Peter Lloyd, who contributed an English word without vowels
("crwth") to last week's edition, wrote 1/23/11 @16:42 EST:

Well, I'll be hogswolloped and boiled in grits!  My second reception of
Borf News and I'm quoted, by golly.  Just for that, after a tiny bit of re-
search, here's another:  cwm.

A  cwm  [pronounced "koom"; rhymes with "doom"]  is a deep hollow
within a mountain, usually with steep edges, such as the Western Cwm
of Mount Everest.  However, in literary English it is nearly always spel-
led "combe" (as in Ilfracombe and Castle Combe),  coomb  (as in J. R.
R. Tolkien), or comb (as in Alfred, Lord Tennyson). SOURCE

I hope yw dw not think it imprwdent of me to  wse  "w"  as  "oo"  from
now on.  If yw dw, I'll crawl intw a cwm!

Er – uh – "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w"?  – Editor


Gary Logsdon wrote Sun 1/23/11 @11:32 CST:

Why not use Tabloid Headlines to print my pet annoyance?
The dumb fucking quotes on church kiosks/signs/whatever.

You  mean,  like,  "Where will you spend eternity?  In smoking or
nonsmoking?"  Yes!  Please!  Send 'em in!  Dumb or clever!  Ev-
eryone!

OK, here's one, just in:  See "dumb news from Kentucky" below.

                                                                                     – Editor

Message on church sign board in Lexington:

 

                                    [courtesy WKYT-TV]


     

                          [Tabloid Headlines photo]

The LaGrange County Alcoholic Beverage Control Board voted
3-0 to keep the town of Shipshewana  dry,  denying  a  package
beer and wine permit to a convenience store in the predominant-
ly Mennonite town  (Indiana is not a local option state). . . .

Fort Wayne was taking a poll for a name for its new city hall (er –
uh – how 'bout: "City Hall"?  Or,  "McDonald's  ARCO  Enron
KFC  Ameriquest  Cinergy  Minute Maid  PacBell  U.S. Cellular
Fort Wayne City Hall" – Editor).
                                                       [courtesy Associated Press]

"North Korea continues to show why it is known as the international
 equivalent of Charlie Sheen."
                                                                                – Dave Barry

"It was so cold this morning I couldn't get my shirt on – the buttonholes
 were frozen."
                                                                              – Madry Chlopak

"They put the horse before the cart to settle this lawsuit, and that's going to
  cost Floridians."
                             – Bill McCollum, former Florida Attorney General

"From the preliminary information we have, it was a terror attack."

                                                – Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, on the bom-
                                                   bing at a Moscow airport that killed 35 persons

"I don't think this was a very successful trip."
                                                                      – Gervais Charles, attorney for Jean-Claude
                                                                         "Baby Doc" Duvalier, on Duvalier's return
                                                                         to Haiti, where he was arrested

" . . . The wounding of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and the killing
  of six others . . . "
                                              – Audie Cornish, National Public Radio
                                                 (you heard it first on NPR:  Six congress-
                                                 women were slain in Tucson)

"I miss my real name.  I miss people calling me Nicole."

                                                         – Nicole "Jersey Shore Snooki" Polizzi

Alexis Texas, 25
Mary Kay Letourneau, 49
Nastassja Kinski, 52
Mr. Acker Bilk, 82

A woman leapt from the 23rd floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires and survived when she landed on  a  taxi  (which was severely damaged). . . . J. C. Penney's catalogue went out of print (fol- lowing the 1993 demise of Sears Roebuck's,  and  now  what are Hoosiers and Kentuckians to do when they go to the bath- room?  Rhubarb  and  burdock  do not leaf in the winter).  . . . Courtney Bowles, 31, a high school teacher in Loveland, Col- orado, was arrested for having sex with a 16-year-old boy.... The American Dialect Society chose "app"  as the word of the year. .  .  . Mobsters known as Meatball, Baby Shanks, Tony Bagels, Vinnie Carwash, and Jack the Whack were picked up in an FBI sweep. .  .  . Men's rooms in Tokyo were fitted with Sega "Toylets" that turn urination into target games. . . . Thous- ands of Northwestern University students living  "off  campus" will be disrupted by Evanston, Illinois's, decision to enforce its years-old "brothel law," which prohibits more than three unre- lated persons' residing together.  .  .  .   A woman hanged and burned her nephew's dog in Spartanburg County,  South Car- olina, for chewing up her Bible. . . . A 5-foot, 45-pound mon- itor lizard was found wandering the grounds of  a  condomini- um complex in Riverside,  California. . . .  A 60-year-old man was arrested in Seattle, Washington, for masturbating on a ta- ble  in his apartment window with a reading lamp  spotlighting his genitals.  . . . German reality TV and porn film star Carolin "Sexy Cora" Berger,  23,  died after her sixth breast enhance- ment operation.

