence to my mother being hard of hearing.  My dad  would ask, 'You want to go to sleep or what?' and she'd say, 'What?!' "

According to Mike his parents have always had a strange and wonderful  relationship.  For example, he claims, "They met on a cruise, which is why my dad has trouble getting excited unless he hears aOOOOgaaaaa!"

With his mom being Catholic and his dad being Jewish, Mike says, "When I was growing up, to celebrate the holidays, every night for eight days we'd burn a Christmas tree."

As Mike once said about the rest of his family, "All things are  relative.  All relatives are thing.  My relatives took all my things."

And, of course, it was the young Mike who, when asked by his high school coach if he could pass a football, replied, "Heck, coach, I can't even swallow one!"

But then, Mike always seemed to be in strange conversational situations, not always of his own making.  He once commented, "I'll never forget what my uncle told me on his death bed:  'Mike...  Arrglaglgglglaaag....' "

As for matters of life and death, let's not forget as Mike once explained, "If you're driving and have to stop suddenly, your life's in  your foot's hands!"

Back on the subject of religion, overhearing a public service announcement that a church picnic had been cancelled due to rain, Mike commented, "It was probably cancelled Deuteronomy, or rather, due to lack of ronomy...  dudalacoronomy?  Isn't that the surgical removal of your dudalac?"

Perhaps Mike's greatest insight came late in life.  As he is fond of  saying, "I should have listened to what my mother was telling me when I was growing up."  When asked, "What was that, Mike?" he invariably replies, "I don't know, I wasn't listening!"

Despite those early traumas, Mike grew up normal...  or at least he  grew up.  He continues to meet life head on and takes people at face value.  He puts it this way:  I never Metamusil I didn't like!"

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"In a snow storm, no two people have the same fingerprints." - Fred Herring

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him grow moss." - Syd Caesar?

"Take no prisoners!" - George Armstrong Custer before the Battle of Little Big Horn

"Don't burn your bridges 'til you're on them." - Mrs. Mervis, Fred Herring's former neighbor

"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous." - offhand remark by an unknown source

"Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and the world laughs at you." - Fred Herring in pain

"You know, they laughed at Red Skelton!" - Fred Herring in denial

"Asp not what your country can do for you..." - Cleopatra, queen of denial 

Speaking of the Nile, as one sarcophagus asked another, "Is that you, coffin?"

"There's a whole mess o' Potamians out there!" - Mike Jaffe paraphrasing the Egyptian Pharaoh under siege by invading Assyrians

"Serfs up!" - Fred Herring paraphrasing King John under siege by revolting peasants
("I beg your pardon?!" - peasant reacting to that last attribution)

And speaking of attribution, who else but Fred Herring would take credit for the latest idea in extreme sports, riding lawn mowers on a  half pipe!

Fred Herring, also in an offhand remark, proposed another extreme sport, gator noodling.

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by Fred Herring, one of the unsolved mysteries of the universe

It came to me in an ecstatic flash of revelation, something so simple and yet so profound it will change your life forever:  Life is...  [Sorry, but that's twenty-five words. - ed.]

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