While proudly showing off his new apartment to friends, a college student led the way into the den.

"What is the big brass gong and hammer for?" one of his friends asked.

"That's my talking clock," the young man replied.

"How's it work?" the friend asked.

"Watch," he answered and proceeded to give the gong an ear-shattering pound with the hammer.

Suddenly, someone screamed from the other side of the wall, "KNOCK IT OFF! It's two o'clock in the morning!"

• If I like it, it's mine.
• If it's in my hand, it's mine.
• If I can take it from you, it's mine.
• If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
• If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
• If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
• If it looks just like mine, it's mine.
• If I think it's mine, it's mine.
• If it's yours and I steal it, it's mine.
• If it's broken, it's yours.

Welcome to Managed Friendship, a whole new way of thinking about friends and relationships! The Managed Friendship Plan (MFP) combines all the advantages of a traditional friendship network, with important cost-saving features.

How Does It Work?

Under the Plan, you choose your friends from a network of pre-screened accredited Friendship Providers (FPs). All your friendship needs are met by members of your Managed Friendship Staff.

What's Wrong with my Current Friends?

If you're like most people, you are receiving friendship services from a network of friendship providers haphazardly patched together from your old neighborhoods, jobs, and schools. The result is often costly duplication, inefficiency, and conflict. Many of your current friends may not meet national standards, responding to your needs with inappropriate, outmoded, or even experimental acts of friendship.

Under Managed Friendship, your friendship needs are coordinated by your designated Best Friend, who will ensure the quality and goodness of all your friendly relationships.

How Do I Know That the Plan's Panel of Friends Is Not Made Up of a Bunch of Losers Who Can't Make Friends on Their Own?

Many of today's most dedicated and highly-trained Friendship Providers are as concerned as we are about delivering Quality Friendship in a cost-effective manner. They have joined our network because they want to focus on acting like a friend rather than doing the paperwork and paying the high bad-friendship premiums that have caused the cost of traditional friendship to skyrocket. Our Friendship Providers have met our rigorous standards of companionship and loyalty.

What If I Need a Special Friend, Say, for Hiking or Fishing?

Special Friends are responsible for most of the unnecessary and expensive activities that burden already costly relationships. Under the Managed Friendship Plan, your Best Friend is qualified to pre-approve your referral to a Special Friend within the Managed Friendship Network should your needs fall outside of the scope of his/her friendship.

Suppose I Want to See Friends Outside the Managed Friendship Network?

You may make friends outside of the Managed Friendship Network only in the event of a Friendship Emergency.

What is a Friendship Emergency?

The Managed Friendship Plan covers your friendship needs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even if you need a friend out of town, after regular business hours, or when your Best Friend is with someone else.

You might be on a business trip, for instance, and suddenly find that you feel lonely. In such cases, you may make a New Friend, and all approved friendly activities will be covered under the Plan, provided you notify the Managed Friendship Office (or 24-hour Friendship Hotline) within two business days.

What Friendly Activities Are Covered Under the Plan?

Friendly Activities that are typically covered include:

• Agreeing with you
• Appearing sympathetic
• Chewing the fat
• Dropping by
• Feeling your pain
• Gossiping
• Hanging out
• Holding your hand (up to 5 minutes per activity)*
• Joshing
• Kidding around
• Listening to you whine
• Passing the time
• Patting your back
• Ribbing
• Sharing a meal
• Shooting the breeze
• Teasing

*up to 15 minutes under the Premium Gold Friendship Plan

What Friendly Activities Are Not Covered Under the Plan?

Activities that would not be pre-approved include (but are not limited to):

• Bar hopping
• Bending over backwards
• Drinking to excess
• Giving a hoot
• Going the extra mile
• Lending money
• Real empathy
• Truly caring
• Illicit drugs use

How Can I Find Out More About the Managed Friendship Plan?

A simple call is all it takes. If you need a friend, just call our toll-free number. Or visit our Web site. Sign up for the Managed Friendship Plan and rest easier knowing all of your appropriate friendship needs will be met.

Who Decides What's Appropriate for Me?

We do. Isn't that what friends are for?

A man was driving down the road and broke down near a monastery. He went to the monastery and knocked on the door. An elderly monk answered the door, and he said, "My car broke down. Do you think I could stay the night?"

The monks graciously welcomed him into the monastery, fed him dinner, even fixed his car. As the man tried to fall asleep, he heard a strange sound.

The next morning, he asked the monks what the sound was, but they said, "We can't tell you. You're not a monk."

The man was disappointed, but thanked them and went on his way.

Some years later, the same man broke down in front of the same monastery. The monks welcomed him, fed him, even fixed his car. That night, he heard the same strange noise that he had heard years earlier.

The next morning, he asked what the noise was, but the monks replied, "We can't tell you. You're not a monk."

The man said, "All right, all right. I'm dying to know. How do I become a monk?"

The monks replied, "You must travel the Earth and tell us how many blades of grass there are and the exact number of sand pebbles. When you find these numbers, you will become a monk."

The man set about his task. Forty-five years later, he returned and knocked on the door of the monastery. He said, "I have traveled the Earth and have found what you have asked for. There are 145,236,284,232 blades of grass and 231,281,219,999,129,382 sand pebbles on the Earth."

The monks replied, "Congratulations. You are now a monk. We shall now show you the way to the sound."

The monks led the man to a wooden door, where the head monk said, "The sound is right behind that door."

