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Weird_&_F-d_UpAnd now, a Japanese shut-in who decided to marry his pillow. I guess "pillow" and "beer" must look the same in those "is better than a wife" posters.
Iran is openly expanding its missile launch complex to accommodate larger launch vehicles. Just when you think the mullahs couldn't get any madder, they go and prove you wrong again. Help us, Bibi, you're our only hope...
Sit back, strap in, and enjoy just how loopy the very top of the high end of the hi-fi hobby can be. And less ye think the economy has sunk all these companies we have an updated version. The super-high end speakers I think are nifty are an absolute bargain by comparison.
Who needs a forklift or a big truck when a Sumo wrestler will do the job just as well. Seems like a lot of work for an $850 payout split (presumably) two ways.
Remember, folks, guns don't kill people, giant lawnmowers kill people. Let's just say she got a real close shave...
Headline sorta says it all: Anti-gay state senator arrested for DUI leaving a gay bar. Research, he was doing res-- Oh, wait, nevermind.
Let it not be said I am one to cover up when my side coughs up the ball. Especially when they do it in heels.
Nice to see it's not just American SUV drivers who think 4WD magically transforms the road into dry pavement. I'm thinking that's somewhere either in Turkey or Iran, but I'm not at all sure. It'd be nice to think nobody got hurt, but I'm pretty sure I'm wrong there, too.
Actually, I'm surprised it's taken this long for some loon to fasten onto global warming as an excuse to off themselves. It's damned sad when even maniacs do this sort of thing to themselves. It's inexcusable to take their kids with them because they can't seek help.
Hey, don't worry guys, I found a great place to park the fire truck. Meh. Detroit. Sorta says it all.
So it seems the actual next-gen home theater will be equipped with a whopping 24 separate speakers. Just what I need, another 19 cables snaking around my living room. So you heard Ellen's "yeah, no" from all the way out there, eh?
In Soviet Russia, tank sale finds you!. I swear, Mr. Customs Official, it just followed me home! Can I keep it? Please?!?
Spider Crawl...not on my floor.
In my house you can get exercise by jumping over the sudden cat vomit pile.
Ok, I'm calling sexism here, cos if guys were to sparkly-fy their junk and then post pictures of it on the intarwebs, the jokes would be endless. As if guys need another reason to scratch down there.
Remember, folks, if you want to get bizzay, do it on level ground. You'd think a 67 year-old woman would know better. You'd be wrong.
If it gets rid of an untreatable parasite that manifests itself as a three-foot long worm that burrows around in my body, I'm all for it! I definitely recall being grossed out by this concept back when I was in... junior high, I think. I just don't remember it being called a "Guinea worm." Yet another reason to stay the hell away from the desert!
Nothing like a collection of 50 of the weirdest looking critters yet found to start your day. Most I'd heard of, a few I hadn't. I've seen video of giant isopods... those things are f-d up for sure!
For peace of mind (and back, and legs, and arms), think about carrying Rest Easy, an organic spray said to repel or even kill bedbugs. You spray a defensive perimeter around your bed (you're advised against spraying it directly on the sheets) and presumably heed the age-old advice, "Don't let the bedbugs bite."
His story: The man is Thomas Beatie, who grew up in Hawaii as Tracy, becoming a model and a finalist in this contest. Beatie began dressing and living as a man when he entered his 20s. Eventually he underwent this type of surgery but elected to retain his female reproductive organs.
Keeping your V-Jay= woman.
Look, I don't care what you do, who you are etc.. just don't expect the main stream media to understand you and accept you. You have female reproductive organs and you chose to use them. That alone makes you a woman, not 100% male. You may feel you are 100% male on the inside, but you got lady parts.
Sorry dude.
Looks like even Italians have a limit to their sense of humor. Ours are too fat, old, and lazy to have any kind of flavor. Well, assuming half-puked cat food isn't a flavor, I mean.
Scientists are testing a radical re-animation strategy by draining all the blood out of dogs, replacing it with a super-cold saline solution, and then putting the real blood back after a few hours. I get why they're doing it, but I'm not going to volunteer for their first round of human trials, that's for sure.
Virginia has joined a growing list of states outlawing involuntary chip implants. Go for the weird story, stay to watch the reporter trying to reconcile the deeply conflicted "privacy, for teh win!!!" and "ZOMG!1!! FUNDIES!!!!" storylines.
New from the Nanny State: Police to pose as burglars, break into houses, wake up residents and scold them for a lack of security. I think they'll also end up finding out which residents own cricket bats, machetes, and various illegal firearms. The hard way.
This is why Pittsburgh can't have nice things. Like the first comment says, if these were Saints fans, they would've been wearing more beads. And, like, fewer coats and touks.
Not only did he put the testicle from a castrated dog in his mouth but he also put a medical tube up his nose and showed a nurse a photo of his erect penis on his mobile phone. The 37-year-old, from Brighton, east Sussex, was charged with two offences by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons while working at St Runwald’s Surgery in Colchester, Essex, between April 2008 and September 2009.
Umm...err...wow.
Today's "climate change will kill us all" debacle is brought to you by (closes eyes and throws dart)... the loss of all topsoil in Britain before the year 2070!!! ZOMG!!1q!! OH NOES!!! QUICK! SOMEONE GET THEM SOME FUNDING!!!
I remember hearing about this particular imminent apocalypse back in the 70s, when the watermelon agenda mostly revolved around fertilizers growing enough food to feed too many kulaks. It didn't happen then. It's not going to happen now.
And in the, "oh-no-they-di'-uhn!!!" file, we have hajji stuffing women's boobs with explosives. This one is so sensationalist it just screams, "slow news day." Then again, the story claims they've already caught looneys with their butts full of Semtex, so wtf knows?
And now, a girl with no vagina who got pregnant anyway due to getting stabbed in a knife fight. No, really!
Not only is Rip Torn still around, he's still getting in trouble. I guess it proves that, no matter how rich you are, it is possible to be so drunk and annoying people will throw your old ass into jail
Sometimes there's just no improving on the lede: "Days after D.C. Superior Court Magistrate Judge Janet Albert broke up with her girlfriend, the judge found her former companion unconscious in her attic, above her bedroom, with some food and an ice bucket fashioned into a makeshift toilet, authorities say."
No, really!
Now that flu season is on its way out, the MSM has the balls to ask was the whole thing exaggerated? Ah, but reading the article reveals the true source of hysteria. It's the government's fault! Really!
The saga of the secret codes appears to be over. As long as the sights keep shooting straight, I guess it's not that big of a price to keep the busybodies happy.
Serves him right, wasting good booze like that. I thought it was fake, until the smoke alarm started going off. Heck it still might be, but it was an interesting explosion.
Ok, I get it, that chicks like to change things about their appearance and, you know, upgrade stuff. What I don't get is this whole "vagazzle" thing. Yeah, you heard me, that's what she said. Seems to me that'd, I dunno... itch.
In the, "don't you have anything better to do?" bin, we have this hard-hitting investigative report which proves a small Michigan company is casting very short, very small biblical references into its gunsights. Of course someone's going to have a problem with this. Once they found out about it, anyway.
Hey, guess what? Swimming in shark-infested waters can be dangerous! The article starts out well enough, but the wheels fall completely off when the author tries to tie a rise in attacks with tourism and then (somehow) with sharks being over-fished.
NASA officials have confirmed a baggie of cocaine was brought into the hangar complex which processes the space shuttles. Junkies are stupid, even rocket scientist junkies. I'm sure they'll catch the person, but, this being NASA, I'm sure it'll involve three dozen meetings, two press conferences, and the creation of at least seven new acronyms.
Took me awhile, but I finally found the real high-end of the hi-fi hobby. Feast your eyes on a forty-two-thousand dollar set of mono amplifiers. Auditioned with a $14,000 turntable, natch. I honestly have no idea who pays for such foolishness, but I guess if it keeps a small bunch of craftsman off the bread line, it's all good.
Hey, if you can't link up a story about a stillborn lamb with a face like a human, well, what damned good is having your own website anyway? Let the Welsh jokes begin!
Now I have seen it all. If you can't get home early enough to walk the dog, then you have a problem.
Old dogs that have urinary problem etc.. puppies, sure.. but really, be responsible.
Problem: Effete Westerners have got all fluttery about the lead you're using on the kids products you're selling them, and now block them.
Solution: use a different poison.
I wonder if it glows?
ClimateGate just gets better and better. How much better? How about the UN IPCC Chief is making millions on side-deals with companies specializing in carbon trades and "sustainable technologies?" Now, remind me again how these are the people who's advice to dismantle our economies we are to trust? I keep forgetting that part...
Sometimes there's just no improving on the headline: crime lord's fake penis falls off during raid. A hermaphroditic crime lord sounds like something out of a David Lynch flick. It also seems to provide even more proof of Mark Twain's axiom about truth and fiction.
Nothing quite as embarrassing as calling the fire department to cut your winkie out of a steel pipe. In the emergency room, no less. Not quite as bad as the story of the guy who got his junk caught in a machine belt so tight it threw him across the room and he tried to stitch it up with a stapler*, but you can see it from there.
---
*I'm not kidding. Google it.
Making the rounds: a funeral home is being sued because, apparently, they sent gramma's brain home with the flowers. Ok, suddenly my own mom's plan to be cremated is getting this giant silver lining...
Coming soon to a console near you: the "ultimate" FPS accessory. I'm still amazed nobody's come up with a left-hand HOTAS solution to give me no-lift access to the number keys and other odd combos.
F- being a vegetarian, I wouldn't eat any of this stuff either. Warning: contains picture of already-prepared "mutt for dinner." Not violent or cruel, but it could upset the sensitive. As if those people still hang out here anyway.
Making the rounds: two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Good thing that was during the Bush administration, otherwise we would've been greeted with another round of "cover-up for the president" from the MSM. But by all means, let's close it down, provide a forum for the worst of them during a show trial in Manhattan, and let the rest scatter to the four winds. What could possibly go wrong?
Just when you thought the pervs had tried it all, we now have a butt-sniffing bandit. This one reeks of a hoax, but the police seem to be taking it seriously. For now.
Ok, I get that people need gross anatomy classes. What I don't quite understand is why it's being taught outside. Note: Pictures are luridly graphic, but since the dude is already seriously dead, it's not exactly violent. Gotta learn somehow, I guess.
Remember when I said the Hi-Fi hobby has a nosebleed section? This one's in the center section, mid-field. Read the first page, as much as you can anyway, and then skip to the last page. It literally took my breath away when I saw the price. Yes, Virginia, there are audiophiles far nuttier (and richer) than I.
First, the "you can't make this stuff up" lede: "A 4-year-old boy, beer in hand, is accused of stealing Christmas presents from his neighbors. It's a strange story, but also a sad one. "
And then there's "The child, Hayden Wright, was found around 1:45 am Tuesday, wandering the streets of his neighborhood. In a police reports, officers said he was wearing a little girl's dress and drinking a beer."
But best of all is: ""He runs away trying to find his father," she said. "He wants to get in trouble so he can go to jail because that's where his daddy is."
Ah, the holidays!
No, really, when monkeys attack. I've watched Olivia make almost exactly that move on a little punk at the playground when his teasing turned to touching. I had to yell at her to stop, but inside I was definitely smiling.
Annie gets a no-prize that'll fit in a pocket protector for bringing us news that girls feel they're driven out of the computer science because (waves hands around), "it's masculine geeky." Think about that one for a second. Yeah, that "smack" sound was all my guy friends doing a face-palm.
Don't worry, man. I'm raising one and I still don't understand them.
Hmm... I'll take armed, naked crazies on the lawn for $200, Alex. As noted previously, I'd wager she looks more like Kathy Bates than Uma Thurmond. Life often isn't fair that way.
Presenting Fapmapper, which combines the creep factor of public wankers with the utility of Google maps. I learned a very long time ago that people who want to be seen naked in public are 99.99% of the time the last people who should be seen naked in public. If this helps me avoid them, well, there ya go.
The shape of things to come here: brothers beat down home invaders and receive multi-year jail terms for their trouble. Well what do they expect? Sure, the robbers tied them up on the floor, but the robbers also said the family wouldn't be killed as long as they didn't move! Those maniacs went after the robbers with a cricket bat! Put one of them in the hospital! And a good thing too it happened in Britain, otherwise that poor thief likely would not have gotten the best of care!
To wit: There's no such thing as a woman so beautiful a man can't be made sick of her crap. With (barely) SFW pictures of an example. The obverse is, of course, just as true.
A 70 year old man has apparently died of a heart attack while skydiving. When I first read it, I wondered, "how could you tell that from a bunch of hamburger and broken bones?!?", but it turns out he was tandem jumping. Go grampa! Bye, grampa!
This one was so gross I didn't want to keep it up on my computer: a tongue-eating parasite has been found of the coast of New Jersey. It (thankfully) is harmless to humans, well, except for that whole "so skeeved I need a shower" feeling. With severely creepy pictures!
Making the rounds: a mysterious spiral blue light appeared in the skies over Norway last night. Not only do they have pictures, they have video. I don't know what the f- it is, but if I had to put a $5 chip down I'd set it on, "Russkie missle test gone bad."
A better, and more honest, way to put it would be, in the face of heretics and apostates, first affirm the faith. I didn't, and don't, want to turn this into some sort of humanist holy war, but the other side seem to already have.
Ok, I get that some folks could be skeeved out by transgender people. Being raised in the deep South, I know there are an unfortunate number of people so badly skeeved out they do stupid things. You know, like leave a nasty, threatening voice mail message on the phone of a transgender teen who just applied for a job at their McDonalds. A bit of a shame, really. The bottom rungs of McDs are rightfully seen as a kind of hell, but the truth is it's not a dead end. Far from it. Work at it hard enough, long enough, and McDs will make someone with a high school diploma very wealthy indeed.
But not for this guy. No, this guy let his prejudices override his professionalism, and now what likely was a bright future is now a dead end.
Karma's a bitch, ain't it?
Nothing like finding vines in the vah-jay-jay to throw your whole day off (SFW). Annie gets a no-prize that damned well better warm its hands before it sets to work for bringing us proof that old-world stabs at birth control are still alive and well.
No, really, when Christmas trees attack. Being a good German Austrian, he told the authorities, cut the tree to size, and drove it home.
So in a street full of tall buildings, these guys manage to smash a moving car. An advantage to driving an old, low-slung sports car is it increases the chances of a miss. A disadvantage is if it manages to score they'll have to scrape what's left off the wrecking ball.
That's right, folks, for about $130 a night you too can experience life as a hamster. All it would need to complete the experience is a giant, menacing cat. Oh no, ours are too old, fat, and lazy to be much of a threat to anything.
Making the rounds: a former Miss Argentina is dead from complications resulting from cosmetic buttock surgery. In other news, people pay good money to have a surgeon take a knife to their ass.
Want to know what more than a decade of progressive government will look like? Wonder no more. The best part is, most people on the left side of the peanut gallery are now wondering what, exactly, the problem is.
So now the hard left is dreaming of Diocletian. Because, when they do that, they think it goes over the heads of the plebes who would otherwise react badly if they were to use the name of the person they really want. ~ Where have you gone, Joseph Stalin... ~
Leave it to the home of everything truly weird to give us the first known case of a man marrying a video game character. No, really!
Ya know, it's just not fair setting up a realistic-looking deer made out of frikkin' concrete. A buck could get hurt, donchaknow? Killed, even!
Leave it to The Sun to find a woman who keeps having kids because all she really wants is a set of twins. It takes awhile, but it would appear she's a very hard-working housewife. Still, 14 kids does seem quite a lot.
I'm sure this'll trigger an impressive round of hysterical journalism, but leave it to the Post to get it started off right: Subway riders sealed in murder car. After reading the article, if the guy keeps his mouth shut and gets a good lawyer, I think he probably could get a self defense plea to work. Regardless, it seems a good lesson in "keep your crap into your lap, you idiot."
For proof that porn has come (ha!) a very long way indeed, one need only examine these scans of "Tijuana Bibles". Suddenly the fact that red-light districts were largely legal in pre-WWII US makes a heck of a lot more sense.
NSFW, but it's Saturday, wtf are you doing at work?
Meh, his kid, his rules: "Is this taking the whole Star Trek thing a teensie weensie bit too far? d'Armond Speers spoke only Klingon to his child for the first three years of its life."
Thing is, kids learn languages like a sponge at that age. Other than teaching him a few strange-ish sounds, I'll wager he'll be fine.
