COLEMAN, Ga. – Ten-month-old Kathy Morben surprised toy shoppers
when she turned up in a Baby Lilly doll box.

"They wouldn't let me take time off, so I had to bring her to work," said Mrs.
Morben,  who inserts plastic left arms in hollow little bodies at the Baby Lilly
factory.   "I was a little behind and placed her on the assembly line so I could
use both hands."

Mrs. Morben tracked Kathy down with a UPC bar code,  but another family
bought the girl before her mother could reach her.  Kathy was returned to the
store by the purchasers, however, with complaints of "excessive realism." . . .

Gerry Blue wrote Sun 22 Oct 2006 @08:18:25 PDT re the
"Dumb news from major league baseball":

Granted,   the two teams lack the statistical credentials
to qualify for the World Series,  but  aren't the winners
of the ALCS and NLCS considered to be the pennant
winners?   Maybe I've been using the wrong term since
1968?

Maybe so!  Let's just say there haven't been any pennant win-
ners since 1968. -- Editor


FGDean@aol.com wrote Mon 23 Oct 2006 @09:18:17 PDT re
the Corey Lidle airplane crash:

Well, you cite only Harper's Weekly and Associated Press
[as your Borf's weekly BONUS sources], but now I know
that the editor is also one of the sources.  And I understand
that this is a tabloid style publication  that  reserves the right
to take liberties.

Your editor was not the source of the Corey Lidle item.  ABC was,
for us (we saw it on television).  Because the Associated Press car-
ried full coverage of the incident,  we considered the AP attribution
appropriate and sufficient.   We did give the item our own specula-
tion as to motive, however, just as Harper's Weekly often does.

The TV coverage was bizarre.  They knew it was Corey Lidle's air-
plane.    They knew by flight log that only he and his instructor were
aboard.   They had found two bodies,  not yet identified;  and  they
had confirmed that no one in the building or on the street  had  been
killed or injured.   They  had  found  Lidle's  passport  in  the  street.
And they  were  speculating  as to whether Corey Lidle might have
died in the crash!

They  reported  further  that  the plane had flown down the Hudson
River, circled the Statue of Liberty, and proceeded up the East Riv-
er,  and that none of this was amiss in terms of  "homeland security."
Wacko.
                                                                                        – Editor

A man arrested for burglary in Muncie pickpocketed the cell phone of
one of the policemen taking him to jail   (it was found in his sock when
he was booked).
                                                              [courtesy Associated Press]

In a mid-October debate  between candidates for Congress from northern
Kentucky, the Republican said the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq to
date that month was 17 (instead of 71),  and the Democrat said the budget
deficit was $250 thousand (instead of $250 billion).
                                                                                           [courtesy AP]

The Maine National Guard was offering "flat daddies" and “flat
mommies" – life-size cardboard cutouts –  to spouses and chil-
dren of deployed soldiers.  . . .  Montana's Republican Senator
Conrad Burns said President Bush has a secret plan  to win the
war.  .  .  . A Denver woman was found insane for stabbing her
baby granddaughter 62 times with a butcher knife  after  receiv-
ing "spiritual messages from the geese flying overhead." . . .  An
inmate on death row in Texas committed suicide.  . . .  The king
of Spain denied killing a drunken bear. . . . A Catholic priest ac-
knowledged a two-year affair with Mark Foley when the former
congressman was an altar boy.  . . .  The Boy Scouts introduced
a merit badge for music and movie copyright law.  .  .  .  In Long
Beach,  New  York,  three 17-year-old girls were sent home for
coming to school as Captain Underpants on Superhero Dress-up
Day (see photo below).
                                                [courtesy Harper's Weekly, AP]

"soaring Peggy" sent us an e-mail titled "PMJohn Oaks people."

"Staci Payne" sent us an e-mail titled "Guten Tag there bonny132,buy drugs from USA only."

FGDean@aol.com wrote Sun 15 Oct 2006 @08:14:32 PDT
re New York Yankee pitcher Corey Lidle's suicide:

The stories I've seen and read speculated that the crash was
caused by a mechanical malfunction of the airplane . . . .

And we tabloids are not entitled to speculate?  -- Editor

Two Indianapolis morticians ran into a burning funeral home to
save three corpses.
                                                   [courtesy Harper's Weekly]

A 67-year-old social worker in Henderson was killed when she
brought a 9-month-old boy to his mother's home  for  visitation;
Mama and boy friend then off with the baby in the social work-
er's car,  and the three were found four days later  in a manhunt
in southern Illinois.
                                     [courtesy Louisville Courier-Journal]

Of the two teams in the "World Series":

1.  Neither won the pennant in its league; one did not even finish in
     first place in its division,  and  the other finished only five games
     above .500.

2.  They are the 4th and 13th (Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals,
     respectively) of the 30 "major league" teams in winning percentage
     in the regular season.

3.  One of them will be the "world champion" of baseball.

4.  Neither has an Asian or European player on its roster.

A 17-year-old Bowling Green, Ohio, girl who let her bra fly
on the highway was charged  with  littering  after the taunting
motorists behind her flipped and suffered a broken neck and
broken ribs. . . . A motorist was shot at with a crossbow in a
road rage incident in Arkansas. . . . Chinese Wal-Mart work-
ers unionized.  . . . Chinese families with dead sons complain-
ed that corpse brides were in short supply in the provinces of
Shanxi and Shaanxi.  .  .  . Xiamen  University in southeastern
China has  made  golf  a required course for business and law
students. . . . Americans were claiming political asylum in Brit-
ain.  .  .  .  Christopher Hitchens confessed that he had eaten a
dog. . . . A school principal in Indua, Minnesota, resigned after
shooting two orphaned kittens on school property. . . . An ele-
mentary school in Attelboro, Massachusetts,  joined schools in
Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Spokane, Washington, in prohibiting
the playing of  tag  at  recess  (it's a question of legal liability, of
course -- dodge ball was banned earlier).

