THE CENSUS IS COMING! THE CENSUS IS COMING!

In the old days, we wanted to know how many slaves you had (manumitted/ mitted) and how many idiots lived in your root cellar and how many mules you had in your barn, and whether anybody in your house knew how to read and do sums, and so forth.  But that was then, this is now.  We're the first Census of the 21st Century, and we're shaking things up!

In addition to the usual statistics that we gather and disseminate to various secret sects such as the Masons and the Office of Management and Budget, this year we've added a few categories.

Please remember to mail the completed form back to us.  Don't mail it to the Canadian Census.  We're sure that they'd dearly love to count you in their census, because all their people are here (Examples: Alex Trebeccccccccccccccccccccccccccc!, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, Mike Meyers, Sandra Oh, Alanis Morissette, Eugene Levy, James Cameron, Jim Carrey,  Neve Campbell, William Shatner, Shania Twain, Pamela Anderson, etc). But that's their problem.

It's Ok to spindle the form but don't bend, fold, or mutilate it.  Good luck trying to find a spindle.  Nobody even knows what they are anymore.

Now to the questions:

1.    How many slaves do you own? ______

2.    How many idiots are you stowing away in the root cellar? ____________

3.    Got any mules? __________

4.     If you were stuck on a desert island for a year, which could you NOT do without -- Q-tips or dental floss? ______________

5.      What kind of an animal would you say you are? (don't say tiger).______

6.     Are you in the country legally? ______

7.     If you weren't, would you tell us? ____

8.     We'd tell you _________

9.     Are you really Canadian? ___

10.   It's OK, you don't have to be embarrassed about it _________ (See Leonard Cohen, et al., supra).

11.     What's you religion? _______

12.      How much money do you make? _____

13.    What do you fantasize about mostly, would you say? _____ (What's your name, by the way?) _____

14.     What's one secret that you've never told anybody? ________

15.     Now write down the names of 10 celebrities on folded strips of paper, put them in a bowl, and mail the bowl back to us together with the form ______.

This is a test blank only _______

Do not remove this blank _______

___________

___________



That's it. You're finished.

Please remember to mail the form back to us and not to the Canadians.  Don't forget the bowl.

Thank you for participating in the 2010 Census.

You can sit down now.

It's Beginning to Smell a Lot Like Latkes

Hanukkah (Hebrew: חֲנֻכָּה‎), also known as the Festival of Latkes, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the invention of potato latkes in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. (The Jews invented latkes, too!? Is there nothing that they didn't invent!?)

Hanukkah is observed for eight nights (the days being pretty low-key), starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, and may occur from late November to late December on other types of calendars, such as ones that have pictures of kittens and flowers and swimsuit models on them.

The festival is observed by eating plenty of latkes (even when you are sick of them but you never get sick of them) with applesauce and sour cream and twirling dreidles and lighting candles and giving and getting chocalate gelt and eating more latkes.

Some people think that Hannukah is the Jewish Christmas. And they're right! It's exactly the same as Christmas (except for the latkes). Other than that -- no difference.

There was a disagreement between two rabbinical schools of thought—Hillel and the House of Shammai—on the proper number of latkes to stuff in your mouth at one time. Shammai said that eight latkes should be eaten one-by-one, whereas Hillel argued in favor of stuffing them all in at once. Jewish law adopted the position of Hillel.

This is why a common Hannukah greeting is: "Don't mess with Texas. And while you're at it, don't mess with Hillel. You gonna finish all those latkes, or what?"