If Noah had to build the ark in 2006, his story may have gone something like this:

And the Lord spoke to Noah and said, "In one year, I am going to make it rain, and the rain shall not stop until it submerges the entire earth and all living flesh is destroyed. Because of this, I want you to save the righteous people and two of every living species on earth. Therefore, I am commanding you to build an Ark."

In a flash of lightning, God delivered the specifications for an Ark. Daunted by this task, but respectful of God's wishes, Noah took the plans and agreed to build the Ark.
"Remember," said the Lord, "you must complete and fill the Ark in one year's time."

Exactly one year later, fierce storm clouds covered the earth and all the seas of the earth went into turmoil. The Lord saw that Noah was sitting in his front yard weeping.

"Noah!" He shouted. "Where is the Ark?"

"Lord, please forgive me, " cried Noah. "I did my best, but there were big problems.

"First I had to get a permit for construction, and your plans did not meet the building codes. I had to hire an engineering firm and redraw the plans.

"Then I got into a fight with OSHA over whether or not the Ark needed a sprinkler system and approved floatation devices.

"Then my neighbor objected, claiming I was violating zoning ordinances by building the Ark in my front yard, so I had to get a variance from the city planning commission.

"Then I had problems getting enough wood for the Ark because there was a ban on cutting trees to protect the Spotted Owl.
I finally convinced the U.S. Forest Service that I really needed the wood to save the owls. However, the Fish and Wildlife Service won't let me take the two owls.

"The carpenters formed a union and went on strike. I had to negotiate a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board before anyone would pick up a saw or hammer. Now I have 16 carpenters on the Ark but still no owls.

"When I started rounding up the other animals, an animal rights group sued me. They objected to me taking only two of each kind aboard. This suit is pending.

"Meanwhile, the EPA notified me that I could not complete the Ark without filing an environmental impact statement on your proposed flood. They didn't take very kindly to the idea.

"Then the Army Corps of Engineers demanded a map of the proposed flood plain. I sent them a globe.

"Right now, I am trying to resolve a complaint filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that I am practicing discrimination by not taking atheists aboard.

"The IRS has seized my assets, claiming that I'm building the Ark in preparation to flee the country to avoid paying the state some kind of user tax that I owe them and that I failed to register the Ark as a 'recreational water craft.'

"And finally, the ACLU got the courts to issue an injunction against further construction of the Ark, saying that since God is flooding the Earth, it's a religious event, and therefore unconstitutional.

"I really don't think I can finish the Ark for another five or six years."

Noah waited.

The sky began to clear, the sun began to shine, and the seas began to calm. A rainbow arced across the sky.

Noah looked up hopefully. "You mean you're not going to destroy the earth, Lord?"

"No," He said sadly. "I don't have to. The government already has."

This morning, I heard on the radio about a local man killed by a cow. I live in a rural area, and there's not much of anything here except cows. You don't get the opportunity to hear this kind of news in the big city.

Everybody in town will be gossiping about the man who was murdered by a cow. You can't even make this stuff up. Many questions run through my head, I'm naturally inquisitive.

Will the cow be charged in the death of the man? Was the attack premeditated? The radio stated how the man had been attempting to load a cow onto his truck when the animal suddenly pushed against him and crushed his chest. What is going on here?

If the man nudged the cow first, will the animal be able to plead self defense? I wonder if the cow is remorseful about committing the crime. Do cows have a conscience? Did the beast drool on itself after killing the man? The radio never seems to give you enough information.

It makes me curious about what the man's family will write on his grave marker. Here lies Edgar, Crushed by a Cow. It has a nice ring to it.

I wonder if the cow had always been pushy, or was this a one time event. Was the animal troubled as a calf? Where were the cows parents when this happened? Could they have prevented this?

Did the cow have a history of violence? Has anybody heard of domesticated bovine depression? Was the cow on any medications? Hormones? I have so many questions, and there are so few answers.

There's a herd of cows on the farm across the street from my house. This is going to demand closer attention from me. I never realized they are such menacing animals, they always appear so docile. Chewing and plotting, plotting and chewing. Apparently, they are just waiting for the right moment to make their move.

