Ted Turner owns 5% of New Mexico.
The cruiseliner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves ahead only 6 inches for each gallon of diesel fuel it burns.
Maine has no poisonous snakes.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. (so is a pregnant 14 year old human)
It is physically impossible for pigs to look up in the sky.
If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat it measures 87 feet long.
In 1848 Niagara Falls stopped flowing for 30 hours because of an ice jam in the Niagara River.
An ostrich egg yolk is the largest single cell in the world.
1 lb. of lemons contains more sugar than 1 lb. of strawberries.
The Weddell seal can travel 7 miles underwater without coming up for air.
A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.
A snail can have about 25,000 teeth.
Soldiers from every country salute with their right hand.
80% of American men say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do over again. (35% said yes when told the wives wouldn't hear the results)
In the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees.
Intelligent people have more copper and zinc in their hair.
Mark Twain never finished grade six in elementary school.
Hot water is heavier than cold water.
In Japan they grow square watermelons because they stack better.
Armadillos can be housebroken.
A mole can dig a 300-foot tunnel in one night.
The state of Florida is larger than England.
There was not a single pony in the famous Pony Express. Just horses!
One quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet.
In your lifetime you may eat around 35,000 cookies.
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
No words rhyme with orange, purple, or silver. (maybe door-hinge)
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Real Town Names
Toad Suck, Arkansas
Hot Coffee, Mississippi
Spread Eagle, Wisconsin
Frankenstein, Missouri
Chicken, Alaska
Fifty-Six, Arizona
Knockemstiff, Ohio
Rabbit Hash, Kentucky
Happy Jack, Arizona
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
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A German husband, 36, and his wife, 32, thought all they had to do to make a baby was to lie next to each other and something would happen, the Mirror reported Tuesday. When nothing besides sleep happened, they saved $12,460 and went to an in-vitro fertilization clinic at the University of Luebeck in Germany. "We're not talking about the mentally challenged here, but a couple who were brought up in a strict religious environment who simply did not know how babies were created," said a clinic spokesman. "It was only after they were subjected to a battery of tests and both were found to be perfectly fertile that we asked them how often
they had sex. "The husband said, 'We're not exactly sure what you mean.'" The couple are now in a sexual therapy course.
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The Names of our months are derived from Roman names. The First six months are named after gods ( Janus, Mars, Aprilis, Maia, and Juno), or festivals (Februa), the next two months are named after emperors (Julius and Augustus), and the last four are simply the Latin names foe seven, eight, nine, and ten (septem, octo, novem, and decem).
 
Only three Roman names remain for our days of the week: Saturday (Saturn's Day), Sunday (Sun's Day), and Monday ( Moon's Day). The rest are named after gods in Norse mythology: Tiu, the god of war ( Tiu's Day), Wodin, the supreme deity (Wodin's Day), Thor the god of thunder (Thor's Day), and Frigg, the wife of Wodin (Frigg's Day).
 
So when you see, or say, T.G.I.F....you are thanking the' frigging' Norse gods.
<><><>
TRUE EMERGENCY ROOM STORIES

INNER SKELETON
A 63 yr. old widow was admitted to the hospital in Recife, Brazil, suffering abdominal pains. X-rays showed that she was carrying a 20-inch long skeleton of a fetus which she conceived decades earlier. It had become lodged outside the womb and was never expelled from her body.

FEMALE SOFA
A 500 lb. woman from Illinois was examined in a hospital. During the examination, an asthma inhaler fell from under her armpit, a dime was found under one of her breasts and a remote control was found lodged between the folds of her vulva.

PRICKLY PAIR
In Michigan, a man came into the ER with lacerations to his penis. He complained that his wife had "...a rat in her privates..." and it bit him during sex. After an examination of his wife, it was revealed that she had a surgical needle left inside her after a recent hysterectomy.

BLIND DRUNK
A drunk staggered into a Pennsylvania ER complaining of severe pain while trying to remove his contact lenses. He said that they would come out halfway, but they always popped back in. A nurse tried to help using a suction pump, but without success. Finally, a doctor examined him and discovered the man did not have his contact lenses in at all. He had been trying to rip out the membrane of his cornea.

