Daily Dose - 020218 - Snow Plow, Rotten News, lesson, DDL, Hey Martha

Snow Plow

Jay and his blonde wife live in Chicago. One winter morning while listening to the radio, they hear the announcer say, "We are going to have 3 to 4 inches of snow today. You must park your car on the even numbered side of the street, so the snowplow can get through."

Jay's wife goes out and moves her car.

A week later while they are eating breakfast, the radio announcer says, "We are expecting 4 to 5 inches of snow today. You must park your car on the odd numbered side of the street, so the snowplow can get through."

Jay's wife goes out and moves her car again.

The next week they are having breakfast again, when the radio announcer says "We are expecting 10 to 12 inches of snow today. You must park...", then the electric power goes out.

Jay's wife says, "Honey, I don't know what to do."

Jay says, "Why don't you just leave it in the garage this time?"

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Rotten News (True !)

Wife spends six years in shed

From AFP
20jan02

A MAN in southern China kept his wife locked up in a tiny wooden shed for six years after she became mentally ill from his frequent beatings, local media has reported.

A reporter from Guangdong province's Information Daily discovered the woman living in her own filth in the three-square-metre shack after being tipped off by a reader, the Legal Daily said.

The 38-year-old woman, Zhong Jinping, had been married to her husband Huang Enzai, 35, for 10 years and had given birth to a son before he locked her up.

Her husband impregnated her while she was locked up and she gave birth to a daughter during her incarceration.

The husband's parents, who lived with them, and other residents in their village turned a blind eye to what the husband was doing.

The village chief told the reporter he did not want to meddle in what he believed was a family affair. He also said Zhong's husband was too poor to send her to a mental hospital.

The village, Changmo, is located in Panyu district of Guangdong's capital Guangzhou city. In recent years, many Hong Kong residents have flocked to Panyu, purchasing relatively cheap luxury apartments, which they live in on weekends.

Zhong was sold to her husband for 2,000 yuan ($A460) by her family from eastern Jiangxi province, the report said.

She became mentally unstable after frequent beatings and scoldings from her husband. Instead of getting treatment for her, he locked her up in the shack behind the family home, feeding her through a hole in the wall.

The reporter who first exposed the problem alerted the Women's Federation in Guangzhou city, which sent representatives to the village to investigate.

Federation officials found the woman and later reported the case to the police. The woman was released on January 9.

Police later tracked down her husband, who was out of town, and arrested him.

They also contacted the woman's brother, who travelled to the village to help Zhong. She had trouble walking after being unable to do anything but sit and lie in the bed in the shack for the past few years.

Federation officials plan to take Zhong to a hospital for treatment, the report said.

China last year amended the marriage law, for the first time explicitly prohibiting domestic violence, which local media say has been reported in 30 per cent of Chinese families and is the cause of 60 per cent of divorces.

Domestic violence is one of the ugliest legacies of Chinese history, as generations of Chinese women have been expected to be obedient to their fathers, then their husbands, and in dotage to their sons.

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January 19, 2002

Medal of Honor fails to impress airline security
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

"They just didn't know what it was but they acted like I shouldn't be carrying it on," retired Marine Corps Gen. Joseph J. Foss of Scottsdale, Ariz., said yesterday in a telephone interview.

"I kept explaining that it was the highest medal you can receive from the military in this country, but nobody listened," he said.

Gen. Foss, an 86-year-old former South Dakota governor whose resume also includes stints as president of the National Rifle Association and as commissioner of the old American Football League, said he was "hassled" about the medal by two separate security crews at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. He was trying to board an America West airliner Jan. 11 to attend an NRA meeting in Arlington.

"I received the medal in 1943 from President Franklin Roosevelt," after shooting down 26 enemy planes in the Pacific, said Gen. Foss, who was a Marine fighter pilot during World War II.

"It states all that stuff on the back of the medal," he said.

"I was held up for 45 minutes, while they decided what to do about the medal. I almost missed my flight, as they went back and forth," Gen. Foss said.

He stressed that he would not have boarded the plane if he had been stopped from taking the medal aboard. "I'm one of only about 140 surviving Medal of Honor recipients," he said.

Gen. Foss acknowledges that a commemorative metal nail file — also bearing a Medal of Honor inscription — and a dummy bullet were also in the same pocket of his sports coat as the military medal. Those items were seized before he boarded the plane, but he was allowed to keep the Medal of Honor.

