The Airport Challenge

As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald - an elderly lady thought she was required to lie down on the baggage belt, so she did, and surprisingly took a trip into the innards of the airport's baggage handling area.

Woman goes down baggage chute

Is this what the world has come to - are we now so perplexed about all the new rules on liquids, security and restrictions, that we just accept the most unusual rules and regulations and resign ourselves to something like this? Or did the poor old duck just forget her medication that day?

~ Elisa

I Mean... What Was He Thinking?

I've heard of prolific thieves before, but this is ridiculous. Police have recovered more than 3,000 stolen bikes from a guy in Canada. That's a lotta wheels.

~ Elisa

Fed Up Women Bash Bottom Pincher

With special thanks to The Brisbane Times and of course to the pinchee. Read the story

~ Elisa

While We're On The Subject Of Guitars

Well, we weren't, until I spotted this article from Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish newspaper whose editors are kind enough to translate selected snippets into English for those of us who are linguistically-challenged. Um, me.

Yes Ladies and Gentlemen it's the 13th Air Guitar World Championships, held in Oulu. The article cheerfully comments that it's perhaps Finland's best-known event. But I'm not so sure. To grab that title it would have to beat the Wife-Carrying Championships in Sonkajärvi, and the Mobile Phone Throwing Championships, both of which demonstrate either the ingenuity of the Finns or the reaction to extreme snow-bound boredom which locks them indoors for an obscene number of months.

But fret not, I'm not about to partake in Finn-bashing. On the contrary, I've tried to learn the language, and a years' diligent study* has led me to the conclusion that I'll need another years' diligent study before I'll have the language skill to visit the supermarket. This has given me a whole new appreciation for the country as a whole. Any place that has a language that hard has to be full of smart people.

~ Elisa



* Diligent, as in, two days per week at a community college. Yes folks, it really is that hard to learn.

...as you do...

There are certain actions and behaviours that are somewhat taboo - and some that have an unwritten, but concrete, rule about how they are to be done. One of them, for example, is kissing in public. I remember reading about a study that polled people on how and how long was appropriate and where the boundary was. Supposedly, kissing in public is ok as long as (1) hands stay on top of clothing and away from the crotch and bust, and (2) kissing is limited to a few seconds or so. Anything longer and it's apparently obscene. Never mind if the kiss doesn't change much... the duration is what determines whether it's appropriate.

Along those lines, there are also "rules" about bedroom relations. They're not supposed to be, ahem, enjoyed by anyone outside the room. (We will disregard the occasions where someone watches by choice.) Enter our hero couple, who apparently had such unbridled lust for each other that they showed no respect for the families in adjoining apartments, who preferred not to appreciate the sound effects.

Just try and place yourselves in the shoes of the hapless parents trying to answer the innocent questions of a curious five-year-old. "Mum, why is the lady next door moaning? And what's that bang, bang, bang, bang noise next to my head when I'm asleep in bed? And why is there a man yelling, 'Ohhhhhhhh YES!!!!' all the time?"

Without further ado I present to you: Court Bans Man From Girlfriend's Home After Noisy Sex.

~ Elisa

Quite Possibly the World's Most Embarrassing Moment

This made me laugh for the poor unfortunate soul. But after I recovered from my mirth, I had to wonder: what on EARTH was this guy thinking? It's just one of those actions that makes you scratch your head. The guy was almost eligible for a Darwin Award. Behold, the man who got his wang stuck while wanking through a park bench. (Talk about your submissive sex partner.)

And here's an unusual method of payment... $8,000 worth of coins to pay for a truck. Quite a departure from the usual flash of the Amex card, don't you think?

~ Elisa

Travel Time

As promised, here's another beauty of a blog that chronicles the disasters perpetrated by some, ahem, "professional" cake decorators. I will admit that among the unfortunate cakes showcased on the internet are some truly spectacular creations, including Michelle's baby cake that looks like an actual human (video), a life-sized cow, several dogs and a bunch of cakes that just defy description. But the good cakes aren't the amusing ones. The amusing ones are the cakes that have gone very, very, wrong, and they are all here for your blog-viewing pleasure at Cake Wrecks.

Speaking of wrecks... this next linkage has nothing to do with it. It's a special story about a "special" Japanese Winnie The Pooh impersonator who erm... got into a special kind of mood. Check it out.

In other news, I'm bashing my head this evening. I own a legitimate, purchased, real-disk version of The Sims 2 Deluxe (DVD), and the serial number which supposedly exists on the instruction manual is AWOL. Not only that, but I had reasoned that since I paid for this, I was entitled to use some underground searches to locate a "borrowed" serial number. To my great disgust, dozens of them that I've tried do not work. Not Deluxe, Nightlife, or vanilla Sims 2. I think it's the gods' revenge on me*, teaching me a lesson for trying to cheat my way in.

Woe.

Paradoxically, this will probably force me to download and install an actual pirated version. How ridiculous. I shall probably install a cracked version and grip tightly to the installation CD, apologising profusely for my transgressions and begging forgiveness from Electronic Arts.

~ Elisa



* I'm not a god-follower in the Christian sense. We all know the true powers are Mother Earth and Father Time.

Germany Introduces New Police Bra

So much for the "bullet-proof bra" - the article is somewhat misleading, because there's actually nothing bullet-proof about the over-shoulder-boulder-holder at all. Still, they managed to grab my interest. You can take than any way you like, I may be female, but my interest in breasts is purely from a "hey, I've got boobs too" perspective.

In other topical news, experts are warning Olympic fans in the United Arab Emirates that watching their favourite event on TV might give them a heart attack. What I found most amusing about this (very serious) advice was that sitting in your living room was no safer than actually competing in an event. Next thing you know, we'll all be advised to watch 30 minutes of sport each day to keep ourselves healthy.

Anyway, cheerio, I've done my healthy 30 minutes of news-reading and blogging... and now I'm off to do 30 minutes of healthy video-game playing. I trust that my fitness levels will increase if I do this daily. I will report back to you if it also helps me lose weight.

~ Elisa

And Preservative-Free

So, welcome. Today seemed like a good day to start blogging. I am a complete beginner at this of course, so I fired up the trusty Google in all its glory and lo and behold landed at Blogger. I have to confess, I'm a big fan of non-commercial software, but there's a catch: my love only extends to something so easy that any idiot can drive it. (I'm the idiot.)

I think the fact you're able to read this blog is ample evidence it's simple to use.

Speaking of simple, someone simple (me again) tried another first today. After spending seemingly eons deathly afraid of the scary acronym RSS, I managed to finangle some news feeds into another one of Google's nifty little doovies - Google Reader. RSS (or, Really Simple Syndication) is a fancy way of saying "Hey, intarweb, bring me the updates on the stuffz I like reading, and shove it all together on one page for me, toot sweet!"

My victory link for today is one of the interesting stories I found in my travels. For your reading pleasure (thankyou, Reuters):

Unwitting Dutch pensioner tends marijuana plants

~ Elisa

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