[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, Obscure.com, AP]

The state House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill  to
require that a majority of the trustees of Indiana University reside in
Indiana and to eliminate a requirement that ballots for trustees elect-
ed by alumni be mailed to all graduates. . . .

A Republican state senator from Carmel introduced a bill to create a
"Don't Tread on Me"  license plate,  with  coiled  snake,  at the same
price as regular plates. . . .

A 16-year-old Warren Central High School student was arrested for
posting on his Facebook page, with reference to the school,  "You're
going to die tomorrow every last one of you."

                                                            [courtesy Associated Press]

Police busted 2,095 meth labs in Tennessee in 2010,   more than twice
as many as in Kentucky. . . .

Two pharmaceutical companies refused to sell the state sodium thiopen-
tal,  a sedative used for lethal injections  – one,  because no doctor was
on  the  purchase  order  (doctors are forbidden to assist in executions),
and the other,  because it relocated to Italy,  where authorities demand-
ed a guarantee that the  drug  not  be  used  in  executions  (seven other
states that use the drug were finding it hard to get). . . .

A Louisville policeman was suspended for ticketing a 7-year-old boy
who threw a ball at his truck. . . .

Governor  Stevie  appointed  a  lobbyist  to  the  state  Board of Elec-
tions (that's against the law).
                                                                                     [courtesy AP]

"We have a mentally unstable person in this class who scares the liv-
 ing crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the
 news, after he has come to class with an automatic weapon."

               – Lynda Sorenson, Pima Community College classmate of Jared Lough-
                  ner, in an e-mail to a friend before the shooting in Tucson, Arizona

"Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was wounded in this month's
 shooting rampage, did not vote."
                                                      – The Associated Press, reporting the
                                                         voting on the health care repeal bill

"Why didn't she vote?"
                                        – Jeanetta Girard

"Six people were killed in the incident in Tucson, and a dozen were wounded."

                                                     – Korva Coleman, National Public Radio
                                                        (apparently those killed were not injured)

Baby Spice, 35
Nicky Butt, 36
Hakeem Abdul Olajuwon, 48
Dolly Parton, 65
Rosetta Jacobs, 79
Arte Johnson, 82
Jeanne Moreau, 83
Wikipedia, 10

Sal the Cat, who was listed in his family's census return,  was
summoned for jury duty in Boston, Massachusetts. . . . A 12-
year-old boy getting a driving lesson from his father  in  Loxa-
hatchee, Florida,  drove the family car and the entire family in-
to a canal,  leaving his mother and brother and sister in critical
condition. . . . Sales of Glock semiautomatic handguns surged
after Jared Loughner's use of one. . . . A Tucson, Arizona, ra-
dio station removed a billboard referring to Rush Limbaugh as
a "straight shooter." . . . Four Republican party officials resign-
ed  in  Arizona,  expressing fear of Tea Party violence. . . . An
11-page paper outlining the government's strategy  to  prevent
leaks was leaked. . . .A Briton shaved his head and found that
19 years ago a hair-transplant doctor  had  branded  his  scalp
"WANKER."  .  .  .  A man in Taiwan lost a suit against neigh-
bors  who had trained their myna bird to call  him  a  "clueless,
big-mouthed  idiot."  .  .  .  CNN obtained a copy of a student
poem written by Jared Loughner (here it is – but don't bother).
. . . A woman in Volgograd,  Russia,  let her 57-year-old hus-
band "sleep" for four days before realizing he was dead.  .  .  .
The owner of Hampden's Café Hon  in  Baltimore,  Maryland,
registered the word "Hon" as her trademark. . . .Two 17-year-
old burglars in Silver Springs Shores, Florida,  stole  the  ashes
of the occupant's late father and two great Danes  and  snorted
them. . . .A poll found that 13 per cent of Catholics and 15 per
cent of "main line" Protestants, but only 2 per cent of "evangeli-
cal" Protestants,  believe  in  astrology  (10 per cent of all three
groups believe that  extraterrestrials  have  visited  the  Earth  in
spaceships).

