Checkbook

Well, my friends, all your mortgages are now all OUR mortgages.

Yesterday the U.S. Government officially took financial giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship.

MSNBC says the deal could cost taxpayers - umm, that would be us - billions of dollars.

But the good news is that it's still cheaper and, apparently, better for the whole country than letting them both go belly up.

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Tired of constantly having to balance her grown son's checkbook, Cindy told him she would only look at it if he spent an evening trying to wrestle it into shape.

A couple of days later, after spending hours working on it, her son showed up at the door, exclaiming, "Yes! I've done it! I made it balance!"

Impressed, Cindy took the book in hand to have a look for herself.

"Let's see," she says, "$550 for your rent ... $100.50 for your utilities ... $50 for your cell phone ..." but then her brow wrinkled as she read the last entry. "What's this one? $65.32 for ESP?"

"Oh, that," her son answered, "it means 'Error Some Place!' "

[first seen in JokeMaster; edited by Mark Raymond]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: Anu Garg's Word A Day just taught me a new term: a "Chinese Auction" - which seemingly doesn't have anything to do at all with China or the tradition and history of its people - is a combination auction and raffle. You start out by purchasing raffle tickets, then, at the auction, you bid however many tickets you want. However, all the tickets bid are put into a box and one is randomly drawn out, and that person receives the item up for sale. So the more tickets you bid, the greater your chance of being the winner, but it's not guaranteed.

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{Today's joke reminds me of a story told about Vin Scully, longtime Los Angeles Dodgers baseball announcer. One of his fellow commentators was looking over his scorecard one day and noticed the term, "WW." When asked about it, Scully replied that it meant "Wasn't Watching." -- MR}

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