Counterfeit trash bags

Those are words I never thought anyone would have an opportunity to use together. What a country!

Yahoo News - Mass. city misspells 'offcial' to catch bag cheats

GLOUCESTER, Mass. – No, managers with Gloucester's Public Works Department aren't idiots. They're just trying to catch cheats. When the Massachusetts city unveiled its new $2 purple trash bags that all residents must use when disposing of household waste, the word 'official' was deliberately spelled 'offcial.'

Recycling coordinator Kathy Middleton tells The Gloucester Daily Times the intentional misspelling is supposed to make it easier to catch people who try to counterfeit bags. Middleton says counterfeiting has been a problem in the past.

I'm pretty sure I shouldn't look this up and find out why Gloucester, Mass requires its subjects to use $2 trash bags. Or why they're even worried about counterfeit trash bags. But I did. And now I know. That's how they pay their trash collection fees.

I guess it's a good thing every city doesn't do this. Then Glad and Hefty would be getting in line for a government bail-out.

Hard-hitting news

Because it must be said:

Sarah Palin's eyeglasses will not make you look as good as Sarah Palin.

Our analyst adds:

As long as people are going to call it a presidential beauty contest, why not get someone in there with some experience?

That concludes this special report.

And now, this, from Cincinnati WKRC. C, i said. C. Not P. C.

Does Editorial Talk to Marketing?

I'm thinking, "no". These are the front and back covers of the new issue of Nature magazine.

The journal swears it is horrified by the coincidence.
"We didn't know until the issue landed on our desks," Nature pleaded to the media.
"It just goes to show that editorial and advertising aren't working in cahoots."

A-yep. (From the Daily Mail.)

Transgender toilets?

This, as so many Fark entries say, can't end well. Transgendered students at Manchester University don't feel comfortable or safe in either of the rest rooms at the student union.

So the women's officer there has had this brainstorm: Change the signs. Instead of "women" and "men", they now read "toilets" and "toilets with urinals".

Well, that should solve the problem, don't you think? I mean, so long as nobody actually has to change their attitudes, proper signage fixes everything.

(Story from the Manchester Evening News.)

Shoot! Shoot! That octopus is strangling that man

The further you read, the better this story gets.

Bagpipes provoked Olympic alarm
A bagpipe player sparked a security alert at the Olympics - after Chinese police mistook his musical instrument for "some kind of weapon".

The Borders piper was in China to carry out a sponsored walk along the Great Wall to raise funds for the National Deaf Children's Society.

Mr Aitken said: "I'm not all that good on the pipes [how can you tell?] so I thought I'd go off on my own and have a practice before I had to play in front of the people I was doing the walk with.

"I had a silly soldier's hat on and my kilt and a few locals gathered round and seemed to be enjoying me playing, but just as I finished a police car pulled up with four officers.

"They weren't happy and it emerged that it was heightened security all over China because of the opening ceremony."

It took the intervention of a passer-by to explain to police what the bagpipes were.

"It was pure luck that a tourist guide was passing and stopped them from arresting me by explaining what bagpipes were - they thought the pipes were some kind of weapon," said Mr Aitken. [BBC]

They sure aren't a stealth kind of weapon.

You know what "perfect pitch" is to a bagpipe player? Being able to hit the middle of the lake.

Whatever happened to...

...that guy who was on Jeopardy! like 74 days in a row and won $2.52 million dollars? Huh?

Well, he wrote a book (duh), wrote another book (hm), co-invented a couple of trivia games and (like everyone else) has a blog. It was on that blog that he recently noted he'd stumbled upon the perfect summation of public radio in a single sentence. Go, read and be amazed.

I have a theory...

A story has been rolling around the media this week about a University of Colorado research study linking bumper stickers (and window signs and bobbleheads and other decorative gewgaws, collectively called "territory markers") to dangerous driving behavior.

Drivers who put stickers on their cars, the study says, are more likely to drive aggressively, lose their temper, and/or succumb to "road rage". The more stickers they put on their cars, the more likely they are to behave badly, and the worse they behave when they do lose it.

And it does not matter what the stickers actually say. Left or right, secular or religious, "honor student" or "I spayed my dog" all indicate that the drivers feel more possessive of the "personal space" surrounding their vehicles.

