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 [ BACK]  [NEXT]                       Issue #249 - 05/20/2001

SUNFUN AL FRESCO

A Mess of Funnies

Howdy All!
     Ever pay attention to all of the rules in a Road Runner
cartoon?  The Road Runner never leaves the road.  The Coyote
always causes all of his own problems.  All products come from
the massive Acme conglomerate, but we never see the Coyote paying
for anything.  The Road Runner never says anything except "Beep-
Beep!," etc.  While these regulations may seem arbitrary - maybe
even silly, the few cartoons that broke them seem odd and somehow
poorer than the rest.  Comedy thrives on sharply defined rules
and characters because humor is not a blunt object, but a
scalpel.  In a perfect world, comedians would be board certified,
like surgeons, dentists and morticians.
     At times it may not seem so, but SUNFUN also has a pretty
specific set of rules, because rules give you something to play
against.  And sometimes, something to break.  You could say that
there is madness to my method.  That's one of the reasons we
usually have a topic most every week; without some kind of theme,
these things have the danger of degenerating to a pile of semi-
anarchistic goo.
     Welcome to the goo, friends.  The goo is rampant.  There is
an extremely high goo forecast.  It's goo time.  Anarchy rules!
     Why?  Because most always having a theme has one serious
down side: there are always those odd stories that don't quite
fit, even though they are pretty funny just on their own.  They
are like square pegs in round holes...  Or, is that round pegs
and square holes?  OK, they are like pentagonal pegs and
nonagonal holes.  (See, I knew that writing course would
eventually help me avoid cliches like the plague.)
     OK, though we are throwing out most of the rules this week,
we haven't quite gone 'round the bend enough to forget to thank
all of the friends and supporters who make this craziness fly
every week, rules or not.  So, Hello and Thanks to: Jerry Taff,
Chuck Maray, Bruce Gonzo, Howard Lesniak, Yasmin Leischer, Nnamdi
Elleh, Caterina Sukup, Jan Michalski, Anna Macareno, Kenn Venit,
Sharon Nuernberg, Carol J. Becwar, Tim McChain, Kerry Miller,
Brian Siegl, R.J. Tully and Rosana Leung.  Even though were are
doing without a theme this week, we have to keep some rules in
place for safety.  Like the one about driving on the right.  You
could get hurt or worse breaking that one.  Those of you in Hong
Kong, Japan and England should ignore the last two sentences.  It
sure would be easier to stick to the rules if they were
consistent, wouldn't it?
     Have a "Goo" Week!
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ONE-WAY TRIP...
------------
     There are a couple of bits of information you need to
understand this story.  First is that Nippon Yusen KK is the
largest shipping company in Japan.  Second, the price of
funerals and graveyard plots has been increasing to insane levels
in Japan, even in these days of falling land values.
     Putting these two facts together, Nippon Yusen hopes to cash
in by providing inexpensive funerals.  Toward that end, they have
formed a partnership with Hasegawa, the largest store operator of
Buddhist altars; Hasegawa handles the funeral service, and Yusen
handles the shipping and scattering ashes in the ocean.
     According to the business newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun,
this is expected to be a popular service, as many elderly
Japanese lost children and husbands across the Pacific during
World War II.
     To keep everything legal, the ship's captain will sign a
certificate verifying that the ashes have been scattered in the
sea and give the certificate to the surviving relatives. 
(Reuters)
          [ A shipping company that is SUPPOSED to lose 
          packages in transit?  Now I've heard 
          everything... ]


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DEM BONES...
---------
     Some people have a skeleton in their closet.  Then there's
the Egyptian gravedigger arrested in Cairo recently.  Police
found two sackfuls of bones in the man's house.  The gravedigger
told police that he wasn't doing it because he was a ghoul; he
said he dug up graves and sold the bones to medical students
strictly for cash. (Reuters)
          [I always said it was a bad thing to bring
          your work home with you. ]


