Where's a Sick Pet When You Need One
     A senator in Nevada is trying to get a bill passed that would allow people to buy marijuana for their sick pets. On condition that a veterinarian certifies that the animal's illness would be helped by taking the drug. This is what I see happening in Nevada. The market for certified sick pets is going to skyrocket. There will be a huge market for these animals. Enterprising people will be buying up sick pets all over the country and hauling them to Nevada for resale. It will become, wait for it---yes---a dog-eat-dog business. Some vet who is having a hard time running a profitable practice will just have to put out the word that he's a pet certification specialist who willy-nilly hands out certificates, he will BE IN BUSINESS.
     So, If you're in Nevada and see a dog walking down the street sucking on a joint, don't be surprised or shocked. It's just a certified sick dog. Now it the owner is sucking on the joint and is carrying the dog in a garbage bag, then you have a scam going on.

     

Oh Yeah, That’ll Work

          The Fresno Bee reports that a 23-year-old man in Madera, CA. spray-painted his face black in an effort to evade police. Police suspect him of stealing a car, (probably because they caught him in the stolen car), and figured that if he painted his face black, the police wouldn’t be able to recognize him. Surprisingly it didn’t seem to work.

    Our educational system has to answer for an obvious gap in what it didn’t teach this man. To leave this man devoid of even a modicum of analytical ability should be a crime. Of course, I’m assuming this man had taken advantage of the fine educational opportunities we have available to us.

    He can rectify his lack of education during his stay at Graybar University, where he can take courses in Auto Theft, Avoiding Police Pursuit, and Disguises. (I doubt that textbook has a chapter on How to Paint Your Face Black.)

Birdwatchers -- Heaven Help Us All

     Birdwatchers are the same all over the world. The sooner we all recognize that, the better off we'll be.

 Example: a guy up by Seattle ran his car into a utility pole. His excuse was that he was in hot pursuit of an owl. Anyone who finds that odd hasn’t done much bird watching or been around birdwatchers. It’s just typical birdwatcher behavior.

Another example:  I remember driving a vanload of birdwatchers across some wetlands in Southeast Texas. It was a two-lane road, and since it was Texas, the speed limit was 70 MPH. Sharing the road with us and the rest of the normal vehicular traffic were numerous oil tankers, coming and going from the refineries on the coast. They made sure their speed did not fall below least the suggested 70 MPH.

Now in the van with me were family members: a brother and sister with their spouses, one nephew and his son, and my wife. We were looking for birds, which were plentiful along the highway.

Someone would yell out, “Stop! Stop!” Of course, I was expected to stop the van, back up the van while hopefully staying on the narrow shoulder, then move the van forward or where ever we needed to be so they could see what they thought they’d seen.

In the meantime, I had traffic, including the aforementioned tankers, loaded with high-octane death, whizzing past the van about ten inches from my door handle, at, of course, the required 70 MPH, while the rest of my carload is blissfully looking at the birds.

The interesting thing was that even though we were creating a traffic hazard, and being a danger to ourselves and other drivers, no one honked at us, no one gave us the finger, and no one yelled at us. Why? Because in that part of Texas, they’re used to birdwatchers and their unusual antics.

So, some poor guy, looking at an owl, drives into a pole. Big deal! 

In New Jersey, a school bus aide was caught stealing lunch money and lunches from 3–5 year-old kids. (She’s not doing it any more, probably because there are no kids where she’s at.) Now if you or I decided on a life of crime, what thought process would we go through? One: we’d go where the money was, right? Two: we would do something where we had a good chance of not getting caught. Not that I’ve given this a lot of thought, mind you.

    But lunch money and lunches from 3–5 year-olds? Beside the fact that this despicable woman was picking on young kids, someone who thinks that small should be locked up.

 

Don't Bite The Hand That Feeds You

     In Coconut Creek, Florida, a police dog has been kicked off the force. Evidently it was not because they didn't need Renzo, that was the dogs name, but because of his behavior. They had to let him go because he had bitten two different people, neither one of them a lawbreaker, that we know of at this time.

The first human he bit was a fellow police office. I guess that was okay, as no disciplinary action was taken because of that. However, the second time he bit a person he really crossed the line. Why? He bit a Dunkin’ Donuts’ worker. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. They didn’t mind jeopardizing their relationship with fellow police officers, but they couldn’t jeopardize their relationship with their donut source. 

     

      I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy shopping. It is usually such a bore. The only exception to that is when I do the grocery shopping, am in control of the cart, and working off a specific list. I fly up and down the aisles, scattering other shoppers and store employees left and right.

   That’s why I can appreciate these folks. If you’re looking to rob a bank, why shop around. In Kandahar, Afghanistan, some folks were looking for a bank to rob. They came up with the idea, “Why shop around, when they had a ready-made bank that they were already familiar with. So why not?”

    So the staff of the bank robbed their own bank and took off. Where? Nobody seems to know. And they took 81 million Afghanis with them. The U.S. equivalent is 79 dollars. I’m just kidding, in U.S. dollars it amounts to $1.4 million. Not bad for not shopping around.

    This report was written by Sarwar Amani for Reuters.

It’s nice when you find a judge that has such a high regard for the fine points of his job.

As reported for Reuters by Stephen Eisenhammer, a judge in Brazil is presiding over the trial of what was one of the wealthiest tycoons in the country. When he was arrested, police confiscated most of his property, including a collection of luxury vehicles. One of these was a Porsche.

A few days ago, the judge was seen driving this Porsche. When asked why, he responded, "The Federal Police did not have a safe place for the car and it was exposed to sun, rain and possible damage. As I want the car to be preserved in good condition, I took it to a covered parking space in the building where I live."

"I did not take it to use, just to look after it.” 