I wonder if the cow was ever sexually abused, and as uncomfortable as the question may be, it deserves to be answered. The cow did not crush the man without a good reason. Did the man touch the udder? Cows have enormous eyes, and they don't miss much.

Did the animal focus on the man's face when it pulverized him? If the man is survived by any children, I feel sorry for them. My dad was killed by a cow just does not sound right.

Nobody has mentioned what type of truck the man was driving. The cow may have resented foreign vehicles. Could the animal have been involved with drugs? Blood should be drawn in order to determine if the cow was sober. Can the animal be charged with Crushing While Intoxicated?

Cows tend to walk funny, and I wonder if the man mocked the animal until it couldn't take it anymore. In some countries the cow is Holy, but not here. In the United States cows push back.

I wonder if there were other animals in the area during the incident. Left unchecked, this could be the beginning of a cow rebellion. Will cows gather in herds to discuss the killing?

The cow may be assigned a public attorney, and they better have read the animal it's rights. Did the cow endeavor to moo after it killed the man? Will the animals have a protest march about unfair working conditions? Justice for the cow. It makes me feel like doing a little marching myself.

From studying the subject, I know that cows don't march very well, and this means they will have to ride in a truck.

Moving to Tucson has been an adventure in learning after spending most of my life in New York State. It's a wonderful place to live with the excellent weather and the beautiful sunsets, but at the same time there are some oddities about Tucson. I'm going to fit right in.

One of the most interesting things that I have learned since moving here is that after you flush your toilet it comes back to you ten days later as your tap water. I gained this tidbit of information listening in on a conversation in a grocery line. I found the fact mildly disturbing, but not distasteful. It did make me wonder what magical process the waste water goes through during those ten days to make it palatable.

Operating a motor vehicle in Tucson can be dangerous. For some strange reason a large number of drivers in this city come to a complete stop at green lights. Is it possible that the bright green color stuns them because they abide in a desert? Tucson averages about 80,000 rear end collisions every year. This would be a great place to open a repair shop or an eye clinic.

There is a preponderance of people who wear cowboy hats in Tucson, and while not having an aversion to that type of headgear it does make me feel like I'm in an old western movie. The citizen's wearing the hats seem to saunter rather than walk. I am on the alert for stampedes.

I will bore you with one more item of interest. A house panel ( I have no idea what that is, but it sounds important ) voted this week to allow people to pull a gun without ending up in jail if they consider themselves in danger. Is this the Wild West? Folks would be immune from prosecution if it was a defensive display of their weapon. Can I pull a knife if I'm feeling frisky?

I always try to maintain an edge, and I'm proud of my ability to overcome obstacles. I now lap my water straight from the toilet tank in order to stay ahead of the game.

I don't mean to alarm anyone and I certainly don't mean to be an extremist, (Okay, the article on the destruction of mankind as we know it may have been borderline) but there is a rumor that, if true, could cause extreme havoc in the community and the release of thousands of people taking to the streets and screaming at the top of their lungs, like in a bad Japanese monster flick. I'm speaking about, of course, the return of Disco!

I know. I know. Those of us who lived through it, back in the 70's remember, all to well, the metamorphosis that took place in our culture. It was a little more than three decades ago that the onslaught of music, with the open and closed cymbal, made people dress in very bizarre fashions and forced them to go to nightclubs so they could "Shake Their Booty", because "That's The Way They Liked It" (Uh-huh, uh-huh.)

Many of you may have met your future spouses at one of these places, married them, and created your own generation of disco dudes and dudettes. The writing is on the wall, folks. What goes around, comes around and the chance that your offspring might end up in this God-awful craze, could be just a Bee Gees song away.

For those of you who were too (how can I put this delicately?) wrecked to remember anything from the last six years of that decade, here are some telltale signs to determine if a member of your brood is considering becoming trapped in that Black Hole called Disco!

Are they using terms like "funky", "get down" or "bad" when they mean good? Example: Kid - "This hot fudge sundae is bad." Parent - "It smells alright to me." Is their bedroom wall covered with K.C. and the Sunshine Band posters? Have you caught them, in front of the mirrors, practicing dance steps, which include, pointing to the floor and then swinging the arm up and pointing to the sky? Then you've got trouble, my friend, right here in River City. I say, trouble and that starts with "t" which rhymes with "d" and that stands for Disco!

