OBAMA NASCAR LEFT TURN, SAVED BY LUNCHBOX, LOST AND FOUND, CITYWIDE POTTY TRAINING, AND WESTERN SPAGHETTI

 OBAMA AND NASCAR?

 They say that politics makes for strange bedfellows. Well, it doesn’t get much stranger than this. BAM racing has solicitied the Barack Obama campaign to sponsor one of their cars. This would make for a strange combination indeed. Nascar and its fans are a bastion of right-wing conservative Republicans that lean to the left only on the racing track. It seems his money would be better spent elsewhere. BAM team spokesman Rhett Vandiver told The Associated Press on Friday that the team has made a sponsorship proposal to the Democratic presidential hopeful’s campaign, and has made similar proposals to the campaign of Republican John McCain and at least one third-party candidate. It appears they are bound and determined to have some sort of political sponsorship no matter where it comes from. Sports Illustrated first reported the proposal on its Web site, saying Obama’s campaign is in talks with BAM, a part-time operation that hasn’t raced in recent weeks, to sponsor its No. 49 car in the Aug. 3 race at Pocono. “I don’t know how far along the discussions are,” Vandiver told AP. Asked about the talks, Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, “We get a lot of good ideas every day, but there are no such agreements in place at this time.” But BAM’s choice of drivers and car brands might turn out to be a little too sticky politically for the Obama camp. The car, a Toyota, the only foreign automaker racing in NASCAR, would be driven by veteran Ken Schrader. According to the Federal Election Commission’s Web site, Schrader gave $1,000 to the campaign of North Carolina Republican congressman Robin Hayes in June 2004, and a total of $2,500 in 2003 and 2004 to the failed Virginia congressional campaign of Republican Kevin Triplett, a former NASCAR official. Also according to the FEC, Mrs. Ann Schrader of Concord, N.C. and Ken Schrader Racing donated a total of $2,000 to President Bush’s campaign in May 2004. None of this makes any sense for Obama. It just seems stupid. It all looks like BAM racing is desperate to find sponsorship anywhere and is clutching for straws. A “vote for Obama” car zipping around the oval driven by Republicans, maintained by Republicans and built by Republicans is just wrong on so many levels. It just seems a little like the beginning of the apocalypse or at least a sign of it anyway.

LUNCHBOX SAVES MANS LIFE

Don’t go anywhere without your lunchbox. Carlos Juarez says his lunchbox saved his life. That’s quite a claim. He was waiting for his ride to work early Tuesday in his driveway when two attempted robbers accosted him, demanding money. Right in your own driveway, is nothing sacred? Carlos replied he had no money and the would-be thieves opened fire, hitting him twice in the side. Juarez said he reflexively held up his lunch cooler over his chest to shield himself from the bullets and the cooler was hit twice. It’s not everyone that can say their lunchbox took a bullet for them, let alone two. “He thinks the cooler saved his life,” Carlos Paz, a friend who translated for Juarez, told The Associated Press. “If he doesn’t have the cooler, the shots come maybe in the heart.” Juarez still has one of the bullets that was in the cooler. I might keep a souvenir too. A lunch container of rice and meat has a bullet hole, as does a package of gum also in the cooler. After Juarez was shot, he climbed the stairs of the apartment building with the cooler still in his hand. “Carlos, I got shot,” he told his friend. Paz said at first he didn’t believe it, but then saw blood on his friend’s side and called police. Blood would give you a clue. Juarez, who was treated at a hospital and released, says doctors have been unable to remove two bullets from his side because of swelling. He also had a cut on his forehead that he suffered when one of the men hit him with what he thinks was a bat as Juarez reached for the cooler. Juarez, who came to the United States from Ecuador about five years ago, works for a concrete flooring company. No arrests had been made Wednesday.

$55,000 FOUND IN JAIL BATHROOM

Somebody lose something? Possibly a lot of money? Well check lost and found, it appears they have it. A correctional officer at the intake facility at the St. Louis County Justice Center in Clayton, Missouri, last week found $55,000 stuffed behind a toilet paper dispenser. The bundle of money was in $100 and $50 bills, said Clayton Police Chief Thomas Byrne. Officials interviewed inmates about the money, but none admitted knowing anything about the stashed cash. I bet they didn’t. Cash like that inside of prison sounds like a pyoff for something to me. That’s one deal that won’t go down.The money was placed in a special bank account until the owner can be determined, Byrne said. Or arrested, I bet.

