Oddities and Humor

The Houston Art Car Show was last week. Here is a video about artists who participate.
http://www.chron.com/disp/video.mpl/featured/20483306?83039680001

The Onion CORRECTIONS: After receiving fewer e-mail complaints than usual, it occurred to us that we have failed to incorporate the word "moist" into any of our recent articles. The Onion regrets missing the opportunity to offend its fragile readers' delicate sensibilities. Moist.

Ha! My daughter hates that word. She cringes when I say Moist, so I do it on a daily basis...

I don't recall ever using it in all my writing. Too stereotypical? Perhaps?

When President Obama was asked if he would play a round of golf with his talk-radio nemesis Rush Limbaugh, the response, relayed by a top Democrat, was: "Limbaugh can play with himself."

Came across these on Facebook today and they had me chuckling:

Funny stuff.

Another one from Facebook:

DES MOINES, Iowa " The siblings of a man who died more than a year ago must exhume his body so his head can be cut off and cryogenically frozen, the Iowa Court of Appeals has ruled.

The court sided this week with Alcor Life Extension Foundation, which sought to dig up the remains of 81-year-old Orville Richardson of Burlington. Richardson had signed a contract with Alcor in 2004 and paid $53,500 to have his head placed in cryonic suspension after his death.

When he died in February 2009, Richardson's brother and sister buried him instead, having told him earlier that they would have nothing to do with his plan, court records show.

Alcor learned of Richardson's death two months afterward, when his brother, David Richardson, asked the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company to refund the money already paid.

The company filed a lawsuit seeking to exhume Orville Richardson's body at its own expense, but a Des Moines Country District Court judge denied the request. The appeals court reversed that decision Wednesday. It said the lower court should have granted Alcor's request because Richardson's siblings ignored their brother's request, "despite knowledge he had made different arrangements."

It was unclear what condition the body would be in.

Gravestones often display macabre humor:

On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia: Here lies Ezekial Aikle/Age 102/The Good Die Young.


In a London cemetery: Ann Mann/ Here lies Ann Mann/ Who lived an old maid/ But died an old Mann. Dec. 8, 1767.


In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery: Anna Wallace The children of Israel wanted bread/ And the Lord sent them manna, Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife/ And the Devil sent him Anna.


Playing with names in a Ruidoso, N.M., cemetery: Here lies/ Johnny Yeast/ Pardon me/ For not rising.


Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pa., cemetery: Here lies the body/of Jonathan Blake/ Stepped on the gas/ Instead of the brake.


In a Silver City, Nev., cemetery: Here lays Butch/ We planted him raw./He was quick on the trigger/ But slow on the draw.


A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery: Sacred to the memory of my husband John Barnes/ who died January 3,1803 /His comely young widow, aged 23/ has many qualifications of a good wife/ and yearns to be comforted.


A lawyer's epitaph in England: Sir John Strange/ Here lies an honest lawyer/ And that is Strange.


Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vt.: I was somebody. Who, is no business/ Of yours.


Lester Moore was a Wells Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Ariz., in the cowboy days of the 1880s. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona: Here lies Lester Moore/ Four slugs from a .44/No Les No More.


In a Georgia cemetery: I told you I was sick!


Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vt., has an epitaph that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie: Here lies the body of our Anna/ Done to death by a banana/ It wasn't the fruit that laid her low/ But the skin of the thing that made her go.


More fun with names with Owen Moore in Battersea, London, England: Gone away/ Owin' more/ Than he could pay.


On a grave from the 1880s in Nantucket, Mass.: Under the sod and under the trees/ Lies the body of Jonathan Pease./ He is not here, there's only the pod:/ Pease shelled out and went to God.


Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, N.Y.: Born 1903 - Died 1942/ Looked up the elevator shaft/ to see if the car was on the way down./ It was.


In a Thurmont, Md., cemetery: Here lies an Atheist/ All dressed up/ And no place to go.


But does he make house calls? Dr. Fred Roberts, Brookland, Ark.: Office upstairs.

Francis and butrflynet: Great stuff.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. " California corrections officials dangled an attractive offer Saturday before hundreds of parolees who have become fugitives: Turn yourself in, get a $200 reward and qualify for an amnesty program.

About 150 who showed up in Oakland were sorry they did.

Instead of getting a check, they soon found themselves in handcuffs and, for most, headed back to state prison for violating their parole.

Agents set up the elaborate ruse with its own website and e-mail account. They appointed an agent to the fictitious post of "amnesty program director." They sent 2,700 letters to relatives of parolees-at-large advertising the reward and fake amnesty program.

