We recently hired a new sexton at church, a huge burly fellow named 
Boris. Boris is a Russian emegree, and he doesn't speak English very well.  
But he's a really good sexton; he's cleaned parts of the church that many 
of us didn't even know existed, and he is a wonderful painter.  The church 
looks really nice now.  And he even goes around after each service and 
collects the old programs so we can recycle them.

About two weeks ago he was vacuuming the sanctuary, and he left the 
vacuum cleaner plugged in at the back of the church while he went up 
front to the alter area to do something.

A street person wandered in, saw the vacuum cleaner in the back of the
church, and that Boris was way up front.  He assumed that nobody else was
around.  (What does a street person want with a vacuum cleaner anyway?)
So he decided to make a grab for it.

He was correct- there was nobody else in the building.  What he didn't
know was what Boris did for a living in the old Soviet Union.  Boris had
been a boxer.  And a house painter.  And a personal bodyguard to Niketa
Kruschev. 

As da song say: "Boom!  Boom!  Out go the lights!"  Or, would that be: 
"Gooood night, Irene..."

Boris is fast.

Ain't real life grand?  If you're not convinced yet, read this:

Dispatched this week to 150,000+ readers in 117 countries AND the
   offices of Alaska Petroleum Contractors, Inc., on the Arctic coast at
   Kuparuk, Alaska, it's...

THIS is TRUE for 29 September 1996    Copyright 1996 by Randy Cassingham
------------------------------------------------------------------------

THEY CALL HER FLIPPER: A fully-clothed woman pulled from the ocean three
   miles off the Florida coast has been detained for psychological
   evaluation. "She said she couldn't live on land anymore and had
   adapted to living in the water," a Coast Guard spokesman said. "She
   didn't want to come in." The woman, who refused to give her name,
   said she was in the middle of "transitioning" to life in the sea and
   had "just come up to get some air" when a boater spotted her treading
   water and called for help. The woman said she'd been in the water for
   three days, and survived by eating seaweed. (UPI)