by Harold Jaffe
Those golf balls weren’t moving any further, the vet said.
They were stuck.
The python would have died for sure.
Now he’s out of danger.
Biofuel
Stockholm culls thousands of rabbits annually to protect the capital’s parks and green sectors.
The rabbits are mainly the offspring of pets released by owners.
Since they have no natural predators the city administration of Stockholm employs hunters to kill them.
The killed rabbits are frozen and a contractor removes them to a processing plant.
There the raw animal matter is crushed, ground, pumped to a boiler where it is burned together with wood chips, peat or waste to produce renewable heat.
So far the only negative reaction to the rabbits-for-biofuel cull has come from the PETA folks.
Tyger
A medical student got some unexpected practical experience at the zoo when she gave the kiss of life to a Bengal tiger cub gagging on a chunk of meat.
She was passing the enclosure when she noticed the 4-month-old creature choking and offered to assist the helpless keeper.
“The tiger tried to eat a chunk of meat that was too big and started choking and trembling and then fell over,” the student told Live-at-6 TV News.
“I got the meat out but he wasn’t breathing so I did mouth-to-mouth. After about 5 minutes he came to, thank God.”
Wombat
The furry marsupial lives in the Australian wilds.
With its characteristic waddle and playful disposition it’s an endearing creature.
In this steep recession an industry has experimented with “paper” made from wombat poop.
Prospects seem favorable.
Wombats’ plant fiber diet makes their feces ideal for paper, which is of course obsolescent.
Hippo
Diana Tilden-Blair, Ms South Africa in 2012 and a runner-up in the 2013 Ms Globe contest, was mauled by a hippopotamus while canoing in the Okavango swamp in Botswana, the local constabulary announced.
The blonde beauty winner, bitten on her face and thighs, was airlifted to Johannesburg hospital, where she was reported to be in critical condition.
Earlier this month, another South African beauty contest winner, Annette Smuts, was murdered by a hippopotamus while she and her family were on holiday in the Okavango swamp.
Botswana, formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, is north by northwest of South Africa.
Bald Eagles
are dying in Utah and nobody knows why.
Hundreds of the majestic birds—many with wing spans of 7 feet—migrate each winter to the Great Salt Lake, feeding on carp and other fish.
Earlier this month, farmers in northern Utah began finding the raptors on the ground suffering from seizures, paralysis in the legs, feet and wings.
The eagles were taken to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.
Within 48 hours most were dead.
“It’s just hard to have your national bird in your arms when you can see it’s in pain but don’t know what’s happening to it.”
Marius
Copenhagen Zoo murdered Marius the giraffe with a bolt pistol as horrified schoolchildren crowded around to watch the cadaver be butchered then fed to lions.
Copenhagen Zoo received more than 20,000 petitions to spare the healthy giraffe.
Copenhagen Zoo was informed by the European Association of Zoos (EAZA) that Marius was genetically similar to the zoo’s other giraffes, hence expendable.
Copenhagen Zoo received offers from zoos to adopt Marius and from individuals to purchase then donate the giraffe to animal parks.
Copenhagen Zoo insisted that animals could not be transferred to Institutions not strictly adhering to rules on breeding programs.
Nuclear Waste
Health officials are instructing residents to chill after a video uploaded on YouTube displayed exceptionally high levels of radiation at a Pacific Coast beach. The 7-minute video has caused concern that nuclear waste from the 2011 Fukushima disaster is arriving on the US side of the Pacific Ocean.
The video shows a man using a Geiger counter radiation detector while walking through Pacifica State Beach outside San Francisco. His monitor reads 150 counts-per-minute, 5 times more radiation than typical in that environment.
Health officials‘ conclusion: “Routinely higher levels of background radiation, no health risk.”
Holy Semen
An Israeli male has been imprisoned for tricking females into sexual acts by claiming his semen was holy.
He presented himself as a rabbi with healing powers, then exploited the naiveté of women and teenage girls with appalling sexual acts.
He had at his disposal various explanations: a jasmine scent emanates from his semen; his sacred semen is transferable by contact; Moses (with whom he is in direct contact) was, like himself, ithyphallic.
“His sexual appetite was insatiable,” the judge pronounced. “There were no means he would not use in order to exploit females young and old.”
Lug Nut
A Texarkana male trying to loosen a stubborn lug nut blasted the wheel with a 12-gauge, wounding himself in both legs.