It's amazing the impact those five letters had on our everyday lives; not only in music, but in fashion, too. Who will ever forget bellbottom trousers? I mean, bellbottoms that spread out so wide, Ringling Brothers could have handled a complete matinee under one pant leg and kept a third world country dry under the other one.

The fabric of the 70's was, none other than, polyester. "Poly" from the term "able to stretch like rubber" and "ester" meaning "extremely flammable." (Anyone who has ever dropped a lit cigarette on a pair of polyester pants will know they ignite faster than a Ford Pinto.)

Who will ever forget the popular leisure suit? The universal appeal to this little number was the fact that you could get married in it and, later that afternoon, Velcro a number on the back and play shortstop on a league softball team. Under the jacket would be worn a very loud and decorative shirt with wild colors, crazy patterns, and lapels wide enough to land a troop transport on them.

To cap off this lovely ensemble there was a piece of fancy footwear called the platform shoe. The purpose of these shoes were to allow people, intent on suicide, the opportunity to do it at any given time. The victim would stand on top of these shoes, while a crowd would gather below and chant, "JUMP!" Later, after they went out of style, platform shoes were used to raise houses in low-lying, flood-prone areas.

So, if you feel your children may be falling into this dreaded trap, there is help. Pick up the phone and dial 1-800-DSCO-STNKS. Operators are standing by now to talk to your child about Generation X (or Y, or whatever letter they're using this month) and play music dated no later than 1969.

I'm not exactly what you would call handy. In fact, I am to home improvement what Mr. T is to Victoria's Secret. I require an overnight hospital stay if I attempt to remove the rubber band from around a newspaper. (I've almost put my eye out twice.)

My lack of mechanical prowess is known throughout the countryside. The borough that I live in has requested that I apply for a permit, if I attempt to build a sandwich.

My father was the one who was blessed with these skills. He could work on the family automobile and have it running in the morning, repair a broken hay rake on the back of the tractor in the afternoon, install new electrical outlets in the spare room by dusk and then turn around and make a Hungarian Goulash that would make a native Budapestian migrate to our kitchen. And, he'd do it all in one day. (Let's see him write a half hour spec script for "Everybody Loves Raymond.")

Still, I would love the ability to build or repair something and not have to fill out an insurance claim form. For instance, I tried replacing the float in the toilet tank in the guest bathroom. Without getting into too many details, people who visit us now, and use the guest bathroom, have the unique opportunity to see, first hand, how a kitty litter operates.

Last year, we had a Nor'easter and several shingles were blown off our roof. I replaced them the day before a major snowstorm in March. After the storm, all the shingles I replaced, (using no less than twenty nails in each shingle) were still there. However, all the shingle surrounding them were gone.

I also attempted to install a toilet paper holder in the guest bathroom. Sixteen drill holes in the wall later, I discovered how much easier it was to leave the loose roll of t.p. on the vanity.

My feeble repair attempts became known as "The Curse Of The Guest Bathroom." Stephen King is planning on writing the screenplay.

Now that I've set you up, and have given you some background on my manual dexterity, it is time to tell you of my ultimate challenge.

No one seems to know how a chip in the porcelain, the size of Camden County, got in the guest bathroom sink. My girlfriend denies any knowledge of it. And every time I question the two cats, they point their paws at each other in an accusatory fashion.

So, when my girlfriend said, "We need to replace this sink." I immediately volunteered for the job. After approximately twenty minutes of my girlfriend laughing uncontrollably, I explained that I needed to break "The Curse Of the Guest Bathroom", I needed to prove that I could do it and I needed the arm and leg I would have been charged had I hired a plumber. It was just something I had to do. Man pitted against plumbing. Mono Au Mono.

I entered the bathroom wearing a fully loaded tool belt, a hard hat, dark goggles, and holding a large pipe wrench in each hand. ROBOPLUMBER!!!

