Subject: Daily Dose - 080429 -
downtown, BIZARRE NEWS, realistic model, DDL, News from the British Tabloids
A man and his girlfriend are having a sexual encounter. He asks her to "go downtown" so, with a sigh, she gets on her knees in front of him and starts peering at his genitals, looking and tipping her head this way and that, studying the whole business.
After a couple minutes of this, he asked her in a sort of peeved voice, "Well, what are you doing?"
She said, "I'm doing what I always do when I'm downtown with no money - just looking."
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BIZARRE NEWS...
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Teacher takes Guns N' Roses song as threat
ROCKY HILL, Conn. - A teacher at a Connecticut school summoned state police when she heard what turned out to be a Guns N' Roses record coming from the public address system.
The teacher at the Booth Free School in Rocky Hill took the words "You're in the jungle, baby; you're going to die" from the song "Welcome to the Jungle" as a threat, WFSB-TV in Rocky Hill reported.
Troopers used police dogs to search the school and found and detained three teenagers. Once police were convinced that the teens, one of them a custodian at the school, were just having some fun with the PA system the three were released.
Booth Free School is a public elementary school in an affluent part of Connecticut between New Haven and Hartford.
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L.A. considers toll for car pool lanes
LOS ANGELES - A proposal is on the table to convert the carpool lanes of three popular Los Angeles County freeways into toll roads with higher fares during rush hour. Charging commuters for a faster way to work is part of a plan by the Metropolitan Transit Agency and Caltrans to institute "congestion pricing" in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
The concept gained steam in November when the U.S. Department of Transportation indicated it would give out more grants to fund such projects.
"I think it's a horrible direction to go and I think it's immoral to sell the diamond lanes," Mid-City resident Charles Tarlow told the Times. "I also think it is outrageous that the feds take the position that they'll give us millions of dollars for lanes that exclude people who can't afford to pay."
The earliest Los Angeles commuters might see toll lanes is 2009.
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Bad move: Man steals cops' meal tip
CINCINNATI - An Ohio man reportedly stole from the wrong guys: two city police officers.
Vincent Balough of Over-the-Rhine allegedly stole a $12 tip two Cincinnati police officers left Wednesday night after eating dinner at Cadillac Ranch, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Balough, 46, was caught and arrested. He was charged with theft and obstructing official business, the newspaper reported.
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Pole dancing not enough for best in show
MARATHON, Fla. - A parade float in the Florida Keys featuring nubile nymphs pole dancing on a 55-foot cruiser didn't win best in show despite drawing the loudest cheers. Spectators at the Boot Key Harbor Lighted Boat Parade shielded their children from seeing women clad in white body stockings gyrating seductively on the parade float's mast, the Florida Keys Keynote said Thursday.
"This woman is all bent over, totally naked and doing a dance you see in Key West," an elementary school teacher watching the parade told the newspaper. "It was one of the most vulgar things I've ever seen."
Judges disagreed, telling complainers, "If you don't like it, just sit down and shut up. The kids shouldn't be here, anyway."
One resident said he plans to file charges against the woman. "What she did was a felony. This is the birth of Christ we're celebrating here and you don't do that when children are watching," he said.
Cat-calls, whoops and hollers greeted the float as it passed the judge's stand but it didn't win the parade prize.
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A woman was in a sex boutique shopping for vibrators when the clerk said, "Perhaps you might be interested in this one. It's our most realistic model."
The woman said, "You mean it's shaped exactly like a man's penis?"
"No," the clerk replied, "I mean that after five minutes it goes soft for the rest of the night."
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DDL
A salute to the ladies who post
To the news group that I love the most
They bring a fresh slant
That us gentlemen can't;
To these ladies the following toast:
To the girls who post here, three loud cheers!
They are better by far than their peers
And to those who would snicker
"But can they hold their liquor?"
I answer, "You bet - By the ears!"
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"Fashion Week this week. Hillary Clinton was wearing her strapless pantsuit."
-David Letterman
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"Last week, prison guards had to use tear gas to break up prison riots in New Jersey. When the tear gas didn't work, the guards sprayed the prisoners with New Jersey air."
