February 11th, 2005
Thwunk
It's like spring break for birds.Warm weather and an ample supply of berries attracted hundreds of cedar waxwings into the enclosed courtyard of the three-story building Tuesday,That must have made for a lovely sight upon leaving work.
The birds began getting drunk on the berries. They got so loopy that some were falling off branches and others were slamming into the glass walls that enclose the courtyard, said Burgess Mills, the building's owner.
About half of the 100 birds that slammed into the building died, workers said.
Posted by fad at 12:09pm
I Know I Do
Bah! What the hell do authors know about books.Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the most romantic novel of all time, according to a poll of authors of today's literary love stories.They only say that because I haven't finished my epic cabbage romance yet. Either that or it's because they hate me.
Posted by fad at 11:00am
As Jugular To Dracula
Australia: Land Of The Bitey.Scientists say Australia's hot, humid and wet summer has had a bad effect on common, but potentially deadly, redback spiders.Well, it's not like anyone wants to be left out.
[...]
Bites have been recorded at a rate of one a day, he said.
The redback is one of the most common of Australia's seemingly endless supply of poisonous pests. A distant cousin of the American black widow, it is distinguished by a red stripe on the shiny black, thumbnail-sized body of the larger female.As opposed to the Margo Spider whose bite is nonsensical and rarely draws blood.
Scientists describe the redback's existence as "amoral" because of their unique mating behavior in which males give themselves up to the deadly females to be killed and eaten after mating.So they're just like pathetic "nice guys" who let women use and tease them in the pathetic hope of someday gaining affection, except the spiders actually get laid and put out of their misery in a nice one-two. So, spiders 1, nice guys, as always, 0.
Posted by fad at 6:44am
Drink To Death In A Shack In Montana Is More Like It
I'm a tremendous loser, but even this is too pathetic for me.An Oregon man is in custody on suspicion of trying to arrange a mass suicide on Valentine's Day via an Internet chat room, police said.Gee, how fucking Romantic. I bet a lot of bad poetry* is involved in this.
[...]
authorities are trying to determine if the 32 people who appear to be involved in the pact are real and where to find them, Evinger said. The plan appears to include using webcams and the Internet to coordinate the suicides February 14, he said.
*Or good as I am too stupid to be able to tell the difference. Hell, Jewel's poetry looks the same to me as any other. Well, except for an odd obsession with hands.
Posted by fad at 6:05am
How To Convince A Mailman That He Is Delivering Skeezy Porn
- Decide to send a package that is obviously DVDs or a VHS tape.
- Wrap said package in the plainest brown wrapper you can imagine.
- Address it to the person using only the firstname and last initial.
- Do not include a return address.
- If you're lucky, it will be the only thing that arrives in the mail that day so that it really stands out.
- Giggle over imagined postman's reaction to such a package.
Posted by fad at 6:02am
February 10th, 2005
Spectral Laxative
First they misquote her, then they behead her, now this, the worst of all.The oldest tree in the grounds of the palace of Versailles -- Marie-Antoinette's oak -- was pulled down more than 320 years after it was planted.Nobody, after I pop off, better dare tear down any tree named after me. I will haunt the shit out of you.
[...]
Planted in 1681, the oak was named after the ill-fated wife of King Louis XVI who reputedly liked to enjoy its shade.
Posted by fad at 4:05pm
Exit Strategy
Virgin mobile in Australia, the same group that offers drunk dialing protection, is now offering date escape service.All you have to do is discreetly dial three numbers and then hang up without saying a word.Now, having never actually gotten a date, this service is useless to me, but you people who can actually get dates may be interested in lobbying companies to offer it in your country.
"Virgin Mobile will call them back a minute later with a perfect excuse to get them out of there. We'll even talk them through what to say
Posted by fad at 3:51pm
Chickens In Choppers
Man, the exciting things never happen around here.Australian police are investigating how and why homes near Sydney have been bombarded by dead chickens.Chicken attacks. Some places have all the luck. All we have around here are the scary bunnies and methed up squirrels.
[...]
When a headless chicken crashed on to a suburban house in Newcastle last month, most people thought it had fallen from a low-flying aircraft.
That theory is now in doubt after a second bird fell on to another home nearby at the weekend.
Posted by fad at 3:29pm
Hobbies
Let the record show that I have never been to Glastonbury.A teenage girl punched a flasher in the face so she could flee his lewd advances, police have said.I am also taller than 5'2", I think.
[...]
The victim, who was wearing three rings, hit him and ran away.
Police say the man, in his 30 or 40s, was 5ft 2in tall with tidy brown hair. He was wearing a light blue fleece jumper with a V-neck and blue jeans.