[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, Obscure.com, AP]

& who's not
 

• Kathy Griffin  [not]
• Lady Gaga
  
• Sarah Palin – her lesbian secret  [not]
• Scarlett Johansson  [not]
• Sandra Bullock  [not]
• Queen Latifah
• Susan Boyle  [not]
• Macaulay Culkin  [not]
• Dustin Hoffman  [not]
• Joran van der Sloot
  

FGDean@aol.com wrote Sun 1/9/2011 @10:34 PST  re
the woman who stabbed the boy friend  who  wouldn't let
her look at his Facebook page and the deputy prosecutor
who committed burglary and assault in the name of love:

You just don't mess with a Hoosier woman, especially if
she's a tough Indy broad.

Connie Harbeson wrote Sun 1/9/2011 @11:58 EST re the
state senator who introduced a bill to arrest illegal aliens for
trespassing by setting foot in Kentucky:

No one is "illegal," even an extraterrestrial!  (Damned media
grab a term and won't let go).  . . . That orange alligator,  by
the way, has been revealed to be artificially colored  – likely
by a University of Florida fan.

We're less concerned about the terminology of the Kentucky state
senator's bill than with what it does to the legacy of Daniel Boone. – Ed.

A man who called police in Washington, Indiana, to report that his
lover wasn't breathing when they were having sex was arrested for
abuse of a corpse.
                                                        [courtesy Associated Press]

One sixth-grade boy was arrested  and four others were charged with
misdemeanors for possession of a map of their Louisville school show-
ing where bombs could be placed. . . .

Two drunken women were arrested for baring their breasts to passing
customers in a Kroger grocery store parking lot in Louisville. . . .

Hopkins County Attorney J. Todd P'Pool is a candidate for the Repub-
lican nomination for Attorney General  (no, that's not a typo). . . .

Governor  Stevie  said he felt safe under current rules that allow visitors
to carry guns into the State Capitol.
                                                                [courtesy Courier-Journal]

"Good thing it's not Friday."
                                               – Jeanetta Girard, on Thursday, the 13th of January

"I planned ahead."
                                – Jared Loughner

"An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serves."
                                                                                                 – John Boehner

"All of us in our roles in service to our fellow citizens comes with a risk."
                                                                                                                 – John Boehner

"It turned out that those who ended up with chicken pox got their vaccine a number
 of years earlier, suggesting its effectiveness had waned down fairly quickly."

                                                                       – Patti Neighmond, National Public Radio

"I was drowning in debt in Lisbon
 'til I met a real flood in Brisbane."
                                                            – anonymous foreign correspondent

Mary J. Bilge, 40
Iris DeMent, 50
Maureen Dowd, 59
Rush Limbaugh, 60
Rod Stewart, 66
Nina Totenberg, 67
Marjoe Gortner, 67
Faye Dunaway, 70
Scott McKenzie, 72
Billie Jo Spears, 74
A. J. Foyt, 76
Marilyn Horne, 77
Ray Price, 85
Andy Rooney, 92

An 84-year-old Chinaman grew a horn on the back of his head. . . . A man shot in the temple by a stray bullet New Year's Eve  in Naples,  Italy,  sneezed it out while waiting to be seen by doctors at a hospital. . . . A vulture wearing a transmitter labeled "Tel Aviv University" flew into Saudi Arabia, where it was arrested on suspicion of being an a- gent for Mossad. .  .  . Jersey Shore Snooki admitted she had help writing her novel A Shore Thing. .  .  . Astrono- mers concluded that the zodiac has shifted  (and you may not really be a Gemini after all). .  .  .  An 8-year-old boy, dared by his older brother, got his tongue frozen to a stop sign pole inWoodward, Oklahoma. . . . Paris Hilton's new reality show,  the World According to Paris, will debut on Oxygen-TV this spring. .  .  .  Lindsay Lohan was fired by Donald Trump before she even got on  his  TV  show  the Apprentice (applied and denied). . . . It was reported that Jared Loughner took yoga, algebra, business management and poetry at a community college in Tucson, Arizona. . . . Two high school girls were arrested in Estero, Florida,  for creating a Facebook page for another girl with a  photo  of her head pasted onto the  naked  body  of  a prepubescent girl  (the victim gained 181 "friends"). .  .  .  A frog rode out the Australian flood on the back of a snake. .  .  .

