THIS is TRUE #806: 22 November

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Nov 27, 2009, 11:00:00 PM11/27/09
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SINCE 1994 and reaching more than 107,000 subscribers in over 200
countries, this is the 806th weekly issue of...

THIS is TRUE: 22 November 2009 Copyright http://www.thisistrue.com
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SMASH HIT: The surveillance video was an instant success on YouTube.
Titled "Worst Parking Job Ever!", the video shows a woman trying to
park her BMW X5 SUV. She pulls in and bounces over a concrete barrier,
which lands her on top of two other vehicles. She then drove off. It
happened in front of Extreme Fitness in Thornhill, Ont., Canada. Local
police investigated and tracked down the alleged driver, Tripta
Kaushal, 62, and arrested her for failing to remain at the scene of an
accident. "I've never seen anything quite like that before," said Todd
Jamison, who owns one of the smashed cars and works at the gym. "It was
like someone had thrown a body through the window." Jamison ran back
inside to check out the security camera footage, and found the cause.
When contacted for a comment, Kaushal replied, "I have nothing to say."
(Toronto Star) ...Right: her driving does all the talking for her.

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION II: An unidentified 30-year-old man driving in
Melbourne, Vic., Australia, was pulled over by police after they
observed his car swerving. The arresting officer noted that the driver
had a mobile phone in each hand, and explained he was moving
information from one phone to the other. But, the man told Sgt. Rob
Atkinson, there was no problem because he always had one finger on the
wheel. Atkinson cited the Fitzroy man with careless driving and for
using a handheld mobile while driving. The fines, he said, added up to
more than A$500 (US$450), plus six points against his license.
(Melbourne Herald Sun) ...Funny, but he was doing something else with
one finger as he drove off.

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NYAH NYAH: Police in Swansea, Wales, wanted to talk to Matthew Maynard,
24, to question him in a stolen goods case. The local newspaper ran his
mug shot to help in the search, but Maynard didn't much like it -- so
he sent a better photo of himself, posed next to a police van, to the
newspaper. "I will be handing myself in to the police," Maynard told
the paper after it obligingly published the better shot. "But it will
not be until after Christmas," he said, adding he'd send more photos to
"taunt police officers further," the paper reported. Police responded
they'd have a Christmas present for him: "full board and lodge at Her
Majesty's Prison." Sure enough, Maynard was caught shortly after,
getting his hair cut at a barber's shop near a police station. He has
already been sentenced to 16 weeks in jail. "With hindsight," his
attorney said, "he acknowledges that he could have dealt with matters
in a different way." (South Wales Evening Post) ...Yeah: next time
he'll send in someone else's photo.

GOT CRABS? When an unnamed man arrived on a ferry from Denmark, officials
in Norway were a tad suspicious. "Customs officers quickly realized the
man was smuggling animals," said spokeswoman Helge Breilid at
Kristiansand customs, "because his whole body was in constant motion."
Officers made the 22-year-old Norwegian man take off his shirt, and
found 14 socks taped to his torso; each contained a royal python. When
he dropped his pants, officers found 10 cans taped to his legs; each
contained an albino leopard gecko. The man was fined 12,500 Kroner
(US$2,200). (Reuters) ...I don't even want to know what they found in
the space in between.

FOR ARREST, OR EMPLOYMENT? "Stroud Area Regional Police Seeks Clumsy,
Rude, Bald Thief" -- Pocono (Penn.) Record headline

DID YOU FIND an error? See http://www.thisistrue.com/errata.html

THERE WAS A LOT OF interest in a story from last week, zero tolerance for
guns story in England where a man went to the police station to turn in
a sawed-off shotgun someone tossed into his garden. Paul Clarke was
arrested, charged with "possession of a firearm", convicted by a jury,
and is awaiting sentencing. The minimum sentence is 5 years in prison,
but there may be a way out. The full story with some updates (and links
to my original source story, plus an update), and why I think Paul
Clarke is an absolute bleeding *idiot*, is on my blog:
http://thisistrue.com/blog-paul_clarke_and_british_zero_tolerance

AS PROMISED LAST WEEK, here's the special "Black Friday" deal I
mentioned. It's good for ONE WEEK ONLY on a package of popular items.
Premium subscribers are getting 11 days on it, not just a week -- they
found out about it on Monday. Still, the special ends on December 4 (or
sooner if we run out of the limited edition mugs included in the
package). Here's the package:

* 3 of our new "Static Cling" Get Out of Hell Free window decals, which
sell separately for $5
* 5 Plastic GOOHF cards, separately $15
* 3 lenticular (moving image) GOOHF postcards, separately $18
* 100 of the gorgeous "Deluxe" GOOHF cards, separately $10
* 1 GOOHF laser-engraved solid oak sticky notepad holder with 2 GOOHF
sticky pads, separately $24
* 1 This is True Limited Edition Headline coffee mug (we choose which
one), $11

That all adds up to $83 -- plus shipping. And I've set up a nice flat-
rate shipping price too.

