Jokes and Stories from this months issue.

*OVERHEARD DURING the 2002 World Cup competition in Japan and South Korea: "Michael Owen is lightening fast. He has run the 100 metres in 9.5 seconds. If he decided to take up sprinting full time, he would blow away all the black guys that represent Britain these days." Well, I'm willing to bet a million baht that if Michael Owen raced Britain's leading sprinter, European Champion Dwain Chambers over 100 metres, he would be more that ten metres behind at the finish. Chambers' European 100m record (equalling Linford Christie's time in 1993) is 9.87 seconds. I would estimate that Owen could clock perhaps 11 seconds for the distance. The Liverpool striker's special skill (and for which he is highly paid) is that he can run fast whilst controlling a football at his feet, and also move quickly into position to pass the ball or kick it at the goal. Unlike some strutting egomaniacs of the English Premier League, however, I'm sure that Owen is also modest enough to know that he can never beat Britain's best professional sprinters at their own game. The world 100 metres record for men is 9.78 seconds by Tim Montgomery (USA) in Paris last September. If Michael Owen was once timed at 9.5 seconds for the distance, the timekeeper must have been his mother, using an egg timer.
*FILM STAR Henry (Hank) Fonda (1905-1982) was a genial soul, but not much of a family man. His daughter Jane and son Peter saw little of him during their childhood and often referred to his remote image. Just goes to prove the old adage that "Fonda makes the heart grow absent"
*LADY JANE GREY was proclaimed Queen of England on 10 July 1553 at the tender age of sixteen. She reigned for a grand total of nine days, before she was arrested and executed for adultery. Henry VIII was always pretty tough on his wives.
*SIR THOMAS MOORE was beheaded on 6 July 1535 for refusing to give his blessing to the divorce of King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Arragon. As he rested his head on the chopping block, Sir Thomas moved his beard to one side with the immortal words, "This at least hath not offended the King."
*FROM MANILA, capital city of the Philippines, comes the news that special 'women only' railway carriages have now been inserted to cut down on the prevalent male practice of 'frotting'- men rubbing up against women in crowded public places. This is a criminal offence in many countries. Whilst this move has been popular with the ladies, there have been complaints from local katoeys (transvestites). It seems that the ladyboys of Manila want to have their own rail carriages too.
*WHILST DRIVING to work on a busy Bangkok street one morning, an expat noticed an expensive sports car ahead of him, weaving erratically in and out of the traffic. "Bet that's a woman driver, talking on her mobile", he thought to himself. Sure enough, when he drew alongside, he observed that there WAS a female behind the steering wheel, talking excitedly on her cellular telephone. But she was not actually driving. Her six year-old son was sitting on her lap, steering the vehicle as she discussed beauty treatments with her best friend on the telephone. We all know that some Thais are notorious scofflaws, but that one takes the biscuit.
*WHEN A CAN of dog food exploded on a supermarket shelf, an unfortunate shopper was covered from head to foot in Rover's favourite nosh (chow to our American cousins). Julie Tyers, 29, was buying cat food at Tesco's supermarket in west London when the freak accident occurred. "I heard a loud bang and thought a terrorist bomb had gone off", said Ms Tyers. Store staff helped to clean her up and the management offered
to pay for dry cleaning and the cost of a new pair of boots. She also received a full apology and a free bottle of champagne for her ordeal. Ironically, feline-loving Ms Tyers had just put a can of cat food into her shopping basket when the dog food can exploded beside her. ('Daily Telegraph', London)
*DURING A RUSH hour in Syracuse, New York, an apparently rabid beaver, foaming at the mouth and swollen to twice it's normal size, was seen reared on it's hind legs, running and snapping at passing cars. Motorists alerted local police and an officer was finally forced to dispatch the berserk animal by blasting it with his 12-gauge pump action shotgun.
*ANSWERING AN emergency call, a police officer in Fairfax County, Virginia, was required to rescue a squirrel which had strayed into a residence and hidden itself in a baby grand piano. The officer had musical talent, so seated himself at the piano and started playing the tune "All I want" by the group known as 'Toad the Wet Sprocket'. Not enjoying this at all, the squirrel jumped out of the piano onto nearby curtains, which tore apart under its talons. The animal then leapt onto the police officer's head, and then onto a couch, where he was able to finally apprehend and caution the frantic creature.
