target shopping cart mishap

hey buddy, you got chaange for a $1900 bill?

I used to think this sort of call was unnecessary...


until I read this...

the pay stub that gives rewards

On Friday, a Chicago man entered a Fifth Third Bank branch and handed the teller a note. It said, "Be Quick and Be Quit (he apparently did not know how to spell Quiet). Give your cash or I'll shoot."

The teller complied and the man got away with $400. Unfortunately for him, he left his demand-note behind. It was on a half-slip of paper. He also dropped the other half of the paper outside the bank as he fled.

Together, the two pieces of paper made one important whole. The man had written his demand on the back of his pay-stub, which had his complete name and address.

The police arrested him on Monday. He faces a possible 20 years in prison.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28425924/

text messages spread to new species

previously, it was only popular among gerbils

I guess it cooked long enough

no attribution information

peas and knees-- the source of fear

Sue Williams is a 37-year-old woman who has an unusual and debilitating phobia: Sue is terrified of knees.

Knees. The bendy part at the middle of your leg.

Sue is so terrified of knees that she has not touched her own knees in the past 16 years. She cannot utter the word "kneecap" without crying. She cannot look at her husband's knees. Until recently (after therapy sessions), she was unable to wash her knees.

"I don't like my own. I can't touch them. I certainly can't touch anyone else's,... I know it's strange. People tease me about it and they have got every right to. But I think I'm the normal one and everyone else is weird." said Sue (notably omitting the use of the word "knees" in her explanation).

Another woman, Louise Arnold, has an irrational fear of peas.

Louise explains her pea phobia: "They (the peas) tend to just look at me – ganging up on me. All the hairs on the back of my neck go up. I have to know where they are in the supermarket before I go in. It's just controlling my life now. I would like to be a dinner lady at my daughter's school, but I'm not even able to be in the same room as someone eating them."
http://tinyurl.com/9zht4j

For a previous post about a woman who has koumpounophobia (fear of buttons) and other phobias, see http://tinyurl.com/853upp

time to fire the graphics editor

sorry, I have no attribution information for these

fruitcake: it’s not for eating

I was not planning to post anything until Monday, but this information is timely and “green.”  It is about saving the planet and restoring relationships through recycling and reusing fruitcake.

Fruitcake recycling.com has some wonderful suggestions on what people can do with the fruitcakes  they were given for Christmas.

a fruitcake dartboard, a fruitcake knife holder, a fruitcake utensil caddy,

a doorstop or a decorative holiday centerpiece!

Here are some other timely suggestions:

• Put one in the trunk of your car to aid with traction
• Use fruitcake next time you need to put your car up on blocks
• It comes in handy with a wobbly table or chair. Slice off as much as you need and put it under the short leg.
• Use as speed bumps to foil the neighborhood drag racers.
• Fruitcake makes a handy hammer.
• Kids can use fruitcake to make an indestructible fort.
• You could use fruitcake as the weights on a grandfather clock
• Fruitcake makes a colorful sail boat ballast
• Fruitcake works as a counterbalance weight on a cantilever crane.

For other timely suggestions on how to use, reuse, or recycle your fruitcake, visit: http://www.fruitcakerecycling.com/crafts.html

maybe its time to get rid of the dry Christmas tree

this video is amazing and scarey...

santa and the do-wop reindeer

Merry Christmas!

a brief gallery of unusual Christmas trees

church signs that don't quite capture the meaning of Christmas

via

giving new meaning to "fill er up"

Look at this car. It is not simply a car filled with clothes, food, furniture and assorted junk. It was pulled off the road looking like this.

This car was observed by police as it whizzed down a highway in Germany. It is so full of stuff that they could hardly see the driver.

The woman has not been identified. However, she has been told that she can not drive again until she passes a tidiness test.

from metro.co.uk

I'll bet her cell phone is in there somewhere, too.

rrobber not too smmart

Last week a twenty-ffive year old man decided to rrob the Dunkin Donuts franchise in Lombard, IL.

He wore a black ski mmask and brandished a knife. Unfortunately, he should have written a nnote.

It sseems that the would-be thief used to work at that particular Dunkin Donuts. He also has an unfortunate stuttering problem that was rrecognized immediately by one of his former cco-workers.

The cco-worker called the police, who immediately arrested Fredrick Brantley. When they arrested him, he had a Dunkin Donuts bag with $300 in it and a knife.

Brantly has been ccharged with armed robbery.

http://tinyurl.com/8lmadm

The stutter may be helped by a speech therapist. The idiocy is untreatable.

gone in one second

via

If this dog were mine, no way he would sleep on my bed.

aviary apartment

The reason that most bird owners place newspapers on the floor of a bird cage is because birds poop. Indeed, they poop regularly and often.

Most bird owners also keep their birds in a cage (most of the time) because a bird flying around the house can be quite unsanitary.

That is, most bird owners.

Last week, city officials in Berlin investigated complaints of bird noises emanating from the apartment of 60-year-old retired man.

