HUMOR - Crooks who bit off more than they could chew!

• A man attempted to mug a 77-year-old Air Force veteran, who beat his attacker off with a Pepsi bottle after being shot in the balls. Apparently he's okay except for a slight limp.
• In 2008, two men with machetes tried to rob a club in Australia. Inside were fifty members of a motorcycle club, who promptly grabbed the bar stools, chased down the thieves and hogtied one of them.
• In 2010, three men in South Africa, armed with a firearm and and knife, attempted to rob some schoolchildren. The schoolchildren responded by stoning one of the assailants to death.
• The outlaw Jesse James came to grief when he and his gang tried to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota in 1876. Unfortunately for Jesse, he had forgotten that he was no longer in his usual hunting grounds of eastern Kansas and western Missouri... and the locals not only did not include any sympathizers of his, but had their life savings in the bank he was targeting and no sense of humor about losing those savings. Oops... Save for James himself and his brother Frank, the entire gang was killed or arrested during either the robbery or the ensuing manhunt, effectively ending his crime spree. He himself was killed by a member of his own gang six years later to collect the bounty on his head.
• An April 2011 incident in Britain had 3 burglars in for a shock when they broke into a house only to find out it belonged to a soldier who, completely naked, gave chase to one who tried to make off with his car, complete with breaking open the driver's window with his bare hands!
• Two teenage thieves broke into a van parked in a council estate in Manchester, only to find that inside there were four SAS men on a night-time counter-terrorism training exercise. 
• An example out of Ferdinand von Schirach's Verbrechen (a book of cases he precided over as a lawyer). Some skinheads decide that a wimpy looking man in a neat suit would be a nice diversion. They ended up dead. It was hinted later, that the guy in the suit was a contract killer on his way home. He had no papers on him, no mark that could identify him - he didn't speak a single word. They had to let him go because they had no evidence and the thing they had on him was clearly self-defense - there were several witnesses to clear him.
• One such incident has become fondly-recalled lore in the Society For Creative Anachronism: After a Society event in New York City, a lady who uses the name "Sir Trude Lacklandia" was walking home late at night and assaulted by several muggers. When she refused to hand over her cash, one tried to stab her with a six-inch knife - only to have the blade turned by the chainmail she was wearing under her woolen cloak. She then drew her (very real) sword, said "I'll see your six, and raise you thirty-five!" before chasing the muggers off. A bard in the SCA afterwards wrote a humorous song about it, which has become quite popular.
• A middle-aged, five-foot-seven Asian man was accosted by two armed, six-footer African-American muggers in late 2011. One mugger was admitted to a hospital with cracked vertebrae and the other had his arm broken in several places. The uninjured Asian man waited for police to arrive while eating takeaway yakisoba on the curb next to the muggers' unconscious bodies. The Asian man was later identified as a fourth-dan Aikidoka.
• In 1999, a thief stole the wallet of who he thought was a tourist in Seville Airport and ran. That "tourist" was Maurice Greene, World Champion sprinter who set the world record for the hundred-meter dash. The thief didn't get very far.
• In 1971, legendary boxer Jack Dempsey was taking a cab home with his wife, and was accosted by a mugger. Apparently, the mugger never knew what hit him. Dempsey was 78 at the time.
• This video linked on Badass Adorable is security footage capturing a man attempting to abduct a little girl in an elevator. He really had no clue what was going to happen next.
• In 2010, a group of forty train robbers stormed a train in West Bengal and started taking valuables from the passengers. One of the robbers then decided to rape one of the women on the train. It turned out that one of the train's passengers was Bishnu Shrestha, a corporal in the 8th Gurkha Infantry. And Bishnu objected, sternly, resulting in him killing several of the robbers by himself with just his kukri and sending the rest fleeing for their lives.
• To read more - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MuggingTheMonster/RealLife

MY LIFE - 50 For My 50th Day Day 09: "So Lonely" by The Police and other songs of a first love!

For an explanation of "50 For My 50th", go here - http://oldermusicgeek.blogspot.com/2013/08/entertainment-50-for-my-50th-50-days-of.html

This post is about one of my first loves! The Police!

