Category: news of the weird

‘COMPETITIVE SALARY:’ We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors. ‘JOIN OUR FAST-PACED COMPANY:’ We have no time to train you. ‘CASUAL WORK ATMOSPHERE:’ We don’t pay enough to expect that you’ll dress up. ‘MUST BE DEADLINE ORIENTED:’ You’ll be six months behind schedule on your first day. ‘SOME OVERTIME REQUIRED:’ Some time each night and some time each weekend. ‘DUTIES WILL VARY:’ Anyone in the office can boss you around. ‘MUST HAVE AN EYE FOR DETAIL:’ We have no quality control. ‘CAREER-MINDED:’Applicants must be childless (and remain that way). ‘SEEKING CANDIDATES WITH A WIDE VARIETY OF EXPERIENCE: ‘ You’ll need it to replace three people who just left. ‘PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS A MUST:’ You’re walking into a company in perpetual chaos. ‘REQUIRES TEAM LEADERSHIP SKILLS:’ You’ll have the responsibilities of a manager, without the pay or respect. ‘GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS:’ Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want and do.

The Washington Post’s ”Style Invitational” asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are some recent winners: Foreploy: any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of obtaining sex. Doltergeist: a spirit that decides to haunt someplace stupid, such as your septic tank. Giraffiti: vandalism spray-painted very, very high, such as on an overpass. Sarchasm: the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn’t get it. Contratemps: the resentment permanent workers feel toward the fill-in workers. Coiterie: a very VERY close-knit group.Impotience: eager anticipation by men awaiting their Viagra prescription. Reintarnation: coming back to life as a hillbilly.Inoculatte: to take coffee intravenously when you are running late.Hipatitis: terminal coolness.Guillozine: a magazine for executioners.Suckotash: a dish consisting of corn, lima beans and tofu.Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like a serious bummer, ya know? Glibido: all talk and no action.Vaseball: a game of catch played by children in the living room.Eunouch: the pain of castration.Deifenestration: to throw all talk of God out the window.Hozone: an area where women of the night hang out.Acme: a generic skin disease.Dopeler effect: the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. Intaxication: euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. Newtspaper: the Washington Times.Nazigator: an overbearing member of your carpool.

With the new millennium nearly upon us, here are some handy tips to help prepare you for what may lie ahead:- Stock up on canned goods, paper bags, packages of Jell-O, small cardboard boxes and Reader’s Digest back issues, or simply move in with an elderly person.- Memorize Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5” now, so you can continue to enjoy it after there are no radio stations.- Learn a valuable skill, such as masonry, woodcutting or trench-digging. These trades will be much sought-after in the coming Empire Of The Beast-King.- Stock up on Hostess Fruit Pies. This may not keep you alive for long, but while it does… oh, baby.- Decide now whether you want to focus on raping or pillaging when the end comes.- Learn basic survival skills… the Tae-Bo� way.- Develop the ability to convert sunlight into energy using the chlorophyll in your body.- Build yourself a moonshine still. Actually, this is a good idea almost any time.- Integrate yourself into sewer-based C.H.U.D. tribes now, before they think you’re just jumping on the post-apocalyptic bandwagon.- Don’t stand close to a computer at midnight on New Year’s Eve. It may emit showers of sparks and say, “Error… Error,” in a mechanical monotone.- When the apocalypse comes, plan to rely solely on your good looks, amiable manner and pleasant telephone voice.- In charge of a fringe church or militia? This may be the big break you’ve been waiting for.- When defending your food piles, remember to aim for the center of the face.- Hot chicks want nothing more than to survive the Y2K crisis. Telling them you have a shelter and food supply will be all you need to have a sexxxy new millennium.- If disaster strikes, it’s God’s wrath — quote the Old Testament. But if nothing happens, God is merciful — quote the New Testament.

12> [*beep*]

“Hi, this is Bob in Obituaries at the Times. Just checking.”

[*click*]

11> Conversations start with, “Say you look a lot like…”

10> TV Guide crossword puzzle clue: Intern Lewinsky. Answer: NEW ER DOC.

9> “Next, a very special guest star on a very special episode of Blossom…”

8> The paparazzi yell, “Hey, you… move! You’re blocking our Ruth Buzzi shots!”

7> No one on eBay is interested in your severed penis.

6> “…and so we figured, hey, the show must go on — why NOT cast you in the role of the ‘Hey, Vern!’ guy?”

5> It’s been months since the FBI last misplaced any documents relating to your case.

4> Despite your utter lack of foolishness, you notice Mr. T pitying you.

