bluemana
‘Bottled Ghosts’ Sold in New Zealand Auction
Via BBC News:
Two glass phials said to contain the ghosts of an old man and a young girl have sold for NZ $2,000 (U.S. $1,395 / £935) in an online auction in New Zealand. The auction attracted more than 200,000 page views on the Trade Me website.
Avie Woodbury said the ghosts had been captured in her Christchurch house by an exorcist and stored in holy water. The top bidder, an electronic cigarette company, said it was looking for ideas on what to do with the ghosts.
Ms Woodbury told bidders she had experienced “bizarre activity” in her home.
“I would get things like the jug boiling itself, touching on the back of my neck, voices from other rooms, and items going missing then turning up in weird places,” she said.
Florida Woman Arrested for Shaving Private Parts While Driving
CBS4 reports:
CUDJOE KEY ― You’ve heard of the dangers of texting while driving, and talking on the phone while behind the wheel of a car. But how many people actually debate the merits of doing a little, well, “landscaping” while on the road?
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, a two-car crash on Cudjoe Key was caused by a 37-year-old woman who was shaving her bikini area while in the driver’s seat. Her ex-husband was steering from the passenger seat.
Trooper Gary Dunick explained, “She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ready for the visit.”
Megan Mariah Barnes and her ex-husband Charles Judy were driving southbound Tuesday morning when they slammed into the back of a pick-up driven by David Schoff of Palm Bay after he slowed to…
Woman’s Growth of a 6 centimeter Horn on Forehead Baffles Village
MSN reports:
A woman has alarmed her small village in China after growing a 6cm horn on her forehead in less than a year.
Zhang Ruifang, 101, says she is also concerned about the appearance of a second mark on the other side of her forehead.
“We didn’t pay too much attention to it [at first] … but as time went on a horn grew out of her head,” said Mrs Zhang’s son Zhang Guozheng.
Scientists Have Discovered Booze That Won’t Give You A Hangover
Tim Barribeau writes on io9.com:
Booze, for all its magical wonder, still has big drawbacks: You can’t sober up quickly, and you often get a hangover. Now Korean researchers have found a way of tweaking booze to limit the fallout — without cutting its strength.
Doctors Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University studied the properties of oxygenated alcohol — booze with oxygen bubbles added — which is a popular concoction in their country. In these drinks, oxygen is added the way carbonation is usually added to soda, and the scientists wanted to know if these oxygenated beverages affected people differently than non-oxygenated ones. The answer was a resounding yes.
They ran three experiments using 19.5% alcohol drinks, and measured the speed at which people’s blood alcohol dropped to 0.000%.…
Baby ‘Starved to Death’ Because He Did Not Say Amen
On the AP via the Sydney Morning Herald:
(Left) Ria Ramkissoon and her son Javon Thompson, (top right) Queen Antoinette and (bottom right) Trevia Williams.
For more than a week, Ria Ramkissoon watched passively as her one-year-old son wasted away, denied food and water because the older woman she lived with said it was God’s will. Javon Thompson was possessed by an evil spirit, Ramkissoon was told, because he didn’t say “Amen” during a mealtime prayer. Javon didn’t talk much, given his age, but he had said “Amen” before, Ramkissoon testified in a US court in Baltimore.
On the day Javon died, Ramkissoon was told to “nurture him back to life”. She mashed up some carrots and tried to feed the boy, but he was no longer able to swallow. Ramkissoon put her…
Woman Says Her Love Handles Saved Her Life
Via AP via Yahoo News:
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ — A Florida woman said her love handles saved her life when she was shot entering an Atlantic City bar. Samantha Lynn Frazier said she heard two pops when she walked into Herman’s Place early Saturday. The 35-year-old then felt pain and saw blood on her hand after she grabbed her left side. Atlantic City police said Frazier was an innocent bystander.
Detective Lt. Charles Love said the gunman was aiming for a man who escaped with a bullet hole in his down jacket. The suspect remains at large.
Frazier told The Press of Atlantic City that ‘I could have been dead. They said my love handles saved my life.” Frazier also told the newspaper that she had been “hollering” that she wanted to lose weight.…
Keith Olbermann: ‘My Father Asked Me To Kill Him’ (Video)
Danny Shea writes on Huffington Post:
“Last Friday night, my father asked me to kill him.”