"is So" sent us an e-mail titled "Systems Whenever."

"Osmund Delgado" sent us an e-mail titled "remunerate screwball."

Two alligators -- one of them 10 feet long -- were seen in the White
River in downtown Indianapolis.
                                                           [courtesy Associated Press]

A Prestonsburg man cut down and sold five telephone poles -- and told
police he did not realize they were in use (residents had complained of a
service outage).
                                                           [courtesy Floyd County Times]

"We must not think evil of this man."

-- Amish girl's grandfather, speaking of her murderer

Tower Records went bankrupt. . . . Whoppers sprinkled with
marijuana were served at a  Burger King  in Los Lunas,  New
Mexico.  .  .  . A woman tried to smuggle marijuana-sprinkled
ice cream (disguised as pistachio) into the Jackson County Jail
in Marianna, Florida.  .  .  . Starbucks announced plans to add
28,000 new outlets to its existing 12,000.  .  .  .  A surveillance
camera filmed the city prosecutor of  Hamilton,  Ohio,  strolling
through the Butler County Courthouse naked after hours. . . . A
New York Yankee pitcher, despondent over not getting into the
World Series, committed suicide by flying his private airplane in-
to the 50th floor of an apartment building on Manhattan's Upper
East Side.  .  .  .  Pregnant British teens were smoking to reduce
the weights of their babies.
                                              [courtesy Harper's Weekly, AP]

"charity kelley" sent us 12 simultenous e-mails saying "im sorry" (she is).

FGDean@aol.com wrote Sun 1 Oct 2006 @09:23:48 PDT:

I listened to the sound clip; heard nothing that struck me as
strange or dumb.  Which announcer is at issue: the first one,
giving the weather, or the second, listing all the dial settings?

Both.  (1) Have you ever heard anyone sounding dumber than the
first – from Kentucky, West Virginia, or Indiana?  (Or, Armenia?)
(2) The numerous sets of call letters for  different  transmitters  are
dumb in themselves.  Also, guess the sex of the second announcer.
Here's another (shorter) sound bite.       – Editor

Can vineyards replace tobacco?

[headline in Kentucky Monthly magazine]

Indiana Pacers basketball player Stephen Jackson was hit in
the mouth and struck by a car, and fired a gun, outside an In-
dianapolis strip club.
                                 [courtesy Louisville Courier-Journal]

"Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?"

                          -- Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi

A man arrested for possession of pot in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
defended himself by telling police that it  wasn't  his  –  that he
had stolen it. . . . Muhammad Atta forgot to swicth on the au-
dio on his martyrdom videotape.  . . .  A Mitsubishi dealership
in Columbus,  Ohio,  withdrew a radio ad proclaiming a  jihad
on the U.S. auto market. . . .  Senator George Allen denied he
had once stuffed  a  deer's  head  into a black family's mailbox.
. . .  A Christian convert hijacked a Turkish airliner. . . . A wo-
man was charged with sexual assault  for  grabbing a steward's
buttocks on a transatlantic flight.  .  .  .  A flying Elvis suffered a
broken pelvis in Montana.  . . .  A Mississippi sports fan named
his baby boy ESPN. . . . Malaysia's culture minister confirmed a
plan to levy fines for displays of incorrect usage of Malay, the na-
tional language (with special penalties for mixes of Malay and En-
glish).
                                                [courtesy Harper's Weekly, AP]

"Lucile" and "Tory" sent us e-mail titled "La mejor manera de recaudar fondos para su negocio."

A man in Hammond bombed his neighbor's house in retaliation for
the neighbor's children's breaking his wife's eyeglasses. . . .

A woman in Bloomington filed a paternity suit for her baby alpaca.

Here's a sound bite (less than a minute) of what we wake up to on
weekends).
                                                              ["courtesy" WKYU-FM]

"It's a good thing I had a bag of marijuana instead of a bag of spinach --
 I'd be dead by now."
                                      -- Willie Nelson, busted for possession of pot

Anita Ekberg, 75
Mark Farner, 58

The dean of the University of San Diego business school, who
is in the midst of establishing a program stressing ethics and re-
sponsibility, was arrested in Cleveland on drug charges. . . .
PETA asked Six Flags parks to cancel their cockroach eating
offer (see last week's Tabloid Headlines). . . . A vice cop pre-
tending to be a john in Syracuse,  New York,  was picked up
by a woman  pretending to be a prostitute  pretending to be a
cop. . . . A failed suicide bomber got the death penalty in Jor-
dan. . . . John Mark Karr's attorney described him as a "Sou-
thern gentleman with a sense of humor." . . .  A foul ball hit by
Baltimore Orioles right fielder  Jay  Gibbons  hit his wife in the
ribs (she was in the stands behind home plate). . . . A hamster
diverted a flight from Mallorca to Austria.  . . .  Surveys found
that television sets outnumber people in U.S. homes – that les-
bians are10 percent more orgasmic than straight women – that
46 per cent of American women want to be  surgically  altered
to resemble Jennifer Aniston  –  that rap fans are unlikely to re-
cycle.

"spyware" sent us an e-mail titled "lIturi actes pygmes auraient."

"Kelley Foreman" sent us 12 simultaneous e-mails titled "excrete."