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The Red Pigeon.....

The mayor of Houston Texas was very worried about a plague of pigeonsin
Houston.

The mayor could not remove the pigeons from the city. All of Houston was full of pigeon poop. The people of Houston couldn't walk on the sidewalks or drive on the roads. It was costing a fortune to try to keep the streets and sidewalks clean.

One day a man came to City Hall and offered the Mayor a proposition. "I can rid your beautiful city of its plague of pigeons without cost to the city. But, you must promise not to ask me any questions. Or, you can pay me five million dollars and ask one question." The mayor considered the offer briefly and accepted the free proposition.

The next day the man climbed to the top of City Hall, opened his coat, and released a red pigeon. The red pigeon circled in the air and flew up into the bright blue Texas sky. All the pigeons in Houston saw the red pigeon. They gathered up behind the red pigeon. The Houston pigeons followed the red pigeon as she flew eastward out of the city.

The next day the red pigeon returned completely alone to the man atop City Hall. The Mayor was very impressed. He thought the man and the red pigeon had performed a wonderful miraculous feat to rid Houston of the plague of pigeons.

Even though the man with the pigeon had charged nothing, the mayor presented him with a check for 5 million dollars and told the man that, indeed, he did have a question to ask and even though they had agreed to no fee and the man had rid the city of pigeons, he decided to pay the 5 million just to get to ask ONE question.

The man accepted the money and told the mayor to ask his question.

The mayor asked: "Do you have any red Mexicans?"



Monty

The New Stella Awards.....

It's time again for the annual "Stella Awards"! For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald's in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee


That's right, these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts that happened in the U.S. during 2005. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratchers handy. Here are the Stellas for the past year:


To kick things off the right way, there was a three-way tie for 5th place. Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.


Also in 5th place is Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California – you knew California had to be in the list somewhere, right? - who won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps. Go ahead, grab your head scratchers.


The last of the 5th Place winners was Terrence Dickson, of Bristol Pennsylvania, who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to subsist for eight - count 'em, 8! - days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish.

Keep scratching

There are more.


Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stellas when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in it's owner's fenced yard Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

Grrrrr ... scratch, scratch.


Third Place went to Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on soft drink and broke her tailbone (coccyx). The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions? Scratch, scratch, scratch

Hang in there, there are only two more Stellas to go.


Second Place: Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware, sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms.Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000 ... oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.


Finally, (may I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please) this year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home - from an OU football game, no less - having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich.

Don't look so incredulous. Remember, we're talking about Oklahoma here.

Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set.

The Oklahoma jury awarded her - you are sitting down, right? - $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home.

Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might buy a motor home.



Monty

At the Butcher Shop.....

A butcher shop owner noticed a mongrel dog pounding on the front door with his paw. He went to the door and opened it. The dog came in and sat down and barked a little, until, the butcher noticed the envelope in the dog's mouth.

In the envelope was a note asking for 5 pork chops and 5 chicken legs and also contained 16 dollars. The butcher prepared the order with the dog watching every move. The dog took the package and then held the envelope open with his paw and counted the change.

Then the dog went to the door and waited for the butcher to open the door for him.

The butcher was amazed at the dog's capabilities and decided to follow the dog home. The dog only went about two blocks and turned into a modest house. The butcher noticed that the mailbox listed M. E. Pettybone CPO, US Navy Ret.

The dog put his plunder down and then turned around several times and then seeming to be frustrated he threw himself against the door several times and then ran around the house, back up onto the porch, and began to press the doorbell non-stop. In a moment the door was answered by the old Chief, who began to scold the dog.

The butcher intervened and said that the dog was a genius.

"Genius... ha... you think he is a genius? This is the second time this week that he forgot his key"



Monty

Spanish Class.....

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

"House", for instance, is feminine: "la casa."

"Pencil," however, is masculine: "el lapiz."

A student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?"

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether "computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computadora"), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.


(THIS GETS BETTER!)


The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine ("el computador"), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.


The who won.



Monty

My interesting day in Beaufort...

A good fried of mine had an interesting day and felt he needed to write it down. It is a little long but I think you will like it…
Monty



It was just another work day, this morning. I had a noon appointment at Allen AME Church, right up against the fence of Beaufort Marine Corp Air station and next door to the Beaufort animal shelter with the pastor, who is also a police chaplain....to fix his Allen Organ, that was dead (corroded circuit breaker on power amp power supply).