The sting was aimed at some of the more than 14,000 California ex-convicts who broke off contact with their parole agents, are suspected of committing new crimes or of violating terms of their parole.

HUNTINGTON, N.Y. - A New York animal shelter is seeking donations of Viagra to treat a pit bull with a heart condition. Staff members at the Little Shelter Animal Rescue and Adoption Center in Huntington, on Long Island, say 6-year-old Ingrid needs two of the little blue pills every day or she will risk heart failure. They said a vet suggested it.

A tourist is lucky to be alive after a deadly spider bit him on the penis.

The Canadian backpacker was attacked after skinny-dipping in New Zealand.

While he was swimming, a rare katipo spider crawled into the shorts he had left on the beach. When the man returned, he put them back on and fell asleep " but the trapped spider then nipped him on his manhood.

Within minutes, the spider's venom was causing him to have agonizing chest pains, a racing heart, high blood pressure and severe swelling to his penis.

Dr. Nigel Harrison, who treated the 22-year-old at Dargaville Hospital, revealed the case in a report for the New Zealand Medical Journal.

"It was a rather nasty, ill-placed bite,” Harrison said. “The man woke to find his penis swollen and painful with a red mark on the shaft suggestive of a bite. He rapidly developed generalized muscle pains, fever, headache, photophobia (light sensitivity) and vomiting."

The unidentified man's condition "improved rapidly" after treatment with an anti-venom, but he was kept in the hospital for 16 days before being allowed to return to Canada.

The katipo, a Maori word meaning "night-stinger,” is an endangered species in New Zealand.

The pea-sized spiders are related to the American Black Widow. Bites to humans are rare, but two fatalities were recorded in the 1800s.

supposedly this appears on Spike Milligans headstone as well

Milligan gets last laugh on grave
The gravestone
Spike Milligan decided on his epitaph before he died in 2002
Comedy legend Spike Milligan has finally got the last laugh, more than two years after his death.

It follows an agreement with the local diocese over the wording on the headstone of his grave at St Thomas's Church in Winchelsea, East Sussex.

Relatives of the former Goon have now decided that it can bear the star's epitaph: "I told you I was ill."

However, the inscription had to be written in Gaelic in order for it to be approved by the Chichester Diocese.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/southern_counties/3742443.stm

Charlie Sheen may face 45 days in jail for assaulting wife Brooke Mueller in Aspen last Christmas, but a source tells UsMagazine.com he's most worried about being able to smoke behind bars.

The actor's criminal defense attorney, Richard Cummins, has been asking local law enforcement if they'd be willing to make an exception to the jail's no-smoking policy.

Authorities say they aren't likely to make an exception to the no-smoking rule, which has been in effect for 10 to 15 years.

The Two and a Half Men star, 44, is likely to end up in Aspen's Pitkin County Jail, which allows nicotine patches for inmates. Nicotine gum is not allowed to prevent gum from ruining the carpet.

Us has learned that the Aspen County District Attorney has offered Sheen a plea deal that would put him behind bars for 45 days, but prosecutors would drop the felony charge in return for Sheen pleading guilty to a misdemeanor.

But Sheen's legal team is trying to knock the amount of time down. The actor is also keen on limiting the amount of probation/parole so that if he gets in trouble again, it won't compound his problems.


At Pitkin County Jail, which is decked out with plants, spacious living area, televisions and other amenities, inmates are allowed to mingle with the opposite sex in shared living areas. The lock up is also known for its cuisine; on Christmas day, when Sheen was arrested, prime rib was served for lunch and Cornish hen for dinner.

Says a high-ranking official of Sheen, "He'd be crazy not to want to do his time here in Aspen."

Carpet ??? In a jail ????

It sounds almost like a country club. I feel certain there are no poor people in there.

New Study Confirms Humans Only Use 10% Of Genitalia

BOSTON"A surprising new study published in The New England Journal Of Medicine this week has revealed that human beings only use 10 percent of their genitalia at any given time. "To think of all that we could accomplish if we just unlocked the remaining 90 percent," said Dr. Howard Schwartz, who contributed to the sex-organ capacity study. "Why, the back shaft alone could represent a vast reservoir of untapped potential. It's frightening, but we, as a species, have barely scratched the surface of our genitals." Schwartz maintained, however, that with enough time and late-night exploration, human beings could someday live up to "the promise of their junk."

Study conducted by THe Onion.