Subject: Daily Dose - 060604 - pleasure, BIZARRE NEWS, blind man, DDL, Rotten News

A professor is lecturing his class on the possibility of finding joy through unusual activities.

"Even the most natural and common actions can provide an immense amount of pleasure," said the professor. "For example, a good bowel movement can be as enjoyable as making love."

A student replied, "Professor, either you don't know how to screw, or I don't know how to shit."

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BIZARRE NEWS...

Bizarre Tax Write-Offs

A client approached Manhattan CPA Marc Albaum about a very personal tax matter. "He had made some money being a sperm donor and wanted to know if he could take a depletion allowance," Albaum recalls. "I told him he really needed to be an oil well or something like that."

A client insisted on deducting the cost of his television and cable service, against his accountant's advice. "His reasoning was that he was a Spanish teacher at school, and the only reason he bought the TV and had the cable was for the Spanish channels so he could be able to teach his students better," Frank Howard, CPA and principal of Howard and Waltrip in Dallas, says.

Back when the Society of Louisiana CPAs manned a tax hot line, few inquiries stumped them. But Al Suffrin, SLCPA's communications and public relations director, recalls one that did: "We took a call from an ostrich farmer in St. Tammany Parish who called in to find out how to go about depreciating an ostrich," he says. Strange as it sounds, you can depreciate an ostrich or any other livestock, as long as it's used for breeding.

"I had a guy come in one time wanting to know if he could deduct the cost of his dog food. His reasoning was that his dog was security for his house, therefore the dog food became a security expense," Howard says.

A rookie tax accountant completed a  return for one of the firm's old and trusted clients and turned it in to his boss, says Mary Anne Petesch, a CPA with Hagen Kurth Perman and Co. of Seattle. There followed several loud whoops of laughter from the partner's office. It seems the client had accidentally lost his dentures when they fell in the toilet and had claimed them on his taxes as an act-of-God casualty loss.

[By Bankrate.com]

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Man Blows Anger Over Botched Surgery Out of Proportion

PHILADELPHIA - A Pennsylvania man who confessed to mailing a letter-bomb to a surgeon he claimed botched a penile enhancement operation has pleaded guilty to weapons charges.

Against his lawyer's wishes, Blake Steidler, 25, pleaded guilty in Philadelphia to using a weapon of mass destruction for sending a mail bomb to a Chicago doctor in February 2005.

Steidler had been "extremely unhappy with the results" of the $8,000 surgery in 2003, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams said in court filings. After mailing it in Ohio, Steidler panicked and called 911.

The package was retrieved and defused, the Lancaster (Pa.) New Era reported.

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Feds Try To Take Bite Out of Crime

TACOMA - Two men who were facing drug charges almost lost their gold-capped teeth after government lawyers ordered them removed.

"I've been doing this for over 30 years and I have never heard of anything like this," said Richard J. Troberman, a forfeiture specialist and past president of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The defendants, Flenard T. Neal Jr. and Donald Jamar Lewis, were told the government had a warrant to seize the teeth, known as "grills." On the way to the dentist, the men called their lawyers, who were able to put a stop to the seizure.

Apparently, the feds thought the teeth could be snapped off like an orthodontic retainer. Once they found out the grills had been permanently bonded to the teeth, they abandoned the seizure attempt.

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Baby Shower Turns Into Blood Bath

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - Two men and a woman in Springfield, Mass., face charges after a weekend baby shower turned into a brawl that ended with a man shot in the stomach.

Springfield police spokesman Sgt. John Delaney said as well as the shooting on Saturday, several people were struck with a large stick, including a 22-year-old woman who was the guest of honor and is seven months pregnant.

The fight stemmed from a heated argument between the victim and another person which escalated. A man and woman were charged at the scene and entered pleas of innocent this week, the Springfield Republican reported. The third man was not apprehended until Wednesday morning by city, state and U.S. marshals.

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One day, there was a blind man sitting on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet and a sign that read: "I am blind, please help."

A man was walking by and stopped to observe. He saw that the blind man had only a few coins in his hat. He dropped in some money and, without asking for permission, took the sign and rewrote it.

He returned the sign to the blind man and left. That afternoon the man returned to the blind man and noticed that his hat was full of bills and coins.

The blind man recognized his footsteps and asked if it was he who had rewritten his sign and wanted to know what he had written on it.

