Random ramblings from my beer soaked melon about politics, religion, sex, stupidities, nature, and any other subject that penetrates the haze. Sometimes crude and not for the faint of heart or people with normal intelligence, or an abundance of common sense.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Weird News Stories
I found this somewhere but the site is hiding from me now.
Things sure are strange sometimes.

1. Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.
2. A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head.
3. A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.
4. The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
5. A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
6. Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.
7. A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., and then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
8. Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.
9. When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
10. A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
11. A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him.
12. Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge -- killing him.
13. Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull.
14. Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car at a snail's pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched.
15. George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him.
16. Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla, in 1981, sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand threatening to kill himself. His wife pleaded for him not to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.
17. In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright.
18. A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but laid back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and crushed him to death.
19. Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison.
20. In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one person was hit, Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.
21. While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti came up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down. While he sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the farmer tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and cart drew up behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in a sports car. When the train roared through the crossing, the horse startled and bit Falatti on the arm. Not a man to be trifled with, Falatti responded by punching the horse in the head. In consequence the horse's owner jumped down from his cart and began scuffling with the motorcyclist. The horse, which was not up to this sort of excitement, backed away briskly, smashing the cart into the sports car. At this, the sports car driver leaped out of his car and joined the fray. The farmer came forward to try to pacify the three flailing men. As he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was strangled. At last report, the insurance companies were still trying to sort out the claims.
22. In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years in Kingston-on-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started when one of the men threw a French fry at another while they stood waiting for a train.
23. Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife's incessant nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses, seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room, her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he and his wife were reconciled.
24. An unidentified English woman, according to the London Sunday Express was climbing into the bathtub one afternoon when she remembered she had left some muffins in the oven. Naked, she dashed downstairs and was removing the muffins when she heard a noise at the door. Thinking it was the baker, and knowing he would come in and leave a loaf of bread on the kitchen table if she didn't answer his knock, the woman darted into the broom cupboard. A few moments later she heard the back door open and, to her eternal mortification, the sound of footsteps coming toward the cupboard. It was the man from the gas company, coming to read the meter. "Oh," stammered the woman, "I was expecting the baker." The gas man blinked, excused himself and departed.
 
posted by Nit Wit at 10:16 AM | Permalink | 4 comments
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
MUSEINGS AND MEANDERINGS
AQUARIUS
By Rick Levine
You are simply brilliant today, yet it may still be difficult for someone to deliver a vote of confidence. Receiving feedback from anyone else isn't your idea of success, so you might not even bother to ask for help, financial or otherwise. Still, it's a smart idea to go out of your way to involve others in your process. The more they know about your current situation, the more they will want to assist.


If I’m so brilliant why are my underwear on backwards?

I guess I don’t know if I’m coming or going.

OK this is yesterdays Horoscope and I think I’m over my simple brilliance. I didn’t seem to impress people very much anyway.

It’s snowing here again and they just canceled school. Now they have to do a make up day. We used to have a lot more snow days before the No Child Left Behind crowd started making the rules. Both my boys have already passed the tests that are required to gauge the progress of the students, so this week is mostly just wasted anyway.

Lots if interesting posts and comments lately. There does seem to be a couple of themes running through comments.
Lots of sexy innuendo on some and lots of good advice too. I have found a few references to cannibalism too.
I can’t wait to find out if West is still standing after Jackiesue and Babs trip to town.

I use this program called Stumbleupon to browse new sites. I think I have more than 100,000 bookmarks of sites I like. It can be a little spooky though. On several occasions when I have been thinking of a subject pages will pop up about it. I was remembering what I heard about the Donner party and those fellas who’s plane crashed in the Andes or where ever it was. Musing on the name Long Pork and wondering what it really tastes like as except for ham and bacon I don’t care for pork much.
Then I clicked on Stumbleupon and saw a whole new lifestyle possibility. I mean it does have everything a body needs… Just can’t seem to come up with a catchy name like Vegan though. I guess you really can get anything if you really want it.




















