Window Cleaner Amuck

Remember when Daffy Duck got erased by a giant pencil? I'm sure that's the real explanation of what happened to this fellow.

Chocolate Fuel

Lola is visiting M.I.T. from the University of Warwick in the U.K. as an honored guest at M.I.T.'s energy conference. She's not there as a speaker but as an exhibit. That's because Lola is a specially designed formula 3 car. Her special design allows her to run on the waste from chocolate factories and other plant based oils. This isn't a slow little hybrid putting along either, with a top speed of 135 MPH Lola can go from 0 to 60 MPH in 2.5 seconds. Not bad, I wish I ran that good on chocolate too!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100309/od_nm/us_car_chocolate

News That Sounds Like a Joke (3-9-2010)

News That Sounds Like a Joke

Some Weeks, News of the Weird / Pro Edition just isn't enough
March 9, 2010
(datelines February 27-March 6) (links correct as of March 9)

Global Warming (and Bathtub) Alert: Scientists from the University of Fairbanks discovered that about 8 million tons of methane is bubbling up from the frozen tundra north of Siberia. (They don't know whether the gas has been coming up all along or just started.) Reuters via ABC News

Toyotas Are Safer: Near Arlington, Wash., a 59-year-old man driving his 1978 Buick left the road and careened down an embankment. His steering wheel had come off in his hands. KOMO-TV (Seattle)

A Swiss condom manufacturer believes that a market awaits in the person of younger teenage boys who are sexually active but find adult sizes too loose. It will begin making a "small" for 12- to 14-year-olds. Unaddressed question: Are there 12- to 14-year-olds actually anticipating sex who would let themselves be seen with a "small"? Daily Telegraph (London)

Arelisha Bridges, 45, was charged in Atlanta with murdering her 26-year-old husband following a domestic altercation. Bridges is a registered lobbyist for an anti-domestic-violence organization. (On the other hand, she's probably not a very good lobbyist, as her total expenses for the year amount so far to $20.) Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Covington, Ky., psychiatrist Douglas Rank was arrested two weeks ago when his own personal demons bubbled over, resulting in his going bloodily samurai on his girlfriend. Apparently, several of his patients are in such bad shape that they've called the jail to see if Dr. Rank can keep his regular appointments while in lockup. Kentucky Enquirer

The Times of India reported that a 55-year-old man checked in to a Kolkata hospital, suffering from a 21-day (and counting) erection. It's a serious story, with warnings and care instructions about priapism. But the name of the hospital is the Wockhardt. The Times of India

Paul Railton was fined £66 ($100) and assessed three driver's license points for walking his dog on a country road by holding the leash out the window as he motored along. His lawyer admitted there was "an element of" of laziness involved. Associated Press via MSNBC

Germain Bowman-McDonald filed a lawsuit against a wig store in New York City based on a July incident when a plastic mannequin head fell on her left foot. The nerve damage that resulted, she said, has left her unable to curl the toes of that foot. Her husband filed a separate lawsuit asserting that the injury has prevented their having satisfactory sex (i.e., no toe-curling for him, either). New York Daily News

The Aristocrat! Toni Tramel, 31, jailed in Owensboro, Ky., for public intoxication, had "assault on a police officer" added to her booking sheet. She had squirted her breast milk at her female jailer. WBKO-TV (Bowling Green, Ky.)

Newsrangers: Kaitlyn Buckway, Kathryn Wood, Kiki Yablon, Graham Rankin, Steve Wagner, Larry Seltzer, Peter Smagorinsky, and Mark Yeager.

Last Date

The future "Mr. Bewitched" commits teen-i-cide!

Weird 2.0 (3-9-2010)

Weird 2.0
Spawn of News of the Weird / Pro Edition
March 9, 2010
(datelines February 27-March 6) (links correct as of March 9)

Evidently, it's big news 8½ years after 9-11 that a respected Muslim cleric has issued a fatwa condemning suicide bombing, backed by 600 pages of Quranic scholarship. Nonetheless, everybody knows that the most important basis for fatwas remains not murder, but insults! CNN

Twenty-three super-principled members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted (23-22) to officially condemn Turkey. It's not for anything anyone alive did. The country is being smited because the 23 have concluded that, based on their study of history, the Ottoman Empire committed "genocide" in 1915-1923 and that it's up to the U.S. House of Representatives not to let them, whoever they were, get away with it. Agence France-Presse via Google News

America has done a creditable job at reducing manmade pollutants over the last 40 years, but it is falling way behind on one: farm animal manure. In the old days, small farms could recycle their manure over their own fields. Now, megafarms produce megapoop but don't have megafields to spread it on. The government tries to set standards, but the way this works is that the megafarms' lobbyists object, using "the small family farms" as their human shield against further regulation. Washington Post

More in extended >>

News of the Weird / Pro Edition (March 8, 2010)

News of the Weird/Pro Edition
"You're Still Not Cynical Enough"

Exceptionally Inexplicable Dispatches from Last Week
March 8, 2010
(datelines February 27-March 6) (links correct as of March 8)

The Cheese Whiz, Plus Howling Women, Time-Delay Quadruplets, and Perhaps Too Much Mons News

