A blonde and a lawyer are seated next to each other on a flight from LA to NY. The lawyer asks if she would like to play a fun game. The blonde, very tired, just wants to take a nap, so she politely declines and rolls over towards the window to catch a few winks. The lawyer persists (as lawyers tend to do) and explains that the game is easy and a lot of fun. He says, “I ask you a question, and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5.00 and vice versa.”

Again, she declines and tries to get some sleep.

The lawyer, now agitated, says, “Okay, if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5.00, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll pay you $500.00.”

This catches the blonde’s attention, and, realizing he won’t stop bothering her till she plays, she agrees to play the game.

The lawyer asks the first question, “What’s the distance from the earth to the moon?”

The blonde looks at him blankly, reaches into her purse, pulls out a $5 bill, and hands it to him.

“Okay,” he says with a twinkle in his eyes. “Now it’s your turn.”

She asks him, “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four legs?”

The lawyer looks puzzled, takes out his laptop computer, and searches all his references. No answer. He taps into his cellphone and searches the net and Library of Congress. Still no answer. Frustrated, he sends e-mails to all his friends and coworkers. But, none of them know the answer, either. After an hour, sweating he wakes the blonde and hands her $500.

The blonde says, “Thank you,” and rolls back toward the window.

The lawyer, now thoroughly agitated, demands, “Well, what’s the answer?”

Silently, she reaches into her purse, hands him another $5, and goes back to sleep. 

That's it folks.  I'll bet this lawyer didn't enjoy his trip to the Big Apple.  Good Day!


Source:  100 Best Lawyer Jokes

"You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass." —Douglas Adams

A very shy guy goes into a bar and sees a beautiful woman sitting at the bar. After an hour of gathering up his courage, he finally goes over to her and asks, tentatively, “Ma'am, would you mind if I chat with you for a while?”

She responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, “No, I won’t sleep with you tonight!” Everyone in the bar turned and stared at them.

Naturally, the guy is hopelessly and completely embarrassed and he slinks back to his table.

After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes. She smiled sweetly at him and said, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. You see, I’m a graduate student in psychology and I’m studying how people respond to embarrassing situations.”

To which, he responds at the top of his lungs, “What do you mean, $200?”  "Do you think I'm Onassis?"

On my 65th birthday, I got a gift certificate from my wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a shaman living on a nearby reservation who was rumored to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction.  After being persuaded, I drove to the reservation, handed my ticket to the shaman, and wondered what I was in for.

The old man slowly, methodically produced a potion. He handed it to me, and with a grip on my shoulder, warned, “This is powerful medicine and it must be respected. You take only a teaspoonful and then say, ‘1-2-3′. When you do that, you will be longer and harder than you have ever been in your life and you can perform as long as you want.”

I was greatly encouraged. As he walked away, I turned and asked, “How do I stop the medicine from working?”

“Your partner must say ‘1-2-3-4′ when she’s had enough,” the shaman replied. “But when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon.”

I was eager to see if it worked. I went home, showered, shaved, took a spoonful of the medicine, and then invited my wife to join me in the bedroom. When she came in, I took off my clothes and said, “1-2-3!” Immediately, I was the manliest of men.

My wife took one look at me. She was so excited she began throwing off her clothes. She jumped onto the bed and excitedly asked, “What was the ‘1-2-3′ for?”

And that, boys and girls, is why we should never end our sentences with a preposition.  Auf wiedersehen!

There is one problem with him, however. Whenever you say "my", he'll eat whatever you've mentioned. Watch. "My apple!" The lady watches in awe as the dog zooms over to the shop attendant and furiously devours an apple he has produced from his pocket.

"He's cute, and so unusual. I'll take him," she says, and a few minutes later she's on her way back home with the puppy to show her husband Bangdu. "Darling, look what a clever pet I bought today!" she exclaims when she got home. "He can fly!"

Bangdu peers at the dog, and then remarks, "Fly eh? Ha! My foot!"  Ouch!

A man is driving down the road and breaks down near a monastery He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door, and says, “My car broke down. Do you think I could stay the night?”

The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, and even fix his car. As the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange sound; a sound so beautiful like no other that he has ever heard. The next morning, he asks the monks what the sound was, but they say, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”

The man is disappointed but thanks them anyway and goes about his way. Some years later, the same man breaks down in front of the same monastery.

The monks again accept him, feed him, and even fix his car.

