Subject: Daily Dose - 080427 -
conversation with Jesus, BIZARRE NEWS, weaker sex, DDL, Rotten News
Many times when I am troubled or confused, I find comfort in sitting in my back yard and having a vodka and cranberry along with a quiet conversation with Jesus. This happened to me again after a particularly difficult day.
I said "Jesus, why do I work so hard?"
And I heard the reply: "Men find many ways to demonstrate the love they have for their family. You work hard to have a peaceful, beautiful place for your friends and family to gather."
I said: "I thought that, money was the root of all evil."
And the reply was: "No, the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. Money is a tool; it can be used for good or bad."
I was starting to feel better, but I still had that one burning question, so I asked it. "Jesus," I said, "What is the meaning of life? Why am I here?"
He replied: "That is a question many men ask. The answer is in your heart and is different for everyone ... I would love to chat with you some more, Senor, but for now, I have to finish your lawn."
(Thanks Jim...)
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BIZARRE NEWS...
Bizarre Music Facts
Melba toast is named after Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931).
Elvis' favorite collectibles were official badges. He collected police badges in almost every city he performed in.
Duran Duran took their name from a mad scientists in the movie Barbarella.
The world's largest disco was held at the Buffalo Convention Centre, New York, 1979. 13,000 danced a place into the Guinness Book of World Records.
In August 1983, Peter Stewart of Birmingham, UK set a world record by disco dancing for 408 hours.
The Beatles song "Martha My Dear" was written by Paul McCartney about his sheepdog Martha.
The harmonica is the world's best-selling music instrument.
Themes from movies Unforgiven, A Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County, Absolute Power and Million Dollar Baby were all written by Clint Eastwood.
The only guy without a beard in ZZTOP surname (last name) is Beard.
The Carpenters signature song, We've Only Just Begun, was originally part of a television commercial for a California bank.
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Snake may have caused motorcycle crash
NEW ORLEANS - A New Orleans motorcyclist was seriously injured in a crash that apparently occurred when he became distracted by a rattlesnake he was transporting. Investigators say the dead snake was tied to the back of the bike and may have been slipping off.
The biker struck a curb and became airborne, landing in the street, The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.
Matt Rutan, a truck driver who was the only witness to the crash Wednesday afternoon, said that as the cyclist passed him he observed what appeared to be a piece of rope dragging behind. The rope later turned out to be a 5-foot canebrake rattlesnake with its fangs and rattles removed. Rutan said that he saw the motorcyclist "lift up a little and twist around in his seat like he was attending to something on the back of his bike."
Police said that the cyclist was hospitalized in "very critical condition."
"It was one of the strangest accidents I've responded to in my 37 years on the New Orleans Police Department," said Lt. Melvin Howard, assistant commander of the Traffic Division.
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Statue mistaken for suicide
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - A Sigmund Freud statue hanging from the side of a Grand Rapids, Mich., building led confused emergency workers to believe a man was preparing for suicide.
Czech sculptor David Cerny's "Man Hanging Out," a life-size sculpture of Freud meant to be bolted to high spots on buildings, was fastened to the seventh floor of a building across from the Van Andel Arena when it was noticed by concerned passersby who phoned authorities to report a possible suicide attempt, the Grand Rapids Press reported Thursday.
Police and firefighters arrived at the scene and fire crews sent to the roof of building discovered the beam holding the statue in place.
"We wanted people to notice this great piece and, since nobody saw us putting it up, I think it surprised people," said Lisa McManus, spokeswoman for the Open Concept Gallery, which installed the piece. "It is very realistic."
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The Weaker Sex????
We start to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find anything that comes in contact with those tender, blooming buds hurts so bad it brings us to tears.
Enter the almighty, uncomfortable training bra contraption the boys in school will snap until we have calluses on our backs. Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we now bloat, we cramp, we get the hormone crankies, have to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had.
Our next little rite of passage (premarital or not) is having sex for the first time which is about as much fun as having a ramrod push your uterus through your nostrils (If he did it right and didn't end up with his little cart before his horse!), leaving us to wonder what all the fuss was about.
Then it's off to Motherhood where we learn to live on dry crackers and water for a few months so we don't spend the entire day leaning over Brother John. Of course, amazing creatures that we are (and we are), we learn to live with the growing little angels inside us steadily kicking our innards night and day making us wonder if we're having Rosemary's Baby. Our once flat bellies now look like we swallowed a watermelon whole and we pee our pants every time we sneeze.
When the big moment arrives, the dam in our blessed nether Regions will invariably burst right in the middle of the mall and we'll waddle with our big cartoon feet moaning in pain all the way to the ER. Then it's huff and puff and beg to die while the OB says, "Please stop screaming, Mrs. Hearmeroar. Calm down and push. Just one more (or 10) good push," warranting a strong, well-deserved impulse to punch the bastard (and hubby) square in the nose for making us cram a wiggling, mushroom-headed 10lb bowling ball through a keyhole.
After that, it's time to raise those angels only to find that when all that "cute" wears off, the beautiful little darlings morph into walking, jabbering, wet, gooey, snot-blowing, life-sucking little poop machines. The teen years. Need I say more? The kids are almost grown now and we women hit our voracious sexual prime in our mid-30's to early 40's while hubby had his somewhere around his 18th birthday (which just happens to be the reason all that early hot man sex got you pregnant in the first place).
Now we hit the grand finale: "The Menopause," the Grandmother of all womanhood. It's either take the HRT and chance cancer in those now seasoned "buds" or the aforementioned nether regions, or, sweat like a hog in July, wash your sheets and pillowcases daily and bite the head off anything that moves.