Great. Even their politicians are cooler than ours:
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rubbed shoulders with rappers and was hailed with "respect" in a television show on Friday that could help boost his flagging ratings.
Of course, people worship Obama. Beat that!
Ron gets a no-prize shaped like a crystal egg with a crack in it for bringing us proof that the Bugatti Veyron does not make for much of a boat. Brackish water, no less. Fixable? Probably, but likely only with a complete disassembly.
Why someone should not be able to own a chimp no matter how well they can care for it.
Just because your state allows it does not mean you should own it.
Valve's on-line gaming service Steam has decided to combine the convenience of advanced download with the empowerment of the nanny state. I became disillusioned with Steam when something went wrong and it decided I'd given my password away for... well, it was never entirely clear why I would be doing that. At any rate, not only did it lock me out of all the on-line games, which would've merely been annoying, but it also locked me out of the off-line games, which was flat outrageous. Rubbing salt in the wound was their, "you're cheating. What did you expect? Get over it." attitude.
So from that point forward it's been brick-and-mortar boxes for me, FTW!
Two words you never want to hear together: stroller, and amputation. Since they're talking a stroller which cost more than $100, we can happily say Olivia had no chance of sitting in one. It took me some searching to determine this is not related to the team what makes the race cars go really fast.
There's horse whisperers, and then, well, then there's guys like this.
Via, I kid you not, Instapundit, who I am now convinced reads us all the time. Because this is exactly what we would've linked, if we'd had his connections. Kno'wha'I'mean?
Except Alfas are way cooler than Mazdas. I mean, really...
Somebody somewhere seems to think the CIA is predicting Israel's demise in 20 years. The text of the article is just barely coherent, and reeks of often-mourned Weekly World News. And don't even get me started on the comments.
Everything I've read indicates, if anything is done, as soon as the Israelis finish their wall they're going to scoop up the outlying settlers and give the Palis a state whether they want it or not.
No, really, when jellyfish attack! 6 feet across and 400 hundred pounds. If that don't define f'd up, I don't know what does.
Nothing quite like some drunken loon parking his car over the bed you're actually sleeping in to start the day. And that, children, is why people with multi-story houses put their bedrooms on the upper floors.
Just when you think the Japanese just can't get any stranger, they go and invent florescent light bulb fighting. You'd think they'd at least make them wear safety goggles or something.
No, really, when bridges attack! Missed them by THAT much. Well, actually, it didn't miss them at all. My luck, I'd be driving the (presumably) freshly-restored spider across that dratted thing when it decided to whack a motorist or two.
Personally, pouring gasoline on a camp and setting it on fire just to get rid of snakes seems a bit excessive. After all, with Ellen and Amber around, the snakes would do well to run and hide, lest they fall victim to ohmygodomygodomygodit'ssoooCYOOOTTT!!! attacks.
William Heirens, the "Lipstick Killer," is believed to be the longest-serving inmate in the United States. He turns 81 on November 15.
Good. Stay there. But, if it was up to me, you would have been euthanized a long time ago.
Scientists are trying to figure out what makes memory tick by, wait for it, merging the brains of two different bird species into one embryo. None of the creatures has made it out of the egg just yet, but scientists think it's only a matter of time. Sometimes science is way cool. Sometimes it's way skeevy.
Move over, penis pump, Jolie Lips is the new game in town. Article is completely SFW. The product, on the other hand, well...
The cold truth is, if he's as rich as he looks to be, he won't have to wait too long for a hot chick to look him up. I didn't even know you could get that much gold in a house.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine whether or not this really is the right answer.
At first, this essay about Stanely Kubrick's The Shining seems straightforward enough. A standard, and even a little innovative, art-house look at one of Kubrick's more popular films. Then, around, say, the third or forth paragraph on the second page, it jumps off the tracks and dives into an unexpected and completely weird abyss.
I finished it anyway simply because he did such a good job of trapping me into reading the first part.
Ok, so which would you want to try fried... a Snickers bar or an f'ing scorpion? Yeah, thought so. Advantage, rednecks!
Ok, so 'fess up... have you seen this man in your dreams? Me, I usually can't remember the faces of strange guys in my dreams. Strange women, well, the faces not so much. Just how much they always seem to resemble my wife.
My story, sticking to it.
Mark gets an electric no-prize for bringing us the sad tale of a family and their careless attempt to upgrade their hobby gear. There's a video floating around which shows an Indian guy walking around on top of a train getting careless and grabbing the high-tension wires above him. Let's just say it was over quickly, but likely not quickly enough.
With friends like these... I dunno, having someone who openly admits to pederasty defending someone who's been on the lam for child rape for twenty years seems appropriate. In a twisted European moral relative way, I guess.
Ron gets a no-prize in a raincoat for bringing us proof there actually is something creepier than what Polanski did to that girl.
Mark gets a very explosive no-prize for bringing us news of yet another Darwin near-miss. Ah well, I guess getting your hands blown off is punishment enough for screwing around with explosives. Bonus: He lived in the basement, and mom ran a daycare center upstairs.
Update: But wait! There's more! Apparently there was a pot farm on-site. You just can't make this stuff up...
Making the rounds: the place Ted Williams entrusted his head for cryogenic storage is just about the opposite of nice. If the book is true, at any rate. Bonus: said book will contain lots of gruesome pictures, making it nearly certain to end up on my shelf some time soon.
Hey man, if it's wrapped in plastic, it doesn't matter where I put it, right? I guess that proves just how nutty addiction makes a person, since I'd have to be out of my freaking mind to want to hide a bag of coke up my wazoo.
Another election cycle, another side of the aisle's married-cousin offspring learning it is in fact against the law to threaten the President. Oh sit down. I can think of half a dozen times when some lefty wackjob pulled the same stunt with Bush and then went to their blog to shriek about Bush's "suppression of their rights."
All you guys who want to give up sovereignty to international bodies like the World Court and the UN? Yeah, I totally agree with you now:
In his rambling diatribe to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 23, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi criticized the world body for being unfair to small nations. The comment struck a chord with the Swiss, since Gaddafi has been on a self-proclaimed mission to destroy their little country.
...
Although the motion [to abolish Switzerland] was thrown out because it violates the U.N. Charter ... some Swiss leaders are still concerned that Libya could use its yearlong presidency of the U.N. General Assembly, which began on Sept. 15, to keep up Gaddafi's vitriolic attacks on their country.
I mean, what's not to love?
Of all the things I thought I needed to worry about if I was critically sick, getting run over by the paramedics themselves was not one of them. Homeless drunks just seem genetically programmed to turn up in the most inconvenient places at the most inconvenient times.
Nothing quite like an actual, recent, celebrity murder-suicide as the inspiration for a haunted house display. I guess whoever built it really really didn't like the Titans.
Oh noes! Things are so bad the Real Doll people are offering specials. Can a government bailout be far behind? Hey, man, I bet over time one of those is cheaper than Viagra. Make it part of Obamacare! Hey, the sex offender and "traps-women-in-the-back-yard" lobby will definitely get behind it.
As it were.
Via Instapundit.
That would be lamp post: 1, Ferrari: 0. It would seem the driver walked away. I'd wager the owner has already had half a dozen inquiries for parts.
I'm not kidding, the guy almost literally said, "watch this!" before he did his deadly-stupid deed. I once watched a drainage culvert behind my apartment building filled to its banks with rushing flood waters. Something powerful enough to sweep whole trees and rocks away is something that no red neck should trifle with. He did, and paid the price.
Scientists recently discovered that a sophisticated type of brain scanner showed activity when cognitive tests were performed on a dead salmon. In other words, they bought a whole salmon at a market, stuck it in the machine, showed it some pictures and asked it some questions, and found activity in the scanner data. Ultimately, the paper is trying to highlight the fact that using these sorts of devices isn't as simply as a point-and-shoot camera, and if proper care isn't taken, well, your results will show a dead salmon thinking about a beach picture you're showing it.
This just in: JFK was gunned down by an extreme right-wing lunatic. The only thing richer than ignoring the historic facts of Oswald's beliefs and motivations is ignoring which party benefited the most from JFK's assassination. I've been entertained watching the moonbats twirl in their belfries for about nine years now. I've just never seen them spin this fast.
Just because you might know about money doesn't mean you know a darned thing about cars. What sort of actually sweet rides can you pick up for $12k? Well, in no particular order, you could get, in ABSOLUTELY PERFECT CONDITION, a:
I'm sure your list will be different, but no less cool. And, unlike the "sweet rides" in the article, at the end of five years these cars will still be worth more or less what you paid for them. Regardless, they'll all kick the crap outta one of those goofy little Smart cars, eh?
Nothing like losing half your skull for ruining your day, eh? Even better: the guys who did it are going to walk because the prosecutors say they don't have enough evidence.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder, the saga of the "gender vague" runner takes yet another weird twist. Look, I think people who run when nobody's chasing them are a little strange to begin with, but this is ridiculous.
Ya know, I can understand doing just about anything to stay out of jail, but people have to draw a line somewhere. One of my mom's favorite stories about our old liquor store involved a guy with a colostomy bag paying cash for booze. Turns out those things are much nastier than you think they are.
In Japan, the first lady claims to have been abducted by aliens. Beat that, Michelle!
Great. Just great. If the TSA starts demanding body cavity searches, I'm just gonna walk. No amount of speed and comfort is worth that.
She said: “Losing my fingernails has been the most dramatic thing that’s happened in my life. I think it was my grandson that said, ‘Grandma, they are like your baby; you’ve taken care of them for 30 years and lost them in a second’. But then when you think about it, you know our whole life could end in a second, not just part of the body, but your whole life.”
How many bottles of nail polish she used at one time.
Seventy days after his sudden death, Michael Jackson will be interred in what may or may not be his final resting place Thursday evening.That's one stinky corpse!
Akituusaq, son of world-renowned walrus Ayveq, died on Sept. 1 of complications from pneumonia. He was two years old. Let the dissections begin!
Dozens of alpine cows appear to be committing suicide by throwing themselves off a cliff near the small village in the Alps.
Maybe they saw a comet?No purple drapes or new sneakers though.
Can't stop the little monsters from crapping in your house? Now you can. The only real drawback I see for cats is I'd need two, one to catch "inappropriate elimination" and another to catch "go cross-eyed and hork up the remains of a transporter accident." Here kitty-kitty-kitty...
So, is Michael Jackson's ghost haunting Neverland? I guess the answer would depend on what you defined as a "ghost."
The things you learn when your daughter only wants to watch Sponge Bob and all you have to do is troll Wikipedia include learning what happens to a human body when the diving chamber it's in goes from 9 atmospheres to 1 in a fraction of a second:
Subsequent investigation by forensic pathologists determined D4, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient, violently exploded due to the rapid and massive expansion of internal gases. All of his thoracic and abdominal organs, and even his thoracic spine were ejected, as were all of his limbs. Simultaneously, his remains were expelled through the narrow trunk opening left by the jammed chamber door, less than 60 centimeters (24 inches) in diameter. Fragments of his body were found scattered about the rig. One part was even found lying on the rig’s derrick, 10 meters (30 feet) directly above the chambers. His death was most likely instantaneous and painless.
How this has managed to avoid being turned into a movie I never will know.
Coming soon to a Christmas tree far, far away from mine: the pole dancer doll. Oh no, it's much worse than you think it is. Much worse.
Ok, all together now, injecting things into Mr. Winky makes him sad. And who the hell pulls out their wang at a drinking party anyway? Man, just put it away.
I don't care what Snopes says, this is a much better story if it was caused by some redneck with a backhoe. Corroded gas lines are bad, mmkay?
Like the headline says: Meet Lauren Williams, the woman with two vaginas. It's not a porno title, it's a medical condition! Article is SFW.
As if being a poodle wasn't bad enough, people have to go and do this to them. Meh. Doggies don't care as long as there's food to eat and toilets to drink out of. Ellen loves these sorts of things.
There's nothing quite like photo-realistic retouching to mess with your day. Bock Bock!
Who the hell is going to pay them after the Rapture? I mean, no pet sitter in their right mind gets paid $110 for long term watching of a pet.
Our service is plain and simple; our fee structure is reasonable. For $110.00 we will guarantee that should the Rapture occur within ten (10) years of receipt of payment, one pet per residence will be saved. Each additional pet at your residence will be saved for an additional $15.00 fee. A small price to pay for your peace of mind and the health and safety of your four legged friends.
It's the next best thing to pet salvation to a post Rapture world.
To recycle the sex toys drop it in the mail. Please clean them first. Yes, they can be used sex toys. They can also be unused. They can even be broken sex toys. When the toys arrive at the Dreamscapes Recycling location the toys are clean and disassemble into parts. The parts are then sent to select recycling facilities. Every part of each sex toy is recycled and/or disposed of responsibly: the batteries, the hard (no pun intended) plastics, the rubber, the silicone, the metal, the motor and any e-waste.
I vomited a bit in my mouth with this one.
Observation: there seem to be a few reports of iPhones hissing, steaming, or cracking.
Headline: Apple investigating iPhone explosions.
Well, it did make me read the article, after all.
Yeah. 10 foot alligators are definitely what I want to see when I take my kid over to the swing set! Welp, there we go, strike Florida off the list of "nice places to live."
A guy seen tossing his girlfriend through a window fell in after her and was fatally injured in the process. Unfortunate that such things are so unusual. The court system would be much more straightforward if it were otherwise.
Olivia: "Daddy? Watchadoin?"
Me: "I'm typing."
Olivia: "About what?"
Me: "About a guy selling a $6000 Mercedes for $100,000 because he thinks he's Christ's grandson."
Ellen: "What?!?"
There's car crazy, and then there's car crazy.
I'd like to think a furries convention would be a fun place for little kids to visit and see all sorts of amazing and cute cartoon characters. And, as long as Olivia's hand is held firmly in mine, we might even think about visiting one.
By watching it on TV.
Across the room.
With our eyes half shut.
Maybe.
Child leashes would seem to have more uses than you'd initially suppose. For whatever reason, we never seemed to need anything like that. Maybe girls are less likely to run off?
A friend recently wondered what a truly outraged Ellen might be capable of. This sounds about right. I can say with some pride that, while I have done any number of boneheaded things under the influence, I've never made someone so mad at me they actually set me on fire.
Problem: Lead paint is dangerous to children.
Reaction: WE'RE FROM THE GOVERNMENT, AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP!!!
Unintended consequence: Classic children's books disappear.
Hope and change, people. Hope and change...
I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. I bet the shoes cost $300, easy.
In fact, by the end of the funeral the flies buzzing around the body's open wound became so persistent the funeral home placed a white veil over the corpse's head to protect it.
Every family's nightmare.
It's all fun and games until your reality show "performance" violates your probation. Go for the "yeah, right, pull the other one" explanations from the principal. Stay for the comments from her pimp-tastic lawyer.
Well, I'm still not completely sure if mermaids exist, but it would seem that, if they do, Allah says it's OK to eat them. Something tells me they probably won't taste like chicken. Too bad the Imam won't be able to advise if we should use a Chardonnay or a Merlot.
Leave it to the English to create a story with proper grammar, containing simple words, that makes no sense whatever. They do love their eccentrics, I'll give them that...
Annie gets a tasty but scary-looking no-prize for bringing us Steve! Don't eat that!, a blog which chronicles the various culinary experiences of its eponymous author. All those things you cruise past in the grocery store, that look curious but too scary to actually try? Yeah, he tries them.
Two words: killer chipmunks. What's that you say? The media over-hyping a crisis to sell papers? Bah. Next you'll tell me they'll sensationalize a celebrity's death just to get ratings...
Sometimes there's just no improving on the story itself:
A Chinese girl was lost her memory and had to be taken to hospital after she was hit on the head by a pregnant tortoise.
Unfortunately the chelonian missile didn't make it, and the girl looks like she'll literally be scarred for life.
Hopefully our friend Kevin does not in fact use an iPod, otherwise I'd fear for his bad-luck-self's safety:
An exclusive KIRO 7 Investigation reveals an alarming number of Apple brand iPod MP3 players have suddenly burst into flames and smoke, injuring people and damaging property.
Local media sensationalizing a story for effect? Say it ain't so!
The small fire spread throughout the wooden roof structure and appeared to be concentrated in the roof stack of the crematorium, he added.
Makes you wonder who started it.
"(The) majority of them were sacrificed using a very sharp bladed instrument, probably a copper or bronze tummy knife. And for the majority there are a several combinations, complex set of variations on cutting of the throat, " Mr Klaus said.
"The handle of the fork broke off and it went straight into Smokey's head. He ran away and after that we thought he must have gone off and died.
