I just looked at a clock I expected to read one in the morning. Instead it reads four. Misery, company, you know the equation. Here. Deal.
Tony Blair opens a new wing to an Edinburgh hospital. After cutting the ribbon, the British prime minister tours a ward, filled with patients who seem to have no obvious injury. He greets a bearded chap, who replies:
“Fair fa’ your honest sonsie face, Great chieftain e’the puddin’ race! Aboon them a’ ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o’a grace. As lang’s my arm.”
Blair — somewhat confused — nods, grins and moves on to the next patient, to ask how he’s getting along. The man shakes his head and mutters:
“Some hae meat, and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.”
Blair turns to a third patient, an older man in a tam, who cries:
“Wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an chase thee, Wi murdering pattle!”
Sweating bullets, Blair turns to the senior doctor accompanying him. “What sort of ward is this?” he whispers. “Are they psychiatric patients?”
“No,” replies the doctor, “It’s the Burns unit.”
this next one as posted by donkey_hokey, which is a strong warning name if I ever saw one
After many adventures in Pointland, Lineland, and Flatland, Ferdinand Feghoot waved goodbye to an equilateral triangle and began his journey home to three-dimensional space. Alas, along the way, his Dimensional Extrapolator failed, and when he stepped outside he found himself, not in his backyard as expected, but in a world occupied only by numbers.
Feghoot explored his surroundings curiously. Across the street, a 3/4ths played soccer with an attractive young 5/8ths, while a stern-looking 16/25ths watched in silence. Other numbers slid around the area, screeching about fractions that had recently been halved and screaming about friends’ plans to exchange common denominators. The cacophony was so deafening that Feghoot had to plug his ears with his index fingers.
In the sudden silence, he noticed the most amazing thing of all: A decimal point rolled down the road, followed first by one three, then another, then another, then another, creating a very long train of .333333333. Indeed, Feghoot realized, the threes continued out to infinity.
Feghoot unplugged his ears, approached the first three, and said, “Greetings! I’m a visitor from another world, and I must say, I find you fascinating. Are repeating decimals such as yourself common here?”
A mouth on the decimal point opened, closed, and opened again. Feghoot thought he heard a distant scratchy cough, but he couldn’t make out any words. Then the decimal point tumbled away down the street, followed by its trail of threes.
“My,” said Feghoot, “but that was very rude.”
The 16/25ths across the street heard him. She shouted, “What more did you expect?”
Feghoot cringed at the noise and plugged his ears again. “I had hoped he would answer my question,” he said.
“But he did!” Her five wobbled in anger. “You just couldn’t hear him, for he doesn’t speak very loudly.”
“Why not? All of the rest of you talk with, ah, rather adequate volume.”
“Of course we do,” she said, “but then everyone knows that fractions speak louder than thirds.”