The man responded: "Nothing that was not true. I just wrote the message a little differently." He smiled and went on his way.

The new sign read: "Today is Spring and I cannot see it."

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DDL

There was a young fellow named Willy
Who acted remarkably silly:
At the big UN ball
Dressed in nothing at all
He claimed that his costume was Chile.

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"65% of people say that cheating on your income tax is worse than cheating on your spouse. The other 35% were women."
--Jay Leno

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"Yesterday the IRS announced that obese Americans are entitled to certain tax breaks. Apparently, under the new rules, you're allowed to claim up two or more chins as dependents."
-Conan O'Brien

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Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

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"[The tax code] is a monstrosity and there's only one thing to do with it. Scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize the American people."
--Steve Forbes

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"Women claim that what they look for in a man in a sense of humor, but I don't believe it. Who do you want removing your bra...George Clooney or the Three Stooges?"

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"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is."
-- Sir Francis Bacon

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Rotten News....  (true)

April 21, 2006 

Hair-raising: $16,000 spent on Cherie Blair's 'do during British election

By BETH GARDINER

LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party spent some $16,000 Cdn on hairstyling bills for his wife, Cherie, during last year's month-long general election campaign, a newspaper reported Friday.

The party would not comment directly on the report's accuracy, but suggested there was nothing wrong with such expenditures.

"So what?" a Labour spokeswoman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with party policy.

"Mrs. Blair worked fantastically hard during the election. . . . She is enormously popular with the party and, don't forget, we won the election."

The Times said the party had listed the styling bills as an election expense - 275 pounds or about $560 a day for almost month of campaigning - in its mandatory declaration to the Electoral Commission.

Cherie Blair, who uses the surname Booth in her professional life as a lawyer, has long had her hair done by Andre Suard, a stylist at the upscale Michaeljohn salon.

Tony Blair's official spokesman said the prime minister's wife paid for Suard herself whenever she brought him on official government trips. He said party events that occurred during a campaign were a separate matter.

Because Britain does not have an official role equivalent to that of the United States' first lady, prime ministers' spouses have to shoulder many costs associated with their position in the public eye.

Christopher Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to Washington, recalled in his recent memoir that the Blairs held up their Concorde's departure from Andrews Air Force base near Washington, B.C., after a visit to Camp David in Maryland because her hairstylist had been left behind.

"A helicopter brought him posthaste to Andrews as the rest of us kicked our heels," Meyer wrote.

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Solar eclipse no cause for rioting, Nigerians told

Thu Mar 9, 4:22 PM ET

ABUJA (Reuters) - The Nigerian government, anxious to avoid a repeat of riots that marked the last solar eclipse, warned citizens they may suffer "psychological discomfort" during a new eclipse this month but urged them not to panic.

Information Minister Frank Nweke said a 2001 eclipse caused riots in northern Borno state because people did not know why it happened.

"Some people even felt some evil people in their communities were responsible for the eclipse," he said in a statement on Thursday to reassure Nigerians ahead of a solar eclipse that is expected to darken parts of the country on March 29.

"I know it is natural for people to be frightened and react terribly to unusual incidents but I urge Nigerians and foreigners resident in Nigeria not to panic over the expected eclipse.

"The eclipse is not expected to have any real damaging effect - only social and psychological discomforts are envisaged."

Nweke did not elaborate on what these discomforts might be, but he said security agencies would be placed on alert to help the public respond.

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Erection keeps burglar out of jail

A German burglar has escaped a prison sentence - because he suffers from a permanent erection.

Maurice Baumann, 32, was sentenced to a year's jail for burgling homes in the British army garrison town of Bielefeld. But he escaped prison after entering hospital as an "emergency case" for his unrelenting priapism.

After a week's treatment, doctors admitted they were only able to get his manhood down to "half-mast".

Baumann told a court in Bielefeld: "I woke up one morning with a hard-on. I didn't think anything of it - that happens to men a lot. But mine never went down."

A medical report revealed that doctors stuck needles in his manhood for 90 minutes in an attempt to reduce its size. But five minutes later it was erect again.

They also injected medication into it but that didn't help either.

A court ruled that he could stay out of jail while his problem persisted but the chief prosecutor of Bielefeld is not happy.

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But I love that machine.....