Subject: Daily Dose - 080304 - melon, BIZARRE NEWS, tooth fairy, DDL, News from the British Tabloids, Rotten News

Recently, in Hungary a man went to the bank to ask for a loan. The bank manager said, "No way," and sent him on his way.

Irate, the customer returned an hour later with a pistol and a watermelon, and dragged the bank manager out at gunpoint into the lobby.

The manager later explained, "I asked him, 'Are you going to shoot me?' and he said, 'Not if you f*ck this melon!'"

The gunman then shot a hole in the melon, and with his trousers around his knees and a pistol at his head, the manager got to work on the fruit in front of his staff and a crowd of customers.

Ten minutes of managerial grunting later, daring clerks succeeded in overpowering and disarming the gunman.

"Actually," one of the clerks admitted, "we could have stopped him much earlier, but we'd never seen our manager enjoy himself so much."

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BIZARRE NEWS...

Topless beach hoax uncovered in Cornwall

TRURO, England - Cambridge graduate Jonty Haywood, from Truro, Britain, has been uncovered as the creator of Cornwall's faux topless beach, Porthemmet beach.

A Web site for the fictional beach calls it the largest in the county, as well as the only one in Britain "to allow topless sunbathing," The Sun reported Thursday. The joke is automatically picked up by locals since "emmet" is a derogatory word for tourist in Cornwall, but the site tells visitors that an emmet is someone who loves Cornwall and says if they tell residents they are emmets they will fit in fine.

The site also instructs tourists to pay no attention to locals who do not know where the beach is. It says: "There is a private joke in Cornwall where locals will pretend not to know where Porthemmet beach is. Don't be fooled."

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Lab technician allegedly bites 3-year-old

INDIANAPOLIS - A lab technician at an Indianapolis hospital was fired after allegedly biting a 3-year-old's shoulder while the boy was having blood drawn.

Faith Buntin said she noticed bite marks on her son's shoulder after they had been to St. Vincent Hospital last Friday, the Indianapolis Star reported. The boy was apparently bitten by a technician who was restraining him while blood was being drawn.

After Buntin returned to the hospital, where the boy was prescribed antibiotics, the newspaper said, officials opened an investigation and the technician was fired. Hospital spokesman Johnny Smith told the Star no charges were filed but that St. Vincent is "reviewing the capabilities" of the subcontractor that does blood work.

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Chimp loses bid for 'personhood' status

VIENNA - An Austrian provincial court appeal to declare a chimp named Matthew "Hiasl" Pan a person has been turned down. Haisl was imported into Austria 25 years ago for use in laboratory experiments but has been living in retirement recently at the Vienna Animal Sanctuary, Arkangel Magazine reported.

After the sanctuary declared bankruptcy recently, Haisl faced deportation. The appeal concerns an application made in February by Martin Balluch, president of an animal rights group, to be granted legal guardianship of Haisl but the chimp needed personhood status before being granted a legal guardian.

Balluch and his legal team said they will appeal to the Austrian High Court in Vienna.

"It is astounding how all the courts try to evade the question of personhood of a chimp as much as they can. After all, chimps share 99.5 percent of genes with us humans," Balluch told the magazine. "The question is: are chimps things without interests, or persons with interests."

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Man uses backhoe to steal ATM in Fla.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. - Police in Homestead, Fla., are looking for a thief who stole a backhoe and used it to haul away an ATM from a Bank of America.

The ATM, which was stolen Tuesday, was believed to contain about $100,000 cash, police said.

"I've seen some crazy stuff with ATMs and all, but I haven't seen this before," police Capt. Ed Bowe told the Miami Herald. Surveillance video from the bank caught a man in a four-door gold or tan Ford F-250 drive up to the ATM and four minutes later, a backhoe shows up, also with a man behind the wheel.

"(He) proceeds to use the backhoe to scoop up the ATM. And then the cameras go out," Bowe said. Police said the Ford driver and the backhoe driver could be the same person.

The backhoe, which was stolen from the South Dade Busway construction site, was found still running a few blocks away, but no suspects have been arrested.

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I was playing tooth fairy when my daughter, Carrie, suddenly woke up.

Seeing the money in my hand, she cried out, "Aha! I caught you!"

I froze and tried to think of an explanation for why I, instead of the 'tooth fairy', was putting the money under her pillow, but her next words let me off the hook completely. .

"You put that money back!" she said indignantly. "The tooth fairy left that for me!"

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DDL

Ladies and gentlemen, hobos and tramps,

Bug-eyed mosquitoes and bowlegged ants!

I'm about to tell you a story I've never heard before,

So pull up a chair and sit on the floor.

Admission is free, so pay at the door.

