`It’s Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as Freshers’ Week.
One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a disembodied voice booms out from above:
“You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!” The confused student obeys as his friends look bewildered.
“People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,” said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.’
`The South Korean Government is handing out gifts for office workers who promise not to visit brothels this holiday season.
“If you promise yourself to make it a healthy night out at the end of the year, and if you recommend this to others, we are giving lots of prizes,” the Ministry of Gender Equality said in an internet posting.
The ministry is offering to pay companies whose employees pledge not to buy sex after what are typically alcohol-soaked, year-end parties.’
This guy is more of a cockhead than a comedian, but the ending gave me a bit of a laugh. 🙂
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`An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein’s death sentence for crimes against humanity and said he should hang within 30 days.
Human rights groups condemned his trial as seriously flawed and called on the government not to carry out the sentence, which comes amid raging violence between Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs and majority Shi’ites.
The White House called the court’s decision a “milestone” in replacing tyranny with rule of law.’
I can’t translate this page into English, so I have no idea what the fuck this is about.
Hairy tit thing is about the best I can do. [shrug] 🙂
Very rough. That’s crazy.
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`Today, Hacienda Napoles is in ruins, taken over by jungle foliage and bats. The sprawling Spanish-style mansion has been gutted, scavenged by treasure hunters looking for stashes of gold and cash buried under the floors. [Pablo] Escobar is long gone, cut down in a hail of police gunfire.
But the hippos are still here.
[..] Now the original four have multiplied to 16 and, far from starving to death, as some expected, they have learned to forage like cows.’
`[..] statuettes of “El Caganer,” or the great defecator in the Catalan language, can be found in nativity scenes, and increasingly on the mantelpieces of collectors, throughout Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region, where for centuries symbols of defecation have played an important role in Christmas festivities.
During the holiday season, pastry shops around Catalonia sell sweets shaped like feces, and on Christmas Eve Catalan children beat a hollow log, called the tio, packed with holiday gifts, singing a song that urges it to defecate presents out the other end.’
It seems at close range, the hunter becomes the hunted.
[I’ve always wanted to say that. :)]
(3.0meg Windows media)
see it here »
This is a cool little game where you put lots of guns on a train and drive around shooting tanks and delivering cargo.
Fun. 🙂
‘A stop motion battle between two friends turned enemies.’
(12.0meg Flash video)
see it here »
`A bluebird in the garden, a spirit in a house, a kind man on the side of the road. Americans are big believers in angels, although not necessarily the ones with halos and wings.
An overwhelming majority, almost regardless of backgrounds and religious convictions, think angels are real, according to an AP-AOL News poll exploring attitudes about Santa Claus, angels and more.
Belief in angels, however people define them, is highest – almost universal – among white evangelical Christians, 97 percent of whom trust in their existence, the poll indicates. But even among people with no religious affiliation, well more than half said angels are for real.’
Basically, if you live in the US there’s an ~80% chance that you’re an idiot.
It took about five days, apparently.
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`A container packed with radioactive material has been stolen from a fortified research facility in eastern India, prompting a major hunt and fears of contamination, officials said.
“It carries uranium and radiation and could have an adverse effect in an area of 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mile),” Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Khoda warned.
Khoda said the uranium was stolen nearly three weeks ago after being moved to a research site at the densely-populated town of Rajrappa from a federal atomic facility near Mumbai.’
`A hungry 10-year-old girl from India’s lowest Hindu caste had all the fingers of her right hand chopped off by an upper-caste landowner for taking a few spinach leaves from his field, the Hindustan Times reported today.
The attack took place in a village in Bhagalpur district last week in impoverished Bihar state in the east where caste prejudice against Dalits – formerly called “untouchables” – is widespread and sometimes results in violence against them.
Police in Bhagalpur, in eastern Bihar, said they would soon arrest the upper-caste landowner who used a sickle to wound the girl whose name was given as Khushboo.
“We will get results. This is terrible,” said police superintendent J. S. Gangwar, quoted by the newspaper.’