The man reached for the knob, but the door was locked. He said, "Real funny. may I have the key?" The monks gave him the key, and he opened the door. Behind the wooden door was another door made of stone. The man demanded the key to the stone door. The monks gave him the key, and he opened it, only to find a door made of ruby. He demanded another key from the monks, who provided it. Behind that door was another door, this one made of sapphire. So it went until the man had gone through doors of emerald, silver, topaz, and amethyst.

Finally, the monks said, "This is the last key to the last door."

The man was relieved to no end. He unlocked the door, turned the knob, and behind that door he was amazed to find the source of that strange sound.

But I can't tell you what it was because you're not a monk.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Mr. Common Sense.

Mr. Sense had been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm, and that life isn't always fair.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults, not kids, are in charge).

His health began to rapidly deteriorate when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place.

Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student only worsened his condition.

Mr. Sense declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer aspirin to a student, but could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Finally, Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband, churches became businesses, and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense finally gave up the ghost after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot, then she spilled a bit in her lap and was awarded a huge financial settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by two stepbrothers: My Rights and Ima Whiner.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

Once there was a little boy who lived in the country. For bathroom facilities, they had to use an outhouse. The little boy hated it because it was hot in the summer, cold in the winter and stank all the time.

The outhouse was sitting on the bank of a creek and the boy determined that one day he would push that outhouse into the water.

One day after a spring rain, the creek was swollen so the little boy decided today was the day to push the outhouse into the creek. So he got a large stick and pushed. Finally, the outhouse toppled into the creek and floated away.

That evening his dad sternly told him to sit down. Knowing he was in trouble, the little boy asked why. The dad replied, "Someone pushed the outhouse into the creek today. It was you, wasn't it, son?"

The boy answered yes. Then he thought a moment and said, "Dad, I read in school today that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and didn't get into trouble because he told the truth."

The dad replied, "Well, son, George Washington's father wasn't in that cherry tree!"

An engineer, a psychologist, and a theologian were hunting in the wilderness of northern Canada. Suddenly, the temperature dropped and a furious snowstorm was upon them. They came across an isolated cabin, far removed from any town. The hunters had heard that the locals in the area were quite hospitable, so they knocked on the door to ask permission to rest.

No one answered their knocks, but they discovered the cabin was unlocked and they entered. It was a simple place... 2 rooms with a minimum of furniture and household equipment. Nothing was unusual about the cabin except the stove. It was large, pot-bellied, and made of cast-iron. What was strange about it was its location. It was suspended in midair by wires attached to the ceiling beams.

"Fascinating," said the psychologist. "It is obvious that this lonely trapper, isolated from humanity, has elevated this stove so that he can curl up under it and vicariously experience a return to the womb."

"Nonsense!" replied the engineer. "The man is practicing the laws of thermodynamics. By elevating his stove, he has discovered a way to distribute heat more evenly throughout the cabin."

"With all due respect," interrupted the theologian, "I'm sure that hanging his stove from the ceiling has religious meaning. Fire LIFTED UP has been a religious symbol for centuries."

The three debated the point for several hours without resolving the issue. When the trapper finally returned, they immediately asked him why he had hung his heavy pot-bellied stove from the ceiling.

His answer was succinct. "Had plenty of wire, not much stove pipe."

A man was known among his friends to be very brief and to the point - he really never said too much.

One day, a saleswoman promoting a certain brand of cosmetics knocked on his door and asked to see his wife. The man told her that his wife wasn't home.

"Well," replied the saleswoman, "could I please wait for her?"

The man directed her to the drawing room and left her there for more than three hours.

The saleswoman was getting really worried, soshe called out to the man and asked, "May I know where your wife is?"

"She went to the cemetery," he replied.

"And when is she returning?"

"I don't really know," he said. "She's been there eleven years now."

One rainy evening, my husband and I emerged from a restaurant only to find that he had locked the keys in the car. He insisted he could open the door with a wire coat hanger, so we went back to the restaurant to get one. There were none to be found.

He then ran to a department store a quarter-mile away and returned with a coat hanger. After a few attempts, he got the door open, and we climbed in. As we sat there, soaked and cold, he stuck the hanger under his seat. With a smug grin, he said, "Now if this ever happens again, I'll have one."

A man had been driving all night and by morning was still far from his destination. He decided to stop at the next city he came to, and park somewhere quiet so he could get an hour or two of sleep. As luck would have it, the quiet place he chose happened to be on one of the city's major jogging routes. No sooner had he settled back to snooze when there came a knocking on his window. He looked out and saw a jogger running in place.

"Yes?"

"Excuse me, sir," the jogger said, "do you have the time?"

The man looked at the car clock and answered, "8:15."

The jogger said thanks and left. The man settled back again, and was just dozing off when there was another knock on the window and another jogger.

"Excuse me, sir, do you have the time?"

"8:25!"

The jogger said thanks and left. Now the man could see other joggers passing by and he knew it was only a matter of time before another one disturbed him. To avoid the problem, he got out a pen and paper and put a sign in his window saying, "I do not know the time!"

Once again he settled back to sleep. He was just dozing off when there was another knock on the window.

"Sir, sir? It's 8:45!"

The strong young man at the construction site was bragging he could outdo anyone in a feat of strength. He made a special case of making fun of one of the older workmen.

After several minutes, the older worker had enough. "Why don't you put your money where your mouth is?" he said. "I will bet a week's wages that I can haul something in a wheelbarrow over to that outbuilding that you won't be able to wheel back."

"You're on, old man," the braggart replied. "Let's see what you got."

The old man reached out and grabbed the wheelbarrow by the handles. Then, nodding to the young man, he said, "All right. Get in."