Say it with me: Aww..
Note: The owner has no teeth, and is a total hick winner.
Well, if nothing else at least this guy has the body to pull it off. Just what, exactly, he's trying to pull off, I have no idea. I'm just glad it's a little youTube video. That was frightening enough.
Ok, now I've seen everything: Obama administration's threat to veto F-22 purchase draws ire of gay activists. Those unfamiliar with how Washington works will be puzzled. Those familiar can repeat after me, "they must have attached a rider to the bill to get something passed."
Hehehehehehheh... rider... heheheheheheh...
I guess I'm a terrible person for smirking at this. At least a little. No, it's not nice to purposely freak out a bear cub, but I just don't know if that's how they all act, if that's how this one acts and it's a pain in the ass and they're trying to train it out of the cub, or if they're just a bunch of cruel m-f'ers. I didn't recognize the alphabet, didn't look like Chinese or Japanese. Maybe this was in Malaysia somewhere?
... progressives are now recommending banning tobacco products outright in the military. It's my understanding restrictions on where someone can smoke are every bit as strict and arbitrary as they are in the civilian world. Of course, since incentives aren't working, and this is the military, we'll just make them quit. After all, legislating human behavior works so very well!
Well, it's nice to know it's not just Americans who can take a video game way too seriously. Fallout was one of those games everyone liked but I just couldn't get into. I actually enjoy a bit of linear story telling, since otherwise I'm just wandering around getting my a-- shot off for reasons I don't understand. Meh.
I don't care this is so nasty I wanted to vomit.
I remember being asked if I even wanted to SEE mine and I squealed and told them to get it away from me.
NASTY!
With disgusting video included!
~ I hate life, a bushel and a peck / a bushel and a peck and a rope around the neck:
A taxi driver decapitated himself after tying a rope around his neck and a post before driving off at high speed.
If nothing else I guess he should get points for originality.
“This is something you’re not supposed to believe in if you are a believer in God, but it’s something that I’m a little worried about. But when you’re scared, you keep praying and ask it kindly to leave politely, and pray and hopefully that will work.”Just in case it won’t leave on its own, Nadya says she’s going to place up to 20 Bibles around the home to ward off any spirits.
She just can't get enough attention.
“After I had a child, my intimate muscles got unbelievably weak. I read books on Dao and learny ed that ancient women used to deal with this problem using wooden balls,” she said. “I looked around, saw a Murano glass ball and inserted it in my vagina. It took me ages to get it out!”
Ok, I can think of 5... no... 8... different ways this is just wrong. Mr. Winky does not appreciate being introduced to Mr. Nail Clipper, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCE! Mmmkay?
Well this is just sad.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Former Titans quarterback Steve McNair has been killed. Police said McNair suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head in downtown Nashville.Read the article.
An onlooker said: "The men took a lot of care unloading and moving the coffin. They did everything very respectfully."
Wow...sure hope they do it that way, since it's done for everyone else. Caskets aren't cheap. I'm surprised it's not covered in rhinestones.
Meanwhile Jacko's pal and music producer Quincy Jones yesterday vowed NOT to attend the funeral.Mr Jones said he would not be able to cope with the sadness.
You and the entire continent of Asia.
Article with pix goodness.
It's a defining moment in a parent's life: Seeing their unborn child's image on an ultrasound for the first time. Now pregnant women could have the chance to hold a life-size model of their unborn baby.
Science can do amazing things.
This one's just too weird, even for Jackson: if this report is to be believed, the King of Pop is going to be plastinated and mounted next to his (now) plastic chimp in an exhibit in downtown London.
The mind boggles...
So how is an environmental activist to make sure an obvious hazard to the health and welfare of people and animals is safe? Pretty much the way you'd expect:
The city should conduct a thorough environmental review before letting thousands of people watch fireworks from the partially remediated toxic waste site that is Gas Works Park, an environmental activist says.
If this doesn't define, "having a slow news day over there, are ya?" I'm not sure what does.
Coming to a free download site near you: allegations have surfaced that there may be a John Edwards sex tape. Not the dude who talks to dead people, the dude who keeps trying to salvage his political career. Neither of whom I have any even vague curiosity to see naked. *SHUDDER*
A very DED No-Prize to Ron!
Television "pitchman" Billy Mays — who built his fame by appearing on commercials and infomercials promoting household products and gadgets — died Sunday.Mays, 50, was found unresponsive by his wife inside his Tampa, Fla., home at 7:45 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Tampa Police Department.
Olivia and I always got a kick out of his infomercials.
Big buildings do lots of things well. Tipping over and splatting into the mud isn't one of them. With picture!
No, really, when old people attack:
A group of well-to-do pensioners who lost their savings in the credit crunch staged an arthritic revenge attack and held their terrified financial adviser to ransom, prosecutors said yesterday.
Alternate: "When getting them off your lawn just won't do."
There's nothing quite like radical lefties when it comes to doing stupid sh-t to their kids:
Pop’s parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information.
Oh I know, I know, loopy righties do just as many evil things to their kids. Thing is, when that happens the feds usually show up outside the compound and start shooting dogs and setting houses on fire & stuff. In Europe they're just arrested.
These people get admiring quotes from academics. Woo-hoo!
Ellen had a nasty habit of trying to make this work back when we lived in an apartment many years ago:
A teenage girl was discovered dead this weekend, electrocuted after dropping her laptop in the bathtub.
And it's important for Ron to remember that mudding can be dangerous. Dangerous to the dumb and panicky, that is:
Five people died after a pickup truck got stuck in a shallow pond and sat with the engine running for several minutes while the truck was submerged just above the tailpipe, West Texas authorities said Monday.
I have to think the latter was caused by a not-so-stock truck. Many modern vehicles actually clean the air of pollutants, and all of them emit so little poisonous gas it can take a very long time indeed to build up to toxic levels. A car without these devices, however, can kill very quickly indeed.
The UK government has released the most secret of all British cold war documents. Well, that's what the article says, anyway. Me, I think a detailed point-by-point plan for all events leading up to the full release of nuclear weapons is a big secret, even a really big one. But most secret of all?
You just cannot help not looking!
There are some messed up feet out there!
Sometimes no explanation is needed:
The NASA moon bombing, a component of the LCROSS mission, may also trigger conflict with known extraterrestrial civilizations on the moon as reported on the moon in witnessed statements by U.S. astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, and in witnessed statements to NSA (National Security Agency) photos and documents regarding an extraterrestrial base on the dark side of the moon.
Damned government demolition projects. Even on the moon they manage to screw up some historic settlement or another.
Annie gets the coveted Snoopy no-prize for bringing us news that at least one local government wants all its employees to cough up their social networking usernames and passwords.
Making the rounds: young actor chased into street by teenage girls, nearly run over by cab. OH NOES!!! That would've meant no more... ok. Rrmm. What's that dratted vampire thing Amber's so into again? Twilight, that's it. *ahem*
OH NOES!!! That would've meant no more twilight movies! This cannot be!
Leave it to PETA to put a cherry of lunacy on top of a bit of strangeness.
He said she knew 'exactly what she wanted'.'The trouble all started when she went home and her father and boyfriend threw a fit.
'They are saying things now like I doped her or hypnotized her. What rubbish!
'She asked for 56 stars and that’s what she got.'
To remove the stars would require surgery costing £8,500.
I wouldn't get tattoo by that guy. Poor girl.
So, who do you believe, the woman claiming a stranger invaded her home, or the traveling salesman claiming he was assaulted by a drunk and his wife? I didn't even know traveling salesmen still existed.
The bottle is about 4 inches tall and 2 inches wide on either side with about 3 ounces of some kind of liquid surrounding the specimen, Gagan said.
It's not everyday you get a fetus in a jar wash up on shore!
Takes a whole new meaning on looking for sea shells.
Officials in China have arrested a father and his accomplices for digging up the corpse of a teenage girl to marry the corpse of his teenage son. And all this time you thought that movie was just fiction.
Chastity Bono has an appointment to become Chaz Bono. As if that family weren't confusing enough.
Some days I think, "wouldn't it have been better to be a little more adventurous in my youth? You know, not such a wall flower?" And then I think, "No, not really."
Plastic surgery, there he goes!
Note to self: having tenure does not make you immune to mental illness. But it does mean you get to keep your job while you're annoying the s- out of the rest of the world. Remember, folks, mental illness is not the scary, misunderstood Jack Nicholson character trying to liberate an American Indian for the good of the country. It's Phil Specter in a wig shoving a gun in some hottie's mouth after ruining his seventh party in a row insisting the Jews really are behind it all. The former is fun an enlightening, the latter scares the s- out of you when it isn't making you claw your eyes out in frustration.
Hey, man, why not yank fire alarms, smash windows, and tear apart sprinkler systems on the say-so of a phone call? Bonus: location is Conway, Arkansas.
"There's no underestimating baseball's versatile capacity for killing us." Sometimes growing up an unathletic nerd had its advantages.
Somehow I don't see him hanging this one on the wall:
A commercial fisherman reeled in a live missile in the Gulf of Mexico and kept it on his boat for 10 days, authorities in Florida said.Police said the boat's captain, Rodney Soloman, hooked the air-to-air guided missile 50 miles off the coast of Panama City. The Air Force and Navy use the area for weapons training.
Personally I think it'd make a nifty decoration, except for that whole potential to go all explody & stuff.
Ok, so, go read "confessions of an e-bay opium addict," and help me decide. Is this guy a) a tragic, youthful victim of post-modern angst, b) a coddled a-hole with a high Mach number and a (presumably long-ago spent) big trust fund, or c) a total fake? My first thought was b), but toward the end I started thinking maybe c). Regardless, he's a pretty good writer. I just wish he'd get a damned job.
All that trash they found in the Atlantic? Yeah, it's not the airliner. What I want to know is, doesn't anyone care they've found mysterious bits of ship wreckage in the middle of the Atlantic?
Sometimes a devil appears on my shoulder and says, "hey, these fancy European cars you have... they could always use a little more horsepower, right?" Then, suddenly, another devil that looks like Ellen* appears, slaps me, and says, "What's the matter with you?!? don't you know you're not the only one who'll be driving it?"
Owners of boys may point and laugh at what I'll be going through in 7 more years, but at least mine's astronomically less likely to pull a stunt like this. The trick, I suppose, is making sure she's not dumb enough to ride around with a boy who's dumb enough to do this. Ah, the joys of parenting...
With video!
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* What? I wanted to say "angel", but that would've made at least three people I know pass out from laughter.
Sunday Metro (UK): Dave Taylor, who leases the farm, said he got a phone call from his father who was driving along the motorway, telling him his cows were exploding.
Sounds... messy? Moo. Mo-*BOOM!!!*
A Russian woman got so upset by the news that her boyfriend intended to leave her that she tied several firecrackers to his penis and exploded them, the Life.ru web-site reports.
It's in the newspaper, so it's got to be true!
The girl was found by her 7-year-old brother on a treadmill in the Phoenix home Monday. She had been strangled by a cord connected to the machine, said Sgt. Andy Hill of the Phoenix Police Department.This is why you don't let a 4 year old out of your sight."We believe the child was on the treadmill but it was not running at the time. She might have been playing like it was," Hill said.
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea defied world powers and carried out an underground test Monday of a nuclear bomb Russian officials said was comparable to those that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The incident drew condemnation from Washington to Beijing and set the communist regime up for a showdown with the United Nations.
Time to take that country down.
Oh, come on. You know you've thought about doing this:
A passerby pushed a would-be suicide jumper off a bridge in southern China because he was angry at the jumper's "selfish activity," Chinese media reported Saturday.
Of course, thinking isn't the same as doing.
Looks like Hajji the Mighty Pirate may be picking up some new toys for the next season. According to the comments, manpad SAMs may not be all that much of a threat. Which is fine to say sitting behind a computer far away from the action. To a pilot who sees one whooshing his way, maybe not so much.
All those times I called the area where my in-laws lived "quiet" and "boring"? I take them back:
Four men due in court Thursday to face charges of plotting to bomb Jewish sites and shoot down military planes were arrested after planting what they thought were explosive devices near a synagogue and community center, authorities say.Officials told The Associated Press the arrests came after a nearly yearlong undercover operation that began in Newburgh, N.Y., about 70 miles north of New York City.
Still not gonna move there. :P :)
Shades of that scene from Little House on the Prairie:
A destructive menace is heading west on I.H. 10 with San Antonio in its sites. It's the crazy Raspberry ant that was first spotted in Houston in 2002. No one knows where it came from or how to control it but it reproduces faster than any insect experts have ever seen.
...
Raspberry tells this story of a woman who called his office two weeks ago."While the lady was talking to us she was telling to her 2 year old honey it's ok they won't bite you, They were crawling over over her baby, " he said.
Texas... it's like a whole other country planet!
Problem: Doping official shows up to your bodybuilding contest.
Solution: Run like hell:
The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled.A doping official says bodybuilders just grabbed their gear and ran off when he came into the room.
Ha-ha!
This can't be right. It' doesn't have "bad makeup", "dramatic sighs at jailbait", or "form ridiculous love triangle with jailbait and weirdo reservation escapee." Don't even get me started on the wacky baseball skills...
This is why, when Ellen takes her dream storm-chaser vacation, she's doing it on her own. To paraphrase, "what good's a life insurance policy if you're not around to use it?"
The crack reporters who filed this story are accepting the local sheriff's department conclusion that the woman suffered "an accidental death due to inappropriate use of a jackhammer*." Me, I think if this had come out of Asia they would've called it what it seems to be from here... a particularly bizarre and spectacular suicide. But hey, that's just my opinion, wtf do I know?
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* Read the article, or do the math.
Sometimes the pedophile is a person you'd never suspect. Other times, well, not so much. Why, yes, I do think the reverse can also be true. Stop mumbling "pot, kettle, black" under your breath! I can hear you!*
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* It's a complicated joke. Think about it, then laugh.
Say what you will about progressives... they still retain the power to surprise:
Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez has just done what no other cellphone company in the world would dare do. Chavez has launched the first ever “penis” phone.
This one's just too weird to be true, but there's a picture!
Nothing like giving birth to your identical twin brother 30 years after he died in the womb to ruin your day. Now that's going to be one helluva bar bet he'll be able to win from now on.
One of the largest free-standing sculptures in the world is set to become one of the largest collapsed statues in the world. What was that? Something the Soviets built as a grand monument is getting ready to collapse, and they can't fix it because people keep stealing the money? Say it ain't so!
Every time I think I've seen furries at their weirdest, I'm proven wrong. I dunno, I guess hot, itchy sex is better than no sex at all.
Thing is, humanity's spent 90% of its existence living with these things living inside them. Those smelly leftist hippies who think the only thing wrong with us is that we're too modern? Yeah, let's stick 'em on a boat to Worm Island, see how much they like it.
Nature is only fun if there's a hot shower and a cold beer at the end of it.
Nothing like your workplace going up in a fireball to ruin your whole day. Fortunately nobody was injured. Ron gets a no-prize with a funny, dangerous smell for bringing us something that happened in one of his former back yards.
Today's "Yet Another Reason Not to Move to Australia" filing comes courtesy Queensland, Australia:
Australia is known around the world for its large and deadly creepy crawlies, but even locals have been shocked by the size of the giant venomous spiders that have invaded an Outback town in Queensland.
With "six cm of creepy goodness" picture!
Hopefully there warn't anyone inside it when the rock hit the windshield. Meh. It'll buff out.
And yes that is... well, was... a Milano.
No, really, when impressionists attack:
Vincent van Gogh did not cut off his own ear but lost it in a fight with fellow artist Paul Gauguin in a row outside a brothel, it has been claimed.
Mark gets a no-prize that'll get all stabby if he gets it drunk for bringing us yet another "conventional wisdom ain't so conventional after all" story.
So, do you believe a female Russian hair dresser foiled a robbery attempt on her store and then held the robber captive as a sex slave for the next three days? Yeah, I don't either. Still, it makes for a fun story!
After the car was hit by the van, there was a loud scream from the woman whose mouth was covered with blood,” he said.The woman later followed her lover to the hospital with part of the sexual organ.
What a more perfect way to get caught cheating
Making the rounds: Main stream media outlet "suddenly" discovers that getting rid of unionized teachers is hard. I guess the NEA must've missed a payment to the LA Times' "widows and orphans" fund.
Remind me again, why vouchers are a bad idea?
