For a moment there is silence. Everyone has forgotten their own peril. They all stare, eyes riveted, at the desperate woman in the front of the plane. Then a cowboy from Wyoming stands up in the rear of the plane. He is handsome: well built, with dark brown hair and blue eyes. He starts to walk slowly up the aisle, unbuttoning his shirt, one button at a time. No one moves. He removes his shirt. Muscles ripple across his chest.

She gasps . . .

He whispers . . .

"Iron this. Then get me a beer."

Submitted by Dave, Bolder, Co.

He had been counting the years off on his calendar, and one day the teenager, who had been collecting the meat each week, came into the shop and said, "I'll be 16 tomorrow."

"I know," said the butcher with a smile, "I've been counting too, tell your mother, when you take this parcel of meat home, that it is the last free meat she'll get, and watch the expression on her face."

When the boy arrived home he told his mother. The woman nodded and said, "Son, go back to the butcher and tell him I have also had free bread, free milk, and free groceries for the last 16 years and watch the expression on his face!"

Submitted by Kenneth, Shropshire, England

• The big spin-off from today's technology is apprehension
• Some people are neatly divided between 'human' and 'being'
• A poor tale oft told is this year's commercial break
• Mediocrity is fine if you're prepared to excel at it.
• We might decide where we are going, but we can never know what is in store
• All equipment has two functions: To serve, and be serviced.
• The more we waste time the more it wastes us.
• Procrastination is one of the true pleasures of the overworked.
• Being a woman is only a small part of being a person. Being a man is being a person.
• Postponing all unpleasant things is fine if done without breaks
• If only quiz shows created an audience of questioners
• One rotten apple makes all today's harvest unconstitutional
• We are nothing but a whole collection of private experiences
• In the country of the mad, sanity is the first casuality
• I am the complete professional - while no one is looking.
• It takes at least two optimists to lift up one confirmed pessimist
• There's nothing like being tired to have to stay awake
• If you can succeed at success you will fail at failure
• The love of God is easily supplanted by the love of money
• Love is never passive. It is always kinetic
• No one is perfect, but some of us are more perfect than others
• When all else has failed, a little talent is good for one's amusement
• Our government is only as good as we are induced to believe
• The present is us continually catching up with the future.
• In a cross section of life on earth, we'd find it mostly going on.
• The silver lining of today's clouds is plastic
• Hurry is the curse of the talking class and the balm of the thoughtless
• Blood may be thicker than water, but it's a lot thinner than money
• The love of money may be wrong, but greed has incentive
• The future does not get less complicated, it only asks more questions
• The easier way always presents itself after the job is done
• Success is the best way society has of staying in business
• Snobbishness is just a thin veneer for ignorance
• Prettier Packages Protect Poorer Products
• Most of us use our quota of genius by age one.
• Never be caught with your expression down
• Canute was a genius, Midas a conglomerate.
• The science of destruction is like nature: No sentiment
• Rather let cakes burn than inspiration perish
• Force bends and breaks; tolerance and understanding rectifies
• Some people's idea of keeping fit is to exercise their stupidity
• Never employ someone who has already reached their level of incompetence
• The ability to do must be preceded by the ability to think
• There is no such thing as a dynamic ritual
• Never have so many kept so few in such luxury
• I'd tread the straight and narrow, but the gates are closed
• It is only others who ever become irrational
• The middle class is the filling in society's sandwich, between the upper crust and the crumbs

Submitted by Lindsey, Melbourne, Australia