Winners, Losers and Assholes!

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. on Sept. 7, 1998, they had little more than their ingenuity, four computers and an investor's $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world.

It sounded preposterous 10 years ago, but look now: Google draws upon a gargantuan computer network, nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value to redefine media, marketing and technology. Definitely a winner!

Hot off the press from the Dallas Morning News is a piece about a guy who I can't decide what he should be. He's definitely in the running for either the "loser or asshole of the day" award.

Seems a robber rolled into a Dallas convenience store came armed with a bat and a knife.

He left with a lot of condoms and an energy drink as he made his getaway Wednesday afternoon.

Dallas police Cpl. Kevin Janse said that a man in a wheelchair entered a Dallas 7-Eleven Wednesday afternoon, rolled straight toward the cash register and beat it with a baseball bat until it opened.

But he didn't grab any cash.

Instead, police say he stole 10 boxes of condoms and an energy drink, which makes a lot of sense because if he was going to use all the condoms then he would need the energy drink.

Janse says the suspect may have been homeless and was likely intoxicated at the time of the robbery. (Ya think?)

We now swing north where cries for help inside a Trenton, N.J., home turned out to be for the birds.

Neighbours called police Wednesday morning after hearing a woman's persistent cry of "Help me! Help me!"

Officers arrived and, when no one answered the door, they kicked it in to make a rescue. But instead of a damsel in distress, they found a caged cockatoo doing a convincing imitation.

It wasn't the first time the 10-year-old bird named Luna said something that brought authorities to the home of owner Evelyn DeLeon.

About seven years ago, the bird cried like a baby for hours, leading to reports of a possible abandoned baby and a visit to the home by state child welfare workers. But it was only Luna practising a new found sound.

DeLeon says her bird learns much of her ever-growing vocabulary from watching television, in both English and Spanish.

And now to confuse you further we have a case where it's clear the U.S. government failed to get all its ducks in a row.

Now callers are getting their feathers ruffled over a typographical mix-up in a phone number that tells hunters where to call to buy their duck stamps.

The Duck stamps, which cost $15 a piece, are required to hunt migratory waterfowl in the United States.

The carrier card for the duck stamp transposes two numbers so, instead of listing 1-800-782-6724, it lists 1-800-872-6724.

The first number spells out 1-800-STAMP24, while the second number spells out 1-800-TRAMP24.

As a result, people calling a federal phone number to order duck stamps are greeted instead by a phone-sex line where they are enticed by a husky female voice to "talk only to the girls that turn you on," for $1.99 a minute.

Which proves that old syaing; "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it's probably a sex line!"

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E ! and as a paperback H E R E !

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://allans-perspective.blogspot.com