Like I said, how many judges would go out of their way to take care of a small detail like that?

From Uncle Vellanoff's Journal

Medical Situations On the Road

     As our troupe traveled around, we sometimes had medical situations arise where we needed to consult or otherwise use the services of medical people or medical institutions. Many in the troupe were immigrants like myself, where English was not our native tongue, so occasionally there was some confusion around these medical situations that turned out to be sort of humorous, when not lethal.

          One such incident happened to Olaf and Henrietta Olson. We were staying in a boarding house while playing in South Bend, Indiana. Henrietta was very pregnant and her time of delivery was close.

    One evening Henrietta started having contractions, so Olaf got very excited, ran downstairs to the phone, and called the hospital. He yelled, “MY WIFE. WE THINK SHE’S READY. SHOULD WE COME NOW?”

    By this time, we were all standing outside our rooms waiting to see if we could help in some way.

    The doctor tried to calm Olaf down and asked him how far apart the contractions were.

    Olaf yelled up the stairs, “HENRIETTA, HOW MUCH TIME BETWEEN THE CONTRACTORS?” Luckily, Henrietta knew what the doctor meant.

    “Tell him ten minutes.”

    Olaf yelled into the phone, “TEN MINUTES.”

    The doctor asked, “And this is her first child?”

    Olaf was astounded, and yelled into the phone, “ARE YOU SOME KIND OF IDIOT? I’M HER HUSBAND!”

   

    Another member of our troupe, Lydia Proludsky, came back from a call to the Doctor’s office a little embarrassed. She told the following story.

    “I got to the office and they gave me a little glass jar, which I later found out was for a urine specimen. But how was I to know? Huh? The nurse said, ‘The bathroom is over there on your right; the Doctor will be with you in a few minutes’.

    A few minutes later, I came out of the bathroom with the empty container. The nurse took the container with a puzzled look. I explained to her: ‘Thanks! But there’s a toilet in there, so I didn’t need that after all.’ Now I know better.”

    Judy, our lead piano player, always thought something was wrong with her. I understand the medical term for that is Hypochondriac, or something close to that. Every time we got close to Chicago, Judy stopped by to see her doctor with some real or imagined ailment.

    On one visit she said, “Doctor, you know those voices I’ve been hearing in my head? I haven’t heard them for several weeks now.”

    The Doctor was very happy, “Wow! That’s wonderful. I’m happy for you.”

    “Wonderful?” exclaimed a sad looking Judy. “There’s nothing wonderful about it. I think my hearing has started to go.”

    Then there was an experience I had which points out the difficulty of understanding the nuances of a foreign language.

    After checking me over the Doctor said, “I’m not exactly sure of the cause, but I think it could be due to alcohol.”

    Felling sorry for the guy I replied, “That’s okay Doctor, I’ll come back when you’re sober.”

    Well that didn’t go over so well, but after I told him that I didn’t drink alcohol, he got down to business.

(Editor’s note: I’ve heard this last one from so many sources, I’ve an idea Uncle Vellanoff just hijacked it for his own use in his journal, or maybe he’s the one the story started with.)

Uncle Vellanoff - No Pets Allowed

     In our troupe we had several people who had pets. Larry and Lenny each had a dog. The dogs were somewhat of a problem, as there were places we went that the dogs just couldn't go.

One example: During performances we tried keeping them backstage---tied up, of course. The problem with that was we had one act that included some operatic singing by Hilda. She was pretty good, but the skit was poking fun at opera singers, so she didn’t try to be terribly accurate about staying on pitch and all that. Whenever she sang, the dogs would start up with the most pitiful howling you ever did hear. The audience loved it, but our producer didn’t feel it was dignified.

    Anyway, the incident I’m thinking of happened when Larry and Lenny were out one evening walking their dogs and came to a restaurant. “Let’s go in and get something to eat,” Larry suggested. “We can’t,” responded Lenny, “Don’t you see the sign saying NO PETS ALLOWED?”

    “Don’t worry,” said Larry. He put on a pair of sunglasses, walked up to door and tried to enter the restaurant, but was stopped at the door, “Sorry no pets allowed.”

    “Can’t you see?” said Larry, “I’m blind, and this is my seeing-eye dog.” But it’s a Doberman Pincher, who uses a Doberman Pincher as a seeing-eye dog?” the man asked. “Oh,” Larry responded, “You must have not heard, this is the latest type of seeing-eye dog, they do a very good job.”

          Seeing that it worked, Lenny tried walking in with his Chihuahua. Even before he could open his mouth, the doorman said, “Don’t tell me that a Chihuahua is the latest type of seeing-eye dog?” Thinking quickly Lenny responded in a angry voice, “You mean they gave me a Chihuahua?”

    Tony did a juggling act in the show. One day his brother came to spend some time with him. The brother, Doug, hung around rehearsals, and it became known that he had a phenomenal memory and a great ear for voices. Our producer got a bright idea and tried him out. He would listen to people in the audience call out their names. After about 30 of these, he would go back and randomly have them to say a short sentence. From that, he was able to tell them their names. People were awed and loved the display of his talents, so he became a permanent part of the show. Did I mention that he was blind?

         One night, Doug and Tony went into a bar. Doug, after settling on a bar stool, said, “Hey guys, who wants to hear a blonde joke?” The question was met with dead silence. After a few seconds pause, the bartender walked up to Doug, got in his face, and said in a deep menacing voice, “I’m blond and I don’t appreciate blonde jokes! My wife is right next to me, she’s blond, and she doesn’t appreciate blonde jokes. And best of all, on your right is a blond bodybuilder who I’m pretty sure doesn’t like blond jokes either! Would you still like to say that joke?” “WELL, NO!” Said Doug, “NOT IF I’M GOING TO HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT THAT MANY TIMES!”