Wipers
by Robert Byron
A friend of mine used to have an old Ford station wagon that began to run
poorly. He took it to a mechanic who told him that the carburetor was faulty
and he'd have to have a new one.
"Can't you just rebuild it?" my friend asked.
"No," said the mechanic. "An electronic sensor inside the unit has gone bad
and, although the sensor probably only costs a few dollars, the carburetor
is welded shut so there is no way to get in to it."
"How much is a new carburetor?"
"$525."
Kudos to the Ford Motor Company for coming up with a cunning idea to force
patrons to have to spend big bucks on replacement parts. In second place is
the infamous Yugo for having the words, "Do Not Rebuild" stamped prominently
on the engine. Yes, believe it or not, a disposable motor.
This reminds me that I originally intended to write a story about windshield
wipers.
I don't know how they do it but windshield wiper manufacturers have come up
with a couple of surefire ways to get consumers to buy their product. First,
the common windshield wiper found in the wild these days will always wear
out at such a position to cause a streak at perfect eye level. This alone is
not an amazing engineering feat as it would be as simple as developing a
wiper with a weak spot at the average eye level to create the desired
effect. I am rather dazzled, however, as to how they can make a wiper blade
that only wears out on the driver's side.
I don't understand why, when it rains, that I can barely see out of the
drivers side due to the poor performance of the wiper but the wiper on the
passenger side, that is the exact same type wiper and was installed at the
same time, works magnificently. If I lean just a little towards the
passenger side and look through the glass I can see perfectly.
I have decided to design a product to take care of all these automobile
items that wear out and need to be replaced. I call it the "Robeo Auto Parts
Adjuster." You can find it in the automobile department of fine department
stores. You can't miss it. It looks just like a ball peen hammer.
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"When I die, I'd like to be scattered over my hometown. But not, like,
cremated or anything." - Mitch Berg
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Green garden grass snakes can be dangerous. Yes, grass
snakes, not rattlesnakes.
A couple in Sweetwater, Texas, had a lot of potted plants,
and during a cold snap, the wife was bringing a lot of them
indoors to protect them from a possible freeze. It turned
out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in one
of the plants, and when it warmed up, it slithered out and
the wife saw it go under the sofa. She let out a very loud
scream. Her husband, who getting dressed after a shower, ran
out into the living room in his boxer shorts to see what the
problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa.
He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for
it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him
on the leg. He thought the snake had bitten him and he
fainted. His wife thought he had a heart attack, so she
called an ambulance.
The attendants rushed in and loaded him on a stretcher and
started carrying him out. About that time, the snake came
out from under the sofa. The emergency medical technician
saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the
man broke his leg and why he wound up in the hospital. The
wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she
called on a neighbor man. He volunteered to capture the
snake. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began
poking around under the sofa. Soon he decided it was gone
and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief. But
in relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where
she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and
fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa, and the
neighbor man, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to
use CPR to revive her.
The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at
the grocery store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's
mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a
bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp
to a point where it needed stitches. An ambulance was again
called, and it was determined that the injury required
hospitalization. The noise woke the woman from her dead
faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his
wife bending over him, so she assumed he had been bitten by
the snake. She went into the kitchen, brought back a small
bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's
throat. By now the police had arrived. They saw the
unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a
drunken brawl had occurred. They were about to arrest them
all, when the two women tried to explain how it all happened
over a little green snake. They called an ambulance, which
took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.
Just then the snake crawled out from under the sofa. One of
the policemen drew his revolver and fired at it. He missed
the snake and hit the leg of an end table that was on one
side of the sofa. The table fell over and the lamp on it
shattered, and as the bulb broke, it started a fire in the
drapes. The other policeman tried to beat out the flames and
fell through the window into the yard on top of the family
dog, who, startled, jumped up and raced out into the street,
where an oncoming car swerved to avoid hitting the dog and
smashed into the parked police car, setting it on fire.
Meanwhile, the burning drapes had spread to the walls and
the entire house was ablaze.
Neighbors had called the fire department, and the arriving
fire truck had started raising its ladder as they were
halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the
overhead wires and caused the electricity to go out, and
also disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block
area. Time passed... Both men were discharged from the
hospital, the house was rebuilt, the police acquired a new
police car, and all was right with the world once again.
About a year later, the couple was watching TV and the
weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The husband
asked his wife if she thought they should bring in their
plants for the night.
She shot him.
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Patriotic Father"
On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., my brother-in-law overheard a patriotic father pointing out a well-known building to his son.
"You see that triangular-shaped octagon over there? That's the Pentagon."
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Oneliner
"I don't pretend to have all the answers. I don't even pretend to know all the questions. Hey look, a Milk Dud!"
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"Weight Room"
Featured Illustration items are well suited for introducing or illuminating a point in a sermon, speech, or devotional. Funny, moving, or perhaps even graphic, the point of them is the point you make with them.
A colleague was planning a trip to my business office and asked if I could find him a hotel with exercise facilities. I called several hotels, with no luck. Finally, I thought I had found one. I asked the receptionist if the hotel had a weight room.
"No," she replied, "but we have a lobby. You can wait there."