It would appear 2007 would be the year Skynet woke up:
The incident took place in June 2007 at a factory in Bålsta, north of Stockholm, when the industrial worker was trying to carry out maintenance on a defective machine generally used to lift heavy rocks. Thinking he had cut off the power supply, the man approached the robot with no sense of trepidation.But the robot suddenly came to life and grabbed a tight hold of the victim's head.
Mynd you, røbøt bites Kan be pretty nasti
Want to see what happens when nerdy types with too much time, talent, and their parent's cash get out of hand? Take a look. I've never understood why many men (and a few women) seem to think it's funny to make other people's lives annoying just for the sake of it. Life is just too damned difficult as it is to have some incompetent boob making it worse just for the fun of it. I guess I'm just too much of a wimp to "get it."
So, are the signs a warning, or an advertisement? One of the things Europeans often use to knock Americans is how hung up we are about sex. What they do not realize is that in a society as diverse as ours is being conservative about this particular human behavior is just about the only way to ensure the cab driver from Somalia doesn't rape the waitress from Amsterdam because he thought she "was asking for it." Even then, it doesn't work very well, but the alternative can only exist inside comparative monocultures like those found in Europe and Asia.
Yes, yes, I know, you're quite diverse full of immigrants look how well everyone gets along yadda yadda yadda. If that were really so, there's a whole line of questions I'd like to ask about things like riots, the rise of conservative anti-immigration parties, taffy-stretch twangs of various sub-cultures trying to pull away and make their own countries, etc.
It's easy to pick on America, because we put our problems out there for everyone to see. The reason we don't pick back is it takes quite a bit of digging to figure out just what's wrong on the other side. The thing is, the problems are still there, and harder to solve for the hiding.
It's like it's 1983 all over again:
On a rainy night last fall, a couple of months after Riner bought her Prius, she was driving toward the Houston Galleria for a sales meeting ... Suddenly she felt the car hydroplaning out of control, and when she glanced at the speedometer she realized the car had shot up to 84 mph. Riner wasn't hydroplaning; quite simply, her Prius had accelerated on its own.
Back then, Audi tried everything it could to reproduce the "sudden acceleration syndrome," but couldn't. What the Germans never really understood was the problem had very little to do with their cars and everything to do with American politics and media perceptions. Audi people who talk to car journalists seem bitter about it to this day.
Will this "new" Prius behavior have the same root causes* as the Audi phenomenon more than twenty five years ago? Almost certainly. Will the results to Toyota's reputation be a severe as they were for Audi? Hard to tell. The Japanese have always been more agile when it comes to PR, and they do have the lesson of Audi before them.
We'll see...
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*to wit: alcohol, inattentive drivers, and extremely attentive lawyers.
What is it with Asians and spectacularly weird murders? Combine them with the Eastern European predilection of cutting off one's wang for various reasons and hey, you've got a real party!
A mysterious figure resembling a human being was sighted on the Doha Corniche’s parking lot, according to a report published in a local Arabic daily.
With picture! Hey, it's in the paper, it's gotta be true! An Arabic paper, even better!
Bank: 1, Pregnant Chick: 0. Money quote:
But she got distracted when her cell phone rang. Police said she began talking to the caller and left the bank without taking any money. No one was hurt.
This is also why Ellen *or* Amber would make for lousy bank robbers, but both together might be dangerous. As long as Ellen lied to Amber about the meet time by about half an hour, that is.
No, really, when bees attack! Ron gets a no-prize that'll have to be taken to the Superdome and cooled to near-freezing before it's safe* for bringing us this abject lesson in why convertible and Jeep owners should button their @#$%'ing cars up after parking them. And I thought that dime-sized spider was bad...
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* Yeh, reference, go look it up.
Sometimes things need no further explanation: "There is a loud popping sound, excruciating pain and swelling."
Remember, folks, if you smoke after sex you're doing it too fast!
The thing is, I have yet to meet anyone who wants to give government benefits to illegal immigrants. Yet any time someone voices their opposition out loud all hell seems to break loose.
I have a somewhat warped, and obviously minority, view. I believe it's completely outrageous an illegal immigrant can have access to any government service. Well, apart from certain transportation services provided by the INS at any rate. However, I also believe it should be made easier for people to become citizens of the US.
The reasoning behind my views are detailed and various, and too long to go into at the moment. Unless someone starts waving beer at me, that is. Anyone buying?
Rumor: Bits in old Singer sewing machines can be used to build a nuke.
Result: a run on sewing machines in Saudi Arabia.
The mind boggles...
See? See what happens when you ban candy cigarettes?!?
Children will imitate what they see others doing, on TV or in person. It only takes one careless parent with a crack pipe (as if there were any other type with a crack pipe) to start a whole stupid trend.
I'm not at all certain Conjugal Harmony is for-real, but it makes for an interesting idea. The profiles on the front page just look too good to be true.
There's colorful houses, and then there's colorful houses. It's said the English value eccentricity above all other human habits. Sometimes I have to wonder if it's a case of being careful what one wishes for.
"F- you, mom, and f- dad and f- your f-ing cats! Now let's go to the gun range.
The video is not as splatterific as others I've seen of this type, but it's still pretty graphic. Very, very sad.
Sometimes you can't improve on the headline: child born with second penis in the middle of his back. With non-gross but very strange picture.
Fortunately, after removing the extra organ the child appears to be doing fine.
Ron gets a no-prize that just better stay on that side of the room for bringing us Furries for Christ. No, really!
I make absolutely no promises about how SFW it is. I clicked a few things, and didn't find anything that'd get ME in trouble.
Sophie Tucker, apparently named after a late US entertainer, fell overboard as Jan Griffith and her family sailed through choppy waters off the northeast Queensland coast in November.The dog was believed to have drowned and Griffith said the family was devastated.
But out of sight of the family, Sophie Tucker was swimming doggedly and finally made it to St Bees Island, five nautical miles away, and began the sort of life popularised by the TV reality show "Survivor."
Read entire sappy story.
Three hour tour tickets to Nina!
Having solved all other... check that, having proved to be incapable of solving most problems, the California legislature has decided an effective way to reduce carbon emissions is to ban black cars. As long as they send the Ferraris my way, I'm all for it!
The miniscule chihuahua-Jack Russell cross - appropriately named Tom Thumb by its owners - is a serious contender for the title of being the smallest dog on the planet.Little Tom was born just three weeks ago as part of a surprise litter to mum Spice, a chihuahua.
Just spay the dog.
Alternate title... when rednecks attack EACH OTHER. I love how he lights a cigarette at the end.
How to avoid a Darwin award, step 1: never, ever, ever let anyone point a loaded pistol at you.
In America, we have children's TV hosts who talk in calm voices about how farmers do their job. In Germany, the host shows you exactly how it is done:
A children's TV chef looks to have gone a little too far after killing, skinning and cooking the Easter bunny.
Different cultures, different ways. I'll bet she's from Bavaria or some other... "rustic" ... area of the country.
Looks like PETA is much more interested in publicity than it is in actually caring for animals. Placing seven pets out of 2200 is pretty pathetic. It probably represents animals taken home by employees, not any real effort at getting homeless animals new owners.
Fans of the macabre or of places off-limits should find this "unauthorized" exploration of the catacombs of Paris of interest. Considering how big and how old they are, I'd be surprised if the authorities were actually able to completely restrict access.
Being a more "technically aware" sort of family, I hope we're able to avoid things like this in the future:
The FBI Arrested 40 year-old Robert Lavern Davison and brought him to Utah to go before a judge this week. Police say he used the internet to lure a 13 year-old girl from Centerville, Utah to California.
And just wait 'till you see the pictures.
Why would she fire the nurse-nannies that were charitably provided for her by the nonprofit Angels in Waiting?She just gets stranger by the day.
Nothing like a couple of gung-ho nutjobs to ruin the reputation of a whole group:
Israel's military condemned soldiers for wearing T-shirts of a pregnant woman in a rifle's cross-hairs with the slogan "1 Shot 2 Kills," and another of a gun-toting child with the words, "The smaller they are, the harder it is."
Look, liberals don't need an excuse to flip out. Doing something like this is like pouring rocket fuel on a particularly loony fire.
Nothing like a deadly-poisonous spider to liven up your morning grocery run. Now that's fresh produce!
Abject lesson in why there's no such thing as a concourse-winning street car:
The Milano and the Cruiser would likely be fine. Well, the Cruiser would be, parts for it are obviously quite common. The Milano... well, fixable. I wouldn't put money on that driver's chances if Ellen ever caught up with him. Let's just say she's not "as forgiving as the Emperor."
The Spider would be a bashed-up little ball, its "unobtanium" stainless-steel bumpers smashed beyond recognition. Which is why I don't parallel park it. Outer-Mongolia parking spot, FTW!
In the "taxpayer outrage" category we have a whole UK family on their equivalent of disability who claim they're too fat to work and the payments don't cover their bills. The sense of entitlement and just outright balls of the people are impressive. Will that be what the US turns into after 12 years of liberal rule? Let's hope we don't have to find out.
"He's 5 feet tall and 5 feet under, the leprechaun grave digger of southern Minnesota." Oh really, yah? Youbetcha!
But... but... now that Obama is in charge this sort of thing is supposed to stop! Oh, I remember... "the outgoing Bush administration so screwed up the world that it will take years for Obama to undo all the damage. If ever." Nice careful phrasing there, Lou. Otherwise people might think you're trying to blame everything bad on Bush, and credit everything good to Obama, forever.
Oh... wait...
Olivia and I had to go around this today. I complained about the hassle the entire orange -> yellow -> blue -> orange detour we had to take to get home, but that was before I learned some dude used a metro car to cure his headache. That just couldn't have been very pretty.
All of those who think men are the only ones who do dumb things with their privates are pleased to be sitting down and shutting up now. I can honestly say it's the first time I've ever seen "sex toy" and "saber saw" used in the same story.
Yeah, I bet that's gonna leave a mark.
Lisa R. gets a no-prize that'll make everyone cringe for bringing us a story about a man, his junk, and an angry horse. And by "junk", I'm not talking about the type you take to Fred Sanford. Ptooey!!!
India has a problem. A poo problem. And no, it's not cow or elephant poo:
Until May 2007, Meera Devi rose before dawn each day and walked a half mile to a vegetable patch outside the village of Kachpura to find a secluded place.Dodging leering men and stick-wielding farmers and avoiding spots that her neighbors had soiled, the mother of three pulled up her sari and defecated with the Taj Mahal in plain view.
Yeah, I think "yuck" is a good word here.
No, really, when kangaroos attack:
Not a bird, or a plane, but a kangaroo has crashed through the bedroom window of a Canberra family's home before terrorising its unsuspecting occupants.
Lisa R. gets a no-prize with boxing gloves on for bringing us even more proof that no matter how cute they are, Australia's native denizens are out to get you.
Her husband, a Briton, travels to Lexington every year for the Patriots Day reenactment and has a keen interest in the Revolutionary War. But with three small children who play in the backyard, she's not certain she even wants to know if there are bodies buried somewhere beneath.My garden grows so well!>And if radar were to discover something, archeologists and historians might come begging to dig down and find out for sure.
"We're not going to have the garden torn up," Ringrose said. "We live out there. That's one of the most peaceful things about this home."
Goldstein and Anderson would welcome an archeological dig at the site, but recognize that homeowners such as Ringrose would have to consent.
At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.
Lord, bless this, thy Internet, without which we perhaps would never have known about the doctor who turned a train robber into a set of comfy shoes. Nope, not his horse, him. Bonus: the doctor requested the nipples be left on.
Rescuers have called off the search for the two NFL players missing off the coast of Florida. I guess that proves definitively there are worse things than playing for the Lions, eh?
I dunno, I guess I should've seen it coming: hospital removes hand sanitizer to keep patients and visitors from drinking it. I bet it's got a real smooth finish.
But if Douglas is to be believed, he could have had sex with as many as "over a hundred" bodies in the 16 years he worked as night attendant at the Hamilton County morgueI guess there is an upside of not having to commit to a relationship."I am sure there are more (victims). I'm certain of it," Deters said Thursday in announcing new indictments against Douglas.
"This guy's just a pig. I can't explain why someone would do something like this.
... This is off-the-charts weird."
Talk about a souvenier!"We discovered the breach today," Mayfield said. "It is not complete skeletons (missing). That's a definite. It's too early to say whether it's just skulls."
The acre of property off Alcoa Highway serves as home to 197 corpses in various stages of decay used by forensic anthropologists to study human decomposition.
I hope this guy gets some sort of severe rectal problems due to this.
Who does this to a puppy?
No way... two kids and $175 for a cockatoo? Highway robbery, that is!
Now, if they're talking about that 164Q4 we linked up a few days ago... well, I don't have two kids, but I do have one, a parrot, three incontinent cats, and a high-maintenance belly dancer. Will that do?
No?
Philistines...
Mark gets a no-prize that wants a cracker for bringing us yet another case of people turning to a life of crime because they're too stupid to do anything else.
And they weren't even her kids!
More is here...
The Tunstall pub called the Ancient Briton, now a derelict site after it was targeted by arsonists, was thought to be HAUNTED.Mr Bundy, who has hung on to the footage for three years, said: "One previous landlord told a local his young son used to talk to 'another little boy'.
"And one tenant's child spoke of a COWBOY who used to pick-up his socks."
Remind me to visit that pub.
Every time I think the Japanese just can't get any weirder I'm proven so very wrong. It's my understanding that other Asian cultures hold Japan up as an example of what's wrong with Asian cultures. Sometimes I think they have a point.
Observation: The stock market's recent decline has equaled that of the Great Depression.
Conclusion: Stocks will never, ever be profitable again.
Is it just me, or does the MSM sometimes act very much like a small child after they've banged their knee? Since it's hurting now, that must mean it will hurt for ever and ever, so we must howl and cry until mommy or daddy rescues us.
Or, at the very least, vote Democrat.
It's one thing to be told India has one of the worst rates of pedestrian vs. vehicle accidents in the world. It's quite another to get a first-person view as to why. Pedestrian bridge? What's that?
Sometimes the headline just can't be beat: chair kills boy by anal penetration. No, really!
Right side bar contains R-rated NSFW pictures. Since it's Saturday, it's all good.
Alternate headline: rare bird becomes rare lunch. Hey, ya gotta eat something!
It seems playing by lawful rules makes putting pirates away a real PITA. If ever there was a case for the tactical employment of the "shot while trying to escape" rule, I think this is it. Unfortunately, in today's all-volunteer Navy, it would be inevitable that some bright-eyed teen swabbie with a razor-sharp sense of morality would blab about it, and I can't think of a captain who'd risk his career just to lob a few hajjis over the side. Can't say I'd blame him. Or her.
This story just keeps getting more weird as the days go on.
Off to work to pay for her welfare!
Today's "makes everyone get the skeevy-jeevies" article is brought to you by Uttar Prudesh, India:
It's important to have a goal in life. Indian grocer Radhakant Baijpai certainly has one - to make sure that he has the longest ear hair in the world.
With picture, of course.
Ok, I guess I'm now officially old, because not only do I not see the point in Skittle-ifying vodka, I'm actually vaguely offended by the attempt. However, I do actually remember a time when I and my (college-aged) friends would've thought this was cool. It was a long time ago.
The reaction of vodka aficionado Joshua will probably provide an equally useful barometer of his actual age.
Leave it to San Francisco to turn a winkie into a mascot. Yeah, that'll be a wonderful addition to my daughter's stuffed animal collection. Not.
WARNING: Inserting an air pistol into someone's rectum and pulling the trigger could lead to severe injury. See? Bill Engvall's been right all these years...
And what is it with Germans and buttplay? I don't think I could ever be bored enough to think jamming a gun into a friend's backside would be a fun game. W... T... F... ?!?
You know it's a bad sign when the bus's destination sign reads, "afterlife":
Jinguan Auto, a popular Chinese ambulance manufacturer, has developed a rolling execution studio. Convicts are strapped to a power sliding stretcher that extends out of the rear of the bus as it's allegedly "too brutal" to haul people on board for their final cocktail. The executions are broadcast to local law enforcement authorities to make sure they are conducted up to code.
No, Ellen, you can't have one.
LOS ANGELES - A big share of the financial burden of raising Nadya Suleman’s 14 children could fall on the shoulders of California’s taxpayers, compounding the public furor in a state already billions of dollars in the red.Even before the 33-year-old single, unemployed mother gave birth to octuplets last month, she had been caring for her six other children with the help of $490 a month in food stamps, plus Social Security disability payments for three of the youngsters. The public aid will almost certainly be increased with the new additions to her family.
“It’s my opinion that a woman’s right to reproduce should be limited to a number which the parents can pay for,” Charles Murray wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Daily News. “Why should my wife and I, as taxpayers, pay child support for 14 Suleman kids?”
