Archive | May, 2008

Space Potty Broken

29 May

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From the reports it sounds as though the problem is limited to collection of liquid waste. To have a problem with collection of, errm , solid waste would be truly tragic. “To heck with your European Microbe Killer, I need a potty!”

Astronauts to deliver pump for balky space toilet
By MARCIA DUNN | 5-29-08

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA rushed Wednesday to get a special pump on board shuttle Discovery to fix a balky toilet at the international space station, as the launch countdown got under way.

The space station’s Russian-built toilet has been acting up for the past week. The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection, not solid waste.

Russian space officials are providing the pump to launch aboard Discovery on Saturday. The shuttle’s seven astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center a few hours ahead of the start of countdown Wednesday afternoon.

At the same time, a NASA employee was en route to Florida from Russia with the 1 1/2-foot-long pump and related hardware, which was packed in a diplomatic pouch and carried onto the commercial jetliner as 35 pounds of hand luggage.

To make room for the pump inside Discovery’s crammed cabin, NASA was going to pull out some wrenches, a spare part for the space station’s oxygen generator, and a microbe-killing device for use in the European space lab.

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Kiwi Bashes Mate with Hedgehog Faces 5 yr Sentence

28 May

If convicted he could five years, FIVE YEARS in the clink. Wow, I bet he wished he’d have used a teabag or dirt clod instead!

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NZ man ‘used hedgehog as weapon’
7 April 2008 | news.bbc.co.uk

A man in New Zealand has been charged with using a hedgehog as a weapon, the New Zealand Herald has reported.

Police said William Singalargh, 27, had hurled the hedgehog about 5m (16ft) at a 15-year-old boy.

“It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks,” said Senior Sgt Bruce Jenkins, in the North Island town of Whakatane.

It was unclear whether the hedgehog was still alive when it was thrown, though it was dead when collected as evidence.

The police spokesman said the suspect was arrested “for assault with a weapon, namely the hedgehog.”

Mr Singalargh is due to appear in court on 17 April. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.

Norwegian Blue Parrot is Real and Quite Dead

27 May

Well no matter how you slice it, that bird has “ceased to be.”

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Monty Python’s ‘dead parrot’ once lived after all
From The Times | May 16, 2008 | Fran Yeoman

Monty Python’s parrot may have been “bleedin’ demised” when that sketch was performed in 1969, but an unlikely discovery suggests that it was once alive and well.

The “Norwegian blue” that Michael Palin claimed was not dead, but simply “shagged out following a prolonged squawk”, may not have been such a ridiculous invention as the comedians intended.

David Waterhouse, a palaeontologist from Norfolk, believes that he has identified the oldest known parrot fossil and, at the same time, proved that the birds once lived considerably farther north than was previously thought.

The bone in question, which is 55 million years old, was found in a quarry on the Isle of Mors, Denmark. After inspecting the fossil of a single upper-wing bone, which is fittingly called the humerus, Dr Waterhouse has concluded that parrots did indeed once squawk around the edges of the North Sea.

“Obviously, we are dealing with a bird that is ‘bereft of life’, but the tricky bit is establishing that it was a parrot,” he said. But after careful inspection, Dr Waterhouse is confident that the bone is from a parrot.

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Altered Yearbook Delivered. Mean or Clean?

19 May

Holy hand grenade- 39 percent of the 1,486 photos in a yearbook were changed! It seems the school requested logos be removed, students eyes be at the same level and similar requests. Acne has been retouched, especially out of senior portraits for over 20 years. To me it seems the retouching and layout was outsourced, probably offshore to unskilled people who little or no knowledge of American culture. Thankfully my yearbooks are full of band t-shirts, body parts that indicate gender and other wonderful and awful things that make people people.

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Brielle Anderson was one of several McKinney High students whose yearbook photos had been altered.

Students’ photos altered in McKinney yearbook
Saturday, May 17, 2008 | By KARIN SHAW ANDERSON | The Dallas Morning News

Imagine posing for a yearbook photo and ending up with someone else’s body – or looking nude – in the final product.

Yearbook photos for 583 McKinney High School students were altered by a national photography company.

The yearbooks were delivered Monday.