OUCH AND DOUBLE OUCH!
A couple hobbled into a Washington (state) emergency room covered in bloody restaurant towels. The man had his around his waist and the woman had hers around her head. They eventually explained to doctors that they had gone out that evening for a romantic dinner. Overcome with passion, the woman crept under the table to administer oral sex to the man. While in the act she had an epileptic seizure, which caused her to clamp down on the man's penis and wrench it from side to side. In agony and desperation, the man grabbed a fork and stabbed her in the head until she let go.
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George P. Danzig arrived in his statistics class late and noticed a problem on the chalkboard. Thinking it was homework; he jotted down the problem and worked into the night to solve it. He turned in his "homework" the next day, and to his professor's surprise, solved the problem.  What's the big deal? That was not homework. It was an example of an "unsolvable" problem that the statistics instructor had written on the board. Mr. Danzig's work was published in the September 1986 edition of the "College Mathematics Journal."
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In October, Dee Blyth reported a burglary of her home in Chadwell Heath, Essex, England, in which thieves had helped themselves to what they thought was her stash of cocaine ("charlie" in local slang), leaving behind the distinctive residue of cocaine "lines" on a table after lifting several electronic appliances and jewelry worth about $3,500. However, as Blyth told police and reporters, gleefully, the container of powder on her mantle (labeled "Newfoundland Charlie") was not a coke stash but was an urn containing the ashes of her late dog, whose name the label bore.
<><><>
Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" was the only recording to win a Grammy for Best Disco recording. The category debuted in 1978 and lasted only a year due to lack of submissions.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps blood out to  the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.  (In my next life I want to be a pig!)
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
Humans and dolphins are the only species that we know of that have sex for pleasure.
On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.
In ancient Egypt, Priests plucked every hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
Polar bears are left handed.
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.
The flea can jump 350 times its body length, It's like a  human jumping the length of a football field.
A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death.
Some lions mate over 50 times a day. (In my next life I still want  to be a pig... quality over quantity!)
Butterflies taste with their feet.
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
A cat's urine glows under a black light.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
Starfish don't have brains.
 

After a 35-year-old man reported to a Brunswick, Ga., emergency room in January complaining of abdominal cramps, doctors removed 55 thin glass cocaine pipes (one of them 4 1/2 inches long) from his stomach; the man said he did not realize they were there because he was always high when he accidentally ingested them.

Twenty-one mayors and more than 100 other officials lost their jobs when a new  provincial law in Newfoundland took effect, tossing out any officeholder who owes back taxes.

***
 Interesting historical info about life in the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and were still smelling pretty good by June.  However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the b.o.

Baths equaled a big tub filled with hot water.  The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually loose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".

Houses had thatched roofs.  Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets .. dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs lived in the roof.  When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.

Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs,"

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. So, they found if they made beds with big posts and hung a sheet over the top, it addressed that problem. Hence those beautiful big four-poster beds with canopies.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor".

The wealthy had slate floors which would get slippery in the winter when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entry way, hence a "thresh hold".

They cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.  Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They mostly ate vegetables and didn't get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in there for a month. Hence the rhyme: "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really special when that happened. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man "could really bring home the bacon."

They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened most often with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes ... for 400 years.

Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers -- a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trencher were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers,  they would get "trench mouth."

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of  the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the "upper crust".

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.  Hence the custom of holding a "wake".

England is old and small and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and reuse the grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the "graveyard shift" they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".

****
Did you know?

Coca-Cola was originally green.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.
Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.
City with the most Rolls Royces per capita: Hong Kong
State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work:  Alaska
Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%
Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33
Cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven:  $6,400
Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour:  61,000.
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
The youngest pope was 11 years old.
First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts- Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 =12,345,678,987,654,321

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural
causes.

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The term "the whole 9 yards" came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a
target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them look like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television was Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

No NFL team, which plays its home games in a domed stadium, has ever won a Superbowl.

The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League all-stars game.

The nursery rhyme Ring Around the Rosey is a rhyme about the plague. Infected people with the plague would get red circular sores ("Ring around the rosey..."), these sores would smell very badly so common folks would put flowers on their bodies somewhere (inconspicuously), so that it would cover the smell of the sores ("...a pocket full of posies..."), People who died from the plague would be burned so as to reduce the possible spread of the disease ("...ashes, ashes, we all fall down!")