I wonder what kind of stimulus check she is getting from Obama.
Even asleep, the f'ers are dangerous. I've always maintained that if a house cat weighed 200 lbs nobody would keep one. If tigers only weighed 6, well, you get the picture...
... an official in some part of the government in the UK (it's not clear to me which) is thinking about criminalizing more forms of sexual behavior between consenting teens. Those opposed are quoted grousing against the influence of Christian groups. The unspoken camel in the room is that if it were Muslim groups doing the lobbying the law would've been passed without debate years ago. Like all good liberals and progressives, they'd much rather throw paint at old ladies than at Hell's Angels.
No, really, it wouldn't surprise me if this kid lost an eye. The "I'm an idiot and I scream like a girl" bit at the end is just frosting on a particularly stupid cake.
Just after I graduated college, say, about 1992, a local high school gym teacher was arrested for manslaughter after a similar but far deadlier stunt during an after-game party. Instead of paintballs and a soda can, it was a .22 pistol and (surprise surprise) a beer can. Unfortunately the teacher aimed a little low at the student. Darwin, as expected, was right on target.
Another year, another zillion-dollar Navy warship foundering on the rocks. If only there were devices which would warn a crew when they were approaching shallow water...
My mom probably predicted this six weeks ago: that chick with the 14 babies? Yeah, she's been on disability for about ten years now. Qualifying for Social Security disability payments is the holy grail for the US disabled. It's an absolute b*tch to get there, but once there you're set, as they don't have the time or money to re-certify your status frequently. Or at all.
And yes, I realize it's not enough money to get rich on. It's the principle of the thing, dammit.
Cow + Lightning = well, this. Cow's Ok. Well, sorta. Look, I like rare steak, but this is taking that "make sure it's mooing" thing way too far.
Ok, whacking off one's wang and then flushing it down the toilet, to me at any rate, constitutes something much stronger than "an accident." That's sort of like saying a NASCAR pile-up at turn 4 at Daytona is "a fender bender."
No, that's doesn't even approach it. I'm not sure any analogy could.
Ron gets a no-prize he just better not shake too hard for bringing us news that the Boys in Blue have f'd up another set of nuclear security inspections. Is it because they're f-ups, or is it because the inspections are hard and meant to be failed the first few times? I'd like to think the latter, but I'm not all that optimistic.
A 16 year-old German... person? ... has become the youngest person known to have undergone sex reassignment surgery. Born Tim, Kim is now looking forward to, well, certainly a different sort of life. Ellen and I have seen a few documentaries about people who undergo this surgery, and from that information we've discovered the result is very far indeed from the surgeon waving a magic scalpel and then ting!!! what was once a 100% male body is now a 100% female body in both form and functions.
"Shunts" are neither romantic nor particularly attractive, and just because it sorta looks like a vagina doesn't make it one. I just hope no German tax dollars were spent on this. Knowing the reputation of the EU social safety net, I'm not keeping my hopes up.
Former French president Jacques Chirac was recently hospitalized after being attacked by his dog. Which sounds, you know, scary and stuff, until you get to the part where they explain Mr. Chirac's dog is one of those little ankle-biter breeds people insist on keeping for some damned reason. Me, I simply wouldn't put up with such behavior. However, the entire in-law side of my family, both sides of it, as far back as the eye can see, has put up with them for as long as anyone can remember. I therefore have to sit on Ellen any time one of these little acid-drooling demon hellspawn comes across her radar screen.
Otherwise I would be able to provide all local friends and house guests with (noisy and annoying) proof positive that there is in fact something much worse than a house full of incontinent, food-puking, litterbox-optional cats.
ZOMG!!1! Did you know if your kid signs up for JROTC, they'll teach them about guns?!? Can't have that, no it just won't do. Could lead to dancing!
Remember, folks... guns don't shoot people, idiots do:
A 21-year-old Marshfield man who accidentally shot his roommate told police he was spinning the gun on his finger like they did in the "Old West" when it fired, Marshfield Police Chief Joe Stroik said.
Gun safety is apparently something that happens to other people.
I think we'd all agree wearing a gas mask, wet suit, and galoshes is no way to go through life, so he didn't:
A security guard accidentally suffocated himself in an autoerotic accident, an inquest heard.Ralph Santiago, 31, was found dead in the men’s toilets of the building he worked wearing Wellington boots, a wetsuit and gas mask.
I always knew security guards usually had really dull jobs. I just didn't understand the lengths some of them would go to for entertainment.
And unlike the Cat in the Hat, it killed him stone dead:
A performer with an aerial acrobatic troupe fell headfirst to his death Tuesday during a show in front of hundreds of people in Scottsdale.
Video coming soon to a liveleak session near you!
Well, at least she was entertained:
Harford County authorities continued to investigate Monday after a 4-year-old girl was found alone Sunday evening at a restaurant. Police said her mother and aunt realized she was missing while watching a Monday morning newscast.
We go to Chuck-e's every few months or so. Amazingly, the places around us all stay open until 11 pm and seem pretty crowded as late as 9. I'm not completely surprised a kid could wander around for hours and not be noticed by the staff. Unfortunately, I'm also not completely surprised some low-rent parents and relatives would not notice until hours after the fact.
And now they've ruined it for the rest of us!
I've heard the advice, "don't f- with wild animals" before. I've paid close attention to it, and it has stood me well. Looks like someone didn't hear the "with" part in the sentence. And, of course, the "don't" part. Just when I think people can't be any dumber...
President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday.
Yeah, that's a great idea, seeing as how automakers are doing so well worldwide. If you like cars and enjoy high performance, you better move quickly, because once these regs hit the books they'll soon be as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth. Even the boring ones will end up being expensive. Europeans shouldn't laugh too hard... unlike the 70s, your greenies are powerful enough to strangle all the cool cars over there too.
After all, to the left TANSTAAFL is just a nonsensical acronym.
Me, I'd settle for a little snuggling without breaking out into a coughing fit. This guy was a lot more ambitious. I doubt if I'd be able to get over how cold the "water" was.
Go for the discussion of kids and cons, stay for the pictures of goofy fen. Especially the guy in the Wonder Woman suit.
We haven't gone to a convention in years. Mid-Atlantic fandom is just too cliquish for me, and while Ellen enjoyed the people watching just about everything else left her cold. That said, if Olivia wanted to go to a con, I certainly wouldn't stop her.
Having regulated absolutely everything else in sight, the British government has now imposed rules on music teachers. I'd like to think we're not due for 2-4 years of these sorts of shenanigans on this side of the pond. Of course, I'd like to think someone will just drive up in one of those new Alfa Romeos and hand me the keys. I'm not holding my breath for either.
If The Sun is to be believed, bubonic plague is stalking al Queda terrorist camps. I'll pull the cart, you shout and bang on the metal plate.
... but, I'm sincerely sad to say, I'm not missing my Washington Post subscription anywhere near as much, because they're just a little more partisan than this.
Inevitably they'll all turn on him, eventually. So will many of you. But in the meantime, to quote a favorite animated character of mine, "Oh would you just shut up?!? You're rats with wings!"
And get off my lawn.
Mark gets a no-prize with an impressively valueless number on it for bringing us news of the introduction of a set of Zimbabwe trillion dollar notes. 100 trillion, no less, which turns out to be about $30 US. Considering the ridiculously high denomination and the ridiculously low actual cost, I'm a little surprised a collectors market isn't springing up around these. Then again, considering how little they're worth, I'm not sure we'd notice if it did.
Now, we have a friend who collects WWII stuff for re-enacting*, but even they'd probably draw the line at this:
When another dusty cardboard box was uncovered in her uncle's attic, Lyn Fulton expected to find memorabilia from his days as a war-time air raid warden and chemistry lecturer.Instead, she found vials of deadly gases thought to date back to the Second World War.
Poison gas is not your friend!
---
* Which, as near as we can tell, is mostly an excuse to dress funny, camp, shoot guns, and drink beer**. In other words, deer hunting without the deer, sort of thing. With tanks!
** Not that there's anything wrong with that†.
† FOOTNOTES!!!
Lisa R. gets a no-prize that Darwin would love for bringing us a rather distinctive form of thrill entertainment:
Without the cage you wouldn't stand a chance swimming with a massive saltwater crocodile.But for brave punters who still want to get cosy with a feisty croc, a new Australian tourist attraction is offering the chance for a close encounter in the safety of a clear acrylic box dubbed the 'cage of death'.
With pictures!
Mark gets a sick n' twistedtm no-prize for bringing us the story of the teen who killed over a Halo game. Something tells me there was more going on there than just an XBox 360.
The PETA weirdos are at it again, this time launching an ad campaign in Australia that calls fish "sea kittens". So... um... every time you masturbate under water, God kills a goldfish?
Barbie's creator was a sex perv and Ken's namesake was a closeted gay. Who knew?
I thought it was some chick who invented barbie?
Ok, this has to be some sort of record:
[Brenton Alan Erhardt, 39] was pulled over by police on the Stuart Highway in July speeding at 147 kilometres per hour, south of Daly Waters.He admitted to officers he filmed himself masturbating while driving from Adelaide to Darwin.
He also pleaded guilty to driving unlicensed, carrying two cannabis smoking pipes, administering the drug and carrying a loaded rifle.
Ta-da!!!
Problem: smokers, having been banned from smoking in almost every place except perhaps the basements of their houses, still insist on smoking.
Solution: Move the goalposts. Again:
Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, [Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School] said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’”
I don't smoke, and find being in a smoke-filled room of any sort very unpleasant. That said, redefining the dangers of smoking to include the smell that comes off a smoker's clothes to me seems flat ridiculous. Second hand smoke is so dilute it took years to come up with convincing evidence of its dangers. This "third-hand" smoke would almost by definition be far more dilute, and correspondingly less dangerous.
But far be it from me to stop the nanny train from running over adults who both know the risks and take steps to prevent them from affecting their children. The anti-smoking lobby quite obviously knows better than anyone else what's good for all of us. That any of us try to hold them back just shows how irrational we all are.
More's the pity.
A British "expert in sound technology at Huddersfield University, West Yorks" is claiming Stonehenge was actually built as a sort of prehistoric disco. Hey, if that's what it takes to get your grant renewed, that's what it takes.
Mark gets a no-prize shaped like a banana peel for bringing us this graphic example of what can happen when you rush a delicate project so you can play with your new toy.
Sometimes spam is just that... "enhancements", fellows from Nigera/Poland/the US Military sitting on pots of gold which could be yours for a modest finder's fee, lonely young ladies looking for a little companionship, that sort of thing. But once in awhile, just every once in awhile, it's something quite different:
Truth is reality. That means don't stretch reality, don't bend reality, don't poke reality -- what did reality ever do to you? Who has a strong need for the mark 'of' the wild American cashcow (mooooo!), I get plasma tv/food, but you get neg value? Can't buy/sell food or cars unless a specific collateralized mark 'of' the wild American, huh.. I get plasma tv, you get neg value seems to require an apology for rest, Forrest. Apology biggest at tithing, with smiles and frowns at tithing, as the only meter for 'did I bring wholly the tithe' while monetized debt increases debt in the house of God. You know, Noah's rainbow only promised no flood, not no destruction (John 6:66, a very big heart filled with pain; Genesis 6:6, a very big heart filled with pain).
I just love it when someone wobbles off their meds in front of a computer!
Lisa R. gets a no-prize that'll make every man who sees it cringe for bringing us yet another reason to leave the spear guns at home:
A man who speared himself in the groin on the Sunshine Coast in south-east Queensland is recovering from his ordeal in hospital.
Sharks, sting rays, jelly fish, now spear guns... spear fishing must be damned near as fun as sex, considering all the dangers that surround it.
Of all the titles I've seen added to Alfa Romeo, meat importer definitely was one of the most unexpected:
Of all the weird trade deals in Australia's long mercantile history, probably none came close to the 1978 scheme to swap 7,000 tonnes of Aussie beef and offal for 2,000 Alfa Romeo cars.
As a government-owned entity, Alfa was subject to any number of goofy ideas like this, especially during the progressive/liberal 70s. As such policies are wont to do over time, they eventually sank the company. Still, having a tray of sausage patties with the cross-and-serpent logo on the front would've most likely made for an interesting bit of memorabilia.
"This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember," said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. "We don't know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it."
Mind you this is done on 6-7 year olds.
And they still wonder why they do not get respect and are called savages.
A game of "tag" is all well and good, until the polar bears show up. No, really!
Lisa R. gets a no-prize that'll play that famous theme at the touch of a button for bringing us yet another in a long line of shark attacks in Australian waters. Just in time for the holidays!
No, really... when underwear attacks:
Thirteen people, including an 8-year-old girl, suffered injuries Saturday when an explosive device went off at a kiosk selling underwear near the Prazhskaya metro station in southern Moscow, Interfax reported Sunday.
Sheesh.
Even though it's in Australia, I'm not chalking this one up to any particularly interesting aspect of that country's well-known deadliness. You see, I expect someone to die when they try to get at a kite stuck in power lines with a metal pole. It's a Darwin sort of thing.
What a way to make sure your family remembers the holidays: man dies when the skid loader he was driving tumbled into a manure pond. I've seen those things on Dirty Jobs. They look just as nasty as they sound.
Mark gets an explosive no-prize for bringing us evidence no matter how extreme you thought you were with fireworks as a kid, there's always someone out there willing to take it to the next level. BOOM!!!
No, really, when foot massagers attack:
So, we're not really sure what's going on here, but three people have been killed by mis-using a Japanese foot massager.
We had a back massager that would give you a nasty pinch if you weren't careful with it, but I never feared for my life around it.
Actually, I'm surprised it's taken this long for anyone to notice: it's becoming more and more common for people to be buried with their (in some cases active, fully charged) cell phones. This suggests a very interesting experiment to prove if there is in fact an afterlife. Simply make sure Ellen and Amber are buried with theirs, and then watch the phone bill. My wager: a $400 phone and $1000 text bill the next month.
Ah, to be a teenager in the 21st century:
Lord knows we encourage enough tatting around here, but like the mafia, we don't deliberately go for the face.Of course, this is on the side of her head, and this person probably wasn't looking for a high powered career in sales or games PR. Actually, it sounds like this tattoo was an impulse buy.
Once she turns 18 my leverage over Olivia regarding these sorts of things will, of course, require a bit of finesse. Before then? A face tattoo? Oh hell no.
Ok, it's official, in Australia, even the f'ing laser printers can kill you:
Snakes often turn up in strange places, but this brown tree snake has decided to join the digital age.It has set up home in a printer of Lismore couple Denis and Marie Matthews.
This is Australia after all, so the snake is naturally poisonous, albeit apparently not terribly so. No, Ellen, you can't have one.
Today's "What the F- Were They Thinking?!?" award goes to whoever runs cross promotions at the Cincinnati Zoo:
The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and the Creation Museum have made a joint marketing agreement and are selling "combo tickets" to get into both attractions for one price.
It would be nice to think that this is a clever plot to separate rubes from their cash and then send them to Kentucky where they belong, but hey, this is Ohio we're talking about here. "Never ascribe to malice..."
Ok, which is, rrm... tasteless-er... a funeral home advertising pre-planned child funeral services, or a planned parenthood clinic offering gift certificates for the holiday season? Social conservatives would most likely note they're, respectively, reactive and proactive solutions to the same "problem." I'm not one of those people, but this is one of those times when I don't care how practical the motive might be, it's just not something I'm comfortable with being promoted so openly.
Meh. Probably a no-win, because if they'd restricted the certificates to exclude abortion, the social progressives would have piled on right behind the Catholic hierarchy.
Happy holidays!
All those times I've complained about our Alfas leaking things onto the garage floor? Yeah, I think I'll stop complaining as much now:
A car left parked in front of a Sacramento [CA] man's home yielded a startling discovery Wednesday morning.The resident, who lives on the 6200 block of 40th Street called authorities to report the Ford Taurus has been parked in front of his home since Tuesday and there was fluid leaking from the trunk.
You'd think the smell would've given it away.
I'm actually surprised it's taken this long for someone to realize who's really behind all the increased pirate activity off the coast of Somalia.
All together now... JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!!
Ok, it's official, the "I don't know what to make of it" trifecta is now in play:
Michael Bowers, aka Chubby Mikey, is set to be the surprise calendar hit of the year.The gay 29-year-old from Memphis, USA, is so proud of his size, he has posed nude in a series of 'sexy' shots.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. The people who most want to be seen naked are the people just about everyone else least wants to see naked.
