Many, many, many years ago I was a state police officer in Pennsylvania. There’s no question that being a cop is a tough job and it’s even worse these days. There’s an old saying amongst cops that police work is “Hundreds of hours of boring patrol work and the occasional 2 or 3 minutes of absolute terror”. While I agree with that there’s also something else that all cops must deal with. That is stupid criminals. We had another saying I was extremely fond of and that was “If it weren’t for stupid criminals, we’d never catch anyone”. That was meant to be funny, but some of the best laughs I’ve ever had in my life had to do with the people I met during investigations and the statements they gave in response to my questions. Here are a few examples of situations other cops have dealt with that might tickle your funny bone.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE $2000? Army military policeman Daniel Christian Bowden, 20, was arrested at the Fort Belvoir (Va.) Federal Credit Union as he attempted to deposit almost $3,000 of cash into his account. A teller called police on Bowden because she recognized him as the very man who had robbed the credit union of nearly $5,000 two weeks earlier.
STEAL THE RIGHT THING When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find an ill man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had.
BATTLE OF THE BULGE Drug-possession defendant Christopher Johns, on trial in Pontiac, Michigan, said he had been searched without a warrant. The prosecutor said the officer didn’t need a warrant because a “bulge” in Christopher’s jacket could have been a gun. Nonsense, said Christopher, who happened to be wearing the same jacket that day in court. He handed it over so the judge could see it. The judge discovered a packet of cocaine in the pocket and laughed so hard he required a five-minute recess to compose himself.
PLEASE ARREST ME Carlos Manuel Perez, 21, was jailed in Anniston, Ala. after a series of missteps that almost begged for his arrest. He stopped in front of a local government building in a stolen car, which had no license plate. His intention, he told the first person he saw, was to inquire about getting a non-photo identification card, since he was not carrying a driver’s license. That first person happened to be Sheriff Larry Amerson, in uniform. When pressed for ID, Perez produced a social security card with the name Matthew Nowaczewski (though Perez has a dark-skinned Hispanic complexion). He also produced a birth certificate under that name but with some information erased and rewritten in pen, including his birthplace of “MiSSSissippi.” Said Amerson later, “I know I’m from Alabama, but I’m not that stupid.”
As my contribution to the current culture, I feel a real responsibility to donate something to the cause. Since I’m not a poet, I have the right to have some fun with poetry in general. I’ve never really had an appreciation of poetry and all of the flowery and descriptive emotions that are thrown around so freely. Since I’ve never heard most of those pretty phrases used in normal conversation, they don’t feel real and meaningful to me. I like my poetry to be more down to earth without all the BS. Here’s another beauty for you . . .
❤OLDIES❤
Be Bop A Lula, She’s my baby, I’ve loved those lyrics for years.
In the backseat, we hummed right along in between all of the beers.
I stroked and stroked her beautiful hair as the Coasters sang “Charlie Brown”.
Off with our clothes and tickled her toes as we turned our frowns upside down.
Those oldies had a wonderful rhythm that made our hips get the beat.
A kiss on the neck, a breast in my hand, and a cop with a flashlight….
Shit! It’s the heat.
It’s certainly no Robert Frost piece of work but that’s okay by me. He wouldn’t like my work almost as much as I don’t like his. I wrote this little ditty when I was in the ninth grade and Sue didn’t appreciate it either.
Today is the day for weird shit. I’ve always been a huge fan of it and I’m about to pass a little of it your way. See what you think!
The average 200-pound human carries between two and six pounds of bacteria.
It would take over one million mosquitos to drain the blood from a single human being.
A chicken (Mike the Headless Chicken) once survived almost two years after having its head cut off. He became famous and toured the country. He was fed through an eyedropper.
Butterflies taste with their feet.
You can generally tell the color of a chicken’s eggs by the color of its ears.
The Absolute Weirdest
A substance secreted from a beaver’s anal gland is used in artificial vanilla flavoring.
The horned lizard can shoot blood from its eyes as a defense mechanism.
Female Koalas have two vaginas.
Marijuana and the hops for making beer come from the same plant family (Cannabaceae).
When a worker bee mates with the queen bee, its penis explodes.
The animal with the longest hibernation period is the frog.
The average weight of a cumulus cloud is 1.1 million pounds. Water vapor is quite heavy.
Almost 90% of all humans on earth live in the northern hemisphere.
There is a species of turtle that can breathe through its butt.
There are more bacteria cells in the human body than actual human cells. Some scientists believe as many as ten times more.