Conception occurs more often in December than any other month.  .

"60 Minutes," on CBS fis the only TV show with no theme song.

Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.

Most boat owners name their boats. The most popular boat name requested is Obsession

If you were to spell out numbers,  would you have to reach One thousand until you would find the letter "A"

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers all have in common?
A. All invented by women.

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil.
A. Honey

 Q. There are more collect calls on this day than any other day of the year.
 A. Father's Day

 Q. What trivia fact about Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) is the most ironic?
 A. He was allergic to carrots.
***

 ------------ The English Language-----------------

 There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple or pine in pineapple. And while no one knows what is  in a hotdog, you can be pretty sure it isn't canine.  English muffins were not invented in England nor French fries in France.  Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.   We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.   And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, and hammers don't ham?  If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, two meese? Is cheese the plural of choose? One mouse, 2 mice. One louse, 2 lice. One house, 2 hice?  If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Why do people recite at a play, and play at a recital?  Ship by truck or car and send cargo by ship?  Have noses that run and feet that smell?  Park on driveways and drive on parkways? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? How can the weather be hot as heck one day and cold as heck another? When a house burns up, it burns down.  You fill in a form by filling it out and an alarm clock goes off by going on.  You get in and out of a car, yet you get on and off a bus.  When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it?
***
An unnamed woman, when police in Appleton, Wis., came in December to remove her children because of a complaint that she had given her 11-year-old daughter a "swirlie" (holding her head in a flushing toilet): "I haven't had a vacation in 13 years. Go ahead and take them."
***
The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

Now the twist to the story..............

There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a Horse's Ass!

***
The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

***
Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie"
***
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.
No word int he English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.
"Dreamt" is the only word that ends in the letters "mt".
All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5.00 bill.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous":
        tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula"- and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size:  "L.A."
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
An Ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home,
    the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the Cop and
       Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life."
A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
Its impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.  (DON'T try this at home!)
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme?  Paul Reiser himself.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum,
      looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "OZ."
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
"Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes.
      When you pulled on  the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on.
      That's where the phrase, "goodnight, sleep tight" came from.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
The world's termites outweigh the world's humans, 10-1.
On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
***********
Seems there was a group of Ku Klux Klansmen in Texas who heard that some
Pagans were holding a ritual out in the woods somewhere. Having run  out of
other minorities to harrass, they decided to get back to their roots and
practice some religious bigotry in addition to the usual racial intolerance
and break up the party with a good ol' cross-burning.

[Note: in recent years, the Klan has tried to distance  itself from its
history of religious intolerance and claim that the organization's only
concerns are racial. This is, of course, utter crap as the anti-Semitism of
the Klan is well documented, as is their history of anti-Catholic violence
in the early part of this century]

So anyway, these fellows loaded up some lumber and a couple of cans of
gasoline and went out hunting for these Pagans they'd heard about, hoping
to catch them dancing nekkid around a fire or something. They found the
spot where the other vehicles were parked and donned their hoods. Grabbing
the lumber and gasoline, they assembled a cross and strode off into the
woods, confident that they'd scare any remaining pants off the fluffybunny
Pagans.

They were a little disconcerted to find themselves looking at the business
end of at least 2 spears, a couple of swords, assorted knives, and more
than one firearm. They'd crashed an Asatru blot, and didn't realize that
not all Pagans are pacifists. From somewhere behind the hardware, a voice
called out "If that cross goes up, you're getting nailed to it. I've got my
hammer right here."

