Chuckle 1099

Chuckle 1099
(Today's chuckle thanks go to Rick R of Surrey BC!)


~Cowboys and Indians~ (2nd time around)
(Plus: Today in History, Word for the Day and 6 Differences.)

Three strangers strike up a conversation in the airport passenger lounge in Bozeman, Montana, awaiting their flights.

One is an American Indian passing through from Lame Deer. Another is a Cowboy on his way to Billings for a livestock show and the third passenger is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived at Montana State University from the Middle East.

Their discussion drifts to their diverse cultures. Soon, the two Westerners learn that the Arab is a devout, radical Muslim and the conversation falls into an uneasy lull.

The wind outside is blowing tumbleweeds around, and the old windsock is flapping; but still no plane comes.

The cowboy leans back in his chair, crosses his boots on a magazine table and tips his big sweat-stained hat forward over his face.

Finally, the American Indian clears his throat and softly he speaks, "At one time here, my people were many, but sadly, now we are few."

The Muslim student raises an eyebrow and leans forward, "Once my people were few," he sneers, "and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?"

The Montana cowboy shifts his toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says in a drawl, "That’s ‘cause we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet, but I do believe it’s a-comin' ***
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(Click Today in History and learn.)

• Today in history
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Word of the Day for Tuesday July 11, 2006

mountebank \MOUN-tuh-bank\, noun:1. A peddler of quack medicine, who stands on a platform to appeal to the audience.2. A charlatan; a boastful pretender to knowledge or a skill.

The man whom Mr. Masson had described as his father's guru is finally regarded by the alert, knowing, newly skeptical son as "a phony, a charlatan, a mountebank, an impostor, a quack."-- Robert Coles, "His First Fallen Idol", New York Times, February 7, 1993

Nevertheless, in William Avery Rockefeller one clearly detects the blarney and easy conviviality of the mountebank.-- Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

To his critics including some of the other topnotchers in the school of Paris, he is a talented mountebank and irrepressible showman who has lured his followers and the world up a blind artistic and intellectual alley.-- "Captain Picasso's Voyages", Time, June 26, 1950

Yet to make such judgments on any question rather than trying to examine the question properly, to discover what the full answers might be, is coercive philistinism: it is to allow the mountebank to triumph over the critic, the mob orator to drown the doubts of the sceptic.-- Kevin Myers, "An Irishman's Diary", Irish Times, November 12, 1999
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(Find the 6 differences, answers below)