The deal? Everyone gets 20% off, which is nice. But Premium subscribers
get 40% off. Yep, a regular $24/year subscription gets you $33.20 off.
And yes, you CAN upgrade at the same time you order and get the
discount. The URL: https://secure.thisistrue.com/goohfpack

IF YOU DIDN'T SEE my "Black Friday" video last year, it's a must-see:
http://thisistrue.com/d-vid26 -- and yes, we'll be starting up new
video production again after the holidays.

IT'S PRETTY COOL when I hear from someone from TRUE's distant past.
Recently I got a note from someone who advertised in TRUE in 1996. He
may have been surprised to find TRUE still going strong after all these
years, but so is his business! His ad is below. And Aaron, the
proprietor of the "smart putty" site (in the ad spot above) is a long-
time advertiser too, coming back year after year for his holiday sales
boost. Pre-Christmas ad space is long gone, of course, but if you'd
like to explore TRUE to get a message out about your product or service
to our six-figure audience (AND help support one of the oldest features
on the Internet!), see http://www.thisistrue.com/ads.html

o o o

I KNOW THIS IS TRUE is *about* people doing dumb things, but it still
amazes me when people do dumb things to me. (But no, this is not about
a dumb reader.)

You might remember some years ago I had trouble with a Dell laptop
computer. I wrote about it in TRUE, calling it my "Dell Hell"
experience. The page quickly rose to Number One on Google for the
search term "dell hell", but it even more quickly got the attention of
Dell executives, and thanks to having a huge and responsive audience,
Dell took care of me, replacing my brand new, but completely screwed
up, computer. Alas, most people having such problems don't have a big
platform to get companies' attention.

My rant about my experiences is not only still on the TRUE website,
it's still a very popular page, getting hundreds of views per month --
at http://www.thisistrue.com/dellhell.html -- if you haven't already
seen it. I used to allow comments there, but so many people were
putting in their own Dell Hell stories, which I couldn't help them
with, that I finally stopped accepting comments -- it was just taking
too much time to read them to decide whether to accept them or not.
(And speaking of dumb? Some people are so desperate to get any kind of
response that they even put their e-mail addresses in, in the open
where anyone could see them. Like scammers and spammers. How sad that
they felt so pushed into a corner.)

One thing that these people constantly clamored for was a way to
contact Dell computer Inc. president Michael Dell, since the company
didn't seem to want it to be easy to find -- so I put a big block on
top of the page with his address. (This is where the *really* dumb
people come in.) Despite the prominent placement of the address in a
colored box, the number one request from people going to that page has
long been... can I give them Michael Dell's address? Duh.

But it gets worse. This week I found a slip in my P.O. Box: a notice
for me to come to the window for a certified letter. The letter's
addressee? Michael Dell at Dell Computer Inc. So someone with a Dell
Hell problem found my page in a search engine, came to a humor site and
read that page, perhaps saw the huge box of the top of the page with
Michael Dell's address, yet ignored all of that and instead went to my
own contact page and found my address, which clearly says
ThisIsTrue.Inc, not Dell Computer Inc., and wrote a letter to Michael
Dell at my address. I don't think it's very likely that Michael Dell
gets his mail in care of ThisIsTrue.Inc in Ridgway, Colorado. Yet some
moron does think so.

I'm still not terribly impressed with Dell Computer Inc's customer
service, and I have sympathy with people who are having problems with
their computers and can't get help. But that doesn't mean Dell is
always wrong. Sometimes the customer is simply an idiot, and it's hard
to satisfy an idiot who thinks he's right. And one of them is about to
get a returned certified mail letter marked "Not at This Address".