Some girls’ heads ended up on boys’ bodies, and vice versa. Some necks were stretched, and some outfits were altered.

McKinney school officials say they are appalled by the changes and called them unethical.

“I cannot even figure out why they did some of the things that they did,” said Lori Oglesbee, the school’s yearbook adviser.

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Worms Fall From Sky in Louisiana

17 May

Ever engaged in the parlor game of naming the novel with the best first line? I will one day write a book and win that prize with ‘It’s worms! Get out of the way!’ This worm fall story may be old, but unexplained falls of things from the sky is one of the most fortean of all topics. As stated here previously, the study of Exploding Amphibians in Popular Culture is enough to make one want to go to graduate and write a thesis. From falling worms and the explanation for exploding toads, a plan materializes.

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These are not the worms that fell from the sky.

Worms Fall from the Sky in Jennings
www.wafb.com | Updated: July 12, 2007 10:18 PM

Jennings Police Department employee, Eleanor Beal was just crossing the street to go to work when something dropped from the sky.

The sky wasn’t falling. She says it was worms, large tangled clumps of them.

Beal says, “When I saw that they were crawling, I said, ‘It’s worms! Get out of the way!’”

She even called her co-worker outside to prove she wasn’t making it up.

Sure enough, she saw worms, and globs of them.

Where they came from is a mystery, but some believe that a water spout spotted less than five miles away at that same time near Lacassine Bayou could have something to do with it.

Eleanor Beal says she hopes she doesn’t see it again.

The Arrestable Prom Dress’s Star Trek Inspiration

14 May

Marche Taylor wore the dress pictured below to her prom and the skimpy dress got her arrested. Upon reflection, her dress seems inspired by the fabulous dresses worn in the original STAR TREK series. Most of these photos can be found at this delightful Star Trek TOS site www.multileggedcreature.info/Trekker . The second to last photo shows Star Trek costumes at the Smithsonian Museum. For more information about the last photo-the lady in silver, (who happens to be a NASA scientist and master costumer) click here. Its a great link with some awesome candid costume shots of BayCon 2006, scroll down, its worth it, trust me, its worth it.

See the previous post about Miss Taylor here.

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Bratty Philly ID Theives Make Plea Deal

13 May

Its easy to dislike Edward K. Anderton and Jocelyn Kirsch. The plea deal they’ve made and the light sentences they will prolly get make them less likable. Some media reports have said the check she bounced to buy thousands of dollars worth of hair extensions was a key piece of evidence against the evil duo. Below are more photos of the bratty tramp.

FYI she didn’t buy the boobs with stolen money, they were a gift from her dad, a plastic surgeon. Wanna speculate he bought her a new nose when she was in middle school too?

Here’s a previous post about these two with tons of photos. Ack-must go wash my hands.
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Lawyer: 2 will admit fraud fueled luxury lifestyle
By MARYCLAIRE DALE

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Presumably, she didn’t fleece Prince Charles. But a couple of young jet-setters plan to admit in court that other people who crossed their paths unwittingly financed their luxury lifestyle.

A lawyer for Jocelyn Kirsch, 22, said Monday that she and her now-ex-boyfriend have signed federal plea agreements that likely will send them to prison for several years for ID theft and other crimes.

Since her arrest, Kirsch’s friends and classmates at Drexel University have portrayed her as a serial liar who even masked her identity when she met the heir to the British throne at a student forum in Philadelphia last year; in a favorite myth, she told him she was Lithuanian.

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Skimpy Prom Dress Leads to Arrest

13 May

Poor Marche Taylor. Miss Taylor was arrested after wearing a skin baring custom made ensemble to her Senior prom. Her outfit leaves little to the imagination about her fine brown frame, but she’s one dance away from indecent exposure. As with the Martha Stewart legal mess, I have a feeling the authorities were punishing sass and brass after the fact as much as the initial offense. Bottom line, Marche was arrested for having the bad taste to wear a MTV VMA or Source Awards red carpet caliber dress to her hick town high school prom.

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Skimpy prom dress lands Houston teen in cuffs
Monday, May 12, 2008 | By WENDELL EDWARDS / KHOU-TV

HOUSTON – Marche Taylor’s prom night experience wasn’t quite the norm. That’s because a night of dancing and hanging out with friends ended in a confrontation with school officials over her choice of apparel.

