Real World Humour #3

Quick Reference

Stupid-Criminal Hall of Shame

From: HumorNet@bgu.edu (Vince Sabio, HumourNet Moderator)

Every day, we are assaulted by stories of stupid people--many of whom use their stupidity for personal gain (e.g., $2.5M to some old broad stupid enough to put hot coffee in her--uh--lap while driving). From time to time, though, we hear of those who strive to achieve new levels of stupidity while also breaking the law. To these brave men and women--ooops, "women and men"--we present the highest possible honor: entry into the "Stupid-Criminal Hall of Shame."

The following are their accounts ...

Kentucky (where else?): Two men tried to pull the front off a cash machine by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck. Scared, they left the scene and drove home. With the chain still attached to the machine. With their bumper still attached to the chain. With their vehicle's license plate still attached to the bumper.
(Editor's Note 1: And they wonder why we call them "Yahoos" ...)

South Carolina: A man walked into a local police station, dropped a bag of cocaine on the counter, informed the desk sergeant that it was substandard cut, and asked that the person who sold it to him be arrested immediately.

Indiana: A man walked up to a cashier at a grocery store and demanded all the money in the register. When the cashier handed him the loot, he fled--leaving his wallet on the counter.

England: A German "tourist," supposedly on a golf holiday, shows up at customs with his golf bag. While making idle chatter about golf, the customs official realizes that the tourist does not know what a "handicap" is. The customs official asks the tourist to demonstrate his swing, which he does--backward! A substantial amount of narcotics was found in the golf bag.

Germany: Oil of Olay no longer turning the trick for her, a woman decided that she would bathe in the milk of a camel (a modern-day Cleopatra). So she stole a camel from the local zoo (where else can you find a camel when you need one?) and transported it back to her house--where she realized that the camel's name was "Otto."
(Editor's Note 2: She might not have gotten much milk from Otto, but she probably made a friend for life while trying to ...)

Arizona: A company called "Guns For Hire" stages gunfights for Western movies, etc. One day, they received a call from a 47-year- old woman, who wanted to have her husband killed. She got 4-1/2 years in jail.

Texas: A man convicted of robbery worked out a deal to pay $9600 in damages rather than serve a prison sentence. For payment, he provided the court a check--a forged check. He got 10 years.

(Location Unknown): A man went into a drug store, pulled a gun, announced a robbery, and pulled a Hefty-bag face mask over his head--and realized that he'd forgotten to cut eyeholes in the mask.

(Location Unknown): A man successfully broke into a bank after hours and stole--are you ready for this?--the bank's video camera. While it was recording. Remotely. (That is, the videotape recorder was located elsewhere in the bank, so he didn't get the videotape of himself stealing the camera. The police, however, did.)

(Location Unknown): A man successfully broke into a bank's basement through a street-level window, cutting himself up pretty badly in the process. He then realized that (1) he could not get to the money from where he was, (2) he could not climb back out the window through which he had entered, and (3) he was bleeding pretty badly. So he located a phone and dialed "911" for help ...

Virginia: Two men in a pickup truck went to a new-home site to steal a refrigerator. Banging up walls, floors, etc., they snatched a refrigerator from one of the houses, and loaded it onto the pickup. The truck promptly got stuck in the mud, so these brain surgeons decided that the refrigerator was too heavy. Banging up more walls, floors, etc., they put the refrigerator BACK into the house, and returned to the pickup truck, only to realize that they locked the keys in the truck--so they abandoned it.

(Location Unknown): A man walked into a Circle-K (a convenience store similar to a 7-11), put a $20 bill on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled-- leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer? Fifteen dollars.

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The Shotgun Constitution

Terminology

Shotgun - The rightmost front passenger seat in a vehicle, a prime choice for any passenger, since it is the most comfortable seat, and also because of the psychological advantage of not being forced to subserviently look at the back of another person's head during a trip.
Enthronement - The physical presence of a person in the Shotgun position.