No, not the peacekeeping institution in our towns, but the band!

I had a lot of bands I enjoyed and probably loved, Devo, The Sex Pistols, Talking Heads. But they were all bands introduced to me by someone else, probably my older brother for the most part.

The Police was a band I discovered on my own!

And back in 1979 before they sold out and tried to be commercial. I hadn't heard anything like them before. The weird mix of punk, reggae, jazz, and world music.

And the lyrics! How could I not relate to songs with titles like "So Lonely", "Next To You", "Hole In My Life", and "Truth Hits Everybody"?!

I felt like Sting got exactly where I was coming from! Later, I would learn that Stewart Copeland would probably relate to me more! But at this time, I felt a strong musical connection!

Their later albums didn't do as much for me. But their first album, and even the second, will always hold a special place in my heart!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vn2SencrSL_0ujzefX_Bfc_j-KJhKJzSUTDJi3CiQs8/edit?usp=sharing



A playlist of Police songs I related to including "So Lonely":

Click the link below to listen to my monstrosity of a playlist, OlderMusicGeek's 50th B-Day, on Spotify:

http://open.spotify.com/user/127676752/playlist/1bRKV8LHJIL3JQih1ZSq76

HISTORY - Phil Romano, the New York Cop Who Saved Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life

Just the letter opener might have changed history if Romano had not stopped a panicked onlooker who was reaching to pull it from King’s chest when the cops ran up. Howard told King not to cough or sneeze or even speak as they lifted him onto a chair and began to carry him out through a back exit.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/21/phil-romano-the-new-york-cop-who-saved-martin-luther-king-jr-s-life.html

CULTURE/SOCIETY: American woman gives domestic abuse a face, and voice, in China

"I made a conscious decision. I used a Chinese lawyer, I used Chinese courts," she says. "To be honest, a lot of my American friends did not understand this. They were like, 'You're crazy. You're American. Go to the embassy immediately.' But I did not want to teach my daughters, 'No one can beat you because you're American.' I wanted to teach them, 'No one can beat you because you're a person, you're a woman.' "

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/07/171316582/american-woman-gives-domestic-abuse-a-face-and-voice-in-china

ENTERTAINMENT: One of Disney's friendly security officers?

POLITICS: 102 Things NOT To Do If You Hate Taxes

So, you’re a Republican that hates taxes? Well, since you do not like taxes or government, please kindly do the following...

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/06/22/102-things-not-to-do/

CULTURE/SOCIETY: How to adopt dogs that have served our country!

http://www.militaryworkingdogs.com/dogstoadopt.shtml

HUMOR: Learn to play the game, copper!

CULTURE/SOCIETY: Origin Of Beggar's Night

Well, tonight in my town - yes, TONIGHT - children are going from home to home in costumes telling jokes in order to get candy. If you want to know why they are going tonight and why they are telling jokes, I've done the courtesy of reprinting an article from last Halloween in our paper. I don't guarantee it's accuracy though! - OlderMusicGeek

Jokes set local Halloween apart
MARY CHALLENDER
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

Detroit has Hell Night.

Carbondale, Ill., used to have Fright Night.

When it comes to bizarre local Halloween traditions, however, few communities can match the (my town) metro area and its 50-year-old ritual of - well, let's just call it Bad Joke Night.

In most places, the Halloween tradition goes like this: The kid says, "Trick-or-treat." The homeowner gives him candy.

In (my town) and surrounding suburbs, it's more like this: The kid says, "Trick or treat." The homeowner says "What's your trick?" Then the kid tells a joke of the sort usually found on Bazooka gum wrappers.

Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?
He didn't have any guts.

Whether or not the homeowner is amused, the kid gets candy.

There may be children elsewhere in the world who follow this unusual practice, but if so, anthropologist Ken Erickson has never run across them. Erickson directs the Center for Ethnographic Research at the University of Missouri.

"That is totally cool," said Erickson, who has conducted research on Halloween customs in the United States. "I never heard of that before. That is totally fun."