Keith Olbermann opened his emotional Special Comment on health care Wednesday with the story of his father’s six-month-long hospitalization suffering through a colon removal, pneumonia, kidney failure, liver failure, and many infections.
After a particularly difficult week, Olbermann said he went into his father’s hospital room to find him “thrashing his head back and forth” and mouthing the word “Help.”
“It was just too much for my father,” Olbermann said. “‘Stop this,’ he mouths. ‘Stop, stop, stop.’”
Olbermann said he resorted to gallows humor, asking his father, “What, you want me to smother you with a pillow?” And his father responded, mouthing, “Yes, kill me.”
Man Appears Free of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant
Jacquelyne Froeber writes on CNN:
A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“The patient is fine,” said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. “Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication.”
The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal. Hutter and a team of medical professionals performed the stem cell transplant on the patient, an American living in Germany,…
Italian TV Chef Recommends ‘Cat Stew’
John Hooper writes in the Guardian:
Among other things, Giuseppe “Beppe” Bigazzi is known for his prize-winning cookbook La cucina semplice dei sapori d’Italia (”The simple cuisine of the flavours of Italy”). But as of this week, the flavour with which the TV gastronome is likely to be most closely associated is that of stewed cat.
Bigazzi is familiar to millions of viewers of the publicly-owned RAI network as the white-haired co-presenter of a popular pre-lunchtime programme, La prova del cuoco (”The proof of the cook”). But today he was experiencing his first day without television commitments in 10 years after being axed for expressing his enthusiasm for the flesh of felines.
His remarks came after mentioning how, in the desperate conditions of post-war Italy, some people had taken to boiling stray mogs.
UN Climate Panel Admits Dutch Sea Level Flaw
Reported via Reuters:
OSLO — The UN panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt.
A background note by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a 2007 report wrongly stated that 55 percent of the country was below sea level since the figure included areas above sea level, prone to flooding along rivers.
The United Nations has said errors in the 2007 report of about 3,000 pages do not affect the core conclusions that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are warming the globe.
“The sea level statistic was used for background information only, and the updated information remains consistent with the overall conclusions,” the IPCC…
‘Obscene’ U.S. Manga Collector Jailed For 6 Months
David Kravets writes in Wired’s Threat Level:
A U.S. comic book collector is being sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to importing and possessing Japanese manga books depicting illustrations of child sex and bestiality.
Christopher Handley was sentenced in Iowa on Thursday, (.pdf) almost a year after pleading guilty to charges of possessing “obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children.”
The 40-year-old was charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Handley was the nation’s first to be convicted under that law for possessing cartoon art, without any evidence that he also collected or viewed genuine child pornography.
Without a plea deal with federal authorities, he faced a…
Why Do People Vote Against Their Own Interests?
BBC News reports:
Last year, in a series of “town-hall meetings” across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama’s proposed healthcare reforms.
What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence.
Polling evidence suggests that the numbers who think the reforms go too far are nearly matched by those who think they do not go far enough.
But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform — the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state — are often the ones it seems designed to help.
In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently…
What Should A “Good” Pedophile Do?
Dan Savage responds to a reader on The Stranger’s Savage Love:
Let’s say, theoretically, I’m a pedophile.
I’m not stupid or evil, so I’m not gonna DO anything. I’m not even gonna look at porn, because the production of it involves child exploitation. I don’t even look at kids in public places.
So what the fuck should I do? Chemical castration? But I haven’t DONE anything and I don’t plan to. Am I obliged to tell anyone? Good way to lose friends. Can I keep babysitting my friends’ kids when they need a hand? After all, if I were into adult women, people wouldn’t see anything wrong with leaving me alone with a couple of those.
What the fuck do I do? Live alone and hope Japan starts producing affordable sexbots before I’m too…
Man Arrested for Peeing on Steaks at Ohio Wal-Mart
Anyone think Wal-Mart’s going to resell the steaks? ALWAYS LOW PRICES! : )
Pete Kotz writes on True Crime Report:
When heading off to jail, it’s best to commit a crime that will provide you with a manly story to tell your fellow inmates, something a little more desperado-like than, say, knee-capping a rival figure skater. Working as a hired gun for the Mafia always sounds good…
Armored car heists always have a nice ring to them. And even if you’re not quite up to something this ambitious, you can still trot out the old resisting arrest.