*FIGHTER PILOTS during World War 1 (1914-1918) were never allowed to use parachutes whilst on active service above France. Top brass in The Royal Flying Corps (RFC), a branch of the British Army and forerunner of the Royal Air Force, declared that parachutes would be "Bad for morale" (!) To these bewhiskered veterans of cavalry warfare, parachuting was considered to be an act of cowardice: it was better for pilots to burn alive in their aircraft than to bail out and float to the ground when under fire. Luckily, a lightweight biplane of the period could glide for a long way with a shot-up engine, and, provided the airman could find an empty field, he could crash land without too much trouble. For example, A British Sopwith Camel pointed into a strong head wind with flaps down could land on a bumpy cow pasture in the space of 150 feet (45 metres). But the attrition rate was high. For every man who managed to land a battered bird safely, four more died in action. An aircraft made of wood, canvas and silk riddled with tracer rounds will burn fiercely. The pilot would either die in the flames, or drop like a stone to the earth below.
By 1917, most allied pilots and their German enemies were lads in their teens, and service life expectancy in the RFC was just two weeks. In the early days of the Great War, pilots dropped bombs from their cockpits onto entrenched infantry as they flew just ten feet (3.05 metres) above the ground. At that height they risked being shot out of the sky by rifle fire. The most celebrated German fighter ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen (born on 2 May 1892) who shot down over 80 allied aircraft, was an ancient veteran among fellow aviators when he was killed over Vaux-sur-Somme on 21 April 1918. Germany's famous 'Red Baron' never lived to celebrate his 26th birthday,
*JIM LAKER took all ten Australian wickets for just 53 runs on 31 July 1956 in the second innings of the Old Trafford Test Match. In the first innings, he collected 9 wickets for 37 runs. Sigh. We just don't get English Test Match players like that any more.
*A SCORPION can survive for three weeks embedded in a block of ice. And after nuclear tests in the Sahara Desert in the 1950's scientists discovered that scorpions can withstand about two hundred times the amount of radiation that would kill a human.
*THE BLACK widow spider can eat 20 husbands in one day. Just like Zsa Zsa Gabor.
*FRANK LENTINI, known as 'King of the Freaks', had three legs, four feet, sixteen toes and two sets of genitals. His deformities were the result of his mother giving birth to triplets that did not separate. But his amazing appearance did not prevent Lentini getting married and fathering four healthy children.
*PERHAPS THE greatest cricketer of all time, W G Grace (born on 18 July 1848) was also talented at other sports. In 1866, after scoring 224 not out for England against Surrey at the Oval on the two preceding days, he won the 440 yards hurdles at the first National Olympian Association meeting held at Crystal Palace. This was a cinder track venue very close to the current sports centre and stadium in south London.
*ONE OF the suitors for the hand of Queen Elizabeth I of England was Phillipe, Duke of Orleans. The young English queen, who ruled from 1558 to 1603, rejected his offer of marriage when she discovered that Phillipe was an habitual cross dresser. He aped women's gestures down to the last detail and always wore high heels. In Thailand, he wouldn't have attracted a second glance.
*QUOTE FROM cheeky cockney comedian Jim Davidson, "All my wives were good housekeepers. When we divorced, they kept the houses."
*SEAN CONNERY, the original 'James Bond' was born on 25 August 1930. He made his debut as the British secret service agent 007 in 'Doctor No', released in 1962. Before becoming a movie star millionaire, the Scottish actor and golf fanatic had a variety of jobs, including one as a coffin-polisher in Edinburgh.
*FRENCH HISTORIANS refer to the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815) as 'The Battle of Mont St Jean'. Okay, but we know which side won. It was the British, aided of course by Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher (1742-1819) and his formidable Prussian cavalry, which arrived late on the scene but turned the tide of battle in favour of the Duke of Wellington's forces.