Erickson isn't the only one in the dark. In the 1990 book "Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History," author Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, one of the nation's foremost authorities on the holiday, traced the evolution of Halloween from colonial times through its modern-day commercialism. Although the book contains many references to trick-or-treating practices across the United States, telling riddles never enters the equation.

A mushroom walks into a bar. "You'll have to leave," the bartender says. "We don't allow mushrooms in here." "Why not?" asked the mushroom. "I'm a fungi."

The credit for providing (my town) children with the perfect outlet for their most groan-inducing jokes largely goes to one woman, Kathryn Krieg, director of recreation for the (my town) Playground Commission (later the Parks and Recreation Department) for 43 years.

When Krieg assumed her post in 1931, kids on Beggars' Night were more likely to clamor "Soaps or Eats" than "Trick or Treat." Every year the newspaper ran a long list on Nov. 1 of youths arrested the previous evening for crimes ranging from soaping windows and sidelining streetcars to setting fires and throwing bricks through windows.

The flash point came on Halloween in 1938 when (my town) police answered a record 550 calls concerning vandalism. Krieg, along with the Community Chest' group work council, began a campaign to encourage less violent forms of Halloween fun.

They set aside Oct. 30 as Beggars' Night and got the word out to the public that on that night - and only that night - children would be allowed to go from door to door and say the phrase "tricks for eats." The council urged that "eats should be given only if such a 'trick' as a song, a poem, a stunt or a musical number, either solo or in group participation, is presented."

The next year, the group work council again promoted the Beggars' Night concept, this time as a way to aid the war effort. An article published in (my town newspaper) on Oct. 29, 1942, carried the headline "Kids! -Don't Help the Axis on Halloween" and included this poem encouraging proper behavior:

"Soap and ticktacks are taboo,
Ringing doorbells? Not for you.
Thoughts of pranks, you must detour,
Lest you bet a saboteur."

The Beggars' Night program was so successful that by the mid-1940's, the number of Halloween police calls in (my town) had been cut by more than half.

After the war, Krieg continued to issue annual bulletins in the Register laying still more Beggars' Night ground rules, including that children should stay in their own neighborhoods and that parents should turn on their porch lights for trick-or-treaters and accompany small children on their rounds.

Each year, she reiterated that children should not be given candy until they earned it "with a stunt, song, or riddle."

Now on Beggars' Night, a group of preteen girls will occasionally sing a song or a shy kindergartner opt for a cartwheel. For the most part, however, every trick-or-treater old enough to memorize one tells a joke.

Why did Dracula visit the blood bank?
He needed to make a withdrawal.

Krieg retired in 1974, a few years after the Register stopped running her yearly admonition to make children work for their candy. By then, the biggest Beggars' Night concern wasn't the danger trick-or-treaters might represent to the public but the danger some members of the public might represent to trick-or-treaters. Krieg died in March of 1999 at age 94.

The joke-telling ritual continues, as does its legacy: Reduced vandalism. Instead of tales of marauding youth, the only Halloween-related story to appear in the Register last year was about a gathering of local witches.

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?
Pilgrims.

I remember when my daughter was 2 and trick-or-treating. She was too young to tell a joke, but since she was dressed as Queen Amidala, I taught her to sing the theme to Star Wars! - OMGeek

A link to other Halloween posts on my blog

Post On Another Blog

"TELEVISION/VIDEOS and COMICS: The Hulk Out List" on OlderMusicGeek's Stupid Entertainment Stuff

HUMOR and POLITICS: The Barber Shop

This is an email forwarded to me by The Older Formerly Wild Now Christian Co-Worker. - OlderMusicGeek

One day a florist goes to a barber for a haircut. After the cut he asked about his bill and the barber replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.'

The florist was pleased and left the shop.

When the barber goes to open his shop the next morning there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.

Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.'

The cop is happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber goes to open up there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.

Later that day, a college professor comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.'

The professor is very happy and leaves the shop.

The next morning when the barber opens his shop, there is a 'thank you' card and a dozen different books, such as 'How to Improve Your Business' and 'Becoming More Successful'.