I received this list many years ago from a very close friend. Where he came by it, I don’t have a clue. Someone obviously put a great deal of thought into it, and I guess that’s a good enough reason for me to pass it on. Do I agree with everything on it, NO WAY! But again, it’s not just about me. It’s a bit of a long read but you never know, you might find a pearl of wisdom or two in it.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIFE
-Eat plenty of whole rice. -Give people more than they expect and do it willfully. -Learn by heart your favorite song. -Don’t believe anything you hear and do not sleep as much as you would like to. -When you say, “I love you”, say it truthfully. -When you say, “I’m sorry”, say it with eye contact. -An engagement period of 6 months is crucial before marriage. -Believe in love at first sight. -Never mock others’ dreams. -Love deeply and passionately. You may get hurt, but this is the only way to live life to the fullest.
-Deal with discontentment, fight fairly but do not offend. -Do not judge others because of their relatives. -Talk slow, think fast. -When someone asks you a question you do not want to answer, smile and ask: “Why do you want to know?” -Remember that the greatest love and the greatest successes also hold many risks. -Call your mom. -Bless a person who has just sneezed. -When you lose, do not lose the lesson. -Remember: Respect for yourself, respect for others and responsibility for your actions. -Do not allow a small disagreement to hurt a great friendship.
-When you notice you have made a mistake, take the appropriate steps in order to correct it. -Smile when you answer the phone. Those who call can “hear” your smile. -Marry the person you love talking to the most. When you get old, conversation will be important more than anything else. -Spend some time alone. -Accept change with open arms; yet do not give up your values. -Remember that sometimes, silence is the best answer. -Read more books and watch television less. -Live a good, honorable life. Later, when you grow old and remember the past, you will enjoy them once more. -Believe and trust god, whomever / whatever you conceive God to be, but securely lock your car. -An atmosphere of love at your home is most important. Do all that you can in order to create a calm home full of love.
-Do not bring back the past. -Read in between the lines. -Share your knowledge. It is the way to live forever. -Be gentle with our Earth planet. -Pray. Prayer has incredible power. -Never interrupt someone who flatters you. -Take care of your problems. -Do not trust a man or a woman who do not close their eyes when you kiss them. -Once a year, visit a place you never did before. -If you make a lot of money, channel it so as to help others while you are alive. This is the greatest satisfaction a treasure can reward you.
-Remember that sometimes, not getting what you want is being very lucky. -Learn all the rules, and then break some. -Remember that the greatest relationships are the ones in which the love between two people is greater than the need one has of the other. -Judge your success in light of what you had to give up in order to obtain it. -Relate to love and to the kitchen completely.
“A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances; and if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.”
In my years of working in corporate America, I made it a point to read his writings, especially “The Prince”. I couldn’t have survived as long as I did without it. Machiavelli has always had a bad name and to be “Machiavellian” is to be totally unscrupulous and cunning. But one thing most scholars are in agreement about: however bad his influence may have been, the real Machiavelli was not the wicked figure of popular tradition.
I thought today we might talk a little bit about food and drink. Just a little bit of trivia concerning some of our favorite consumables and some not so favorite. Don’t read this before you eat your lunch, it might put you off a little bit.
To make 1 pound of honey, bees must tap an average of 2 million flowers and fly more than 50,000 miles.
In ancient times oranges, not apples, were known as the” Fruits of the Gods”.
Some fast-food hamburgers are made of only 12% meat.
More than 45% of Americans eat fast food once a week.
To burn the calories consumed while eating a McDonald’s Big Mac, large fries, and a large soda, you must walk briskly for seven straight hours.
The US FDA allows pizza sauce at fast food restaurants to contain a maximum of 30 fly eggs per 100 grams, or 15 fly eggs and one maggot per 100 grams.
Each day McDonald’s feeds more people than the entire population of Spain.
Worcestershire sauce is created by dissolving the whole anchovies in vinegar, until the bones melt.
Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.
Honey is the only natural food that does not rot. Theoretically honey could sit for 1 million years and remain completely edible.
On average there are more than 1200 calories in movie theater popcorn if you include the butter topping. That’s the equivalent of the calories in one pound of baby back ribs or two McDonald’s Big Macs.
M&Ms are the top-selling candy in the United States. Second is Reese’s peanut butter cups and third is the Snickers bar.
In China, the most popular use of ketchup is as a condiment for fried chicken.
The French government banned ketchup in its primary schools in 2011, fearing it would encourage children to develop Americanized taste preferences.
No more than two rodent hairs, or 29 gnawed kernels, can be shipped in a pound of popcorn.
A few months ago, I posted a page of interesting quotes by women. I promised at that time I’d find others and post them, today is the day. I really don’t feel the need to get into a rant about how difficult it is to find quotes by women even though they’re making quotable statements every day. It just seems the authors of books of quotations have a somewhat limited supply of female contributors. For today I think a few thoughts on feminism might make for an interesting read. Here we go . . .