Unfortunately, Robert T. Jenkins now sits in jail with probably the worst criminal tale ever. He was arrested at a Wal-Mart in Canton, Ohio for peeing on steaks. Yes, you heard that right.
Cops were called to the store after Jenkins simply walked up to the meat counter, pulled out his manly apparatus — which we hope isn’t capable of reproduction — and begin peeing on the steak selection.
No one seems to know why he did it, unless he was practicing a bold new form of marinating.
Little Girl Who Had Eight Limbs and Was Worshiped As a Deity, Starts School
Via the Daily Mail:
She was born with a unique body — eight limbs and two torsos fused at the hips. Now Lakshmi Tatma, the Indian toddler whose plight touched the world, has grown up and started school.
Two years after a ground-breaking operation to separate her from a parasitic twin, Lakshmi is a lively and bubbly four-year-old.
She loves playing cricket with her older brother, has a tendency to boss around her newfound friends and remains firmly a daddy’s girl.
‘When I think of the way she was, never in a million years would Lakshmi have been able to go to school or have the life she does today,’ said her mother Poonam, 26. ‘All the things she’s capable of now were impossible two years ago.
Crazy In Our Own Ways: Mental Illness Around The World
Mary Montserrat-Howlett writes on Highest Five:
Killing rampages, fear that genitals are retracting, spirits taking over the body … here are some notable cultural illnesses that can only be understood, “understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions of the mind that is its host”.
Amok (South Asia): Amok or running amok is derived from the Malay/Indonesian word amuk, meaning mad with rage. It quite literally is a mad fit of rage where a person who hasn’t shown any previous signs of anger or inclination to violence will suddenly switch into homicidal maniac mode and attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone around them.
Their fit will be followed by a bout of amnesia wherein the person will return to their premorbid state (i.e. the state before they went haywire) with no recollection of the incident.…
Florida Man Arrested for Calling 911, Asking for Sex
On the AP:
Florida police say a man arrested for repeatedly calling 911 looking for sex claimed it was the only number he could dial after running out of cell phone minutes. Tampa police said 29-year-old Joshua Basso made sexual comments to the 911 dispatcher and asked if he could come to her house. Investigators say she hung up, but he called back four more times.
He was arrested about 15 minutes later at his home late Wednesday and charged with making a false 911 call. Basso reportedly told officers that he didn’t think he would get in trouble for calling 911.
Tampa jail records show Basso is being held without bond but don’t indicate whether he has an attorney. He is listed as unemployed with arrests for theft and other crimes dating…
British Women Claims to Have Two Vaginas
Darragh Worland writes on Tonic:
This story is so peculiar and conjures so many images and questions that we just couldn’t resist mentioning it. Model-turned-talk-show host Tyra Banks had what she called an “international exclusive” interview on her Tyra show Friday with a woman who says she was born with two vaginas.
Yes, you heard right!
Banks opens the interview by saying, “It’s already tough enough having one vagina, and you have two. So, OK: two of everything?”
Lauren, 29, whose last name isn’t mentioned, seems to have a good attitude about her double trouble. She answers Banks’ questions without embarrassment, admitting that she “thinks” she has two periods given that hers last a whopping 21 days. Yikes! (More on Tonic)
People Of Walmart, Some Of You Should Look In The Mirror Before You Walk Out The Door
Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch: In most cities across America, Walmart has replaced Main Street as the place people go to do their shopping and mingle with each other. But what is it about Walmart that brings out the — how do I say this delicately? — fashion-challenged freaks. I am talking about people who cover themselves in cheetah-print garb or worse, Easter eggs and bunnies. They are a tiny sliver of the people who go Walmart, but they are fascinating in a human train wreck kind of way. You want to avert your eyes, but you can’t stop looking.
A satirical site called People of Walmart now lets you stare to your heart’s content without actually stepping inside a Walmart store. People can submit photos of the strangest people they encounter in Walmart.
