What do bent lines and war torn countries have in common? Crooked Rulers.

 There's just something appropriate there!  Jus' sayin'!

On the other hand, I'm going out to wear some rubber off my tires on the bike in a bit.  Or as I tell people about all three of my sports "I'm in competition with yesterday.  How about you?"

A guy who was born with no arms goes to the doctor one day and the doc says, ‘I have bad news, you are terminally ill and you only have one month left to live.”

The man was a absolutely despondent - but as he walked out of his doctors office, he looked up at the monastery atop the hill near town and thought to himself, I have always wanted to ring the bells in the monastery tower - if I don’t do it now, it will never happen.

So he walks up the path to the monastery and, using his head, ‘knock knock knock’, bangs on the door. A few moments later, a portly monk answers the door and asks how he may be of assistance. The man with no arms explains his plight and asks if there is any way that the monk can help.

The monk pauses, then looks at his watch, looks back at the man - focusing on his lack of arms - and says, ”well, I don’t know how you would do it, but it is almost time to ring the bells so I will give you a shot.”

The man is overwhelmed with joy and can’t stop thanking the monk as the monk leads him to the bell tower, slowly waddling across the yard and up the long spiral staircase to the bell tower. They reach the bell tower with just minutes to spare. The skeptical monk looks at his watch, and when the hour strikes twelves, he says , ‘ tis time to ring the bell, my son’.

Expecting the young man to grab the rope in his teeth in his attempt to ring the bell, the monk is stunned when instead the man leans forward and runs full speed into the bell. And ring the bell the young man did. When he made contact, the bell let out the most glorious ring - a sound so beautiful that the monk was brought to tears. And as the bell rang, it slowly swung backwards from the force of the impact before swinging back. But when it did swing back, it squarely struck the young man, sending him flying out the window and down to the sidewalk just outside of the monastery.

The chubby monk waddled down the stairs as fast as he could - which wasn’t very fast - and when he finally gets around to the side of the monastery where the man had fallen, a passing police officer had already arrived and covered the corpse with a blanket. When he saw the monk running up in a flustered state, he just assumed that the monk knew the victim, so he pulled back the blanket and said, ‘I am sorry to ask this brother, but do you know this man.’

The monk paused for a moment as he looked down at the newly deceased before he said, “Well, I don’t know his name, but his face sure does ring a bell.”