At Heathrow Airport in England, a 300 ft. red carpet was stretched out to Air Force One and President Bush strode to a warm but dignified handshake from Queen Elizabeth II. They rode in a 1937 silver bentley to the edge of London where they boarded an open 17th century coach that was hitched to 6 magnificent white horses. As they rode toward Buckingham Palace, each looking to their sides and waiving to the thousands lining the streets, all was going well. What a glorious display of pagentry and dignity! Suddenly the scene was shattered when the right rear horse let rip one of the most horrific, earth shattering, eye tearing blasts of flatulance and the coach filled with noxious fumes… Uncomfortable, but maintaining control, the two dignitaries did their best to ignore the whole incident but then the Queen decided that was a ridiculous manner in which to handle this embarrassing situation. She turned to President bush and explained “Mr. President, please accept my regrets. I’m sure you understand that there are some things even a Queen can’t control.” To which George W. replied “Your majesty, please don’t give the matter another thought. You know if you hadn’t said something, I would have assumed it was one of the horses!”
- I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each. II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second — 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the “flying” reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can’t be done with eight or even nine of them— Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance — this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s dead now.
- 10. “Clocks are five hours fast” 9. “Everybody’s speaking some crazy foreign language” 8. “Harry Potter won’t return phone calls” 7. “So touchy about minor things…like going to war under false pretenses” 6. “They don’t know where Saddam is either” 5. “Queen Elizabeth not half as funny as ‘King of Queens’” 4. “Disappointed to learn ‘Big Ben’ is just a giant clock” 3. “Pack a gum costs 2 pounds — who carries two pounds of money?!” 2. “I’ve been here for 36 hours and Prince Charles hasn’t made a single move on me” 1. “Driving on the left reminds me of my drinking days”
- Daniel and Ginny are walking down the street one evening. As they pass one house, they hear loud shouting and crashes inside. Peter and Elizabeth Jones live there and are having a fierce argument. At the height of the quarrel, Peter picks up a table lamp, rips it out of the wall, and hurls it at Elizabeth. Elizabeth ducks, and the lamp flies past her through the window. It sails over Daniel and Ginny’s heads. Daniel looks up and exclaims, “Soft! What light through yonder window breaks!”
- Dolly Parton and Queen Elizabeth went to the Pearly Gates on the same day. They both met with an Angel to find out if they would be admitted to Heaven. The angel said “Unfortunately, there’s only one space in Heaven today so I must decide which one of you will be admitted.” The Angel asked Dolly if there was some particular reason why she should go to Heaven. Dolly took off her top and said, “Look at these, they’re the most perfect breasts God ever created and I’m sure it will please God to be able to see them every day, for eternity.” The Angel thanked Dolly, and asked Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the same question. The Queen walked over to a toilet, pulled the lever and flushes it without saying a word. The Angel immediately said, “OK, your Majesty, you may go into Heaven.” Dolly was outraged and asked, “What was that all about? I showed you two of God’s own perfect creations and you turned me down. She simply flushed a commode and she got admitted to Heaven! Would you explain that to me? “Sorry, Dolly,” said the Angel, “but even in Heaven, a royal flush beats a pair – no matter how big they are.”
- Maths teacher: If you have 12 chocolates and you give 5 to Mary, 3 to Claire and 2 to Elizabeth then what will you get? Me: 3 new girlfriends.
- Queen Elizabeth is planning to visit the set of “Game of Thrones” next week. She said things are hard to keep track of because everyone keeps dying. And then Prince Charles said, “Not everyone.”
- The cast of “Game of Thrones” had a very special visitor Queen Elizabeth. A lot of the Royals on “Game of Thrones” get offed. It leads me to believe this visit was arranged by Prince Charles.
- Queen Elizabeth’s horse tested positive for morphine and a mix of other powerful drugs. Sources say the queen is in denial. She thinks someone confused her horse’s urine sample with Prince Harry’s.