[639] in Humor
HUMOR: The Weirdness of 94
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew Bennett)
Wed Dec 28 20:18:00 1994
From: Andrew Bennett <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 94 20:14:17 -2400
To: humor@MIT.EDU
>
>
> BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuter) - Raise a glass at New Year to
> the condom that plays Beethoven and the flatulence activists who
> say breaking wind is healthy.
> A little indelicate? Then crack open the bubbly for the
> guard dog that was stolen, the cat that dialled long distance,
> or the taxi driver who got a $30,000 tip.
> Or how about a toast to Japanese squid racing, portable
> British gardens or stuffed Danish puppies -- all of which burst
> on an unprepared world in 1994.
> It is time again, as 1995 rolls in, to pay homage to the
> weird and sometimes wonderful happenings that graced the world
> in the old year.
> Top story -- at least as far as New Year revellers are
> concerned -- must surely be the campaign by the Netherlands
> Liver and Intestine Foundation to make breaking wind publicly
> acceptable.
> Fifteen times a day is about right, the group said.
> In Italy, meanwhile, a safe-sex conscious physics student
> planned to patent a prophylactic that plays classical music if
> it tears.
> His breaks to Beethoven, he said. It was not clear if it was
> ``Ode to Joy.''
> Animals, as ever, added grist to the weirdness mill.
> Traffic in downtown Tokyo ground to a virtual halt when
> squid races attracted large crowds of office workers who fancied
> a flutter. The winner took home the speediest squid.
> A Tokyo taxi driver is waiting for police to decide if he
> can keep a 3,000,000 yen ($30,000) tip. His passenger paid the
> 1,600 yen ($16) fare on the meter, asked for a receipt and then
> put a stack of old 10,000-yen bills next to the driver as he got
> out of the taxi. Police say they have had no inquiries about the
> money and the driver may get to keep it.
> An Australian Siamese cat built up a large telephone bill by
> knocking the receiver off its cradle and stepping on the redial
> button.
> A hapless Dutchman, meanwhile, spent more than $1,000 on a
> police-trained guard dog -- only to have it stolen two days
> later.
> Still, the dog had better luck than five Labrador puppies in
> Denmark. To the horror of pet lovers, they were stuffed and put
> on display in a modern art exhibition.
> For fans of the macabre, the United States also weighed in
> with its usual flourish.
> Some New Yorkers, it was painstakingly reported, have taken
> to being branded rather than simply getting a tattoo.
> In Florida, two separate sets of German tourists spent the
> night in hotels with a (different) corpse under their bed.
> One group complained about the smell; the other apparently
> didn't notice.
> Elsewhere, some people were spectacularly unlucky.
> An Australian farm hand was crippled when a lamb knocked
> over a rifle and shot her.
> In Spain, an 82-year-old woman, quietly playing cards in her
> home with friends, was gored to death by a bull. It escaped from
> the local bullring and crashed through the woman's front door.
> But at the other extreme, 1994 also had its share of good
> luck.
> A Spanish tourist had a wallet returned years after losing
> it in Scotland's Loch Ness. It was found by an expedition
> looking for the loch's monster.
