Subject: Daily Dose - 080127 - terrible troubles, BIZARRE NEWS, Propaganda, DDL, News from the British Tabloids....

Patient: Oh, doctor, I have terrible troubles. I do hope that you can help me.

Psychiatrist: Now calm down. Just lie down on the couch and tell me all about your troubles.

Patient: Well, doctor, I have a duplex penthouse apartment in New York and a summer house on the beach at the Hampton. I drive a Rolls-Royce, and my wife drives a Jaguar. My two boys go to the best private school in the city. We belong to three very swanky clubs, and every year I manage to spend a month in Europe.

Psychiatrist: These things are very wonderful, but let’s get down to your basic problem.

Patient: I was just getting to it, doctor. You see, I only make $100 a week!

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BIZARRE NEWS...

Bizarre Things People Have Done -------------+  

[The following is from the British Sunday Express giving Gongs (medals) for dubious distinctions]

To John Bloor, who mistook a tube of superglue for his hemorrhoid cream and glued his buttocks together.

To Henry Smith, arrested moments after returning home with a stolen stereo. His error was having tattooed on his forehead in large capital letters the words "Henry Smith." His lawyer told the court: "My client is not a very bright young man."

To Michael Robinson, who rang police to deliver a bomb threat, but became so agitated about the mounting cost of the call that he began screaming "Call me back!" and left his phone number.

To Paul Monkton, who used as his getaway vehicle a van with his name and phone number painted in foot-high letters on the side.

To Julia Carson, who as her tearful family gathered 'round her coffin in a New York funeral parlor, sat bolt upright and asked what the hell was going on. Celebrations were short-lived, due to the fact that Mrs. Carson's daughter, Julie, immediately dropped dead from shock.

To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock -- and was killed instantly when it fell on him.

To the passengers on a jam-packed train from Margate to Victoria, who averted their eyes while John Henderson and Zoe D'Arcy engaged in oral sex and then moved on to intercourse... but complained when the pair lit up post-coital cigarettes in a nonsmoking compartment.

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Custodian claims pizza poisoning

FAIR LAWN, N.J. - A Fair Lawn, N.J., school custodian is suing the local board of education, claiming he was intentionally poisoned with hallucinogenic drugs at an office party.

Dominick Rao said he was often bullied during his tenure with the Fair Lawn Board of Education by coworkers and his supervisor because he has bilateral ocular albinism, a condition that causes his eyes to have no pigment, The Record of Bergan County, N.J., reported Monday.

Richard Mazawey, Rao's attorney, said his client was served pizza from a different box than his coworkers at an Aug. 19, 2005, party at Fair Lawn High School. Soon after, he went to the emergency room at Hackensack University Medical Center because he was feeling unusual and doctors determined "he had a controlled dangerous substance running through his bloodstream," Mazawey said.

"He said he felt like his body and system were melting from the inside out, like he was living in a kaleidoscope," Mazawey said.

Rao's suit is seeking back pay, front pay, lost benefits, compensatory damages for humiliation, mental anguish and other pain and suffering, punitive damages, attorney fees and court costs.

***

5,000-year-old gum found in Finland

HELSINKI, Finland - If you think chewing gum you've found stuck on the underside of tables was old, the gob of old gum found in Finland will blow you away. Derby University student Sarah Pickin, 23, found a hunk of birch bark tar believed to be 5,000 years old while on an archaeological dig on the western coast of Finland, Sky News reported Monday.

"It's generally believed that Neolithic people found that by chewing this stuff if they had gum infections it helped to treat the condition," Professor Trevor Brown said. "It's particularly significant because well-defined tooth imprints were found on the gum which Sarah discovered."

Pickin, who also found an amber ring and a slate arrow, said was was "very excited" to learn about the items she discovered. "I'm keen to work in this area in the future so the experience has stood me in good stead," she said.

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Pets at work OK in Taiwan

TAIPEI, Taiwan - It's not unusual for Taiwanese workers to bring their pets to work.

The 1111 Job Bank said it found 42 percent of the 900 people who responded to its online questionnaire said their bosses allowed them to bring their pets to work, the Taipei Times reported Tuesday. Some respondents reported, however, they are required to keep their animals locked up while on the job, while others said pets were allowed only on designated "pet days."

The job consulting company's survey found pets can help stimulate workplace conversations and ease job-related pressure. But others said they don't like the noise and smell of pets but put up with them to avoid hurting co-workers' feelings, the newspaper said.

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Space hotel stay runs about $4 million

LONDON - A British company is developing a vacation package costing nearly $4 million includes a three-night hotel stay in orbit around the Earth.

