... it was funny to me....
- Thread starter Jef
- Start date
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Imagine an elementary school kid moving from Europe to the USA in the late 1960s. He's already got a pretty good handle on the metric system. Now he learns that 16 ounces make a pound, and 128 fluid ounces make a gallon. OK, so a gallon of water should weight 8 pounds, right? No, it weighs 8.33 pounds.
Dafuq? Yeah, that was me. Don't even get me started on the rest, like 12 inches to a foot, three feet to a yard, and 1760 yards per mile.
Oh, but I'll bet George Washington did know that there are 1760 yards to a mile.
-Uwe-
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They would been even more confused if they were British and found a US gallon was four quarts' not five and oil came in 0.946 litre bottles...
Well, the imperial gallon makes some sense. It's the volume of water that weighs 10 pounds.
But my understanding is that an imperial gallon has four imperial quarts (not five!), each consisting of two imperial pints, each consisting of 20 imperial fluid ounces, which are just a wee bit (by about 1 ml) smaller than a US fluid ounce.
Metric really is far more rational than either US or Imperial. A liter of water weighs a kilogram. One ml of water weighs a gram. A cubic meter of water is 1000 liters and weighs a (metric) ton.
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I don’t like dealing with French measurements (not invented here syndrome) but they are rarher logical.
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It is an English gentleman's right to wish to invade and conquer France.
Vee Germans haf had ze same desire at times!
But ze French, zey do zis every time:
-Uwe-
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Amateur, give it a few years and it will be $2000AUS, which is about £3.56 
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When I was a young turkey, new to the coop,
My big brother Mike took me out on the stoop,
Then he sat me down, and he spoke real slow,
And he told me there was something that I had to know;
His look and his tone I will always remember,
when he told me of the horrors of..... Black November:
"Come about August, now listen to me,
Each day you'll get six meals instead of just three,
And soon you'll be thick, where once you were thin,
And you'll grow a big rubbery thing under your chin;
And then one morning, when you're warm in your bed,
In'll burst the farmer's wife, and hack off your head;
Then she'll pluck out all your feathers so you're bald 'n pink,
And scoop out all your insides and leave ya lyin' in the sink;
And then comes the worst part!" he said not bluffing,
She'll spread your cheeks and pack your rear with stuffing."
Well, the rest of his words were too grim to repeat,
So I sat on the stoop like a winged piece of meat,
And decided on the spot that to avoid being cooked,
I'd have to lay low and remain overlooked;
I began a new diet of nuts and granola,
High-roughage salads, juice, and diet cola;
And as they ate pastries, chocolates, and crepes,
I stayed in my room doing Jane Fonda tapes;
I maintained my weight of two pounds and a half,
And tried not to notice when the bigger birds laughed.
But 'twas I who was laughing, under my breath,
As they chomped and they chewed, ever closer to death;
And sure enough when Black November rolled around,
I was the last turkey left in the entire compound.
So now I'm a pet in the farmer's wife's lap;
I haven't a worry! So I eat and I nap;
She held me today, while sewing and humming,
And smiled at me and said: "Christmas is coming..."
-Uwe-
My big brother Mike took me out on the stoop,
Then he sat me down, and he spoke real slow,
And he told me there was something that I had to know;
His look and his tone I will always remember,
when he told me of the horrors of..... Black November:
"Come about August, now listen to me,
Each day you'll get six meals instead of just three,
And soon you'll be thick, where once you were thin,
And you'll grow a big rubbery thing under your chin;
And then one morning, when you're warm in your bed,
In'll burst the farmer's wife, and hack off your head;
Then she'll pluck out all your feathers so you're bald 'n pink,
And scoop out all your insides and leave ya lyin' in the sink;
And then comes the worst part!" he said not bluffing,
She'll spread your cheeks and pack your rear with stuffing."
Well, the rest of his words were too grim to repeat,
So I sat on the stoop like a winged piece of meat,
And decided on the spot that to avoid being cooked,
I'd have to lay low and remain overlooked;
I began a new diet of nuts and granola,
High-roughage salads, juice, and diet cola;
And as they ate pastries, chocolates, and crepes,
I stayed in my room doing Jane Fonda tapes;
I maintained my weight of two pounds and a half,
And tried not to notice when the bigger birds laughed.
But 'twas I who was laughing, under my breath,
As they chomped and they chewed, ever closer to death;
And sure enough when Black November rolled around,
I was the last turkey left in the entire compound.
So now I'm a pet in the farmer's wife's lap;
I haven't a worry! So I eat and I nap;
She held me today, while sewing and humming,
And smiled at me and said: "Christmas is coming..."
-Uwe-
I wonder if he tried setting the choke or dumping a splash of gasoline down the carburetor to help it start?????
That's funny! It'a Miele canister vac (we have 2 of them) and the guy is (unknowingly?) resting his left hand on the cord retraction button. The recoil springs Miele uses are quite powerful and can retract the entire cord length in just a few seconds.