My own theory is that the more bumper stickers the driver puts on his car, the more likely the aggregate message will be politically liberal. Here in the city of Atlanta, of course, most voters are Democrats, therefore most bumper stickers are for liberal causes, so anecdotal evidence would seem to confirm the theory--

But it would be unwise to take that as anything resembling proof.

Still, when I see this car--

Well, I drive cautiously until he's out of sight.

I dreamt of something bigger

No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is a six-foot-tall, anatomically correct sock monkey.

No trick photography was involved, and no actual sock monkeys were harmed in the production of this masterpiece.

See Verkstad, via Erin O'Brien.

How to fill time on the news

From WSJ.com's Best of the Web:

• Many Hollywood Celebrities Rally Behind Obama (Reuters)
• Actors' Strike Could Hurt Mass. Movie Biz (Boston Herald)
• PETA Slams Jessica Simpson for 'Real Girls Eat Meat' T-Shirt (FoxNews.com)
• Menus With Fancy Font Can Mean Fancy Prices: Study (Reuters)
• Locked Door Thwarts Robber (Mobile Press-Register)

Recently flagged as "Obvious" by readers of FARK.com

• Guests get fed up as hotels' miscellaneous fees pile up (Freep.com)
• California summer starts with blast — of heat (msnbc.com)
• TV Batman Adam West not excited for The Dark Knight (Coventry Telegraph)
• Doctor: Flip-flops lack support (WTHR 13 Indianapolis)

I'll take "The Flippin' Obvious" for $100, Alex...

The consummate professional

What does it mean to be a professional actor?

It means that you give it everything you've got, even when you're giving it to a felt-tip pen.



Can you imagine any other actor (that is, any other actor who didn't really need the money) throwing himself into this with such gusto?

The gayness of Charles Nelson Reilly was perhaps the worst-kept secret in Hollywood. He was told it would keep him from getting work. Some weeks you could spin the dial and Reilly was on every channel at the same time. Thank God he was gay, or it would have been All Charles Nelson Reilly, All The Time.

(Saw the clip at Mark Evanier's News From Me.)

Sometimes it's too easy

In Corio, Victoria AU, a man texted a video of himself masturbating to a woman while she was at the police station in the process of filing a complaint against him.

I know, "stupid criminal" stories are all too common, and often untrue, but this one is so far over the top I had to pass it along. In addition, it appealed to me because it's a form of self-incrimination that wasn't possible, say, five years ago.

Not what you're picturing

closet girl 01 Originally uploaded by eley88

I thought of this image when I saw this story. I mean, any healthy red-blooded man who thinks about finding a Japanese woman in his closet is naturally going to think of a woman who looks like this. "Please don't turn me in," she'll say breathily, as if this is The X-Rated Diary of Anne Frank. "I'll do anything..."

Japan man discovers woman living in his closet
[Reuters / Yahoo]
A Japanese man who was mystified when food kept disappearing from his kitchen, set up a hidden camera and found an unknown woman living secretly in his closet, Japanese media said Friday.

The 57-year-old unemployed man of Fukuoka in southern Japan called police Wednesday when the camera sent pictures to his mobile phone of an intruder in his home while he was out on Wednesday, the Asahi newspaper said on its Website.

Officers rushed to the house and found a 58-year-old unemployed woman hiding in an unused closet, where she had secreted a mattress and plastic drink bottles, the Asahi said. Police suspect she may have been there for several months, the paper said.

An unused closet? What kind of home has one of those?

(I hope she won't mind me using her picture this way...)

What else is she qualified to do?

A monthly talk show.

The young Austrian lady who managed to escape from the windowless basement cell in which she'd been imprisoned for eight years since her abduction at age 10...will premiere on Vienna's Puls4 Sunday night.

I can't decide if this is a triumph of the can-do human spirit or an obscene exploitation of fame.

Young woman held in underground cell gets talk show
[AP / Cnews]

VIENNA, Austria - Television was once her only window on the world. Now Natascha Kampusch - still adjusting to life after spending 8 1/2 years in an underground cell - is starting an improbable new career as a TV talk show host.

Less than two years after staging a dramatic escape while her captor was distracted with a phone call, the young Austrian woman whose ordeal stunned people worldwide is going prime time.

"Natascha Kampusch Meets ...," a chat show featuring local celebrities, debuts Sunday evening on Puls4, a new private cable channel.

A Puls4 trailer shows Kampusch typing on a laptop computer, pouring herself a glass of mineral water and grinning as makeup artists give her a final touchup on the set. She wears her long blond hair down and sports a sweater and a floral-patterned skirt - both in purple, her favorite color.

