Fact & Fantasy 8
HEARING AID. Brand new. AHS Alfa Series. $300 or trade for guns. (the IWANNA, Asheville, NC.)
A man who was found in a women’s restroom at Mayfair Mall was issued a citation for disorderly conduct on October 17. the man admitted to the police that he had entered the restroom because he thought it would be a good place to meet women. (The Times, London)
From the West Cumberland Times (UK): A bungling Workington burglar who returned to the scene of his crime to ask for his jacket has been jailed for three years.
POST OFFICES, U.S.A.
1. The first post office in America was a tavern in Boston, Massachusetts.
2. The US Postal Service once transported an entire bank through the mail, brick by brick. The bank was sent from Salt lake city to Vernal, Utah, in 1916. Not one of the 80,000 bricks was lost.
3. When the $1,000,000 Hope Diamond was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958 it was sent from New York to Washington D.C. by mail in an ordinary brown paper parcel.
Health warnings are to be sewn into men’s underpants in an innovative attempt to combat male reluctance to discuss intimate problems. (from the Observer, London)
Marriage: The groom never turned up. The bride married the limo driver to save face.
Marriage: When his girlfriend turned him down, a man applied at the courthouse for permission to marry his 1996 Mustang.
Marriage: 80% of couples in Japan rent artificial wedding cakes, the average height of which is 1.5 meters.
Marriage: In Ghana some curious statistics have emerged from the fact that more than 30% of married couples are not living together. When husbands and wives live together, men work six hours less per week than they would if they lived on their own. For women, however, living with husbands means five hours MORE work than living without them. (New Internationalist)
IN SEX, MEN USE A CONDOM. WOMEN USE A DIAGRAM. (from the mouth of a six-year-old)
Animal Facts
- the muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers - a cockroach can live nine days without its head before it starves to death - firehouses have circular stairways because fire engines used to be pulled by horses, which were stabled on the ground floor. The horses had figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” (Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943)
6.2 million Americans say that they are more attached to their dogs than to their children. (Governing, March 1999)
LOVE IN ONE LINE:
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. (H.L. Mencken)
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question? (Lily Tomlin)
Huey says a presidental prayer: In this time of war against Osama bin Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that our leader isn’t the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, who operates through clandestine organisations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents and uses war to deny people their civil liberties. Amen.
BUSINESS AS USUAL:
We will never be an advanced civilisation as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.
American Airlines save $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class.
Gender Benders
1. How come we choose from just two people for president and fifty for Miss America?
2. A gay couple in Silver Spring, MD, has found a way to legally sanction their 32-year relationship: One of the men adopted his middle-aged partner. A Maryland court ruled in favour of the adoption as a way of ensuring inheritance and medical decision-making rights for the couple.
3. An ad in Time Out, London: “Being a Woman”: 10-week course, £38. Intriguingly, the corresponding course “Being a Man” costs £63. So what’s to know? More specifically what’s £25 more to know? Have we unwittingly stumbled on the root of gender equality. Or is this a reflection on what women can afford, what with being paid lower wages for the same job? The mind boggles.
whatever is funny is subversive (george orwell)
