Thought Your Life Was Weird

Who’s running for President?

2008-10-12T21:17:00Z

Citizens in Rensselaer County, New York have received absentee ballots listing the presidential candidates as “John McCain” and “Barack Osama.” Come on people, that’s not even a typo - look down at your keyboard, s and b are way far apart.

The county states that they sent out 13 different versions of the ballot, that only one was printed that way, that all remaining ballots of this sort have been shredded, that 300 citizens have been mailed new ballots and that citizens who received both ballots will be able to send in either and still have their vote counted.

Texting elephants

2008-10-12T21:07:00Z

Kenya is the first country to begin using elephant texting as a way to protect both growing human settlements as well as the wild animals who are facing less and less space to roam. The Kenya Wildlife Service has reluctantly shot five elephants already because they head toward crops and sometimes destroy as much as half a year’s income worth of agriculture at one time. The Save the Elephants group suggested placing a mobile phone sim card inside the elephant’s collar which would send a text message to alert rangers in the elephant is headed toward civilization.

This method has already stopped the massive bull elephant from damaging crops on fifteen occasions.

Pot laden cake

2008-10-12T20:58:00Z

Police in West Hartford, Connecticut have arrested a 51 year old woman, charging her with assault, reckless endangerment, and tampering with evidence. Allegedly the 51 year old lady served a marijuana laced ginger cake to her 28 year old real estate agent. The man called 911 after leaving her house, reporting feeling ill. He was treated at a local hospital where paramedics initially suspected the man was having an allergic reaction to the ginger cake but after some tests determined that he was only high and released him. They then contacted authorities who detained the woman. No word has been released on why she fed her real-estate agent pot laced cake, but I will keep you posted if I find out.

My kind of field trip

2008-10-12T20:55:00Z

A group of San Francisco first graders took a class field trip to City Hall to witness the marriage of their lesbian teacher. While activists against the rights of gays and lesbians spoke out against the trip, the trip was organized by a parent of one of the students.

How bad is this “economic slowdown”?

2008-10-05T19:18:00Z

So, just in case your mortgage is in crisis and your house might be foreclosed on at any moment, here is a way to get out of your loan with Fannie Mae. Fannie recently “set aside” the loan of a woman who was in a state of panic and despair over the economy. The woman was so incapable of paying her loan that sheriff’s deputies had arrived at her home to evict her. At that moment the solution occurred to her.

She stunned officers by shooting herself with a shotgun!

She is still in the hospital listed in critical condition, however Fannie Mae has decided to halt action against her and sign the property “outright” to her.

So there, if you’re in jeopardy of loosing your home, Fannie Mae suggests that you just shoot yourself.

Bringing out the racism

2008-10-05T19:10:00Z

Nobody thought this election would be easy, and sure enough it is bringing out the darker racist side that lurks in some of our fellow humans who otherwise seemed to be decent contributing members of society. Sorry folks, nowhere does the Constitution offer you the right to be racist, that’s just wrong and we, as a people, have moved past it - get along with the program.

A seventh grade social studies teacher in Florida was reprimanded by his school board with a punishment of 10 days suspension without pay and being forced to attend a sensitivity and diversity training seminar. His crime? He asked the students a question about Senator Obama’s call for change and the wrote the letters C-H-A-N-G-E on the board and said that they stood for “Can You Help A (expletive deleted) Get Elected.”

According to the report the teacher repeated this several times throughout the day. A teacher should never ever be expressing something so offensive to students.

Forget cleaning, just sell!

2008-10-05T19:07:00Z

An apartment owner in Houston, Texas reported rented an apartment valued at $80,000 to a woman who refused to pay rent. When the owner was finally able to force the woman out of the apartment, she left behind seas of trash. The owner continued by stating that there should be two cats somewhere under the debris but the stench in the apartment might just be an indicator that the cats are no longer among the living.

Rather than clean up this massive mess, the owner has decided to minimize his losses and is selling the apartment, trash and all, on http://www.buymydump.com to the highest bidder, currently $39,000.

Flamethrower for the in-laws

2008-10-05T19:03:00Z

A 48 year old Austrian man killed his wife’s elderly parents with a homemade flamethrower before attempting to take his own life. After the fire barrage, he stabbed himself in the stomach. As a result he is in a medically induced coma, unaware of the charges awaiting him upon his awakening.

Royal Irony

2008-09-28T15:13:00Z

The Queen of England has asked her parlaiment for a pay raise because she is facing rising costs in the face of economic instability. I wonder if she’ll get it?