First, I removed the old sink. This was the sink that originally came with the house. I discovered that builders tend to use the cheapest grade materials when building a house. (The next lower grade sink, in this case, would have been a flowing stream and a rock.)

The cats hid under the bed, as I removed the hardware from the old sink and attempted to put them (the hardware, not the cats) on the new one. NOTE: It's advisable to remember how the hardware came off, so that after installing the hardware on the new sink, you don't have ten or twelve extra pieces left over.

The sweat began pouring from my forehead as everything I tried to do went wrong. The bathroom began looking like a scene out of The Three Stooges' "A Plumbing We Will Go." I had thoughts of, after completing the job, turning on the faucet and my neighbor's toilet flushing.

Moving to Tucson has been an adventure in learning after spending most of my life in New York State. It's a wonderful place to live with the excellent weather and the beautiful sunsets, but at the same time there are some oddities about Tucson. I'm going to fit right in.

One of the most interesting things that I have learned since moving here is that after you flush your toilet it comes back to you ten days later as your tap water. I gained this tidbit of information listening in on a conversation in a grocery line. I found the fact mildly disturbing, but not distasteful. It did make me wonder what magical process the waste water goes through during those ten days to make it palatable.

Operating a motor vehicle in Tucson can be dangerous. For some strange reason a large number of drivers in this city come to a complete stop at green lights. Is it possible that the bright green color stuns them because they abide in a desert? Tucson averages about 80,000 rear end collisions every year. This would be a great place to open a repair shop or an eye clinic.

There is a preponderance of people who wear cowboy hats in Tucson, and while not having an aversion to that type of headgear it does make me feel like I'm in an old western movie. The citizen's wearing the hats seem to saunter rather than walk. I am on the alert for stampedes.

I will bore you with one more item of interest. A house panel ( I have no idea what that is, but it sounds important ) voted this week to allow people to pull a gun without ending up in jail if they consider themselves in danger. Is this the Wild West? Folks would be immune from prosecution if it was a defensive display of their weapon. Can I pull a knife if I'm feeling frisky?

I always try to maintain an edge, and I'm proud of my ability to overcome obstacles. I now lap my water straight from the toilet tank in order to stay ahead of the game.

I don't mean to alarm anyone and I certainly don't mean to be an extremist, (Okay, the article on the destruction of mankind as we know it may have been borderline) but there is a rumor that, if true, could cause extreme havoc in the community and the release of thousands of people taking to the streets and screaming at the top of their lungs, like in a bad Japanese monster flick. I'm speaking about, of course, the return of Disco!

I know. I know. Those of us who lived through it, back in the 70's remember, all to well, the metamorphosis that took place in our culture. It was a little more than three decades ago that the onslaught of music, with the open and closed cymbal, made people dress in very bizarre fashions and forced them to go to nightclubs so they could "Shake Their Booty", because "That's The Way They Liked It" (Uh-huh, uh-huh.)

Many of you may have met your future spouses at one of these places, married them, and created your own generation of disco dudes and dudettes. The writing is on the wall, folks. What goes around, comes around and the chance that your offspring might end up in this God-awful craze, could be just a Bee Gees song away.

For those of you who were too (how can I put this delicately?) wrecked to remember anything from the last six years of that decade, here are some telltale signs to determine if a member of your brood is considering becoming trapped in that Black Hole called Disco!

Are they using terms like "funky", "get down" or "bad" when they mean good? Example: Kid - "This hot fudge sundae is bad." Parent - "It smells alright to me." Is their bedroom wall covered with K.C. and the Sunshine Band posters? Have you caught them, in front of the mirrors, practicing dance steps, which include, pointing to the floor and then swinging the arm up and pointing to the sky? Then you've got trouble, my friend, right here in River City. I say, trouble and that starts with "t" which rhymes with "d" and that stands for Disco!

It's amazing the impact those five letters had on our everyday lives; not only in music, but in fashion, too. Who will ever forget bellbottom trousers? I mean, bellbottoms that spread out so wide, Ringling Brothers could have handled a complete matinee under one pant leg and kept a third world country dry under the other one.

