This story is about something else – a robbery? The New York Mets? Lady Gaga? – we can’t remember. We read this part and forgot everything else:
Members of an armed gang are on trial after they’ve been charged with stealing millions from the Dubai royal family. The £2million heist ($3,099,000) was the royal family’s “holiday spending money” set aside for its visit to London on June 24.
Because we live to serve you the latest and greatest (and, well, let’s face it, some of the most awful) news, history, wisdom, nonsense, and, as in times like these—still steaming piles of fresh gossip—we point you to the Twitter feed of comedy legend John Cleese, who twittered, just minutes ago (it’s around 10 AM on the 14th day of December, 2011), of his Monty Python partner, Eric Idle:
Oh dear. Somebody’s a Mr. Crabby Pants this morning.
He followed that up minutes later with:
Over the past few weeks we’re published several excerpts from our very latest annual “Big John” publication, Uncle John’s 24-KARAT GOLD Bathroom Reader, a 544-page behemoth of mind-widening wonder. We brought you:
• The Playboy Playmate Edonomic Indicator
• and Obscure Fads of the 1960s: Piano Wrecking
Just to name a few.
Here’s one more. We think, we hope, you will like it.
HOW TO EAVESDROP ON THE ASTRONAUTS
The International Space Station is one of the wonders of our age, as large as a
football field and the third-brightest object in the sky after the sun and the
moon. Few of us will ever get to visit it, but you can listen in when
it’s passing overhead. It’s easier than you think.
UPDATE, 8 OCTOBER 2012: It has just been brought to our attention that this story is a hoax. Ugh.
An April 2012 ABCNews story on fake handicaps in sports for the disabled contains these paragraphs:
The Dutch handbiker Monique van der Vorst had won two silver medals in the 2008 Paralympics. But after that she suddenly experienced a seemingly miraculous recovery. In the summer of 2010, she claimed that she had regained sensation in her legs after 13 years in a wheelchair. Since then, she said, she could stand up, walk and even ride a racing bike again.
Now Van der Vorst has had to admit that she was also able to stand and walk during her career as a paraplegic handbiker. Former competitors and neighbors had reported often seeing the athlete outside of her wheelchair — taking a shower, or even dancing. Van der Vorst was a sports celebrity in the Netherlands, and now everyone is outraged. The newspapers are calling it a “scam” and a “lie.”
Update over.
*****
And in what is without question a candidate for the most amazing story of the year, last year, next year, and possibly every other year ever – she’s now in training to go to the regular old Olympics in 2016. Because just coming un-paralyzed? Boring!
Your instructions for watching this video, from BRI article and art veteran Ol’ Jay: The goat’s nostrils are actually the eyes of an evil alien that has implanted itself on front of the goat’s face. That is all.
We found this story on FaceBook today. It describes one of those moments in life that seem to come straight out of a dream – and, indeed, many a singer and songwriter has probably had this exact dream.
This is almost impossible to take as real. But it apparently is.
No long story here, just this: A Dutch architect firm designed a tower complex to be built in Seoul, South Korea. It has two towers. What else had two towers? The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, as in the ones that were intentionally hit by airliners and brought to the ground on the horrible day we know as 9/11.
And these new two towers? Words fail, so here you go:
No, that is not super-secret spy code language – Norway is really out of butter:
The soaring popularity of a fat-rich fad diet has depleted stocks of butter in Norway creating a looming Christmas culinary crisis.
Norwegians have eaten up the country’s entire stockpile of butter, partly as the result of a “low-carb” diet sweeping the Nordic nation which emphasizes a higher intake of fats.
Our guess is Norwegian farmers will milk this story for all it’s worth. They’ll spread it far and wide. Keep churning it out…
This story is made all the more ironic by the fact that Norway actually looks like a lump of butter that was dropped on the top of Finland and dripped down the back of Sweden:
If you think this behind-the-scenes photo is cool:
…then you’re going to love the rest of the photos at BuzzFeed.
Get ready for UncleJohn’sBathroomReader.xxx – coming to your internet any day!
