Daily Dose - 030405 - The Stove, THIS is TRUE, chair lift, Queen Mother, DDL, Rotten News

The Stove

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."

___________________________

THIS is TRUE.....

USUALLY CRIMINALS JUST SHOOT THEIR MOUTHS OFF: When Jimmy Batten, 56,
arrived at his home in Brooksville, Fla., after being out for the evening, he found an intruder in
his living room. He confronted the man, later identified as Sean Todd Duval, 26, who was
allegedly trying to steal some guns Batten had in the house -- a rifle was lying on the floor.
That's when he noticed that Duval was missing a toe on one foot after accidentally shooting
himself with the rifle. "Finish me off," Duval begged him. "Go ahead and blow my brains out."
Batten called for police and an ambulance instead. "I guess I had all the right in the world to
shoot the boy," Batten said. "But I didn't." (St. Petersburg Times)
...Of course not -- not shooting him is a much more severe punishment.

**********

GONE POSTAL: Rep. Bob Schaffer of Ft. Collins, Colo., decided to name a post office for
someone who is developmentally disabled. He sponsored a bill to honor Barney Apodaca,
60, a local man who lives on his own, works two jobs and raises money for charity. After
sailing through Congress and being signed into law by President Bush, the Barney Apodaca
Post Office in Ft. Collins was christened. Apodaca was surprised by the gesture. Very
surprised. "No one asked me if I wanted this, and if they did I would have said 'No!'," he said
when he found out later. "I don't want my name on the post office. I don't work over there. I
never go to the post office." Schaffer has asked postal officials to abort their plans to put up
signs and have a party to celebrate the new name. (Denver Post)
...Schaffer's next bill: a "Fight Paternalism" stamp.

***********

KLUTZY FOOLISH CRIMINAL: Aaron Bell, 19, has been convicted of robbery after a
particularly lame effort on his part: Bell decided to hit the KFC store in West Philadelphia,
Penn., during the hours the safe's timelock wouldn't open. He should have known that -- he
had worked as a cook at the very KFC he was robbing for 2-1/2 years. He wasn't wearing a
mask or disguise, and all the employees knew who it was that was robbing them. Bell left
empty-handed ...and showed up at the store to work his next-scheduled shift three days later.
"He was acting like nothing had happened," said the prosecutor in the case. Employees
called the police while Bell was in the men's room, changing into his uniform. (Philadelphia
Daily News)
...There's clearly something more fried there than the chicken.

***********

DRIVEN: Amanda Webster, 34, of London, England, couldn't get her car to start. "I noticed
that part of the key was missing," said Keith Scott, who was dispatched by the auto club to
help. He figured out that the missing bit was the transponder -- a security device that won't let
the car start unless it's detected near the keyhole. Webster's toddler, Oscar, had been
playing with the keys. "Mrs. Webster told me that he had been sucking the key and we
realized he might have swallowed part of it." Scott had her hold the baby up to the steering
wheel to get the transponder near the detector and the car started right up. The transponder
was "recovered" later. (London Telegraph)
...Yeah, great security -- even a 1-year-old can start the car!

***********

CLEARLY, SOMEONE IS GOING TO LOSE FACE OVER THIS: "Face Transplants No
Longer Science Fiction"
-- Reuters headline

________________________________

A man went on a ski trip, and was knocked unconscious by the chair lift. He called his
insurance company from the hospital, but it refused to cover his injury.

"Why is the injury not covered?" he asked.

"You got hit in the head by a chair lift," the insurance rep said. "That makes you an idiot, and
we consider that a pre-existing condition."

____________________________

The Queen Mother was walking around in heaven when she saw Princess Di.

'Hello Di,' she said. 'Where'd you get the halo?'

Di gave her a dirty look and said, 'Are you taking the piss? This is the steering wheel!'"

_____________________________

DDL

Lady Di said, "This is absurd!
I'll show Charles just who has the last word!"
So to shake up the Brits,
She uncovered her tits
And flipped the Queen Mother the bird!

_____________________________

Happiness, noun. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

[Taken from Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary."]

***

"Health nuts are going to feel awfully stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing."
-Redd Foxx

***

"Just because someone agrees with you doesn't make you right. It just means there's some
one else out there as stupid as you."
-Nathan Reed

_____________________________

Rotten News... (true)

Underendowed man kills at members-only club

[Manila, January 31] - A 40-year-old Filipino man has been killed for laughing at his friend's
penis - and then refusing to display his - during a drunken competition to find the longest
member.
Joseph Pueblo, a police officer, said Eduardo Cristomar had been shot dead by Arnel Orbeta
in Antipolo City, 3km east of Manila, late on Wednesday.