Then, a congressman comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.'

The congressman is very happy and leaves the shop.

The next morning when the barber goes to open up, there are a dozen congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.

Vote carefully this year.

Other posts related to The Formerly Wild Now Christian Co-Worker

CULTURE/SOCIETY and SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: The Flying Spaghetti Monster's Pirate Fish Saves the Day

Usually I don't reprint too many blog post from The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, cus they can be even too anti-religion for an anti-religion type like me. But this one is pretty cute. - OlderMusicGeek

December 9, 2007 - a cold, wintery night in Cleveland, Ohio. I dropped my keys outside a Panini’s (sports bar franchise) in the Warehouse district. In a strapless dress, heels and no coat I walked all the way back to my car only to realize I had no way in. Frustrated and tired, I spent the night at a friends and waited for my sister to come in the morning with a spare key. As we approached the lot, my car was nowhere to be found. The towing company did not have it. The only other option… STOLEN. My poor Honda Civic was being violated by the hands of a complete stranger.

The cops made a report and then did nothing. The following Friday I received a voicemail from a man named Ray whom I’d never met and said he had information about my car. Apparently it was in the ghetto of Cleveland preferably known as “Crackland.” Evidently a homeless man had found the keys and used the remote to locate it. Very resourceful.

Since the police would not tow it, I called my insurance company. There was a field agent in the area. With a multitude of Civics in the general population hope of finding mine was slim. The only distinguishing marker of my vehicle was an FSM Pirate fish spray painted in white on the back window. If it had not been for my love of FSM and my sheer distaste for organized religion I would still not have my car back. The representative found the fish and my car and everything is back to normal. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Kristina K

A link to the original blog post

HUMOR: Humor for Lexophiles

I'm sucker for a good pun - or even bad ones! So I pass these along that Ernest T Spoon sent me. :) - OlderMusicGeek

- I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
- Police were called to a day care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
- Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
- The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.
- The butcher backed up into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
- To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
- When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
- The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
- A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
- A thief fell and broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.
- Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.
- We'll never run out of math teachers because they always multiply.
- When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A.
- The math professor went crazy with the blackboard. He did a number on it.
- The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
- The dead batteries were given out free of charge.
- If you take a laptop computer for a run you could jog your memory.
- A dentist and a manicurist fought tooth and nail.
- A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.
- A will is a dead giveaway.
- Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
- A backward poet writes inverse.
- In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.
- A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.
- If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.
- With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
- Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat miner.
- When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
- The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.
- A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France, resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.
- You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
- Local Area Network in Australia: The LAN down under.
- He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
- A calendar's days are numbered.
- A lot of money is tainted: 'Taint yours, and 'taint mine.
- A boiled egg is hard to beat.
- He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
- A plateau is a high form of flattery.
- Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
- When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
- If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.
- When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.
- Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
- Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
- Acupuncture: a jab well done.

HUMOR: One Day on I-80

This is an email from Ernest T Spoon. It originally mentioned our state, but I don't like giving too many details about myself on the web, so I changed the state name to "the midwest". - OlderMusicGeek.

Two men were driving on I-80 in the midwest, when they got pulled over by a State Trooper. The trooper walked up and tapped on the window with his nightstick. The driver rolled down the window and "WHACK", the trooper smacked him in the head with his nightstick.

"What was that for?" the driver asked.

"You're in the midwest, son," the trooper answered. "When we pull you over here, you better have your license ready by the time we get to your car."

"I'm sorry, officer, “the driver said, "I'm from New York and didn't know your laws here." The trooper runs a check on the guy's license--he's clean and gives the guy his license back.

The trooper then walks around to the passenger side and taps on the window. The passenger rolls down the window and "WHACK", the trooper smacks him on the head with the nightstick.

"What'd hell did you do that for?" the passenger demands.

"Just making your wish come true," replied the trooper.

"Making WHAT wish come true?" the passenger asked.

"Because I know you New Yorkers," the trooper says. "Two miles down the road, you're gonna turn to your buddy and say I wish that jerk would've tried that with me!"