Bar Bets (from Witnit)

I nearly soiled myself laughing...

http://witnit.blogspot.com/

Bar Bets
Many years ago, in my drinking days, I went to a small old Irish bar in Old Sacramento on a Tuesday night. I sat at the bar and ordered a draft. One table had three guys sitting, laughing and drinking. Otherwise it was just me and the gray-haired bartender. Probably the owner.
He wasn't in a talking mood. A baseball game was on and his eyes kept straying to the game.
Soon, a man wearing a brown fedora came in and sat nearby. He ordered a draft, smiled at me and lifted it in a gesture of friendly drinking. I raised my glass and drank.
He asked me if I was a betting man. He had a slight Irish brogue.
Not really, I said. Why do you ask?
Him: Well if you were I'd want to make a friendly wager with you.
Me: What wager?
Him: Oh, I'd probably bet you something that would be impossible for me to win.
Me: Like what?
He looked at me and said, I'd bet you $50 that I could bite my right eye. (The bartender tore his eyes from the game and looked at us.)
I laughed. That would be quite a bet.
Him: You wanna take me up on it?
I thought a moment. Seemed like something that would be worth seeing if I lost. I had plenty of cash on me.
Me: Okay, you got a bet. I don't think you can bite your right eye.
The guy took a drink, set down his glass, reached up and removed his right eye. It was a glass eye. He put it between his teeth and bit down on it.
I laughed. The bartender laughed. I paid up and asked the guy to buy me another beer. He obliged.
Then he said, I'll bet you $100 that I can bite my left eye. You can get your money back.
I looked at him. His left eye was definitely real. The right eye looked fairly real but I could tell now that it was glass. I couldn't imagine how he could possibly bite his left eye.
Me: Okay. You got me hooked. I'll bet you hundred bucks that you can't bite your left eye.
He smiled, removed his false teeth, reached up and lightly clamped them on his left eye, and then put them back in his mouth. The bartender and I both laughed. I paid up. Just another sucker in a bar who had secretly hoped he could someday make money off these bets. But I don't want to lose my eye or my teeth. I was down $150 and had about a ten spot left.
Him: You know, I have another bet for you...
I waved him off. No, out of money, but thanks. I learned quite a lesson and had a couple good laughs.
The guy just smiled, raised his glass in a toast, and looked at the bartender, who just smiled and shook his head. The guy nodded and then got up and shuffled over to the table with the three laughing guys.
The bartender looked at me, gave me a crooked smile like, What a character, and then went back to watching his game.
After about five minutes the guy left the table and came back over to the bar. He swayed a little, like the beers were starting to affect him. He waved at the bartender.
Him: I know you might not want to hear it. But I got an interesting bet for you.
Bartender: I'm listening.
Him: I'll bet you $20 that I can stand at one end of the bar, and that you can put a jigger at the other end of the bar. And that I can piss into that jigger, filling it up, without getting even so much as a drop of piss on the bar or on anything else in the bar.
The bar was about 20 feet long. The bartender stared at him. He didn't want to do it, but it was only $20. I'd have bet if I had the money.
The bartender didn't answer and the guy said, Tell you what. If I do it you owe me $20. If I fail, I give you $100.
Bartender: Okay. You got a bet.
The bartender set up a jigger at one end of the bar, and the guy climbed up and stood at the other end of the bar. He unzipped his pants and began peeing all over the bar. The bartender started laughing. The guy zipped up, climbed down, sat, and gave the bartender $100.
Bartender (wiping down the bar and still laughing): Now you know that that was an impossible bet. Why in God's name did you make it?
Him: Well, you see that table of three guys over there? I just bet them $300 that I could piss all over your bar and you'd just laugh.

Illegal Immigrant

This sums it up pretty well...