Ok, put it a different way... me, in a thong, on a beach.
Ah geeze... you didn't have to run screaming for the mind bleach. Decorum people, decorum!
Not content with promoting a sixty year-old technology with built-in transient clicks and pops, the "indie" scene seems to be bringing back the cassette tape. Unlike the LP, which at least approaches the S/N ratio of CDs and other digital media, cassettes have always had terrible sound. People can buy 100 blank CDs for, what, $30? Heck I'm not sure it's possible to buy a computer that can't write CDs.
Bah. It never was about the sound, it's about the scene. It's your money, spend it the way you want.
She answered: 'It was when I was a child when I lived in Africa. We always went to the same butcher and then suddenly - we were there a couple of years - the meat started to get so much better.Umm....yeah...'It was only when we moved back to England a couple of years later that we realised that the butcher had been arrested because he farmed little black girls."
Well, certainly not Mark, but still:
A man wearing a World War II Nazi uniform and carrying a powerful German rifle of the same vintage quickly told police his mission: He was on the way to kill a man.
Something called an "8mm Mauser" sounds more like a pistol than a powerful gun, but wtf do I know?
When you encourage people to broadcast live videos of themselves doing things, it's inevitable that one of those things will eventually be offing themselves. I've seen video clips on the internet of people killing themselves in much more spectacular ways than a drug overdose for years now. Just because it's "live" doesn't mean it's any less sad. It just means another set of people had a chance to stop it, and didn't.
Ron gets a rare second no-prize in one day for bringing us a most... unusual... wedding (completely SFW).
Umm... I'm not completely sure that's real. If it is...
Well...
Rrr...
[Swing arms out, swing back in, clap hands loudly once...]
Yeah...
Note to self: When being an iron-clad sonofabitch, try to make sure there aren't any cameras running. I've actually known more than a few guys like this, back in my starving student days*. It's nice to see they eventually end up in jail where they belong. I just wish we could keep them there.
Ron gets a no-prize he can use to get into people's faces for bringing us this "not-quite-cops-but-shoulda-been" news clip.
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* Fry cook being one of the few entry-level jobs available to felons.
Lisa R. gets yet another "so harmless it's deadly" no-prize for bringing us something else to add to the list of things that will kill you in Australia:
Australia's harsh Simpson Desert conservation park will be closed during the southern hemisphere summer to prevent tourists dying in the outback, authorities said on Tuesday.
Ah, the national park. The wilderness! The wildlife! The dead campers rotting in the sun!
LolWhut?!?
Coffin: 1, Little Old Lady: 0. See, if this were Ellen's hearse, the coffin would've properly been secured. Tie-downs: they're not just for groceries, ya know?
Bah, couple of sheets of scrap metal, a little bondo, and it'll be good as new. Hopefully the driver will be ok. I amazed whoever it was got out in one piece.
Weirdly, on the way to dropping off Ellen for work we passed a similar tableau, except this one was "burly hotrodded Chrysler sedan: 0, telephone pole: 1." There were two cops on the scene but no ambulances or fire trucks, so my speculation was a drunk who hit a pole and then wandered home on foot. But what do I know?
While it's pretty obvious the thing is not really abandoned, this tour of North Korea's largest amusement park is still surreal enough to entertain. The article includes a bonus video that gives you a ride on the "roller coaster of death". And you thought the local fair was dangerous!
It's funny when it's a movie. It's Just Not Right when it's an article of clothing. Tights go on men who're engaging in winter sports/activities or are performing in a variety of (fabulous) events. Otherwise... JUST SAY NO!
Guard rails? We don't need no steeking guard rails!
And that, children, is why race cars have roll cages.
Two words: Liquid Smoking. As if a beer glass used as an ash tray didn't smell bad enough...
And they wonder why they are called 'stone chuckers' for a reason.
Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.Third World County...always a Third World Country.Initial reports had said she was a 23-year-old woman who had confessed to adultery before a Sharia court.
Numerous eye-witnesses say she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people last week.
I will now officially upgrade magpies to "damned dangerous":
Anelderly woman has been forced to have her leg amputated after it became infected and then gangrenous when she was pecked by a pet magpie.
This article includes a picture of an example of the miscreant.
And yes, it ended up exactly where you're thinking it did.
Sometimes you just can't do better than the headline: Aquaholic drinks himself to death by gorging on a hosepipe.
Sounds like a tragic case of unmedicated OCD to me.
Mark gets a no-prize that looks suspiciously like the ones Lisa R. gets for bringing us this report of an Australian spider caught eating a bird. Apparently it's a video, but I got such huge heebie-jeebies from the picture I didn't have the guts to find the film. YEESH!!!
Cricket as big as your open hand, anyone? Every time I think the insect world couldn't get any creepier, I'm proven wrong.
Fans of abandoned places who have lots of patience should find this collection of abandoned urban areas around the world of interest. The site is really slow, and the text isn't as informative as I'd hoped, but it was still informative, at least to me.
Lisa R. gets yet another deadly no-prize for bringing us yet another example of Australia trying its level best to kill whomever tries to live there. Australia: go for the beaches, stay because the inhabitants put you into a box.
Lisa R. gets an explosive no-prize for bringing us news of yet another meteor impact in Australia. Geeze. If the magpies don't get you, it would seem the sky will.
Ah, Switzerland, where the watches are accurate, the chocolate is superb, and even the plants have rights:
For years, Swiss scientists have blithely created genetically modified rice, corn and apples. But did they ever stop to consider just how humiliating such experiments may be to plants?That's a question they must now ask. Last spring, this small Alpine nation began mandating that geneticists conduct their research without trampling on a plant's dignity.
Equal rights for plants... coming to a progressive party near you!
More than 2100 WWII-era bombs were recently discovered during a routine property survey in Germany. "The find is the biggest in Germany this year, the state’s military ordnance disposal service said."
This year?!?
Alternate title: Paging the Church Lady, white courtesy phone please. I picked a different one because nobody under 20 will know what the heck I'm talking about.
No, really! When magpies attack:
A little girl from Mandurah [Australia] may lose the sight in one of her eyes after a terrifying magpie attack last week.
Lisa R. gets an innocent looking no-prize with a mean streak for bringing us yet another example of wildlife which is harmless everywhere else but downright dangerous in Australia.
Oh, and "sunnies?" I think she may be going native on us.
Britain is on the verge of deploying speed cameras which will monitor all highways, all the time, everywhere. The Japanese wanted similarly strict speed compliance but chose a different route. Well, they did back in the 80s when I was following such things. In those cars, any time you exceeded the national speed limit an apparently really loud and really annoying buzzer would sound. The British solution has the advantage that it can't be disconnected like the buzzer can.
Fortunately, for now, our kids are too young for their various grandparents to fall for this:
Delpha Speak has 13 grandchildren and she didn't think it was completely implausible that one of her grandsons-in-law would call her to say he was in trouble. The 72-year-old retiree could tell something was wrong, and she wanted to do whatever she could to help.But it was that concern that almost caught her up in what the state attorney general's office said is a common scam targeting older folks.
Geeze. Now we're gonna have to get gramma her own safe word.
Ok, so the Redskins dropped it in the pot and now Romo looks to be out for a couple of games. At least nobody died.
A certain regular commenting, "it would've been good if it happened to the Eagles" in 3... 2... 1...
Nothing says, "disconnected from reality" like dressing babies up as food dishes and setting them on the table. Relax, no children were even vaguely annoyed in the film. Martha Stewart's reputation, well, I can't vouch for that.
Those gear shifts, man, they can be some clever things. I love how it keeps bouncing off the rev limiter at the end of the clip.
Apparently in the UK it takes them five years to investigate why someone on the government dole isn't paying rent. And what's up with family members who don't visit for the entire time, leaving a corpse alone watching TV?
The National Enquirer is reporting that 17 year old Jamie Lynn Spears is now expecting for the second time just three months after giving birth on June 19 to baby Maddie Briann.
Hell even I thought it wasn't possible to get pregnant when breast feeding.
Sometimes, a lover's quarrel just makes a body hungry:
The first winner of the Mr Gay UK contest stabbed a man to death before carving a piece of flesh from his thigh, seasoning it with fresh herbs and cooking it in olive oil, a court heard yesterday.
And all this time I thought olive oil's smoke point was too high to make it a good stir fry medium.
Getting dragged by a bus for 4 miles just ruins your whole day, donchaknow? Explain that one to the insurance adjuster.
It's crap like this that kept me from ever really taking skateboarding as a hobby seriously. I have enough trouble just walking down the street without falling down.
Being on vacation means I get to troll some of the saucier sites, and this is no exception. Video is SFW, but surrounding ads... well, they're not what I'd call porn, but they're pretty darned close.
Ron gets a very... graphic no prize for bringing us yet another example of just how loopy the Japanese can be. There's an annual phallic festival somewhere in southern Japan (can't recall the city), I'll bet that's where this was taken.
In case you haven't figured it out, the SFW status on this is a bit vague. Winky-shaped ice cream cones most likely always will be.
When twelve years old your burger becomes, look as good it will not.
I'm a little chary of this one. What's been keeping mold and rot from taking hold? What's been holding the bugs at bay? Something else has been used to keep this bit of "food product" cool and very dry, I'd wager.
Great. Just great. Now I have to worry about wheelchairs too:
A holiday jet carrying 229 passengers narrowly avoided disaster when a wheelchair stored in the hold burst into flames shortly after landing at Manchester airport.
When on a plane, Mr. Sparky Battery is not your friend!
Lisa R. gets a no-prize that'll thwack Kermit if he gets out of line for bringing us news of a woman being held hostage by a semi-wild pig. My first thought would be, "pig, meet rifle. Bacon, meet pan," but it would appear the property owner is a distraught animal lover who doesn't want that to happen.
It's one thing to be told "hurricane causes massive damage." It's quite another to see pictures to demonstrate the fact. Reason #... well, #1 I guess, for why Scott doesn't want to live on the coast.
And that, friends, is why daddy always told you to stand behind the shooter. At least, that's what my dad always taught me. This guy, probably not so much.
While it's said a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes it just takes a few words to completely change the meaning of a picture. I think I need to take a shower now. YEEESH!!!
This week the British government quietly allowed decisions of certain Sharia law courts in Britain to be legally enforced. The mind boggles...
Via La Shawn Barber.
I guess it was only a matter of time before people started mistaking an actual tragedy for a semi-fictional disaster movie. Coming to a fall celebration near you!
Biking across the W&OD trail: fun. Biking across the Himalayas, on a unicycle, well, not so much. There's a guy in our neighborhood who has one of these "off-road" unicycles. We saw him a few times as we were taking Olivia home from day care. They look interesting, but I have a hard enough time staying upright on two wheels to even think about trying it with just one.
Go for the wacky preacher saying "Mickey Mouse should die", stay for the surreal sign-language translator in the bottom-right corner. I'm not a huge fan of ol' Mickey myself, but I think whacking him is a little extreme.
(09-11) 17:15 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A car-burglary suspect fell to his death early today after he climbed over a wall on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill while trying to flee from police, apparently unaware that on the other side of the wall was a 200-foot cliff, authorities said.
And the Parrots!
At first I thought this scheme to pay Jews $50,000 to move to a smallish Southern city was some "Jews for Jesus" - style recruitment effort. Then, after having actually read the article, I realized it was a synagogue-funded effort to revitalize a pre-existing Jewish community. I still don't know if it's a good idea... the reason most people move to a different city is they can't find good work at the one in which they currently live. $50,000 is very nice, but it won't last long if you can't find a job.
Well, it would appear there are now just two animal species in Australia which won't kill you:
An attack on a child by a large wallaby in Cairns has sparked calls for a cull of the area's growing mob before someone is killed.
This is from a Spam-Bot.... I think.
[22:11] NigglingTrout: Listen, this is going to sound very weird, but how in the world does one remove an angry spider monkey from one's...sensitive areas?
1. Why would you put spider monkeys there?
2. Why do I care?
3. I am sure there is a cream for this.
4. Please see a therapist.
"John stopped to take a photo of the canopy, and saw something that didn't seem quite right through his viewfinder. He watched it for a little bit longer and the wind blew, and caught it, sending it spinning, and it seemed to be a body."
Read entire article here.
Really neat article! Don't miss out!
Disapproving reporter: 1, castle: 0, teacher: 0. I'm filing this one as another case of, "I'm actually quite surprised they didn't arrest the property owner for assault."
Were it Texas, the property would've survived unscathed, but I wouldn't place the teacher's chances anywhere near as high, both on the "surviving" and "unscathed" odds.
I'm not completely sure that's a good thing. It really would be a shame if some damned fool got drunk and ended up dead because of a set of really idiotic actions. After all, that damned fool could be me! Then again, being an American and quite aware of the potential consequences of playing this particular game in the US, perhaps I'd be less likely to do something quite so spectacularly dumb. Deterrence at its finest!
'County fire spokesman Lt. Frank Fennell says the boy was eating "Steak on a Stake" when he pulled the wooden skewer out of his mouth and then somehow stuck the skewer in his eye.'
Read entire mini asinine article here.
This is WHY you pay nearly $20 a head to get in. Next thing that is going to happen... No TURKEY LEGS!
No, really, when crocks attack:
A crocodile killed and ate a 25-year-old man in Bangladesh after he waded into a pond next to a shrine hoping to be blessed by the animal, police say.
...
[Police] said about 25 people dived into the pond following the attack yesterday, but could not find the man's body.It washed ashore today and had been largely eaten...
You're doing it wrong!
There's a reason gymnastic apparatus (apparati?) are surrounded by giant pads. I'm surprised serious injury doesn't happen more often.
Paging Camel, your room is ready:
MI5 has concluded that there is no easy way to identify those who become involved in terrorism in Britain, according to a classified internal research document on radicalisation seen by the Guardian.
...
British-based terrorists are as ethnically diverse as the UK Muslim population, with individuals from Pakistani, Middle Eastern and Caucasian backgrounds. MI5 says assumptions cannot be made about suspects based on skin colour, ethnic heritage or nationality.
If only this group had a single thing in common, they'd be a lot easier to track, eh?
Reason # 431 on the Why I Don't Like Seafood list: giant parasites:
A man who contends he got a 9-foot tapeworm after eating undercooked fish is suing a Chicago restaurant.
The article isn't clear on the time line, and makes it sound like it all happened very quickly. If so, well, 9 foot tapeworms don't get that big overnight. I think. How the heck should I know?
We got yer state-run food bank right here:
With food prices rising, one of India's poorest states is considering adding rat meat to the menus of state-run canteens, a move officials in Bihar say could help provide cheap protein for the state's 80 million people, most of whom live off the land as poor sharecroppers or subsistence farmers.
Now that's a spicy meatball!
Via TSO.
Knowing one or to Quebecois over the years, I'm not completely surprised they'd turn poultry slaughter into a betting game. I'm just about certain you can't call betting on when and where a beheaded chicken will fall is literally cruel. The things are dead when the head parts with the neck after all. But it is damned weird and more than a little gross, IMO.
After a medically determined "early termination," a five-month old... infant? ... showed signs of breathing after spending a few hours in the cryo chamber. Such a profoundly premature infant obviously has a very slim chance for survival, but (obviously) weirder things have happened.
I'm not sure what's worse, the tragedy of the thing or that a whole bunch of anti-abortion wackamoles just got a new arrow to stuff in their quiver.
Coming to a trailer park near you: styrofoam dome houses. I'm actually a bit surprised it's taken this long. However, I'm not particularly surprised it took the Japanese to make it popular.
There's nothing like seeing Peter Pan getting hauled away in zip-tie cuffs to get a day started. No, really!
Annie gets a no-prize Mickey once used to bang on his cell bars for bringing us this most unfortunate of labor disputes.
It's dangerous to report from a war zone. People shoot at you and stuff. That doesn't look like a graze, that looks like a flat-out hole through the ol' arm.
I guess I'm surprised it took this long for some anarchist to supply the general public a tool that allows them to do what spammers have done forever. Maybe it'll raise awareness amongst the general public just how easy it is to manipulate all the varied fields that make up an e-mail message?
Pardon me while I go revive a few sysadmins who've passed out from laughing at that last sentence...
A local business owner got the shock of a lifetime when she left the Bank of America in Newport News Friday. She'd asked for money to pay her employees, but what she got has her seeing red.
You'd think there would be lots of safeguards to prevent a dye bomb from getting into the hands of a legitimate customer, ya know? I don't have clue one how they work. Maybe this wasn't really all that accidental?
