Subject: Daily Dose - 040317 - Top Country Songs, BIZARRE NEWS, heart transplant, DDL, Rotten News

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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Paddy was having coffee and croissants with butter and jam in a cafe when an English tourist, chewing gum, sat down next to him. Paddy politely ignored the Englishman who nevertheless started up a conversation.

The Englishman snapped his gum and said "Do you Irish people eat the whole bread?"

Paddy frowned, annoyed with being bothered during his breakfast, and replied "Of course".

The Englishman blew a huge bubble. "We don't. In England we only eat what’s inside. We collect the crusts in a container, recycle them, transform them into croissants and sell them to Ireland". The Englishman had a smirk on his face. Paddy listened in silence.

The Englishman persisted. "Do you eat jam with the bread?"

Sighing, Paddy replied "Of course."

Cracking his gum between his teeth, the Englishman said, "We don't. In England we eat fresh fruit for breakfast, then we put all the peels, seeds and leftovers in containers, recycle them, transform them into jam and sell it to Ireland."

Paddy then asked "Do you have sex in England?"

The Englishman smiled and said, "Why of course we do."

Paddy leaned closer to him and asked, "And what do you do with the condoms once you've used them?"

"We throw them away of course."

Now it was Paddy’s turn to smile. "We don't. In Ireland, we put them in a container, recycle them, melt them down into chewing gum and sell them to England. Why do you think it's called Wrigley's?!!

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BIZARRE NEWS....

Bizarre Sporting Failures

Wallace Williams ran in the 1979 Pan-American Games marathon, but was so slow that by the time he reached the stadium it was locked and everyone had left.

To fight the heat in the 1950 Tour de France, Abd-El Kader Zaag drank a bottle of wine and promptly fell off his bike. After sleeping it off by the side of the road, he got back on and rode off - in the wrong direction.

Russian athlete Ivanon Vyacheslav was so excited to win a medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics that he threw the medal high into the air in jubilation. Unfortunately it landed in Lake Wendouree where, despite a frantic search, it remains to this day.

Preparing for a bout at the 1992 New York Golden Gloves Championships, boxer Daniel Caruso psyched himself up by pounding his gloves into his face. In doing so, he broke his nose and was declared unfit to box.

After beating 1,000 rivals in a 500-mile race, Percy the racing pigeon flopped down exhausted in his Sheffield loft and was promptly eaten by a cat.

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So Cute It Ought Not to be a Crime

FORT LAUDERDALE - Although Mike Nahum's handsome features lost him a criminal case, he can rest easy in knowing he might be the only guy in the world with a court order declaring he is a "very attractive man."

Because he is so cute, Judge Susan Lebow threw out a criminal charge against a man charged with selling drugs to Nahum during an undercover sting at a gay nightclub. She ruled the defendant, Julio Blanco, was encouraged by the cop to commit a crime in hopes he would get sex in return.

Dismissing the case, Judge Lebow certified Nahum as cute. "I make that a finding. He's a very attractive man," she said.

Lebow wasn't the only one who noticed Nahum's macho good looks. "Let's just say that all of the women in court that day were paying a lot of attention to him," attorney Kevin Kulik said. "After he left the courtroom, they were all like, 'Wow.'"

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This New Record Was a Close Call

LAS VEGAS - Las Vegas comedian Mac King has set a new world record for the longest game of telephone with 614 participants at Harrah's Casino. Telephone is played by whispering the same message to the person next to you, and by the time the message gets back to the start, it's usually completely different than how it began.

King began the game by passing the message "Mac King is a comedy magic genius" to magician Penn Gillette, the person next to him in line. From there, it passed through 612 other people, and ended up as the garbled message, "Macaroni cantaloupe knows the future."

After the game, King surveyed the participants to find out some of the confused messages they passed along at various stages. They included "Mac King covers his nether regions"; "My king controls many regions"; and "My kid can know the future."

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How to Sell Yourself

LOS ANGELES - Students of the online New Canoe University, based in Sausalito, will now have the opportunity to learn how to sell their bodies and rack in the dough. "Body Bucks: How to Sell Your Body to Science While You're Still Alive," is the latest course offered by the university.

"By selling bodily fluids and participating in medical experiments, a human being can earn $20,000 or more per year," said course instructor Bob Heyman. "This is literally the only business out there where you can always carry your assets with you and they're renewable to boot."

The course gives students lessons in making money by legally selling their blood, sperm, eggs, hair and bone marrow, and by participating in paid medical trials and research.

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Just the Bare Necessities

JOHN O GROAT, Scotland - A former Royal Marine, dressed only in footwear and headgear, has managed to walk across Britain in the buff, braving cops and cold for nearly 1,000 miles.

Steve Gough, 44, of Eastleigh, Hampshire, set off from Cornwall in southwestern England June 16, headed for the northeastern coast of Scotland. By hiking naked he hoped to draw attention to what he considers Britain's "outdated" indecency laws.

Thursday he finally made it to John O' Groats on the Scottish coast, having spent 57 nights in a tent and 140 nights in various jails at a total cost to taxpayers of more than $90,000.

"My body is part of me and it is not shameful. It's who I am," said the former Royal Marine.

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A prostitute visited a colleague in the hospital just before she was about to have a heart transplant.

Concerned about her friend's welfare, the prostitute went up to the surgeon and said, "Doctor, I'm worried about my friend. What if her body rejects the organ?"

The doctor replied, "Well, she's 34 years old and is in extremely good health, apart from her heart. How long has she been in the business?"

The patient's friend replied, "She's been working since she was 18 years old, but what's that got to do with anything?"

"Well," said the doctor, "if she's been working for 16 years and hasn't rejected an organ, I don't think she's about to start now!"