Now, you ask WHY women seem to be more spiteful than men when men get off so easy INCLUDING the icing on life's cake: Being able to pee in the woods without soaking their socks?
Now I love being a woman but "Womanhood" would make the Great Gandhi a tad crabby.
Women are the "weaker sex"? Yeah right. Bite me.
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DDL
There was an old fellow from Roop
Who'd lost all control of his poop.
One evening at supper
His wife said, 'Now Tupper,
Stop making that noise with your soup.'
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
-H L Mencken
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'Escargot' is French for 'fat crawling bag of phlegm'.
- Dave Barry
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People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.
- Jerry Seinfeld
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Rotten News.... (true)
Space Station Crew Can Access Gun
POSTED: 6:16 am EST February 14, 2008
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Astronauts aboard the International Space Station apparently have access to a gun.
Russian Cosmonauts carry a gun on their Soyuz space capsule, which is attached to the space station. Every spacecraft carries survival gear for crash landings, and the Russian Soyuz has a kit that includes the gun.
A photo of a space tourist using one version of the weapon is posted on his Web site.
But although the gun has been there for as long as the space station has been in orbit, its existence is kept quiet. NASA and Russian officials won't talk publicly about it.
Former NASA engineer Jim Oberg, who is an author and journalist, wrote about the gun on his Web site. He said the gun has no place in an environment where people are under such high stress.
"There have been cases of severe psychological strain on people in space, strain that they have taken out -- that their shipmates worried about the ultimate actions," Oberg said.
Experts said the idea of an astronaut losing control was unthinkable until one year ago, when Lisa Nowak shattered the myth. Her own attorney said she was insane when arrested for hunting down another woman, and prosecutors said she was armed. Nowak had flown in space just seven months earlier.
Oberg knows an astronaut bent on orbital manslaughter could simply throw any number of switches to do the job, but he said the crews would be safer if the gun was locked up or left on Earth.
The gun is located in a survival kit between some seats aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. All the crewmembers know about it, and U.S. astronauts who fly aboard the Soyuz are trained to use it.
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Company seeks tax exemption for bribes
JERUSALEM - Some companies request tax deductions for philanthropy, others for restaurants bills. But one Israeli business tried to push the envelope by asking to deduct nearly $860,000 it paid in kickbacks.
A Tel Aviv district court rejected the petition on Feb. 8.
The business, whose name was withheld by the court, asked to deduct the sum for kickbacks that were paid to help spur a business deal. The Israeli daily Maariv reported that the deal took place in an unidentified African nation. The company alleged the kickback was necessary as a part of the local business custom and therefore should be exempted from the Israeli law.
The transaction was carried out in 1999, four years before Israel adopted a U.N. anti-corruption convention.
Judge Magen Altuvia ruled that an Israeli business must adhere to the values of its home nation even while conducting business abroad. The "state's values don't stop at its borders and the petitioner's request damages the bedrock of Israeli law and its legal system," the judge wrote.
The business, however, countered that the business conducted in this particular country did not pose a threat to Israeli business ethics at home or in other nations abroad.
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Police: Fla. woman strapped in beer but not baby
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - Florida police arrested a motorist they said had a 24-pack of beer strapped in with a seat belt but had a 16-month-old girl unrestrained in the back seat with the toddler's mother.
Tina Williams was pulled over in St. Augustine on Sunday for allegedly running a red light. A 24-pack of Busch beer was strapped in with the passenger-side seat belt, said an arrest report. The girl was in the back seat with 20-year-old Amber Tedrick, who is the toddler's mother.
Williams, 46, said she didn't know why the child wasn't restrained. Williams refused to take a breath test and a deputy found two metal pipes commonly used to smoke drugs in her purse, authorities said.
Williams was charged with driving under the influence, child abuse, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving without a licence, a jail official said. She remained in the St. Johns County jail Tuesday after bail was set at $31,000.
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Photo News from the British Tabloids....
The $300,000 Watch That Doesn’t Tell Time
According to several news reports flagged by my friends at Luxist, Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome just launched the “Day&Night” watch. The watch won’t tell you what time it is. That’s so yesterday. But it does tell you whether it’s day or night — helpful, I guess, for billionaire types who can’t afford windows.
The Day&Night watch (Romain Jerome)
As the company’s Web site boasts: “With no display for the hours, minutes or seconds, the Day&Night offers a new way of measuring time, splitting the universe of time into two fundamentally opposing sections: day versus night.”
What’s most impressive about the Day&Night is its complexity, given its absolute uselessness. The watch features two tourbillons — devices that overcome the ill effects of earth’s gravity on a watch’s accuracy — connected by a differential mechanism. Instead of hands, the watch has a “contemplative tourbillon operation whereby the ‘Day’ tourbillon operates for 12 hours to symbolize working life, while the ‘Night’ tourbillon takes over afterward to represent an individual’s private time.”
Like other Romain Jerome watches, the watch is made in part with steel salvaged from the sunken Titanic, along with material from the shipyard where it was built. That sounds creepy to me, but maybe today’s buyers prefer morbid metals.
The company’s chief executive, Yvan Arpa, cited statistical studies to explain how the watch better reflects the time-philosophy of today’s wealthy.
“When you ask people what is the ultimate luxury, 80 percent answer ‘time’. Then when you look at other studies, 67 percent don’t look at their watch to tell what time it is,” he told Reuters.
He added that anyone can buy a watch that tells time — only a truly discerning customer can buy one that doesn’t.
And here’s the best part: The watch sold out within 48 hours of its launch.