This has been attributed to Bill Gates (and others), but I've been informed ty Brendan D. that Charles J. Sykes wrote it as part of a book called "Dumbing Down our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can;t Read, Write, or Add."
Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time!
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
"Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride."
Your Tax Dollars at Work
When Nasa first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in Zero Gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and 12 billion dollars developing a pen that writes in Zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface - including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 degrees c.
The Russians used a pencil.
Submissions Please
If you have a joke or story that you would like to submit for inclusion in our next newsletter, email it to us. Just make sure it's suitable for all ages (we don't publish anything off-color). Thanks again!
A lot of you take time to drop us an email to tell us that you like our monthly newsletter. Some of you write to tell us what you don't like about it. We always like to hear from you what you like, and what you'd like to see more or less of. So, if you have a thought that you'd like to share, drop us an email by clicking here. - Thanks (The Duct Tape Guys)
Random Acts of Duh!Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.
A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head.
A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.
The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.
A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.
When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
Did you know that...1. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
2. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
3. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
4. The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
5. A shark is the only fish that can blink both eyes.
6. There are more chickens than people in the world.
7. Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
8. The longest one-syllable word in the English language "screeched."
9. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
10. All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20. (more to come next month)
We have lowered the prices on select merchandise at the Duct Tape Pro Shop. For instance - you can now get the Duct Tape Tool Box (featuring our first three books, a Duct Tape Pro Cap, Duct Tape Pro Button and Bumper Sticker AND a roll of Duck® brand X-Treme™ tape all in a bright red toolbox for only $25.00 (that's over $35 of merchandise). Thousands of this same product sold in a national mail order catalog (with one less book, not duct tape, and no pin or bumper sticke)r for $39! Click in today to check out other mid-summer deals including how to get a Duct Tape Book for only 99¢!
You can always get stuff from the Duct Tape Guys FREE. Postcards, bumper stickers, computer monitor desktops, even books! Check out our FREE STUFF area by clicking on the icon on the left.Note: Some of you have sent requests without a self-addressed STAMPED envelope (SASE). Sorry, but these requests are NOT filled by our fulfillment person. So please remember to include a SASE!