Metal nail files and other instruments with blades are prohibited from aircraft cabins under Federal Aviation Administration regulations that went into effect after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Bullets and other ammunition are not permitted on an aircraft in a passenger's possession. However, the bullet taken from Gen. Foss was harmless, as it has a hole in it so that it will fit on a key chain.

An FAA spokesman was unable to say whether a dummy bullet would be banned under the federal regulations. But he pointed out that airlines are allowed to impose restrictions that go beyond those of the federal agency.

Gen. Foss said he normally doesn't travel with his medal. "I do not carry the medal around with me. But I had it with me this time to show to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point," where he was a guest speaker last week.

Patty Nowack, spokeswoman for America West, said she could not respond to specific questions about the Foss case, as she cannot verify he flew on the airline. She could not say whether there would be any security concerns about a medal but that it would cause a metal detector to go off.

"Our primary objective is to ensure the safety and security of all passengers and employees. We're not trying to single out any individual," she said yesterday.

Gen. Foss says he believes his one-way, first-class ticket, coupled with the 10-gallon hat and western boots he was wearing, made him seem suspicious to security personnel.

Because he wears a pacemaker, he said he couldn't go through a metal detector and so he had to be "frisked" by guards.

Also, Gen. Foss said, "I had to take off my cowboy boots three times [before boarding], as well as my belt and necktie. I compared the situation to bailing out to land in a foreign country."

He said security personnel went so far as to remove razor blades from his luggage, which also went beyond FAA requirements.

Jim Baker, chief lobbyist for the NRA, said he understands the need for "extra security." But he questions how an 86-year-old man bearing the Medal of Honor could be considered a security risk.

"There appears to be a need to incorporate common sense" with the additional security that's being imposed, Mr. Baker said.

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Some of you at the Friars may remember a guy named Charlie Schlossel who was a very successful manufacturer who seemed to disappear from our midst.

Last night I was about to enter my limousine when I saw this homeless person going through a garbage can and I realized it was Charlie Schlossel. It was a sobering moment. I said, "Charlie, what happened?"

"Well, I went through fifteen million like this," he said, snapping his fingers. "You know, after I sold my business I always wanted a jet airplane so I bought one. I'm coming out of Manila Airport, we had to abort the takeoff, the wing hits the tarmac, bursts into flame, thank God we were all safe. Five million dollars, no insurance, out the window."

He said, "I was sitting in the south of France, I saw this yacht and I hear somebody's saying that the guy's going belly up. I give him five million for the yacht. We're coming out of the fjords in Norway, hit an iceberg, sunk, thank God we got out."

He said, "I saw this little girl in the Greek Islands ... breasts, ass firm, tight, maybe twenty, twenty-three years old. I married her. Two years later she took me for five million in the settlement."

The lesson, I guess, that we can all learn is that if it flies, floats, or fucks --- rent it.

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DDL

Mary had a little skirt
Split right up the sides,
And every time she wore that skirt
The boys could see her thighs.

She also had another skirt
Split right up the front
But she never wore that one...

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"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name 'Bzjxxllwcp' is pronounced Jackson."
-Mark Twain

***

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with much force."
-Dorothy Parker

***

"When you're eight years old nothing is your business."
-Lenny Bruce

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Hey Martha (true)

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Small town looses track of election

BRINSON, Ga. (AP) -- This tiny town in southwestern Georgia has just one full-time employee, so it's understandable when something slips through the cracks -- like an election.

Brinson was supposed to elect two town council members last November, but officials mistakenly thought the terms expired later this year. Now there's no one to replace the outgoing members.

"Our faces are red, but it was an honest mistake," said Sharon Foulk, clerk for the town of 225. "We are very, very small. We're just doing the best we can in a small town."

Foulk said a combination of factors led to the missed election: a 1997 change of the town charter that staggered the council terms, the death of a council member that led to a special election, and an ad published in a local newspaper with the wrong dates.

Town attorney Paul Fryer got a court order authorizing a special election, to take place on March 19. The order also allows the two outgoing councilmen to stay on the job until then.

It's not the first time a town in this part of the state has forgotten about an election -- it happened in 1997 in Baconton, about 60 miles away.