Newsgroups: alt.butt.harp Subject: RICHH: TEETH, MOUTH, BALLS Message-ID: <1992May18.023524.5221@tigger.jvnc.net> From: richh@tigger.jvnc.net (RICHH) Date: 18 May 92 02:35:24 GMT Sender: news@tigger.jvnc.net (Zee News Genie) Organization: JvNCnet, Princeton University, NJ Nntp-Posting-Host: tigger.jvnc.net Lines: 144 TRIP TO THE DENTIST "Oooh, says Karen. "I gotta tell you about what happened at the dentist." Karen has this dentist downtown, some real old guy. Despite the number of times a day she brushes her teeth, she always ends up with cavities. "So I'm there, right. He's poking around in my mouth, and he says, 'Now *there's* a cavity just *begging* to be filled." "What a cool bad pick-up line," says Maria. "Yeah," says Howard, "but only if he drops his pants and says 'And I got just the tool for it, right *here*." Karen says, "So I closed my eyes and said, 'Say that again', but he wouldn't. So he's loading up the novocaine and I shake my head and say, 'Uh-uh, no novocaine.' 'But I'm gonna be drilling pretty close to the nerve. How about some gas?" "Did you--" says Howard, and we all laugh. We've seen what NO2 does to Karen. "Nope. Nothing. I say, just do it. That tooth is no stranger to friction.'" "Oh God, you didn't--" "Yup. It didn't even hit me, what I'd said, until I was coming back, in the cab, and I just start cracking up. Driver kept asking me if I was okay--" "I wonder if your dentist ever got it. Hope he wasn't involved in some sort of root canal, then busts out laughing--" "Naaah, he never gets any of my jokes." "Ah well." YOU CAN'T TAKE ME ANYWHERE It was a special dinner. Karen's parent's, Maria's, and mine. We were eating downtown at The Palm, the restaurant in the Bellevue Strattford. At the table behind us were Bill Giles and Norman Braman, owners of the Phillies and Eagles, respectively. Earlier that evening we had seen about twenty bellhops surrounding this guy who was trying to get on the elevator. We looked closer and it was Muhammed Ali. His son had strayed, and Howard and I were play- duking it up with him, before he was dragged into the elevator. Dinner went well, at least until dessert. We all got coffee and cheesecake, and Maria's mom made the mistake of telling a joke. It was a clean one, a Polish joke. The punch line was: "But this is a hardware store." Soon, everyone told his or her own. Finally, it was Karen's turn. Maria, as Karen started, dug her fingernails into my right knee. Howard did the same to my left. The tables around us had been eavesdropping since we had started this joke thing, and Karen was well aware of her audience. She said, "How do you get a nun pregnant?" I crossed my fingers under the table and shook my head. The hands on my knees tightened their grip. Maria's father said, "I'll bite. How *do* you get a nun pregnant?" "YOU *F*U*C*K* HER!!" Oh man. BRASS ONES Before break. "Rich," said Howard, in that tone that could only mean two things: Either a term paper was due or he'd wrecked the car. Since we don't have a car I said, "What class?" "Asian studies. It's that whole Taoism, Buddhist Zen thing." "You haven't been to a class all year, have you?" "It's a nine o'clock. But I did make it to the first one. Got the syllabus." He handed it to me. "Have you read any of these?" "Never bought them. I skimmed them in the library before the midterm. Got a b minus." "Any papers?" "Two. Blew em off." "Great." "I don't want to fail this class. I'll just have to take ano--" "All right. Let's think." I lit up a joint, took a drag, passed it to him. "How big are your balls," I said. "Big enough. Wha--" "All right. I got an idea." Got up, grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper, scribbled something on it and handed it to him. "There's your paper." He looked at it and laughed. "No way. I'll flunk." "Probably. So why not do it with style?" A few days later he said, "Professor wants to see me in his office tomorrow." "Could be trouble." "I'll live." After. "So how'd it go?" "Check it out. I'm in there, and he says, 'Howard, you haven't been to a class all year, have you?' I shook my head. 'Did you even *buy* the books?' Kept shaking it. He points to a pile of papers on his desk and says 'I've been a professor here for twenty some odd years. I've read thousands of these papers. But this', he says, pulling out mine, 'is the only one that I'll remember after the semester ends. What the hell were you thinking?' I say, 'I didn't want to insult you buy pulling an all- nighter and putting together some half-plagiarized piece of crap. Figured you get enough of those.'" Wow, I thought, he's good. My brother sat down and said, 'Howard,' he says, 'You probably heard about the guy who, on a philosophy exam, saw the question, 'Why?' and answered 'Why not?', right?' Yeah, I say, I always figured that was some kind of urban legend. 'No', he says, 'it happened. The first student to ever do it probably got an A. After that, all F's. Now, no one in his right mind would put that on a test' 'This', he says, holding up my paper, is the same sort of thing'." "He gave you an *A*??," I say, incredulous. "Um, not exactly," Howard said, handing me the yellow see- through binder with the single page in it. It said: ------------------------------------------------------------------ FOOTNOTES 1.Ibid. Below it there was a red 'F' with a circle around it. "Am I missing something?" I say. "He gave you an 'F'." "But I got an 'A' for the course, on the condition that I read these books over the summer and take him again next term." "No shit." "But he said if I ever pull this Ibid thing again, he'll fail me for that term and retroactively for this one." "An A. Un-fucking-real. So you gonna buy those books now?" "I might," said Howard, like he had a secret. "But you heard what he said. That's it for this Ibid thing." "I got an ace up my sleeve," said Howard, folding a stick of Big Red into his mouth and handing me the pack. I took one and said, "Ace, eh?" Then I looked at my brother and between us there passed those two words that soon had both of us hysterical, on the floor. Op cit. RICHH