Monday

Well, the remnant of Hurricane Ike blew through our fair state this weekend, sparking flash flood warnings and raining out a good part of the Renaissance Festival.

Which meant that for a welcome change, the Mrs. and I did pretty much a whole lot of nothing.

Including preparing any material for the post. So just the joke today.

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YOUR MONDAY GROANERS

Chickens make lousy baseball players. All they can hit are fowl balls.

A group of women who used peroxide to turn their hair blonde were causing a big ruckus at the ballgame, but to downplay the incident, the headlines merely said, "The Bleachers Went Wild!"

When that new film about Camelot came out a few years ago, we wouldn't let our children see it. Too much Saxon violence.

If a pretty woman loses her watch, does that make her a timeless beauty?

Lubricating oil wasn't invented until 1895. Before that, I guess, people were just squeaking by.

As I get older, I'm going to stop eating natural foods. I need all the preservatives I can get.

I was having lunch one day with a friend, a highly respected circuit court judge, who mentioned that his father had worked as the publicist for Sonny and Cher. He had continued working with Sonny even after their divorce, and talked of how bitter Sonny had become about the whole thing. He had instructed my friend's father to cut up all the remaining publicity photos, so that only Sonny remained in the picture. At this point I told my friend that he had done quite well for himself, considering his humble beginnings. "I don't understand," he replied. "Well," I explained, "considering that you were raised as the son of a Cher cropper....."

[JokeMaster, Top Greetings, and Joe's Clean Laffs]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: The Latin noun "culmen" meant "top." When used in the form "culminare," it meant "to crown" something or someone (putting the crown on the *top* of the person). It was first put into use as the word "culminate" by astronomers in the 16th century. When a planet or star culminates, it reaches the peak - or top - of its orbit, so that it is directly overhead, or at the highest point from the horizon. These days we tend to use the word in its figurative sense, which means that someone or something has reached a climactic or decisive point, as in, "Weeks of civil unrest culminated in a protest march."

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