The girl told detectives his jeans were dirty.No reports as to with what, thankfully.
UPDATE: You know where else I've never been? Cleveland.
No real reason for mentioning it. I just felt all confessional.
Posted by fad at 2:20pm
EAT PIE NOW!
The one and only punch I've ever thrown in anger was over a slice of pizza. I hate to think what my pot pie rage would be like.A Michigan boy is being held in a youth home after an argument with his sister over a chicken pot pie turned violent.But what happened to the pie?
[...]
He says when the 13-year-old girl refused to give up the microwavable pie, her brother drew a nine-inch folding knife.
[...]
Medics treated the girl at the scene for an inch-long forearm gash.
Posted by fad at 12:47pm
Zorro The Gay Blade Deserves One More
Oh fraptrous day! Movie pefection is on its way.George Hamilton is resurrecting the vampire comedy "Love at First Bite," and is in talks to star in a sequel-cum-update called "Love at Second Bite."Consider me already in line.
[...]
"Second Bite" takes place 25 years later, centering on Dracula's Americanized son, who has rejected his family's heritage and is getting married to a human. Trouble ensues when he learns that his vampire relatives are coming to America for the wedding.
Posted by fad at 11:12am
I Promise You Victory. I Promise You Good Times
"Dean now sole candidate for DNC chairman"Like hell he is. I hereby declare my candidacy for the DNC chairmanship. My first act will be to tear off the sexist "manship" from that word (though not quite like this) so that the Democratic Party can truly be inclusive. With me in charge, there will be no stopping me. Er, us! I mean us.
Posted by fad at 10:16am
Party!
America: Land of big ideas.Police found more than they bargained for when they stopped a U-Haul truck with a burned-out taillight.That is a scene I would have loved to have seen.
Instead of furniture in the back, police on Monday found a rolling keg party with about 20 people drinking whiskey and beer. Eleven people were charged with underage drinking.
"They all kind of froze and didn't know what to do, I guess,"
Officers allowed the partygoers to call for rides and no one was arrested.God bless 'em for that.
Posted by fad at 7:28am
Støre
Even though -- and maybe because -- my brother and sister-in-law are deep in the cult of Ikea, I've never understood the depths of passion it inspires.A man was stabbed and five other people were taken to hospital after thousands of customers caused a stampede at the midnight opening of a new IKEA furniture store in north London, British authorities said Thursday.At least no one tore off any limbs to beat the others with.
The Swedish retailer expressed regret at the incident.And offered meatball like substances to all.
Some 6,000 people flocked to the Swedish furniture store, which had been offering special bargains including leather sofas for $84.There's that little detail I was looking for to explain it all.
Posted by fad at 7:23am
Lemon Party
I fear and loathe internet forums and posting boards of all stripes, spots and other animal related cliches. But that doesn't mean I was involved in this.Villagers living in Copmanthorpe, near York, had been offered a comprehensive website by their local councillors.At least there is one fewer of those damned things.
But the online discussion forum section of the site has been littered with internet links to sexually explicit websites featuring older people.
The discussion forum has now been closed down by the council.
[S]teps had been previously taken to remove the links and prevent anyone putting "undesirable elements" back onto the site.Maybe it just got in a shower of wrinkle porn spammers.
"It would appear that whoever is doing this may be cleverer than us", she said.
Posted by fad at 7:06am
February 9th, 2005
Metric Fans
Once again, American fans are shamed when it comes to dedication.Police are investigating threats against Malcolm Glazer and the Manchester United board by a fan group opposing the bid by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner to take over the world's richest soccer team.Ooo! Education. That's always good. This must mean they are doing this for The Children™.
The group, Manchester Education Committee, said on its Web site it will be "ruthless in protecting" the team.
Manchester Education Committee has admitted vandalizing the house and car of United lawyer Maurice Watkins after he sold shares to Glazer. The group has said that if the board recommends Glazer's bid to shareholders, it will consider board members "collaborators." It said they would be "in an extremely vulnerable position for years to come.""Nice life you got there. Shame if it got broke."
Posted by fad at 4:52pm
A (sort of) Haiku For The Non-Regular Saline I Accidently Bought
Redness enhancesThe bright greeness of my eyes.
Morning crusties suck.
Posted by fad at 3:17pm
Thought Better Left Unexpressed
I wish mustard could talk.
Posted by fad at 2:52pm
The More You Know
As many of us have long known, drunken beer bottle brawlin' is good for you.A blow to the head with a beer bottle may have saved [a woman's] life.Remember, kids, drinking and anger saves lives.
While doctors were examining her after the barroom attack, they discovered a brain tumor that could have killed her.