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GETTING AHEAD IN POLITICS...
-------------------------
     Over the past few decades, many ethnic, racial and cultural
groups have finally achieved representation in American politics. 
But according to one group, there's still a minority that is
discriminated against in political life.
     Nope, it's not members of the Jerry Springer studio
audience, it's bald guys.
     According to follicle-challenged Brooklyn electrician Arnie
Rubin, bald men make up less than a quarter of New York's City
Council and the state congressional delegation, despite the fact
that half of males go bald to some extent.  And society will have
to pay.
     Speaking at a news conference on the steps of City Hall,
Rubin spoke in support of a political action committee for the
comb-over set.  The committee, called HAIRPAC, will specifically
back shiny-skulled candidates.  They are, of course, likely to be 
male - unless Sinead O'Connor chooses to run.
     "We figure we get discriminated against because we haven't
got enough hair," Rubin said.
     How they explain the political success of the impressively
bald former New York mayor Ed Koch, I don't know.
     Though the committee only has a few members so far, Rubin
insists that the movement won't be hair today, gone tomorrow. 
And while it could sound like fuzzy logic to some, the head of
the movement clearly takes this very personally.
     "As soon as I started to get bald, my wife says, 'that's
it,"' Rubin said. "She left me.  Found somebody with hair." 
(Reuters)


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PARTY ANIMAL
------------
     A pair of Dutch police officers got a shock recently as they
were patrolling a small lane near Engelen in the southern part of
the country - a huge bear sleeping at the edge of the road.
     At least, that's what they thought.  Closer investigation
revealed the large furry one was a very drunk human male in a
bear suit.  Apparently, the 22-year-old had drunk 15 liters of
beer at a costume party (about 30 bottles), and decided he was
too plowed to drive home.  Eventually he discovered that he was
too drunk to walk as well, and laid down to hibernate for a while
until he felt better.  (Reuters)


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EGG ON THEIR FACES...
------------------
     It was Easter and a modern day Italian Romeo was looking to
impress his Juliet with a special Easter surprise.  He had a
local candy store in the northern city of Perugia make him a
large chocolate egg that contained a diamond engagement ring. 
How romantic!
     In fact, the guy forgot only one detail - he had the egg
made of dark chocolate, which his lady friend didn't care for. 
So, when the treat was delivered to her apartment, she took it
back to the candy shop and exchanged it for one made of milk
chocolate, without telling her boyfriend.  One that did not
contain a ring.
     Though the couple rushed back to the shop as soon as they
realized what had happened, the special, ring-containing
chocolate egg ended up mixed with all the others, and had been
sold.  Luca Maori, a lawyer acting for the young woman, launched
an appeal for the return of the eggstremely valuable holiday
sweet, even though the couple has already announced that the
engagement is off.  (Reuters)


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KNOCK, KNOCK!
------------
     A little vacation is a nice break for everyone.  A little
time off to go home, see the family and have a few drinks with
your friends.  Of course, the reality is that, at the end of the
holiday, you still have to get back to work.
     Crazy as it might sound, this also applies to as many as 70
inmates who escaped from Columbia's Caloto prison, high up in the
Andes.  After three days away, they came back and knocked on the
front door of the prison, asking to go back to their cells.
     The secret to their little jaunt is a law in Columbia that
prison breaks don't count if the escapee returns voluntarily
within 72 hours.  Just before their free holiday was up, over 60
of the Caloto escapees had returned to the compound.
     Prison authorities were remarkably philosophical about this
mass escape.
     "They usually wait until the very last minute, to take
advantage of their free time," the spokesman said.  (Reuters)


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IT'S THE BOMB!
-------------
     After a few explosive incidents, 50 men in padded protective
suits and gloves were sent out across Holland to defuse a
potentially dangerous threat.
     Orange juice.
     Close to 300,000 bottles of orange juice made by the Vrumona
company are being recalled after customers complained that the
bottles were exploding.  The bottler blames a machine that failed
last February and sent out their sales staff fitted out as a
bottle bomb squad to safely retrieve the dangerous drinks. 
(Reuters)


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DAMAGED GOODS...
-------------
     The Toulemne County Library in California recently sent a
notice to Chuck Barr of Jamestown, California that he hadn't paid
his bill for damages on a book he had borrowed.  And it wasn't
going to be cheap: the bill was for $39,949,000,620,214.00.
     Yup, just shy of $40 trillion.  About seven times the
national debt.
     Naturally, Barr thought he might have some difficulty paying
this amount on his Navy pension.
     "I guess I must have dog-eared one of the pages," he 
joked.
     The library notice, dated last January 20th, didn't even
include the name of the book.
     Stranger still, when Barr called the library he learned he
didn't owe anything for any book damage.  A computer apparently
had decided some book was damaged, entered its bar code number in
the "amount due" space, and kicked out the fine notice.  (AP)


