Subject: Daily Dose - 040426 - 22 MPH, Hey Martha, bear warnings, DDL, Rotten News

Old Lady Driving on Highway Sitting on the side of the highway waiting to catch speeding drivers, a State Police Officer sees a car puttering along at 22 MPH. He thinks to himself, This driver is just as dangerous as a speeder!" So he turns on his lights and pulls the driver over.

Approaching the car, he notices that there are five old ladies -- two in the front seat and three in the back -- wide eyed and white as ghosts. The driver, obviously confused, says to him, Officer, I don't understand, I was doing exactly the speed limit! What seems to be the problem?"

"Ma'am," the officer replies, you weren't speeding, but you should know that driving slower than the speed limit can also be a danger to other drivers."

"Slower than the speed limit? No sir, I was doing the speed limit exactly... Twenty-two miles an hour!" the old woman says a bit proudly.

The State Police officer, trying to contain a chuckle explains to her that 22" was the route number, not the speed limit. A bit embarrassed, the woman grinned and thanked the officer for pointing out her error.

"But before I let you go, Ma'am, I have to ask... Is everyone in this car OK? These women seem awfully shaken and they haven't muttered a single peep this whole time," the officer asks.

"Oh, they'll be all right in a minute officer. We just got off Route 119."

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Hey Martha...  (Weird News)

March 29, 2004 

Thai leader sends daughter to McDonald's to learn the value of hard work

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - If Paetongtarn Shinawatra thought she could keep a low profile Monday on her first day working at McDonald's, her hopes were dashed when her father, Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, dropped by for a takeaway.

Thaksin, who became one of Thailand's richest men by investing in telecommunications, let the phalanx of reporters trailing him know that even in the family of a billionaire, the younger generation must learn the value of money and hard work.

"Thai kids, when they finish school, they don't know how to work," said Thaksin, as his giggly daughter stood by. Paetongtarn, 17, will be earning the equivalent of 80 cents Cdn per hour in her part-time job.

"I just want her to have the experience and to know about life, because she is the youngest child and when she was born her parents already had status," he said. "Money isn't the main issue. We want her to find experience."

Thaksin didn't say how long he expected his daughter to work at the fast-food restaurant.

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February 27, 2004 

Lost finds a new name

LONDON (AP) - Lost: several road signs and one village's identity.

Exasperated at having souvenir hunters steal their road sign, residents of Lost - population, less than two dozen - have changed the Scottish hamlet's name to Lost Farm.

At least five road signs have disappeared in recent years from the village. The longest any sign lasted was three months, and one vanished after a day, said Mark Skilling, principal engineer for Aberdeenshire Council.

"It's infuriating," he said Friday. "The hamlet is very popular because of its name."

Skilling said it costs around $240 Cdn to replace each sign. "Apart from making it, we have to take it to Lost, which is quite far away," he said. "We hope that the name change means in future the sign will last."

Lost, whose name comes from the Celtic word for "inn," is about 65 kilometres west of Aberdeen, in the Cairngorm mountains of northeast Scotland, near the village of Bellabeg, where the Water of Nochty feeds into the River Don.

Aside from the remote location, thousands of tourists have found Lost every summer since it was mentioned in guidebooks several years ago. During the rare periods when there has been a sign, visitors loved to pose for photographs with it.

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March 16, 2004 

Chinese vets give American-born panda crash course in reproduction: report

BEIJING (AP) - Chinese veterinarians have begun showing American-born panda Hua Mei sex-education videos featuring pandas mating to prepare her for "blind dates" with Chinese suitors, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.

The four-year-old animal, whose name means "China-America," arrived in China from San Diego in February. Now that her month of quarantine is complete, officials are hoping she will quickly mate with a panda at her new home, the Wolong Giant Panda Protection Research Centre in southwestern China.

"We hope she can get pregnant by the end of March. But first of all, she should have some sexual education," said Wei Rongping, assistant director of the research centre, quoted by Xinhua.

Because Hua Mei has been in captivity since she was born, she has not had the chance to observe the natural course of panda reproduction in the wild. So officials have shown her videos of mating pandas and taken her to see other pandas copulating, according to the report.

The report said that similar sex education courses given to other pandas in the centre had resulted in natural matings.

The offspring of all pandas loaned overseas are considered Chinese property and must be returned to China by age three. But Hua Mei's trip was delayed for more than a year by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and other complications.

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Vacationing in Alaska, I couldn't help but notice all the warnings about bears posted in campgrounds, visitors' centers and rest areas advising people not to feed the bears, how to avoid bears, what to do if a bear sees you, what to do if a bear attacks, and so on.

My favorite, however, was a hand-lettered sign on the door of a small gas station in a remote area.  It said: "Warning! If you are being chased by a bear, don't come in here!"

