DEAD PERSONS' SOCIETY
PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA



Funny 011

Genie Taglines and Bumper Stickers

* A family tree can whither if nobody tends its roots.
* Many family trees were started by grafting.
* A miser is hard to live with, but he makes a very fine ancestor!
* Am I the only person up my tree? Seems like it.
* Any family tree produces lemons, nuts and a few bad apples.
* Climbing my family tree was fun before the nuts appeared.
* Ever find an ancestor HANGING from the family tree?
* Every family tree has some sap in it.
* Geneaolgists are time travelers.
* Genealogy: Chasing your own tale.
* Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to better people.
* Everyone believes in heredity until their children act like fools.
* I looked in my family tree and found out I was the sap.
* I looked up my family tree....there were two dogs using it.
* I'm always late...My ancestors arrived on the JuneFlower.
* I'm no genealogist...Until this year I spelled it "geneOlogist!"
* I'm not sick, I've just got fading genes.
* It's hard to believe that someday I'll be an ancestor.
* It's 1999, Do you know where your grandparents were?
* Jeanealogy: the study of Levis and Wranglers.
* Many a family tree needs trimming.
* My ancestors must be in a witness protection program.
* My family came on the Mayflower....Or was it Allied?
* My family coat of arms ties at the back...Is that normal?
* My family tree is lost in the forest!
* My family tree must have been used for firewood.
* My hobby is genealogy and I raise dust bunnies for pets.
* Only a genealogist regards a step backwards as progress.
* Remember, undocumented genealogy is mythology.
* Shhh! Be vewy, vewy quiet...I'm hunting forebears.
* So many ancestors, so little time.
* The gene pool could use a little chlorine!
* That's the problem with the gene pool - no lifeguards.
* What do you mean my birth certificate expired?
* What do you mean my family tree has root rot?
* Whoever said seek and ye shall find was NOT a genealogist!
* Genealogy goes on ... and on ... and on ...
* Genealogists live in the past lane.
* Genealogists do it generation after generation.
* Geneqlogists do it in the library.
* Genealogists do it with a computer.
* Genealogists never die, they just lose their census.
* Genealogy: Better than the best adventure game, and every bit as frustrating.
* Genealogy: Tracing descent from someone who didn't.
* Give me your tired, your poor...they're genealogists!
* Genealogy - Where you confuse the dead and irritate the living.
* I think that I shall never see a completed genealogy!
* Genealogists collect dead relatives.
* What's really upsetting is to have a dog who can trace his ancestry further than yours.
* We are all related, relatively speaking!
* Can a first cousin once removed return?
* Did my ancestors inbreed? My genes seem tight.
* If you get a divorce in Arkansas, are you still cousins?
* My mother and father were siblings. That's why I look so much alike.
* Sign of a redneck: circular family tree.
* If your family tree doesn't fork, you're probably a redneck!
* Redneck family - one that produces identical cousins.


The English Language

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preacher praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another. Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or piccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all).That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

Ponder This . . . .

* How is it possible to have a civil war?
* Does the Little Mermaid wear an algebra?
* Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
* How do I set my laser printer on stun?
* Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?
* If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?
* If God dropped acid, would he see people?
* If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
* If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too?
* If the Number 2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still Number 2?
* If work is so terrific, how come they have to pay you to do it?
* If you're born again, do you have two belly-buttons?
* If you ate pasta and antipasta, would you still be hungry?
* If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
* Is a castrated pig disgruntled?
* Why are haemorrhoids called "haemorrhoids" instead of "asteroids"?
* Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
* Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
* What happens when none of your bees wax?
* Where are we going? And what's with this hand basket?
* What was the best thing before sliced bread?


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Nov 1, 2001