3> Your invitation to be on Hollywood Squares says, “Hurry!”

2> Once you let the dogs out, that’s it. They’re gone.

1> No one has shot your wife in the head in *weeks*.

[ The Top 5 List www.topfive.com ] [ Copyright 2001 by Chris White ]

The following from a Florida newspaper:

A man was working on his motorcycle on his patio and his wife
was in the house in the kitchen. The man was racing the engine
on the motorcycle and somehow the motorcycle slipped into gear.
The man, still holding the handlebars, was dragged through a
glass patio door and the motorcycle dumped onto the floor inside
the house.

The wife, hearing the crash, ran into the dining room and found
her husband laying on the floor, cut and bleeding, the
motorcycle laying next to him and the patio door shattered. The
wife ran to the phone and summoned an ambulance. Because they
lived on a fairly large hill, the wife went down the several
flights of long steps to the street to direct the paramedics to
her husband.

After the ambulance arrived and transported the husband to the
hospital, the wife uprighted the motorcycle and pushed it
outside. Seeing that gas had spilled on the floor, the wife
obtained some papers towels, blotted up the gasoline, and threw
the towels in the toilet.

The husband was treated at the hospital and was released to come
home. After arriving home, he looked at the shattered patio door
and the damage done to his motorcycle. He became despondent,
went into the bathroom, sat on the toilet and smoked a
cigarette. After finishing the cigarette, he flipped it between
his legs into the toilet bowl while still seated.

The wife, who was in the kitchen, heard a loud explosion and her
husband screaming. She ran into the bathroom and found her
husband laying on the floor. His trousers had been blown away
and he was suffering burns on the buttocks, the back of his legs
and his groin. The wife again ran to the phone and called for an
ambulance.

The same ambulance crew was dispatched and the wife met them at
the street. The paramedics loaded the husband on the stretcher
and began carrying him to the street. While they were going down
the stairs to the street accompanied by the wife, one of the
paramedics asked the wife how the husband had burned himself.
She told them and the paramedics started laughing so hard, one
of them tipped the stretcher and dumped the husband out. He fell
down the remaining steps and broke his arm.