I fixed the organ, and a couple of piddling little problems it had, filled out the bill and the pastor wanted to see my step van shop so I invited him into the air-conditioned coolness. God it was HOT in Beaufort!

Curious about my DJ equipment, I played him some tunes from my MP3 player through the beastly speakers. Suddenly, I looked out at some movement outside and spotted a maroon, early 90's Lumina minivan. A young white man got out and headed for the church door. I notified the pastor, who was intently listening to Ella Fitzgerald singing in 1948. The pastor stopped the young man before he could disappear into this rather large AME church and he went out to see what he wanted, it being a black church a curiosity.

This begins our story, the pastor and me.........

The young man, probably late 20's, skinny but physically fit, was panhandling for gas money to get him, his wife and SIX LITTLE BOYS from 2 to about 8 years old back home to Orlando! They ran out of money, so the sad story goes, when the van broke down coming back from North Carolina on I-95 and had to get it fixed with about all they had.

Man, looking into that van at those six little blonde boys who were hungry and hot, their pink little faces showing the fatigue of the hot day, just melted your heart....and maybe our brains, too. Pastor refused to give them money, for fear of it not going to help those boys the way the country's state is today, but offered to take them up to a nearby gas station to put some gas in the tank to help them on their way.....I followed along in case this was a setup to steal his monstrous Cadillac or hold him up. We're out in the country, ya know.

As he pulled into the gas station on the Charleston side of the USMC main gate road, I noticed he had donned his POLICE CHAPLAIN hat to gauge what the adult's reaction would be if this were a scam. He told me he'd been scammed a few times before. Lots of churches are.
The woman seemed a little nervous, but there was no reaction of flight. I got out of my step van and went into the store to see what foods this convenience store had for little boys to eat. Pastor came inside to prepay for some gas, without the adults in the van, so we talked about our predicament and I got his assessment of the situation.

He went back outside to talk to the kids some more, trying to find out some truths as I explained to the clerks what was going on to put them at ease. That settled, I looked out to see pastor had all the walking kids, 5 blonde-topped white kids all smiling, in tow across the parking lot. They came into the store and started to peruse the candy racks, about all the store had to offer. The kids, being kids, chose the absolute worst, nasty candy TV sells them. Mom, still looking a little fearful at that hat, probably fearing us calling the cops and DSS child welfare bureaucrats on them, stood by while pastor and I told them to get whatever they wanted. Mom tried to stop it at one item, but we'd have none of that. Most of the boys got 2 or 3 junk foods. We insisted they get a Coke or some other drink as the only liquids we saw in the van was a fruit punch jug full of water.

Well, he was buying gas, so I coughed up for the goodies. The boys, though clean and not dressed in rags, clearly were not used to such treats and thanked me profusely. We kept them inside the cool store to see if we could cool them down before packing back in this un-air conditioned van. The man said if they ran the AC, the van overheated. Not good. After some cajoling, pastor convinced Mom to get this awful shirt off the poor overheated little baby-in-a-Pamper. She had a box and a half of Pampers in the van, enough to make it to Orlando, we thought.

The boys followed pastor back out to the van and climbed in as dad finished the gas pumping. "What's the gas gauge read?” pastor asked him. It was about 1/2 a tank on the pastor's $20. "Wait here.” I instructed, on my way back into the store. I added another $20 to the gas tank to bring it up to nearly full and cooled off in the store again while he pumped it. It took all that $20, too, of course.

At that point, I was so emotionally drained thinking about these two STUPID, TOTALLY STUPID adults, I just couldn't stand to be around them any more. The boys were "fed", such as it was, and had extra Bear Claws and drinks to help later on in the night, after it cooled off. They all went to the men's room and all I could do was done. I didn't want to say what I was thinking to the STUPIDS in the front seat, so went out, shook the pastor's hand and said I was headed back to Charleston.....

From the time I left and as I type this account, I can't get their little faces out of my head worrying about where they are now, and are they all ok. The van looked a mess under the hood. SIX KIDS!

If anyone proposes involuntary sterilization for the REALLY STUPID, I'm all for it and they have my full support. Some people just SHOULDN'T be allowed to raise kids......

If you got this far in the story, I feel lots better telling it.

Thanks for putting up with me....... The man said he was "in construction and odd jobs".....WITH SIX BOYS HE DIDN'T HAVE A STEADY
JOB?!!

I won't sleep well, tonight..... I should have demanded their phone number at home in Orlando or someone who could tell me how they arrived safe. That would have gotten me some sleep.



Something to Think about
Monty