****The Official Friday Silliness Thread****

Origins: Odd terms sneak into our language every now and then, and this is one of the oddest. Everyone who considers himself in the know about the drug subculture has heard that '420' has something to do with illegal drug use, but when you press them, they never seem to know why, or even what the term supposedly signifies.

“I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?”

Types of People who Fart:

VAIN PERSON :ONE WHO LOVES THE SMELL OF HIS OWN
FART

AMBITIOUS :ALWAYS READY FOR A FART

LAZY :JUST FIZZLES

AMIABLE :LIKES TO SMELL OTHER’S FARTS

PROUD :THINKS HIS FARTS ARE EXCEPTIONALLY
PLEASANT

SHY :BLUSHES WHEN HE FARTS SILENTLY

CARELESS :FARTS IN CHURCH OR AT GLOW OF LOVE IN
THE ROOM

SMART ALEC :FARTS WHEN LADIES ARE PRESENT

CLEVER :FARTS AND COUGHS AT THE SAME TIME

SCIENTIFIC :BOTTLES HIS FARTS

STINGY :BELCHES TO SAVE HIS BUTT-HOLE

TIMID :JUMPS WHEN HE FARTS

CONCEITED :THINKS HE CAN FART THE LOUDEST

UNFORTUNATE :TRIES TO FART BUT POOPS IN HIS PANTS
INSTEAD

FOOLISH :SUPPRESSES A FART FOR HOURS

BEWILDERED :CAN’T TELL HIS OWN FART FROM OTHERS
(that’s me!0

NERVOUS :STOPS IN THE MIDDLE OF A FART

MISERABLE :CAN’T FART AT ALL

CONFUSED :FACE IS SO MUCH LIKE A BUTT,FART CAN’T
TELL WHICH WAY TO GO

GROUCHY :GRUMBLES WHEN LADIES FART

SNEAKY :FARTS AND THEN BLAMES IT ON SOMEONE ELSE

DISAPPOINTED :FART DOESN’T SMELL

CHILDISH :FARTS AND THEN GIGGLES

FRESH GUY :JUMPS IN FRONT OF YOU AND THEN FARTS

BIG BULLY :HOLDS YOU DOWN AND THEN FARTS IN YOUR
FACE

DUMB :ENJOYS OTHER FARTS, THINKING THEY ARE HIS
OWN

SICK :SMELLS YOUR FART AND THEN TELLS YOU WHAT
YOU WERE EATIN’

DAMNED MEAN :FARTS AND THEN PULLS THE COVERS
OVER HIS WIFE’S HEAD (that’s me!)

MUSICAL :TENOR OR BASS,CLEAR AS A BELL,SMELLS BAD
BUT SOUNDS GREAT!

ATHLETIC :JUMPS IN THE AIR,FARTS 3 TIMES,AND CLICKS
HIS HEELS 3 TIMES

SLOB :FARTS AND THEN STAINS HIS UNDERWEAR

IMPUDENT :FARTS OUT LOUD AND THEN LAUGHS

ENVIRONMENTALIST :FARTS REGULARLY BUT IS
CONCERNED ABOUT THE POLLUTION

HONEST :ADMITS HE FARTED BUT OFFERS A GOOD
MEDICAL REASON

DISHONEST :FARTS AND THEN BLAMES IT ON THE DOG

HERMIT :ONE WHO ALWAYS HAS A FART IN RESERVE

ANTI-SOCIAL :EXCUSES HIMSELF AND FARTS IN PRIVATE

INTELLECTUAL :CAN DETERMINE THE SMELL OF HIS
NEIGHBOR’S FART

WHIMPY :FARTS AT THE SLIGHTEST EXERTION

SADIST :FARTS IN BED AND THEN FLUFFS THE COVERS

SENSITIVE :FARTS AND THEN STARTS CRYING

AQUATIC :FARTS IN THE BATH; THEN BREAKS THE BUBBLES
WITH HIS TOES

MACHOCHIST :FARTS IN THE BATH AND TRIES TO BITE THE
BUBBLES

The Art of Showing Pure Incompetence at an Unwanted Task

by Jared Sandberg
Friday, April 20, 2007
provided by

To learn something at the office can be difficult. But to refrain from learning something requires years of practice and refinement.

It’s an office skill that Steven Crawley finds indispensable. “The inability to grasp selective things can be very helpful in keeping your desk clear of unwanted clutter,” says the executive in HR, or what he calls “the dumping ground” of all unwanted office tasks. “I have developed a very agile selective memory across a wide range of nonvalue-added activities.”

