I’m a daily visitor to the web site fark.com which is a site that archives interesting and/or humorous news articles and then lets visitors comment about the articles. It’s an truly great site and I highly recommend it to everyone. Occasionally there’s a story on Fark that I can’t resist making a few phone calls to people related to the story and messing with their heads a little. Here is a small archive of the calls along with excerpts from the stories.
If you like these clips you’ll probably also enjoy our other sound clips like the Disgruntled Tech calls, Auto Parts calls, movie theater calls and a few of our other random clips.
Pennsylvania State Police seized an estimated $40,000 in items that they allege is drug paraphernalia from three businesses in York and Adams counties on Thursday afternoon. State troopers, York Area Regional and Gettysburg police raided three tobacco product businesses: a warehouse at 3840 East Prospect St. in Windsor Township, and two Custom Blends and News stores, one in York Township and one in Straban Township in Adams County.
According to state police reports, police took products which they believe had potential to be used to smoke marijuana, including pipes and water pipes commonly referred to as bongs. As of Thursday night, no charges had been filed against the business owners. State police said they will continue their investigation with the district attorneys offices in both counties. At the South Queen Street Custom Blends store in York Township, shelves that once housed glass pipes with intricate designs stood empty. Cabinets that held hookah pipes, water pipes and pipe parts kits were also clean.
Police took stacks of stickers and patches they allege made drug references. The impounded items had stickers on them that advised customers use them with tobacco only. A man walked into the store Thursday night and rounded a corner to look in the glass cases. His eyes widened when he saw they were bare.
“Oh, they took everything,” one employee said.
Custom Blends stores sell tobacco related products, including several brands of cigars, cigarette rolling paper, 30 blends of loose tobacco, lighters, flavored cigarettes and other items. Employees at the store could not comment on the seizure. The Windsor Township warehouse receives inventory from various vendors across the country that it distributes to retail outlets. Owners for the businesses could not be reached for comment Thursday night.
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my sound clip – drug tip to the police
LE ROY, N.Y. – Nancy Crocker gets calls from famous dead people. Or at least that’s what her caller ID box at her western New York home has been telling her. Among the names listed by her caller ID last week were Charles Dickens, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Not to mention Herbert Hoover, Edgar Allan Poe and Albert Einstein.
The names of some living famous folks are also popping up, like Ronald Reagan. The Le Roy woman called her telephone company about the problem. Officials at Frontier told her that none of the phone numbers listed on the caller ID was real. A customer service representative told her the names are either old or made up as part of a testing system. The phone company thinks that a power failure or old equipment could have caused the famous names to show up on Crocker’s caller ID box.
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my sound clip – phone company rep.
Associated Press Feb. 14, 2002 – LYNNWOOD, Wash. – It’s bad enough getting telemarketing calls, but Ann Hutton and her husband are getting annoying pitches for someone else.
The Huttons, who have lived in this suburb north of Seattle for seven years, have the phone number once assigned to Omar A. Johnson. He moved out of Snohomish County 30 years ago but is still listed at his old address and number in the Verizon phone book. Hutton said she was getting 10 calls for Johnson on “a good day” from sellers of siding, home loans, hearing aids, auto glass, carpeting, pagers, vacation homes, windows, newspapers, water purifiers and chiropractors, as well as requests for donations to charity and medical research.
“We keep telling them there are no Johnsons here,” she said last week.
At one point, Hutton said, she was unable to call her sick mother because a telemarketing call had the line tied up. When she hung up and picked the phone up again, the spiel was still going. Verizon says it’s a database error, “an isolated event” that can’t be fully corrected for months. The next reissue date for the magnetic tape of telephone customer names and numbers that includes her phone is Aug. 15, and the new Verizon directory comes out in December.
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my sound clip – FARK beer fund
(AP) (STUART, Fla.) Feb 13, 2002 – A jury has awarded $50,000 to a couple who sued officials in the town of Sewall’s Point for displaying a picture of their house at City Hall with the words: “Our view of the hillbilly hellhole.” Residents Blaine and Sally Rhodes had asked jurors to award them more than $15,000 in the defamation lawsuit against Mayor Don Winer and clerk Joan Barrow. The suit claims Winer and Barrow ridiculed and harassed the Rhodeses and invaded their privacy by displaying an 8-by-10 photo of their house, given to the officials for Christmas in 1998. The photograph of the back of the Rhodes house showed a damaged floating dock hanging from a tree.
“It’s a great burden off my shoulders,” Blaine Rhodes told television station WPTV. Government officials “have to be held accountable for their actions, just like you and me.” The Rhodeses’ neighbor, Jann Levin, took the photograph and wrote the caption. She has reached an undisclosed settlement with the couple. Michael Piper, attorney for Sewall’s Point, said the caption was “a classic statement of opinion, and opinion is not defamation.”
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my sound clip – $30,000 for pictures
This guy’s number is busy so I end up emergency inturrupting his line which really pisses him off.
SPARTANBURG — Environmental officers in Spartanburg County are dealing with what they call one of the worst cases that they’ve ever seen. Officers said Tuesday that they found a home at 214 River Forest Drive filled with trash and more than 50 animals in horrible condition. They said that the smell is indescribable. The homeowner, Andres Terrill, has been arrested. There were 55 animals at the home and 28 in the back yard and 27 inside. Officers also said that there was trashed piled up inside from the ground to the ceiling. So much that officers said that Terrill had to dig tunnels just to get around.
“When you stuck your head in the door, you could hear sounds, you could smell awful smell of urine and feces, a heavy ammonia smell, house just totally consumed with litter,” Don Arnold with the Environmental Enforcement Department told News 4. Officers said that the animals were covered in feces, locked in cages and their fur was matted. Terrill is facing 27 charges of animal cruelty. He has bonded out of the Spartanburg County Jail.
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my sound clip – the kid next door
my sound clip – the man next door
I talked to the neighbors on either side of this guy’s house. One was a kid and one was an older guy. Both of them were more than happy to talk to me. The man even wanted my number so he could call me back later and give me an update on what was happening. (He thought I was with a radio staion in New York.)
(By MIKE WIGGINS The Daily Sentinel) A Grand Junction man suspected of drunken driving allegedly rammed two sheriff’s deputies’ vehicles and a garage during a chase through a Redlands neighborhood, then remarked during his arrest that the incident was “fun,” authorities said Monday. Gary Gulliford, 42, 3671/2 Rosevale Road, was arrested after the brief pursuit ended in the driveway of his home just before 11 p.m. Sunday.
The chase began after Mesa County Sheriff’s Deputy Bonnie Waegli heard a truck’s tires screeching as it turned south onto Monument Road from Broadway. She tried to pull the truck over for careless driving, according to an arrest report. Gulliford, traveling at more than 50 mph, led Waegli along Monument and D roads. He turned onto Rosevale Road and, driving south in the northbound lane, nearly hit a taxi cab head-on.
Deputies said Gulliford laughed after he was handcuffed and said, “That was fun.” Gulliford is being held without bond at the Mesa County Jail on suspicion of first-degree assault, attempted vehicular assault, vehicular eluding, criminal mischief, drunken driving and multiple other misdemeanor and traffic offenses. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Mesa County Court this afternoon. At the time of his arrest, Gulliford was out of jail on bond on several charges, including first-degree burglary, third-degree assault, drunken driving and criminal mischief, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Janet Prell. His driver’s license had also been revoked for prior traffic offenses.
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My sound clip
I ended up calling a neighbor of Gary’s and it turned out to be Gary’s landlord.