Subject:                          Daily Dose - 040404 - 50TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, BIZARRE NEWS, evangelist, DDL, Rotten News

 

50TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

 

The old couple were planning to go on a second honeymoon for their 50th wedding anniversary. The old woman said, "We will go to all the same places that we did on our first honeymoon."

 

"Uh huh," said the old man.

 

"We will do all the things that we did on our first honeymoon," said the old woman.

 

"Uh huh," said the old man.

 

"And we will make love like we did on our first honeymoon," said the old woman.

 

"That's right," said the old man, "except this time I get to sit on the side of the bed and cry, 'It's too big, it's too big!'"

 

______________________________

 

BIZARRE NEWS....

 

Their Health Was At Stake

 

MAROTINUL DE SUS, Romania - A Romanian family convinced a late relative was a vampire dug up his body, pierced it with wooden stakes and removed his heart.

 

Gheorge Marinescu said he led the family's graveyard expedition to dig up his brother-in-law Petre Toma's grave to snuff out the vampire. Toma died last year at the age of 76. Marinescu said his wife, son and daughter-in-law were all sick because Toma drank their blood before he died.

 

"I decided to unbury him. I've seen these kinds of things before," Marinescu said. "We took his heart and he sighed when we stabbed him. We burned it, then dissolved the ash in water. The people who had fallen sick drank it."

 

Marinescu said his family got better immediately. For good measure, they pierced the body several times with wooden stakes.

 

Police were planning to exhume the body again to determine if desecration charges would be filed.

 

***

 

Going Ball-istic

 

CHICAGO - The infamous baseball that may have cost the Chicago Cubs its first trip to the World Series in 58 years was blown up Thursday night. All that remained of the ball was a heap of thread after it was exploded inside a clear protective case by a Hollywood special effects expert.

 

The stunt was shown live on television from inside a tent at Harry Caray's Restaurant. Loyal Cubs fans watched as the baseball many blame for the team's playoff failure was destroyed.

 

Some fans wore replicas of the thick, black-framed glasses worn by Caray, the famous Cubs' broadcaster. They held up a beer to toast the man, who died in 1998, and sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" just before the ball was demolished.

 

***

 

Toying With Emotions

 

Police in southern Texas are seeking a Barbie doll-wielding man who has been stalking a residential neighborhood, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.

 

Pasadena police say the man is masked as he knocks on doors while carrying a Barbie doll. The man, clad in black clothes, doesn't say anything but continues knocking while waving a Barbie doll.

 

One resident, Debbie Cryer, said that the man came to her house four times in the past week. "He waves the Barbie doll. He'll take the doll (in his hands) and hold it with its legs spread open. He takes the Barbie doll and he shakes it... It's the only part of him that moves. He stands directly straight and he'll just move the Barbie doll. And then he strokes the hair sometimes," she explained.

 

A neighbor told officers a man wearing a black mask waved a Barbie doll in front of her peephole early Friday. He fled over her backyard fence when she answered the door, police said.

 

_____________________________

 

A patient, while recovering in the hospital from a heart attack, met this over-zealous evangelist.

 

After listening politely for over a half-hour on how thankful he should be to have been spared, and how he should repent at once, he was asked if all of his sins had flashed before his eyes during the heart attack.

 

The patient responded, "Don't be ridiculous, the attack lasted only 6 hours!"

 

_____________________________

 

DDL

 

There is a certain young woman named Janet
Who's the sexiest dish on the planet
From her toe to her palm
She's a nuclear bomb
And no one, thank god, wants to ban it.

 

_____________________________

 

"Ferrets are horrible creatures. It's an elongated rat that's wearing a mink stoll or something like that. I think I wanna spearhead some anti-ferret legislation."
--Actor Ben Stiller, who was bitten on the chin by one of the creatures on the set of his new movie ALONG CAME POLLY.

 

***

 

"No sex scandals yet, but I am open to offers."
--Actor John Cusack, lamenting his tame private life.

 

***

 

"Fox has announced they've signed Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie for a second season of "The Simple Life". They're going to send them someplace else they'll be out of place besides a farm. Hey, how about a library?"
--Jay Leno

 

________________________________

 

Rotten News....  (true)

 

Congress Raises Executive Minimum Wage To $565.15/Hr

 

WASHINGTON, DC—Congress approved a bill to increase the executive minimum wage from $515.15 to $565.15 an hour, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) announced Monday. The move marks the first increase in the wage since 1997.
 
"This is good news for all Americans who work in the upper levels of commerce," DeLay said. "Almost a third of America's hard-working executives toil at corporations day after day, yet still live below the luxury line. It was about time we gave a boost to the American white-collar worker."

 

The wage was calculated to help executives meet the federal standard-of-easy-living mark of $1.1 million a year. DeLay said that, although his goal is to ultimately reach an executive minimum wage of $800 per hour, he was satisfied with what he characterized as a "stop-gap measure."

