Leaping JOW #803

Today is Leap Day.  Julius Caesar and his astronomer, Sosigenes, calculated the need for a Leap Year in 45 B.C.  There have been 514 leap years since then.  Without that extra day I guess today would be July 31, 2017.  Actually we even have a Leap Second this year which is actually very important for things like atomic clocks.  Don’t think those matter?  GPS depends upon them.

Leap year gives me an extra day to reflect on how unproductive I am with extra time.  Here are some Leap Year factoids.

People born on February 29 are called "leaplings" or "leapers".

If you're on a fixed annual wage today you are working for free

Anthony, Texas is the self-proclaimed "Leap Year Capital of the World". It holds a festival which includes a guided trip to Aztec Cave, "fun at the horse farm" and square dancing. – Too bad I will have to miss all the fun….

   Some leap year kid riddles:

·         What do athletes wear on Leap Day? Jumpsuits.

·         What kind of music do you listen to on Leap Day? Hip Hop.

·         What do the Chinese call the Year of the Frog? Leap Year.

·         Where do most people eat on Leap Day? IHOP.

·         What do you call a one-legged waitress in a pancake house?  Yup – IHOP   

·         Oh, and what do you call a one-legged Japanese waitress?  Irene

The current Republican presidential race is reminding me more and more of a reality TV Show – no wonder Trump is winning.  There are disturbing echoes of Mike Judges cult film ‘Idiocracy’, set in a future where all the smart people have been outbred by the dumb ones.  The POTUS of that movie was a mixed-martial arts/porn star.  Okay, maybe that is a bit too much but when did a debate for the most important job in the world degenerate into a shouting match of insults.  Ken Hoffman is a writer for the Houston Chronicle.  He is not my favorite writer but he did post a number of amusing (to me) bits on the current candidates. As he says, ‘I knew that at some point a funnier sitcom than ‘Seinfeld’ would come along.  I never thought it would be the presidential debate’.

Here are a few presidential insult jokes:

Hillary and Bernie are so old they look like the couple in a Cialis commercial.  They should be debating side by side in separate bath tubs.

On a Trump rally – ‘We are witnessing history.  Specifically Germany in 1932.’

On one of the early losers – ‘How do you run a campaign over the sound of your staff typing their resumes?’

Mike Huckabee supporters don’t know the meaning of the word ‘surrender’.  That is because they were educated in the Arkansas school system.

Random short jokes

·         I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

·         I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again.

·         Hippopotamuses kill more people every year than guns.  But a gun is easier to conceal.

·         I was watching the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco where the runners often wear costumes.  Then I saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought: 'This could be interesting'.

·         I started so many fights at my school – but I had that attention-deficit disorder. So I didn't finish a lot of them.

·         Dave drowned. So at the funeral we got him a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt. Well, it's what he would have wanted.

·         There is a lot of crime in multi-story parking garages. That is wrong on so many different levels.

Finally, a silly one that I just heard:

Two blondes became lost on a hike.  They called out but no one answered.

“Maybe they can’t hear us,” one said.

“I heard it is better if we all call out together,” the other said.

So they took a deep breath and began to yell loudly, “Together, Together, Together!”