Subject: Daily Dose - 080406 - Golf Questions, BIZARRE NEWS, music tests, DDL, News from the British Tabloids, Rotten News

Golf Questions

Kathy: I just don't understand the attraction golf holds for men.

Vickie: TELL me about it! I went golfing with John one time, and he told me I asked too many questions!

Kathy: Well, I'm sure you were just trying to understand the game. What questions did you ask?

Vickie: I thought I asked legitimate questions.. like, "Why did you hit the ball into that lake?"

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BIZARRE NEWS...

Bizarre Statements

1. "Let's get things straight. The police aren't here to create disorder. The police are here to preserve disorder."

-Mayor Richard J. Daley during 1968 Chicago riots

2. Ketchup is to "be counted as one of the two vegetables required as part of the school lunch program."

-U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1981

3. "Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life."

-Senator Orrin Hatch, 1988

4. "We do not have censorship. What we have is a limitation of what newspapers can report."

-South Africa Ministry of Information, 1988

5. Instead of lying to Congress, he said he was offering "a different version from the facts."

-Lt. Col. Oliver North, 1987

6. "When I sell liquor it's called bootlegging. When my customers serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality."

-Al Capone during Prohibition

7. "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win it, you're still a rat."

-Lily Tomlin

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Man sets record for bathing with snakes

DUBLIN, Texas - A man has set a world record in Dublin, Texas, by spending 45 minutes in a bathtub filled with 87 rattlesnakes.

Jackie Bibby, dubbed "The Texas Snake Man," shattered the record he previously set of 12 snakes, and a Guinness World Records official certified the feat as a world record, KWTX-TV, Waco, reported Tuesday.

Bibby said the snakes spent their time slithering under his arms, between his legs and anywhere else they could fit themselves, but none of them decided he was worth biting. The snake fan said he also plans to break his previous Guinness-certified record of holding 10 rattlesnakes by their tails in his mouth at one time by adding an 11th Tuesday.

"I do it for the attention," Bibby said of his motivations for performing the dangerous stunts. "I like being on television."

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Youngsters' names displayed in space

CALIFORNIA, Ky. - Students at a Kentucky school are part of a worldwide group of children whose digitized banners with their names are now 235 miles above their heads in space.

The banner carrying the names of 187 students at Sts. Peter and Paul School in California, Ky., and 550 other banners around the world, were chosen to fly aboard the shuttle Discovery's STS-120 mission to the International Space Station, The Cincinnati Post reported Monday.

The hand-made banners, which were digitized for their space trip, are part of the "Signatures in Space" program, sponsored by NASA and Lockheed Martin Corp. The program aims to increase young children's interest in science. Once the shuttle returns to Earth, the banners will be returned to the school along with a photograph of the seven-member shuttle crew.

"I think anybody you talk to in NASA, they'll say education is the top priority in the agency," said Kyle Herring, a spokesman for NASA in Houston. "For NASA to survive in the long term, you have to get youngsters interested because all of us aren't going to be here in 20, 30 years."

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Thousands in China are named Olympics

BEIJING - A Chinese Web site says nearly 3,600 people in the world's most populous nation share the name of Aoyun, which translates to Olympics in English. In addition, some 4,100 residents have names that translate to Beijing Olympic Games, The China Daily reported Monday.

The newspaper says a recent survey predicts there will be an increase next year in the number of people named Olympics as more Chinese couples try to give birth when opening ceremonies begin in Beijing on Aug. 8.

Repetition is a big problem facing parents in China when it comes to selecting names for their offspring, the newspaper says. Hoping to have their child stand out, one couple tried to name their baby "@," saying in Mandarin the symbol sounded like "love him."

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Son found alive after funeral

MANCHESTER, England - A British woman who had a funeral for a man she believed to be her son has discovered that her child is still alive.

Gina Partington identified a body as her son, Thomas Dennison, and had the corpse cremated, the Manchester Evening News reported Monday. However, the day after the cremation, police called her to say her son -- still living -- had been found by police in Nottingham.

"(Police) said a person man was in custody in Nottingham and asked me for three questions which only my son would know the answer to," Partington said. "They also showed me a picture of the man in Nottingham -- been taken two days earlier -- and it was my son. I then spoke to him on the phone and I kept asking him was the name of my mum to convince myself it was him. But I still couldn't believe it.

"He has mental health issues but despite this he was bailed by police and I don't know where he is again -- but he's alive," she told the Evening News.

Police said the resemblance between Dennison and the deceased man was uncanny, right down to distinguishing body markings, the newspaper report said. Police are attempting to contact the family of the deceased man.

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Maybe this is why they don't teach music in high school any more. Following are actual answers from students on music tests...

- The principal singer of nineteenth century opera was called pre-Madonna.

- Gregorian chant has no music, just singers singing the same lines.

- Sherbet composed the Unfinished Symphony.

- All female parts were sung by castrati. We don't know exactly what they sounded like because there are no known descendants.

- Young scholars have expressed their rapture for the Bronze Lullaby, the Taco Bell Cannon, Beethoven's Erotica, Tchaikovsky Cracknutter Suite, and Gershwin's Rap City in Blue.

- Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel; if they sing without music it is called Acapulco.

