Print Edition: January 19, 2008

OK, kidlings, it’s time for another edition of "Big Rob’s You Can’t Make Up This Stuff," the game based on my brother’s theory that reality is stranger than any fiction you can conjure up. We usually begin with an item from Big Rob’s stomping grounds of Flint, but this time around he’s more concerned with a national item.

Big Rob cites a Fox News report that telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because the agency has not paid its phone bills. A Justice Department audit said the FBI has "lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations." Fox News noted, "FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies."

"We’re not talking a couple of phone bills," says Big Rob. "There are 470 or more bills not paid. These are the guys who we’re supposed to trust to hunt down terrorists, organized crime bosses, and murderers but they can’t even figure out their own phone bills. You can’t make up stuff like this."

We know what Big Rob means; sometimes it’s difficult to understand the thought processes behind some of our governmental leaders. For instance, last Monday the NBC Nightly News ran a story about how Saudi Arabia is exporting the ideology of terror. Captured Al Qaeda documents show that 41% of all foreign fighters who went to Iraq to kill Americans last year were Saudis. Furthermore, our own terrorist experts report that rich Saudi Arabian citizens are ‘the primary source of funding for worldwide terrorism.’

So what was President Bush doing in Saudi Arabia last week? Why, offering these stalwarts of freedom a $123 million weapons handout, which includes 900 smart bomb kits so the kingdom’s armed forces will have the world’s most highly accurate targeting abilities. Here’s a question. Why don’t save a few bucks by eliminating the middle man and just send this technology directly to Al Qaeda?

Now on to more important international concerns – the Swiss sausage crisis. The Associated Press reports: "Cervelat sausage — a much-loved Swiss specialty — could be off the menu by the end of the year because of a lack of key ingredients." The ingredient in short supply is Brazilian cows' intestines, not allowed into Europe because they might contain Mad Cow disease. Before you say "yuuuk," you should also know that one of the ways this Swiss treat is consumed is raw.

Wait, it gets better. The sausage shortage is critical because there might not be enough of the tasty links to serve to the tens of thousands of soccer fans expected to descend on the Alpine nation this year for the final round of the 2008 European soccer championships. Now you know why rioting soccer fans are so common in Europe, they’re crazed by raw Mad Cow sausages.

Speaking of cows, how about this for one of the worse jobs ever. Students at Purdue University can earn $30 per session to inhale livestock excrement and rate the whiffs of air collected from barns filled with hogs, cows and chickens. It's a science experiment conducted by a professor searching for ways to improve methods for estimating a livestock farm's odor emissions. No word on how being involved in this work affects the students’ ability to ever look at a hunk of barbeque again.

Landing a job such as this is a bit unfortunate, but not nearly as painful as what happened to a couple of dimwits in New Mexico. Two men trying to trace a loaded .357-caliber Magnum as a pattern for a tattoo accidentally shot themselves. Authorities said one genius was struck in the hand when the gun accidentally went off and the other was hit in the left arm. Their injuries were not life-threatening, although sending monumentally stupid guys like these out into the world is pretty much like sentencing them to certain death.

I must admit, I have a facination with the tattoo industry. My question always has been, "Would you get a tattoo from an tattoo artist who couldn’t spell?" Your obvious answer would be "no," so I’m constantly surprised by how many tattoo businesses have misspelled words on their signs and windows. My advice? If you’re going to have something etched into your skin, make sure the person doing the etching owns a dictionary.

Finally, you have to love the ingenuity of a couple of guys who wanted to cash a $355 Social Security check in New York City last week. The trouble began when a couple of petty criminals tried to cash a check made out to a third individual, Virgilio Cintron, at a store.The man at the counter told them that Cintron had to be present to cash the check, so they went back to his apartment, which was a small problem because Cintron had died the day before. Well, they dressed him in a faded shirt, pants, and a pair of sneakers, threw a coat over his waist, put him on an office chair and wheeled the corpse over to the check-cashing store.

The men left Cintron's body outside, went inside and tried to cash his check. The store's clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and they told the clerk they would go and get him. At about the same time, a policeman spotted the men and arrested them as they were trying to haul the body into the store. I guess the moral of the story is that if you want a government hand-out make sure that the hand that’s out doesn’t belong to a dead guy.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com.  Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews.  

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