Subject: Daily Dose - 040327 - worst wife, BIZARRE NEWS, little sister, DDL, Rotten News

A couple of old cowboys were sitting in a bar having a drink (or two or three), doing what most old cowboys do; complaining about the heat, the cows and their wives.

Every day they said pretty much the same thing.

And it always ended in a pissing contest over who had the worst wife.

Today though something was different.  There was a wise looking elderly Indian Chief sitting at the bar.  They decided to ask him to decide, who had the worst wife.

The first cowboy complained that his wife was always arguing with him. No matter what he said, she always said the opposite.  She didn't just say it either, she said it so loud that the neighbors complained.

The old Chief listened attentively and then said, "If your wife was Indian, we would name her Fire-Water."

He asked, "Why would you call her Fire-Water?"

The Indian Chief replied, "Every time she opens her mouth she breathes fire and your knees turn to water."

The second cowboy said "My wife is so bad that we haven't hadn't had physical relations in darn near twenty years."

The chief again listened attentively and pronounced his wife as "Sleeping-Dragon."

When he asked why, the chief replied, "If you try to touch her  while she is sleeping, she will become dragon and bite your head off."

They both had a good laugh over their wives new names. Then the  first cowboy asked, "Okay, them Indian names are pretty cool, but....  Who has the worst wife?"

The chief replied, "I do."

The second cowboy asked what the chiefs wife name was.

The chief replied something along the lines of "Whumpo Havo Noja"

Both looked very confused, and so the chief explained, "That's my wife's Indian name, it translates in English to "Three-Old-Horses."

More puzzled than ever before the first cowboy asked, "Yeah, but what does it (Three-Old-Horses) mean?

The chief sighed, took a sip of his beer and said, "Nag, Nag, Nag."

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BIZARRE NEWS...

Bizarre Festivals

Gotmaar Festival (India, September) - On the day after the September full moon, the 45,000 residents of Pandhura divide themselves into two groups and hurl rocks at each other until sunset when the fighting ends.  

Moose-Dropping Festival (Alaska, July) - The town of Talkeetna is host to an annual celebration of moose-droppings. Stalls sell jewelry and assorted knick-knacks made from moose-droppings. The highlight of the celebration is the moose-dropping-throwing competition, where competitors throw gold-painted moose-droppings into a target area.

Cheese-Rolling (U.K., May) - At 6 p.m. on Spring Bank Holiday Monday, local youths line up at the top of the hill alongside a 7 pound circular Double Gloucester cheese. When the cheese is released, the competitors hurtle down the hill in an attempt to catch it before it reaches the bottom.

Grandmother's Festival (Norway, July) - First held at Bodo in 1992, the festival sees grannies riding motorbikes, race-horses, skydiving and scuba-diving. The star of the inaugural event was 79-year-old Elida Anderson who became the world's oldest bungee jumper.

La Tomatina (Spain) - This festival dates back to 1944 when the fair at Bunol was ruined by hooligans hurling tomatoes at the procession. Now each year the town stages a 90-minute mass fight with 190,000 pounds of ripe tomatoes.

Running of the Sheep (U.S., September) - Reedpoint, Montana, stages a gentle alternative to Spain's famous Running of the Bulls. Each September hundreds of sheep charge down Main Street for six blocks. Contests are held for the ugliest sheep and prettiest ewe while shepherds assemble to recite poetry.

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A Gift You Can Rap

NEW YORK - Gail "Gee" Powell was tired of the same old thing for birthdays and other special occasions, so she started Rap-A-Gram, a unique New York message service.

For $129.99, the romantically inclined can choose from the romantic Krush-on-U-Gram, Luva-Gram and Erotica-Gram, the Washington Post reports. Those leaning toward the hip-hop can send the Pimp-A-Gram, the Thug-A-Gram (for women who crave thug love) and the Dis-A-Gram (for "those who's been hated on, disrespected, cheated on, lied to or just can't stand someone"). For the poetically inclined, there is the Spokenword-Gram option.

Powell, 26, came up with the idea less than a year ago, when her boyfriend celebrated a birthday. She founded Rap-A-Gram with three partners. They have a Web site, rapagram.com, but no real office space. Powell says they don't need any: "I've got a cell phone and the Web."

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Tunes to Help Toddlers Tinkle

LOS ANGELES - To help motivate toddlers to use the toilet, Chicago mom Vicki Esralew has created a new DVD of music videos entitled "I Gotta GO!" The DVD contains songs that are supposed to encourage toddlers to discard the diapers and go "potty" by themselves.

One of the tracks is a reggae-style tune called "Pull Down, Pull On" and has lyrics like "Bye bye diapers/ Hello fun/ I can potty by myself/ No help from no one." Another song, "I Have the Power," motivates with verses like "I didn't know if I'd ever be ready/ Then one day I said 'you know it's time to change my ways'/ The time seemed right/ I'd seen the light/ Now I'm ready for drier days."

The DVD/CD package arrives in U.S. stores this week.  

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Not a Very Practical Joke

MADRID - A robber's own stupidity has landed him in jail after he blew his cover by making a prank call to a television crime program about an unrelated murder case.

"Perhaps motivated by a desire to be in the spotlight, he had the arrogance to call a television program to give information about another man wanted by police ... but he got himself arrested instead," Madrid police said in a statement.

The 34-year-old man, wanted in six robbery investigations around Spain, aroused suspicion in police when they tried to get in touch with him to obtain more information and found he had changed mobile phones. They eventually caught up with the man, who had previously been arrested 44 times for robbery.