The Klansmen left in a bit of a hurry, it's said.
<><><>
Country Songs

Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye
How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?
I Don't Know Whether To Kill Myself Or Go Bowling
I Sold A Car To the Guy Who Stole My Girl, But It Don't Run So We're Even
I Keep Forgettin' I Forgot About You
I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well
I Still Miss You, Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
I Wouldn't Take Her To A Dog Fight, Cause I'm Afraid She'd Win
I'll Marry You Tomorrow But Let's Honeymoon Tonight
I'm So Miserable Without You, It's Like Having You Here
I've Got Tears In My Ears From Lain' On My Back and Cryin' Over You
If I Had Shot You When I Wanted To, I'd Be Out By Now
Mama Get A Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa's Head)
My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Do Miss Him
Please Bypass This Heart
She Got The Ring And I Got The Finger
You Done Tore Out My Heart And Stomped That Sucker Flat
You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly
If The Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me
She's Actin' Single and I'm Drinkin' Doubles
She's Looking Better After Every Beer
I Haven't Gone To Bed With Any Ugly Women, But I've Sure Woke Up With a Few.
***
THE NEXT TIME YOU THINK YOU ARE HAVING A BAD DAY:
 
Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. The deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with scuba tanks on his back, flippers, and face mask. A post-mortem revealed that the person died not from burns but from massive internal injuries. Dental records provided a
positive identification. Investigators then set about to determine how a fully clad diver ended up in the middle of a forest fire.
 
It was revealed that on the day of the fire, the person went for a diving trip off the coast some 20 miles from the forest. The fire fighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible, called in a fleet of helicopters with very large dip buckets.  Water was dipped from the ocean and then flown to the forest fire and emptied.
 
One minute our diver was making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next he was doing the breaststroke in a fire dip bucket 300 feet in the air. Apparently he extinguished exactly 5'10" of the fire. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. This article was taken from the California Examiner, March 20, 1998
 
STILL THINK YOU ARE HAVING A BAD DAY?
 
A man was working on his motorcycle on his patio and his wife was in the kitchen. The man was racing the engine on the motorcycle when it accidentally slipped into gear. The man, still holding onto the handle bars, was dragged through the glass patio doors and along with the motorcycle dumped onto the floor inside the house.
 
The wife, hearing the crash, ran into the dining room and found her husband lying on the floor, cut and bleeding, the motorcycle lying next to him and the shattered patio door. The wife ran to the phone and summoned the ambulance.
 
Because they lived on a fairly large hill, the wife went down the several flights of stairs to the street to escort the paramedics to her husband. After the ambulance arrived and transported the man to the hospital, the wife up righted the motorcycle and pushed it outside. Seeing that gas was spilled on the floor, the wife got some paper towels, blotted up the gasoline and threw the towels in the toilet.
 
The man was treated and released to come home. Upon arriving home, he looked at the shattered patio door and the damage done to his motorcycle. He became despondent, went to the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and smoked a cigarette.
 
After finishing the cigarette, he flipped it between his legs into the toilet bowl while seated. The wife, who was in the kitchen, heard the loud explosion and her husband screaming. She ran into the bathroom and found her husband lying on the floor. His trousers had been blown away and he was suffering burns on the buttocks, the back of his legs, and his groin.
 
The wife again ran to the phone to call the ambulance.
 
The very same paramedic crew was dispatched and the wife met them at the street. The paramedics loaded the husband on to the stretcher and began carrying him to the street. While they were going down the stairs to the street accompanied by the wife, one of the paramedics asked the wife how the husband had burned himself. She told them and the paramedics started laughing so hard, one of them slipped and tipped the stretcher, dumping the husband out. He fell down the remaining stairs and broke his arm.   ....taken from a Florida Newspaper.
 
Having a bad day? Just remember, it could be worse.....
 
The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, a killer whale ate them both.
 
A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her with an axe leaving her mentally retarded.
 
A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment he had been happily listening to his Walkman.
 
Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn Germany. Suddenly the pigs,all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.
 
And finally.......
 
Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.
 
There....Feeling better now??????
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Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics:
 
*29 have been accused of spousal abuse
*7 have been arrested for fraud
*19 have been accused of writing bad checks
*3 have done time for assault
*71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
*14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
*8 have been arrested for shoplifting
*21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
*84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year
 
Can you guess which organization this is? Give up yet?
Its the 535 members of the United States Congress.
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Very Strange Laws: (t)
 
In Lebanon, men are legally allowed to have sex with animals, but the animals must be female. Having sexual relations with a male animal is punishable by death.
 
In Bahrain, a male doctor may legally examine a woman's genitals, but is prohibited from looking directly at them during the examination. He may only see their reflection in a mirror.
 
