Category: news of the weird

Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half New Vaccine May Contain Rabies Man Minus Ear Waives Hearing Deaf College Opens Doors to Hearing Air Head Fired

The following are actual English subtitles used in films from Hong Kong:* I am darn unsatisfied to be killed in this way. * Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep. * Gun wounds again? * Same old rules: no eyes, no groin. * A normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries. * Darn, I’ll burn you into a BBQ chicken * Take my advice, or I’ll spank you a lot. * Who gave you the nerve to get killed here? * This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your toenails and leave them out on the dessert floor for ants to eat. * Quiet or I’ll blow your throat up. * I’ll fire aimlessly if you don’t come out! * You daring lousy guy. * Beat him out of recognizable shape! * Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your doctor for a thorough extermination. * I have been scared silly too much lately. * I got knife scars more than the number of your leg’s hair! * Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected. * The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold? * How can you use my intestines as a gift? * Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some but of the giant lizard person. * You always use violence. I should’ve ordered glutinous rice chicken.

Subject: Stuff You Absolutely Have to Know. Now, nobody really _knows_ why you absolutely have to know this stuff… but don’t let that stop you… A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why. In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television’s Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.The ‘save’ icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.The combination ‘ough’ can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: ‘A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.’The verb ‘cleave’ is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning ‘containing arsenic.’Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.The word ‘Checkmate’ in chess comes from the Persian phrase ‘Shah Mat,’ which means ‘the king is dead’.Pinocchio is Italian for ‘pine head.’ Camel’s milk does not curdle.In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.An animal epidemic is called an epizootic. Murphy’s Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.All porcupines float in water.Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio. Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ? Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of ‘Lorne Greene’s Wild Kingdom.’Cat’s urine glows under a blacklight. If you bring a raccoon’s head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.Non-dairy creamer is flammable.The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the ‘American Pie.’ (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.The only nation whose name begins with an ‘A’, but doesn’t end in an ‘A’ is Afghanistan.Pamela Anderson Lee is Canada’s Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada’s independence.When opossums are playing ‘possum, they are not ‘playing.’ They actually pass out from sheer terror.The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

Survey Finds Dirtier Subways After Cleaning Jobs Were Cut: The New York Times, November 22Larger Kangaroos Leap Farther, Researchers Find: The Los Angeles Times, November 2’Light’ meals are lower in fat, calories: Huntington Herald-Dispatch, November 30Alcohol ads promote drinking: The Hartford Courant, November 18Malls try to attract shoppers: The Baltimore Sun, October 22Official: Only rain will cure drought: The Herald-News, Westpost, Massachusetts

Tell you about my kid after he got his BowFlex.

It’s 2:00 in the AM when I get home and the up-stairs light is on. Go in there and he is doing an incline bench press and ahs the TV turned on with 1/2 dressed women.

I asked him what he was watching, “an HBO special on how to negotiate with hookers.”

Nodded my head and went to bed.