The Madison High School senior was escorted out in handcuffs because school officials said her revealing gold dress was inappropriate for the school prom.

“I actually like the dress. Everybody else likes my dress,” Ms. Taylor said as she showed it off to a KHOU-TV reporter on Friday afternoon.

Madison High’s prom took place at the Sugar Land Marriott, but Ms. Taylor got only as far as the lobby. When she tried to enter the ballroom, she was told her outfit violated a school dress code.

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Drunk Vader Attacks Jedi Church Founder

12 May

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Ha ha ha, in this story Darth Vader uses a metal crutch as a weapon and drinks too much box wine. The photo above shows a HELLO KITTY Vader who hasn’t been accused of hurting anyone.

Drunk Darth Vader’s Jedi assault
news.bbc.co.uk | Published: 2008/04/22 15:37:01 GMT

A man posing as Darth Vader attacked a Star Wars fan, who had founded a Jedi Church, a court has heard.

Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, from Holyhead, Anglesey, admitted assaulting Barney Jones and cousin Michael with a metal crutch. They suffered minor injuries.

Hughes, who was drunk and dressed in a black bin bag, shouted “Darth Vader!”

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A Man and his PBR Beer Can Coffin

7 May

As the saying goes “well, it’s your funeral.” At least Mr Bramanti is planning ahead.  Theres a company name on the side of the casket, so is this a tax deductible business expense? The custom coffin bad taste barrier was broken in my opinion by the Kiss Kasket shilled by Gene Simmons et al. Cheers!

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Forever blitzed: Man orders custom beer-can coffin
By Associated Press | May 4, 2008


SOUTH CHICAGO HEIGHTS, Ill. (AP) – Bill Bramanti will love Pabst Blue Ribbon eternally, and he’s got the custom-made beer-can casket to prove it.

“I actually fit, because I got in here,” said Bramanti of South Chicago Heights.

The 67-year-old Glenwood village administrator doesn’t plan on needing it anytime soon, though.

He threw a party Saturday for friends and filled his silver coffin – designed in Pabst’s colors of red, white and blue – with ice and his favorite brew.

“Why put such a great novelty piece up on a shelf in storage when you could use it only the way Bill Bramanti would use it?” said Bramanti’s daughter, Cathy Bramanti, 42.

Bramanti ordered the casket from Panozzo Bros. Funeral Home in Chicago Heights, and Scott Sign Co. of Chicago Heights designed the beer can.

Seal Has Sex with Penguin in Front of Scientists

5 May

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s two of the seal while he’s attempting to have sex with the penguin.

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An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin.
By Matt Walker | www.news.bbc.co.uk | 2008/05/02 13:10:24 GMT
The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known.

The incident, which lasted for 45 minutes and was caught on camera, is reported in the Journal of Ethology.

The bizarre event took place on a beach on Marion Island, a sub-Antarctic island that is home to both fur seals and king penguins.

Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal.

Equally, it might be been an aggressive, predatory act; or even a playful one that turned sexual.

“At first glimpse, we thought the seal was killing the penguin,” says Nico de Bruyn, of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

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English Ravens Attack Livestock-Repeatedly

5 May

Wow, who would ever imagine carnage like this in the countryside of Jolly Olde? Don’t leave your toddler outside to play alone.

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Flocks of ravens in killing spree
This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday May 04 2008 on p5 of the News section. It was last updated at 00:03 on May 04 2008.

Like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, large groups of ravens are flocking together to attack defenceless victims and eat them alive.

Throughout the country, farmers have reported a rise in the number of calves, lambs, and sheep pecked to death. Animals not killed have been left in agony as the birds eat their eyes, tongues and the soft flesh of their underbelly.

Farmers are demanding the right to destroy the protected birds, but the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says it does not see any need for a change to legislation.

The birds – which have acquired mythical status over the centuries, with six being kept at the Tower of London with their wings clipped in case they leave and the kingdom falls – were almost exterminated in many areas during the 19th century. But in the past 20 years they have made a comeback, with colonies as far afield as Inverness, Devon and East Sussex.

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