MAGPIE:THE FBI had an opening for an assassin.
After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done, there were three finalists: two men and a woman.
For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. “We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances. Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair . . . Kill her!”
“You can’t be serious. I could never shoot my wife,” said the man.
The agent replied: “Then you’re not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home.”
The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about five minutes.
Eventually, he came out with tears in his eyes. “I tried, but I can’t kill my wife.”
“You don’t have what it takes,” said the agent. “Take your wife and go home.”
Finally, it was the woman’s turn. She was given the same instructions, to kill her husband.
She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman, wiping the sweat from her brow.
“This gun is loaded with blanks,” she said. “I had to beat him to death with the chair.”
Moral: Women are crazy. Don’t mess with them.
(With thanks to Eleanor in Prague.)
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A PENSIONER in England was rescued from the hard shoulder of a motorway after he took a wrong turn on his electric mobility scooter. The 89-year-old man was travelling at 13km/h (8mph) on the M20 near Folkestone. Motorists called the police who picked him up and took him home. “He said he had been to Tesco but had mistakenly ended up on the motorway,” said a maintenance worker.
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EMBARRASSED US officials have been forced to admit that they have been spelling Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg wrong for years.
The errors in the country's longest place name were revealed by a local newspaper, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette,which has been covering the misspelling scandal since 2003.
Resolving the issue involved research into the two dozen spelling variants for the lake, in Webster, Massachusetts.
Eventually, it was determined that the 45-letter Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg was the correct spelling, and that the signs saying “Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaoggagoggchaubunaguhgamaugg” were wrong, inserting an “o” for a “u” at position 20, and a “h” for an “n” at position 38.
The research also found that the 49-letter variant, Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, was the second-most common version.
The local chamber of commerce will now attempt to find out who painted the signs in the first place, and get them to correct them. Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg is commonly referred to as Webster Lake by locals for some unknown reason.
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SOME 118 local councils in England have spent £1.65 million (€1.85 million) testing gravestones to ensure they are not in danger of falling over and injuring an unfortunate passerby.
Apparently, one million tombstones have failed the test and are secured with wooden stakes to ensure safety.
This is a piffling story. If they really wanted to waste money, they should have bought our banjaxed e-voting machines, no?
(With thanks to Eleanor – a different one. Dundrum, not Prague.)