Subject: Daily Dose - 050201 - THE MARINES, THIS is TRUE, challenging hunt, DDL, Rotten News

THE MARINES

*Two things they teach Marines:

1. Keep your priorities in order

2. Know when to act without hesitation.

A college professor, an avowed atheist, was teaching his class. He shocked several of his students when he flatly stated he was going to prove there was no God.

Addressing the ceiling he shouted: "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you 15 minutes!"

The lecture room fell silent. You could have heard a pin fall. Ten minutes went by. Again he taunted God, saying, "Here I am, God. I'm still waiting."

His count-down got down to the last couple of minutes when a Marine - just released from active duty and newly registered in the class - walked up to the professor, hit him full force in the face, and sent him tumbling from his lofty platform. The professor was out cold!

The students were shocked and babbled in confusion. The young Marine took a seat in the front row and sat silent. The class fell silent.....waiting.

Eventually, the professor came to, shaken. He looked at the young Marine in the front row. When the professor regained his senses and could speak he asked: "What's the matter with you? Why did you do that?"

The young Marine answered, "God was busy. He sent me."

______________________

THIS is TRUE...

HANDS-ON EDUCATION: "We all call him Dr. Devon now," says Taru Mills of Oakland, Calif. Her son Devon, 5, helped her deliver his baby sister on the stairs of their apartment building when his mother couldn't make it to the hospital. "Devon's eyes were as big as his head, but he didn't panic at all," mom says. Was the boy scared? "Nope," he answered the reporter's question directly. Does he want to be a doctor? "Yep." And does the 5-year-old know where babies come from? "Yep," he said, finally adding some detail: "No storks." (Oakland Tribune)
...Well, that's more than most teens know.

***

RECESS IS CANCELED: At an assembly of 13-year-olds at St Matthew's High School in Moston, Manchester, England, a teacher told students an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. The stunned children were told they would be able to leave school early to say their "final farewells" to family members. "Unfortunately a small number of pupils took the story literally," says Headteacher Kevin Hogan -- the end-of-the-world threat was meant as a lesson for students to "live each day to the full." When it became apparent that some of the children were crying, "the head of year visited every year-9 class and again told students that the story was untrue and made every effort to ensure that those students who had been anxious were reassured." (Manchester Evening News)
...Right. Everyone knows doomsday would only come after finals.

***

ON THE WRONG TRACK: Patricia M. Frankhouser says she was walking along the railroad tracks in Pittsburgh, Penn., when a train passed by and clipped her, injuring her finger. Rather than curse her own stupidity, she sought out a lawyer; Harry F. Smail Jr. filed suit against Norfolk Southern Corp., charging that the railroad failed to put up warning signs to notify pedestrians "of the dangers of walking near train tracks and that the tracks were actively in use" which "negligently provided plaintiff with the belief she was safe in walking near the train tracks." The suit seeks unspecified damages in excess of $30,000. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
...And here all her friends thought she was untrainable.

***

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME: Michael Parks, 49, of Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, donated some clothing to Age Concern, a charity for the elderly. When he realized that one of the coats in the pile had 1,200 pounds (US$2,250) in a pocket, he asked for the cash to be returned. "They said they had taken legal advice and the money was considered a donation so they were keeping it." A spokeswoman for the charity says they "hope that this isolated incident doesn't deter members of the public from donating to their local Age Concern shop." (AFP)
...The sad part is, she's serious.

***

ONE DOWN, THOUSANDS TO GO: "Lawyer Going to Jail for Telling Witness to Lie"
-- Nashville Tennessean headline

__________________________

A woman answered her front door and found two little boys holding a list.

"Lady," one of them explained, "we're on a scavenger hunt, and we still need three grains of wheat, a pork-chop bone and a piece of used carbon paper to earn a dollar."

"Wow," the woman replied. "Who sent you on such a challenging hunt?"

"Our baby-sitter's boyfriend."

_______________________

DDL

A curious thing, the vagina,
Said the Doctor of cology (gyne),
It has lips that don't talk,
And goes 'squish' when you walk,
But I've never seen anything fina!

________________________

NORA CHARLES (Myrna Loy): "They say you were shot in the tabloids."
NICK CHARLES (William Powell): "They never got near my tabloids."
--THE THIN MAN, 1934

[Hey, this was racy stuff for 1934.]  