Now, THAT is a bad day

When some people see the word ‘coworker’ they think it means the same as ‘co-worker.’ But it doesn’t. Coworker is from the Olde English expression, ‘cow orker,’ as in the following sentence that is best read with a cockney accent, ‘I ain’t workin’ with ‘im! He’s a bloody cow orker!’ I walked up to the counter at a chain fried chicken joint and asked the cashier-Induhvidual for a soda and a piece of chicken. ‘Crispy or regular’, she asked. ‘I don’t care. Either will be fine,’ I replied. ‘Crispy or regular’, she asked again, annoyed. ‘…Ahh, Crispy then,’ I responded. ‘We are out of crispy,’ she said.——— A couple of years ago, when I worked at a large company, our ‘sexual harassment training’ included a company letter that stated ‘Don’t treat a female engineer like a secretary.’ Needless to say, the secretaries were not amused.———I was helping a friend (yes I admit it, I have an Induhvidual for a friend) set up her new computer. It was a desktop model, so I naturally placed it on top of her desk in the traditional setup. A few minutes after I had installed the software, she complained that she wished she had bought a tower PC instead of the desktop computer as it took up too much space on her desk. I promptly took the computer off the desk, flipped it on its side and placed it on the floor. She then looked at me in amazement and asked, ‘You can do that?’ (Editor’s Note: An easy way to make some extra money is by offering to upgrade Induhvidual’s desktop computers to tower configurations.)——— ———I was at the library making copies of articles for a research paper and discovered that the copy machine wasn’t working (after having plugged several dimes into it). I told the girl at the library desk the copy machine was malfunctioning, to which she replied, ‘I know’. Exasperated, I asked why she hadn’t put a sign on the machine indicating it was broken so people wouldn’t waste their money. Her answer was, ‘We don’t have a sign like that’.——— ———A friend was asked to be interim director of our Institute while the director was away. The following day I noticed him looking at a form with an amused look on his face. He was required by policy to sign a form to authorize the transfer of signing authority. Under each category indicating the amounts or the things he could sign for (i.e. vacations, overtime, etc.) it said NONE in each case. He had to sign a form which would give him the authority not to authorize anything.———I brought my film to the ‘One Hour Developing’ place and asked for the one hour service. ‘No problem,’ said the owner, You can pick it up in two hours.’ I protested, ‘The sign says one hour developing. ‘ ‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘One hour developing takes about two hours.’ [Editor’s Note: Be sure to order the double-wide prints, which are the same size as the regular ones.]DNRC Prank Report —————–This galactic prank report comes directly from the field: I took the QuickTime panorama of the Mars Pathfinder, reworked it into my own HTML web page (neatly entitled ‘Pathfinder Mission Control’) and put a heading ‘Pathfinder Active Camera Control’ above the panorama. Soon the news travelled, from Induhvidual to Induhvidual, that I had found a way to control the camera on the Pathfinder from my computer at work. My PC was swarmed by Induhviduals each taking their turn ‘controlling the camera’. And another prank report… A friend of mine works at a large insurance company as a sysadmin. He informed his boss that the boss’s hard disk needed to be ‘balanced.’ My friend gave his boss a program which writes ‘weight files’ on carefully computed spots on the disk, so that the balanced disk will run smoother. The boss distributed the program among the employees and ordered them to regularly have their hard disks balanced.DNRC Motto ———-Visionary Dave Morse suggests this motto for the DNRC: I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn’t looking good either. Curing the Voicemail-Playing Coworker ————————————-I get many complaints from people about their cow-orking co-workers who use the speakerphone function to listen to their voicemail messages everyday. This is very annoying if you are in the next cube. But I have a cure for this. From an anonymous phone, preferably a payphone or the desk phone of a dimwitted cow-orker, leave a sexually suggestive message on the offending Induhvidual’s voice mail. Do this every day until the problem abates. The messages should be naughty enough to embarrass the person who plays it aloud, but not so naughty that you’ll get fired if they find out it’s you. I suggest using breathy and suggestive sentences that make oblique references to things like vegetable oil, feathers and lost wristwatches. That oughta do it.Dogbert Answers My Mail ———————–In this section, Dogbert answers the mail that I’m too polite to answer myself.Dear Mr. Adams, After reading your 7/31/97 cartoon and sharing it with a fellow co-worker, we got into a small discussion. The issue involves the last panel of the cartoon in which a rather large person is pictured at a copy machine. Is this large human being clearly meant to be a female? If so, I feel this could be taken as being politically incorrect for the reason that men can also have fat rear ends. However, it always seems that women are the ones pictured with the fat rear ends. A short reply from your side to clarify the situation would be greatly appreciated. Barb L.Dear Bulb, You make a good point. All the male characters in the Dilbert strip are trim and good-looking. Dilbert, Wally and the Pointy-haired boss are all Chippendale dancers on weekends. But the female characters don’t get such favorable treatment. More often than not they are depicted as gigantic creatures whose butt cheeks embrace Wally’s head in an accicental embrace. Apparently this is Mr. Adams’ idea of ‘funny.’ I will talk to Mr. Adams about this obvious bias and have it corrected immediately.

Cold Wave Linked to TemperaturesHalf of U.S. High Schools Require Some Study for GraduationBlind Woman Gets New Kidney from Dad She Hasn’t Seen in YearsOn behalf of Barbara Rutledge and her family, our sincere thanks go out to those sending flowers, cards and contributing to the death of her husband. The airplane was only a few feet from the ground when it crashed, witnesses said.

The locksmith who unlocked a car door & told the owner the charge was $50. Outraged, the owner argued that it only took 30 seconds to open the door. The locksmith calmly locked the door again & closed it.

These are actual newspaper headlines gathered from papers across the country.Stud Tires Out Prostitutes Appeal to Pope Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over Soviet Virgin Lands Short of Goal Again

1. The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later they were both eaten by a killer whale.2. A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with an axe leaving her mentally retarded.3. In 1992, Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the world flagpole-sitting record. Suffering from the flu he came down eight hours short of the 400 day record, his sponsor had gone bust, his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had been cut off.4. A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Till that moment he had been happily listening to his walkman.5. Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all 2000 of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.6. Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn’t pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with ‘return to sender’ stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb he opened it and was blown to bits.

In December, Leonard Oak, 51, was convicted of aggravated assault in St. Johnsbury, Vt., for shooting Richard Lavoie in the shoulder. According to an eyewitness, Oak and Lavoie were “playing chicken” with their rifles at Lavoie’s home by firing rounds as close to each other as they could without hitting anything. After Lavoie missed Oak’s head by only 6 inches, Oak shot out a clock in the home, which infuriated Lavoie, who threatened Oak, who then shot Lavoie.

Dont know how much of it is accurate…

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Now it gets really weird.

Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy’s Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named ‘Ford.’
Kennedy was shot in a car called ‘Lincoln’ made by ‘Ford.’

Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a
warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a
theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here’s the kicker…

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Creepy huh?