He’d been repairing his 1960 El Camino for two weeks and gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the left rear wheel.
Bound and determined to get that lug nut off, the man fired the shotgun from about arm’s length at the wheel and was boomer-anged in his legs with buckshot and debris, with some wounds as high as his nose.
According to the sheriff’s report: “He’d been drinking beer, but that ain’t news.”
Steak Knife & Nut Wrench
A male imprisoned for raping & murdering a nine-year-old girl murdered his girlfriend in jail. She had written him letters, they fell in love, he was permitted conjugal visits.
She visited him for the first time in the “love cell.” When guards unlocked the cell two hours later, the woman, naked, lay twisted on the floor, left arm severed at the elbow, stab wounds in the chest, penetration wounds in intimate places.
A broken steak knife & nut wrench, both bloody, were by her side. The inmate was squatting on the floor expressionless.
Pierce
A man jailed for piercing his 2-year-old stepson with 43 needles said he wanted to spite his wife by tormenting the child, who is recovering from surgery and scheduled for further surgery this week.
The man said he drugged the boy with rum and had his mistress restrain the child while he pierced him.
“I did this three times a week for three months,” the 31-year-old stockbroker told Globo TV’s “Fantastico” program in a phone interview from jail.
“The boy suffered unbearably,” he said. “It was to get back at his mother who I detest with my heart.”
Texas Fat
An obese Texas inmate has been charged with concealing a loaded 9mm pistol on his body.
The 540-pound 26-year-old was searched, but officers did not detect the weapon in his rolls of flesh.
The inmate later displayed the gun during his weekly shower break at the county jail.
Egg in Texas
A Burleson, Texas farming couple alerted Guinness World Records that one of their hens laid an egg with a cross on it.
The couple displayed the odd-shaped egg, which they believe is “a sign of Christian love during the holiday season.”
The man said he was gathering eggs Monday night when one felt unusual, not smooth like the others.
The misshapen egg had an indentation on one end with what appeared to be a cross on it.
The couple said eating the egg is not an option.
Burleson is about a dozen miles south of Fort Worth.
Goog
Your average young American spends virtually every waking minute except for time in school & usually even there using a smart phone computer or other electronic device using them simultaneously multitasking while eating drinking energy drinks exerci
sing or sitting on the toilet according to a study underwritten by Goog.
Loving Robots
An American engineer has designed a “loving robot,” life-size with “human-like” skin, called Roxxxy.
At a demo in Vegas the engineer licked Roxxxy’s chest & the negligee-clad robot purred: Your tongue turns me on.
For $8500 purchasers can select different “prototypes” for Roxxxy, from “Lady Gaga” to “Frigid Farrah.”
The engineer designed Roxxxy after a disabled friend died in the 9/11 attacks; he’d initially planned to create a robot-aide for the infirm.
In his book Love a Robot, a Slovenian AI expert asserts that robots are rapidly becoming “mainstream sexual partners,” answering needs that “actual” humans cannot satisfy.
Neticide
Police have warned young netizens against advocating suicide on the social networking service Facebook.
483 Chinese netizens have become “fans” of the group I Want to Commit Suicide, the Wenhui Daily reported.
Members exchanged posts about organizing a group suicide on Christmas eve.
Online pictures showing a member slitting her wrists prompted police to investigate.
“We intend to contact all the people who logged onto the site,” said a police spokesman.
Encouraging suicide is a penal offence in China with a maximum penalty of 14 years.
Parents and teachers have been ordered to instruct teenagers to cherish their lives.
A Bangladeshi
extends his scarred hands to show the effects of arsenic poisoning. Man-made ponds are responsible for widespread arsenic contamination of ground water affecting millions of Bangladeshis.
The ponds have become dumping grounds for debris releasing arsenic into ground water.
An estimated 25 million Bangladeshis have been exposed to arsenic through water making it the worst mass poisoning in history.
The ponds were originally created to protect villagers from unclean water.
Arsenic enters the water from agricultural and industrial waste or from natural deposits in the ground.
Bangladeshis knowingly poison themselves because there are no alternative water sources.
A Bangladeshi
laborer was beheaded and his head burnt in a kiln by bricklayers wanting to ensure their bricks were a deep red.
The man was killed under orders from the brick-field’s owner, who had consulted a fortune teller.
“The owner was unhappy that the brick-field was not producing reddish bricks,” said the local police chief.
