Spread the Wealth Pencil Sharpener from Planck's Constant

My tax attorney just emailed me this interesting news: because Obama wants every American to get his fair share of the wealth of this country, his first Executive Order will be to the IRS to send every US taxpayer a new "Spread the Wealth" pencil sharpener. This is to help taxpayers to know exactly how much they will need to spread to comply with the new 2008 IRS tax forms. So be watching' in your mail box!

Those anal-retentive enough not to wish to have all their wealth taken can simply assume the position and just take it like a man.

Wikipedia informs us that Bernard Lassimone, a French mathematician, applied for the first patent (French patent #2444) on pencil sharpeners in 1828. Speaking of mathematicians and pencils, I have always heard that constipated mathematicians always work it out with a pencil.

When I was a child in school fifty years ago, we used the Planetary Pencil Pointer. I assume modern classrooms no longer use the device although it worked perfectly, never needed servicing (other than dumping the shavings at the end of day) and did not require electricity. Despite the minuscule physical effort required, someone thought it was useful to invent an electric pencil sharpener. To be fair, its use in an office is certainly a time saver but for children's classrooms what is it that we are saving? Keeping them from getting up and down? No wonder we are so fat in this country.

Photo Credit: Office Museum

The pencil sharpeners were always located near a window since they were attached to a wooden sill and held in place with 4 screws. I always enjoyed sharpening my pencil, it gave one an excuse to get up and stretch, look out the window and see life outside in the free world, and to brush up against young girls waiting to sharpen their pencils. Of course today flirting with a classmate would be considered a sex crime by some prosecutors and people with a sick, perverted sense of right and wrong. It's not surprising then that women are finding it hard to meet any men since flirting has been outlawed in schools and the workplace. The only decent way a woman today has a chance of meeting anyone is to resort to dating complete strangers they meet on the Internet.

I certainly would never have gotten married if I met my wife in today's sick, everything-is-sexual-harassment environment. It was love at first sight - for me. For her, she couldn't stand me. I stalked her, showed up everywhere she went, even "bumping" into her at restaurants while she was on a date with someone else. Eventually she agreed to date me on the promise I would stop harassing her. We were married less than 3 months after we first met - we have been married for 12,217 days. For those who are not idiot-savants, that's 33 years, 5 months and 10 days. If they had had sexual harassment laws 33 years ago, we would never have married.

Sometimes I like to end an article with a few jokes apropos the topic, but there are very few pencil sharpener jokes out there, to put it bluntly. I did find a Muslim Pencil Sharpener though.