No, really, falling rock:
One of the largest and most photographed arches in Arches National Park has collapsed.
Ron gets a hard-hat no-prize for bringing us news that we know will be blamed on the Bush administration, even though we're not quite sure how just yet.
"That is the coolest thing that I've ever seen," teacher Martha Gietner said. "It looks like a person. It really does. I think it's a ghost."
The black image is then seen moving into a lighted hallway and casting a shadow.
Skeptics are having a hard time explaining what could cause a shadow and appear to float in the building at 2:51 a.m.
Video is here!
I knew it was bad to ignore the "clearance: X ft" signs, but I didn't know it could get this bad. I'm not completely sure that the guy even survived it.
Take your computer in to get it fixed, end up naked on the "intartubes". Which should teach the class two things: 1) learn to use your computer properly so you don't f- it up with spyware and viruses, and 2) do like Ellen and marry your IT support. Easy-peasy!
Andrea Pininfarina, head of the famous car design company which bears his family's name, has been killed in a car accident. The Pininfarina house has been responsible for dozens of famous car designs, not the least of which is our Alfa Spider. A damned shame.
Seconded: "It's metrosexuality gone stark raving mad."
It's all Ellen can do to keep me from wearing knee-high socks and shorts. Tights?!? Fuggedaboudit!
Nothing like an 800 degree patch of ground to get your firefighters all excited. As if we needed another reason to think California is one of the weirdest places on Earth.
It's bad enough when your experimental rocket kerplooies; it's worse when it was carrying the ashes of at least a few famous people. I wonder if they'll give refunds? Probably not.
Looks like it's even harder to climb Everest's near-by companion:
Helicopters have begun airlifting climbers stranded on the world's second-highest mountain, K2, in north Pakistan, reports say.News agency Reuters said rescuers had reached two Dutch members of the group, 11 of whom are feared dead.
...
The fatality rate for those who reach the summit at 27% is about three times higher than that for Mount Everest.
I'd be interested to know the percentage of people who make the summit vs. the number who try. That way we could tell if you're more likely to die than to succeed.
Which is why I only watch them try on the Discovery channel!
Annie gets a no-prize that's probably photoshopped for bringing us news of the "Montauk monster". I like how they've posed it flipping us the bird. Do people really get paid for viral marketing?
You'd think they'd have used a tether or something:
DNA tests confirmed that a body found off the coast of Brazil is that of a priest who disappeared while flying over the Atlantic buoyed by hundreds of brightly colored party balloons, authorities said Tuesday.
A dye marker or something like it probably would've helped as well. Too bad.
Kids like this stay F'd up their entire lives. Chuck them in a sack and drown them while you have the chance.
New Castle County Police and officers from Delaware SPCA arrested the boy Friday after he allegedly set the kitten on fire in Edgemoor. Neighbors told police the boy, and two friends, poured lighter fluid on the kitten and then set it on fire. The kitten then ran to a nearby tree on N. Rodney Drive where its charred remains were found.
Read entire article here.
Looks like Shia LaBeouf's "good boy with an edge" image just got a lot edgier. I'm not sure it'd be quite as newsworthy if he hadn't rolled his truck. Luckily nobody seems to have been seriously injured. Time to head to rehab!
A nine-year-old girl whose parents named her Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii was put into court guardianship in New Zealand so that her name could be changed.
...
The ruling was handed down in February but only came to light in law reports issued today. The girl, who had been at the centre of a custody battle, has since changed her name, but it was not revealed in order to protect her privacy.
"It's my kid I'll name them how I please" should only ever go so far. Still, you'd think the girl would just not register using her goofy name. Maybe it's not as easy as I think?
Eel soda, anyone? I'm not completely sure it's a fizzy drink, but neither option does not sound particularly appealing. Stack that one alongside vegamite and peanut butter on the "have to grow up with it to like it" shelf. At least for me.
Not content with ending his own miserable life, the escaped "spam king" decided to take his wife and two daughters with him. Unfortunately, only one of the daughters, and an infant he must've forgotten about, survived.
I dunno folks, this sure does sound like a bomb to me:
A Qantas flight to Melbourne made an emergency landing today after a large hole appeared near the cargo door.The plane made the landing in Manila about 1:20pm after the cabin depressurised due to what sources have described as a "massive" hole in the fuselage.
...
Qantas this afternoon was still trying to establish how a large hole came to appear in the fuselage outside the baggage compartment.
It definitely wasn't a hatch failure... you can still see that, firmly shut, a few feet in front of the hole. This picture shows an intact one at roughly the same angle. Looks like a big chunk of faring came away. It also looks like this happened near the same point the bomb that took down Flight 103 detonated.
I don't like this. I don't like it one bit. Weirdly, there are probably a bunch of Boeing guys right now secretly hoping it was a bomb, because otherwise there'll be several hundred 747s grounded immediately. If it's wrong in the structure, it'll be wrong on a whole bunch of them.
Something tells me the next facility he's "enrolled" in won't be so nice:
Edward “Eddie” Davidson, a notorious e-mail spammer who was sentenced to jail time in April, has escaped from a federal prison camp in Florence, Colorado.
...
Davidson was housed in a minimum security facility. Minimum security institutions, also known as Federal Prison Camps (FPCs), have dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and are work and program-oriented. FPCs are generally located adjacent to larger institutions, where inmates help serve the labor needs of the larger institution.
Everyone's always suspected spammers are just barely smarter than a dead sponge. Now we have proof.
Remember that old saying, "eat like you've got a tapeworm"? Back in the recent past, some people took that way too seriously.
It would seem our wish to compulsively eat without consequences, and resort to whatever it takes, dates back well before the advent of the gastric bypass procedure.
No, really, when flowerpots attack:
Fire investigators said a fire that destroyed a Mendota Heights home last week was caused by a flowerpot.
What's on your porch?
I dunno, 30 or so catfish strolling down a street would probably give me pause too. I do know that, were this to happen anywhere near my old Arkansas home town, they'd never make it to the end of the street for all the whoopin' rednecks that'd found themselves a dinner right there in the road.
Annie gets a no-prize that Ellen can't have for bringing us this story about a most unusual thing to find in one's wash:
A woman checking her laundry Wednesday afternoon found an 8-foot-long snake wrapped around the clothes inside the washing machine at her Gorham home.
Ellen would've jumped with glee and most likely would still be on the phone with Amber about it.
I guess he really, really liked living there:
A ‘vulnerable’ man cut off his own head with a chainsaw after being ordered to move out of his home to make way for developers, police believe.
Umm... ouch?
Concrete wall: 1, bmx biker dude: 0. I never got into that sort of thing precisely because I knew without a doubt something like that would happen to me. My brother, not so much, and so when we were kids he more than once ended up in a dentist's chair for "repairs."
The things one can do with paper, upholstery foam, and way too much free time can be... Well hell, I'm not completely sure what that is. I guess that was probably the point, eh?
Their were more weird items in this murder trial than you could shake a stick at. I'm still not completely sure we know what's going on.
It's bad enough to drown while rafting down a river; it's worse if they can't even get at your body. I only thought that sort of thing happened on Everest!
While I can certainly respect the artistry, I gotta question just what went wrong in this kid's past to make him go that extreme. And dude, tattoo the whites of your eyes?!? Oh, Canada!
Leave it to New York to invent the Lutherburger. Bacon cheese burger, meet donut. Donut, cheeseburger. Ron would probably get his with extra cheese.
You'll please pardon me while I go check to make sure the wayback machine isn't set to 1437 or something:
The unsolved case of a 15-year-old girl who went missing in Rome 25 years ago has been dramatically reopened.A woman has told police the girl was kidnapped by a criminal gang on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the disgraced former head of the Vatican's bank who was linked to the death of the Italian banker Roberto Calvi.
I've heard the saying, "old habits die hard", but this is ridiculous.
I guess it must be all the refinery smoke that keeps them from noticing the smell:
An 84-year-old Burlington County woman died and five other New Jersey residents were sickened in separate incidents after drinking small amounts of torch oil they mistook for apple juice, New Jersey poison control officials said yesterday.
NJ ex-pats Ron and Amber frequently told tales of the... piquancy*... of the native residents. For some reason they left "and they also drink kerosene like it's water" off the list.
---
* And I'll be damned if I didn't spell that right the first time, without even looking.
No, really, when alligators attack:
Okeechobee - Kasey Edwards said he never paid "too much mind" to alligators swimming in canals in Okeechobee County.But early Sunday morning, an 11½-foot alligator had his full attention as Edwards, 18, struggled to free his left arm from the jaws of the reptile.
Those who put their money on the "alcohol involved" outside bet before the spin can now collect your winnings.
While I'm not particularly surprised that "lost and completely uncontacted" tribe that made the rounds a few months ago, well, wasn't, I am annoyed at the completely uncommented paternalism which triggered the whole episode:
Indigenous tribes expert, José Carlos Meirelles, said the tribe had been known of since 1910, and had been photographed to prove that they still existed in an area endangered by logging, The Guardian reported.
...
"When we think we might have found an isolated tribe, a sertanista (tribe expert) like me walks in the forest for two or three years to gather evidence and we mark it in our (global positioning system)," he told Al Jazaera in his first interview since the images were released."We then map the territory the Indians occupy and we draw that protected territory without making contact with them. And finally we set up a small outpost where we can monitor their protection."
These are not rare jaguars or gazelles, they're people, just like you and me. They are people, moreover, who I would imagine would appreciate knowledge that would help more of their children survive their first year, if nothing else. They don't need protection, they need opportunities.
Meh. I'll bet you dollars to donuts they've been so isolated for so long not because of any government or NGO "protection", but because the place in which they live is so miserable and hard to reach nobody wants to contact them. Some Amazon tribes also have an extremely well-deserved reputation for being such miserable examples of the human race nobody else wants to contact them either, at least not for very long.
Ah well. It's not my tax dollars being spent to "protect" people who're just as smart and clever as I am. "I say, let 'em crash."
Sometimes the headlines, they just write themselves: fifth foot found on British Columbia's south coast. Bonus: police have no clues as to just to who the feet belong. WeIrD!
So, really, what is it with these urban tigers? No, really, urban tigers. There's video! I swear!
Ellen would've tried to "step up" the hawk (command it to perch on her hand). Knowing her, it'd probably be in a cage in the corner within the hour, happily "nom'ing" one of the snakes' rats.
Seems giraffe meat is kosher. Who knew?
Ok, I'm officially nervous now. When a news day gets this slow, it usually means something awful's in the offing. I'd say, "be interesting!", but that'd probably just set it off.
While a pro-Israel statement from a neo-Nazi organization may at first seem contradictory, I'm not so sure it is. After all, they're supporting Jews in Israel. This would be quite similar in word and spirit to the KKK announcing it's support for black folks in, say, Liberia. "Not in my back yard, for racists."
Sometimes when you're stuck on jury duty you end up sitting for an interesting murder case. Most of the time, you either sit until they turn you loose or you help adjudicate two boring people with a petty problem. Then, just every once in awhile, you hit the poo lottery. And I mean poo lottery in almost it's literal form.
Inveterate peanut gallery member Ron is justly famous for his bathroom humor. However, something tells me even he'd have his limit, and some girl crying covered in the stuff is probably six or seven notches beyond it.
Me? Hey, if everyone's happy and I'm not forced to watch it, you do what you want. But as far as I'm concerned, when one of the participants is filmed being upset? Yeah, that's not art. Not by a long shot.
Seems they're putting women's parts on just about everything these days. Puts a whole new spin on all those "do you wanna ride?" pick-up lines.
What is it with these chicks and their land marks:
Erika La Tour Eiffel, 37, a former soldier who lives in San Francisco, has been in love with objects before ... But it is the Eiffel Tower she has pledged to love, honour and obey in an intimate ceremony attended by a handful of friends.
Methinks there's a reporter or two who have too much time on their hands.
Drunk driver: 1 & 10, cyclists: 0. I wonder if they'd even closed the highway for the race?
Update: This video seems to indicate it was a decent-sized event. It would appear the well-earned reputation of Mexican police has withstood yet another test of incompetence.
Today's "commercial crop threatened by some wicked disease" is brought to you by Dole. The fruit company, not the ex-senator, that is.
It would appear having an older dad is just about as bad as having an older mom. It seems Olivia just skated in under the deadline, as it were.
The 2008 Darwin Awards are out. When the going gets tough, the stupid get dead.
... said reporter has to file a story like this:
His mother, whose residence is where the sexual activity occurred, teaches at a public school. She testified at Thursday's hearing, insisting repeatedly that she was unaware of her son's sexual acts with her male German shepherd.
Your dog wants a restraining order!
Ron gets a... a... no-prize for bringing us a rather unusual gift idea. I personally have never understood the whole extreme bondage scene, but I guess as long as they pay their taxes, stay out of trouble, and off my lawn... meh.
While this particular page is SFW, I cannot vouch for any part of the rest of the site.
Fans of medical macabre should find this collection of "unusual brain injuries" of interest. If you want to know how bad mental illness can get, short of killing the victim outright, you need look no further.
Looks like the fall of communism claimed a victim we never expected:
A woman with a bizarre fetish for inaninimate objects has revealed she has been married to the Berlin Wall for 29 years....
While the rest of mankind rejoiced when the Wall, erected by the Soviets in 1961 to halt an exodus from East to West Berlin, was largely torn down in 1989, its "wife" was horrified.
She's never been back and now keeps models depicting "his" former glory.
Rrrmm... yeah. I wonder if she's able to hold down a job?
I have to admit, trying to get wi-fi internet connections banned because you're allergic to them is a novel strategy. Not one that's likely to work (one hopes, at any rate), but novel nonetheless.
It would seem people are lining up at Apple's flagship store in Manhattan for no clear reason. Me, I get a whiff of publicity stunt when I think about this. However, New Yorkers are justifiably famous for taking a buck and running with it. If it really were a stunt, I can't imagine them not saying so.
Steve Jobs may be a maniac, but he most likely will go down in history as one of, if not the, most important person to come out of the first wave of the PC industry.
A Canadian man who asked his lover to carve a heart-shaped symbol on his chest during a rough sex game almost died when she accidentally pressed too hard and punctured his heart, a newspaper said on Thursday.
There's a claim form that'll end up in someone's secret "best of" stash!
Actually, I'm surprised someone hadn't thought of tying tomb stones to the WWW. Now that'd be a helluva epitaph, putting the URL of this place on my grave marker, eh?
Nothing like a home-bru flame thrower and a couple of tard teens to lighten the day. Bonus: dead-on Butthead giggling in the last scene. I never did anything this stupid, but I knew a lot of other guys who did.
Code Pink has officially jumped the shark:
Members of the anti-war group Code Pink gathered Friday with a cauldron of flowers outside a controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center in Berkeley, Calif., to use witchcraft to rally against the Iraq war.
I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that they're trying these stunts or the fact that they get press coverage Jesus would envy every time.
You'd think someone would've turned a wheel or something. I have a feeling neither of the captains in this "kiss" collision went much further in their careers.
Leave it to Asians to put an oh-so-distinctive spin on pizza. Unfortunately only one of the advertisements seems to work, but it's plenty weird enough for you to get the gist.
Scott's rule of collecting, #7: an explosive is an explosive, no matter how old it may be. Me, I'll stick to something safer to collect, like scale model kits or old Italian sports cars. I'll leave the explosives to the re-enactors, who at least have the good sense to use new powder and blow it up on-site.
Is the investigation of a single, tragic death in Minnesota going to lead the unraveling of an entire string of serial killings? To me, it all sounds way too sensational, spooky, and just downright circumstantial to be true. Hopefully the media outlets will be sensible enough not to name any "persons of interest."
The sad thing is, this guy will most likely end up on Conan in the very near future. Video is SFW, but you'll most likely want the eye bleach handy.
Meh. His (fat, sharpie-markered, shirtless) body, his business. Pay your taxes, stay out of trouble, keep off my lawn, etc.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, just because you're smart at one thing does not mean you're smart at everything:
Jurors found Linux programmer Hans Reiser guilty of first degree murder on Monday, concluding he killed his estranged wife in 2006. The verdict followed a nearly six-month trial and nearly three days of deliberation.
...
When police eventually located Hans Reiser's Honda CRX a few miles from his home, they found the interior waterlogged, the passenger seat missing, and two books on police murder investigations inside. They also found a sleeping-bag cover stained with a 6-inch wide blotch of Nina's dried blood...