Oh, no, wait, really. That sounded funny in our heads – for about 1.23 seconds – but now that we think about it a bit more…no. Really. Uh uh. No with a capital N.O.
Back to the story:
Web addresses ending in .xxx have gone on general sale, as legal efforts continue to scupper the domain name.
Some 100,000 addresses have already been purchased in a restricted sale. The first pages went live in September.
Much more on the whole “.xxx” story here. (They’ve apparently become available to the general public only yesterday.)
First thing they found out: That oysters spend a lot of time talking about “Oyster Hell,” a place they describe as “where bad oysters are thrown into cauldrons of boiling water, squirted with acid, and eaten by hideous monsters.” Ha! Such imaginations!
Now back to the story:
As we do every year on this day, we now present you with the December 5 Birthday/Phobia News Report:
Birthday: Today is the birthday of one of the most famous names in the history of – well, just about anything, really – but mostly in the history of film, and especially animated film, Mr. Walt Disney. He is known for his role in the creation of some of the most memorable characters in the history of animation, including the world-wide animated mega-superstar, Mickey Mouse.
Here’s some interesting Sunday reading for you, on why we humans invented monsters, by Paul A. Trout, professor emeritus at Montana State University:
Hey, some cool news from our own neck of the woods:
Oregon: Where we shout “We’re Number One! We’re Number One!” because of a tree. Oh yeah.
THE TUPPERWARE STORY
Today the word Tupperware is a generic term for any plastic food container
with a sealable lid. That’s thanks to two people: Earl Tupper, inventor
of the product that bears his name, and Brownie Wise, who has
been all but erased from the company’s history.BLACK GOLD
In the fall of 1945, a plastics manufacturer named Earl Tupper tried to place an order for plastic resin, one of the key ingredients in plastic, with the Bakelite Corporation. But the material was in short supply, and Bakelite couldn’t fill his order. When Tupper asked if they had anything else for him to work with, the company gave him a black, oily lump of polyethylene slag, a rubbery by-product of the petroleum refining process that collected at the bottom of oil barrels. Bakelite, makers of an early plastic by the same name, couldn’t find a use for the waste product, and neither could the chemical giant DuPont. Both companies had plenty of the stuff lying around. They told Tupper he could have as much as he wanted.Tupper spent months experimenting with different blends of polyethylene—“Poly-T,” as he called it—and molding them at different pressures and temperatures. He eventually came up with a process for forming it into brightly colored cups, bowls, and other household items. A year later he patented the idea that he’s most famous for: the “Tupperware seal,” which provided a spill-proof, airtight seal between Tupperware containers and their lids. (He borrowed the idea from paint-can lids.) Tupper called his first sealable container the “Wonderbowl.”
Take it away, Homer: “Beer—is there anything it can’t do?”:
Beer and health care may sound like an odd mix. In one case however, the two have formed an unlikely partnership to get creative with renewable energy.
City Brewery in La Crosse, Wisconsin is using all of its biogas byproduct from the brewing process to create three million kilowatt hours per year of electricity by employing a capturing, cleaning and burning process through an engine called a jenbacher.
Down the road from the brewery is Gundersen Lutheran Health System which is credited for the electricity produced by City Brewery. And while this only accounts for 10-13 percent of their total needs, it means they are on their way to meeting complete energy independence by 2014.
So very good.
And there’s even a beer-powered hospital video:
Looks like someone’s gunning for the “Worst Jerk of the Century” award:
[It] is fairly simple in concept: someone anonymously submits nude photos to Moore through the site’s submission form. Perhaps it’s a jilted ex, or a recent hookup, or a vengeful friend. These days, the site receives many self-submissions as well. Provenance doesn’t matter. Moore uploads those photos and attaches identifying screen-grabs from the person’s Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter accounts—whatever’s available. He sometimes adds a pithy caption and a reaction gif at the end, usually from a television show or meme. And that’s pretty much it.
Good gads, what a monumental ass. It’s no surprise that this happened:
