moonbuggy

‘A Wisconsin man whose blend of awkward syntax, imminent disaster and bathroom humor offends both good taste and the English language won an annual contest Monday that salutes bad writing.

Jim Gleeson, 47, of Madison, Wis., beat out thousands of other prose manglers in San Jose State University’s 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this convoluted opening sentence to a nonexistent novel:

“Gerald began – but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them ‘permanently’ meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash – to pee,” Gleeson wrote.’

‘Images captured by a surveillance camera inside the store show the woman lose her footing in one of the aisles and take a nasty fall. A store worker comes to her aid and helps her up. The woman then loses her footing again and falls to the floor.

But store manager Luis Diaz noted there was something strange about the ‘accident’ after viewing the tape.

Diaz decided to do a little investigating on his own and rewound the surveillance tape back even more, and what he found surprised him. On the tape, the same woman, in the same aisle, minutes before her ‘slip and fall’ accident. On the tape, the woman appears to be trying to open a bottle of olive oil unsuccessfully. The woman puts it back on the shelf, leaves the aisle only to return a few moments later and pick up a new bottle. The tape shows her opening this bottle and pouring some of the oil onto the floor, then she puts the bottle back on the shelf and leaves the aisle.’

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How does Kevin Smith respond to the question “Do you ever plan on making an original movie without rehashing any of your old characters that doesn’t suck?” .. Hilariously. :)

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‘Party princess Paris Hilton is $60 million out of pocket after her billionaire grandfather – appalled by her jail term for drink-driving offences – axed her inheritance.

Family patriarch Barron Hilton was already embarrassed by his granddaughter’s wild behaviour – notably when her home sex video was leaked on the internet.

But the 79-year-old considered her 23-day sentence last month the last straw.

“He was, and is, extremely embarrassed by how the Hilton name has been sullied by Paris,” says Jerry Oppenheimer, who wrote a biography of the clan called House Of Hilton.

“He now doesn’t want to leave unearned wealth to his family.”‘

‘Emissions from office laser printers can be as unhealthy as cigarette smoke, according to an Australian professor who is now calling for regulations to limit printer emissions.

Office workers breathing easy since smoking was banned in public places in the United States and the United Kingdom have new reason to worry, according to research from the Queensland University of Technology’s Air Quality and Health Program, led by physics professor Lidia Morawska.

The average printer releases toner particles that can get deep into the lungs and cause respiratory problems and cardiovascular trouble, according to Morawska’s team, part of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, and specialists in atmospheric particles.

The team tested 62 laser printer models–all relatively new–and found that 17 of them were “high emitters” of toner particles. Despite using similar technology, office photocopiers do not emit particles, the team found. ‘

‘The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face — miles and miles of face — of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough — so Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share In the glory that was Multivac’s.’

‘It was a night like any other – people inviting us out to a steakhouse. We get there, we are seated in a private room. All was well. Niceties aside, we prepare to order. I ask my wife what I should get. She says, “Go ahead and look at the menu – it’s in English.”

“Oh Really?”‘

‘This colored corn syrup is dropped into a mixture, stirred up, and when the direction is reversed, the drops return their original state.’

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Here’s a collection of funny stories by emergency physicians and the like. Quite a lot of them. Also, more in part 2.

I’ve chewed up a whole day reading through these. Good way to kill some time. :)

Followup to Nee Naw – Blog of a Dispatcher in the London Ambulance Service’s Control Room.

‘A gang of children killed a father-of-two by stoning him as he played a makeshift game of cricket with his son, a court has heard.

They surrounded a tennis court where Ernest Norton and his teenage son had set up a wicket and hurled bricks and debris in a “completely unprovoked attack”.

Mr Norton, 67, collapsed in a pool of blood after being hit by a piece of rock and died from heart failure, the Old Bailey was told. [..]

Five boys, all aged 13 or under at the time of the onslaught last year, are accused of unlawfully killing Mr Norton, a retired engineering draughtsman. None can be named for legal reasons.’

Coach, it’s the wrong ball!

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‘The World’s Largest Restroom is in Chong Qing, China and oddly enough, is made from all recycled waste and materials.

Some urinals are uniquely shaped, including ones inside open crocodile mouths and several that are topped by the bust of a woman resembling the Virgin Mary.

As seen below the design of the restroom is quite unique with an Egyptian theme and elaborate decoration.’

Followup to China Public Restroom Has 1,000 Stalls, with images.

‘Oshkosh Police have a 17-year-old teen in custody in connection with the robbery of a lemondade stand.

Police arrested the boy Wednesday night on pending charges of robbery and physical abuse of a child.

