Daily Dose - 030208 - difficult decision, THIS is TRUE, Grannies, DDL, Rotten News

I was faced with a difficult decision recently and asked my friends what I should do. This is
what I got...

- Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

- A silent man is a wise one.
A man without words is a man without thoughts.

- Look before you leap.
He who hesitates is lost.

- Many hands make light work.
Too many cooks spoil the broth.

- Actions speak louder than words.
The pen is mightier than the sword.

- Clothes make the man.
Don't judge a book by its cover.

- It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.
The nail that sticks out gets hammered.

- Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Better safe than sorry.

Now what do I do???

_____________________________

THIS is TRUE....

THY NAME SHALL BE ABRAHAM: After a judge refused to allow Charles Haffey, 55, of Lake
City, Fla., to change his name to "God", Haffey went back to his home (which he had named
"Heaven") to regroup. "According to Moses, when he said, 'What's your name, dude?', [God]
said, 'I am who I am or I will be who I will be'," Haffey says. "But that's kind of wordy, so I'm
just going for 'I am who I am' as my full legal name." He took the request back to Columbia
County Circuit Court Judge Vernon Douglas, who approved Haffey's new legal name. "My
first name, of course, would be 'I am'," who I am says. (Lake City Reporter)
...Of course, his friends will all just call him Popeye.

******

WITNESS: Barb Trenchi, 50, of Everett, Wash., was crossing a street in Seattle when a car
sped through a red light and nearly ran her down. A police car was in hot pursuit. "I was in the
middle of the intersection and saw the police lights and thought, 'What else could happen to
me today?'," she says. It had indeed been a bad day for her: she had reported her car stolen
from her home that morning, about 30 miles away. It was about then that she realized that
the car being chased was hers. The pursuit ended shortly after -- when the guy driving her
car crashed into someone else. (Everett Herald)
...See? Her day could have been much worse.

******

GOTCHA: The years-old "Nigerian Fraud" has snagged another gullible victim. The fraud,
most commonly e-mailed or faxed by conmen in Nigeria to hundreds of thousands of random
people at a time, claims that the perpetrator has millions of dollars in cash that he needs to
smuggle out of the country, and if the victim will only help him pay a small transfer fee they
can have a big percentage. The fees grow and grow as complication after complication crops
up. That's what happened to Ann Marie Poet of Rochester Hills, Mich., the FBI says.
Investigators say Poet paid out $2.1 million, $9,400 to $360,000 at a time, in attempts to get
25 percent of a supposed $18 million treasure. Where did the 59- year-old bookkeeper get
such money? She embezzled it from her employer, the FBI says -- a law firm, allegedly
draining the firm's entire cash reserve. "It's unbelievable that she fell for this," said the FBI's
investigator. "Nobody is going to call someone they don't know and offer to pay millions of
dollars to help transfer money to the United States." (Detroit Free Press)
...No, but it does work to call random people to transfer millions of dollars OUT of the United
States.

******

GOAL ORIENTED: As the Boston Bruins were playing the Calgary Flames in Calgary, Alta.,
Canada, Bruins forward Joe Thornton noticed one of the fans in the stands doing something
unusual. "I saw him taking off his pants" and then climb up on the glass around the rink. "Oh
man, it wasn't very nice," he observed. The unidentified man, by then wearing only red socks,
jumped into the rink to "streak" the game -- but slipped on the ice and fell, knocking himself
unconscious. He was carried off the ice on a stretcher. "It's a shame," the Flames' Bob
Boughner added. "It's never a girl." Bruins goalie Steve Shields says he "thought it was a
dummy at first." (Edmonton Journal)
...The entire time, actually.

******

TIRED OF THE CAFETERIA'S "MYSTERY MEAT"? "Zookeepers Suspended for Eating
Animals"
-- Reuters headline

____________________________

The Grannies

Two elderly ladies are sitting on the front porch, doing nothing. One old lady turns to the
other and asks, "Do you still get horny?"

The other replies, "Oh sure I do."

The first old lady asks, "What to you do about it?"

"I suck on a lifesaver."

After a few moments, the first old lady asks, "Who drives you to the beach?"

____________________________

DDL

There was an adulterous Abbot,
As randy as any old rabbit;
He'd even been known
(Indeed, he was prone)
With neighboring nuns to cohabit.

____________________________

"One thing I hope I'll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will
never work in this town again!"
--Jim Carrey

***

"Broken promises don't upset me. I just think, they shouldn't have believed me in the first
place."
--Jack Handy

***

"If April showers bring May flowers, then what do May flowers bring?"

