Sunday Funnies 2011.10.23

It's World Series time. Sunday is also church day (at least theoretically - we've been backsliding lately). So today's jokes combine church and baseball.

Two nuns took their first trip outside the convent. They had never seen a baseball game, so the Mother Superior arranged for them to get World Series tickets. Once inside, they sat in the bleachers. Hearing a vender selling hot dogs, one said, "We've never had hot dogs before," and they decided to order a couple.

The first nun unwrapped her hot dog, and proceeded to quickly wrap it up again, saying, "Oh, my!"

"What's wrong, sister?" asked her companion.

"Well," came the reply, "which part of the dog did you get?"

 

Outside a small Macedonian village close to the border between Greece and strife-torn Yugoslavia, a lone Catholic nun keeps a quiet watch over a silent convent. She is the last caretaker of the site of significant historical developments spanning more than 2,000 years.

When Sister Maria Cyrilla of the Order of the Perpetual Watch dies, the convent will be closed by the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Macedonia. However, that isn't likely to happen soon, as Sister Maria, 53, enjoys excellent health. By her own estimate, she walks 10 miles daily about the grounds of the convent, which once served as a base for the army of Attila the Hun.

In more ancient times, a Greek temple to Eros, the god of love, occupied the hilltop site. Historians say that Attila took over the old temple in 439 A.D. and used it as a base for his marauding army.

The Huns are believed to have first collected and then destroyed a large gathering of Greek legal writs at the site. It is believed that Attila wanted to study the Greek legal system, and had the writs and other documents brought to the temple. Scholars differ on why he had the valuable documents destroyed -- either because he was barely literate and couldn't read them, or because they provided evidence of democratic government that did not square with his own notion of rule by an all-powerful tyrant.

When the Greek church took over the site in the 15th Century and the convent was built, church leaders ordered the pagan statue of Eros destroyed, so another ancient Greek treasure was lost. Today, there is only the lone sister, watching over the old Hun base.

And that's how it ends: No Huns, no writs, no Eros, and nun left on base.

 

The church orchestra was performing Beethoven's Ninth. In the piece, there's a long passage, about 20 minutes, during which the bass violinists have nothing to do.

Rather than sit around that whole time looking stupid, some bassists decided to sneak offstage and go to the tavern next door for a quick one. After slamming several beers in quick succession, one of them looked at his watch and said, "Hey! We need to get back!"

"No need to panic," said a fellow bassist. "I thought we might need some extra time, so I tied the last few pages of the conductor's score together with string. It will take him a few minutes to get it untangled."

A few moments later they staggered back to the concert hall and took their places in the orchestra. About this time, a member of the congregation noticed the conductor seemed a bit edgy and said as much to her companion.

"Well, of course," said her companion. "Don't you see? It's the bottom of the Ninth, the score is tied, and the bassists are loaded."