[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, Obscure.com, AP]

culture, along comes "nia" (it's a Swahili word that means "with purpose") –

 


Unopened e-mail last week included

• Roadie held as suspect
• Says heavy metal godfather 'sold out'
  

Retired contractor builds
30-acre retreat for
homeless cats

Terry Crow wrote Mon 1/3/2011 @11:57 PST:

Rocky Graziano is 91?  I guess somebody up there does like
him.

A 22-year-old Indianapolis man was stabbed by  his  girl  friend
after he refused to let her see his Facebook page. . . .

A  deputy  prosecutor  forced her way into an Indianapolis coup-
le's apartment,  claiming she was having an  affair  with  the  man,
and scratching and biting the woman. . . .

An Indianapolis woman who had taken rat poison a week before
the birth of a daughter was charged with murder when  the  baby
died only three days after being born.

                                                     [courtesy Indianapolis Star]

Boys aged 15 and 12 got 25 years in prison for the murder of the
15-year-old's stepfather near Lake Wawasee. . . .

The state is sponsoring an essay contest for grades 4-12 on Pres-
ident Reagan's  "most important contribution to American history"
to commemorate his 100th birthday anniversary February 6. . . .

A Republican state representative said he would introduce  a  bill
saying the state "does not recognize Sharia law."

                                                       [courtesy Associated Press]

A Republican state senator introduced a bill to charge illegal aliens
with trespassing for setting foot in Kentucky. . . .

Hundreds of dead blackbirds were found on the streets of Murray,
and several dozen in Gilbertville  (and in Louisiana  and  elsewhere;
see weekly BONUS below).
                                                                              [courtesy AP]

The parents of two female athletes at North Oldham County High
School sued the school board over a $1 million football fieldhouse
built in 2008 (apparently the board had not heard of Title IX). . . .

A woman whose pets had fed upon her decomposing body for 22
days was found dead in her Louisville home  (one of her four dogs
also was found dead). . . .

Alex Phelps, 24, was arrested in Shepherdsville after admitting tor-
turing and mutilating four cats "for medical research."

PETA's  crippled  chicken,  an  anti-KFC  effigy  denied  display in
downtown Louisville, found a home at an old coffee shop on Bards-
town Road. . . .

Anita Barbee, a professor at the University of Louisville, received a
grant to fight teen-age pregnancy (our roving reporter, Steve Yates,
suggested that the best way to stop teen pregnancy would be to get
all teen-age girls to wear masks of Professor Barbee's face).

    

                                           [courtesy Louisville Courier-Journal]

"I think it's Willow's year to go down."
                                                               – Kathy Griffin, on the Palins

"I'm going to get the snake."
                                               – Damonta D. Jones,  during sex between a friend
                                                  and a woman who said she was sexually assaulted
                                                  by the friend and the snake in Eau Claire, Wisconsin

"Many Americans believe the media is biased."
                                                                         – Renée Montagne, National Public Radio

Asuka Hinoi, 20
Maci Wainwright, 21
Pauline, 23
Paolo Nutini, 24
Rachael Lampa, 26
Tomiko Van, 32
Kimberley Locke, 33
Jonna Tervomaa, 38
Nichole Nordeman, 39
Sakis Rouvas, 39
Lara Fabian, 41
DJ Bobo, 43
Deana Carter, 45
Ehab Tawfik, 45
Patty Loveless, 54
Kathy Forester, 56
Crystal Gayle, 60
Rio Reiser, 61
Kaz Lux, 63
Leona Williams, 68
Joan Baez, 70
Athol Guy, 71
Cristy Lane, 71
Shirley Bassey, 74
Elvis, 76

