Volume 13, Number 30, July 27, 2008

(Check out my blog at: http://jpdave.blogspot.com/ and feel free to leave a comment (even a few comments will encourage me to blog more)! Go on; take a look! Go! Now – this’ll still be here.)

Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It!” The Panda Chinese Restaurant in York, Pa., was previously in some doo-doo from an early summer city sanitation inspection, with demerits accumulating because of accumulated grease, insects in the seating area and rotting lettuce, according to a York Daily Record report. Then (uh-oh), in the middle of an inspector's visit, he came upon a live snapping turtle in the restaurant's main sink. Said the inspector, "I had to sit down and gather myself before I could speak." The manager said he had seen the turtle outside and had brought it in for safety: "It was wrong that we put it in the sink." (Yeah, it should have gone straight into the pot!)

Next, creative problem solving at its best! Michael Windisch, proprietor of the Maltermeister Turm restaurant in Goslar, Lower Saxony, Germany, came up with a solution to what has become a crisis for other restaurants since the state enacted a smoking ban. Windisch opened three holes in an outer wall so that, in cold weather, a smoker need not venture outside but can stick his head and arms through the holes and puff away while remaining inside (according to a report in Der Spiegel). Of course, anyone passing by outside with snowballs….

Finally, the letter of the law! From Ananova, a painter and decorator (one person) has been fined for smoking in his own van - because it's classed as his work place. Gordon Williams, 58, who had finished work for the day and was on his way to the shops, was fined about $60USD. He told a paper: "I was told that because my van is my place of work I had broken the smoking laws. The van is only insured for private use and to get me to and from work. It's not my place of work - I decorate houses not vans." It is believed his ticket is the first of its kind issued by Ceredigion Council - the penalty notice was number 0001. Gordon, who smokes ten a day, is planning to appeal even though wife Sue, 56, has already paid the fine.

From My Way News, “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It” - Part II. Authorities say a Levy County (FL) man accidentally shot his wife while trying to hit a fox that had attacked her. The couple told deputies they had spotted an animal in their yard  and went outside to see what it was. The fox bit the woman on the left leg and wouldn't let go, so she told her husband to get a gun. The man fired a .22-caliber rifle seven times, killing the animal but also hitting his wife in the lower right leg. The woman was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. The dead fox will be tested for rabies, but authorities say the results won't be available until next week. (Testing for rabies by cutting off the animal’s head is kinda like the old witch trials: “We’ll put you under water – if you drown, you’re innocent!”)

I feel like I am revealing a magic trick here, but I’m not (doing so goes against all rules of magic – that’s why so many people hated Val Valentino, the masked “magician” who revealed all those secrets on Fox TV). From the United Kingdom’s Telegraph: Customers nicknamed the two people the “robot couple” because of their lengthy hours, which involved opening the restaurant at 6am and apparently still being there to close it up at 3am. But it has now come out that the restaurant in the city of Yiwu in eastern China is actually run by two couples – and both the men and the women are identical twins. The twin brothers married the twin sisters three years ago, and the four of them decided to go into business together.  Both couples now have young sons, who are also almost identical. “Many diners thought we worked too hard and are like robots, but they don’t know that we are actually four people,” said Mao Zhanghua, 32, one of the brothers.

How some Republicans think – Hey, the Associated Press carried the following Bit (so it must be true): Humane society workers have found 117 cats, a raccoon and a rabbit in an Obama house (I heard that on the news, so it must be true [and it’s anti-Obama). The discovery came after Council Bluffs, Iowa, police caught the person who lives at the house reportedly stealing cat food (figures). Officials say the person smelled like cat urine (no comment there). At one time the humane society pulled more than 200 cats from the house (what kind of guy is this?). Many of the cats taken were sick and the floor was covered in feces. Some of the cats were dead. This person faces possible citations for cruelty to animals and other charges. All true! What? Oh, I thought it said “Obama.” It was really an Omaha house – sorry I was so careless. (That Bit is honestly and totally true (except the apology at the end.)

Perhaps you have heard of the Stella Awards (For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself   and successfully sued the McDonald's in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right?  These are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head.   So keep your head scratcher handy.)  Here are a couple of new ones (at least new to me): (1) Kara Walton, of Claymont , Delaware, sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000 ...oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Must have been a jury of her peers (they don’t sound very smart either) (2) Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was given the award because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. Hel-loooo!

Finally, from Fox News (and other sites), one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard! The following is presented exactly as presented: “The stage was set, the lights went down and in a suburban Japanese primary school everyone prepared to enjoy a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The only snag was that the entire cast was playing the part of Snow White. For the audience of menacing mothers and feisty fathers, though, the sight of 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs and no wicked witch was a triumph: a clear victory for Japan's emerging new class of “Monster Parents." For they had taken on the system and won. After a relentless campaign of bullying, hectoring and nuisance phone calls, the monster parents had cowed the teachers into submission, forcing the school to admit to the injustice of selecting just one girl to play the title role (emphasis added). Across Japan teachers are reporting an astonishing change in the character of parents, who, after decades of respectful silence, have become a super-aggressive army of complainers (imitating some American parents, I assume). The problem is that nobody can decide whether this is a good thing or not (Ask me! Ask me! I can decide easily!). Japan's mass media has opted to demonize them: a lavish television drama starting next month will present the monster parents as a vile symptom of a society that has lost all respect for its traditions and decorum. The parents believe that they are champions of basic consumer rights, rights that Japanese society has supposedly long trampled over in the name of conformity and order. Either way, few deny that mothers and fathers have shifted from being staunch supporters of Japan's rigid education system to its most ardent assailants. Previously, when a child was in trouble the parents apologized profusely to the teacher; nowadays, they try to have the teacher sacked (“There are no bad kids – only bad teachers” – gee, where have I heard that before?). Where previously schools were trusted and respected, they are now the targets of concerted activism. Dozens of educators have been forced to resign in the face of the blazing fury of parents who no longer tolerate anything that appears to disadvantage their offspring.” (It didn’t say how many parents were involved, but I think they all should have been on stage playing Dopey! [But of course, what does it matter what I think?)    

Later.