The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation.
 
There are men in Guam whose full-time job is to travel the countryside and deflower young virgins, who pay them for the privilege of having sex for the first time... Reason: under Guam law, it is expressly forbidden for virgins to marry.  (Let's just think for a minute; is there any job anywhere else in the world that even comes close to this?)
 
In Hong Kong, a betrayed wife is legally allowed to kill her adulterous husband, but may only do so with her bare hands. The husband's lover, on the other hand, may be killed in any manner desired. (Ah! Justice!)
 
Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England but only in tropical fish stores.
 
In Cali, Colombia, a woman may only have sex with her husband, and the first time this happens, her mother must be in the room to witness the act.
 
In Santa Cruz, Bolivia, it is illegal for a man to have sex with a woman and her daughter at the same time. (I presume this was a big enough problem that they had to pass this law?)
 
In Maryland, it is illegal to sell condoms from vending machines with one exception: prophylactics may be dispensed from a vending machine only "in places where alcoholic beverages are sold for consumption on the premises."
<><><>
THE CHOCOLATE RITUAL
Copyright 1993, John Shepard,
Performed at Dragonfest, August 1993

Materials required: On the altar there are brown candles; a Tootsie Roll
(the great big one -as the athame;) a large glass with milk in it, (the
chalice;) A small dish of Nestle's Quik and a spoon; a small dish of
chocolate sprinkles; a plate of cupcakes and some Yoo-Hoo along with a
goblet;

CLEANSE THE SACRED SPACE:

(Take the small bowl of chocolate sprinkles)

Chocolate sprinkles where thou art cast
No calories in thy presence last.
Let no fat adhere to me,
And as I will So Mote It BE!

Nestle's Quik where thou art cast
Turn this milk to chocolate, fast.
Let all good things come to me,
And make my milk all chocolatey!

CAST THE CIRCLE (using a tootsie roll):

CALL THE QUARTERS:

Mousse of the East, Fluffy one! Great prince of the palace of dessert.  Be
present, we pray thee, And guard this circle from all moochers Approaching
from the East.

Fondue of the South, Molten One! Great prince of the palace of decadence.
Be present we pray thee, And guard this circle from all diets Approaching
from the south.

Cocoa of the west, Satisfying One! Great prince of the palace of thirst. Be
present we pray thee, And guard this circle from all carob Approaching from
the West.

Rocky Road of the North, Cold one! Great prince of the palace of crunchy.
Be present we pray thee, And guard this circle from all cheap imitations
Approaching from the North.

MAIN RITUAL:

HANDMAIDEN (Henceforth known as the Swiss Miss): Listen to the words of the
Mother of Chocolate; who was of old called; Godiva, Ethel M, Sara Lee,
Nestle, Mrs. See, and by many other names:

HPS: Whenever you have one of those cravings, once in a while and better it
be when your checkbook is full, then shall you assemble in a great public
place and bring offerings of money to the spirit of Me, who is Queen of all
Goodies.

In the Mall shall you assemble, you who have eaten all your chocolate and
are hungry for more. To you I shall bring Good Things for your tongue.

And you shall be free from depression, and as a sign that you are truly
free, you shall have chocolate smears on your cheeks, and you shall munch,
nosh, snack, feast, and make yummy noises, all in my
presence. For mine is the ecstasy of phenylalanine (FEEN-EL-AL-A-NEEN), and
mine also is Joy on Earth, yea, even into High Orbit, for my law is "Melts
in your mouth, not in your hand."

Keep clean your fingers, carry Wet Ones always, let none stop you or turn
you aside. For mine is the secret that opens your mouth, and mine is the
taste that puts a smile on your lips and comfy, padding pounds on your hips.

I am the Gracious Goddess who gives the gift of joy unto the tummies of men
and women. Upon earth, I give knowledge of all things delicious, and beyond
death........well, I can't do much there. Sorry about that.

I demand only your money in sacrifice; for behold, chocolate is a business,
and you have to pay for those truffles before you eat them.