Fans (such as myself) of CourtTV and/or various court TV dramas will rightly surmise that even though the evidence was almost comically incriminating, it was also completely circumstantial. It's the kind of stuff good defense attorneys love to sink their teeth into, because cops can and do fake stuff like this all the time. So why did he get convicted? Because of a counter-example to Scott's Plaintiff Principle: never ever ever take the stand in your own defense:
In a characteristic exchange under cross-examination, Reiser tried to explain why he'd removed and discarded the passenger seat from his two-seater Honda CRX after Nina vanished. His explanation: He'd been sleeping in the vehicle, and wanted the extra room. Asked why he hosed down the inside of the car, leaving an inch of water on the floorboard, he explained that the interior was dirty, and he mistakenly believed the water would drain out.
The description in the article paints the man as a genuinely unpleasant person to be around, and in my opinion indicates he's suffering from a pretty severe mental illness. Which is sort of surprising to me, since I actually deployed ReiserFS on a few systems around here back in 2000, and the articles on his website seemed to me friendly and conversational.
Of course, it's not known as a "descent into madness" because people start off nuts, eh?
Mike P. gets a no-prize that'll wander down the street with its pants around its ankles for bringing us news (and picture) about someone taking a blown gun to a town's pigeon population. You'd think that, instead of offering some sort of reward, those PETA folks would get some traps and take the dratted things to the vet. Priorities, people, priorities!
Everyone look out, there's penis snatchers loose in the Congo!
Sometimes these things just write themselves: Missing man found dressed like doctor with dead deer in stolen ambulance. The article includes a classic "four-stiff-legs-in-the-air" picture of the aforementioned deer in the back of the presumably stolen ambulance.
Man. Where do you start?
Reason #412 Australia is a nice place but I probably wouldn't want to live there: a plague of poisonous spiders bad enough to shut down a whole hospital. It would be just Mark's luck he'd break a leg across the street from that one.
Actual headline: Priest attached to party balloons vanishes in Brazil. And here we've been wasting our time just attaching notes to them!
Reason #134 the rain forest is evil: It's ability to generate new and entertainingly deadly viruses. Take that, ebola!
And in the "freaky, seemingly pointless, yet somehow compelling science" category we have an experiment that alters fruit fly brains so that females are genetically programmed to think they're male. Look, sometimes you have to do science for its own sake, because you never know where it'll lead.
Bacon-flavored lollipop, anyone? Something tells me this one would stay at the bottom of the ol' candy bucket for a long, long time.
Pretty sad when you get run over by the car you tried to steal. Sounds like it ran right over his head, too. Oh, and the article gets my nomination for "year's most poorly written news report."
Reason #432 not to smoke: you could get trapped in an elevator for 40 hours trying to come back from your smoke break. And be immortalized in (included) video with that awful mullet everyone thought was so cool back in '99.
Just in time for a particular anniversary, we have news that yes, it definitely could've been worse:
The daughter of a woman made a gruesome discovery while going through her bedroom closet after she'd died -- the decomposing body of another woman wrapped in plastic, blankets and a sleeping bag.
According to the article, the family never caught on (or wind) because they were never allowed near the house.
No, really, when turkeys attack:
About five to 10 of the birds have been pecking at the postal workers as they make their rounds, and some of the birds have attacked the letter carriers with the sharp spurs on their legs. One of the birds went through the open door of a mail truck and scratched the driver.
Time to carry a .410 with bird shot, I'd think.
Update: Linkee now workee.
And here I always thought it was the drivers who'd be the troublemakers:
FORMULA One motor racing chief Max Mosley is today exposed as a secret sado-masochist sex pervert.The son of infamous British wartime fascist leader Oswald Mosley is filmed romping with five hookers at a depraved NAZI-STYLE orgy in a torture dungeon. Mosley— a friend to F1 big names like Bernie Ecclestone and Lewis Hamilton— barks ORDERS in GERMAN as he lashes girls wearing mock DEATH CAMP uniforms and enjoys being whipped until he BLEEDS.
Assuming it's true, well... dude, wtf?!?
Another day, another twister tearing through my home state. It seems nobody got killed, thank goodness. Oh, and note the backhand redneck reference right in the opening.
No, really, when crocs attack:
A woman has been rescued from the jaws of a saltwater crocodile in Australia after her husband jumped onto its back and forced it to flee.
Pat gets a no-prize with a real knife for bringing us yet another reason nobody should ever live near the water in Australia.
Annie gets a strangely disturbing no-prize for bringing us this DIY knife block. Let's just make sure that stays off our Christmas list, kay? :)
I guess if you're dumb enough to think you can get rich using mercury to get at the gold inside computers, you're dumb enough to do it in your house. Mercury is dangerous, mmkay? Geeze. I thought everyone learned that back in junior high.
It would appear Comcast's efforts to stuff more channels into their digital domain aren't as unnoticeable as they'd like. This sort of thing had relatively few consequences in times past, but now that competition is a reality, it probably won't go well for the executives who thought this whole thing up.
Fark linked a single weird UFO picture, which seems to be a single shot from a series being featured on not one, not two, but at least three different web sites.
Nearly everyone thinks they're photoshopped, and those who didn't thought they were generated with some sort of 3-D art tool. I thought the "viral video game marketing ploy" idea made the most sense, but that's just me.
Of course, it could really be a space ship, so who knows?
I'd be a lot happier if they were switching off lights to dramatize why we need to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. The problem I have with environmentalism is not necessarily its (prima facia) goals, but that its most enthusiastic supporters never seem to admit that keeping the environment clean is expensive.
First go watch this, (all of it! Don't think I can't tell!) then come back and yell at me about how misguided my attitudes on environmentalism are.
Where else in the world but from the Pentagon can one request a set of batteries and receive a set of nuclear missile fuses instead? Alternate title: China.Cage.Rattle(new NukeFuzes[4]);
"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence."
Ok, now it looks like a winky with a frilly sock on top. "Modding" the Eiffel Tower to celebrate its 120th anniversary is all well and good, but isn't this the same tower that has to be closed periodically to ensure it's not dangerously corroded?
Another day, another example which proves that storing cardboard boxes in an oven is actually a pretty tame thing. Strangely enough, Olivia has (so far) completely avoided any really destructive escapades. Well, except for exploding makeup bombs at various points around the house.
Slashdot is getting reports that X-Box 360 owners may have a long wait before their console supports Blu Ray. To which I say, "meh." The HD option is apparently a very fine DVD player, with excellent upconversion. If it were me, that'd be plenty enough for me to sit tight and wait until Blu Ray players drop far enough in price for me to pick one up.
Those of you wondering if our post-9/11 pilots are packing need wonder no more. If the tests on the popular show Mythbusters are any indication, discharging a gun in an airplane as it's flying around, even when pressurized, is nowhere near as dangerous as Hollywood has made it out to be. It is still a gun though, so it's still pretty damned dangerous.
Your safety. Let me show you it.
Your safety.
Pat gets a no-prize with a moose bite in it for bringing us news of the untimely and strange demise of a former Abba drummer. I thought things like glass doors were tempered to prevent exactly this sort of accident from happening. Who knew?
I dunno, if Glenn keeps this up we might have to accuse him of having a sense of humor as twisted as our own. Of course Lileks got all wordy on it. How did anyone survive childhood in the 50s and 60s?
The YouTube link is the best!
Vodka fans in the audience may be surprised to hear someone's come up with a recipe for bacon flavored vodka. Somehow I don't see Absolut making this one of their new flavors. Then again, who knows?
Being the parent of a daughter, I can only hope my child is at least somewhat less likely to pull a stunt like this:
An 18-year-old man using a shopping cart to "car surf" was killed when a Cadillac sport utility vehicle he was holding onto hit a speed bump and threw him to the ground, according to authorities.
Then again, I got through my teens & twenties without doing anything even remotely this stupid, so perhaps it's more a matter of parenting than it is biology.
I'm not sure if I should be comforted by that or not.
Finally, a coconut crab picture with some scale. Ok, things without spines have no business being as big as a dog, mmkay? And I'd be damned annoyed if one disassembled my fence to get at my garbage. Raccoons are bad enough!
Update: Joshua found video!
An engineer has demonstrated an implantable blood-powered display device. He configured it to act like a cell phone, but there are other potential uses. An implanted cell phone that never needs recharging. I'd never speak to my wife again.
Well, except over the phone.
Sometimes this stuff just writes itself: Twin gay porn stars arrested in rooftop robbery burglaries. Twins together in a porn flick is just a wrong no matter what. Stir in the "none of my business as long as I don't think about it OH MY GOD I'M THINKING ABOUT IT!!!" homophobia common to most heterosexual males and, well, it just don't get no skeevier than that.
Time for the brain bleach...
It's a beauty pageant that has it all: fancy dresses, fancy makeup, and muskrat skinning. No, really!
And it's in Maryland, of all places.
Ever wonder what it actually looks like when a trucker f's up and drives an oversized load into a tunnel? Wonder no more. With video goodness!
The sad thing is, the only reason we're hearing about this guy is he's famous:
The saga of Tony Rosato, in which the mentally ill comic actor from Saturday Night Live, SCTV and Night Heat spent more than 800 days in jail on a domestic harassment charge, mostly because he denies he is sick, then was transferred to a psychiatric institution in a creative legal manoeuvre that embarrassed the Crown last summer, slipped from the sublime into the ridiculous yesterday.
The vast majority of people this sick are never heard from at all. Well, until they kill themselves or others, that is.
How a constitutionally bounded free society deals with its mentally ill is probably one of the greatest unsung challenges it will ever meet. To date, not one has done so satisfactorily. They may not ever be able to, making the pathologically unreasonable the ultimate albatross to liberty.
This guy took that whole "let them eat cake" thing way too far. I'm actually surprised this doesn't happen more often in extreme eating competitions.
Leave it to China to take hiking to a completely new extreme. Sorta puts the Appalachia hike into perspective, eh?
Who needs an education when warm-and-fuzzy groupthink works just as well? Somewhere (hopefully an extremely warm undergroundish sort of place) Walter Duranty is smiling.
I've heard guys wanting it "stiff as a rod" before, but this is ridiculous. No hardware near the gear!
Via Mahmood.
Had this happened in America, there would be liability lawyers calling him right now:
The unnamed customer from Doncaster, South Yorks, had ordered the display mannequin over the internet mistakenly thinking it was an adult sex toy. He had to use a pair of heavy duty scissors to cut the dummy and set himself free.Cheekily instead of feeling a right dummy, he then asked for a REFUND from the suppliers but they were said to have “politely refused.”
All aboard the failboat!
Four foot worth of WWI-era German torpedo will definitely put a crimp in anyone's fishing plans, donchaknow? At first I think it's amazing they're still finding explosives from WWI after all this time. Then I remember just how gleefully Europe went at itself during those years, and I wonder why they don't find more.
In the "I honestly didn't know that was a problem" file we have WATCH FOR FALLING MOOSE. Explain that one to the insurance adjuster!
Problem: Precious male snowflake decides on a novel route to avoiding the second grade by insisting on dressing as a girl.
Solution: Not exactly what I'd vote for, at any rate:
An 8-year-old boy is preparing to return to his home school district in Colorado as a girl, so school officials are designating two school restrooms as unisex facilities, and preparing to counsel other students on the issue of transgenderism.
I've known for a long time that the existing public school system structure was fundamentally flawed, but I never thought it would result in something like this. And yet, once you get your head around the incentives that our centrally-planned, government-managed, "progressive" public school systems create, such an outcome is not only logical, but inevitable.
Yet another in the legion of reasons why Milton Friedman's voucher system is so urgently needed.
When some people trash a house, they really go all the way:
A years-old mummified body has been found in a cottage bathtub beneath layers of wood, plastic, dirt and sand, Phoenix police said.
No word yet if it's the former tenant or an unfortunate victim.
I guess it's nice to know the US holds no monopoly on bizarre money scams. I hate the phone so much I just don't answer it if I don't recognize the number. However, I don't run a business, so I have no reason to expect cold-calls out of nowhere. Considering that a successful business owner will already be a pretty savvy person, I can't imagine this particular scam would work all that well. Then again, nobody who turns to a life of crime does so because of an excess of brains. Quite the opposite, in my experience.
This week's "crap literally falls out of an airplane and punches a hole in someone's roof" story is brought to you by Calgary Canada.
It falls through the roof, then you say it, then you do it. Trifecta!
I got no idea what's going on here. From what I'm able to see, I'm pretty sure I don't want to know what's going here. What is it with Asians?
Ah, Carnivale. The all-night parties. The elaborately dressed women naked in all the right places. The dancing Hitler on top of a mound of dead Jews.
No, really!
Today's miracle photo-with-story comes to you from the western German city of Ludwigshafen. Tossing babies out of windows is obviously not an optimal solution to rescue, but if it's between that or watching them fry, well, I guess it'd be time to pray the guy on the ground was a good catch.
Lane G. gets a no-prize that proudly waves its hammer and sickle flag for bringing us the latest loopy attempt by the People's Republic of Berkeley to show "We. Are. Relevant!" Reminds me of the old saying, "when God created the United States, he picked up the East coast and shook it once hard, causing all the loose marbles to roll down to California." Seems to me that the further north you go in that state, the further left the landscape leans. Must be something in the water.
Scientists (or rather, "scientists") have announced that what really caused the World Trade Center to collapse was... *shakes magic 8-ball*... directed energy weapons utilizing the Hutchison Effect:
At the end of the first show, a caller said, “This is a revelation beyond revelations…this trumps everything…If this story ever gets out, it will change the course of the United States’ and the whole world’s history.”
Note how the wording of the press release basically rubs your nose in its "trutherness." How could one possibly doubt it? Then, of course, you wake up.
Well, considering how popular truthers are along the fringe, I guess we can only say some of us wake up.
Just in time for Valentine's day, a tampon flower bouquet. I guess everyone needs some sort of hobby, eh?
Strawberry flavored Cheetos, anyone? Olivia, like most kids her age, doesn't have a definition for "too sweet," so she'd probably dive into a bag with both hands. Not being her or Japanese, I'll have to give it a pass.
The MSM is justifiably famous for trying to hammer the square peg of truth into the round hole of narrative, but can they carry it too far?
Wait a minute. This is the media we're talking about here. "Going too far" is something that happens to other people.
Why, yes, this foil hat does keep me warm in the winter. Thanks for asking!
Via Instapundit.
Somehow, I wouldn't want a chick who was doing this to then start tinkering with my teeth. Happy gas, meet happy ending!
I've always thought some warm water would do the trick, or maybe trying to warm the pole with your hands to get things unstuck. But I guess, ultimately, the one sure way not to get your tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole is to keep it in your mouth.
Pat gets a no-prize with an inconvenient hole in it for bringing us the tale of the farmer, the crocodile, and the rescuer with poor aim. There's a reason you don't shoot at things that are thrashing around, although I must say if the choice is between a survivable gunshot wound and becoming lunch, well, that's not much of a choice at all.
Dell's latest "prosumer" laptops seem to have a grounding problem. Having recently become the owner of same (merry X-mas to me from me), I can only say it hasn't happened to me yet. The operative word there being, I suppose, yet.
Geeze, Liberia's so screwed up even their genocidal maniacs are ridiculous:
A former warlord known as General Butt Naked has confessed to Liberia’s post-conflict reconciliation commission that his men killed 20,000 people during the country’s civil war.
Insert "banality of evil" quote here...
It's not often you get to watch a crazy person lose it. People think insanity is all this cool/scary raving and swatting at things that aren't there, when in reality insanity is mostly just someone being a complete pain in the ass without ever once admitting it.
Deadly explosions at fireworks factories I expect, but in a winery, not so much. They bubble a lot of CO2, but I can't think off hand just what in wine making would be unstable enough to blow the roof off.
I've had folks around here pull some pretty ballsy moves trying to get me to do PC support on personal items, but I've never had someone try to get me to recover a hard drive full of their child porn. Wouldn't surprise me if he sued them for invasion of privacy. This guy might just get away with something similar.
He's not fat, he's big boned. The only difference between this guy and the monsters who terrorized me in grade school is most likely his language. Bullies, it would seem, can be found across space and time.
No, really, they're calling it "well dying:"
The mock funeral, which aims to get participants to map out a better future by reflecting on their past, is part of a new trend in South Korea called "well-dying." The fad is an extension of "well-being," an English phrase adopted into Korean to describe a growing interest in leading healthier, happier lives.
Complete with wooden coffins, nailed-shut lids, and dirt sprinkled on top. The bonus? Companies are paying to send their employees on well-dying "retreats." Puts a whole new spin on that damned 7 Habits retreat I was force-marched to a long time ago.
