Subject: Daily Dose - 070310 - Jewish Ventriloquist, BIZARRE NEWS, Diploma, DDL, Rotten News

Follow Up Flag: Follow up

Flag Status: Flagged

Jewish Ventriloquist

An Italian guy and a Jewish guy go out to dinner. They go to a very expensive restaurant and are there for a couple hours, talking and carrying on.

Finally, the waiter comes over and says, "Who should I give the check to?"

The Italian guy says, "Give it to me. I'll take care of everything."

"Fine," says the waiter.

The next day the headlines read, "Jewish Ventriloquist Strangled to Death."

______________________________

BIZARRE NEWS...

New York offers Free Condoms By Internet

NEW YORK - A new Internet system in New York allows businesses and other groups to request free condoms from the city if they distribute them for free. Any organization that wishes to give out condoms and lubricant can request up to 10,000 at a time from nyccondom.org, and there is no limit on the number of requests a group can make, the New York Sun reported Tuesday.

"Effectively, there's no limit," said Adam Karpati, New York's acting assistant commissioner for HIV prevention and control. "If they want more, we're happy to do it."

However, some have raised concern that the city will not be able to enforce the provision barring organizations from selling the condoms.

"The city has a hard enough time collecting water bills," City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. said. "I don't think there's going to be any follow-up to ensure that people aren't selling them. There's a finite amount of resources the city has. It's bad enough that we're spending them on giving out free condoms -- and I doubt they're going to spend any more to make sure people aren't taking advantage of the system."

***

Hurry to the Curry Museum

YOKOHAMA - The owner of a curry-themed museum in Yokohama, Japan, said the popular attraction will shut down at the end of March. An official from Matahari Co., which owns and operates the spicy attraction, said it would be shut down despite its profitability, Mainichi Daily News reported Tuesday.

"Even though it's profitable, it has already achieved its goal of spreading the culture of curry and vitalizing the local economy," the official said.

The official told the Daily News that the company may build a new recreation facility at the site of the museum. The curry museum has attracted 8.7 million visitors since it opened in January 2001.

***

Horse's Head Butt Restores Blind Man's Vision

After being blind for 64 years, all this horse owner and trainer needed was a swift smack to the face.

Don karkos, 82, lost his vision during combat in World War II when shrapnel from an explosion left him blind. Doctors had tried to restore his sight for years, and he was eventually told that nothing could be done.

It wasn't until 64 years later when the racehorse, My Buddy Chimo took action, did he see results.

"I was putting a collar around his chest, and he whacked me real hard with his head," said Mr Karkos. The horse's head butt hit him in directly the same spot as the shrapnel. "Being kicked is part of the job, but I've never been hit that hard. I was pretty shaken up, kind of dazed."

Later that night, Karkos began to get the vision back in my right eye. Since the head-butt he has been able to see about 15 ft, not perfect but miraculous improvement.

Dr Douglas Lozzaro, head of ophthalmology at Long Island College Hospital, stated the blow could have knocked a dislocated lens back into place.

***

Virgin Birth Imminent For Komodo Dragon

Chester, England, A giant Komodo dragon at Britain's largest zoo is expecting to hatch by Christmas eggs that apparently developed without male fertilization.

"Essentially, what we have here is an imminent virgin birth and, because the eggs were laid back in May, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmastime," curator Kevin Buyley of England's Chester Zoo said. "We will be on the lookout for shepherds, wise men and an unusually bright star in the sky over Chester Zoo."

Other lizard species can reproduce without a male, but this is believed to be the first time it has ever been reported in Komodo dragons, Sky News reported.

The upcoming hatching follows a similar "virgin birth" at London Zoo. The Chester immaculate conception was discovered after a giant lizard named Flora laid 11 eggs that contained embryos. Paternity tests showed Flora was both the fertile eggs' mother and father, a system of reproduction known as parthenogenesis.

The eggs' overall genetic makeup exactly reconstructs that of their mother, University of Liverpool researchers found.

______________________________

A grandmother was pushing her little grandchild around WalMart in a buggy. Each time she put something in the basket she would say, "And here's something for you, Diploma." or "This will make a cute little outfit for you, Diploma." and so on.

Eventually a bewildered shopper who'd heard all this finally asked, "Why do you keep calling your grandchild Diploma?"

The grandmother replied, "I sent my daughter to Virginia Tech and this is what she came home with!"

______________________________

DDL

There once was a doughty Norwegian,
Who enlivened the French Foreign Legion.
But his brothers-in-arms
Who succumbed to his charms,
All got clap in their hindermost region.

______________________________

What's the difference between baseball and politics?
In baseball you're out if you're caught stealing.

***

Committees are a group of the unfit appointed by the unwilling to do the unneccessary.
--Carl c. Byers

***

According to a new article in 'Cosmopolitan' magazine, they say the position you sleep in says a lot about you.

They say women who sleep on their sides are sensitive, women who sleep on their stomachs are competent, and women who sleep on their backs with their ankles behind their ears are very popular.

***

What did the redneck do with his his first 50-cent piece?

He married her.

***

"My wife is a bisexual."

"You don't say?"

"Yeah. She only wants to have sex twice a year."

***

A baby penguin walks into a bar and says to the bartender, "Have you seen my dad?"

