Silly stories to make you smile... or despair

Nov 18 2007 by Alan Ross, Magic 1170

CONSIDERING that we are supposedly at the top of the evolutionary tree, it’s worryingly obvious to anyone with half a brain that that’s what human beings have . . .

Half a brain. Not the full shilling. A few sandwiches short of a picnic. Some examples from around the world in a moment but first here’s one that is closer to home.

I’m famously unable to walk and answer a mobile phone at the same time, let alone hear what anyone is saying on the other end, but it’s not that. This one comes from Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 3.

Since the shoe bomber made air travel such a breeze, after you’ve taken your jacket off and put your keys and loose change into the trays, there’s another machine for shoes, just before you go into the paradise that is duty free.

I watched a woman observing everyone taking their shoes off, going through the machine, and then putting their shoes on again after they’d been X-rayed.

She seemed very interested in the whole process and had a “what are these people doing?” expression on her face . . . as she wandered through with her shoes still on her feet, having decided that she wasn’t going to play like the rest of us!

Mind you, she wasn’t as dumb as Louis Pasquale, whose 10m (35ft) fishing boat broke down off Freeport, New York. He had to be rescued by coast- guards when they spotted him trying to tow it against the current by attaching it to the little inflatable emergency boat he was rowing. He’d done about 100 yards in three hours.

And then there’s the sense in trying not to smoke marijuana in a police station like Scott Snow allegedly did in Connecticut . . . and when arrested he turned out to have more of the stuff in his trousers.

There’s also the example of a “reformed terrorist with great international contacts” who’d like a job in a multinational corporation. Yes, these were the details one guy posted on a job networking website. No job offers yet then?