CITY POTTY TRAINING RESIDENTS

Imagine, as a grown adult, your city trying to teach you how to properly use the restroom. That is exactly what one city in South Taiwan has started to do. To reduce over 340 tons of waste generated daily, Tainen launched it’s new potty training program which is geared towards teaching its 764,000 residents to flush their toilet paper instead of throwing it in trash cans. Yuck. “An old habit is to throw toilet paper in the trash can beside the toilet, which causes a major stink that’s bad for public sanitation.” Ya think? When “Japanese and Western visitors come to Taiwan, they find this Taiwan toilet habit to be quite poor.” I’d say that’s an understatement. This habit developed because of pipe backup and clogging problems, however the current system can handle the load without backing up. In addition to solving the issue of trash buildup and smell concerns, flushing the toilet paper will actually save the city $600 million a year in trash treatment costs.

WESTERN SPAGHETTI

This is a creative little piece that I just found clever and fun.Check it out.

JEN MOSS TOPLESS JULY 4TH PARADE, LEMONADE STAND ROBBERY, MONK SEX ADVICE, STUPID BURGLAR, AND VOTING REPUBLICAN

 WOMAN PLANS TO GO TOPLESS IN JULY 4TH PARADE

I love patriotism. A woman in Ashland Oregon plans to join their Fourth of July parade topless. If she’s not allowed she intends to sue the city. Yes she plans to have more than her Red, White and Blue showing this year. With some early fireworks she’s creating a preholiday controversy. Jen Moss has been known as “The Naked Lady” since she moved to Ashland in May from Ojai, Calif. She was drawn by the town’s nudity laws. They specify only that people must cover their genitalia in a city park or the downtown commercial district, which means Moss need not cover her breasts. I bet that’s one loophole they’re going to regret. The Ashland Chamber of Commerce learned of her coverage plans from an online posting. Ya gotta love the internet. She promised to lead in-line skaters “wearing only a hemp G-string and blowing a conch shell.” That presents an intriquing image. “We don’t feel that someone in the parade who is topless or nearly naked is appropriate for a family audience,” said parade chairman James Kidd. “She’s welcome on any other day of the year to do that,” he said. “But not on the Fourth of July while in the parade.” Moss told the Ashland Daily Tidings in an e-mail that if she can’t be nearly naked in the parade, she would “run around near naked protesting their unconstitutionalism and un-Americanism.” And she said, she would ask the American Civil Liberties Union for help in a lawsuit. Good luck with all that. Apparently this woman didn’t get enough attention at home and is now seeking it elsewhere. Well, cover the kids eyes and hope for the best. And, maybe you need to rethink that ordinance.

DON’T MESS WITH THE LEMONADE STAND

There’s nothing like the smell of lemonade in the morning. A group of kids inTerra Haute, Indiana were running a lemonade stand when Steve Tryon showed up. “The guy came up and was, like, ‘Give me your money,'” said Dominique Morefield, who was running the lemonade stand with a group of friends. “I was shocked. It was just my immediate reaction to chase after him.” And Chase after him she did. This is one little girl you do not want to mess with. She actually followed him into a house and then called the cops. Officers eventually persuaded Tryon, 18, to come outside after 45 minutes and arrested him on a preliminary felony charge of robbery of $17.50. “I didn’t think anyone would come up to a lemonade stand and steal, that’s really low,” 12-year-old Fred Erstine said. Well Fred, the world is full of all kinds of morons. The kids say they will continue to sell lemonade, but now they are using a parent for a security guard. Don’t mes with the lemonade kids, they’ll bust your butt.

CELIBATE MONK SETS UP SEX ADVICE SITE

I’m not sure how well this will work, but a celibate monk has set up a website giving sex advice to Catholic couples. Go figure. Father Ksawery Knotz’s lover’s guide on http://www.szansaspotkania.net gives graphic lovemaking tips and has been dubbed the “Catholic Kama Sutra.” It compares having an orgasm to going to heaven and recommends that men “take care that women experience pleasure” during sex, adding that this requires “extra efforts on the part of the husband.” Really, well there’s a brilliant bit of advice. It just seems a little dumb to me to be taking sex advice from someone who suppossedly has never had it. It just goes to show that anyone can be an expert on anything on the internet these days. 

ESCAPED CROOK ASKS POLICE TO REMOVE HANDCUFFS

Here’s a bright move. A man and his three friends break into a supermarket and are caught by the security guard. One of them is caught and handcuffed to a rail while the guard goes after the other three. The man then escapes. Everything would have been fine if would have left it there, but no, what does he do? He goes to the local precinct house and asks the police to remove the cuffs. “It was stupid of him,” said a police spokesman in Frankfurt, Germany on Monday. “They took the cuffs off, but they kept him.” The security guard had called the local police so they were aware of the escaped burglar. The cuffed man tried to convince police that a friend had put the cuffs on as a joke and now they couldn’t get them off. The police removed the handcuffs and then reunited him with his friends. Somtimes, you just have to wonder what goes through peoples’ heads. Near as I can tell, absolutely nothing.