The bartender says, "What does he look like?"

______________________________

Rotten News....  (true)

Kentucky fears loss of traditional critter dish By James B. Kelleher

Fri Dec 22, 2:01 PM ET

OWENSBORO, Kentucky, Dec 22 (Reuters Life!) - Kentucky, the untamed western frontier when the American colonies declared independence in 1776, is struggling to keep a taste of its past alive -- a stew traditionally made from roadkill and veggies.

Burgoo is a stew-like soup of meat and vegetables that the settlers who poured through the Cumberland Gap survived on as they tamed this region. It featured whatever meat -- squirrel, rabbit or possum -- the backwoodsmen bagged on any given day.

But Owensboro in the western part of the state is now one of the few places where burgoo is still served in restaurants, at church picnics and barbecue cook-offs, albeit in a slightly updated form.

In many ways, burgoo is similar to Brunswick stew, another one-pot, slow-cooked dish popular in the south.

But unlike Brunswick stew, which has been embraced by epicures, burgoo is just a generation removed from its roots as a roadkill-and-veggie ragout. Indeed, in the late 1990s, during the scare over mad cow disease, health officials warned Kentuckians to stop eating squirrel brains, which, like squirrel meat, remains a something of a delicacy here.

"It's basically a poor man's food," says Pat Bosley, whose family runs the Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn in Owensboro, which bottles burgoo and sells it by mail order.

In the run-up to the Kentucky Derby, burgoo -- now usually made with chicken and pork -- is as ubiquitous as mint juleps. But during the rest of the year, it's hard to find -- except in Owensboro.

Settled by Welsh sheep herders, the city of about 54,000 on the Ohio River is the burgoo capital of Kentucky, which means the burgoo capital of the world, and the stuff is a year-round fixture on the menus of places like the Moonlite, Old Hickory Pit Bar-B-Q and George's Bar-B-Q.

**********

Motorists switch satnav on and brain off

By Erik Kirschbaum

Fri Dec 22, 10:12 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - Motorists who seem to turn off their brain when switching on their car's satellite navigation system have had a number of spectacular crashes in the past year -- but occasionally they're right to blame the machine.

Drivers obeying directions given by a sultry satnav voice have crashed into rivers, construction sites and roadside toilets in Germany, and had similar accidents in Britain.

"It's hard to understand how these things can happen," said Maximilian Maurer, spokesman for the German motoring club ADAC.

"It's not as if people are driving in a tank with only a small slit to see out. You'd think they have their own eyes and brains engaged to make decisions and not rely on the satnav. I used to think satnavs were 'idiot-proof', but perhaps not."

In October a 53-year-old German, obeying his satnav's command "Turn right now!" jerked the wheel over and crashed into a roadside toilet hut 30 metres (yards) before the crossing he was meant to take, causing 2,000 euros (1,342 pounds) damage.

A few weeks earlier, an 80-year-old motorist also followed his satnav instead of common sense and ignored a "closed for construction" sign on a Hamburg motorway. He hit a pile of sand at high speed but was not hurt.

"I just thought the navigation system knew a shortcut," Volker Heinemann was quoted as telling a local newspaper. His car had to be towed away.

In southern England a 29-year-old woman survived unscathed after misreading her satnav and driving the wrong way on a motorway near Portsmouth at nearly 120 km (75 miles) per hour, according to a local newspaper.

When stopped after 22 km of dodging oncoming traffic, she told police she had only followed the satnav orders.

In early December, the American band "Viscount Oliver's Legendary Four Tops" missed their own sold-out concert in Cheltenham, southwest England, after following satnav directions to Chelmsford -- 220 km to the east.

An ambulance driver with a faulty satnav drove more than 600 km while transferring a patient from one hospital in Ilford east of London to another in Brentwood -- 13 km away. He was near Manchester before realising his error.

Experts say that as cars get smarter, some people seem to get dumber, and the problem increases as more vehicles are equipped with the devices. ADAC said one in three new cars in Germany has satnav, and retailers say they are among the top Christmas gifts in Germany this year.

Joachim Siedler, spokesman for market leader Blaupunkt, said it was absurd to blame the gadgets for human errors and noted motorists are clearly warned the devices are there to help, not to take decisions.

"If a traffic light is red it's obvious you have to stop even if the satnav says 'drive straight on'," he said. "People who drive into rivers and then blame their satnav are just too humiliated to accept blame themselves."

One German did drive his car into the Havel River near Berlin on a foggy Christmas Day. He said his satnav had made a ferry crossing look like a bridge.

ADAC spokesman Maurer said humans are ultimately responsible for the blunders but noted that satnavs are not infallible.

"I was on a motorway recently and my satnav said 'turn left now'," he said. "If I had done, I would have crashed into the guard rail. It was using an outdated, pre-motorway map."

**********

In this handout satellite photo taken by GeoEye IKONOS for Kentucky Fried Chicken, a 87,500 sq. ft. version of the new KFC icon, Colonel Harland Sanders, is photographed in the Nevada desert from space.

The company unveiled a new brand logo Tuesday that includes bolder colors and a more well-defined visage of the late Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, who will keep his classic black bow tie, glasses and goatee. (11/15/06 AP photo-GeoEye IKONOS)