A minister, making a call, was sitting in the parlor with his hostess when her small son came running in carrying a dead rat.

"Don't worry, Mother, it's dead. We bashed him and beat him until--" and, noticing the minister for the first time, he added in a lowered voice, "until God called him home."

Dave and Jeffrey have played a round of golf faithfully every Friday for 20 years. As Dave prepares to putt, he notices a funeral procession drive by. He also observes his friend Jeffrey remove his cap and bow his head in the direction of the procession. Dave sez, "Jeffrey, you are truly a gentleman to show your respect like that". Jeffrey replies, "Oh, it's nothing. After all, we were married for 35 years".

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A new young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript.

So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up. In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."

So, the head monk goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscript is held in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot.

So, the young monk gets worried and goes downstairs to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall. His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old abbot, What's wrong, father?
With a choking voice, the old abbot replies,
"The word is celebrate".

A tourist walked into a curio shop in San Francisco. Looking around at the exotic items, he noticed a very lifelike, life-sized  bronze statue of a rat. It had no price tag but was so striking he decided he must have it. He took it up to the owner, "How much for the bronze rat?"

"Twelve dollars for the rat.  One hundred dollars for the story," said the owner. The tourist gave the man twelve dollars.  "I'll just take the rat.  You can keep the story."
 As he walked down the street carrying his bronze rat, he noticed that a few  real rats had crawled out of the alleys  and sewers and began following him down the street. This was disconcerting; he began walking faster.  But within a couple
 blocks, the herd of rats behind him had grown to hundreds,  and they began squealing.   He began to trot toward the bay,
looking around to see that the rats now  numbered in the MILLIONS, and were squealing and  coming toward him fast.
 Scared, he ran to the edge of the bay and threw the bronze rat as far out into the bay as he could.
 Amazingly, the millions of rats all jumped into the bay after it, and  drowned. The man walked back to the curio shop.  "Aha," said the owner, "you have come back for the story?"
 "No," said the man.  "I came back to see if you have a Bronze politician."

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A police officer pulls over a speeding car. The officer says, "I clocked you at 80 mile per hour, sir."

The driver says, "Gee, officer, I had it on cruise control at 60, perhaps your radar needs calibrating."

Not looking up from her knitting the wife says sweetly from the passenger seat, "Now don't be silly, dear, you know that this car doesn't have cruise control."

As the officer writes out the ticket, the driver looks over at his wife and growls, "Can't you keep your mouth shut for once?"

The wife smiles demurely and says, "You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did."

As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal radar detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, "Darn it, woman, can't you keep your mouth shut?!"

The officer frowns and says, "And I notice that you're not wearing your seat belt, sir. That 's an automatic $75 fine."

The driver says, "Yeah, well, you see officer, I had it on, but took it off when you pulled me over so that I could get my license out of my back pocket."

The wife says, "Now, dear, you know very well that you didn't have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you're driving."

And as the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, "WHY DON'T YOU SHUT  UP?!"

The officer looks over at the woman and asks, "Does your husband always talk to you this way, Ma'am?"

"Oh, heavens no, officer. Only when he's been drinking."