Italian Lover A virile, middle-aged Italian gentlemen named Guido was relaxing at his favorite bar in Rome when he managed to attract the attention of a spectacular young woman. Their meeting progressed to the point where he invited her back to his apartment and, after some small talk, they retired to his bedroom where he rattled her senseless. After a pleasant interlude he asked with a smile, “So, you finish?” She paused for a second, frowned, and replied, “No.” Surprised, Guido reached for her and the session resumed. This time she thrashed about wildly and there were screams of passion. The sex finally ends and, again, Guido smiles and asks, “You finish?” Again, after a short pause, she returns his smile, cuddles closer to him and softly says, “No.” Stunned, but damned that he was going to uphold the reputation of all Italian men set out to ensure that no woman left his bed unsatisfied, Guido reaches for the woman yet again. Using the last of his strength, he barely manages it, but they end together screaming, bucking, clawing and ripping the bed sheets. Exhausted, Guido falls onto his back, gasping. Barely able to turn his head, he looks into her eyes, smiles proudly and asked again, “You finish?” Barely able to speak, the beautiful blond whispers in his ear, “No, I Norwegian.” If the shoe fits, it’s ugly. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. A married couple was asleep when the phone rang at 2 in the morning. The wife (undoubtedly blonde), picked up the phone, listened a moment and said, “How should I know, that’s 200 miles from here!” and hung up. The husband said, “Who was that?” The wife said, “I don’t know, some woman wanting to know if the coast is clear.” Two blondes are walking down the street. One notices a compact on the sidewalk and leans down to pick it up. She opens it, looks in the mirror and says, “Hmm, this person looks familiar.” The second blonde says, “Here, let me see!” So the first blonde hands her the compact. The second one looks in the mirror and says, “You dummy, it’s me!” COMMITTEE A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours. HANDKERCHIEF Cold Storage. INFLATION Cutting money in half without damaging the paper. New Language Changes in Europe The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English.” In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c.” Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favor of “k.” This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f.” This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, pulik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v.” During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer wil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in zu forst plas. Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular? Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication. One Big Dude A little guy goes into an elevator, looks up and sees this HUGE guy standing next to him. The big guy sees the little guy staring at him, looks down and says, “7 feet 3 inches tall, 385 pounds, 12-inch penis, 2 pound left testicle, 2 pound right testicle, Turner Brown.” The small guy faints away and falls to the floor. The big guy kneels down and brings him to, gently slapping his face and shaking him, “Are you alright?” In a very weak voice the little guy says, “Excuse me, but what EXACTLY did you say?” The big dude says, “I saw the curious look on your face and figured I’d just give you the answers to the questions almost everyone always asks me. I’m 7 feet 3 inches tall, 385 pounds, 12-inch penis, 2 pound left testicle, 2 pound right testicle, and my name is Turner Brown.” The small guy says, “Thank God! I thought you said ‘Turn Around’.” What brought me to textiles definitely has to do with a collective creative labor, which is very much in contradistinction with the great artist. Which is what I lived and I think most people in the art world lived. The idea of art and art forms which would be much more collective, a shared social iconography is what interested me. The purpose is probably the difference between, say, the applied arts and the fine arts, in that sense. And I was very much interested in textiles because they were both very beautiful things and . . . big business. So it was a trade. As you probably know, in the eighteenth century, nineteenth century in England . . . twenty-five, thirty percent of the population was working in the needle trades or the weaving business. It was very, very big. It was like the car in the ‘30s, and probably like computers right now. Great fortunes were built on this, and yet textiles were still an art in a way. And I was curious particularly—in the bibliography (Bibliographica Textilia Historiæ), in the research I did, or my understanding of the literature—[about] the meeting of those two kinds of interests. In other words, the art world, for all its excitement, is a very egotistically oriented kind of activity. Art may be brilliant, it may make insights into your life and what we see around us, and the quality and thoughts, but it’s basically super-man kind of stuff. I always tell myself, couldn’t I have been a dealer in rare feathers or something?