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REPORT FROM THE LITERARY UNDERGROUND
------------------------------------
     Like many universities around the world, the University of
Western Sydney faces some budget problems.  And storing surplus
textbooks is always a significant problem.  But the university
was embarrassed recently when it discovered how someone on the
staff had dealt with the surplus books problem.
     "Instead of being stored which would have been most
appropriate, some idiot got rid of surplus books by burying
them," said university spokesman Steven Matchett.
     Matchett said the university did not know who was
responsible for burying the textbooks on the university's
grounds, next to a cricket field.  Most of the 10,000 buried
books were apparently interred sometime around 1996.  The
majority of those are now unusable.
     "They are not in terrific shape," Matchett said, adding that
dumping books in the ground would not happen again.  (Reuters)
          [ And imagine the fine if they were in 
          Toulemne County! ]


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DON'T HAVE A COW, MAN...
---------------------
     Lawsuits are funny things; in the U.S., you can sue almost
anyone over almost anything.  But even in this climate where
there aren't many rules, this suit is pretty far out there.
     Citing an internal Email obtained in the discovery process,
a vegetarian lawyer is claiming millions of dollars in damages
from McDonald's Corp.  The suit accuses McDonald's of fry-by-
night practices for advertising its fries as cooked in pure 
vegetable oil. Worse, according to Harish Bharti, the fast
food giant is secretly lacing its french fries with beef fat.
     "We will seek injunctive relief to stop this practice ...
and we are seeking damages, including punitive damages, that will
easily be in the hundreds of millions of dollars," said Harish
Bharti, who filed the class action suit in King County Superior
Court early this month.
     Company officials call the suit "udderly" ridiculous. 
Stressing all of its food products are government approved,
spokesman Walt Riker said McDonald's fries contain "minuscule"
amounts of beef products, not the beef fat alleged by the
lawsuit.
     Bharti, an Indian native who, as a devout Hindu, avoids all
meat, said he filed the suit on behalf of the million or so
Hindus in the United States and 15 million vegetarians eaten meat
products unknowingly.
     "McDonald's didn't have any right to deceive people this
way," Bharti said.
          [ Perhaps only a lawyer could eat at
          McDonald's and believe that it was a
          vegetarian restaurant. ]


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A CRASH COURSE IN HUMOR...
-----------------------
     All of us have things that we find funny, but Daniel Ellis
of Kenosha, Wisconsin has one joke he'll probably never forget.
     Ellis and passenger Brenda Williams were driving through
town in his van, when Williams told a joke so funny that he
started laughing uncontrollably.  Ellis only regained his
composure after the van swerved off the road and crashed into a
utility pole.
     Fortunately, neither Ellis nor Williams were injured.
          [ Last we heard, the Comedy Store was looking
          to sign Williams for a few performances. ]


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MAKING MOUNTAINS OUT OF MOLEHILLS
---------------------------------
     Filmmakers are hard at work on a new, mythic adventure film
called "Reign of Fire" about dragons taking over England.  The
$70 million movie stars Matthew McConaughey and Christian Bale
and is due to be released next year.  It is currently filming in
Ireland, and features fantastic scenes of the snow-capped
mountains of Norfolk.
     Those of you who know your English geography will have
stopped with a "Huh?!!" by now.  Norfolk is actually one of the
flattest counties in England, where the highest point is only
about 300 feet above sea level.  Production was well under way
when two Norfolk men on the film crew pointed out that it was
like setting a film in the mountain peaks of Kansas.
     But Norfolk County Council spokesman John Birchall said they
would welcome the publicity -- accurate or not.
     "If fans of the film want to come here to look for the
mountains, they will be most welcome." 
     "I tried to explain that they were making a terrible
mistake," said film crew member Shaun Hindle, who was born in
Norfolk, " but they just shrugged their shoulders and said it was
a small detail.  Their view was that the film wold be seen by 200
million people across the world and only about two million would
know that Norfolk is flat."  (Reuters)
          [ And now gentle readers, you are part of the
          2 million who know. ]


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© 2001 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.