The fabric of the 70's was, none other than, polyester. "Poly" from the term "able to stretch like rubber" and "ester" meaning "extremely flammable." (Anyone who has ever dropped a lit cigarette on a pair of polyester pants will know they ignite faster than a Ford Pinto.)

Who will ever forget the popular leisure suit? The universal appeal to this little number was the fact that you could get married in it and, later that afternoon, Velcro a number on the back and play shortstop on a league softball team. Under the jacket would be worn a very loud and decorative shirt with wild colors, crazy patterns, and lapels wide enough to land a troop transport on them.

To cap off this lovely ensemble there was a piece of fancy footwear called the platform shoe. The purpose of these shoes were to allow people, intent on suicide, the opportunity to do it at any given time. The victim would stand on top of these shoes, while a crowd would gather below and chant, "JUMP!" Later, after they went out of style, platform shoes were used to raise houses in low-lying, flood-prone areas.

So, if you feel your children may be falling into this dreaded trap, there is help. Pick up the phone and dial 1-800-DSCO-STNKS. Operators are standing by now to talk to your child about Generation X (or Y, or whatever letter they're using this month) and play music dated no later than 1969.

I'm not exactly what you would call handy. In fact, I am to home improvement what Mr. T is to Victoria's Secret. I require an overnight hospital stay if I attempt to remove the rubber band from around a newspaper. (I've almost put my eye out twice.)

My lack of mechanical prowess is known throughout the countryside. The borough that I live in has requested that I apply for a permit, if I attempt to build a sandwich.

My father was the one who was blessed with these skills. He could work on the family automobile and have it running in the morning, repair a broken hay rake on the back of the tractor in the afternoon, install new electrical outlets in the spare room by dusk and then turn around and make a Hungarian Goulash that would make a native Budapestian migrate to our kitchen. And, he'd do it all in one day. (Let's see him write a half hour spec script for "Everybody Loves Raymond.")

Still, I would love the ability to build or repair something and not have to fill out an insurance claim form. For instance, I tried replacing the float in the toilet tank in the guest bathroom. Without getting into too many details, people who visit us now, and use the guest bathroom, have the unique opportunity to see, first hand, how a kitty litter operates.

Last year, we had a Nor'easter and several shingles were blown off our roof. I replaced them the day before a major snowstorm in March. After the storm, all the shingles I replaced, (using no less than twenty nails in each shingle) were still there. However, all the shingle surrounding them were gone.

I also attempted to install a toilet paper holder in the guest bathroom. Sixteen drill holes in the wall later, I discovered how much easier it was to leave the loose roll of t.p. on the vanity.

My feeble repair attempts became known as "The Curse Of The Guest Bathroom." Stephen King is planning on writing the screenplay.

Now that I've set you up, and have given you some background on my manual dexterity, it is time to tell you of my ultimate challenge.

No one seems to know how a chip in the porcelain, the size of Camden County, got in the guest bathroom sink. My girlfriend denies any knowledge of it. And every time I question the two cats, they point their paws at each other in an accusatory fashion.

So, when my girlfriend said, "We need to replace this sink." I immediately volunteered for the job. After approximately twenty minutes of my girlfriend laughing uncontrollably, I explained that I needed to break "The Curse Of the Guest Bathroom", I needed to prove that I could do it and I needed the arm and leg I would have been charged had I hired a plumber. It was just something I had to do. Man pitted against plumbing. Mono Au Mono.

I entered the bathroom wearing a fully loaded tool belt, a hard hat, dark goggles, and holding a large pipe wrench in each hand. ROBOPLUMBER!!!

First, I removed the old sink. This was the sink that originally came with the house. I discovered that builders tend to use the cheapest grade materials when building a house. (The next lower grade sink, in this case, would have been a flowing stream and a rock.)

The cats hid under the bed, as I removed the hardware from the old sink and attempted to put them (the hardware, not the cats) on the new one. NOTE: It's advisable to remember how the hardware came off, so that after installing the hardware on the new sink, you don't have ten or twelve extra pieces left over.

The sweat began pouring from my forehead as everything I tried to do went wrong. The bathroom began looking like a scene out of The Three Stooges' "A Plumbing We Will Go." I had thoughts of, after completing the job, turning on the faucet and my neighbor's toilet flushing.

