Weekender #3: May 23, 2009
A collection of links, news, and oddities that I’ve come across during the past week.
Categorized
Is that a banana in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? …oh, it is a banana. Okay then.
One set of “twins”, two different fathers — I do not want to be this woman’s marriage counselor.
Fatty and Skinny went to bed, Fatty rolled over and Skinny was dead! Or something like that.
This is my favorite story of the week: a commodities trader has a 3.5-hour lunch and way too much booze, goes back to the office brimming with Dutch courage, and decides to fixth the world’th problemth by making $10mil worth of bad trades. And then, sometime in the afternoon, he sobers up enough to realize what he’s doing and spends the rest of the afternoon frantically retrading to regain his position, rather than ’fessing up to his bosses and letting them handle it. That must have been one hell of a hangover the next morning…
Uncool: sea otter culling; shooting kangaroos in the face; infanticidal dolphins.
From the Bad Parenting Files, in ascending order of fail: driving drunk/having sex while your kids watch from the backseat, biting your child’s eye out while tripping on PCP, starving your daughter to death and then not giving her CPR because there were ants crawling out of her mouth. It’s been a disturbing week.
Apparently, stealing a bar mat in Thailand is a very big no-no, as one unfortunate tourist found out when her friends, as a joke, slipped a mat into her purse as they were leaving a bar. She’s now facing a five-year jail sentence. We all know stealing is wrong, but seriously: five years? And then this guy getting in hot water over a doughnut? Calm down, Thai authorities.
T-shirt: Make the logo smaller.
And once again, a gullible young girl falls for the Pretty Girl scenario and thinks that prostituting herself will lead to a good relationship with a nice guy — that, and gabbing about selling her virginity. Turns out she should have kept her mouth shut; prostitution is legal in Germany (where she is a student), but is heavily taxed, so it looks like half her take is going to the government. And it wasn’t that much to begin with, either. Whoops.
I never knew that the largest mass execution in United States history was held just south of where I live. I also did not know that President Lincoln signed an order banishing the Dakota Indians from Minnesota — which is ironic, considering that I grew up in Dakota County. For once, I’m with Governor Pawlenty.
An article on Slate dissects the idiocy — and the callousness — behind the “Mayan calendar prediction” that says the world will end in 2012. It also links to an article on Conan Doyle’s Spiritualist beliefs; there’s nothing new in the essay itself, but the comments are priceless (and I say that both seriously and sarcastically).
I have to say, I’m impressed by a three-year-old who’s computer-savvy enough to buy anything online, let alone an earthdigger. I do hope her parents told her she’s not getting it, otherwise she’s gonna be waiting for a package that will never arrive…
A New Zealand bank screwed up and deposited $10mil in a couple’s bank account instead of the requested $10thou; the couple, naturally, have disappeared with the cash. Depressingly, Tony and I are too square to do anything that cool; we would just call the bank up and notify them of the error. Sigh.
Buried alive! Okay, not really; just pronounced dead by a doctor and then observed more closely by an undertaker. The undertaker was moving the old lady to a coffin at the time, so I guess she’s lucky he hadn’t set about breaking her limbs to fit her into it.
Is there anything sadder than a suicide jumper? Yes — a suicide jumper who won’t freakin’ jump. Apparently there is a certain bridge in China that is plagued by vacillating depressives; while police were trying to talk the latest guy down, one upright citizen got fed up and broke through the police cordon, climbed up to the jumper, shook his hand, and pushed him off the bridge. Sometimes you just gotta give a man a helping hand. The jumper survived with relatively minor injuries, and the pusher has said he did it because jumpers are “selfish”.
It’s certainly not nice to kill people, but I must admit I kind of sympathize with the man who killed his girlfriend for waking up his dog. Sometimes Tony wakes the kittens up in the middle of the night, and suddenly they want to play and jump around and that wakes me up and then I get a little stabby. But only a little.
Last, but not least: stupidity from the Daily Mail, this time on the subject of mothers in the workplace — and no, it’s not what you’re thinking it is. (via @_vixx)
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