Upon entering the two-bedroom apartment, they were surprised to find un-caged birds. Not one or two. Not five or six. Not one or two hundred. They found 1,700 parakeets (budgerigars) flying free in the apartment. The birds were living on perches that the man had placed along the walls.

As you might expect, the floor was saturated with bird poop, as was nearly everything else in the apartment.

The man said that he had started with two birds because he was lonely... then they started to create little birds.

The parakeets are being relocated. Birdman's apartment has been ruled "unfit for human habitation" and he has been forced to leave.

http://tinyurl.com/5e6jjw

that will teach you to keep your mouth shut

this is a repost from a year ago, but it fit so well with the other post today :)

another offensive sterotype

just in time for Christmas: flame-broiled cologne

It's true. Not only can eat a Whopper-- you can smell like one, too.

On Monday, Burger King debuted a meat-scented body spray called "Flame." Although tongue-in-cheek, the product is not a hoax. The product description says,

The WHOPPER® sandwich is America’s Favorite burger. FLAME™ by BK® captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.

Don't rush to your nearest Burger King because they won't have it for sale. The chain is selling it through a costume retailer in New York called Ricky's. But you can purchase a can of Flame by following this link.

product: http://tinyurl.com/5fpwlt
original story: http://tinyurl.com/5ua963

Google Search humor

Did you know that the answer to life the universe and everything is 42?

Really. According to Google search, it is 42.

Google shows a sense of humor by planting "Easter Eggs."  For these to work, you must go to a Google page that allows you to click "I Feel Lucky.”

Search for:
Answer to Life the Universe and Everything
Once in a Blue Moon
Number of Horns on a Unicorn
find Chuck Norris  (this one only sometimes works)

My favorite one is to search for french military victories... I took a screen shot of my results:

check it today... because this is an external "bomb" which Google might fix in a few days.  And… apologies to my French readers. :)

via

if you can edit film, you can make music

This guy can neither play the drums nor the piano, but he is an amazing film editor. You may not like his style, but this is fascinating to watch and hear... (he gets even better after he gets by the hoots and plays the piano). :)


via

for sale at Christmas

note the top... Christmas Fun Special (?)

goundbreaking journalism

you're going to jail for stealing what????

Memo: It is stupid to go to jail for stealing something stupid.

This week, in two unrelated stories, three Florida men find themselves going to jail for stealing some unusually stupid items: an egg beater and urine.

The first story comes from Plant City, Florida where two men, Robert Thompson and Taurus Morris, have been charged with burglary and aggravated assault.

It seems that recently, the two men broke into a home around 4:00am. One man held the knife to the homeowner's neck while the other pointed a gun at him.

Their demand? They wanted his egg beater. That's all. His metal egg beater.

The two beater-thieves ran off with their take, only to be caught a short time later. When they were apprehended, one of the men was carrying the egg beater in his back pocket.

Why? you ask. Dunno. They didn't say.

The second story comes from Gainsville, FL, where a man is under arrest for stealing his own urine.

The 26-year old man apparently learned that his urine test had proven positive. So, naturally, he broke into the lab, stole the entire sample-refrigerator and started a fire.

Police were able to obtain a list of the people who had urine samples stored in the fridge and were able to track down the thief. When they arrived at his house, they found pieces of broken glass covered with blood in his trash. The glass matched a window that had been broken at the lab. The blood was his. The refrigerator remains at large.

The urine-thief has been charged with arson, destruction of evidence, burglary and larceny.

http://tinyurl.com/62gfl3 (Tampa Bay Online)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28244225/

police blotter continues...

I'll bet M.H. is glad her name was kept in confidence.



for more police blotter posts click on the appropriate label below...

correcting the Christmas carols

Ever afraid that someone might somehow offend somebody somewhere, people who are politically correct and socially aware are blessing us with some changes to traditional Christmas carols (or shall we say, Holiday tunes??).

For example, one church has banned "O Little Town of Bethlehem" because it shows insensitivity to the current residents of Bethlehem.

What could be more sexist than referring to Jesus as "the newborn king?" In an effort to not offend, another church has changed the line "Hark! the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king" to "...glory to the Christ child, bring."

Just as sexist, they say, is the Christmas carol that sings, "O come let us adore Him." So, that line (found in O Come All Ye Faithful) has been changed to "O come in adoration." Apparently it is inappropriate to refer to Jesus as a male since that alienates all women. (??)

The weirdest job has been done on the traditional 12 Days of Christmas. It has been rewritten by a church official who feels that it should reflect more social awareness. In hopes of making the song more socially relevant, he has changed it to:

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me...
12 soldiers serving
11 lottery losers
10 hoodies hollering
Nine single mothers
Eight AIDS victims
Seven shoppers struggling
Six carers caring
Five repossessings
Four calling conmen
Three starving children
Two addicts shaking
And a poor homeless refugee

Now, that's catchy! Let's join hands and sing that around the Holiday tree with the kids.

http://tinyurl.com/5kon43
http://tinyurl.com/5qqw4z

why your dog really goes outside

via

now, you can pay someone to make you look lazy

The problem: You buy your wife or girlfriend a gift but don't want to take the time to wrap it by yourself.