One fine day, in the middle of the night,

two, dead boys got up to fight.

Back to back, they faced each other,

drew their swords and shot each other.

A deaf policeman heard the noise,

and saved the lives of the two dead boys.

If you don't believe my lies are true,

ask the blind man, he saw it too!

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"Toyota is developing a car with a new device that will automatically stop the car if the driver has had too much to drink. The device is called oncoming traffic."

--Conan O'Brien

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"U.S. officials have now approved the first anti-obesity drug for dogs. I'm no veterinarian, but if your dog is over eating, try putting a little less food in the bowl. Do we really need to give him a pill? Is the dog taking your car keys and driving to McDonalds?"

--Jay Leno

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"How about this? On this very day in 1861, the first elevator was introduced here in New York City. First elevator ever in New York City, or, as we call them now, restrooms. And it took them ten more years to develop the 'ding.'"

--Dave Letterman

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News from the British Tabloids

Multi-millionaire dog receives death threats

A dog left £6million by her late owner has been moved to a safe house after receiving death threats.

Trouble, a small white Maltese, inherited her fortune from property and hotel billionaire Leona Helmsley. The dog came out significantly better in its owner's will than members of the Helmsley family - two of her grandchildren received nothing.

But the so-called Queen of Mean's multi-million dollar trust fund for Trouble may have backfired. The New York Post reports that Trouble's new guardians have received around two dozen death threats directed at the bitch.

John Codey, in charge of Trouble's trust fund, estimated it would cost more than £150,000 a year to look after the dog, including the cost of a rotating security team, medical care and grooming.

He told CBS television: "We received any number of threats to kidnap the dog, so that was a major problem for us after Leona passed away. "We've had problems keeping her identity confidential and we had to change her name even to take her on the aircraft. We called her Bauble instead of Trouble."

The dog used to live in a luxury 46th-floor flat on top of Helmsley Park Lane Hotel, in New York, eating food prepared by the hotel chefs.

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Scouse shelf-stacker becomes Chinese crooner

A supermarket shelf-stacker from Liverpool has become a famous singer in China after learning Cantonese.

Barry Cox, 30, is something of a star in the gambling haven of Macau where he is known as Gok Pak-wing. He sings Canto-pop, a style of love song which has teenage Asian girls swooning, and there is talk of a film being made about his unusual path to fame.

Mr Cox started learning Chinese at his local chip shop after asking the Chinese owners for a pie and language lessons. Luckily, the owner's nephew was looking for English lessons. The two helped each other out and became friends.

Gradually, Mr Cox became a common face in the Liverpool Chinese community's favourite bars and karaoke lounges, and entered a local singing competition at Chinese new year. He decided to try to make it as a singer in Hong Kong which initially proved a challenge but he was hired for a few performances, partly as an oddity, and started to make an impression.

Having achieved his big break in Macau, he has no regrets about his choice of career, saying that if he had stayed in England he would probably still be working in a supermarket.

''When you go back, you see all of your friends doing exactly the same as 10 years ago," he said. "I have got out of the rut. I do things and have done things that most people could only dream of doing."

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Riot police called to calm angry tourists

Riot police were called in China to calm tourists angry they were being shown too many shops and not enough culture.

More than 20 police armed with riot shields and batons were involved in a five-hour stand-off with 100 tourists in the gambling mecca of Macau. The last straw came at a windy beach where the tourists, from Hubei province, were not allowed to retrieve warm clothing from coaches.

The tourists had complained to their guides that they wanted to see more of the former Portuguese colony's historic sites. They said they were being pressured into buying goods.

A scuffle broke out at the beach when the tourists were not allowed to re-board their four locked coaches to get some warmer clothing. Police tried to push back the angry tourists with batons and detained at least four.

"Some tourists refused to let some of our colleagues go and attempted to use violence," one police officer told the South China Morning Post.

Tourism officials in Macau said the incident was a "one-off situation". Macau was last year reported to have overtaken Las Vegas as the world's top gambling destination. Last year, 22 million tourists visited.

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Photo News from the British Tabloids....

'Pigcasso' stuns art world

A pot-bellied pig that paints pictures has become a hit for his canvases of abstract expressionism.

Smithfield's proud owner Fran Martin, 54, sells them for £8 over the internet, reports The Sun..

Ten-year-old Smithfield, who holds the paintbrush in his mouth, has now become a celebrity across America. He trots out at charity events and has appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show.

Fran, from Virginia, said: "Smithfield is a very clever pig. He's done hundreds of paintings."

Scientists say pigs are colour blind but Fran reckons Smithfield can tell the difference.

She added: "He likes blue best. He definitely picks up the blue brush more frequently than any other."