A Day Without an Illegal ImmigrantAn imaginary exercise.
By Tom Tancredo
What would a day without illegal aliens really be like? Let’s try to imagine it.
On May 1, millions of illegal aliens working in meat-processing plants, construction, restaurants, hotels, and other “jobs Americans won’t do” are supposed to stay home from work to show the importance of their labor to our nation’s economy. Doubtless, there will be some inconvenience if that happens, but there is another side to the story that is not being reported. We are talking about illegal aliens, not mere “immigrants.” If legal immigrants stopped working for a day, we would miss the services of physicians, nurses, computer programmers, writers, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs of all stripes, and some airline pilots…as well as the CEO of Google. That would be more than an inconvenience, but it won’t happen because legal immigrants are not out marching angrily for rights that are already protected by our courts. But if illegal aliens all took the day off and were truly invisible for one day, there would be some plusses along with the mild inconveniences. Hospital emergency rooms across the southwest would have about 20-percent fewer patients, and there would be 183,000 fewer people in Colorado without health insurance. OBGYN wards in Denver would have 24-percent fewer deliveries and Los Angeles’s maternity-ward deliveries would drop by 40 percent and maternity billings to Medi-Cal would drop by 66 percent. Youth gangs would see their membership drop by 50 percent in many states, and in Phoenix, child-molestation cases would drop by 34 percent and auto theft by 40 percent. In Durango, Colorado, and the Four Corners area and the surrounding Indian reservations, the methamphetamine epidemic would slow for one day, as the 90 percent of that drug now being brought in from Mexico was held in Albuquerque and Farmington a few hours longer. According to the sheriff of La Plata County, Colorado, meth is now being brought in by ordinary illegal aliens as well as professional drug dealers. If the “Day-Without-an-Immigrant Boycott” had been held a year earlier on May 8, 2005, and illegal alien Raul Garcia-Gomez had stayed home and did not work or go to a party that day, Denver police officer Donnie Young would still be alive and Garcia-Gomez would not be sitting in a Denver jail awaiting trial. If the boycott had been held on July 1, 2004, Justin Goodman of Thornton, Colorado, would still be riding his motorcycle and Roberto Martinez-Ruiz would not be in prison for killing him and then fleeing the scene while driving on a suspended license. If illegal aliens stayed home—in Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, and 100 other countries—the Border Patrol would have 3,500 fewer apprehensions (of the 12,000 who try each day). Colorado taxpayers would save almost $3,000,000 in one day if illegals do not access any public services, because illegal aliens cost the state over $1 billion annually according to the best estimates. Colorado’s K-12 school classrooms would have 131,000 fewer students if illegal aliens and the children of illegals were to stay home, and Denver high schools’ dropout rate would once again approach the national norm. Colorado’s jails and prisons would have 10-percent fewer inmates, and Denver and many other towns would not need to build so many new jails to accommodate the overcrowding. Our highway patrol and county sheriffs would have about far fewer DUI arrests and there would be a dramatic decline in rollovers of vanloads of illegal aliens on I-70 and other highways. On a Day Without an Illegal Immigrant, thousands of workers and small contractors in the construction industry across Colorado would have their jobs back, the jobs given to illegal workers because they work for lower wages and no benefits. (On the other hand, if labor unions continue signing up illegal workers, no one will be worrying about Joe Six-Pack’s loss. Sorry, Joe, but you forgot to tell your union business agent that your job is as important as his is.) If it fell on a Sunday, Catholic Churches in the southwestern states might have 20-percent fewer parishioners at Mass if all illegals stayed home, but they would be back next Sunday, so the bishop’s job is not in danger. The religious leaders who send people to the marches and rallies will never fear for their jobs, because illegal aliens need their special “human-rights” advocacy and some priests and nuns seem especially devoted to that cause. The fact that most Catholics disagree with the bishops’ radicalism doesn’t seem to affect their dedication to undermining the rule of law. All of this might be a passing colorful episode in the heated national debate over immigration policy if it weren’t for an odd coincidence: The immigration-enforcement agency responsible for locating and deporting illegal aliens is also taking the day off today. Of course, they didn’t call it a boycott. It is just (non)business as usual.
—Tom Tancredo is a Republican congressman from Colorado.