Subject: Daily Dose - 060523 - Hard day on the farm, THIS is TRUE, Leaf Assault, DDL, Rotten News

Hard day on the farm

At the end of the workday, one cowboy tells another, "That new bull nearly did me in today, partner."

"Oh yeah, what happened?"

"I was putting out the feed, when the sucker came charging at me like a locomotive from hell. He damn near got me!"

"So, how'd you get away?"

"Well the bull kept slipping. He slipped three times, and that gave me a chance to make it to the fence and jump over."

"Man, that's scary. If it'd been me, I would probably have crapped all over the place."

"I DID! What do you think the bull was slipping on?"

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THIS is TRUE...

MORON OF THE WEEK #614: Kimberly Du, 36, of Des Moines, Iowa, had racked up several traffic tickets. To get out of the fines, police now allege, Du faked her death, sending a falsified death certificate to the judge, who canceled an arrest warrant. But like most bad drivers, she kept getting tickets. A month after her supposed death, police stopped her for speeding and driving with a suspended license, and court investigators noticed the ruse. Du now faces two years in prison for forgery. (Des Moines Register)
...At least that will get her out from behind the wheel for awhile.

***

AW HAIL II: An Orange County, N.Y., sheriff deputy trying to pull over a motorist went in pursuit when the driver fled. The car went faster than the pursuing deputy was willing to in the icy conditions, and indeed the bad guy spun out and crashed, then fled on foot. After 90 minutes of searching through the snow, deputies noticed a taxi drive by, looking for his fare. "The cab seemed out of place," deputy Justin Butterfield said, so he flagged it down. Sure enough, the taxi was called by a man using a cell phone. The cab wasn't quite to the pickup location yet, so Butterfield jumped in the cab, ducked down, and told the driver to pick up the caller. Sure enough, the suspect flagged the cabbie down, and Butterfield got his man. (Middletown Times Herald-Record)
...And a way out of tracking the guy through the snow.

***

HOW DARE YOU!? Walter Soehnge and his wife, Deana, had run up their credit card a bit, so they decided to pay it down. The Scituate, R.I., couple paid $6,522 toward their JC Penney MasterCard balance. The check cleared, but the balance on their credit card account didn't go down. He called to ask why. Walter was told that the amount he sent in was larger than usual, which triggered a "threat alert" -- the retired Texas school teacher could be a terrorist, and the credit company said it was holding the money until Homeland Security could be notified and approve the money being applied to his account, which is legal, he was told, according to recent changes in the Bank Privacy Act. Lucky for the Soehnges, Homeland Security cleared the payment after a brief delay. (Providence Journal)
...Of course they were suspicious: terrorists always pay off their debts to large corporations before they commit suicide attacks, right?

***

BLUE STATE: Maryland State Sen. John A. Giannetti Jr. was at a restaurant's bar when James Rosapepe stopped in for dinner. Rosapepe is thinking about running against Giannetti in the next election. The two men didn't notice each other until Rosapepe started choking on a piece of chicken. "He was saying, 'I can't breathe. Help me, I can't breathe'," Giannetti said. He performed a Heimlich maneuver on Rosapepe, saving his life, before noticing it was his rival. Does the senator wish he hadn't saved Rosapepe's life, then? "No! My gosh, no," Giannetti said, in answer to the question. "There's a time for politics, and there's a time to do your duty as a citizen." (Gaithersburg Gazette)
...It takes a slimy reporter to ask such a question, and a stupid reporter to expect the answer might be "yes".

***

THE 12-INCH PEPPERONI STICK JUST WASN'T BELIEVABLE: "Man Caught with Groceries in Pants"
-- St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times headline

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Leaf Assault

A little old man was escorted into the witness box. After being sworn in, the lawyer asked him to explain what happened.

After a lengthy discussion of the events leading up to the incident, he finally got around to the meat of the case. "...and then she hit me with a maple leaf."

"Surely that couldn't have caused you any serious injury?" said the lawyer.

"Are you kidding?" exclaimed the old man. "It was the leaf from the center of our dining room table."

______________________________

DDL

A wanton young lady of Wimley
Reproached for not acting more primly
Answered "Heavens above!
I know sex isn't love,
But it's such an attractive facsimile."

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"The other week I went to see my doctor .... I was in the waiting room, and I decided to pass the time finishing a novel. But the other patients complained about the noise of the typewriter."
--Arthur Brown

***

"One thing vampire children are taught is, never run with a wooden stake."
--Jack Handey

***

"I was in the supermarket the other day, and I met a lady in the aisle where they keep the generic brands. Her name was 'Woman'."
--Steven Wright

***

"Here is a very odd story. A woman in Tennessee is now suing a local pharmacy after buying what she thought were birth control patches. They turned out to be nicotine patches. The good news, her new baby is now down to a half a pack a day."
--Jay Leno

***

"According to a new poll, only one in four Americans can name two of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. But more than half of Americans can name at least two of the characters on The Simpsons. Hey, if they ran the Constitution on TV eight times a day, we'd know it."
--Jimmy Kimmel

[Hey, didn't I already do this joke?]

***

"A new survey says that New Jersey is the most livable state in the U.S. The survey has a margin of error of 100 percent."
--Conan O'Brien

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Rotten News....  (true)

Vanilla smell extracted from cow dung

07.03.06 5.20am

Japanese researchers have succeeded in making the sweet smell of vanilla come out of cow dung.

A heating process allows cow faeces to produce vanillin, the main component of the vanilla-bean extract, said Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Centre.

It could be used in shampoo and candles but not food as "it would be difficult for people to accept [given disclosure of] origins of ingredients".

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Holy smoke! Chinese city turns cigarettes to medicine

Sat Mar 18, 11:53 PM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - A city in China, a country that's home to the world's most enthusiastic smokers, is crushing fake cigarettes to make medicine, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

The north-western city of Xian is using the counterfeit cigarettes to extract solanesol, a compound found in tobacco which is used to treat cardiovascular disease, it said.

"We used to incinerate the fake cigarettes, which is wasteful and causes air pollution," Xinhua quoted Zhou Yaqing, vice director of the provincial tobacco monopoly, as saying.

A kilo of solanesol is worth about $200, and 30 tons of tobacco leaf can produce up to 120 kilos, Xinhua added.

China is the world's largest cigarette producer, with a growing market of about 320 million. Chinese cigarettes are also among the cheapest in the world -- a packet can cost as little as 8 U.S. cents -- and smoking kills 1.2 million people a year in China, according to the World Health Organisation.

Fake cigarettes, made of poor quality tobacco and often topped up with wood chips, are commonly sold on Chinese streets.

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German hotel charges guests by the kilo

Fri Mar 17, 11:15 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - A hotel in northern Germany has started charging its guests by the kilo for an overnight stay.

In the town of Norden, close to the Dutch border, guests now have to step onto the scales before moving into their rooms and fork out half a euro (35 pence) per kilogram (2.2 lbs).

"I had many guests who were really huge and I told them to slim down," said Juergen Heckrodt, owner of the three-star establishment. "When they came back the year after and had lost a lot of weight they asked me what are you gonna do for me now?"

Heckrodt said he hoped his initiative would inspire Germans to become leaner and healthier.

"Healthy guests live longer and can come back more often."

Larger customers may be reassured that the hotel turns no one away who refuses to step on the scales and charges no guest more than 39 euros, the normal single room price.

Freedom isn't free....