That night, he hears the same strange mesmerizing sound that he had heard years earlier.

The next morning, he asks what the sound was, but the monks reply, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”

The man says, “All right, all right. I’m dying to know. If the only way I can find out what that sound was, is to become a monk, how do I become a monk?”

The monks reply, “You must travel the earth and tell us how many blades of grass there are and the exact number of sand pebbles. When you find these numbers, you will become a monk.”

The man sets about his counting task. Some forty-five years later, he returns and knocks on the door of the monastery. He says, “I have traveled the earth and devoted my life to the task demanded and have found what you had asked for. There are 371,145,236,284,232 blades of grass and 231,281,219,999,129,382 sand pebbles on the earth.”

The monks reply, “Congratulations, you are correct and now you are a monk. We shall now show you the way to the sound.”

The monks lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says, “The sound is behind that door.”

The man reaches for the knob, but the door is locked. He asks, “May I have the key?”

The monks give him the key, and he opens the door.

Behind the wooden door is another door made of stone. The man requests the key to the stone door.

The monks give him the key, and he opens it, only to find a door made of ruby. He demands another key from the monks, who provide it. Behind that door is another door, this one made of sapphire. And so it went until the man had gone through doors of emerald, silver, topaz, and amethyst.

Finally, the monks say, “This is the key to the last door!”

The man is relieved to no end. He unlocks the door, turns the knob, and behind that door he is astonished to find the source of that strange sound. It is truly an amazing and unbelievable sight!

But I can’t tell you what it is because you’re not a monk.  So start counting your blades of grass and your sand pebbles.   Adieu!

A man went into a pharmacy and asked to talk to a male pharmacist.

The woman he was talking to, said that she was the pharmacist and that she and her sister owned the store, so there were no males employed there. She then asked if there was anything she could help the gentleman with.

The man said sheepishly, “This is embarrassing for me, but I have a permanent erection which causes me a lot of problems and severe embarrassment. I was wondering what you could give me for it?”

The lady pharmacist said, “Just a minute, I’ll go talk to my sister.”

When she returned, she said, “The best we can do is 1/3 ownership in the store and $3,000 a month in living expenses.”  "Do you accept the deal?"

Joe Carter grew up in a small rural dusty town, then moved away to attend college and law school.  He then decided to come back because he could be a big man in his home town. He really wanted to impress everyone with his new career. He opened his new law office, but business was very slow.

One morning, he saw a man coming up the sidewalk to his office. He decided to make a big impression on this new client when he arrived. As the man came to the door, Joe picked up the phone. He motioned the man in, all the while saying, “No. Absolutely not. You tell those clowns in New York that I won’t settle this case for less than one million bucks. Yes. The Appeals Court has agreed to hear that case next week. I’ll be handling the primary argument, and the other members of my team will provide support. Okay. Tell the D.A. that I’ll meet with him next week to discuss the details.”

This sort of thing went on for almost five minutes. All the while, the man sat patiently as Joe rattled instructions. Finally, Joe put down the phone and turned to the man.

“I’m sorry for the delay,” he said, “but as you can see, I’m very busy. What can I do for you?”

The man replied very politely, “I’m from the phone company. I came to hook up your phone.”

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher who dedicated all his life trying to prove that life existed because it could be filtered through the process of thought.  He made famous the phrase, "Cogito ergo sum", meaning "I think, therefore I am; or better, I am thinking, therefore I exist".

“I entirely abandoned the study of letters. Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth traveling, visiting courts and armies, mixing with people of diverse temperaments and ranks, gathering various experiences, testing myself in the situations which fortune offered me, and at all times reflecting upon whatever came my way so as to derive some profit from it." (Descartes, Discourse on the Method)

When I was in college, I spent a great deal of time reading about philosophy even though I understood very little.  This is serious stuff.  It makes your mind go around in circles, but it's good to develop intellectual curiosity.   If you've been a follower of Lingua Franca, you certainly have noticed that I like to ask questions or collect witty quotes.  Some of them are funny, while others are thought provoking. 

This post follows the pattern of thinking.  This leads me to explain the title of this post---Ponder-ism.  A good dictionary worth its salt will say that "ponder" implies a careful weighing of a problem or often prolonged inconclusive thinking about a matter.  A good synonym would be "meditate". 

The following statements or questions are included to encourage you to start pondering; and in the process, put a smile or two on your face.