 

"Many of the thousands of Americans overseeing the nation's factories, restaurant chains, and retailers can't even afford a jet," DeLay said. "It's our long-term goal to ensure that no one who sees to it that others work hard for a living will have to go without the basic necessities of the good life."

 

Under the new law, the executive-minimum salary will increase to more than $1.175 million a year, plus mandatory overtime for executives who work more than seven minutes after 5 p.m., on holidays, outside of their home offices, or from a limousine or non-chartered private aircraft. A separate section of the bill includes concessions for second- and third-housing credits, as well as single-player health-spa coverage.

 

Top executives nationwide have repeatedly called for wage increases in recent years.

 

"Our lifestyles are expensive to maintain," Boeing senior vice-president of international relations Tom Pickering said. "The costs of even the most basic executive transportation, food, and clothing are staggering. Since 1993, the average cost of maintaining a household of six, including a butler, a cook, a maid, a driver, and a groundskeeper, has increased by 14 percent. All this, even after we work our fingers to the bone for hundreds of hours a year, painstakingly assembling our benefits packages. It shouldn't have to be this hard."

 

Some executives called for even more support, in the form of increased benefits and reimbursements.

 

"Well, it's a good start," said Abby Kohnstamm, IBM senior vice-president of marketing. "But I still don't get a transportation allowance for my company-owned limo. And no one has addressed the fact that almost 8 percent of my income disappears after taxes."

 

Nick Scheele, Ford president and chief operating officer, said he looks forward to February 2004, when the wage increase is slated to take effect.

 

"It's about peace of mind," Scheele said. "Executives like myself are sick of living quarterly statement to quarterly statement, forced to check our bank balances before every little real-estate purchase. We're not asking for the world, just the overseas vacations that we so desperately need."

 

The pay hike marks a rare instance of bipartisan cooperation in one of the most polarized congresses in U.S. history. In the U.S. Senate, only Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ) opposed the bill.

 

"This proves that politicians can work together when it involves the welfare of the citizens most responsible for keeping them in office," U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) said. "Those of us who hold higher office don't ever forget where we came from, and how we got where we are today. This wage hike is our way of giving something back to the American people who are most important."

 


(Ha! Fooled You! THis HAS to be a 'National Lampoon' or 'Onion' article....)

 

**********

 

Piercing record holder fears robbery of studs
Wed 12 November, 2003 23:27

 

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - The Brazilian woman with the most body piercings in the world -- 1,903 -- fears returning to her crime-ridden home country as she would attract so much attention she could be robbed.

 

"The last time I went to Brazil, I had to wear a face mask because since I have a lot of jewellery (pierced to the skin), I fear being robbed or attacked," Elaine Davidson told Reuters from Edinburgh in Britain where she lives.

 

Brazil has one of the highest crime rates in the world.

 

Davidson, who has been outside her home country for 10 years, won an entry in this year's Guinness World Records book after starting to pierce herself four years ago. In Edinburgh she runs a Brazilian restaurant.

 

She considers feeling pain a motivating factor in her life and says she also walks on beds of nails, fire and bits of glass.

 

"I like pain, I love pain," she said, explaining that she now wants to surpass exceed 2,000 body piercings.

 

Her genitalia is the body part where she has the largest number of piercings -- 500 in all, externally and internally.

 

"It hurts in the chest as well," she said. "I had to take some out because of the silicone, the doctor asked."

 


**********

 

Dilemma as rare birds devour rare fish
Thursday, November 13, 2003 Posted: 1422 GMT (10:22 PM HKT)

 

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- A protected species of bird is devouring rare fish in the German state of Bavaria and creating a dilemma for local officials who now want federal permission to kill birds that once appeared headed for extinction.

 

The population of cormorants -- black, long-beaked fishing specialists which can stay underwater for up to 30 seconds -- has ballooned to over 6,000 in the Alpine state.

 

And they are feeding on rare fish species such as grayling and pearl fish, which are unique to the region, German officials said.

 

"The problem is that a protected bird is eating protected fish," a spokesman for the Bavarian environment ministry said this week.

 

Eager to save the fish from extinction in the wild, Bavaria has asked the federal government for permission to reduce the bird population, for example by shooting them or taking their eggs. It is also seeking help from the European Union.

 

"As the birds migrate from other countries we need a European-wide ruling for it to be effective," said the environment ministry spokesman.

 

The cormorant population has been growing in Germany since the bird was put under European Union-wide protection in the early 1980s when it appeared headed for extinction.

 

"My fishery loses some 40 tons of fish a year to the cormorants," said Holmer Lex, 75, who owns a fishery on the Chiemsee. "We only produce 90 tons a year."

 

"The Chiemsee is the only lake in Germany that has pearl fish," Lex said. "They have died out in the lake, but we're trying to raise them now."

 

The regional government ordered the cormorant population in the Chiemsee to be cut in half last year, but rejected a request put forward by Lex and others to halve it again this year.

 

"Cutting the population of birds will help solve the problem over the medium term," Born said.