Kitty ToysToo Absurd Not to be TrueCalling in sick to work makes me uncomfortable because no matter how legitimate my illness, I always sense my boss thinks I am lying. On one occasion, I had a valid reason but lied anyway because the truth was too humiliating to reveal.I simply mentioned that I had sustained a head injury and I hoped I would feel up to coming in the next day. By then, I could think up a doozy to explain the bandage on my crown.In this case, the truth hurt. I mean it really hurt in the place men feel the most pain. The accident occurred mainly because I conceded to my wife’s wishes to adopt a cute little kitty.As the daily routine prescribes, I was taking my shower after breakfast when I heard my wife, Deb, call out to me from the kitchen. ‘Ed!’ she hearkened, ‘The garbage disposal is dead. Come reset it.”You know where the button is.’ I protested through the shower (pitter-patter). ‘Reset it yourself!”I am scared!’ She pleaded. ‘What if it starts going and sucks me in?’ . . . .Pause. . . . . ‘C’mon, it’ll only take a second.’No logical assurance about how a disposal can’t start itself will calm the fears of a person who suffers from ‘Big-ol-scary-machinephobia,’ a condition brought on by watching too many Stephen King movies. It is futile to argue or explain, kind of like telling Lloyd Bentsen Americans are over-taxed. And if a poltergeist did, in fact, possess the disposal, and she was ground into round, I’d have to live with that the rest of my life.So out I came, dripping wet and buck naked, hoping to make a statement about how her cowardly behavior was not without consequence but it was I who would suffer.I crouched down and stuck my head under the sink to find the button. It is the last action I remember performing. It struck without warning, without respect to my circumstances. Nay, it wasn’t a hexed disposal, drawing me into its gnashing metal teeth. it was our new kitty, clawing playfully at the dangling objects she spied between my legs.She (‘Buttons’ aka ‘the Grater’) had been poised around the corner and stalked me as I took the bait under the sink. At precisely the second I was most vulnerable, she leapt at the toys I unwittingly offered and snagged them with her needle-like claws.Now when men feel pain or even sense danger anywhere close to their masculine region, they lose all rational thought to control orderly bodily movements. Instinctively, their nerves compel the body to contort inwardly, while rising upwardly at a violent rate of speed. Not even a well trained monk could calmly stand with his groin supporting the full weight of a kitten and rectify the situation in a step-by-step procedure. Wild animals are sometimes faced with a ‘fight or flight’ syndrome; men, in this predicament, choose only the ‘flight’ option.Fleeing straight up, I knew at that moment how a cat feels when it is alarmed. It was a dismal irony. But, whereas cats seek great heights to escape, I never made it that far. The sink and cabinet bluntly impeded my ascent; the impact knocked me out cold.When I awoke, my wife and the paramedics stood over me. Having been fully briefed by my wife, the paramedics snorted as they tried to conduct their work while suppressing their hysterical laughter. My wife told me I should be flattered.At the office, colleagues tried to coax an explanation out of me. I kept silent, claiming it was too painful to talk. ‘What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?’If they had only known.

A timeless lesson on how consultants can make a difference for an organization…

Last week, we took some friends out to a new restaurant, and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket.

It seemed a little strange, but I ignored it. However, when the busboy brought out water and utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket, then looked around the room and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, “Why the spoon?”

“Well,” he explained, “the restaurant’s owners hired Anderson Consulting, experts in efficiency, in order to revamp all our processes. After several months of statistical analysis, they concluded that customers drop their spoons 73.84 percent more often than any other utensil. This represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel is prepared to deal with that contingency, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.”

As luck would have it I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it with his spare spoon. “I’ll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.” I was rather impressed.

The waiter served our main course and I continued to look around. I then noticed that there was a very thin string hanging out of the waiter’s fly. Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. My curiosity got the better of me and before he walked off, I asked the waiter, “Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?”

“Oh, certainly!” he answered, lowering his voice. “Not everyone is as observant as you. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we can save time in the restroom.” “How so?” “See,” he continued, “by tying this string to the tip of you know what, we can pull it out over the urinal without touching it and that way eliminate the need to wash the hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39 percent.”

“Okay, that makes sense, but . . . if the string helps you get it out, how do you put it back in?”

“Well,” he whispered, lowering his voice even further, “I don’t know about the others, but I use the spoon.”

Teaching Math in 1950: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?Teaching Math in 1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?Teaching Math in 1970: A logger exchanges a set ”L” of lumber for a set ”M” of money. The cardinality of set ”M” is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set ”M”. The set ”C”, the cost of production contains 20 fewer points than set ”M.” Represent the set ”C” as a subset of set ”M” and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set ”P” for profits?Teaching Math in 1980: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. Her cost of production is $80 & her profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.Teaching Math in 1990: By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds & squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees? There are no wrong answers.Teaching Math in 1996: By laying off 40% of its loggers, a company improves its stock price from $80 to $100. How much capital gain per share does the CEO make by exercising his stock options at $80? Assume capital gains are no longer taxed, because this encourages investment.Teaching Math in 1997: A company outsources all of its loggers. The firm saves on benefits, & when demand for its product is down, the logging work force can easily be cut back. The average logger employed by the company earned $50,000, had three weeks vacation, a nice retirement plan & medical insurance. The contracted logger charges $50 an hour. Was outsourcing a good move?Teaching Math in 1998: A laid-off logger with four kids at home & a ridiculous alimony from his first failed marriage comes into the logging-company corporate offices & goes postal, mowing down 16 executives & a couple of secretaries, & gets lucky when he nails a politician on the premises collecting his kickback. Was outsourcing the loggers a good move for the company?Teaching Math in 1999: A laid-off logger serving time in Folsom for blowing away several people is being trained as a COBOL programmer in order to work on Y2K projects. What is the probability that the automatic cell doors will open on their own as of 00:01, 01/01/2000?