SWISS MISS: Hear now the words of the Goodie Goddess, she in the dust of
whose feet are the cheap imitations, whose body graces candy racks and
finer stores everywhere:

I, who am the beauty of chocolate chips, and the satisfying softness of big
bars, the mystery of how they get the filling inside of truffles, and fill
the hearts of all but Philistines with desire, call unto thy soul to arise
and come unto me. For I am the soul of candy; from me do all confections
spring, and unto me all of you shall return, again.....and
again..........and again..................and again

Before my smeared face, beloved of Women and Men, thine innermost divine
self shall be enfolded in the rapture of overdose.

Let my taste be within thy mouth that rejoices. For behold, all acts of
yumminess and pleasure are my rituals. Therefore let there be gooeyness and
mess, crispness and crackling, big slabs and bite size pieces, peanut
butter and chocolate covered cherries all within you.

And you who think to seek me, know that your seeking and yearning shall
avail you not unless you know the Mystery; "We will sell no chocolate until
you pay for it."

For behold; I have been with you since you were just a baby, and I am that
which is attained at nearly any shop in the land.

Messed Be.

SWISS MISS: Hear now the words of the Chocolate God, who was of old called
Ghirardelli, Milton Snavely Hershey, Bosco, Fudgesicle, and by many other
names.

HP: I am the strength of the candy rack, and the piece that fell on the
floor, but looks like it might not have gotten too dirty, and the deepest
bitterness of dark chocolate. No matter how you try to resist the call of
chocolate, I will hunt you out and I will become your sacred prey. I am the
warmth of hot cocoa in the dead of winter, and the call of the road that
leads you to that really expensive Godiva store downtown.

I give you, my creatures, the fire of love of chocolate, the power of jaw
strength to bite off a piece of that frozen Milky Way bar, and the shelter
of Haagen Daz when that big date didn't work out. You are dear to me, and I
instill in you my power; the power of a piece of chocolate that you had
forgotten you had hidden, and the power of vision and magickal sight with
which you can spot a candy counter a mile away.

By the powers of the half melted bar in the glorious sun, I charge you; by
the darkest depths of the bottom of the cocoa pot and the lingering smell
of bittersweet chocolate, I charge you; and by the beauty of a perfectly
swirled vanilla butter cream, I charge you:

Follow your heart and your instinct, wherever they lead you. The wealth in
your pocket can buy you treats that a Mayan king would envy. Take joy in
that first bite of lecithin emulsified cocoa, and in the last satisfying
slurp of Yoo-Hoo. Yet you must be wary of deceit. Eat not of that which is
called "Baking Chocolate," for it is vile and bitter.

Lastly, always remember to leave some chocolate behind you. Be not greedy,
but let yourself be known as a connoisseur. Leave a little for someone else.

I am with you always, just over your shoulder, or around the next corner. I
am the Lord of Chocolate, and when you have reached the end of your hoard,
I will never be farther away from you than that 7-Eleven on the corner. I
am the spirit of the Wild Child; the Inner Child who can never get quite
enough. If you are a true chocolate lover, then your soul and mine are
intertwined.

CUPCAKES & YOO-HOO:

(The blessing of the Yoo-Hoo)

HP: Be it known that milk chocolate is not better than dark chocolate.

HPS: Nor is dark chocolate better than milk chocolate.

HP: For both are better than the falsely named 'white chocolate,'

HPS: And neither one is carob.

HP: As the frosting is to the cupcake,

HPS: So the creamy nougat is to the Milky Way Bar. BOTH: And when they are
eaten, they are yummy in truth, for there is no greater snack in all the
world than one made of chocolate.

(The blessing of the cupcakes)

HP: Frosting is keen,

HPS: And the filling is neat.

BOTH: Great Goddess! Let's eat!

Feasting and drinking (chocolate liqueur, if possible,) music and dance.

Dismiss Quarters.

HPS: Oh, ye mighty goodies of the ______, We thank you for attending our
rites and guarding our circle nd ere you depart for your sweet and sticky
realms, We say unto you, "N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestles makes the very best."

ALL: "Chooooc-laaate."

(After all quarters have been dismissed, give a final, satisfying belch at
the East.)

Close circle.

copyright August 1993, John L. Shepard. Permission is given to post
anywhere as long as the content is not altered and this notice is attached.
***