Oshkosh Police say the teen punched and robbed 11-year-old Austin Cundy of $20.00 and his wallet while he was running a lemonade stand Tuesday afternoon.’

‘Two men have been charged with attempting to smuggle 16kg of the illicit drug ice into Australia hidden in two marble tables. [..]

Customs officers at Sydney Air Cargo discovered the drugs on July 10 after selecting for examination two packages which had arrived from Vancouver, Canada.

An X-ray of the packages aroused suspicion of a possible concealment and prompted Customs officers to drill a hole in the marble slab.

They found white powder inside.’

‘U.S. stocks had a tough week with the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffering its worst one-week point drop in five years, but a group of meditators promise their good vibrations will send the index past 17,000 within a year.

A group called the Invincible America Assembly made that claim and more Friday, insisting they have America’s prosperity under control and their positive vibes will bring fewer hurricanes and better U.S.-North Korean relations.

Through group transcendental meditation the assembly — which has 1,800 people meditating daily in Iowa since it was formed in July 2006 — releases harmonious waves which benefit all aspects of U.S. life, spokesman Bob Roth told Reuters. [..]

The group takes credit for, among other things: the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching a record high of 14,022 last week, unemployment rates falling to a six-year low at 4.5 percent, and North Korea shutting down its nuclear reactor.’

‘Two news helicopters covering a police chase on live television collided and crashed to the ground Friday, killing all four people on board in a plunge that viewers saw as a jumble of spinning, broken images.

Both helicopters went down in a park in central Phoenix and caught fire. No one on the ground was hurt.

TV viewers did not actually witness the accident because cameras aboard both aircraft were pointed at the ground. But they saw video from one of the helicopters break up and begin to spin before the station abruptly switched to the studio. [..]

Rick Gotchie, an air conditioning contractor, was working nearby when he noticed the helicopters overhead. He said they began circling closer as he continued watching, and one appeared to get too close to the other.’

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‘Three men who dug up a young woman’s corpse to have sex with it after seeing her obituary photo cannot be charged with attempted sexual assault because Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

A judge was correct to dismiss the charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21, because lawmakers never intended to criminalize sex with a corpse, the District 4 Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 ruling.

The three men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin on Sept. 2 to remove the body of Laura Tennessen, 20, who had been killed the week before in a motorcycle crash.’

‘The Beauty Smile Trainer is basically a mouthpiece, but it’s designed specifically to make your smile wider and more amicable than the one you already have. It’s even endorsed by a cosmetic dentist (the woman on the top left.) In addition to improving your smile, the product promises to reduce facial sagging, making your countenance more firm and petite.’

‘The state attorney general’s office removed the toll-free number for a sexual assault counseling center from its Web site after an 8-year-old girl was connected instead to a sex chat line. [..]

On Sunday, the girl approached her mother and said she wanted to talk. Carter decided to call the toll-free number she found in the phonebook hoping the operators would offer advice to her daughter. She said she handed her daughter the phone and walked away to give her privacy.

“I come back a few seconds later and she has this look on her face of surprise and then horror and then her eyes start tearing up,” Carter said. “I never thought in my wild’s dreams that she would get a sex line. I was trying to help my daughter.”‘

‘Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp’s mass wedding. “They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia”.

Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland.

With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult.

But this organisation – known as “Nashi”, meaning “Ours” – is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life.’

‘A shocking onfrontation between a Melbourne Catholic priest and a group of trespassing skateboarders has led to calls for the clergyman to have anger management counselling.

The ugly footage, which was posted on a social networking site about a year ago, shows Reverend Monsignor Geoffrey Baron, Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, chasing off a group of skateboarders while both sides exchange obscene and racist insults.’

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‘A Kenmore man told Buffalo police that his pants and wallet were stolen while he was in a Johnson Park apartment late Sunday night for a sexual encounter with a woman.

The man said he thought it would be free of charge, but a second woman entered the apartment and took his pants and wallet, demanding that he pay for “services rendered.”

When the man pursued the second woman out of the apartment to get his wallet back, he was confronted by a man who threatened him, police were told. All three suspects then fled in a four-door maroon sedan. The wallet contained debit and credit cards as well as the man’s house and car keys.’

‘”When Kyle was a baby in his little baby seat and I’d be vacuuming, he would just be mesmerized by the vacuum and he would just; he’d follow it everywhere,” she says.

Kyle got his first vacuum at age 1, dressed up as a Dirt Devil for Halloween at 2, and, as a former teacher recalls, was vacuuming during school recess at age 6.

“It’s not that he didn’t like recess. He just preferred to stay inside vacuuming,” he says. “He would go down and, actually, one day vacuum one side of the room, the next day vacuum the other side. [He’d] also vacuum the principal’s office — anywhere he could vacuum.”

