Subject: Daily Dose - 050604 - cheap suit, THIS is TRUE, parachute jump, DDL, Rotten News

This fellow was being sold a very cheap suit.

"But the left arm is a lot longer than the right arm," he complained.

"That's why the suit is such a bargain," the sales clerk explained. "Just cock your left shoulder up a little, like this, and tuck this left lapel under your chin a bit, like this."

"But the right leg is way too short," argued the customer.

"No problem," the sales clerk answered. "Just keep your right knee bent a little at all times, walk like this, and no one will notice. That's why this suit is only thirty dollars."

Finally, the fellow bought the suit, cocked his left shoulder into the air, tucked the suit's left lapel under his chin, bent his right knee, and limped out of the store toward his car.

Two doctors happened along and noticed him.

"Good heavens," the first doctor said to the second, "look at that poor crippled fellow."

"Yeah," answered the second doctor. "But doesn't that suit fit great?"

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THIS is TRUE....

THE TAXMAN COMETH: The Canada Revenue Agency announced a fine of C$16,232 (US$13,150) against Winnipeg, Man., bookkeeper Audrey Shuster after she was convicted of embezzling more than C$73,000 from her employer over a period of two years. At the time, she was on probation for taking C$129,000 from a local charity. She was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for the second theft, but the tax agency tacked on the fine because she failed to pay income tax on her ill-gotten gains. As long as the fine goes unpaid, interest and penalties will accumulate. "The Income Tax Act doesn't distinguish between illegal and legal activities," explained CRA spokeswoman Emilia Kotris. "It's all earned income." (Winnipeg Sun)
...Or, as the case may be, unearned income.

***

REFLECTION ON SOCIETY: Economist Kazuhide Uekusa, 44, of Tokyo, Japan, is a well-known commentator on Japanese television. He may be better known now, however, since he has been fined 500,000 yen (US$4,700) after being convicted of attempting to look up a teen girl's skirt with a mirror attached to his shoe. The judge in the case declined to impose a prison sentence recommended by prosecutors, but ordered that Uekusa forfeit the mirror. (Reuters)
..."Caution: Objects in mirror have a greater impact on your personal economics than they might appear."

***

PAGING RUBE GOLDBERG: Tim Brender was getting ready to move and "knew he needed to start getting things organized," said his wife, Lani. The Madison, Wisc., man went to the basement of his rented townhouse to start packing. He moved a table, which knocked over a can of spray paint, which landed on a hammer on the floor. The can was punctured, and it started to spray wildly, shooting paint into the water heater. The paint fumes were ignited by the pilot light, which ignited a cushion, which spread to stored gunpowder. The ensuing inferno destroyed everything in the home. "You couldn't set up this scenario to happen," Lani said. (Madison Capital Times)
...Fire investigators believed that, since the couple wasn't insured.

***

BU-GAWK! Uegene Safken says he let his chickens out of their coop outside of Collbran, Colo., and went into his house for a cup of coffee. When he came back, he found one of his birds drowned in a tub of water in the yard. He fished the young chicken out of the water and thought, "what the heck, I'll give it a shot," and gave it mouth-to-beak resuscitation. His girlfriend told him to give it up. "Leave the chicken alone; it's dead," Denise Safford says she told him. But, he said, "I wouldn't let that damn thing die." It worked: the chicken, he says, came back to life and is now fine. It wasn't so bad, he says. "I've kissed worse." (Grand Junction Sentinel)
...Let's just hope he doesn't mean Denise.

***

OH, NOW THAT SUCKS: "Vacuuming Man Shoots Himself"
-- St. Cloud (Minn.) Times headline

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I volunteered recently to perform a parachute jump for charity. On our first day of training, the instructor made an important point about preparing for landing at 300 feet.

"How do you know when you're at 300 feet?" asked one woman.

"A good question," replied the instructor. "At 300 feet you can recognize the faces of people on the ground."

The woman thought about this for awhile before saying, "What happens if there's no one there I know?"

______________________________

DDL

Few things to desire can so prod us,
As much as a plump Hindu goddess,
With eight clinging arms
And exuberant charms
That are never concealed in a bodice.

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"According to a report, there are some people who are not happy with the choice of the new pope. In fact, one of the cardinals today had a bumper sticker on their car that said 'Don't blame me. I voted for Cardinal Mahoney.'"
--Jay Leno

***  

"You know, it is so fashionable to take a shot at Jay Leno. Look, the fact is the man is out there every night with fresh material and he's charming.
--Stewie from The Family Guy

***  

"I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners."
--Jeff Stilson

***

Most men would respect a woman's mind more if it bounced gently as she walked.