I'm proud to say that, eventually, the sink was installed and hooked up. The hot water came out when the hot water faucet was turned on. The cold water ran when the cold water faucet was activated. This was all accomplished in one afternoon with only two Band-Aids, a change of clothes and thirty-seven expletive deletives. The "curse" had been broken.

The only utility of a tissue paper is that we need not to reuse it. It is a thing that is always thrown in the waste basket after very first use. The contemporary world is producing a lot of tissue papers to make the life more rich and comfortable.

Science has made immense progress in all fields of life. The amenities of life have increased manifold. Whatever you want to do involves some invention of science. Every day life has also been affected by these discoveries. Science has crept not only into our daily life but has also made home in hearts, minds and souls. This useful invention of science , the the tissue paper, has many similarities with human personality.

Psychologists divide human personality into many kinds. A lot of kinds look strange but are present there . I have also discovered a new type of personality. This has been present there since centuries but it is revealed in the most scientific way fist time. It is a fresh and pure type of personality. It is everywhere in all the classes of society. Either it is aristocratic, middle, lower middle or poor strata of societies, tissue paper and the tissue paper personality are there together. Each and every thing is evaluated in terms of utility. Human feelings and emotions are in abeyance and mundane wisdom is on the rule. Whoever meets you wants to exploit you. This is the human tissue paper.

Its inventors are unknown but its exploiters have been there from all the ages.The most significant trait of this personality is that it does not believe in cast, color, creed or religion. The scholars of the past had the knowledge of this personality . They were unable to explain it in obvious terms because there was no tissue paper invented .We are blessed by the new discoveries of science, that is why it became very easy for us to generalize the tissue paper personality.

The tissue paper personality is the most ancient and the most recent kind of personality. The comparison of the tissue paper and tissue paper personality would reveal its real characteristics .The tissue paper is one of the big inventions of science in many ways. It comes to handy on all occasions. It has become a basis also to define a personality. Where you are ,you need a tissue paper. It has achieved the status of an essential ingredient of life.

The most common feature of a tissue paper is that the user always discards it after first use. Tissue paper personality has the same characteristic .The exploiter always discards it after the fulfillment of his aim. The fast and advance human life is in need of the tissue papers either in the form of a paper or a person.Who was the first man who was able enough to use others and then discard them ,history is silent over it. But hundred and thousands of examples can be quoted from the annals of the known human history.

Now a day the military rulers of the world are experts in using this personality. The advanced states are in habit of exploiting the smaller and weaker nations in the same manner. The bureaucracy of many countries is deft in this regard. Moreover the common man of the planet earth has become scientific and uses this discovery whenever he gets a chance.The chance is always there because avarice and poverty are there. So tissue papers should always be used by the people who are in the capacity to buy them!!

Act 1 - The Prologue

Twas the night before Christmas. In an age of mobile phones, a conversation has amassed between two characters whose events have unravelled before us. A page fuelled by fantasy and to be filled by destiny ...

Post-Modern Christmas

Hey m8, hows u? wat u get up 2 ova xmas?

I'm k, xmas @ home with rents. Pretty weird.

What happened to thee? You have me intrigued with your account of the festive season.

I woke, at but 3 hours past the witching one. A sound, similar to that of a mighty tempest, I harked in the drawing room.

And I ask what did you do at that time? How did that make you feel? What did you find when you find when you searched for something?

That man grabbed his dressing gown, and with great bravery, hurtled towards the stairs, and ran down them 2 at a time. He arrived at the great oak door. He could here someone ho ho hoing. Would you have opened it?

---.---.-...-.-. .--.-.-. -...--.. -.-..-.. ----.- .-.-. .--.- .- -..-..- .--..- -..-.

-.--..-.. .-.- -..- ..-...- .-. ..--..- .-..- .- .-.-..- .- . -. .-..-. .- --- ..-..- .--.-..-.. -..-.

Act 5, Scene 3

The paper stood still. The writer content with what his characters have accomplished. The audience left in despair and only ones with Morse code leave the theatre with satisfaction.