‘Watch as this guy does the superman dive onto his roommate’s bed. That’s gonna leave a mark.’
(1.0meg Windows media)
see it here »
`A man who portrayed Santa Claus at a Toledo-area mall tested positive for a bacteria that causes meningitis, health officials have said.
The man was admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital in suburban Maumee last week with a respiratory ailment, according to the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department. Tests showed that the man did not have meningitis but carried a bacteria that can cause the disease, said Health Commissioner Dr. David Grossman.
Parents of children who may have been exposed to the man should call a doctor about preventive antibiotics, he said Saturday.’
`BRITISH forces have killed seven gunmen and blown up the headquarters of the police serious crimes unit in southern Basra in a raid to rescue prisoners who were about to be killed, the British military said.
Calling the police station a centre of “criminal enterprise” and a symbol of oppression for the city’s residents, the military said the building was demolished with explosives after a pre-dawn assault by around 1000 troops backed by tanks. [..]
British military spokesman Captain Tane Dunlop said the unit had been taking the law into its own hands.
“Crimes unit? That’s pretty much what it does, rather than prevent,” he said.’
This is from that Balls Of Steel show, which appears to be consistently hilarious. I dug up a few more clips.
see it here »
`”We’ve got them in Nebraska; that’s as far north as we have any records,” said Lynn Robbins, a biology professor at Missouri State University. “They’re adapting, filling in so many places.”
To Robbins, the prehistoric-looking armadillo Spanish for “little armored thing” is here to stay.
Exactly how many of Texas’ official state mammal have made their way into the Midwest remains elusive. But observers say the remarkable advance may have been aided by the region’s lack of predators and the abundance of favorable habitat such as forests and river valleys.’
This game is kinda interesting. Looks like it could get quite tricky.
see it here »
‘The Learning Channel takes a fascinating look at the lives of conjoined twins Brittany and Abigal. [..]’
(12.5meg Windows media)
see it here »
`Siberian scientists believe that addiction to alcohol and narcotics, as well as depression, suicidal thoughts and psychosomatic diseases occur when an individual loses his or her interest in life. The absence of the will to live is caused with decreasing production of endorphins – the substance, which is known as the hormone of happiness. If a depressed individual receives a physical punishment, whipping that is, it will stir up endorphin receptors, activate the ‘production of happiness’ and eventually remove depressive feelings.
Russian scientists recommend the following course of the whipping therapy: 30 sessions of 60 whips on the buttocks in every procedure. A group of drug addicts volunteered to test the new method of treatment: the results can be described as good and excellent.’
`The world leader of the Exclusive Brethren church intervened personally to break up a family this year, telling a 12-year-old that she would lose her mother if she did not renounce her father.
The Sydney-based Bruce D. Hales – the “Man of God,” or “Elect Vessel” of the separatist cult – urged the girl to cease contact with her father, saying: “Your mother will not be able to accept you if you continue contact with him.”
Notes of the conversation, taken immediately after they met in Sydney in January, also reveal Mr Hales told the girl: “You cannot love Christ if you wear pants [jeans], and you cannot be a Christian if you leave the Brethren.”‘
If you look closely there’s a ball of sparks/plasma/fire all around his left hand. That’ll teach him. 🙂
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`Someone slipped a little something extra into a batch of cookies brought for a holiday party.
Earlier in the week, 15 workers at the Weyerhaeuser plant in Stayton were hospitalized after complaining of dizziness and light headedness.
Investigators determined that the illness was caused by employees eating homemade cookies they believe were intentionally baked with a foreign substance. They suspect the substance to be marijuana.
The Stayton police are offering a $500 reward for information that leads to an arrest in the case.’
with video.
`Police said the robber entered the bank and shot 25-year-old James R. Garrison in the chest, fatally wounding him. [..]
The robber then approached another teller and said, “Give me all of it,” and the teller gave him an undisclosed amount of money, according to police. The robber said, “Merry Christmas,” and fled.
Garrison was pronounced dead at a hospital.’
I find the quiet little “Aah, sheisser” at the end kinda strange.
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