His Media Instincts Better Than His Dishes?
A-List New York City chef Daniel Angerer stepped up the buzz by acknowledging that, yes, he is preparing cheese from his nursing wife's breast milk. It's open-source, though: He published the recipe, and offered aspiring cordon bleus some of the couple's "back-up" milk that their 8-week-old won't be able to get to. "[W]hoever wants to try it is welcome." New York magazine

Know Your Prophets
(1) The omniscient Sean David Morton, who has "called ALL [ed: his capitaliz.] the highs and lows of the [stock] market giving EXACT DATES [his capitaliz.] for rises and crashes over the last 14 years," was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He didn't call any of that, even though he was supposedly trained in "remote viewing" by monks in Nepal. However, he did manage to lighten investors' bank balances by about $6 million. (2) More measured is Lenny Dykstra [ed.: yep, the baseball player], who debuted his yearly investment service ($999). He acknowledges that he's not a registered advisor, but says "his proven track record has caught the attention of many." (3) Minister "Calypso Louie" Farrakhan resurfaced, reminding his Nation of Islam that he has helped them over the years by uniquely recognizing warning signs like the earthquake in Chile, which currently portends trouble for President Obama. "The word 'prophet' is too cheap a word. I am a light in the midst of darkness. It ain't ego; it's my love for you." New York Times /// Wall Street Journal /// Associated Press via Salon.com /// YouTube [Farrakhan sings calypso]

The Staff of Life
Sarah Burge, 49, is well-known in Britain as the recipient of more than 100 invasive cosmetic procedures (cost: at least £500,000 [$750,000], which should surely render her perfect by now). Not wanting to be a hypocrite, she acceded to her daughter's cries of vanity, by administering her Botox at age 15. Hannah is now 16 and still deathly afraid that, without "B," she'd "get that frozen-face look" when she's older. Daily Mail [includes before and after photos of Mom]

Two Things You Didn't Expect
(1) Afghanistan has a National Environmental Protection Agency. (2) Last week, it moved to save the endangered large-billed red warbler and 13 other critters, running its "save the" list up to 48. Scientific American

Your Periodic Roundup of "Intelligent Design"
(1) Deepak Paswaan, 7, in Bihar, India, is looking for (a) a qualified surgical team and (b) a little health-care reform to pay for it, to remove the parasitic twin he was born with. (There's a Not Safe For Stomachs, all-eight-limbs photo.) (2) A woman in England had triplets, arriving two years after the birth of her first daughter, and doctors determined that all four had come from the same egg. Time-delay quads! (3) And it says here that this little fella was born without pores, creating predictable problems plus skin resembling fish scales. Daily Telegraph (London) via Fox News /// BBC News /// Daily Telegraph (London)
More in extended >>

A Little Light Weirdness – 9

First up, apologies if this post contains more typos than usual, I'm sending it from my new ultra-small netbook and I'm still getting used to its itty-bitty keyboard. Which brings me nicely to my first story. That according to a survey for satellite channel SKY-HD, British consumers waste £52 billion a year on hi-tech features they don't use. For example, half of the people polled did not know their high definition television also required a hi-def signal source such as a blu-ray player or HD satellite receiver – like the ones sold by SKY-HD perhaps (Telegraph).

And it's not just the the British, military officials in Russia recently discovered 100 front-line battletanks parked and forgotten by the side of the road near Yekaterinburg in the Urals. Locals say the tanks, which were unguarded and unlocked, have been there for several months and lack only ammunition and the all important starter keys (Reuters).

Someone who might have had a use for those tanks were guests at a wedding in New Delhi in India recently. The Hindu ceremony was somewhat marred when an elephant hired for the event went on a rampage after becoming aroused by the smell of a nearby female in heat. The amorous pachyderm then proceeded to crush 20 limousines, smash through a nearby mall and mount a truck before it could be tranquilised (Orange).

Also losing it this week was the man on the RyanAir flight who found he had won 10,000 euros on a scratchcard he bought on the budget flight from Poland to the UK. Furious that the airline had not seen fit to equip all their planes with the requisite amount of cash onboard, hence he could not be given his prize there and then as he demanded, the unnamed passenger ate the winning card rather than wait to claim it at his destination (BBC News).

More in extended >>

A Dirty Job

What is the sleaziest job on the planet? Politician? Used car salesman? Lawyer? Here's a new candidate for your consideration, break up caller. For just $10 Bradley Laborman will call your soon to be ex- significant other and tell them you no longer want to go out with them and why. He also tapes the calls and plays them on youtube.
IDUMP4U is the name of his service and there are a couple of examples of his break up calls at the link along with an interview of Bradley.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/hell-dump-your-lover-for-you-over-the-phone-and-post-it-online/article1490172/

Dressed To (Road) Kill

Freeport, Florida along US RT 331 the above, sharp dressed beaver, was spotted. A Monster Energy Drink can was lying beside it, those things are lethal! A fish and Game spokesman thinks Spring Break and alcohol are involved. Uh, yeah probably.
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/driving-26525-sarah-animal.html

What’s That Noise?

This story provides the first viable reason I've heard for a woman to check out a strange noise by herself when home alone. Oh how embarrassing!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100305/od_afp/germanypolicesexoffbeat

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