VOTING REPUBLICAN 

MCCAIN PREACHERS, ESCAPING PRISONER, PLUMBING THIEF, TOXIC VOMIT, AND ODD LAPTOP

 JOHN MCCAIN, BARACK OBAMA IN PREACHERS GONE WILD

 What is it with preachers and politics lately? I thought the pulpit was for expressing love, understanding, forgiveness, not political platforms to slam “Whitey” and endorse Hitler. I thought there was suppossed to be a seperation between church and state. With weirdos like Reverend White and John Hagee running around out there, we need to consider that seperation issue. Obama and McCain certainly are. With Obama’s attempt to distance himself from his former pastor Rev. White, the pulpit politics really seemed to start rolling. The political season seems to be the time when every whack job on the planet comes out of the woodwork. Heck, alot of them are running for office. John McCain has had two renegade radical Reverends try to attach themselves to his coattails. They’re worse than trying to shake off a bad hangover. The most recent has been John Hagee, the pastor from San Antonio that declared God allowed the rise of Adolf Hitler because it resulted in returning Israel to the Jewish people. Now that’s certainly some twisted logic. Now I’m a live and let live kind of guy, which I thought was the basic teachings of christianity. Apparently not with these guys. Now, I don’t blame Obama or McCain for making these kinds of errors. It just shows that they’re going to screw up like most politicians. McCain also received the endorsement of another controversial television evangelist in late February, the Rev. Rod Parsley of Ohio, whose sermons have been called anti-Muslim. In one sermon, posted on YouTube, Parsley described “our historical conflict with Islam,” adding that “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.” Where did he get that from? What history book was that in? I never saw that. Do these guys make up this junk as they go along? McCain seems to be drawing these guys like flies. It was bad enough courting an association with Jerry Falwell. McCain has of course disavowed any endorsements with Hagee and Parsley even though he himself originally wanted their endorsements. It appears he knew not whom he sought. Politicians need to go back to seeking the old political endorsements, like labor unions and foreign diplomats instead of religious nuts. You remember, that seperation of church and state thing. Pulpits belong in church not politics.   

 

SUSPECT STEALS POLICE CAR WHILE CUFFED

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a suspect was being transported in a police car to court. He was handcuffed and all the precautions had been taken. At least that’s what they thought. The 24-year-old man got away Thursday when police transporting him to court stopped for a toilet break in the northern Perak state, local police chief Roslan Bek Ahmad said. Along the way, they stopped at a rest area off a highway. Two of the policemen went to the toilet while a third officer remained with the suspect in the car. The suspect overpowered the officer, got behind the wheel and sped away, driving with his hands still cuffed. Clever. Though they set up a roadblock, this guy was determined he was going to get away. After driving against the traffic the police car ran off the road and crashed into a tree. When the police arrived, the man had disappeared. I wish I knew that trick. Next time, go to the bathroom one at a time and leave the guard some backup.

PLUMBING THIEF PLAGUES FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS

In Norristown, Pennsylvania, a new kind of thief has struck with a different concept of take out. His diabolic target is the plumbing at local fast food joints. So far he has hit two McDonalds and several Burger Kings. Jean Morrison, a detective for the East Norriton Township is on the case. This evil genius takes about four minutes to shut off the water to the toilets and urinals and pulls all the pipes out. Morrison thinks the thief might be fencing his take for brass value. She may have gotten a big break in this debilitating crime spree. A survellience camera may have gotten this arch villain on video. Thieves. If it isn’t tied down, wait a minute, these were tied down. I guess nothing’s safe anymore. Not even the plumbing.

TOXIC VOMIT POISONS 54 PEOPLE

Ok, this is really weird. A new trend in Japan, is committing suicide by drinking toxic materials. A man was brought into a hospital in Kumamoto, Japan after drinking a large amount of pesticide. The doctors were trying to pump his stomach when he vomited before dying. The spray was so toxic that it caused 54 doctors, nurses and patients to have breathing problems and sores on their eyes. The emergency room had to be decontaminated and everyone was transferred to a different hospital. Over 50 people have killed themselves this way. Whatever happened to the old method of Japanese suicide, Hari Kari. At least it doesn’t endanger everyone else or turn the place into an environmental hazard.

 

DUAL SCREEN LAPTOP – WHO’S IDEA WAS THIS?