Eli Manning, 30
Freb Cood, 72

Ashley Blumenshine, 27, caught with a 16-year-old boy in a car in a department store parking lot in Plainfield,  Illinois,  is the latest teacher arrested for sex with a teenager. . . . Glenn Beck was more admired than the Dalai Lama in a U.S.A.To- day Gallup poll (but less admired than Barack Obama). .  .  . Five  hundred  dead  blackbirds  were found on a highway in Labarre, Louisiana,  300  miles  south  of  Beebe,  Arkansas, where 5,000 blackbirds perished a week before, as mass fal- len blackbird deaths were reported also in Maryland, Tennes- see, Britain, Italy, Brazil, New Zealand,  and Sweden,  where 50 jackdaws were found dead on a street in Stockholm. .  .  . Tens of thousands of drum fish floated belly up dead  in a sin- gle pool of the Arkansas River.  . . .  An orange alligator exci- ted residents  and puzzled wildlife officials  in Venice, Florida. .  .  .  A bus driver was run over by his own bus in New Zea- land. . . .  A man attempting suicide with a leap from the ninth story in New York  landed on a pile of garbage,  uncollected in a blizzard,  and survived. .  .  .  A burglar who couldn't find his way out of a home he had entered  in  Wilmington,  Dela- ware,  called 911. . . . A male motorist wearing no pants in a Burger King drive-through in Longmont, Colorado, asked the attendant if she would like to hold his "whopper"  (he was ar- rested) .  .  .  A man walked into the kitchen of a Taco Bell in Spokane, Washington, locked himself in the cooler, and died. . . .  A valet shot by an evicted patron at a night club in Atlan- ta, Georgia, took it in the cell phone, in his breast pocket, and was not seriously hurt. . . . Six middle school girls were arrest- ed in Carson City, Nevada, for participating in "Attack a Tea- cher Day" on Facebook.  .  .  .  "Emo  rock"  was  branded  a threat to young people's welfare and the gene pool. [courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, Obscure.com, AP]

The Seattle Seahawks, winners of their division in the Na-
tional Football League with a  losing  record,  defeated the
2010 Super Bowl champion  New  Orleans  Saints  in  the
first  game  of the playoffs  (and they still have a losing rec-
ord – it's worser than the college "Bowl Championship Se-
ries"). . . . Russia's junior hockey team, celebrating a world
gold medal victory over Canada  –  none of the players yet
20 years of age and most of them high on champagne, was
kicked off a Delta Air Lines flight at Buffalo, New York.

• Their lesbian lies
• They DO share a bed

Publius Leget wrote Sun 26 December 2010 @10:04:26 CDT
re last week's headline   "SOUTHERN  INDIANA OFFICER
SHOOTS  MAN  IN  CONFRONTATION":

I looked through all my atlases, gazetteers and road maps for
Confrontation, Ind., and couldn't find it.   Could someone tell
me where it is? (I did find a "Lincoln City" and a "Springfield"
in Southern Indiana – in Spencer and Posey counties, respec-
tively – but only on the official state road map; and I have my
doubts about their existence, too.)

Confrontation is in eastern Rush County, in eastern Indiana.  The offi-
cer was a bit out of his bailiwick (and is now on administrative leave).

"Lincoln City" is said to be the home town of Chicago Bears quarter-
back  Jay  Cutler,  and of three other National Football League stars:
Ken Dilger,  Jon Goldsberry  and Bruce King.  But it's not a city,  or
even a town – it's  merely  the  neighborhood  of  Abraham Lincoln's
boyhood home.  A Wikipedia article on "Lincoln City" says that Lin-
coln as  a  young  man  "practiced law at the nearby Spencer County
courthouse;"  but that's not true, either.  The county seat is Rockport,
on the Ohio River, which was not "nearby": It's 18 miles away, which
was quite a journey in the early 19th century. The Lincoln family mov-
ed to Illinois in 1830, and Lincoln did not begin his law practice in Illi-
nois until 1837.

