Subject: Daily Dose - 040320 - hunters from Wisconsin, BIZARRE NEWS, first day of school, DDL, Rotten News

Two hunters from Wisconsin -- (true story)]

An amusing story just when you thought you had seen it all...

This is from a radio program, a true report of an incident in Wisconsin:

A guy buys a brand new Lincoln Navigator truck for $42,500 and has $560 monthly payments. He and a friend go duck hunting in winter, and of course all the lakes are frozen. These two guys go out on the lake with their guns, a dog, and of course the new Vehicle.

They drive out onto the lake ice and get ready. Now, they want to make some kind of a natural landing area for the ducks, something for the decoys to float on. In order to make a hole large enough to look like something a wandering duck would fly down and land on, it's going to take a little more effort than an ice hole drill.

So, out of the back of the new Navigator truck comes a stick of dynamite with a short, 40-second fuse. Now these two Rocket Scientists do take into consideration that they want to place the stick of dynamite on the ice at a location far from where they are standing (and the new Navigator truck), because they don't want to take the risk of slipping on the ice when they run from the burning fuse and possibly go up in smoke with the resulting blast.

They light the 40-second fuse and throw the dynamite. Remember a couple of paragraphs back when I mentioned the vehicle, the guns, and the dog??

Let's talk about the dog: A highly trained Black Lab used for RETRIEVING. Especially things thrown by the owner. You guessed it, the dog takes off at a high rate of doggy speed on the ice and captures the stick of dynamite with the burning 40-second fuse about the time it hits the ice. The two men yell, scream, wave their arms and wonder what to do now. The dog, cheered on, keeps coming. One of the guys grabs the shotgun and shoots the dog. The shotgun is loaded with #8 buckshot, hardly big enough to stop a Black Lab.

The dog stops for a moment, slightly confused, but continues on. Another shot and this time the dog, still standing, becomes really confused and of course terrified, thinking these two geniuses have gone insane. The dog takes off to find cover, under the brand new Navigator truck.

The men continue to yell as they run. The exhaust pipe under the truck is still hot, so the dog yelps and drops the dynamite under the truck, and takes off after his master. Then --BOOM-- the truck is blown to bits and sinks to the bottom of the lake in a very large hole, leaving the two idiots standing there with this "I can't believe this happened" look on their faces. The insurance company says that sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is NOT COVERED. He still had yet to make even the first of those $560.00 a month payments!!!

And you thought your day was not going well....

___________________________

BIZARRE NEWS.....

Bizarre Weather Cases

A 2ft-long alligator fell from the sky at Evansville, Indiana on May 21, 1911, landing on the front doorstep of Mrs. Hiram Winchell's home. When the animal tried to crawl inside, it was clubbed to death by Mrs. Winchell and neighbors armed with bed slats.

A deluge of dead birds tumbled from a clear sky on to the streets of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in November 1896. The only plausible explanation was that the birds, which included wild ducks, catbirds and woodpeckers, had been driven inland by a storm on the Florida coast and had been killed by a sudden temperature change over Baton Rouge.

Following weeks of drought, a storm broke one afternoon in August 1814 over Fremontiers, near Amiens in France. In the rain which accompanied the storm were dozens of tiny frogs which began to hop around on the ground. Live frogs also landed on Leicester, Massachusetts, in 1953, tumbling into gutters and on roofs.

On May 11, 1894, at the height of a hailstorm, a gopher turtle encased in ice fell on Bovina, eight miles east of Vicksburg, Mississippi. During the same storm, a small block of alabaster, also encased in ice, landed on Vicksburg itself.

A crop of peaches dropped on a building site at Shreveport, Louisiana on July 12, 1961. The workmen confirmed that the fruit was coming from the sky and not being thrown. Weathermen said that conditions that day were not conducive to the peaches having been carried by strong winds.

***

Causing Quite a Buzz

OLATHE, Kan. - To protest what he felt was a sting operation by prosecutors, a man came to court wearing a bumblebee costume.

Conrad J. Braun attended court on Friday donning the costume complete with yellow stripes, cloth wings and a foot-long stinger. The court session was to hear a judge rule whether a blackmail case filed against him last summer should go to trial.

District Judge John Anderson III did not find Braun's getup amusing and told him that even though there is not a rule prohibiting the wearing of such an outfit in court, he has a duty to uphold court decorum. Braun told the judge that he did not mean any contempt to the court and vowed never to do it again.

The blackmail charge alleges that Braun made a threat against his former wife's husband.

***

A Leap of Faith

BANGKOK, Thailand - A world record for a mass jump was created last weekend when 672 skydivers from 42 countries leaped from six aircraft over the capital. At least three of the divers were hurt upon landing.

The previous record was set in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, in 2000, when 588 jumpers took the plunge. A number of divers were blown off the landing zone by strong winds and reporters witnessed at least three jumpers taken to a hospital with injuries.

The divers jumped out of six C-130 military transport planes at 7,000 feet. Many ended up in trees and one landed on the roof of a university building.

The divers came from 42 nations and included 250 parachutists from the Thai armed forces. The Paris-based World Air Sports Federation, which tracks skydiving feats, has recognized this jump as a world record.

***

A Shocking Story

BERLIN - A suicidal 37-year-old man who was about to kill himself was stopped by German police who shot him with a Taser gun.