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Making No Bones About It

LONDON - The Museum of London is looking for an "ethically acceptable" way to dispose of some 17,000 archaeologically excavated human skeletons.

"Reburial of some of the skeletons is an option that I tend to favor," museum director Jack Lohman told the current issue of The Art Newspaper. "Another might be long-term storage in a church, cemetery, or mausoleum. Seventy percent of the skeletons came from Christian sites."

He pointed out, however, that reburial would probably mean the skeletons would never again be available for research at a future date when scientific techniques used in bio-archaeology have been improved. The museum's Center for Human Bio-Archaeology has recently been funded with a $650,000 grant from the Wellcome Trust, making detailed recording of the skeletons possible before final disposal is decided by the museum's directors, probably later this year, Lohman said. 

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A little girl says, "Daddy, I wish I had a little sister."

Trying to be funny, the daddy says, "Honey, you do have a sister. You just don't see her because when you are coming in the front door, she is always leaving through the back door."

The little girl thought about this and remarked, "You mean like my other Daddy does?"

_____________________________

DDL

There was a young man of Beaumaris
Whom nothing was known to embarrass:
Not even the sin
That you find in Berlin,
Or the wilder excesses of Paris.

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"The brewery that makes Pabst Blue Ribbon is up for sale. Several corporations might buy Pabst, or they just might ask their older brother to buy it for them."
--Conan O'Brien

***

"President Bush announced a major new plan for the United States to put a man on the moon. Which would be a really big story if it were 1962."
--Jay Leno

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"A good rule of thumb is if you've made it to thirty-five and your job still requires you to wear a name tag, you've made a serious vocational error."
--Dennis Miller

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Rotten News.....  (true)

Thu, Jan 15, 2004
Bookies offer heavy odds against Mars landing  
Thu Jan 15, 9:55 AM ET 

LONDON (Reuters) - If U.S. President George W. Bush is serious about sending a man to Mars, he can put his money where his mouth is and win a fortune.

Bookmakers William Hill said on Thursday they were offering 50/1 odds against a man walking on Mars by December 31, 2030. Bush announced plans on Wednesday to send humans back to the moon as early as 2015 and eventually to Mars.

The bookies are also sceptical that humans will soon return to the moon -- they are taking bets at 10/1 against anyone reaching the moon before December 31, 2015.

But the oddsmakers have underestimated space exploration before, to their cost.

In 1969, when Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon, Hill's paid out 10,000 pounds to punter David Threlfall, who had bet 10 pounds at odds of 1000/1 in the early 1960s that nobody would reach the moon before the end of the decade.

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Venezuela may let starving steal  
Thu Jan 15, 2:37 PM ET 

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Thou shalt not steal, say the Ten Commandments, but it might eventually no longer apply if you are starving in Venezuela.

The poor, oil-rich nation is considering decriminalizing the theft of food and medicine in cases where a thief is motivated by extreme hunger or need.

Supreme Court Judge Alejandro Angulo Fontiveros told Reuters on Wednesday that the so-called "famine theft" clause should be part of a broad penal code reform measure for humanitarian reasons.

"This is a guide for judges to avoid injustice," said Fontiveros, who is in charge of drafting the reforms. "They lock up for years a poor person who lives in atrocious misery and what they need is medicine."

Under Fontiveros' proposal to the Supreme Court, those who take food, medicine or inexpensive goods without using violence to ease hunger caused by prolonged, extreme poverty would not be punished.

To eventually become law, the proposal must pass through the Supreme Court and be approved by a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.

Critics say the initiative will fuel crime in a country mired in a recession and where police last year reported an average of 25 murders a day and thousands of robberies a month.

Supporters dismiss fears it will become a license to rob, saying the proposed law would apply only to nonviolent crimes.

Two thirds of Venezuela's 25 million people are poor and a third of those cannot afford their basic food needs despite the nation's huge oil wealth, according to government figures.

Private analysts dismiss state figures as too conservative.

The penal reform effort has sparked more controversy by also including possible decriminalization of abortion and allowing voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill.

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Wednesday, 14 January, 2004, 14:57 GMT 

Imam rapped for wife-beating book

A Muslim cleric who wrote a book that advised men how to beat up their wives without leaving incriminating marks has been sentenced by a Spanish court.

Mohamed Kamal Mustafa was given 15 months in jail, which he will not serve as Spanish law suspends sentences of under two years for first offences.

Mustafa's book, Women in Islam, sparked outrage among women's groups when it was published three years ago. In his defence, the imam said he was interpreting passages from the Koran.

A jury in Barcelona found Mustafa guilty of inciting violence against women, lawyer Jose Luis Bravo told reporters. He was also fined euros 2,160 ($2,735).

In his book, Mustafa wrote that in disciplining a disobedient wife: "The blows should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body."

Mustafa - imam at the mosque in the southern Spanish town of Fuengirola - said he was opposed to violence against women and had been simply interpreting the Koran.

The book incensed women's groups and, in July 2000, around 90 groups filed a lawsuit in a Barcelona court to have the book withdrawn. The book - some 3,000 copies of which had already been distributed - was removed from Islamic cultural centres around Spain.

The BBC's Katya Adler in Madrid says domestic violence is an issue of growing public concern in Spain, where until just over 25 years ago it was not considered a criminal offence.

Women's groups across the country were celebrating the sentence, she added.

Two groups representing Spanish Muslims came forward ahead of the trial distance themselves from the cleric's book, saying that the Koran and other sacred texts condemned violence against women.