Originally Jokes / Recent Jokes

"I want to make sure everybody who has a job wants a job" -George Bush, during his first Presidential campaign
"This is a great day for France!" -Richard Nixon, while attending Charles De Gaulle's funeral
"Now, like, I'm President. It would be pretty hard for some drug guy to come into the White House and start offering it up, you know?... I bet if they did, I hope I would say, 'Hey, get lost. We don't want any of that.'" -George Bush, talking about drug abuse to a group of students
"For seven and a half years I've worked alongside President Reagan. We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex... uh... setbacks." -George Bush
"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change." -Dan Quayle
"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here." more...

CHAUFFEUR
French for a "heater." Originally this term was used for a particularly nasty breed of robbers, who broke into houses, seized the occupants, and then tortured them by burning their feet in the fireplace until they disclosed where they had stashed their valuables.
Later, the word was applied to stokers of steam engines, including the early steam powered automobiles. Finally, chauffeur came to mean the driver of any car.
DIPLOMAT
Greek for "folded twice." A diplomat dealt in matters so secret that the documents required this special precaution.
LORD
In Old English the head of the house was called the hlafweard: "loaf warden," or "master of the bread." This approached the 1960s slang "bread" for what most people called money.
On the way to lord it passed through many intermediate forms, such as hlaford and louerd.
Similarly, a lady was originally the "bread-kneader," hlaefdige, before more...

Boy, it really galls my threads when these ignoramuses go off about how the Corvette crowd is 'over-restoring' cars! I say, restored means *exactly* as the factory did it, no matter what. I spent 95 weeks last year doing an accurate and complete ground-up restoration on my '67. And, let me tell you, some of those rubber and glass pieces are *really* hard to restore after grinding them up! Thankfully, the metal pieces are easy to remelt and form.
For some folks, simply applying a bit of overspray while painting is 'good enough.' I scoff at this. I meticulously copied onto the mufflers, droplet by droplet, the exact overspray pattern that was there originally. Even the runs and sags at the bottom of the door panels were duplicated. Your average 'restorer' will just slap some new paint on, calling it 'original' if it is the same color. Jeeez. I chemically removed every vestige of *the original paint*, then broke it down, reformulated it, and re-applied it. Sure, I had to use more...