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DDL

A man asked two beauties pernicious

To join him for dinner of fishes.

T'was an earthly delight

By a soft candlelight,

And then he did the dishes

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We haven't crossed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we stop saying 'It got lost' and say 'I lost it.'

--Sydney Harris

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"Dennis Kucinich is campaigning in Hawaii. President Bush says that he's not worried and is sticking to campaigning here in the states."

--Craig Kilborn

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"Honestly must be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy."

-George Carlin

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Rotten News... (true)

Monday, 26 January, 2004, 16:21 GMT

Mauritania's 'wife-fattening' farm

By Pascale Harter

BBC, Mauritania

Obesity is so revered among Mauritania's white Moor Arab population that the young girls are sometimes force-fed to obtain a weight the government has described as "life-threatening".

A generation ago, over a third of women in the country were force-fed as children - Mauritania is one of the few African countries where, on average, girls receive more food than boys.

Now only around one in 10 girls are treated this way. The treatment has its roots in fat being seen as a sign of wealth - if a girl was thin she was considered poor, and would not be respected. But in rural Mauritania you still see the rotund women that the country is famous for. They walk slowly, dainty hands on the end of dimpled arms, pinching multicoloured swathes of fabric together to keep the biting sand from their faces.

"I make them eat lots of dates, lots and lots of couscous and other fattening food," Fatematou, a voluminous woman in her sixties who runs a kind of "fat farm" in the northern desert town of Atar, told BBC World Service's The World Today programme.

Fatematou said that it was rare for a girl to refuse to eat, and that if they did, she was helped by the child's parents.

"They punish the girls and in the end the girls eat," she said.

Fatematou admitted that sometimes the girls cried at the treatment.

"Of course they cry - they scream," she said.

She argued that in the end the girls were grateful.

"When they are small they don't understand, but when they grow up they are fat and beautiful," she said. "They are proud and show off their good size to make men dribble. Don't you think that's good?"

Some men are also much less keen on having a fat wife - a reflection of changes in Mauritanian society.

"We're fed up of fat women here," said 19-year-old shop owner Yusuf. "Always fat women! Now we want thin women.

And while there still men who like their women big, Fatematou is on hand to fatten them up with her years of experience.

I asked her if she ever felt cruel, beating and force feeding children?

"No! It's not cruel to make girls fat!" she said. "Me, I've seen 10-year old girls give birth. I tell you, 10 years old! Once they are fat and beautiful they can serve their men well, once they are fat they can be married."

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Sunday 25th January 2004

Cash-strapped lesbian auctions her body to help pay for her university tuition fees

Student is selling her virginity on the internet for £10,000

By Holly Jarvis

A STUDENT is so hard up she has decided to make the ultimate sacrifice ...she is selling her virginity to the highest bidder on the internet.

So far more than 400 men, many of them sickos, have placed bids offering 18-year-old Rosie Reid up to £10,000 for sex.

The drastic action has left Rosie's parents sickened. Her doctor dad has told her she "is selling her soul". Her nurse mum is outraged.

And Rosie is even willing to sleep with a man despite it being abhorrent to her—she is a LESBIAN. But she would rather prostitute herself than see her studies suffer. She is currently forced to work long hours in poorly paid part-time jobs to pay her tuition fees.

"It seemed that my virginity was something really valuable yet at the same time something I could do without. With £10,000 in the bank I could work less. I could live comfortably until the end of my course and concentrate on my studies.

Rosie placed her ad on the popular eBay website earlier this month.

Her posting, which ran alongside ads for secondhand cars and unwanted furniture, read: "Eighteen-year-old university student looking to sell virginity. Never lost it due to lesbianism. Will bung in free massage if you are any good. Picture on request."

Within days of placing the ad, Rosie was bombarded with e-mails from around the world. eBay had nearly 7,000 hits on her ad over three days, almost ten a second.

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"All I know about the ceremony is what I saw on Monty Python."

--BILL GATES, Microsoft co-founder and the richest man in the world, on what he's expecting when QUEEN ELIZABETH gives him an honorary knighthood.

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ARCH ENEMY

By MEGAN LEHMANN

January 22, 2004 -- LAST February, Morgan Spurlock decided to become a gastronomical guinea pig.

His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald's and document the impact on his health.

Scores of cheeseburgers, hundreds of fries and dozens of chocolate shakes later, the formerly strapping 6-foot-2 New Yorker - who started out at a healthy 185 pounds - had packed on 25 pounds.

But his supersized shape was the least of his problems.

Within a few days of beginning his drive-through diet, Spurlock, 33, was vomiting out the window of his car, and doctors who examined him were shocked at how rapidly Spurlock's entire body deteriorated.

"It was really crazy - my body basically fell apart over the course of 30 days," Spurlock told The Post.

His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression.

Spurlock charted his journey from fit to flab in a tongue-in-cheek documentary, which he has taken to the Sundance Film Festival with the hopes of getting a distribution deal.

"Super Size Me" explores the obesity epidemic that plagues America today - a sort of "Bowling for Columbine" for fast food.

Spurlock, who says he ate at McDonald's only sporadically before his total immersion in the Mickey D's menu, says he even began craving fat and sugar fixes between meals.

"I got desperately ill," he says. "My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I've never had in my life.

"People from the food industry were saying, 'You can't link kids being fat to our food - our food is nutritious.' I said, 'How nutritious is it really? Let's find out."

Not surprisingly, Spurlock has steered clear of the Golden Arches since filming wrapped.

"I have not had McDonald's for seven months, but yesterday, during an interview, I had a bite of a Big Mac," he says. "I chewed it up, swallowed it and I said, 'You know what, I'm pretty much done after that bite.' "