Posted by fad at 2:20pm
Greatest Achievement
My birthday may still be over 4 months away, but that doesn't mean you can't surprise me early.Now ordinary people can bid online to officially name an orange and brown monkey first documented last year in Bolivia's Madidi National Park, seen by scientists as one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth.To have an entire species of monkey named after me would be the coolest, fecal flingingest thing ever.
Posted by fad at 11:34am
Deletion Is Its Own Reward
Just noticed the ole Sitemeter thingy popped 50,000 overnight. As a reward for all my visitors, I'm going to write a 50,000 word essay about the ties of Rousseau, the French Revolution and Herbert Croly to the current far Left as it continues to descend from it's 60s incarnation. Then I'm going to delete it.
Posted by fad at 10:06am
February 8th, 2005
Bubblers
Might as well officially make this a Wisconsin themed day.[A man] was driving out of town for business around 4 a.m. Jan. 28 when he spotted something on the road near the Rothschild Village Hall.Seems almost classicly small town in that, except for the $850,000.
[...]
What was inside the locked bag was more than $850,000 in cash and checks, according to city officials.
A police officer had set the bag on the trunk of a squad car and then was called to an emergency, [he] said. The bag apparently slid off the back of the car when the officer pulled away.
Posted by fad at 6:18pm
FIBS And FISH
I used to live in town in Wisconsin on the Illinois border, which was a favorite weekending spot for the wealthy and upper middle class from the Chicago area. They treated our town like a fiefdom and the townies (those who weren't wealthy move-ins from the Chicago area) like serfs. I exaggerate, but they were generally shitheads. Little things like a guy parking his corvette in the fire lane, with the back of the car almost impeding traffic (meaning the one road that passed the downtown traffic), rather than pop a quarter in one of the meters. I ran up to him, told him I was sorry his car payments had robbed him of even a single quarter for the meter, and offered him a quarter. He ignored me. So, I ran to a meter, dropped in the quarter, stood in the spot and yelled, "Hey, mister! I put the quarter in! You can move your car now!" That's when he began cussing.I have a million stories like that; we all do. Basically, every snotty, entitled-feeling customer you ever dealt with characterized the majority of the thousands who clogged the town on weekends. We townies had to get our small revenges like that. One favorite was when I worked in a grocery store. I got stuck with the Friday night shift (though it is true it wasn't like I was going to do anything else that night), so got to deal with the incoming traffic from Illinois who wanted to grab something before hitting their house/cabin/whatever.
Wisconsin, at least our county at the time, ended liquor sales from grocery stores at 9pm on Fridays. This was much different than the Illinois laws. Every Friday, we'd wait until they had gone into the liquor section -- ignoring the "Section Closed" signs we put up around it -- picked out their selection, and were heading for the register before informing them that they could not buy liquor in a grocery store after 9.
Oh, how they would cuss us out, making us laugh harder at their impotent idiocy. Then we would point out the signs they had ignored or, more likely, assumed didn't apply to them. They would cuss us out even more and then storm out all huffy.
I thought of this reading this story.
The identification checks at all Pick 'n Save and Copps food stores in Wisconsin are part of a new policy by Roundy's Inc. requiring cashiers to check the age of everyone buying cigarettes or alcohol - regardless of whether they look 21 or 91.It was in fact a Pick 'n Save I worked for. As much as it will annoy everyone else, at least this is just one more thing those Illinois bastards are going to act all stupid over.
Posted by fad at 4:59pm
Ultraviolence
I just know this will be sick fodder for search hits, but what the hell is going on here?A 16-year-old Idaho girl was tied up and scalped by an older woman in an attack motivated by revenge, police said.Sick enough, but check out the suspected reason behind the revenge.
["]The motive, as near as we've been told by witnesses, was retaliation for acting in a way that the adult perceived as being offensive to women as a gender."That's a, uh, strange feminism.
Posted by fad at 2:22pm
Almost Enough Of Them For A Club
Finally. For once a mysterious nail in the head area story that doesn't involve a nailgun. Those were starting to give the nailgun industry a bad name, and I will have none of that.a 29-year-old football coach in California, thought he injured his neck during a football practice this past summer and visited a doctor. An X-ray revealed he had what appeared to be a metal object lodged in his neck.It's like when Homer had the crayon up his nose! Yes, everything comes down to The Simpsons.
[...]
"I thought, there's no way," he said Tuesday on "Good Morning America." "I didn't believe the pictures."
Fast forward to October, when Villagomez was telling some of his fellow coaches about the bizarre X-ray. The head coach, whom Villagomez describes as a "real joker," suggested putting a magnet to his neck to test the diagnosis.How powerful a magnet was that?
Villagomez took the head coach's advice and began experiencing pain in his jaw and neck, so he visited another doctor, who confirmed the original diagnosis.