However, you also don't want to have it professionally wrapped, because this would be a dead give-away that you didn't do it yourself (not very romantic!).

The solution: Crapwrap. Firebox.com is willing to ship your gift pre-wrapped with cheap wrapping paper, complete with tears, stains and hair on the tape.

The company is currently paying 20 of it's male forklift drivers to wrap gifts for men who want their gifts to have that done-it-myself look. The forklift drivers are instructed to quickly wrap the gifts using as little care as possible. They use brown tape, inexpensive paper and nail-scissors for cutting the paper. The end result is a gift that looks like it was wrapped by, well, like by a man.

The service costs around $7. They will even send it to the post office in a brown paper wrapper with a badly-tied pink ribbon.

Claire Wood of Firebox.com said, ‘Nearly as many people are asking for CrapWrap as for our normal gift-wrap. Women like to think that their husbands and boyfriends took the trouble to wrap the present themselves, even if they made an appalling hash of it.

‘We launched CrapWrap as a bit of a joke but it’s proving so popular that I think we must have touched a raw nerve.’

http://tinyurl.com/5ma6aq

wanted: have you seen these men?

Police composite artists play a valuable role in tracking down the bad guys. Here are some examples of their work:







for a similar post, see http://www.mypointless.com/2008/02/wanted-have-you-seen-this-man.html

NO power in Maine Tonight. Will post as soon as I do not have to do it from my cell phone: :)

update... after the Thursday ice-storm, we finally got power at midnight today (Sunday). Hundreds of thousands are still out of power.

(picture from my back yard...)

annoy your friends. win at Scrabble.

Have you ever played Scrabble and had a few extra letters you couldn't get rid of? Have you ever wanted to squeeze a word into a small space or use a Q when you didn't have a U?

Here are the top 10 approved Scrabble words that will help anyone win:

1. Aa-- “basaltic lava having a rough surface.”

2. Qat – a flowering plant native to East Africa and the Arabian peninsula.

3. Zax – a slate mason, or the tool used to cut and punch nail holes in roofing slate.

4. Cwm – a valley, especially one created by glacial movement.

5. Xu – Vietnamese money

6. Qua – as or as being, or in the character of.

7. Suq – a market, or part of a market, in an Arab city.

8. Adz – an axe-like tool.

9. Jo – sweetheart or dear

10. Qadi – a judge in the Muslim community.

If you need to authenticate these words for your Scrabble buddies who won't accept mypointless as an authority on Scrabble, here is the URL you'll need:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/17972

in search of...

...as opposed to the new Civil War planes that weren't invented before the Wright brothers?


that was some paint....

dogs on the police blotter

I asked for a sign. I got a sign.

Watch it again. I don't think it is a fake.

haven't you heard? kissing may cause deafness

Kissing can be dangerous to your ears.

You may recall that back in June, a woman in Hicksville, NY, lost her hearing after her daughter kissed her ear.

The little girl had returned from school. She was just glad to see her mother and gave her a "big smacker" on the ear. Mom went deaf in that ear.

This week, a woman in China lost her hearing when her boyfriend gave her an exceptionally vigorous kiss. This time, however, the kiss was not delivered to the ear, but to the mouth.

According to the doctors, the kiss caused the air pressure in her inner ear to drop and dislodged the eardrum, causing the woman to go deaf in her left ear. Fortunately, they expect that she will regain her hearing in a couple of months.

They never heard that kissing can cause deafness.

http://tinyurl.com/5mywwr
http://tinyurl.com/6278vy

time to fire the guy who chooses the graphics

do they sell belts, too?


I guess they can be a nuisance and they do smell at times.


mixed cartoons

please pass the evidence

Last week, 18-year-old William Colburn stole a $16 pair of earrings from the local JC Penney store. Store security observed William take the earrings and drop them into the water bottle he was carrying.

After he left the store, the security guards approached William. Being a quick thinker, William immediately drank the contents of the water bottle... including the pair of earrings.

We can guess that William assumed that swallowing the evidence would get him off the hook. It didn't.

William was given an X-ray that confirmed the presence of earrings in his stomach. He has been charged with retail theft and tampering with evidence. However, police had to wait for William to deliver the evidence.

No word on what police will do with the earrings.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28005993/

what's for lunch?

via

world's slowest high-speed chase

This week, Janos Jakab attempted to smuggle 100,000 packs of cigarettes across the border from Romania into the Ukraine. The contraban was worth an estimated $600,000.

As Janos' vehicle approached the border, the police noticed the would-be smuggler and challenged him. At that point, Janos decided to make a run for it.

The chase was on.

The chase was off.

Unfortunately, Janos' vehicle was an overloaded horse-drawn wooden cart (see picture).

Said one border police officer, "We have a fleet of high-powered vehicles that can chase down the fastest cars. Outrunning our officers was never a possibility - even if he had a thoroughbred racehorse strapped to his cart."

That was a fine bit of planning, Janos.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3108869.html?menu=

health tips for a better life