Crucifixion

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This must be the stupidest man ever born,’ said Sheriff Barry DeLong of Somerset County, Maine.  ‘Except that he did call the emergency services when his self-crucifixion attempt went awry. 

 

My men had to break down the door to gain entry.  He seemed confused at first.  He was rambling on about walking on water.  He told us the face of God had appeared on his computer’s screen-saver and told him he was God’s son and should crucify himself right away. 

 

He got two large pieces of wood, nailed them together on his bedroom floor, lay down on it and proceeded to nail his left hand to the makeshift cross using a six-inch nail and a hammer in his right hand.  At that stage it occurred to him that he’d be unable to nail his right hand, his left being otherwise occupied.  He rang for us, using his mobile phone.

 

(I couldn’t help reflecting that this was the ONLY time I ever remember a proper use for this ubiquitous instrument!).

 

I offered to wield the hammer and nail but he appeared to have changed his mind about the whole enterprise.  My men sawed off the cross where it was attached to his hand.  It was freed at the County Hospital. 

 

No charges were preferred against him.  There was no crime only mind-boggling imbecility and possible insanity.

 

And wasting police time and resources.

 

Hold on!  Get him back in here. NOW!’   

Not Lost after All!

The Royal Hotel, Ventor, Isle of Wight recently received a request from a German tourist to book a room. 

 

Nothing unusual in that you say.  Only that the card sent to make the request was posted some ninety six years ago.  The half penny stamp bore the image of King Edward VII who died in 1910.  

 

Asked to comment a Post Office spokesman remarked,

 

‘This only proves that eventually – like our great forebears of Wells Fargo – the Post Office delivers triumphantly.

 

Indeed this is so long ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if Wells Fargo didn’t have a hand in it!

 

Really, the Royal Hotel ought to be surcharged because the face value of the stamp does not cover the current postage charge.  But in the circumstances, we are prepared to be magnanimous and overlook the surcharge.’

 

Perhaps the postman who delivered it ought to be grateful that he didn’t suffer the fate common to today’s bearers of bad news: i.e. ‘shoot the messenger!’

 

But then again, Piers Moran is supposedly seeking a

Disposal Chutes

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‘When the coffin was carried into the Chapel of Ease there was a howl of derision from the striking gravediggers.  They were cheering and clapping and yelling.  We were mortified!  My late aunt deserved a better send-off than this!’  Judy Andrews told reporters outside the funeral parlour in Quebec. 

‘They were waving banners and laughing and pointing.  I don’t know whether they deserve better pay and conditions of service, but now, after this display I believe they deserve hanging!’

Co-operative Funeral Services, from the photograph above, appear to have found a solution.

Anal Wedges

‘The most common excuse is that they ‘fell unto’ these objects.  We frankly find that hard to believe, especially the bloke with a can of shaving cream wedged in his anal passage.  There was three feet of battery wire firmly attached and wound round it.  He didn’t even attempt an explanation of that!  To be honest, we thought at first it was an even more perverse form of human bomb, and no doctor would approach him!

The spokesman for the University Medical Centre at Leiden in Netherlands warmed to his subject.

‘Sometimes it’s fruit, vegetables, bottles, billiard balls, a Barbie doll, candles or screwdrivers.  This mania particularly afflicts men of between forty and sixty years of age.’

I don’t know why, but that last comment unnerved me somewhat!

‘But they can be of any age’ he continued, as if to reassure me.

School Howlers

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Concentrating upon words, their meanings, corruption and derivations, as we have been recently, brought to mind the true story of the substitute teacher who was concerned at the limited vocabulary of her charges. 

Since they were boys, she decided to test their use of adjectives in regard to their favourite sport of football.  How can you qualify the noun footballer?  ‘What??’  O.K.  Complete the sentence, ‘David Beckham is a … footballer’. 

Prompted thus, one boy offered the word ‘good’.  A second boy said ‘bad’.  As she went round the class, no further adjectives were offered.  ‘Good’ inevitably alternated with ‘bad’.  Eventually the pattern was broken.

‘Corrupt!’ said one little chap.

‘Now that’s interesting,’ said the teacher.  ‘Where did you pick up that word?  Was it from television?  ‘Corrupt’.  Are you thinking of some footballer who has been charged with a criminal offence?’

‘I didn’t say ‘corrupt”, he replied contemptuously, knowing well that his street credibility was on the line here, ‘I said ‘crap”.

It was a Catholic school and she was a dedicated religion teacher.  At Whitsun, forty days after the Ascension, the Holy Ghost descended on the apostles in the form of tongues of fire.   I admit I too get confused between these Feasts, the Ressurection, the Assumption and the Epiphany.  Anyway the question was asked to name the Feast Day celebrated at Easter.

‘I know,’ says our favourite pupil.  ‘It’s the Feast of the Erection!’ 

Dog Brothels

It was an amusing story, certainly, but my attention was grabbed by that introduction!  Most dogs in this city get only a five-minute walk on a lead each day.  That was a great solace to me for I’d laboured under the illusion that I alone suffered from pet-owners on this count.  It’s because a number of my neighbours consider their dogs to be house-trained when they deposit their treasures in someone else’s garden [preferably mine!].  If the unfortunate mutt is so precipitate as to choose mine, then his evening walkies is immediately terminated and he is returned to his paddock.  If you don’t believe me, come and examine the evidence!

‘Most dogs in this city get only a five-minute walk on a lead each day,’ Karl Lentze told reporters in Berlin.  But I’d got the wrong end of the lead!  He was on a sales pitch.

‘That’s not long enough to sniff another canine, let alone indulge in a bit of fun.  Our dog brothel will allow them to release their frustrations and will suit the fast-paced modern life of their owners too.

For

Shelve Him

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‘The man urgently needs shelving!’ the ambulance man offered – which I thought was a particularly harsh judgement from a medical man in the mercy business.  I checked my dictionary – shelve; to abandon, to cancel, put an end to.  What could he have done to deserve so harsh a judgment?

 

The crew had had to remove the door of his apartment by the hinges and clamour over mountains of magazines to rescue Patrick Moore from his paper tomb where he had been trapped for three days.

 

‘He is an obsessive collector of pornographic magazines with tens of thousands of publications stacked to the ceiling.  He’d made a corridor through so he could get in and out.  Finally he unbalanced the stacks.  I’ve no sympathy with him.’ 

 

So he had required him ‘shelved’ rather than the apartment!

 

Had he met a similar case before?  Harlem brothers Homer and Langley Collier were crushed to death by their collection of encyclopaedias and clutter in 1947.  It took 18 days to find the bodies under the debris which included a Model T Ford, an antique motorbike, a collection of stuffed rats and ten pianos.’