The Galactic Suite Hotel is expected to begin taking bookings next year for a vacation package that includes 18 weeks of astronaut training at a Caribbean island, The Sun reported Monday.

"This is the first package deal to space," said Galactic Suite director Xavier Claramunt. "It includes transport to the Caribbean island, the training required for journeys into orbit, the flight to the hotel and three nights in space."

Hotel guests will be outfitted with Velcro suits that will allow them to anchor themselves to the walls of their accommodations when they want a break from zero-gravity floating. Claramunt said designers have solved the problem of washing -- guests will enter spa rooms filled with bubbles of floating water -- but the kinks are still being worked out of some other necessary areas.

"How to accommodate the more intimate activities of the guests has not been easy. The toilet is still a challenge," he said.

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Seems the Soviet Department of Information Services (Ministry of Propaganda) was out in the field, taking "The Revolution" to the people explaining the fundamentals of Socialism to the populace to bolster its popularity. A member of the Department was out talking to a farmer in Siberia.

Official: "So you see, Comrade, dat it iz de way Marx explained: 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.' You understand?"

Farmer: (confused) "Nyet..."

Official: "OK. Iz like dis: Say a Comrade has two cows. Ve take one cow from him and give it to comrade that has no cow. Dat is de Revolution. You see?"

Farmer: "Da, Da! Iz good!"

Official: "And if a Comrade has two tractors, ve take one of his tractors and give to man who has no tractors. Da?"

Farmer: "Da! Da! Is WERY good!"

Official: "And if a comrade has two cheekens, ve give one cheeken to man who has no cheekens. Da?"

Farmer: "Nyet! Iz not good!"

Official: "Vhy?"

Farmer: "Because I have two cheekens."

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DDL

There was a young lady of Eccles

Whose belly was covered with freckles

But the boys didn't mind,

For she made a good grind,

And she did it for love, not for sheckels

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glorious insults

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination."

--Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

***

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."

--Billy Wilder

***

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."

--Groucho

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News from the British Tabloids....

Elephants on LSD: The ten silliest experiments of all time

The thirst for knowledge often inspires research with life-changing results. But it can also fuel experiments that range from the slightly silly to the downright disgusting.

Here the Daily Mail details what are being called the ten silliest experiments of all time.

Elephants on acid

Forty-five years ago, two psychiatrists administered history's largest dose of LSD to Tusko, a three-and-a-half ton elephant.

The 14-year-old male was given enough acid to make 3,000 people hallucinate, in a bizarre bid to find out whether it would trigger a temporary form of madness called musth, in which bull elephants become sexually aggressive.

Whatever the intentions of the University of Oklahoma researchers, the experiment backfired within seconds of the drug being injected into Tusko's rump on a hot August day in 1962. The horrified creature trumpeted round its pen in Oklahoma City's Lincoln Park Zoo for a few minutes, before keeling over and dying shortly afterwards.

Faced with a public outcry, researchers Louis Jolyon West and Chester M Pierce noted they had taken the LSD in the past without fatal consequences - and suggested the drug could be used to destroy herds in countries where they cause a problem.

The masked tickler

In 1933, Clarence Leuba, a professor of psychology in Ohio, used his wife and newborn son to try to find out why we laugh when we're tickled.

Leuba ordered that no one could laugh while tickling the child, or while being tickled within earshot of him. If the boy laughed when tickled, this would show his response was inbuilt, not something he learned from those around him. The household became a tickle-free zone, except during sessions in which Leuba tickled the boy while hiding his face behind a mask.

By the age of seven months, the boy was screaming with laughter when tickled.

Three years later, his younger sister reacted in a similar fashion, leading Leuba to conclude laughter is an innate response to being tickled.

Sleep learning

In the summer of 1942, Lawrence LeShan stood in the darkness of a cabin where a group of young boys lay sleeping.

All were chronic nailbiters and LeShan, a U.S. psychologist, tried to cure them by uttering the phrase: 'My fingernails taste terribly bitter' over and over as they slept. By the end of the summer, 40 per cent had kicked the habit, with LeShan's actual voice more effective than a recording.

Other researchers have questioned whether the youngsters were properly asleep during the night-time lectures.

The vomit-drinking doctor

Determined to prove that yellow fever was not contagious, trainee doctor Stubbins Ffirth set out to demonstrate that no matter how much he exposed himself to the disease, he would not catch it.

To this end, he poured 'fresh black vomit' from a patient into a cut on his arm.