*THE LATEST American buzz phrase is "Pain Management". The sympathetic, caring people in this field are clairvoyants who can put us in touch with loved ones and family members who have recently died. Just contact the website and send a hundred dollars signing on fee to…yeah, well, you know the rest.
*MEN OF BRITAIN'S elite SAS (Special Air Service) regiment are by necessity hard guys who sustain themselves through tough assignments with a very British type of black, laconic humour. Author Andy McNab ('Bravo Two Zero') reveals that when faced with the prospect of being tortured by captors, the men rationalise and hopefully defuse the horror of what is about to happen to them by saying, "Well, they can do anything they like, but they can't get us pregnant."
*PARISHONERS OF St Mary's Church in Mirfield, northeast England, were startled when they heard wolf whistles and obscene insults coming from above. The culprit was an African Gray parrot, which was nesting in trees in the church grounds. Said one resident, "Let's just say that Mr Polly will not be in the vicar's Nativity Play this year."
*QUEEN ELIZABETH 11 was crowned in London on 2 June 1953. This particular day was chosen because meteorologists said it would be the most consistently sunny day of the year. It rained.
*DID YOU know that at a steady walking pace, a fit human can walk the circumference of the earth in a year - that's 365 days? Don't ask me how mathematicians worked that one out.
*THE DISTINCTIVE sharp-nosed Concorde aircraft was a joint British/French engineering project that was commissioned on 29 November 1962. The elite passenger jet, which can fly at 60,000 feet at twice the speed of sound, first flew in 1967, and the first commercial flight between London and New York was in 1976. The high-speed journey takes 3.5 hours so that, because of the time difference, passengers arrive at their destination 90 minutes before take-off! Aimed at business passengers with big expense accounts, the Concorde priced itself out of the main commercial market. This narrow-bodied jet can only hold a limited number of passengers, and only 16 of the planned 200 Concorde aircraft were built and put into service. But the Concorde is solid proof that the British and French, who have warred for centuries, can work together on something.
*BRITAIN'S FAMOUS public executioner Albert Pierrepoint once had the unpleasant task of hanging a friend from his local public house. One of the drawbacks of his macabre and unusual job, I guess.
*A CROW in Hampshire, England once built a nest made from barbed wire stolen from a nearby building site. I expect that the birds got the point.
*WE UNDERSTAND that there is no truth in the story that the great American writer James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) once wrote a novel about a randy tribe of Americans Indians called 'Lust of the Mohicans'.
*A BRITISH SOAP opera e-mail address - eastenders@dotcotton
*THE MOST COMMON letter in both the French and English languages is the letter 'e'. In 1969, a Frenchman managed to write a full-length novel named 'La Disparition', which did not contain a single letter 'e' in the text.
*KING PTOLEMY IV of Egypt had a passion for very large rowing vessels. The biggest one ever built in history was during his reign (224-205 BC). It required ten thousand oarsmen to propel it along the Nile. Yes that's right - 10,000 Steve Redgraves'.
*THE GOLIATH frog of West Africa is nearly three feet long and most domestic cats would be inclined to steer well clear of one.
*AMERICA'S FAMOUS crooner and actor Francis Albert Sinatra (1915-1998) was once quoted as saying that "Rock and roll music is only played by cretinous goons". We can safely assume from this that Frank was not an Elvis fan.
*TRASH TALKIN' Teddy Bears were the Christmas craze sweeping the USA last December. These cuddly toys, however, are not for children. The company's website warns, "Ballsy Bear and Bitchy Bear are rude, crude and totally lewd." They look just like other adorable teddies, apart from their slight frowns. But once their cuddly joints are moved, they turn the air blue with swearing. Ballsy and Bitchy don't like being handled, and are quick to tell anyone holding them to get stuffed. Just the thing for Sebastian Flyte - for you literary types that recall reading Evelyn Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited'.
*PETER THE GREAT (1672-1725) of Russia was one jealous husband. On discovering that his wife was philandering, he had her lover tortured and executed, then had his head cut off and placed in a jar of preserving alcohol, which he ordered to be placed by her bed so that she was faced with this terrible image every night. davidcox@loxinfo.co.th