“Time is at hand when the voices of the feminine mystique can no longer drown out the inner voice that is driving women on to become complete.” Betty Friedan
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal . . . The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man towards woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Woman’s liberation is the liberation of the feminine in the man and the masculine in the woman.” Carita Kent
“It was the usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.” Margaret Mitchell
“The true republic: men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.” Susan B Anthony
“We’re half the people; we should be half the Congress.” Jeanette Rankin
“Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us.” Andrea Dworkin
“I am more than a hole.” Karen Finley
“As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” Virginia Woolf
“One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” Simone de Beauvoir
Now that I’ve finished my first two cups of coffee and I’m reasonably awake and alert, I’m trying to decide exactly what I’ll be posting about today. I have many categories to choose from, but I’ve come up with a few things that I found very interesting concerning one of my and your favorite topics – ‘Celebrities’.
The amount of unbelievable interest in celebrities has always boggled my mind. So many people in this country seem to think that because they’re celebrities their lives are totally different from ours. They certainly have more money than most of us, but they also lose their “right to privacy”. So, they have some good things we don’t have and a few things we’d probably never want. Here are a few facts that may help make them seem a little more human than we ever thought.
Superstore Madonna is reportedly deathly afraid of cockroaches. She once confessed:” Whenever I saw them, I screamed and ran away.”
Hollywood actress and producer Drew Barrymore, suffers from claustrophobia, a fear of confined spaces.
Hollywood star Johnny Depp suffers from clourophobia, a fear of clowns. He sees darkness and evil in those painted faces.
English actor Orlando Bloom once broke his back falling from a third story roof terrace, but he isn’t afraid of heights – he’s terrified of pigs.
American singer and actor, Justin Timberlake, suffers from galeophobia, ophidiophobia, and arachnophobia – that’s fear of sharks, snakes, and spiders.
Oprah Winfrey fears chewing gum.
Actress Nicole Kidman is afraid of butterflies.
Christina Ricci suffers from a form of botanophobia – she is frightened by indoor plants.
The English actor, the late Roger Moore, was licensed to kill as James Bond but he had a fear of guns.
The legendary British suspense director Alfred Hitchcock was afraid of eggs. He thought they were absolutely disgusting.
And there you have it folks, just a few facts about celebrities that show they’re no different than the rest of us. They suffer from the same stupid phobias and issues just like everyone else. Now as I’m finishing this posting I must throw one more fact out there. It concerns a celebrity I’ve never been particularly fond of, Roseanne Barr. It appears that she is deathly afraid of anything – people or objects – touching her toes. For some reason I find that hilarious, but that’s just me.
I rolled out of bed today at about 3:45 AM and the house was dead silent. I poured myself a cup of coffee, crawled back into bed, and watched one of my favorite movies. The movie is “Shooter” and stars Donnie Wahlberg. It’s been one of my favorite movies for quite a long time but today something struck me, and I thought I’d talk about it a bit. In one of the nastier scenes in the movie Wahlberg is trapped on a mountain top and chatting with a corrupt United States Senator. The senator was eloquent in his smartass remarks and stated, “There are no Republicans or Democrats, just the “Have’s” and the “Have Not’s”. And that’s a pretty profound statement, like it or not, and it’s true to a certain point. Certain political entities in this country love nothing better than separating those two groups whenever possible to garner votes.
I’ve been known to take shots at the wealthier class of people in this country only because I felt it was necessary. I recently discovered a book titled The Rich Are Different. I’m a firm believer that statement is true but I’m not sure if it’s a good ‘different’ or a ‘bad different’. Here are a few pearls of wisdom from that book and a few of our richer, upper-class citizens.
When the Duke of Marlborough could no longer afford his valet, who had, among other things, always put the paste on the Duke’s toothbrush, the nobleman’s shock was palpable. “What’s the matter with my tooth brush?” He exclaimed. “The damn thing won’t foam anymore!”
“Until the age of twelve I sincerely believed that everybody had a house on Fifth Avenue, a villa in Newport and a steam driven, oceangoing yacht.” Cornelius Vanderbilt Junior
“I have had no real gratification or enjoyment of any sort more than my neighbor on the next block who is worth only a half million.” William K. Vanderbilt
“Prior to the Reagan era, the newly rich aped the old rich. But that isn’t true any longer. Donald Trump is making no effort to behave like Eleanor Roosevelt as far as I can see.” Fran Leibowitz
“With money in your pocket you are wise, you are handsome, and you sing well, too.” Yiddish Proverb
“No rich man is ugly.” Zsa Zsa Gabor
During the 1887 Saratoga racing season, William Collins Whitney lost $385,000 at the gambling tables while waiting for his wife to finish dressing.
“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” Leona Helmsley
“What’s the use of money if you have to earn it?” George Bernard Shaw
HOW COULD ANYONE THINK THE RICH AREN’T JUST LIKE US
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