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Alo-Ha! Friday Charles Memminger |
France can ban term
e-mail, but not Le SpamI was killing reams of currier electronique this morning with a vengeance, trying to isolate the good currier electronique from the bad currier electronique. I now receive roughly 250 bad currier electroniques a day for every four good currier electroniques.
Wait. This is not working. I thought if I went along with the French and called e-mail currier electronique -- the French have banned the use of the term e-mail -- I would feel better about it. I've got to admit, currier electronique is dern pretty. Sounds like a juggling act in Cirque du Soleil.
But I still hate e-mail no matter what it's called. I wonder how the French feel about the term Le Spam?
Now the news:
Jury sees the naked truth
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) >> Jurors who were mooned by a defendant needed only 30 minutes to find the man guilty of armed burglary and battery. The verdict came after Cornell Jackson, 29, punctuated his insanity defense by hooting "cuckoo-cuckoo" and then dropping his pants and showing his buttocks to the jury.(Ironically, his lawyer told the jury charges against his client were a "bum rap.")
Bark worse than flight
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) >> A deputy sheriff got a fleeing man to surrender by threatening to sic a police dog on him and then imitating the barking of a dog.Henry Ritter, who fled into the woods after being pulled over for a traffic stop, surrendered after hearing the deputy's barking, saying: "I'm here. Call off the dog." There actually was no dog present.
(But the deputy did read the defendant his Miranda rights in German Shepherd.)
Cubans keep on truckin'
MIAMI (AP) >> Cuban migrants fashioned a boat out of a 1951 Chevy pickup truck and "drove" it to within 40 miles of the United States before they were spotted by the Coast Guard and returned to the island.The Cubans built a raft of empty 55-gallon drums around the green truck and used the vehicle's drive shaft to turn a propeller, which pushed the unusual craft along at 8 miles per hour.
Cubans who flee and manage to reach America are allowed to stay. Those stopped at sea are returned to Cuba.
(One of the migrants complained they would have made it to Miami if only "Che Andretti over there hadn't been driving slower than Fidel's grandmother.")
'Honolulu Lite' on Sunday:
Free speech doesn't mean you have the right to fly an airplane through a crowded movie theater trailing a long banner that reads "FIRE!"
Quote me on this:
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." -- Kurt Vonnegut
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com
