Dear Rex, Thank you for your caring letter of March 27th. I hope your fractured leg has healed and the skin grafts have finally taken. After all of the tissue rejection problems you experienced while on vacation here, a little good news would certainly be in order. Since your unfortunate accident in our “breakthrough” class, we’ve made a number of curriculum changes. I thought I’d share some of them with you, so you’ll know what to expect next year. First, we’ve dropped cliff jumping from the beginner’s class. The attrition rate was just too high. And by popular demand, we’ve added one restroom break to each day. You’ll also be…
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Lies are Like Boomerangs No matter how talented you are at telling whoppers, eventually, they’ll come back to haunt you.
There’s only two people in your life you should lie to… the police and your girlfriend. – Jack Nicholson I’ve never told a lie. Now, that right there is a lie. But if you have, you know the sinking feeling of being caught like a deer in the headlights. The blood rushes from your head to your feet, you begin to hyperventilate and sweat profusely as you begin scrambling to tell another lie to cover up the one you just made up. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. The secret to getting away with lying is the same as throwing a boomerang. It revolves around three crucial elements…
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Interview with a Felon It's not easy breaking the corporate barrier when you've done time
Hi. I’m here for the job. I’m sorry I’m late, but I missed the last bus from the halfway house because some of the other inmates started throwing food around at breakfast. By the time the guards released us from lockdown and found all the hidden knives, I had to steal a car to get here on time. I read in the newspaper ad that you’re looking for a mature, sharp-dressed, post-graduate educated CPA with extensive computer experience. Well, I don’t have any of those skills but I’m a fast learner. Just ask my cellmate. Besides, this place is only five minutes from the penitentiary, so I’d probably qualify for…
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New Frontiers in Homeschooling Going to school can be tough... even if you never leave home
Like most other parents, my mom and dad agonized over my schooling options during the recent pandemic. After all, their choices were so limited. Short of sending me to the job site with my dad, they were reduced to two choices: break down and buy me a laptop or home school me. They chose the latter. “We were concerned,” said my mom. “We wanted him to experience all of the benefits of homeschooling during the pandemic without sacrificing any of the important social aspects of attending a large public school.” So, they came up with a unique approach to making my experiences at home mirror those I would have at…
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Those Good Old Time Diseases Why nobody gets Dry Bellyache or Bucket Fever these days
I was a first-grader at Van Nuys Elementary School the first time I came into contact with the medical system and its old time diseases. As a healthy child, the only thing that slowed me down was the occasional off-color weenie on “Hot Dog Friday.” None of the hair-netted ladies behind the steam table thought for a minute that I could have something as serious as Ptomaine Poisoning and wouldn’t have been able to recognize it even if I had. Instead, one of them took off her apron and marched me downstairs to the nurse’s office where she laid me down on an old army cot that smelled of other…