The Books Oprah Doesn't Talk About

But Bookseller's magazine does, in their annual Odd Titles contest.

Want some more?

He's gonna stick his head out the window anyway

If you can't quite see (I certainly can't), and you're too lazy to hit the link for a larger image (and, really, how lazy is that?), it's a canvas bag meant to sit on your running board (your car has a running board, right?) so your dog can ride safely and comfortably and not stink up the car. Photo Basement thinks this is Quite Possibly The Worst Invention Ever.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. I can think of plenty of worse ideas than this. You probably can too. Cordless jump rope. Weed-cutting golf club. New Coke. Cell phones.

Okay, here's a job you don't want

Photo found (and available a little larger) at The New Shelton Wet/Dry.

Come On, Everybody's Doing It

Come On, Everybody's Doing It
Originally uploaded by NontrivialMatt

South Bend Tribune | Boys left with bleeding tongues after sticking them to flagpole
Two fourth-grade boys mimicking a scene from the movie "A Christmas Story" wound up with their tongues stuck to a frozen flagpole in bitter cold weather on Friday morning.

Gavin Dempsey and James Alexander were serving on flag duty at Jackson Elementary School, with the job of raising and lowering the school's flags, when they decided to see if their tongues really would stick to the cold metal.

"I decided to try it because I thought all of the TV shows were lies, but turns out I was wrong," said Gavin, who celebrated his 10th birthday Friday.

Actually, what young Gavin said was, "I bethibeb po pry ip becauthe I phoughp aww of phe PV thhowth were wieth, bup purnth oup I wath waag."

Other kids were apprehended sitting too close to the television and crossing their eyes to make their faces "freeze like that".

The boys say they'll try things they've seen on "Jackass" and "Survivor" when they get out of detention.

An icon is gone

Hydrox cookie Originally uploaded by milatchi

It may say something about the dedication inspired in generations of sweet-toothed Americans that, although Sunshine / Keebler / Kellogg stopped making Hydrox cookies in 2003, its loyal fans are only just now beginning to notice that they can't find one anywhere.

WSJ | The Hydrox Cookie Is Dead, and Fans Won't Get Over It
Robert Fliegel was craving a Hydrox. The 52-year-old computer consultant says he always liked the way the chocolate sandwich cookie, which he found crisper than Oreos, "stood up to the milk" when dunked.

But Mr. Fliegel, who used to be able to devour an entire package of the crème-filled biscuits in a sitting, couldn't find them in any stores near his East Stroudsburg, Pa., home.

Only when he went online a few months ago to try to order some did he learn the truth: Hydrox is dead.

In 2003, without warning or announcement, Kellogg Co. killed off the cookie -- by then rechristened Droxies -- after failing to gain ground against the dominant Oreo, one of the country's best-selling snack foods.

I'm thinking that if they really were as enormous as that photograph makes them look, they might still be around.

Old W. K. Kellogg must be spinning to know that "his" health-food company now owns Keebler.

If it moves and it shouldn't...

If it doesn't move, and it should, use WD40.
If it moves and it shouldn't,
use duct (duck) tape.
Originally uploaded by jimfrazier.

When Forbes magazine conducted their "20 Most Important Tools" survey, there was a 21st tool that just wouldn't be left out.

Forbes | The Other Greatest Tool Ever
Models use it to create cleavage. Sled-dog drivers use it to prevent frostbite. Athletes use it to support weak joints. Veterinarians use it to repair horses' hooves.

What's this wonder tool? Duct tape.

There's no denying that Duck Tape Saves the Day.

The computer's down, so...

Whole Foods Market
Originally uploaded by JustJon.

Hartford Courant | Whole Foods Shows You Can Get Something For Nothing
It could not have happened at a worse time. A major snowstorm was howling outside. Whole Foods supermarket at Bishops Corner in West Hartford was jammed with shoppers anxious to get home for dinner.

Suddenly, the computer crashed. None of the cash registers could function. Ted Donoghue, the assistant manager running the store on the afternoon of Dec. 13, consulted associates and made a snap decision:

All customers passing through the registers would get their food for free until the computers were working again.

"It was clearly a snafu on our end, and it didn't seem right" to punish the customers by making them wait, Manager Kimberly Hall said.

(Heard it from The Consumerist.)