The most memorable time he brandished his nonskill was when the president at an automotive-parts manufacturer asked Mr. Crawley to organize the company picnic. With a sensibility more dry than bubbly, he wasn’t crazy about party planning. So he began to milk his lack of picnic knowledge for all it wasn’t worth. He responded to any inquiries or suggestions with questions and comments such as “How do you do that?” or “What did you guys do in the past?” or even “Help me remember why we’re talking about this.”

Ultimately, responsibility for the picnic was reassigned. Mission unaccomplished. Says Mr. Crawley: “You’d be amazed at how much I don’t know about picnics.”

Strategic incompetence isn’t about having a strategy that fails, but a failure that succeeds. It almost always works to deflect work one doesn’t want to do — without ever having to admit it. For junior staffers, it’s a way of attaining power through powerlessness. For managers, it can juice their status by pretending to be incapable of lowly tasks.

In all cases, it’s a ritualistic charade. The only thing the person claiming not to understand really doesn’t understand: That the victim ultimately stuck with the work sees through the false incompetence.

The tactic starts in early youth with chores. (”How do you open the dishwasher?”) Its puppy-eyed helplessness gets refined through homework with math-word problems and book reports on “Beowulf.” In college, it gets reinforced by enablers who take better notes in class. And in marriage it works — but not as well — by raising the specter of disaster from a task mishandled: “If I do the wash I might shrink your sweater” and “How do you change diapers so they don’t leak?”

At work, it can be institutionalized at customer call centers, for example, whose operators will transfer you to another department before the last department transfers you back to them. And for shady corporations, incompetence is the best legal defense strategy.

For any employee, the soul-stealing complexity of office machinery such as fax machines, copiers, PCs, voicemail and even coffee makers gives everyone ample cover to studiously never learn how to use them. But the same blank stare accompanies nonmechanical tasks, too. Claire Wexler, an accountant who used to work at a law firm, says lawyers “pretend to be completely flummoxed” by all of those machines as well as “everything related to accounting except for billing.” Their message: “I have so many lofty matters on my mind I can’t be bothered with mastering this small task,” she says.

Rescuing a pseudoincompetent from an office task can mean doing it for life; failing to rescue risks the sting of being a nonteam player. “There’s nothing worse than doing too good a job on something that you don’t want to keep doing,” says Carole Kempler Meagher. She once worked with another manager of a different department who played up the fact that he “couldn’t find his belly button with both hands, a map and a flashlight.”

Each month, he’d start complaining that he couldn’t close his books. Their boss would beg her to help him. “The following month we would go through the whole thing again,” says Ms. Meagher. “Sometimes being a team player means getting your own stuff done so that other people can get their own work done.”

Laziness and status issues aside, Tom Colbert, president of a logistics provider, observes that found incompetence sometimes comes from a genuine fear — not of looking stupid but of proving it. “There’s no reason to demonstrate it,” he says.

Even someone for whom no task is too small, such as Mr. Colbert himself, the fax machine and its labyrinthine menu of options are more trouble than they’re worth. “It’s a jungle! I’ll coerce someone else into performing the task by feigning ignorance or frustration.”

That person is Mary Powell. She reports that Mr. Colbert engages in a lot of shrugging, sighing and throwing up of the hands. “He usually can figure out most things without too much trouble,” she says. “This one particular thing he doesn’t want to take the time to.”

Strategic incompetence involves a lot of unnecessary posturing, notes Robert Sutton, a professor of management science at Stanford University. But it’s not all bad. “One way in which lower-status people feel more esteem in the presence of higher status people is to show they have a skill that’s valued and needed,” he says.

It can signify a mutual respect found in other hierarchies, he adds. “I think of apes grooming.”

here's something form the net:

http://www.hookahshop.co.uk/howtosetuphookah.php

How to Set-up your Hookah Pipe Clean your pipe and make sure it and the hose are dry inside before using it. Water in the hose and pipe will help residue collect and end up at the mouth piece whilst smoking. Fill the glass base so approximately 1 inch of the metal tube is submerged below the water line. The area left above this is where the smoke will mix with air and cool further. Attach the pipe onto the bottle as below:

If you are new to using a hookah pipe try a small amount of tobacco first to practice getting it right. Place the tobacco into the clay bowl. We recommend about 8g of tobacco per smoke. Ensure the tobacco is not compacted or the air will not pass through and will make the smoke strong and give a burnt flavour to your smoke.. Place the grommet on the pipe then the clay bowl to ensure an air tight seal. Take a small piece of aluminium foil, big enough to cover the opening of the bowl. Wrap the foil over the top so that the surface is tight. Use a toothpick or pin to punch a small group of holes in the foil. You may want to suck on the mouth piece to see if enough air flows through the pipe. If its an effort to draw air you may want to make some more hole or ensure the tobacco is not too tightly packed. See images below:

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