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DDL

Sally-Jo taught erotic correction.
She told her student to get an erection.
"Put your dick in my mouth.
Move it north, move it south -
Now, you're getting a sense of direction!"

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"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian."
--Dennis Wholey

***  

"There's always one of my uncles who watches a boxing match with me and says, "Sure. Ten million dollars. You know, for that kind of money, I'd fight him." As if someone is going to pay $200 a ticket to see a 57-year-old carpet salesman get hit in the face once and cry.
--Larry Miller

***  

"There's a store near my house with a sign that says, 'Unfinished Furniture'. I have to go in there. I'm looking for a nice three-legged table."
--George Carlin

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Rotten News...  (true)

No time to vote – I'm having sex!
By Darrell Giles
February 29, 2004

A WOMAN claimed she was having group sex with 30 men in Nimbin, NSW, and could not get to a polling booth in Queensland on time to vote.

That is the all-time best excuse, according to electoral commissioner Bob Longland.

Hundreds of people have already contacted the Electoral Commission of Queensland offering reasons for their no-show as 2.2 million others voted in the February 7 state poll.

"You could have walked across Moreton Bay for all the broken-down fishing boats," Mr Longland said.

The most common excuse was illness, closely followed by cars, boats and planes with kaput engines.

"We get all manner of excuses . . . most are genuine," he said.

Of the 200,000 letters that will be sent to non-voters in May, about 25,000 people end up paying the $37.50 fine because they do not have a legitimate reason.

"Some cop it sweet and say, 'You got me' – they send in a cheque straight away," he said.

Others are asked to elaborate.

"We don't accept it if they just say they were sick. It depends on the nature of the illness."

Some people had the ultimate excuse: they were dead.

"Very occasionally, and very embarrassingly, these letters slip through. We get some poor grieving relative saying dear old Charlie died and now you are pinging him for not voting."

Mr Longland said staff kept a close check on death notices filed with the Australian Electoral Commission.

He said there were very few serial non-voters, but that would be tested with the local government poll so close, on March 27.

Letters would go out once that election had been finalised.

Mr Longland said the ECQ collected more than $1 million from non-voters at each election and that went to Treasury.

"It would be nice if I was on a commission," he said.

Sunday Mail (SA)

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Homeless couple in graphic protest
March 3, 2004

A homeless couple protesting against a lack of housing in Stockholm placed a bed in the middle of a downtown square and had sex in front of numerous spectators, police said.

The demonstration took place on Monday, and was the culmination of a week-long campaign by a group of Swedish homeless people demanding adequate shelter from the winter chill.

"They had a sign saying 'Even homeless people want to have sex', and then they did," police spokeswoman Carolin Karlsson said. "They even had a dog at the foot of the bed."

For 90 minutes the couple had sex under the covers, before police, summoned by multiple calls from offended onlookers, broke up the party.

Many families with young children were especially offended, while a number of spectators took the opportunity to take pictures of the lovemaking with their mobile phone cameras, according to Swedish media at the scene.

Media also reported that the couple's fornication continued even after they had been taken into police custody in the back of a police van.

Police did not, according to Ms Karlsson, arrest the couple, but simply drove them to a social centre for urgent cases where they could spend the night - away from public scrutiny.

"They did commit a crime, causing a public disturbance, but we didn't see any reason to arrest them," she said.

AFP

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Suspect's torture - two years of Springsteen

01mar04

MADRID: A Spaniard recently released from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay denies being linked to al-Qaida and says he was confined to a small cell where the lights were always on and he was forced to listen to patriotic American music.

Hamed Abderrahman Ahmad was there two years but had little contact with other inmates.

"First I spent a month in a cell 2 metres by 2 metres that had a roof of sheet iron, with unbearable heat," he reportedly told the Cadena Ser radio network. "All day they blared patriotic American music. It was Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen. I remember we had to put wet towels on our heads to be able to bear the heat and not hear the music . . . Later they put us in even smaller cells."

Ahmad, from Spain's North Africa enclave Ceuta, was flown to Madrid two weeks ago. After a three-hour hearing on Thursday, he was ordered jailed without bail by National Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, who accuses him of alleged ties to al-Qaida.

Cadena Ser reported that a list of questions was slipped to Ahmad at Gregorio Maranon Hospital before he was sent by Judge Garzon to the high-security Soto del Real prison near Madrid.

Ahmad said he and a friend were studying in an Islamic school in Afghanistan when they were detained by the Americans.

"When September 11 happened, the religious teachers told us to leave, that the Americans and NATO would come," he said.

Asked why he left his home, where he worked as a construction labourer and apparently wanted to be a policeman, he said: "I wanted to learn the Koran at a madrasah."