Fake Sites

Here follows an actual extract from a tourist guide book, send in to the Observer from our Hong Kong connection.
In the late 1980’s, the municipality of Chiang Rai became aware that the city’s claims to an ancient and glorious past were not supported by an adequate amount of archeological and architectural evidence, and tourist attractions are somewhat wanting in the town. It was then decided to build them and sponsors, historians and artists were called in to help to restore the glory of the city.
The first objective was the city walls. The original walls were pulled down in 1920 on the advice of Dr Briggs, an American missionary physician who argued that they were not only useless but were a permanent source of all kinds of illnesses because they obstructed the flow of fresh air.
Initially, it had been hoped that a complete city gate and a good part of the walls could be rebuilt, but no evidence whatsoever was found to help with the reconstruction except an engraving showing an elephant passing through a gate against the rays of the rising sun. The elephant was quickly taken as a yardstick, and assuming that its height may have been at least 8 feet, a stretch of cement wall covered with bricks was quickly built. It measured 330 feet long and 16 feet high, with an opening in the middle (no evidence upon which to reconstruct the gate was found). This “antiquity” now stands proudly in front of the shopping centre.
The second achievement was the construction of a city pillar, which Chiang Rai never had. This was erected on a hilltop - Doi Chomthong - on the outskirts of the town where a telephone exchange was about to be built. Pittaya Boonag, a lecturer from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Chiang Mai was called in to design a city pillar according to Thai cosmology, and he ended up with a complex of 108 granite pillars surrounding “the navel of the Universe,” a larger column of phallic shape 5.5 feet high. The design represents major features of the universe as illustrated in various Thai murals in Bangkok, and therefore completely alien to the Lanna culture of old Chiang Rai. The complex was inaugurated on January 31, 1989 (six days after the date on the commemorative inscription), but has gone unnoticed since.
A city wall would be bad for the health but maybe a 20 metre totem pole would be nice!

The Stella Awards

It's time once again to consider the candidates for the annual Stella Awards. The Stellas are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonalds. That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits in the United States. The following are this year's candidates:
1.Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.
2.A 19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbour ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbour's hubcaps.
3.Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr.Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.
4.Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbour's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.
5.A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
6.Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighbouring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.
7.This year's favourite could easily be Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the R.V. left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner's manual that he couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals
on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.

Two blondes waiting at the Pearly Gates strike up a conversation,
"How'd you die?" the first blonde asked the second.
"I froze to death," says the second.
"That's awful" says the first blonde.
"How does it feel to freeze to death?"
"It's very uncomfortable at first," says the second blonde.
"You get the shakes, and you get pains in all your fingers and toes. But eventually, it's a very calm way to go. You get numb and you kind of drift off, as if you're sleeping.".
How about you, how did you die?" asked the second blonde. "I had a heart attack," says the first blonde. "You see I knew my husband was cheating
on me, so one day I showed up at home unexpectedly. I ran up to the bedroom, and found him alone watching TV. I ran to the basement, but no one was hiding there either. I ran to the second floor, but no one was hiding there either. I ran as fast as I could to the attic, and just as I got there, I had a massive heart attack and died."
The second blonde shakes her head.
"What a pity, if you had only looked in the freezer, we'd both still be alive.

The world's press had a few interesting articles recently: Australia home to some of the world's most deadly creatures (and we're not talking fast bowlers here), has a new terror to worry about. Razor teeth fish. Scientists in Queensland have found fish in Cairns harbour that attack humans. The fish are called Triggerfish and grow up to 50 centimetres long.
Still in that part of the world: New Zealand police are looking for about 1,000 pumpkins stolen in a night time raid on a farm near Wairoa. What would anyone want with all these veggies and it's not even Halloween.
Marine life features again with a tale from the mid-Atlantic: A French yacht taking part in the (would you believe it) Jules Verne round the world sailing trophy was attacked by ... you guessed it, a giant squid. The sailors said it was "7, 8 or 9 metres long and had tentacles as thick as an arm wearing an oil skin."
We than had a 'som nom na' (serves you right) tale from the Philippines: A 24 year old man was attacked and killed by his pet fighting cock! More than 1,000 cockfighting enthusiasts witnessed the gory attack and no one lifted a finger to help the victim!

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