A fortune teller advised a human sacrifice.
Four men have been arrested for the murder, which took place in a remote area of Bangladesh.
Red bricks are worth a premium in the area, as it is believed to show they have been baked properly.
Bela Lugosi
At Bela Lugosi’s burial in full Dracula regalia (except for the fangs), his fellow Hungarian Hollywood émigré, Peter Lorre, was alleged to have turned to Vincent Price and quipped: “Should we plant a wooden stake in his heart just to make sure?”
It was commonly assumed that Lugosi and Boris Karloff were rivals because when they opted for roles Karloff got them.
When they acted in the same movies Karloff received top billing.
Karloff had an odd lisp, but Lugosi’s thick Hungarian accent proved the greater impediment.
Karloff was a connoisseur of wines.
Lugosi injected state-of-the-art morphine.
Undead
A 91-year-old male has been refused flight out of Liverpool’s Ringo Starr Airport because he was dead.
The old dead male, in a wheelchair, wearing sunglasses, was wheeled to the gate by two middle-aged females.
Airport staff became suspicious while patting him down and noting his lack of body warmth.
Bela Lugosi
would be strolling with a colleague on the set when he’d excuse himself, step into a sheltered doorway, raise the trouser of his left leg, inject the opiate.
He’d then continue his stroll in good humor, marked, though, by stylized rather than “normal” responses to his colleague’s utterances.
Dead Man Joking
Known as a jokester, Chip, who died in October, age 86, gave friends a start when they received Christmas cards, 34 of them—written in Chip’s hand with a return address of “Heaven.”
The greeting read: “I asked Big Guy if I could sneak back and send some cards. He said okay but don’t tarry.
“Wish I could tell you about things up here but words fail.
“Heck, I’ll be seeing you—some of you anyway.
“Wishing you a cool Yule. Chip.”
A friend for 35 years, Lois Hansen, said, “All I could think was, ‘Chip, you little stinker’.”
War Story
Compassionate cabbie transports coffins.
Finds a shot-to-death child in the street.
(Everyone knows everyone in the invaded city.)
Cabbie gathers the shredded body in his arms, fits him into one of the child coffins, straps the coffin onto the roof of the cab.
He drives to a blasted part of the city, stops at a partially burned-out tenement, locates the child’s parents’ name on a mailbox, shouts the name and someone shouts back.
When he returns to his cab to deliver the body he finds the coffin still strapped to the roof, but pried open, child-corpse snatched.
Osama
From his cunningly disguised hideout in the mountains of northwest Pakistan, Osama bin Laden will slip into Afghanistan to smoke primo opium. When he has a yen for curried cauliflower he sneaks into Delhi for lunch. He’s been seen basking in the sun in a houseboat in Kashmir. He’s been spotted in Iran where he evidently advises the mullahs. Possibly the most evocative rumor is his booking tickets for a Michael Jackson homage in LA after which he will sit ringside at the long-anticipated Pacquiao-Mayweather fight in Vegas.
So why can’t our White Hats nail this ghoul?
Obama
Barack Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech in Oslo is the speech with which we’ve become familiar: quasi-eloquent words to justify a piously nationalist catalog of illusions.
Barack Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech in Oslo is the speech with which we’ve become familiar: quasi-eloquent words to justify a piously nationalist catalog of illusions.
World Peace
The US has been voted the greatest threat to world peace in a Worldwide Independent Network / Gallup survey across 68 countries.
Citizens were asked: “Which country is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?”
The US topped the list with 24 percent of the vote. Pakistan came in second with 8 percent, followed by China with 6 percent. Iran, Afghanistan, Israel and North Korea tied for fourth place with 5 percent.
Unexpectedly, many Americans regard their country as a prospective threat with 13 percent voting the US most likely to disrupt the global status quo.
Sharkteeth
is the nom de guerre of the artist who, with allies, defaced (reconstituted) the controversial wall, 375 miles long, 7.5 feet high, crowned with razor wire, which, without mandate, the US Army Corps of Engineers, under government fiat, erected between the San Diego-Baja border, from California to
Arizona, the Air-Conditioned State, prepping to erect its own wall to prevent poor, brown illegals from entering the cultureless American-English-only promised land, where, possessing filthy genes, they work unlawfully long hours, stealing from true Americans coveted jobs in pesticide fields, toxic factories, as janitors and shit sweepers for prison inmate wages.