When he failed to fall ill, he gradually upped the ante, pouring the stuffing into deeper cuts, dribbling it into his eyes, and even building a 'vomit sauna' filled with vomit vapour. He then drank the vomit, which gains its black colour from blood that has haemorrhaged in the stomach.

He finished by smearing himself with yellow fever-tainted blood, saliva, sweat and urine.

Healthy as ever, Ffirth, who lived in Philadelphia, declared his hypothesis proven in his 1804 thesis.

The Lazarus dogs

With the help of a series of fox terriers named Lazarus, researcher Robert E Cornish tried to hone a technique for raising the dead.

In the 1930s, the University of California biologist seesawed the canine corpses up and down to circulate the blood, while injecting a mixture of adrenaline and anti-coagulants. Some did stir back to life, and despite being brain damaged, they lived on for months.

In 1947, armed with a heart-lung machine made from items including a vacuum cleaner blower, he announced he was ready to experiment on a human. A death row prisoner volunteered, but Cornish was refused permission.

Turkey turn-ons

In an attempt to work out just what it takes to excite a male turkey, Pennsylvania State University researchers looked at how the birds reacted to a lifelike model of a female turkey.

Dismantling the model piece by piece did not put the males off, with even a head on a stick appearing attractive. In fact, the males preferred a head on a stick to a headless body, the 1960s experiments showed.

It is thought that the head fixation stems from the mechanics of turkey mating, with the female's head being all that the much larger male can see while straddling her.

The look of Eugh

To see whether emotions evoke characteristic facial expressions, psychologist Carney Landis drew lines on volunteers' faces with burnt cork to easily view the movement of their muscles.

He then observed the expressions as they smelled ammonia, listened to jazz, looked at porn and put their hands into a bucket of frogs. The climax of the 1924 University of Minnesota experiment involved decapitating a live rat.

Landis never did find a single characteristic facial expression associated with rat decapitation.

Eyes wide open

Some people can sleep through anything, as Edinburgh University researcher Ian Oswald proved in 1960.

Oswald taped open the eyes of three volunteers before exposing them to flashing lights, electric shocks and loud music.

Despite the abuse, all three dozed off within just 12 minutes, perhaps soothed by the monotony of the combination of light, noise and pain.

Terror in the skies

Trying to chart how people react when faced with death, the U.S. Army faked a plane crash.

A group of young soldiers was told their plane was about to make an emergency landing in the ocean - and they had to quickly fill out insurance forms. After they completed the forms, they were told the threat was over and the plane landed safely.

Not surprisingly, the fear of a crash landing led to them making more mistakes on the form than another group who filled out the same paperwork on the ground.

So disenchanted were the guinea pigs that one left a note on a sick bag, ensuring any move to repeat the 1960s experiment was ruined.

Two-headed dogs

In 1954 Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov unveiled a two-headed dog, created by grafting the head, shoulders and front legs of a puppy on to the neck of a mature German shepherd.

When one head wanted to eat, so did the other. When it was hot, both panted. When one yawned so, did the other.

But the older dog occasionally tried to shake the foreign head off its neck. The puppy retaliated by biting its larger companion on the ear.

Twenty such creatures were created. None lived longer than a month, but the work is seen as paving the way for human heart transplant surgery.

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Lord, forgive us when we cock things up

Leaders at a town hall apparently turned their backs on the Lord after their meeting was opened with a prayer in cockney rhyming slang.

They walked out after their guest, Pearly Queen Doreen Golding, recited the Lord's prayer with phrases such as 'forgive us when we cock things up' and a reference to God as 'our china plate in heaven'.

Cllr Peter Gardner, of Havering Council, said: 'There have been grumbles and disquiet about it.'

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Dog urinal answer to lamppost woes

A doggy urinal is being touted as the answer to prematurely corroded lampposts in Sweden.

It consists of a rubber cup attached to the post and a hose to pipe the urine into the gutter.

'The average lamp-post has a lifespan of 30 years but my invention could add a further 15 years,' said inventor Lennart Jarlebro, from Boras.

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Photo News from the British Tabloids....

City Battles Giant Blob

LEWISTON, Maine -- A large, mysterious blob has taken over a major sewer line in the city of Lewiston, leaving public works crews stumped as to how to budge it.

According to city officials, the stretch of 12-inch pipe on Main Street backed up on Jan. 13, and the city has been trying unsuccessfully to clear the line ever since. Deputy Public Services Director Kevin Gagne told News 8 the doughy, 90-foot mass is comprised of grease, flour and rags.

Gagne said the city has chosen to replace the 170-foot line at a cost of between $40,000 and $60,000. Work is expected to begin this week.