By Laws

Post-amble

I first drafted the Shotgun Constitution in 1990 while attending Embry-Riddle University in Florida. The Constitution was widely distributed via fax, and steered many young passengers towards a more democratic form of ridership. It is time to resurrect this living document, and to let a new generation of passengers rightfully call SHOTGUN.

If there is any new case law I should be aware of for the Shotgun Constitution, please e-mail me at: gerkie@aol.com. I will conduct a judicial review of your case and see whether it merits an amendment to the Constitution.

Buttered Cats

This question was posed to me the other day:

If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and towering place, it will land on its feet.

But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on its feet? Or will the butter splat on the ground?

And in response, thus spoke I:

Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash its furry back.

If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.

That's right, you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.

Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several hundred tabby cats. The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of red-hot starship and pissed-off aliens crash on top of them.

Electrical Conspiracy

Rewritten by the Quantum Mechanic
(Author Unknown)

For years the electrical utility companies have led the public to believe they were in business to supply electricity to the consumer, a service for which they charge a substantial rate. The recent accidental acquisition of secret records from a well known power company has led to a massive research campaign which positively explodes several myths and exposes the massive hoax which has been perpitrated upon the public by the power companies. The most common hoax promoted the false concept that light bulbs emitted light; in actuality, these 'light' bulbs actually absorb DARK which is then transported back to the power generation stations via wire networks. A more descriptive name has now been coined; the new scientific name for the device is DARKSUCKER. This newsletter introduces a brief synopsis of the darksucker theory, which proves the existence of dark and establishes the fact that dark has great mass, and further, that dark particle (the anti-photon) is the fastest known particle in the universe. Apparently, even the celebrated Dr. Albert Einstein did not suspect the truth.. that just as COLD is the absence of HEAT, LIGHT is actually the ABSENCE of DARK... scientists have now proven that light does not really exist!

The basis of the darksucker theory is that electric light bulbs suck dark. Take for example, the darksuckers in the room where you are right now. There is much less dark right next to the darksuckers than there is elsewhere, demonstrating their limited range. The larger the darksucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Darksuckers in a parking lot or on a football field have a much greater capacity than the ones in used in the home, for example.

It may come as a surprise to learn that darksuckers also operate on a celestial scale; witness the Sun. Our Sun makes use of dense dark, sucking it in from all the planets and intervening dark space. Naturally, the Sun is better able to suck dark from the planets which are situated closer to it, thus explaining why those planets appear brighter than do those which are far distant from the Sun.

Occassionally, the Sun actually oversucks; under those conditions, dark spots appear on the surface of the Sun. Scientists have long studied these 'sunspots' and are only recently beginning to realize that the dark spots represent leaks of high pressure dark because the Sun has oversucked dark to such an extent that some dark actually leaks back into space. This leakage of high pressure dark frequently causes problems with radio communications here on Earth due to collisions between the dark particles as they stream out into space at high velocity via the black 'holes' in the surface of the Sun.

As with all manmade devices, darksuckers have a finite lifetime caused by the fact that they are not 100% efficient at transmitting collected dark back to the power company via the wires from your home, causing dark to build up slowly within the device. Once they are full of accumulated dark, they can no longer suck. This condition can be observed by looking for the black spot on a full darksucker when it has reached maximum capacity of untransmitted dark... you have surely noticed that dark completely surrounds a full darksucker because it no longer has the capacity to suck any dark at all.

A candle is a primitive darksucker. A new candle has a white wick. You will notice that after the first use the wick turns black, representing all the dark which has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. It is of no use to plug a candle into an electrical outlet; it can only collect dark.. it has no transmission capabilities. Unfortunately, these primitive darksuckers have a very limited range and are hazardous to operate because of the intense heat produced.

There are also portable darksuckers called flashlights. The bulbs in these devices collect dark which is passed to a dark storage unit called a battery. When the dark storage unit is full, it must be either emptied (a process called 'recharging') or replaced before the portable darksucker can continue to operate. If you break open a battery, you will find dense black dark inside, evidence that it is actually a compact dark storage unit.


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