***

Dreaming frees the soul, energizes the spirit and allows you to do things that would get your ass thrown in jail if you really tried them.

______________________________

Rotten News....  (true)

Frogs saved from blender

Friday, April 29, 2005 Posted: 8:56 AM EDT (1256 GMT)

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) -- Peruvian officials saved some 4,000 endangered frogs from being whizzed into popular drinks after they were found hidden in an abattoir.

"We were checking the fridges when out jumped a frog. It had escaped, they were in big crates," a spokesman for Lima city hall said on Thursday.

Frog cocktails are popular in the Andes because of their supposed aphrodisiac qualities. Shops in central Lima selling the drinks have tanks where customers can choose their frogs.

He said the Telmatobius frogs -- which had apparently been brought from the southern lakes in the high Andes -- were found on Wednesday stored in the abattoir.

They were taken to a colonial fountain in central Lima to splash around before being returned to their native lakes by ecological police.

"There were about 5,000 of them but 1,000 died because of the conditions and in transit," the spokesman said.

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7 men sue Florida City Denny's after being called 'bin Ladens'

By Chrystian Tejedor

Miami Bureau

Posted April 28 2005

Seven men of Middle Eastern descent have sued a Denny's restaurant in Florida City, claiming the restaurant refused to serve them.

Ehab Albarabi, Nabil Arafat, Usama El-A-Baidy, Esam Hessein, Mohammad Natour, Usama Mohamed and Ehab Mohamed, all of Boca Raton, filed the civil rights suit April 22 in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. They seek $4 million each from the owner and a former manager of the restaurant.

The suit alleges that last year the restaurant discriminated against the men and humiliated them.

"We certainly are very hurt by all of this," 31-year-old Ehab Mohamed said Wednesday. "We are in fear of being discriminated everywhere we go."

The men decided to stop for food at the Denny's in Florida City shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 11, 2004, attorney Alan Kauffman said.

According to the suit, the discrimination started when the waitress who took their drink orders took "an unusually long time" to bring their drinks and take their food order.

After waiting more than one hour, Albarabi asked manager Eduardo Ascano about the delay. According to the suit, Ascano called the men "Bin Ladens," referring to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

After waiting another 30 minutes, El-A-Baidy questioned the manager about the remark and delay.

According to the suit, Ascano said, "We don't serve Bin Laden's here ... You're not welcome here anymore."

Ascano's comments caught the men off-guard and prompted their departure, Natour said.

"We're a group of very responsible guys," said Natour, a 39-year-old Syrian native who owns a restaurant in Plantation. "We were very surprised when we heard the manager screaming as Bin Ladens."

Two officers from the Miami-Dade and Homestead police departments eating at the Denny's asked the seven men to leave the restaurant, and said they would arrest them if they didn't, the lawsuit said.

The officers, who could not be reached for comment, are not named in the suit.

Owner Alfonso Fernandez said in a statement Wednesday that the men's allegations are false.

"We are truly committed to treating all of our guests with respect, and we take every guest concern seriously," Fernandez wrote. "These allegations of discrimination were immediately and thoroughly investigated by an independent, outside agency that found no evidence whatsoever to support the guests' claims."

Fernandez did not identify the agency. However, an investigation by the Florida Commission on Human Rights said "reasonable cause does exist" to support the discrimination claim.

Denny's restaurants have long been the targets of discrimination lawsuits across the country. Denny's settled a 1994 lawsuit for $54.4 million that accused the chain of asking blacks to prepay for meals. Since then, it has faced at least six more discrimination lawsuits filed by African-Americans and Hispanics and has been investigated in at least two cases involving discrimination against people of Middle Eastern descent.

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Burglar With Conscience Returns

ENID, Okla. - There may be a burglar with a conscience in Garfield County.

A television, stereo, and VCR were stolen over the weekend from a house in the small town of Kremlin.

Undersheriff Jerry Niles said the woman who lives at the house called deputies Monday night to say that someone broke into her house again while she was away, returned the electronics gear, even restoring the wiring and repairing a door jamb damaged in the original break-in.

"It was spooky," Niles said.

He said it was the first time he has ever seen all of the property taken in a burglary returned like that. Deputies are still investigating the case.