"Pilgrims!"

____________________________

Rotten News... (true)

Dublin prison guards get dumped on by inmates

November 25 2002 at 03:59PM

Ireland - About 100 inmates at Dublin's Mountjoy Jail were locked in their cells until further
notice on Monday after dumping the contents of their toilet buckets onto guards in a protest
over tightened security measures.

The prisoners on an upper-floor wing emptied the buckets over a balcony after being freed for
breakfast. They were opposing a new policy, introduced last week, that visitors had to provide
photograph identification.

Mountjoy officials defended the rule as necessary to reduce visits by drug dealers, who
sometimes arrive in place of family members and pressure inmates into taking marijuana,
heroin and amphetamines for distribution within the jail. - Sapa-AP

******

PARROT GIVES THE BIRD

A foul-mouthed parrot left church-goers stunned - by bombarding them with wolf-whistles and
insults.

Parishioners complained that they are wolf-whistled at or insulted when they walk past their
local church.

But it is not a vicar calling them names - it is an escaped African Grey parrot living in the
trees above St Mary's church in Mirfield, West Yorkshire.

Tim Wood, owner of the local pub, The Old Colonial on Dunbottle Lane - only a few hundred
yards from the rude bird - is one who has fallen victim.

He was taking a walk when he heard the word "pillock" coming from up in the trees. "The
parrot appeared a couple of weeks back high up in the trees," he said. "I was with someone
at the time and I thought it was quite amusing. I thought someone was pulling my leg on the
other side of the churchyard.

"I couldn't believe it when I realised it was a parrot. It's just bizarre. Let's just say he won't be
used in the vicar's nativity play."

However, the vicar of St Mary's jumped to the defence of the bird.

"It is not rude at all," the Rev Peter Craig- Wilde said. "He's a very friendly chap - called
Charlie. "He does not swear - he has never sworn at anyone. He's, I think, said hello, he
makes telephone ring noises and wolf whistles at anyone regardless of age or gender, but he
does not swear and I want to defend his reputation on this.

"I am pleased that he has chosen our churchyard to live in. He is very welcome and everyone
hopes he can manage to survive, especially if he mates with the pigeons. We could have new
species of pigotts that are grey with a bright red tail."

It seems that most people in the town, including the vicar, are happy to have the new talking
parrot around.

"It is very welcome," said the vicar, "It is a help to our growth in faith as he is a constant
reminder that we perhaps ought to go back to the days when people learnt the Bible - parrot
fashion."

Last Updated: 13:12 UK, Wednesday November 27, 2002

*******

Pin-striped tumble wins Bad Sex prize

Michelle Pauli
Wednesday December 4, 2002

The 'most dreaded literary prize' has been won by Wendy Perriam for a description of pin-
striped sex in her novel Tread Softly.

The annual Literary Review Bad Sex prize is awarded to the worst description of sex in a
contemporary novel. This year's winner includes the lines "Weirdly, he was clad in pin-stripes
at the same time as being naked. Pin-stripes were erotic, the uniform of fathers, two-
dimensional fathers. Even Mr Hughes's penis had a seductive pin-striped foreskin."

"Coming a close second" was Nicolas Coleridge for a passage in his novel Godchildren, in
which he describes a man stroking his lover "like a groom reassuring a frightened foal".

Other literary big-hitters featured on the longlist were Hari Kunzru, also shortlisted for both
the Whitbread First Novel Award and Guardian First Book Award; Will Self for Dorian; Jeffrey
Eugenides for Middlesex; actor-turned-writer Ethan Hawke; and Canongate's rising star,
Michel Faber, for The Crimson Petal and the White.

Wendy Perriam, who has been nominated for the prize three times in a row, said that she
was "stunned but pleased" by her win, insisting that the winning scene had been intended to
be humorous.

She attributes her interest in sex to her convent upbringing. "We were taught that sex was
wicked and so I became totally fascinated by it," she explains. "In a sense I write sex scenes
as I still want to be sure that it really happens and that people are taking the risk of going to
hell..."

"Sex can still be such an unknown subject that the secrets of the bedroom are a real area for
novelists to explore, especially to shed light on character," she added.

The prize, presented this year by socialite Nicky Haslam, is a semi-abstract statue
representing sex in the 1950s.

The award was set up by the literary critic Rhoda Koenig and the late editor of the Literary
Review Auberon Waugh in 1993. Previous winners include Christopher Hart for his
description of love-making as a polar exploration, AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks and Alan
Titchmarsh.