moonbuggy

`Vitaly Matyukhin is an Arkhangelsk resident who has not seen the sun for fifteen years. Neighbors shun his household, while his little son cannot understand why he always have to wrap up in warm clothes before seeing his dad.

Suffering a rare disorder — he cannot stand the heat and sunlight — Matyukhin has been confined to a self-built giant fridge for over 15 years now, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported on Friday. [..]

The man is suffering a rare heat exchange disorder and cannot stand temperatures over 5 degrees Celsius. For nearly fifteen years no, Matyukhin has been living in a fridge.

Born in Krasnodar in Russian South, Matyukhin graduated from a construction college. One fine day, the youth suffered a sunstroke that triggered all his woes.’

`It looks like a spaceship that has landed on the wrong planet. It is Afghanistan’s very first shopping mall, gleaming with shops while on the dusty road outside people pump water and grim soldiers drive by in armoured vehicles.

The mall, which opened here this month, offers a lesson in contrast. It also boasts another first for Afghanistan, an escalator, which customers can use to reach upper floors – if they dare.

“People are afraid of the escalator. They are amazed to see something moving by itself,” says Anwar Hussein, manager of the hotel that shares a nine-storey building with the shopping centre. [..]

“That is real development. I wish Afghanistan were full of shopping malls,” said customer Abdul Fatah, who had just purchased a silver wristwatch.’

`A senior U.S. official rejected calls on Thursday for a U.N. body to take over control of the main computers that direct traffic on the Internet, reiterating U.S. intentions to keep its historical role as the medium’s principal overseer.

“We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet,” said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. “Some countries want that. We think that’s unacceptable.”‘

I’m going to set this as the backdrop on someone’s laptop at the office, and tell them I saw someone else knock said laptop from the table onto the floor.

That’ll show ’em. :)

`Not unlike Michael Jackson, these harmless soybeans had undergone some kind of hideous transformation. They were now a freakish version of their former selves. (Which, coincidentally, should also be kept away from your children.)

The most disturbing aspect of this stuff is it seems to get “activated” when you stir it. What I mean by this is, (and I may actually weep, but…) the slimy coating on the beans develops into stringy, stretchy, marshmallow-like strands that will forever haunt my dreams. [..]

I force-fed myself a big ol’ spoonful, and found it to be slightly rancid and extremely bitter. Unfortunately, swallowing didn’t help dissipate the flavor because the strings of bean jizz melted, coating my mouth and lips with a glistening sheen of sadness.

The entire experience is difficult to describe, but if you can remember back to the very first time you made out with a hobo’s ass, it’s a lot like that.’

`After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA – Beron doesn’t remember his name – came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

“I’ve got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome,” Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.’

(1meg .wmv)

`An 11-year-old boy who was caught behind the wheel of a BMW has been disqualified from driving for a year.

Police in Andover, Hants, stopped a car in August because its headlights were not on, Basingstoke Youth Court heard.

Officers noticed the driver was “very short” and when they signalled for the car to stop it crossed over into the other lane just missing a lamppost.

The boy had pleaded guilty to several driving offences. He was also given a four-month supervision order.’

‘Dude, it doesnt matter how late you are you would probably be better off showering at home.’

(2.2meg .wmv)

see it here »

`A ninth-grader here has been banned from his school’s assemblies after asking a sensitive question to a U.S. Army pilot.

Phil Sannes also had to apologize to speaker Michael Durant after he asked the “Black Hawk Down” helicopter pilot on Thursday whether he had been raped during his capture by hostile forces in Somalia.

“He asked a fair, hard-balled question,” said Phil’s dad, Jon Sannes. “I don’t know why he’s being punished.” [..]

Durant said it was a good question, but he wouldn’t answer it.’

I think that answer probably counts as a `yes’. :)

`Somehow, I doubt Lego had this in mind when they made their Squid…’

`French police are investigating the suicide of two teenage girls who tied themselves together and leapt from the 17th floor of a tower block while their horrified boyfriends watched.

The girls, named only as Marion and Virginie, had apparently carefully prepared their deaths, intending their boyfriends, Ben and Julien, to witness the event.

The girls had gone to a relative’s flat and told the two boys to wait in the living room while they prepared a “surprise”. One of them called from the bedroom: “OK, come in.” Ben opened the door. Marion and Virginie were standing on the window sill, their hands tied together. They smiled and jumped.’

`Religious belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems. [..]

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”’

`This is the story of men who play god with the universe. Here is the astounding story behind these weird astronomical theories, which are now taught as fact in newspapers and popular magazines. One got his ideas from Spiritualists. Another (*Charles Darwin’s son) theorized that the moon floated out of the Pacific on a high tide. The list of foolishness goes on and on. There never was a Big Bang, and stars and planets cannot evolve from gas. Evolutionary theory is a myth.’

`A 12-year-old Indian girl committed suicide after her mother told her she could not afford one rupee – two US cents – for a school meal.

Sania Khatun lived with her mother in a village north of Calcutta under a tarpaulin sheet provided by the state.