-Conan O'Brien
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"Happy birthday to Gary Coleman. He turns 40! It seems like just yesterday he was only this tall."
-Craig Ferguson
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News from the British Tabloids
The Woman Who Married The Berlin Wall
“Among the broken lumps of masonry and rubbish is a shed in which a film by Lars Laumann tells the story of a Swedish woman who fell in love with the Berlin Wall and now believes they are husband and wife.
In the dark, my jaw dropped. The story, I realised, is not a spoof. Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer really is Mrs Berlin Wall, and lives with her now retired husband, in the form of various small barbed-wire-topped models of himself, in a village in northern Sweden.
She says the day the wall came down was an absolute disaster, but she loves her wall just the same. As well as her beloved husband and numerous cats, she also keeps various scale-models of guillotines for company.
What turns her on is parallel lines, rectangular shapes, forms that divide (such as walls), and others that connect (such as bridges). Don’t ask about the guillotines. She says she’s an object-sexualist, and believes that objects have souls, feelings, desires and thoughts they share with her telepathically.“
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The man with the bottomless stomach
A German has been dubbed "the man with the bottomless stomach" because of his massive appetite.
Heinz Asthoff binges on over 12,000 calories a day without gaining an ounce in weight, reports the Daily Telegraph. He was struck with his incurable hunger following the death of his wife 22 years ago.
On any given day he will eat a 2.2lb chunk of leberkase meat loaf, 5lb of potatoes, a dozen eggs, a pint of mayonnaise, pizzas, chips and sometimes as many as 20 meat patties. He has even been advised by his doctors not to give up his 40-a-day smoking habit because he would eat more.
The trouble is that Heinz, 68, from Offenbach, is spending more on food than he has pension money. "Something has to give," he said. "I can't eat out anymore. Last time I went to a pub I ordered a potato pancake and ended up eating 100 of them. I can't afford it."
He is nearly six feet tall and weighs 15 stone. "My doctors say my stomach is like the mine I worked down for 36 years - black and bottomless," he said.
Doctors confess that they have no idea why his metabolism demands so much food. He lost his devoted wife, Minna, 22 years ago to cancer - the event, he says, which triggered his bizarre eating syndrome.
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Sight restored - after 66 years
Surgeons have restored the sight of a man who was blinded in one eye 66 years ago during the Blitz.
John Gray, 87, was injured during a bombing raid on Clydeside and was told he would never again see through his right eye, reports the BBC. As the years went by a friend's son, Frank Munro, qualified as an optometrist and began to see John for check-ups.
As optometry became more advanced, Frank was able to take a look at John's old war wound. He realised that John's retina was healthy - all the damage was to the lens. But it was too risky to attempt an operation - the part of John's brain that 'sees' through that eye hadn't been used for decades and might have become redundant.
Then, in 2007, he developed Macular Degeneration in his healthy left eye. Frank had to break the news that he would gradually lose his sight in his left eye until he was totally blind. The Southern General Hospital's eye surgeon Dr Ian Bryce removed John's scar tissue and inserted a new artificial lens in his right eye - something not possible 60 years ago.
It took a few weeks for John's brain to adjust but to everyone's relief John began to see again. At first it was blurred but now John's vision is good enough to read small print.
Frank has just issued John with his first set of bifocal spectacles with a lens in both the left and the right eye, and the 87-year-old is delighted. He says both his optometrist and his surgeon deserve a knighthood.
"I couldn't be more pleased," he declared. "I've got vision and I can read to a certain extent."
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Photo News from the British Tabloids....
Bit of a draught at bathtime
It may be froth or just a waste of a good drop but in the Czech Republic they bathe in their beer. Michelle Wranik dives in.
If there's any truth in the Czech proverb "where beer is brewed, life is good", life must be glorious at the Chodovar Family Brewery. Not content simply to drink the stuff, here they also bathe in it. I'm standing in the brewery's ancient cellar with my partner, four German tourists and a buxom Czech woman named Klara. We're naked apart from flimsy white sheets and we watch intently as six claw-footed metal bathtubs fill slowly with dark, frothy beer.