This is one for all you collectors of strange things out there. This is a dual screen laptop that is currently up for auction on Ebay. I’ve never seen anything quite like it and it certainly didn’t go far in the commercial market. The auction says it’s a prototype made by Xentex in 2002, called the Dual Screen Voyager and sold for nearly $5,000! That’s an expensive laptop. The unique thing is that the screen pivots so someone opposite you can look at the screen. The body of it actually folds twice so that it is more compact. I just thought I’d put this up for the annals of the odd, strange and curious.

 

JOHN MCCAIN, DOGGY BEER, SPITTING DEATH, DONKEY JAILED, AND SPORK ART

 DOES JOHN MCCAIN BELONG IN AN OLD FOLKS HOME?

During election years we brook a lot of babbling. This year’s clueless award goes to John McCain. This guy is starting to make me think he has Alzheimer’s. Maybe he just stands out in the Arizona sun too long.  Yes he’s got experience and has been around the Washington scene for ages, but that just may be the problem. It’s beginning to appear as if he’s been there too long. Judging from this video, it’s a miracle he can function as a Senator, let alone run the country. Over the weekend Mike Huckabee announced that he’d like to be McCain’s running mate. I bet he would. Maybe he sees what I see, a doddering old man that can’t keep anything straight. Maybe he hopes McCain will overdose on viagra trying to keep up with his younger wife and then get the job by default. If this is the best the Republicans have to offer they need to hang it up altogether. At least Obama and Clinton are entertaining. McCain’s just senile. 

LET’S GO TO THE VIDEO TAPE:

 

DOGGY BEER

An australian compny has come up with a brew for your dog. Don’t taste test this for the dog, it’s beef flavored. Dog Beer, or DB, was designed by Sydney pet supplies store owner Elise Schumacher.  “I have drunk it. It tastes like beef and smells like beer.” OK, it’s not something that I’m putting high on my list. Though, it can’t be worse than Bud Light. She claims to have sold hundreds of them and it is a booming product in her pet store claiming real beer isn’t good for dogs. Her version has no alcohol so you won’t be able to get your dog drunk. That’s no fun. Half the fun of letting him drink beer is to watch him wobble.

MAN SPITS TO HIS DEATH

And the nominee is: After returning to their hotel from visiting the disco district of the Swiss town of Cadempino, a 29-year old man and his friend decided to have a spitting contest. They wanted to see who could spit the farthest from their balcony. The 29-year old came to the hair-brained conclusion he needed to get a running start to get some extra distance. He didn’t stop in time and plunged off the balcony to the street below. He wins! His dying at the hopital officially qualifies him for the coveted Darwin Award. None of the names have been released probably due to embarrassment.

 DONKEY THROWN IN SLAM FOR ASSAULT AND BATTERY

In Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico, a donkey has been thrown in jail for assault! The ass ended up in the drunk tank after it bit and kicked two people. Officer Sinar Gomez said the donkey will remain behind bars until its owner agrees to pay the men’s medical bills. “Around here, if someone commits a crime they are jailed,” Gomez said, “no matter who they are.” Actually I think a donkey is more of a what than a who. The owner, Mauro Gutierrez said he would try to reach a friendly arrangement to pay the men’s bills, estimated at $420. The victims said the donkey bit Genaro Vazquez, 63, in the chest on Sunday and then kicked 52-year-old Andres Hernandez as he tried to come to the rescue, fracturing his ankle. What I want to know is what did they do to make it so angry, feed it tequila. It would explain the drunk tank.”All of a sudden, the animal was on top of us like it was rabid,” Hernandez said. Yep, sounds like tequila. Police said it took a half-dozen men to control the enraged burro. Chiapas police have thrown animals in the slammer before, including a bull that devoured corn crops and destroyed two wooden vending stands in March. I bet they had a tough time getting that one in a cell. In 2006, a dog was locked up for 12 days after biting someone. It appears the local cops spend more time chasing livestock than they do real offenders. At least it cures the hot meals problem.

ART FROM PLASTIC CUTLERY

I have to admit, I’ve never looked at a spork and thought, could I turn this into a bug. Now I do admit I’ve looked for bugs where I picked up the spork. 70-year-old Peter Rush makes bug art out of plastic cutlery.  The overhead is cheap, he grabs a handful everytime he goes to McDonalds’s and then heats them up, shapes them into what he wants and then paints them. Voila, bug art. “It started a few years ago, when I turned up to do a workshop with children on endangered species,” he said, “I had forgotten my materials but noticed the plastic spoon in my tea was bending. I made a stag beetle from it and it proved a great success so, after that, I started making other insects.” Rush is from Dorset, England and he has quite a collection of his homemade, plastic creepy crawlers. Certainly art is in the eye of the beholder. Spork art, go figure.