After convincing Villagomez he should have the object removed, Yun operated and extracted a nearly two-inch-long rusty nail from Villagomez's neck.And I thought the time I walked around with strep throat for 3 weeks and just thought it was the sniffles was odd.
Despite the fact that the nail could have been lodged in his neck anywhere from six months to several years, Villagomez had experienced no pain or complications from it, outside of the incident during the summer.
"It looks like it could have been there a few years," said Villagomez. "I just never noticed it."
Posted by fad at 12:43pm
A Recognizable Theme Around Here
Need your daily dose of moral relativism? Then look no farther than this otherwise interesting article about the various squishinesses people have about applying the term "evil" to a person.
Posted by fad at 11:02am
Gah!
Ok, I may tease Philly fans and others, but none can hold up to the fanatacism to be found across the ocean.[A 26 year old man] was so convinced England would win Saturday's match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, "If Wales win I'll cut my balls off," the paper said.No word on how much wretching ensued.
Friends at the club in Caerphilly, south Wales, thought he was joking.
But after the game [he] went home, severed his testicles with a knife, and walked 200 yards back to the bar with the testicles to show the shocked drinkers what he had done.
Posted by fad at 10:36am
Bound
Modern education taught me that all things are to be filtered through current mores. The creators of art were not speaking to anything specific to their time, nor are they to be forgiven their contemporary culture. All art speaks to the now. Therefore, these are a scary indication of the attempted take over of society by Christian Right extremists.Engravings thought to be about 10,000 years old have been found in a North Somerset cave once used as a cemetery.Crosses. Crosses!!! Bill Moyers was right. Gaia hope that this was just a pre-conceptualization of the coming Christian night by this ancient society and not that the Christfreaks have time travel technology to start their Rapturous ecological destruction (starting with cave desecration).
[...]
The inscribed crosses were found on the wall of Aveline's Hole in Burrington Combe, one of the earliest known cemeteries in the UK.
A further engraving has been noted in one of the caves in the Cheddar Gorge, and further investigations are being carried out to verify this.Cheddar Gorge, besides being a great bandname, is the best way to describe last night's dinner.
Posted by fad at 10:16am
'All 5 Of The 4 On Board Were Killed'
I think I'll be watching this story for a correction later today.Some Wisconsin quarters issued last year are turning out to be worth considerably more than 25 cents.Emphasis added by me because it makes me feel all powerful over the text! And we all know the text is the thing. We just don't know what that means.
Coin collectors say nickels with two variations in the design of a cornstalk on the back of the coin have been spotted at Tucson, Ariz., and San Antonio, Texas.
UPDATE: Awww...they fixed it already.
Posted by fad at 9:36am
In Which I Attempt To Care About The Topic Of The Week
A Confused Former Sports Fan Reacting To One Of The RightWing Blogs' Latest Chewtoys"Eason Jordan? Wasn't he quarterback of the New England Bulls back in the 80s?"
Posted by fad at 9:33am
Disturbing
You know, I thought the infinite cats thing was the purest distillation of evil (besides lefties) as wrought by the internet. I should have known there were depths yet unplumbed.
Posted by fad at 9:20am
February 7th, 2005
Stupid Foot
Science once again reveals something we already knew.Left-handed and right-handed people view the world differently, scientists have shown.Yup. Lefties are evil and wrong and do not share the outlook of all good hearted people (otherwise known as the "righthanded" or "normal"). Since I already know that, I have no need to read any more of the article.
Posted by fad at 5:45pm
Attitude
Yeah, that's all you got today. Anyone got a problem with that?
Posted by fad at 3:46pm
In Which I Wordlessly Sing Instead Of Typing About Herbert Croly
Ah-ooooooooo-oooo-wah-oooooo-ooo-wah. Ah-woooooo-OOOOO-ooo-ooo-ooo-wahhhhh!
Posted by fad at 12:43pm
February 6th, 2005
Except For Some Of March
And so endeth the football season. Suicide watch is back in effect.
Posted by fad at 10:00pm
8 Hours Until Suicide Watch
Ok, prediction time: Patriots 34 - Eagles 24.And that's not just because of my oft hinted at desire that Philly fans not be happy. It's not like I want New England area fans to be all that happy either.
For the heck of it, this is how I think the game will go. The Eagles will start fast, get behind or tied at halftime, make a push late in the 3rd or early 4th (probably off a Brady mistake), but the Patriots will put it away safely midway through the 4th. The whole game comes down to if the the Eagles defense can rattle Brady. If that happens, picks-a-plenty time.
But, be aware, I'm almost always wrong on these things.
Posted by fad at 12:54pm