Look, they even have free range for a healthy diet.
They are a little pricy though, and I would need to get a much bigger pot.
I remember a book I saw on an old Twilight Zone or maybe it was The Outer Limits.
How to Serve Humans.
I wonder if it is still in print.

Sweet dreams.
 
posted by Nit Wit at 7:22 AM | Permalink | 5 comments
Sunday, February 24, 2008
COMIC REMIX?
MY FAVORITE







 
posted by Nit Wit at 9:12 AM | Permalink | 6 comments
SCIENTIFIC SNAFU
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov



I don’t think most people understand the scientific process, what would surprise them is the number of times that a great discovery is a total accident.

Science even has a name for it.
“The principle of Limited Sloppiness.”

A few examples are,

LSD, which was created while trying to develop a drug to induce childbirth.
Maybe it would make someone think they had had a baby.

Penicillin, while researching flu Alexander Fleming noticed a blue green mold in one of his Petri dishes. Upon investigation he discovered it had killed the Staphylococcus bacteria growing in it. Millions of lives saved because of sloppy lab work.

Brandy, medieval wine merchants boiled the water out of wine so it would keep better and take up less space at sea. Before long some thirsty soul decided to forget about putting the water back. So was born Courvoisier.

Viagra, While doing trials on a drug for angina in the Welsh hamlet of Merthyr Tydfil, (don’t ask me what it means) the well known side effect was noted and everybody forgot about angina.

X-rays
Artificial Sweeteners
Microwave ovens
Vulcanized rubber
Silly Putty
And even Potato chips.
There are hundreds of these accidental discoveries, and that’s just the ones that they admit to.


Now enter Dr. Stuart Meloy an anesthesiologist and pain specialist in North Carolina.
One day in 1998 while implanting electrodes from a device in the lower spine to block the signals to a patient’s brain to treat her chronic leg pain the position of which is a trial by error kinda thing. He turned the device on to test the positioning and the woman let out something between a shriek and a moan. When Dr. Meloy asked her what was wrong she said, “You’ll have to teach my husband how to do that.”
He almost left it at that.
Though he didn’t know it at the time this was the birth of the Orgasmatron.
He has named it after the device in Woody Allen’s movie Sleeper.
In trials the subjects 11 women were implanted with the electrodes and a small device located just above the belt line. It is operated by a small video game like remote control.
Most of the women said it felt like they were being stimulated in their tinglely parts. Some said they had episodes of clenched foot muscles like the curling toes I’ve heard about. When cranked up to full power some woman’s Vaginal and rectal muscles contracted in time to the impulses even before the orgasmic finale.
The woman who had lost the ability to have an orgasm and regained it with the device lost it again when the device was removed. Some of the women had never experienced an orgasm before and Dr. Meloy believes that with longer exposure their neural pathways would develop and retain the ability to experience them.
More trials are coming as soon as a new smaller device is perfected and Dr. Meloy wants to make it as inexpensive as a boob job. That’s about $1200.00 right now so start saving for a rainy day ladies.
They tested it on men with erectile dysfunction who couldn’t take Viagra and found it worked very well for them as well.
One woman asked him if it would be adultery if she gave the remote to someone besides her husband.
Losing the remote would be a whole new level of frustration.
If you turn it up high enough this could be you.











Women won’t need men much longer it seems.

Never fear, they have developed something that will more than replace the women in their lives.










Yea, that will do the trick. Make sure you read the warning at the bottom!

I have shamelessly stolen this from articles by, Larry Gedney, Lucas Graves and Jonah Lehrer.
If you steal from one person its plagiarism, if more than one it's research.
 
posted by Nit Wit at 7:47 AM | Permalink | 5 comments
Friday, February 15, 2008
MY VALENTINE/BIRTHDAY GIFT!




The Boss decided I needed a new toy. I didn't think I had been that good a boy.

The piece of junk blocking part of the view is what I have been going to work in for the last year.
There is another part of the gift that I'll get soon.

The payment book.