Springfield is not a town,  either.   Indiana  is among only half of the 50
states without a Springfield  –  which is the most popular  town  name
in the United States, according to Rand McNally:  Ten of the 25 states
that  have Springfields  have  more than one Springfield  (not counting
the Simpsons' home town).   It is precisely because there is no Spring-
field in Indiana that the writer John R. Tunis chose that name for a ficti-
tious town in his juvenile novel  A City for Lincoln,  about high school
basketball and politics in Indiana.
                                                                                             – Editor

Amber Portwood of Anderson, 20-year-old star of the MTV reality
show "Teen Mom," was charged with battery and child neglect after
a September episode showed her slapping, choking, and kicking the
24-year-old father of her daughter. . . .

The state closed all license plate branches as automobile registration
went totally on line. . . .

Eight cats died in a house fire on the south side of Muncie (two cats,
a dog, and an 80-year-old woman survived). . . .

A 3.8 earthquake rocked Gas City.
                                                           [courtesy Associated Press]

The fire department was called to rescue a horse that had fallen through
the ice into a family swimming pool in Georgetown.
                                                                                     [courtesy AP]

A bankruptcy judge threw the Louisville Orchestra out of court when he
heard about its $9 million endowment.
                                                                  [courtesy Courier-Journal]

"Next time Congress suggests it has a better idea how to determine a college football
 champion than the Bowl Championship Series, ask how the economy is doing."

                                                                 – Mike Lopresti, Gannett News Service

"In the 1970's pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity
 with man and even with children."
                                                                         – Pope Benedict XVI

"It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is
 equivalent to a diminished consumption.  The very contrary is the truth."

                                                 – William Stanley Jevons, in The Coal Question (1865)

Country Joe McDonald, 69
Rocky Graziano, 91

Donald Trump Jr., 33
Donna Summer, 62
Patti Smith, 64
Jim Bakker, 71
Dan Rostenkowski, 82

Charles the Angry (1387)
Paul Revere (1735)*
Mad Anthony Wayne (1745)*
J. Edgar Hoover (1895)
Xavier Cugat (1900)
Barry Goldwater (1909)
Kim Philby (1912)
Milt Jackson (1923)
Doak Walker (1927)

* Paul Revere actually was born on December 21,  ac-
   cording to the reckoning of the British Empire  at  the
   time  – his traditional New Year's Day birthday is the
   result of a reconciliation with the Gregorian Calendar,
   not adopted by the British Empire until 1752.  By the
   same reckoning,  George  Washington  was not born
   on  February  22.  We're not sure about Anthony the
   Mad – reader research and report welcome.

A man is charged criminally in a Detroit, Michigan, suburb
with snooping in his wife's e-mail, where he discovered an
affair (they are now divorced). ... Arthur Sedielle, 23, told
Oklahoma City police  it wasn't just gun play,  it  was  sex
play, and he didn't know the gun was loaded;  but his wife,
Rebecca, 50, is dead with a shot in the head; and Arthur is
in jail for murder. . . .  An undertaker about to bury an 88-
year-old woman  in Ipatinga,  Brazil,  noticed that she was
breathing. . . .China banned the use of foreign words in the
media.  .  .  .  A chair lift derailed at a ski resort  in  Maine,
dropping screaming skiers 30 feet, including children.  .  .  .
MTV moved Jersey Shore Snooki's drop in a ball  to Sea-
side Heights, New Jersey,  after the Times Square Alliance
nixed their New York plan for New Year's Eve.  . . . An I-
daho man  was arrested for punching a 15-year-old boy in
the shoulder for refusing to turn off his cell phone on a flight
from Las Vegas to Boise. .  .  . Both the wife,  48,  and the
daughter,  21,  of a county supervisor in Phoenix,  Arizona,
were  arrested  for sexual relations with a 14-year-old boy
(police said neither mother nor daughter  knew  of  the oth-
er's relationship with the boy).  .  .  .  Nicole Richie was re-
leased from probation.  .  .  .   A thousand dead blackbirds
fell on Beebe,  Arkansas. . . . Electronic impersonation be-
came a misdemeanor in California.

[courtesy Harper's Weekly, Daily Snopes, Obscure.com, AP]

"Your worst humiliation is only someone else's momentary entertainment" – Karen Crockett