Pueblo said the two men and their friends had been having a drinking party. The victim
challenged all to show their penises to determine who possessed the longest and widest
male member.

"A drunken Orbeta immediately unzipped his pants and showed his sex organ," he said.
"Cristomar laughed at Orbeta instead of showing his penis, infuriating the suspect."

Orbeta pulled out his gun and repeatedly shot the victim.

Pueblo said police were already hunting down Orbeta, who had fled after the incident.
[Sapa-DP ]

*********

Love that costs a leg or two
January 23 2003
By Stephen Cauchi
Science Reporter

A male member of the world's most sexually unequal animal species has finally been found
alive.

A senior curator at the Melbourne Museum, Mark Norman, has captured and photographed a
male blanket octopus.

Not only is the hapless male about 100 times smaller than the female of the species, but it
dies after having sex with her.

Dr Norman, who found a living one on the Great Barrier Reef, said that until now the two-
centimetre male had only been discovered dead in trawls and plankton nets.

His achievement in capturing and photographing a live one has been documented in a recent
paper for the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research.

According to the article, the male blanket octopus is, technically speaking, "the most extreme
example of sexual size-dimorphism in a non-microscopic animal . . . such dimorphism is not
seen in any other animal remotely as large".

In other words, as Dr Norman told The Age: "There's no other critters on that scale that have
such a significant difference between the male and the female."

The two-metre female weighs at least 10,000 times as much as the male, sometimes up to
40,000 times as much.

This could make the question of position rather delicate, but as it turns out it doesn't matter.

The male, it seems, relies on its arm as much as its penis to have sex.

This reproductive arm, known as a hectocotylus, is tucked away in a white spherical pouch
between its other arms. When males mate, the pouch ruptures, the penis injects sperm into
the tip of the arm, the arm is severed, and passed to the female.

It stays there until used to fertilise the female's eggs, which can be weeks later.

And while the human post-orgasm is sometimes referred to as "the little death", for the male
blanket octopus the term takes on literal meaning. The male dies, but the female carries on,
free to have sex with more males. In lieu of notches on the bed-post, she carries a collection
of male arms carrying sperm.

"It's kamikaze sex, effectively," said Dr Norman. "They've found females with up to six male
arms in the gill cavity."

But how did it get that way? Males compete with each other to fertilise the female, said Dr
Norman.

Being small allows the male to mature earlier, and allows for better self-protection using its
tentacle segments.

Both the male and female species are lodged with the collections at Museum Victoria.

*********

Doorstopper now worth $90m
By Michael McKenna in Los Angeles
December 18, 2002

WHEN 14-year-old Roy Spencer found a black stone in 1935 his father dismissed it as
worthless and used it as a doorstop on their back veranda of their Queensland home.

A decade later, when the Spencer family was finally convinced it was a valuable stone, they
sold it for pound stg. 6000 and bought a house.

Now the Black Star of Queensland - a black sapphire as big as a hen's egg - is on the market
for about $90 million.

"The offers have been pouring in from heads of state, business people and the wealthiest
foundations in the world," said gem curator Jack Armstrong.

"A-list actresses have been asking to wear it at the Oscars and to premieres. I am not
kidding, they see this as a once-in-a lifetime chance."

Nothing is known about the owner of the jewel, which has sat in a Beverly Hills vault for the
past 25 years, or the reason for the sudden decision to sell.

It went on public display yesterday for the first time since the mid-1970s.

And the gem dealers are in a tizz. "The sale of the Black Star sapphire is a huge event in the
gemstone market," Mr Armstrong said.

"To have a stone like this come on the market is tantamount to having a Raphael painting
suddenly emerge for sale. It happens maybe once, maybe twice, in a lifetime."

The Spencer family sold the stone in 1947 to Armenian-born jeweller Harry Kazanjian, who
travelled from Los Angeles to the central Queenland town of Anakie to pick up his prize.

The stone, which weighed more than 1100 carats, was cut and polished to reveal a brilliant
six-point star sapphire weighing 733 carats - dwarfing the fabled Star of India sapphire's 563
carats.

Mr Armstrong said he expected to sell the stone for much more than the $90 million asking
price.