Dave Barry Column:November 7, 1997, in the Miami Herald Decaf Poopacino I have exciting news for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal’s digestive tract.And you just know there are plenty of people who would. Specialty coffees are very popular these days, attracting millions of consumers, every single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me whenever I go to the coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup on my way to catch a plane. These consumers are always ordering mutant beverages with names like “mocha-almond-honey-vinaigrette lattespressacino,” beverages that must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products and what appears to be a small nuclear reactor.Meanwhile, back in the line, there is growing impatience among those of us who just want a plain old cup of coffee so that our brains will start working and we can remember what our full names are and why we are catching an airplane. We want to strike the lattespressacino people with our carry-on baggage and scream “GET OUT OF OUR WAY, YOU TREND GEEKS, AND LET US HAVE OUR COFFEE!” But of course we couldn’t do anything that active until we’ve had our coffee.It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity. I bet this kind of thing does not happen to heroin addicts. I bet that when serious heroin addicts go to purchase their heroin, they do not tolerate waiting in line while some dilettante in front of them orders a hazelnut smack-a-cino with cinnamon sprinkles..The reason some of us need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes us alert. Of course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and, like any drug, it is a lot of fun.No! Wait! What I meant to say is: Like any drug, caffeine can have serious side effects if we ingest too much. This fact was first noticed in ancient Egypt when a group of workers, who were supposed to be making a birdbath, began drinking Egyptian coffee, which is very strong, and wound up constructing the pyramids.I myself developed the coffee habit in my early 20s, when, as a “cub” reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., I had to stay awake while writing phenomenally boring stories about municipal government. I got my coffee from a vending machine that also sold hot chocolate and chicken-noodle soup; all three liquids squirted out of a single tube, and they tasted pretty much the same. But I came to need that coffee, and even today I can do nothing useful before I’ve had several cups. (I can’t do anything useful afterward, either; that’s why I’m a columnist.)But here’s my point: This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far. I say this in light of a letter I got recently from alert reader Bo Bishop. He sent me an invitation he received from a local company to a “private tasting of the highly prized Luwak coffee,” which “at $300 a pound . . . is one of the most expensive drinks in the world.” The invitation states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a “member of the weasel family” that lives on the Island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a “natural fermentation” takes place, and the berry seeds — the coffee beans — come out of the luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs.The invitation states: “We wish to pass along this once in a lifetime opportunity to taste such a rarity.”Or, as Bo Bishop put it: “They’re selling processed weasel doodoo for $300 a pound.”I first thought this was a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee craze. Tragically, it is not. There really is a Luwak coffee. I know because I bought some from a specialty-coffee company in Atlanta. I paid $37.50 for two ounces of beans. I was expecting the beans to look exotic, considering where they’d been, but they looked like regular coffee beans. In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they were just regular beans, and that I was being ripped off.Then I thought: What kind of world is this when you worry that people might be ripping you off by selling you coffee that was NOT pooped out by a weasel?So anyway, I ground the beans up and brewed the coffee and drank some. You know how sometimes, when you’re really skeptical about something, but then you finally try it, you discover that it’s really good, way better than you would have thought possible? This is not the case with Luwak coffee. Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed a dead cat in it.But I predict it’s going to be popular anyway, because it’s expensive. One of these days, the people in front of me at the airport coffee place are going to be ordering decaf poopacino. I’m thinking of switching to heroin. Thank You,

A guy farted in a elevator. He took out an air freshner. Another
guy got on the elevator. The first guy asked” What do you think
of the smell?” The second guy anwsered,” It smells like someone
poped under a Christmas Tree!”