Sania normally ate nothing at school but on Friday saw classmates eating rice and asked for one rupee.

Her mother scolded her and when she returned from work found her daughter hanged from the ceiling with a sari.’

Some strange man rapping strange stuff. I assume he’s being ridiculous on purpose, but you never know.

(7.4meg Flash video)

see it here »

`In Taipei, there are free city maps distributed at the airport and hotels. These maps are published once every three months, typically with singers on the front cover. On this occasion, the featured singer was Vivian Hsu and she wore a t-shirt read “Dirty White Slut.” The editorial staff did not pay attention to that. After it was exposed in Hong Kong newspapers, the maps have been withdrawn from circulation.’

with picture.

Lots of photos of some guy in a diaper.

And before you ask, yes, of course he’s German. They love that sort of thing over there, you know. :)

As the old German saying goes: Deine Mutter hat Hundesaft auf deinem Gezicht.

Edit: Actually, now I realise he’s Swiss, not German. [shrug] Still, I’ll leave my slanderous comments towards the Germans here because it may amuse certain colleagues of mine. :)

‘When driving your BMW in a drifting contest, there are a number of safety precautions you should observe. The first, and listen up, because this is important, is that you don’t get out of the car during your “performance” no matter how cool it may seem at the time.’

(3.2meg .wmv)

see it here »

`Our in-house designed (Joachim Stadel & Ben Moore 2003), massively parallel supercomputer for running our cosmological N-body simulations. This machine consists of 288 AMD Athlon-MP 2200+ (1.8 GHz) CPUs within a few cubic meters. Under load it produces about 45 kW of heat, about equivalent to 45 electric hair dryers operating continuously! This amount of heat, combined with the extremely high density necessitated a new design for efficient cooling. The 144 nodes (2 CPUs per node) are connected using an SCI fast interconnect supplied by Dolphin in a 12×12 2-dimensional torus.’

I have no personality disorders it seems, so hooray for me. I wonder how many people tick the “Do you experience magical thinking that influences your behavior?” box in that test. :)

The depression test tells me I should go to the hospital right now, or call 911 and ask for help. [laugh]

Psych tests are fun. :)

No idea what it says. But a picture is worth a thousand words.

I figure, if they’ll hang it in an art gallery it has to be safe for work. [shrug] :)

`It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.’

`Australia’s new High Court judge is a grandmother who throws wild St Patrick’s Day parties, complete with drums, and once accidentally turned off a power station.

Susan Crennan’s colleagues say the Federal Court justice is one of the nation’s most brilliant legal minds and a welcome addition to the High Court.’

`An 18-month-old child started the family car and ran over three family members in a southern Polish village on Saturday, police said.

“The child somehow started the car, whose keys had been left in the ignition, and it began reversing,” police spokesman Adam Jachimczak said.

The child’s mother, who tried to stop the car, and her four-year-old daughter, got run over by the vehicle which pinned the grandfather against the wall of a barn.’

`The US military lawyer appointed to defend Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks has welcomed the prospect of his client applying for British citizenship. [..]

Unlike the Australian Government, the British Government has refused to cooperate with the US military commission process.

All nine British citizens detained at Guantanamo Bay were released without charge, with the first releases taking place in March last year.

Maj Mori says the US and the UK have an agreement that no British citizen will be tried under the military commission process.’

`The crew of a fishing boat blocked emergency radio frequencies for hours as they watched an erotic film.

The crew of the Blyth-based Oceania accidentally left their radio switched to the emergency channel on Thursday as they were off the North East coast.

They then settled down to watch the film Crash on a TV which was next to the radio – not realising it was being broadcast over a 30-mile radius.’

`A Christchurch beneficiary has complained to the State Services Commission after her Work and Income case manager allegedly left an obscenity on her voicemail.

Sickness beneficiary Andrea Metcalfe claims her case manager ended a message on her answerphone about her next appointment by calling her a “cunt”.

Work and Income has investigated and exonerated the case manager, saying the words she used were: “Thanks, ta.”

Social Development Ministry chief executive Peter Hughes blamed the New Zealand accent and audio “drop out” on its phone network for the confusion.

“The ministry’s phone system, while cutting edge, does experience drop outs,” he said. “This, coupled with a Kiwi accent, can result in words being swallowed. We believe what has been recorded is the hitting of the K and T.”‘

`Of course, the true danger lies in the fact that once the Gay Genie is out of the bottle, it can never return – that there’s no turning back on the road to the queer armageddon. Ah, some of you might be thinking, but surely the forces of good, justice, and straightness will triumph, even at the end of the world! If only it were so, my friends. But our situation is far more dire: evidence indicates that by the time the apocalypse arrives, God Himself may be infected with Gay.

Between the United Church of Christ’s pernicious promotion of equal rights and the Episopal Church’s gay bishop, God has become increasingly pink of late. Indeed, reliable reports have it that God the Son has been acting suspiciously swishy, while the Holy Ghost has been a raging queen for years. [..]’

Having fun with stickers and signs.

Stickers that say fuck. And signs that didn’t say fuck originally, but now do.