A man walked into a bank in New York City one day and asked for the loan officer.

He told the loan officer he was going to the Philippines on business for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000. The bank officer told him the bank would need some form of security for the loan.

Then the man handed over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produced the title and everything checked out, the loan officer agreed to accept the car as collateral for the loan. The bank’s president and its officers all enjoyed a good laugh at the guy for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan.

An employee of the bank then drove the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parked it there. Two weeks later, the guy returned, repaid the $5,000 and the interest, which came to $15.41.

The loan officer said, “Sir, we are very happy to of have had this transaction which has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found you are a multi millionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow “$5,000”.

The millionaire replied, “Where else in New York City can I park my car for $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?”

2000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton

Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement: 1 bananosecond

365.25 days of drinking low-calorie beer because it’s less filling: 1 lite year

Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon

Basic unit of laryngitis: 1 hoarsepower

Shortest distance between two jokes: A straight line

1 million-million microphones: 1 megaphone

1 million bicycles: 2 megacycles

52 cards: 1 decacards

1 millionth of a fish: 1 microfiche

1 trillion pins: 1 terrapin

Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult - for example, cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using ‘s’ instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard ‘c’ could be replaced by ‘k’ sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be announsed that the troublesome ‘ph’ would henseforth be written ‘f’. This would make words like ‘fotograf’ twenty per sent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent ‘e’s in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing ‘th’ by ‘z’. Perhaps zen ze funktion of ‘w’ kould be taken on by ‘v’, vitsh is, after al, half a ‘w’. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary ‘o kould be dropd from words kontaining ‘ou’. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of ze Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.