Comments about this? (But DO NOT write about your own "Dell Hell"
problems! I *cannot* help you!) This essay is on my blog at
http://www.thisistrue.com/blog-dell_hell_and_dumb_people.html

AS AN ASIDE, even though I can type at well over 100 words per minute, I
didn't type this. I dictated it with Dragon naturally speaking 10 (and
I didn't correct the capitalization there, too bad for them), which
arrived today. I only spent about five minutes training it, so I expect
it to get better, but I'm amazed how accurate it is already. Speech
recognition has come a long way since I first played with IBM's Via
Voice years ago. You don't have to talk in an unnatural way, like
clearly separating each word. It just gets what you're doing when you
speak to it within a normal voice, though at least first you have to
speak out the punctuation. That means you can say things like "open
quote" to get a quotation mark, or "open paren" to get an (. The
interface is intuitive enough that, with only five minutes of training
and doing the essay above, I was able to dictate this entire paragraph,
including figuring out how to write the phrase "open paren" without
getting an ( character. Very cool software, and I can hardly wait until
I really know it! I got the $115 (retail $199) "Preferred" version, as
has a lot more features than the slightly cheaper standard version. See
http://ThisIsTrue.com/d-dragon10 (Amazon) for more about the software.

AMONG THE LATEST postings to Jumbo Joke: Thanksgiving Thoughts. Be sure
to see Arnold Schwarzenegger's: it's particularly amusing.
http://www.JumboJoke.com

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TOP ON GROXX today: "Farting Pig Sparks Gas Leak Emergency". The
submitter noted, "It's still a dangerous gas leak, of sorts...". Yeah,
I suppose! Submit stories and vote on what submissions are best,
register for free at http://Groxx.com

PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS got LOTS MORE stories on Monday: A constitutional
amendment in Texas may invalidate all marriages in the state. Police
training team forgets a packet of cocaine, leaving it in a hotel room.
Subject of international arrest warrant found -- in a hilariously
unexpected place. PETA sets up demonstration of "pain-free" way to kill
lobsters before cooking, but the event goes horribly wrong. You can
still read these stories: just ask for your subscription to start with
the 22 November issue: http://thisistrue.com/upgrade.html

TEN YEARS AGO IN TRUE: Cadillac tries to hitch its wagon to this newly
popular "Internet" thing: http://thisistrue.com/6762
And don't forget http://i.thisistrue.com for a new story every day on
your iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, or other web-enabled phone!

BONZER WEB SITE OF THE WEEK: http://www.PreyProject.com -- Prey. When
your laptop is stolen, you aren't just out your laptop, you lose all
the personal data, and possibly even your identity. With Prey, you can
fight back. Install a simple, lightweight program, and within minutes,
you are protected. Should your laptop go missing, go to their website
and report it. Prey will leap into action, silently connecting the
laptop to any available network. Then, it starts sending back reports,
documenting the current IP, screenshots of what the thief is doing, and
even photos, if you have a webcam. And best of all, Prey is free, open
source software, so there is really no reason not to put this on your
laptop today! (TC)
-- Bonzer Sites archive: http://www.BonzerSites.com

THIS WEEK'S HONORARY UNSUBSCRIBE goes to Rusty Kanokogi. As a teen, she
wandered the streets "looking for trouble." Then someone taught her
something that would change her life -- and others'. For the full story
see http://www.honoraryunsubscribe.com/rusty_kanokogi.html
NOTE: The full Honorary Unsubscribe is included in the Premium edition --
you don't have to click to a web site to read it. Support the
publication that brings it to you! http://thisistrue.com/upgrade.html
HONORARY SUBSCRIBE ARCHIVE: http://www.HonoraryUnsubscribe.com

YOU CAN REALLY HELP TRUE: Send this issue (in its entirety, please) to a
friend with your personal recommendation. A friend told YOU about this
newsletter, right? Pass the favor on! Thanks.

TIRED OF BEING TOLD WHERE TO GO? "Get Out of Hell Free" with our popular
and (in?)famous cards, created in response to a reader telling Randy he
was doomed. http://www.GOOHF.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS to "This is True" are free at http://www.thisistrue.com
Published weekly by ThisIsTrue.Inc, PO Box 666, Ridgway CO 81432 USA
(ISSN 1521-1932). TRUE is available to newspapers as a regular feature
column. "This is True" is a registered trademark of ThisIsTrue.Inc

COPYRIGHT 2009 by Randy Cassingham, All Rights Reserved. All stories are
completely rewritten by Randy Cassingham using facts from the noted
sources. ALL broadcast, publication, retransmission to e-mail lists,
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STRICTLY PROHIBITED without PRIOR written permission from the author.
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forward no more than three copies to any one person -- after that, they
should get their own FREE subscription. We ALWAYS appreciate people who
report violations of our copyright to us.


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