Past my bedtime. Gotta go to work tonight and make enough to put a couple of gallons of go juice in the beast.
 
posted by Nit Wit at 12:05 PM | Permalink | 9 comments
Sunday, February 10, 2008
MY KIND OF POETRY
 
posted by Nit Wit at 5:32 AM | Permalink | 5 comments
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
MAKES MY GO HMMMMMMMMMMMM
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
James A. Baldwin








 
posted by Nit Wit at 4:29 AM | Permalink | 5 comments
Saturday, February 02, 2008
MATTERS OF THE HEART
Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz




I think tonight I want to talk about death. It is the one thing that we don’t seem to be able to defeat.
I know I have been trying to figure out how to outwit that bastard from the time I was a little nit.

I also want to talk about affairs of the heart. More specifically cardio pulmonary function.

To zoom in even further think back to the last Emergency Room scene you saw in a movie or on the boob tube. Which is a funny name if you consider that you get fined if you show boobs. Just can’t seem to get off that subject.

You all know what goes on, EMT’s burst through the doors with a man on a stretcher they have a breathing tube in and are squeezing the bag to give air to the his lungs (it’s almost always a man.) and another is doing chest compressions to get the oxygen to the poor saps brain. After that it’s all Doctors and Nurses spouting jargon about ringers and epinephrine and clear or get zapped with a gazillion volts because we have to get this heart back to work before the brain cells die.

Funny thing, the medical community is all about standardized responses. If this happens, do this. If that doesn’t work try this, but above all don’t think.

It is, in fairness a valid response. When in a crisis you have to react quickly and thinking becomes secondary to following established procedures. It works in battle and in the treatment of patients in an emergency room.

But what happens if the treatment is wrong?

The bright boys have always defined death as when the cells have died from lack of oxygen. They figure that it’s too late after four or five minutes without oxygen to the cells. Well, some of the bright boys decided not to take this on faith. They decided to look further. I love those kind if bright boys.

First they decided to look at the cells of the hearts of some of the dead guys.
What they found is that the cells of the hearts didn’t die from lack of oxygen.
Go figure.

There is a little known defense the human body uses. If cancer cells are detected the body floods them with oxygen. This is kinda a reverse reaction giving them too much of something they need to survive, but it does seem to kill them.

Now back to the bright boy’s research. They found that if your heart goes without oxygen for more than an hour it is still ok, but if you force it to restart after a few minutes it might not be OK.

That flood of oxygen is bad for good cells too. Too much oxygen kills.
Hmm, what do we do now?

Based on the research done they tried to figure out new treatments that had a better chance to be effective on people who are about to meet their maker
The current treatment is if you had lost heart function for more than 5 minutes with no CPR you is gone on to a better life or into the void if that’s what you believe.

So the accepted treatment is to jump start the heart and flood it with oxygen which has a survival rate of about 15 percent. Not the kind of odds a nit who lost both parents to heart problems wants to hear.

They found that after hour’s oxygen deprived heart cells were still alive and suffered no damage.

One of the smart guys, Dr. Lance Becker an emergency room medicine expert at the University of Pennsylvania says that once the cells have been without oxygen for more than 5 minutes they die when the oxygen is resumed. Now that is a fucking conundrum.

He is now the head of the newly created Center of Resuscitation Science a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine’s newest frontiers: treating the dead.

He says the standard procedure to flood the heart muscle is exactly the wrong thing to do.
What is being studied in four hospitals across the country is ways to treat the heart attack patient.
One thing they do is put the subject on a heart lung bypass machine to maintain circulation to the brain until the heart could be safely restarted. They then inject a cardioplegic blood infusion (think of a slurpy for vampires) to keep the heart in a state of suspended animation.
They can then bring it back in a gradual way that doesn’t cause the cells to die.
There have only been 34 patients treated this way so far but 80% of them have been sent home alive.

I think I need to find one of these hospitals and move in right next door. I like 80% a lot better than 15%.

I know I will never change my life style to improve my chances of not having my heart attack me. So I hope they fast track this research. The trouble is, it doesn’t make anything bigger or harder so it won’t get the funding it needs.

So I guess maybe I am full of shit.

Maybe next time I'll talk about beer farts or the rising cost of porn.
 
posted by Nit Wit at 6:06 AM | Permalink | 7 comments