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ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

QUIZZICAL QUOTATIONS

Mixed bag of quotations this week. Answers next week or from the usual address.

• You can't stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting.
• This valley is just one long smorgasbord.
• Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative.
• A bear in his natural habitat. A Studebaker.
• Hey, bank robber! Want some advice? Next time keep the engine running!

Last issue's vengeful quotations were:

• Suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. You heard me rapping, right?
  -- The Crow
• ...revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold in space.
  -- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Think of it. On the surface there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns.
  -- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
• I'm no white trash piece of shit. I'm better than you all. I can outread you, I can out-think you, and I'm gonna outlast you.
  -- Cape Fear (1991)
• I dream of being in a Las Vegas hotel where all the towels smell like Downy Fabric Softener.
  -- Feeling Minnesota

April Fools' selection (If you know of any others, please send them in): Socks with built-in deodorisers (Daily Mail); Yeltsin diaries reveal that Putin rose to power after Boris saw him shoot a wild boar with a single shot to the heart (Moskovski Komsomolets, subsequently picked up as genuine by Le Monde); F/Rite Air - claiming to have developed an air ioniser that cures depression - received more than $6.5 in IPO share bids at the InfoExchanges web site in the Netherlands before the site managers took pity and revealed the hoax - none of the potential investors had requested a prospectus...; Indian cricketer Ajay Jadeja stunned fans during a live TV interview by announcing his retirement to start a movie career, revealing the hoax a few minutes later; Cyan announced Myst Mayhem, bringing Quake first-person multiplayer combat to the previously abandoned island...

On March 30 a Hollywood police patrol noticed a car beng driven erratically. Suspecting the driver was drunk they followed it for several blocks until the chase ended in an usual way - even by Hollywood standards. Driver Sam Otero, 30, opened his car door to throw out an empty beer can, and fell out. After receiving treatment for cuts and bruises he was arrested on suspicion of DUI.

When more than 300 people set off on a charity walk in Lahore, to raise cash for a hospital they expected to finish at an open-air concert, but a swarm of bees - reportedly provoked by people pelting their hives with stones - saw to it that a large number of the walkers ended up being treated for stings in the Ganga ram Hospital, the very intistute they had been trying to raise funds for.

Two cases of mistaken identity: A Fort Worth, Texas, woman who drove away from her bank at the same time as a man who had just robbed it found herself in handcuffs for ten minutes after a teller mistakenly wrote down her car license plate number instead of the robber's. To make matters worse, the ATM she had been using at the bank had malfunctioned, losing her $20 and the receipt. Meanwhile in Baltimore Gregory W Kasey Jr and his son - also Gregory W Kasey Jr - appeared in court to untangle a legal mixup that had seen the senior Kasey - in prison since 1991 on a 20-year sentence - accept the 4-year jail sentence imposed on his son for violating probation as his own. On Tuesday the two Kaseys met for the first time in 17 years, in court, as a judge reimposed the four-year sentence on the younger Kasey Jr, who said he was touched that his father had accepted the prison term meant for him last autumn. "It showed he still cared," he commented, "He wanted me to go home."

We don't often feature ice hockey in Weird World News, so here are a couple of stories from the last week. A 7-month-old baby girl escaped with just a bruise to the forehead after being hit by a deflected puck at a Tampa Bay v New Jersey game, and in St Petersburg city officials are so eager that their city look its best for the world ice hockey championship - starting April 29 - that they have made available up to 103,000 tickets for first round games for anyone who takes part in at least one day's civic cleaning.

IRREGULAR WEBSITE OF THE WEEK

Some time ago we featured weird eBay auctions in Weird World News - John Wayne lavatory paper, that kind of thing. Well we're delighted to find that someone has been collecting and cataloguing these offerings - from "FIVE! cat turds" thru missiles (hey, *guns* are banned - they didn't say anything about missiles...), a used penis enlarger and a Hitler pin cushion "where you stick the pins in his Butt" to Girl Scout patches and the Ark of the Covenant - complete with seller's feedback ("Whoa, I bought the Rosetta stone from him! He even translated it! A+++++").

http://www.WhatTheHeck.com/ebay/

THE AMAZING NOT-QUITE-RANDOM LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

Madame Jennifer, our in-house psychic predicts the following numbers will be lucky:

1, 12, 18, 24, 27, 38

COMING SOON!

• Dante's Lavatory #9!
• Film reviews!
• Website news!
• ...and more!

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