Today, Kyle has 165 vacuums. He uses almost all of them, vacuuming his own house up to five times a day.’

‘A man from Ohio is accused of offering a Florida mother hundreds of dollars to “dunk” and torture her children under water in order to satisfy a bizarre sexual fetish.

Jeff Doland, of Uniontown, Ohio, was arrested by authorities after he flew to Miami, believing he was going to meet a mother of two girls, ages 9 and 12 years old, to pay her $550 to forcibly submerge the children under water until they became unconscious, officials said.

During multiple Internet conversations, Doland told the woman, an undercover agent with the U.S. Secret Service, that “dunking” was his particular form of sexual gratification. [..]

Doland claimed online that he “liked watching the bubbles” [..]’

‘New research indicates that hacking the atmosphere — pumping microscopic particles into the stratosphere or clouds to block sunlight and offset global warming caused by greenhouse gases — is imminently possible. The problem is we could never, ever stop doing it.

Climate scientists Damon Matthews of Concordia University and Ken Caldeira of Stanford ran the numbers on atmospheric geo-engineering through a climate simulation and found that while cranking out carbon dioxide at business-as-usual rates we can geo-engineer our way back toward pre-industrial temperatures in short order, reaching 1900 levels in about five years. Not only that, it would be fairly cheap and easy to do.

Pumping 20 to 25 liters of aerosols per second to keep enough particles in the stratosphere would cool temperatures, causing the planet’s carbon sinks to suck more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

“That kind of flow rate can be handled by a single fire hose,” said Caldeira. “For something like $100 million a year you could probably keep a hose in the stratosphere suspended by an array of balloons with pumps along the way.”

The problem is what happens if we stop short or screw it up.’

‘Watch the guy in the light blue shirt, as the mini merry go round twirls faster and faster he begins to slowly pass out until he flat out loses consciousness and becomes dead weight.’

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‘1. Dumb as a limestone brick: Indiana’s misguided bid for tourists

The great idea: Turn a small Midwestern town into a tourist mecca for lovers of limestone block.

The great big problem: Limestone block is not as big a draw as you might think.

Cost to taxpayers: $700,000

Despite being the undisputed “Limestone Capital of the World,” Bedford, Indiana, always had a hard time figuring out how to parlay its claim to fame into a thriving tourism industry. That is, until Bedford Chamber of Commerce member Merle Edington came up with a brilliant plan.

In the late 1970s, Edington proposed that Bedford build a Disney-style theme park. But, instead of cartoon characters, the park’s main attraction would be limestone, featuring a 95-foot-high replica of the Great Pyramid of Cheops built out of (you guessed it) local limestone blocks.

And, on the off chance that a scale model of one world wonder wouldn’t be exciting enough, Edington added plans for an 800-foot-long replica of the Great Wall of China.

While the power of limestone over the vacationing public is debatable, Edington convinced the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration to believe in his dream — to the tune of $700,000.

Unfortunately, those funds dried up quickly, thanks to Wisconsin senator William Proxmire (famous for his “Golden Fleece Awards” ridiculing government waste), who called attention to the project. The town was left deep in debt, unable to even pay Edington’s salary. Today, the abandoned project is little more than a giant rock pile.’

‘Ministers insisted that British secret agents would only be allowed to pass intelligence to the CIA to help it capture Osama bin Laden if the agency promised he would not be tortured, it has emerged.

MI6 believed it was close to finding the al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan in 1998, and again the next year. The plan was for MI6 to hand the CIA vital information about Bin Laden. Ministers including Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary, gave their approval on condition that the CIA gave assurances he would be treated humanely. The plot is revealed in a 75-page report by parliament’s intelligence and security committee on rendition, the practice of flying detainees to places where they may be tortured.

The report criticises the Bush administration’s approval of practices which would be illegal if carried out by British agents. It shows that in 1998, the year Bin Laden was indicted in the US, Britain insisted that the policy of treating prisoners humanely should include him. But the CIA never gave the assurances.’

‘Daisy Valdivia is annoyed that someone stole her backyard pool — and baffled at how they did it without leaving behind a splash, drip or trace of the 1,000 gallons of water it contained.

Valdivia awoke to find her family’s hip-high, inflatable, 10-foot diameter swimming pool gone from her back yard Wednesday.

Valdivia told The Record of Bergen County the theft must have occurred between 1 a.m., when her husband went to bed, and 5 a.m., when she awoke.

She’s amazed someone could steal the pool that quickly and just wanted to know “what the heck they did with the water,” she said.’