It may sound like a hedonistic fantasy or just a waste of good beer but this is the Czech Republic - home to arguably the best beer in the world, a place where people spend more money on pilsner than on water and threaten to overthrow any government that dares raise the tax on beer.
A beer bath may be an innovation here in west Bohemia but it's certainly not the first time the region has been visited for its spas. The neighbouring towns of Karlovy Vary and Marianske Lazne, once frequented by Chopin, Nietzsche and Freud, are famous in western Europe for their magnesium-rich waters. Thousands of tourists visit for thermal treatments at exclusive health spas. Chopin probably never bathed in beer, however.
Klara is a balneologist, a master and commander of the bath. She tells us that while a regular tap pipes in locally sourced Il-Sano mineral water, our tubs will also contain 8-10 litres of unpasteurised Chodovar 10, a dark brew that is pouring rapidly from a brass beer font fixed to the foot of each bath. Add some crushed herbs and dried yeast, mix it all together and you have a beer bath, excellent for "soothing muscles, warming joints and healing the complexion", according to the brewery.
But isn't this just a gimmick? A clever trick to lure the beer-loving tourists? Not according to brewery manager Mojmir Prokes, who insists there is science beneath the froth.
The hop is a bitter plant used in beer production. It has been used since Roman times to treat menopausal conditions and improve digestion. In neighbouring Germany, scientists are busy creating a beer containing high levels of xanthohumol (found in hops), which they say has powerful cancer-fighting properties. All these benefits are supposedly gained by drinking beer (hallelujah) but I am not yet convinced that scrubbing myself with a loofah and lager will help me live longer.
Prokes is insistent, telling me the owners of Chodovar Family Brewery were so convinced of beer's efficacy they hired Dr Roman Vokaty, a local curative specialist who helped formulate and test the mixture on willing patients.
"It is very beneficial for overall health," Prokes says. "It increases circulation, decreases blood pressure and purifies the skin because of the proteins, the high vitamin B content and also because of the minerals in the water." Soaking in beer, he adds, is also very relaxing for the mind and good for wellbeing.
Since the brewery opened its spa in early 2006, the township of Chodova Plana, two hours' drive west of Prague, has experienced a tourist boom and, just like me, they are fixated on the concept of wallowing in beer.
Catching me dipping my fingers into the frothy head collecting on the surface, Klara shoos me away. She leaves the bath area and returns a few minutes later, pushing a cold glass of Chodovar Rock Lager into our hands. "Enjoy," she calls in a singsong voice, and suddenly we are alone. Inhaling the heady scent of hops, we waste no time clambering into our tubs, giggling and splashing each other.
At a tepid 34 degrees, the bathwater is a little lukewarm for my liking. It's also somewhat unsettling to see a crusty layer of herbs and beer foam forming on the surface. It's not at all as sticky as one would imagine but the taste (yes, I drank my own bathwater) is far from palatable.
But a few minutes later, the beer seems to be working its magic. I feel myself relax as we soak quietly, the gentle sound of Ave Maria piping from hidden speakers.
Twenty minutes later, we are roused from our beer bubbles by Klara poking her head through the curtain. She helps us step out of our baths and wraps us in white sheets, then leads us to an adjoining room for "relaxation". This involves lying in the dark, wrapped tightly in terry-towelling sheets. She tells us this is the final step for detoxification but as I lie there I feel anything but detoxified. I am petrified. I had forgotten we need to drive back to Prague.
I can visualise being pulled up and the disbelief on the police officer's face. "No officer," I'd have to explain. "I swear to you, I haven't been drinking. I've only been bathing in beer."
The Chodovar Family Brewery is at Pivovarska 107, 14 Chodova Plana, a two-hour drive west from Prague along the E50 motorway through Plzen and Road 21. A 20-minute beer spa, including a glass of beer, is 600 korunas ($40). For bookings, phone +420 374 794 181 or see www.chodovar.cz.