Political Theater

2008-09-28T14:55:00Z

On Wednesday, Senator John McCain, the Republican Presidential candidate came out to a nationally televised press conference and said basically two important things. The report from Secretary of the Treasury Paulson on the $700 Billion financial markets bailout being proposed to Congress, was so long in length as to take up a mere three pages had been delivered to him on Monday. (actually he noted this during an interview on Monday, but on Wednesday elaborated further) In his conference he announced that the financial crisis was so catastrophic that he needed to “suspend his campaign” so that he might return to Washington to work on the bailout agreement. At which point he was asked what he thought about the plan and admitted he had not yet gotten around to reading that darn report. It is long you know…

So, McCain says he’s putting his campaign on hold on Friday, the first debate is scheduled for Friday and his campaign staff is playing it coy over whether or not they will show for the debate, because the Senator is “so focused on dealing with this important crisis.”

Senator Obama responded immediately by pointing out that the President will have to face numerous crises, oft times several at a time. He stated, “how can you expect to be the next President of the United States if you can’t do more than one thing at a time.”

But McCain didn’t really suspend anything. A news organization called 30 McCain field offices in battleground states Thursday, none were closed and several reported being unaware that the candidate had called for suspension of the campaign. On Wednesday McCain had been scheduled to be on The Late Show with David Letterman, but cancelled stating that he was returning to Washington immediately. Instead of doing that, he went to another building owned by the same TV station and did an interview with Katie Couric! He then stayed in NYC so long that when he finally did arrive in Washington, as if to proclaim from the rooftops that a suspension was grossly unnecessary, the Congress reached a tentative agreement on the plan before Senator McCain’s arrival.

That fell through shortly after a meeting at the White House though. And, despite stating repeatedly that he would not attend the debate until significant progress toward resolving this bill had been made, McCain left Washington on Friday morning to match words with Obama with no deal in sight.

The nature of corporate America

2008-09-28T14:35:01Z

Gosh how we love Under Armour here in Auburn. Sometimes, when corporations that make millions of dollars annually for charging extremely high prices, the y go too far in flaunting their greed and excess in our faces. Under Armor recently sent a shipment of well over 125 hooded and 15 crew sweatshirts to one of the many “bookstores” here in Auburn meant for fan memorabilia. These sweatshirts retailed to the customers at $75+. After three days on the floor, and selling several, the 125 hooded and 15 crew sweatshirts arrived a second time. It seems that Under Armour had decided that their logo was not printed large enough for their liking.

Yeah, Under Armour doesn’t actually make their own clothes, pretty much all they do is sell a retailer the right to put their logo and the “sponsored team logo” onto clothing made by another company readily available in the same store often at a savings of at least 20% and the feeling of not being a walking billboard for the company you just paid your hard earned money to.

So, the representative from Under Armour arrives. I say to him, so what exactly are you and Under Armour going to do with these over 100 sweatshirts you feel your logo is too small on? And he proceeded to make fun of me, “well, we’d love them to all the hardworking employees in the bookstore; so they can give it to their friend and family or sell them on the streets. But we’re going to send them all off to some unfortunate part of the globe and the next time you see disaster footage, all the people are going to be all huddled up wearing these sweatshirts.”

The only problem with that quote is that he was not being serious, he was stating it like it was a ridiculous thought. They destroyed all the sweatshirts.

Of course it makes more sense to destroy perfectly good clothing that the wealthy exhibited the fact that they would pay good money for when millions of other are desperate just to keep warm all around the globe.

No Bull!

2008-09-21T20:55:00Z

Police chased a young bull through parts of New York City earlier this week. I sort of wonder if this event occurred at all : the bull died before it could be brought to an animal sanctuary, veterinarians have no clues as to what caused the bull’s death and authorities have no idea where the bull was kept before it began running wild.

Random bull.

Boast not lest ye be taxed

2008-09-21T20:26:00Z

Several students from Oklahoma City were slapped with a state tax bill for $320,000 this week after they boasted on MySpace that thousands has made merry at parties hosted by their party throwing business. The students state that in actuality they threw far less parties and hosted far fewer guests than their website hype alludes to.

No undie Sunday

2008-09-21T20:22:00Z

A bar in Melbourne, Australia known as The Saint Hotel is coming under fire for their latest promotion, “No Undie Sunday!” As a part of the marketing technique for No Undie Sunday, the establishment made flyers and posters showing Britney Spears flashing her privates as she exits the limo to go party.

The No undie Sunday works as follows: Any woman willing to flash their bra or undies to the bar staff gets a free glass of champagne. However, any woman willing to remove her panties and hang them from the bar gets $50 Aussie dollars worth of free booze.

Send a few of the bigger ladies in there and see this promotion shut right down. The local authorities are already investigating whether this sexist and chauvinistic marketing technique is breaking any existing statutes regarding the treatment of women.

Nickel and diming it

2008-09-21T20:12:01Z

Earlier this week a big rig from the US Treasury Department carrying more than 4 million nickels, that’s over $200,000, was involved in a fatal crash on I-95 in Florida. Troopers have recovered about $300 worth of nickels and are actively pursuing at least 4 motorists who stopped at the time of the crash to loot nickels from the scene. Officials have reported that other looting has most likely occurred, but the focus is definitely on the four lucky (?) individuals right behind the crash who cashed in.