- A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.

- Contralto is a low sort of music that only ladies sing.

- Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the Hatfields and the McCoys.

- I know what a sextet is but I'd rather not say.

- Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic.

- Rock Monanoff was a famous post-romantic composer of piano concerti.

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DDL

A girl from Shanghai had a ball,

With the whole Eighth Army last fall.

She was screwed, with a smile,

Seven times every mile,

The full length of the Chinese Great Wall.

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"In sports The Florida Marlins have announced they will form an all-male, plus-size cheerleading squad. They will be called the Marlin Brandos."

-Conan O'Brien

***

"Another Democratic debate last night. This time in Ohio. The big winner? 'American Idol.'"

-Jay Leno

***

"Hillary Clinton is trailing Barack Obama. She's getting pretty desperate. People are saying she has a new personality every day of the campaign. For instance, today, she is Madam Lasonga, the mind reader at the carnival."

-David Letterman

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News from the British Tabloids

Woman jailed over late library books

A US woman ended up in jail for six days - for overdue library books.

Keely Givhan, of Beloit, Wisconsin, was pulled over by traffic police because her number plate lightbulb was out. When officers ran checks, they found an arrest warrant had been issued after she failed to appear in court over unreturned items from the city library.

Givhan, who had been in between homes at the time, said she never received the overdue notices from the library, reports the local Daily News. That meant she didn't see know anything about then three overdue item notices - or the court summons which led to a £165 fine.

"I got pulled over for not having a lightbulb over my back license plate," said Givhan, who is a mother and student. "When the officer pulled me over, I was taken straight to Rock County Jail."

At the time, neither she nor her family members had the money to pay her fine, so she remained in jail for six days.

Beloit Police Captain Bill Tyler said a municipal fine is a municipal fine. And library director Dan Zack said: "People can check out thousands of dollars of materials every year. All we ask is that they bring them back."

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Miser ordered to buy wife 124,000 roses

A miserly Iranian man has been ordered by a court to buy his neglected wife 124,000 red roses.

Iran's Etemad newspaper reports that the woman - known only by her first name, Hengameh - decided to claim her mahr, or dowry, after ten years of marriage as a way of punishing her husband's tight grip on the purse-strings.

"Shortly after marriage I realised that Shahin was very cheap. He even refused to pay for my coffee if we went to a cafe or restaurant," she said.

A long-stemmed rose in the Islamic Republic costs a little over £1 - and the order will cost him an estimated £134,000.

Under Iranian law mahr, offered by the man to the woman at the time of marriage, can be claimed at any time during married life or divorce proceedings. Most common offerings are gold coins or property, sometimes up to hundreds of thousands of pounds in value.

Iranian authorities have seized Hengameh's husband's apartment - worth around £32,500 - until he has bought her all 124,000 roses.

The husband denies the accusations of thriftiness, claiming that he can only afford five roses a day, he complained that it was "her billionaire friends who had put such ideas in her head."

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Policemen to learn ballet

Traffic policemen in a Romanian town have started taking ballet lessons to make them more graceful.

A total of 20 officers at Timisoara, in Timis county, have enrolled for classes with two professional dancers.

Dorel Cojan, head of community police in Timisoara, said: "We see this new concept as a way to make our agents look better on the streets. They can learn how to be agreeable and make the traffic more fluent at the same time. After all, it's all about grace."

Sorin Baltica, who worked for 27 years as a ballet dancer for the Romanian Opera in Timisoara, said: "I think this is a positive thing and I am glad I can help. Why shouldn't policemen be pleasant and well mannered when they pull drivers over? Instead of having robots guiding the traffic, we can have very graceful agents doing the same thing."

One of the police students, Ciprian Lascu, said: "I never imagined I would take ballet lessons but here I am. I think we need these lessons and hope we can learn very quickly how to move with elegance on the streets."

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Photo News from the British Tabloids....

Russian cave cult deserts lair

Several members of a Russian cult preparing for the imminent destruction of the planet have left their cave after it began to collapse around them.

Followers of Pyotr Kuznetsov, an engineer-turned-prophet who reportedly sleeps in a coffin, were persuaded to leave their man-made bunker after melting snow caused part of its roof to cave in.

Mr Kuznetsov's disciples, who styled themselves the True Russian Orthodox Church, secreted themselves underground in November after they were told that God would bring the world to an end in a hail of brimstone some time in May. But according to the Daily Telegraph officials in the Penza region of western Russia say that many had begun to have second thoughts as temperatures climbed above zero with the onset of Spring.

"The sect members realised their lives could have been in danger if they remained underground during the spring thaw," a regional spokesman said.

Police and Orthodox clergymen who tried to communicate with followers through a makeshift chimney were chased away with rifle shots last month. Sect members, who lived in fear of supermarkets and cannibals, also threatened to blow themselves up if police attempted to storm the cave.

"According to our estimates, in Spring 2008 the devil will be thrown into the fire," Kuznetsov said earlier this year.

Among the creeds of his faith was a belief that supermarket barcodes were satanic. He also forbade his followers from using money, watching television and listening to the radio.

Although 21 of his disciples have now left the cave, a determined core of 14 - including a two-year-old-girl - remain underground.