News That Sounds Like a Joke

publication date: Oct 18, 2008

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author/source: Chuck Shepherd

News That Sounds Like a Joke
• (1) Britain's Bristol City Council warned residents in government housing in September to always leave their sheds unlocked. Otherwise, thieves would have to break the doors down to get inside, and taxpayers would be stuck with the repair bills. (2) Atlanta Pentecostal preacher Thomas Meeks told the Journal-Constitution in October that he was “in talks” to create a “Survivor”-type TV reality show in which the twice-divorced evangelist navigates a field of single women and selects a winner. “Holy Hook Up: Who Will Be the Next Mrs. Weeks?” will, he said, be a “very tasteful, five-star presentation.

Government in Action
• Things Government Does When It's Not Bailing Out the Economy: (1) The municipal transit company in Austin, Texas, unveiled a rider-education campaign in August, giving step-by-step instructions in how to stand up on buses without falling over. When the bus is accelerating, “lean forward and put your weight on your front foot.” (The introductory frame on the poster features a harried rider exclaiming, “Help! I'll never figure it out!”) (2) A British government-funded poster campaign, also introduced in August, aims to encourage those waiting for municipal buses to do Pilates-type movements to improve physical fitness. Among the suggestions: standing on one leg, pointing the toes forward, clenching the buttocks.

• Most workers who have retired in the last few years from New York's Long Island Rail Road have also qualified for disability payments (though most did not claim such disabilities while working), according to a September New York Times investigation of state records. Lax union work rules, plus the astonishingly cooperative “Railroad Retirement Board” (which virtually never rejects a disability application), have resulted in nearly every worker drawing about as much money in retirement as he made on the job. In October, the Times also discovered that many of the same retirees were apparently so confident that their “disability” status would be approved that they also purchased private disability insurance to make retirement even more lucrative.

Police Blotter
• Awesome: Police in Dortmund, Germany, arrested six Romanian men in June and charged them with stealing from trucks on the open highway. Allegedly, the thieves would drive their own truck carefully up behind a tractor-trailer at highway speed, and a man on the hood would reach out and open the back of the rig with a bolt cutter. He would climb in and loot the rig of computers and cell phones by passing them out to a partner sitting on the hood of the trailing truck.

• Almost Awesome: Motorist Michael Mills Jr., 38, who was making a getaway from police in Chesapeake, Va. (who wanted him on identity-theft charges), broke through a drawbridge warning arm and tried to jump (“Dukes of Hazzard”-style) onto the span that was being lowered (but which wouldn't be completely down for another several minutes). He missed, and the car plunged into the Elizabeth River, where it sank (but Mills was rescued and arrested).

Men Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
• (1) Police in Fort Myers, Fla., said Jonathon Guabello, 29, who was angry that his girlfriend had denied him sex when they came home from a bar in October, left the room, shot himself twice in the arm, fell, and hit his head on a kitchen appliance, knocking himself out. (2) In Anderson Township, Ohio, in July, another frustrated lover, angry that his girlfriend kept falling asleep one night during sex, retaliated, according to police, by attempting to set fire to her van. (The 46-year-old man who couldn't sustain his lover's interest is Gregory Smallwood.)
   
Dignified Death
• From the self-composed obituary in the Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune of James William “Jim” Adams, who died September 9th: “Jim, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's [sic] courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he had lost his battle ... primarily as a result of ... not following doctor's orders. ... He was sadly deprived of his final wish, which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a date.”