***  

OTIS B. DRIFTWOOD (Groucho Marx): "It's alright, that's in  every contract. That's what they call a sanity clause."

FIORELLO (Chico Marx): "You can't fool me! There ain't no  Sanity Claus."
--A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, 1935

***  

OSCAR MADISON (Walter Matthau): "I cannot stand little notes on my pillow! 'We are all out of cornflakes, F.U.' It took me three hours to figure out F.U. was Felix Unger."
--THE ODD COUPLE, 1968  

***

Liberal Arts

Why do most Liberal Arts students have a minor in communications?

So they can learn the proper way to say, 'Would you like fries with that?'

***

``What the hell would I want to go to a place like Mombasa? I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me..."
-- Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman, referencing a trip to Mombasa, Kenya for a meeting of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa, where he was due to push for the Toronto bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

________________________

Rotten News...  (true)

Fri, Jan 07, 2005

Census Lists Renamed Lake As 'Butthead'

LAKE STEVENS, Wash. - Someone in the Census Bureau may be watching a little too much MTV. Bevis Lake, a 5.7-acre body of water in a forested area about 25 miles northeast of Seattle, is now appearing in Bureau records with a different name: Butthead Lake.

Those two names — Bevis and Butthead — are almost identical to the 1990s MTV cartoon show "Beavis and Butt-head," which featured a pair of slacker teenagers who watch music videos and make bad jokes.

Someone at the Census Bureau must have gotten bored and made a joke out of naming the lake, said Ken Brown, a land surveyor with the state Department of Natural Resources.

"It's got to be," he said.

It's not unusual for small lakes in out-of-the-way places to have different names because of variations in county, state or other official records, but there are no such indications in this case, Brown said.

"That means someone is playing a joke, I think," Brown said.

*******

Fri, Jan 07, 2005

Parents Share Daughter's School Detention

PEARLAND, Texas - Susan and Steven Manis say it was their fault their daughter was late for school so they shared her punishment — spending an hour with her in detention.

The couple says their 13-year-old daughter, Jessica Dunkley, was being unfairly punished for being late six times in October and November when the family's van wouldn't start.

So when administrators insisted the Pearland Junior High School East seventh-grader would have to spend an hour in detention, they decided to go with her.

"We're more at fault than she is," said Susan Manis, who had appealed the administration's decision.

After the punishment was over, Jessica said it was "a little embarrassing" to have her mom and stepfather in detention with her. But, she said, "I'm proud of them for sticking up for what they believe in."

During the hour, the trio copied two pages from a school handbook about pillars of good citizenship.

The first one, Susan Manis pointed out, is "stand up for your convictions."

******

Thu, Jan 06, 2005

Toilet Brush Warning Wins Consumer Award

By DAVID N. GOODMAN, Associated Press Writer

DETROIT - The sign on the toilet brush says it best: "Do not use for personal hygiene."

That admonition was the winner of an anti-lawsuit group's contest for the wackiest consumer warning label of the year.

The sponsor, Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, says the goal is "to reveal how lawsuits, and concern about lawsuits, have created a need for common sense warnings on products."

The $500 first prize went to Ed Gyetvai, of Oldcastle, Ontario, who submitted the toilet-brush label. A $250 second prize went to Matt Johnson, of Naperville, Ill., for a label on a children's scooter that said, "This product moves when used."

A $100 third prize went to Ann Marie Taylor, of Camden, S.C., who submitted a warning from a digital thermometer that said, "Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally."

This year's contest coincides with a drive by President Bush and congressional Republicans to put caps and other limits on jury awards in liability cases.

"Warning labels are a sign of our lawsuit-plagued times," said group President Robert Dorigo Jones. "From the moment we raise our head in the morning off pillows that bear those famous Do Not Remove warnings, to when we drop back in bed at night, we are overwhelmed with warnings."

The leader of a group that opposes the campaign to limit lawsuits admits that while some warning labels may seem stupid, even dumb warnings can do good.

"There are many cases of warning labels saving lives," said Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy in New York. "It's much better to be very cautious ... than to be afraid of being made fun of by a tort reform group."

The Wacky Warning Label Contest is in its eighth year.