British Left Waffles on Falkland islands Lung Cancer in Women Mushrooms Eye Drops off Shelf Teacher Strikes Idle Kids Reagan Wins on Budget, But More Lies Ahead

One of the great joys of modern American English is the enthusiasm we have for new words and word usages. It drives the folk for whom English is a Second (or fourth or tenth) Language, absolutely nuts I hear… You’ve heard the slang phrase ‘Going Postal’. Here are some more examples, from the book ‘Jargon Watch’, just published by Wired magazine: ————————- Going Postal – Euphemism for being totally stressed out, for losing it. Makes reference to the unfortunate track record of postal employees who have snapped and gone on shooting rampages. ————————-Alpha Geek – The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. ‘Ask Larry, he’s the alpha geek around here.’Assmosis – The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.Beepilepsy – The brief seizure people sometimes have when their beeper goes off (especially in vibrator mode). Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and interruption of speech in midsentence.Chips and Salsa – Chips = hardware, salsa = software. ‘Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem’s in your chips or your salsa.’Crapplet – A badly written or profoundly useless Java or Active-X applet. ‘I just wasted 30 minutes downloading this stinkin’ crapplet!’Dancing Baloney – Little animated GIFs and other Web F/X that are useless and serve simply to impress clients. ‘This page is kinda dull. Maybe a little dancing baloney will help.’Depotphobia – Fear associated with entering a Home Depot because of how much money one might spend. Electronics geeks experience Shackophobia.Flight Risk – Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave a company or department soon.404 – Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error message ‘404 Not Found,’ meaning that the requested document could not be located. ‘Don’t bother asking him . . . he’s 404, man.’Generica – Features of the American landscape – both urban and rural – which is indistinguishable from anywhere else. ‘We were so lost in generica, I actually forgot what city we were in.’GOOD Job – A ‘Get-Out-Of-Debt’ job. A well-paying job people take in order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit as soon as they are solvent again.Irritainment – Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying, but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a prime example.Keyboard Plaque – The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards.Midair Passenger Exchange – Grim air-traffic-controller-speak for a head-on collision. Midair passenger exchanges are quickly followed by ‘aluminum rain.’Nyetscape – Nickname for AOL’s less-than-full-featured Web browser.Ohnosecond – That miniscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake. Seen in Elizabeth P. Crowe’s book The Electronic Traveller.PEBCAK – Tech support shorthand for ‘Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard.’ (Techies are a frustrated, often arrogant lot. They’ve submitted numerous acronyms and terms that poke fun at the clueless users who call them up with frighteningly stupid questions. Another variation on the above is ID10T: ‘This guy has an ID-Ten-T on his system.’)Percussive Maintenance – The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.Prairie Dogging – When someone yells or drops something loudly in a ‘cube farm’ (an office full of cubicles) and everyone’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on.Seagull Manager – A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, sh-ts over everything and then leaves.Square-headed Girlfriend – Another word for a computer. The victim of a square-headed girlfriend is a ‘computer widow.’Telephone Number Salary – A salary (or project budget) that has seven digits.Tourists – People who take training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. ‘We had about three serious students in the class; the rest were tourists.’Umfriend – A sexual relation of dubious standing. ‘This is Dale, my…um…friend…’Uninstalled – Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voicemail of a vice president at a downsizing computer firm: ‘You have reached the number of an uninstalled vice president. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance.’ See also Decruitment.Vulcan Nerve Pinch – The taxing hand position required to reach all of the appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the warm boot for a Mac II involves simultaneously pressing the Control key, the Command key, the Return key and the Power On key.Yuppie Food Coupons – The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal: ‘We all owe $8 each, but all anybody’s got is yuppie food coupons.’ (Also called: ‘Yuppie Food Stamps.’)