The shot from the gun incapacitated him with an electric shock and police had enough time to pull him to safety. The man had been holding a knife to his neck and threatening to jump out of a fifth-floor window in central Berlin when the police forces arrived.

The man was later treated for self-inflicted knife wounds and police did not know why he tried to kill himself. The Taser gun the officer used simultaneously fires two darts and sends a 50,000 volt current through a person's body.

Since acquiring them in 2001, police have used Tasers five times and saved a life more than once.

_____________________________

The little kid next door, a Dennis The Menace Type, came home from his first day of school last week and I over heard him say, "Mommy, the teacher was asking me today if I have any brothers and sisters who will also be coming to my school."

"That's nice of her to take such an interest in your family, Dear. What did she say when you told her that you are the only child?"

She just said, "Thank goodness!"

______________________________

DDL

There was a young lady of Brussels

Who was proud of her vagina muscles.

She could easily plex them

And so interflex them

As to whistle love songs through her bustles.

_______________________________

"I'm going to memorize your name and throw my head away."

--Oscar Levant

***

"Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it."

--Christopher Morley

***

"It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis."

--Margaret Bonnano

________________________________

Rotten News... (true)

Tuesday, 20 January, 2004, 06:41 GMT

Kids celebrate smoky saint's day

By Suzanne Bush

BBC, in Capena

Simone is nine years old. On Saturday, in between playing football, sitting down for a big family lunch and watching a spot of television, he spent the day smoking, like almost all his friends and the rest of the town.

Six-year-old Lorenzo has been a regular at the festival since age one He is seven years too young to buy the cigarettes himself, but that is okay.

"My parents bought me some" he explains.

Nearby one mother is encouraging Agostino, her two-year-old, to take his first puff, but he does not seem very convinced.

Welcome to Capena, a small medieval town to the north of Rome which the anti-smoking message does not appear to have reached yet.

Every year, like many towns and villages across Italy, they light a bonfire as part of the festival of St Anthony, which is also celebrated with the blessing of animals to bring prosperity in the year ahead.

But unlike other places, once the fire is burning in the square, the town's inhabitants use it to light cigarettes.

The Italian Government may have fallen into line with many other countries around the world this month, introducing a tough new law banning smoking in bars and restaurants, but that did not stop the people of Capena.

As in previous years, the most eager participants were children, some as young as six.

Even the official brochure about the town talks of how characteristic it is to see everyone, "even the children" smoking throughout the day.

It all began harmlessly enough in Capena, hundreds of years ago, with the smoking of rosemary.

*********

Tuesday, 20 January, 2004, 23:37 GMT

Russian army rescues kegs of beer

Russian troops have retrieved 10 tonnes of beer trapped under the Siberian ice after a week-long operation.

A lorry carrying the beer was lost while crossing the frozen River Irtysh, near the city of Omsk, about 2,200 kilometres (1400 miles) from Moscow. The driver managed to jump out after the ice gave way, but the lorry and its cargo sank.

Six divers, 10 men with electric saws and a tank pulled the beer kegs - but not the truck - to safety.

With temperatures reaching -27C, the rescue mission was fraught with problems. Russia's Tass news agency reported that the recovery team eventually managed to pull the vehicle through a hole in the ice. They retrieved the kegs of beer but the rope snapped and the truck slipped back under the water.

The Rosar brewery in Omsk said the freezing temperatures probably kept the quality of the beer from deteriorating and said it will still take the delivery.

It plans to sell the beer at a discount.

***********

Wed, Jan 21, 2004

Haggis, Born in The USA

By Trevor Datson

LONDON (Reuters) - A tiny Scottish firm has teamed up with a U.S. company to start the first industrial-scale production in America of Scotland's national dish -- haggis.

Stahly Quality Foods, which employs just four people in the industrial new town of Glenrothes, believes the joint venture with a Chicago-based food processor can move 300,000 tins of the offal-based delicacy in its first year.

The estimated 10 million Scots and people of Scottish descent that live in North America offer an appetizing market.

But founder Ken Stahly's first venture into the United States was crushed by an import ban following the British foot-and-mouth disease outbreak of 2001.

"We were constantly getting e-mails and calls asking 'How can we get haggis over here?', Stahly said, as the Scottish diaspora across the globe prepares to toast the national bard Robbie Burns with haggis and whisky on January 25.

The U.S. launch is proving expensive for the firm, .

"It's cost us a fortune so far -- the lawyers were charging us $290 an hour just to draft things like confidentiality agreements that will hopefully just sit in a drawer. But the potential is huge," Stahly said.

Haggis is prepared in a sheep's stomach and is steamed or baked and served hot, but can also be revived when cold with a dash of scotch. Stahly will initially be offering two varieties from the Chicago plant -- traditional and vegetarian.

The recipes, like the identity of the U.S. partner, are a closely guarded commercial secret, but most traditional haggis contains liver, heart, tripes, oatmeal, suet and spices.

It also traditionally contains "lights," or lungs.

But "mad cow disease," or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which can be transferred to humans as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), put a stop to that in commercial haggis production as lungs are deemed "high risk material."

All of the ingredients used in the Chicago plant will be sourced locally to avoid U.S. import restrictions on British meat products -- the irony being that BSE most recently recurred in the United States.

Marketing could, however, prove a challenge. A recent poll of 1,000 U.S. visitors to Scotland, by haggis makers Hall's of Broxburn, found that 33 percent believed a haggis was an animal hunted in the highlands.