Tuesday, August 24, 2010

great horse race call from Monmouth Park: my wife knows...


(yes, it was an actual race. :) This video came from SportsCenter (ESPN), shot on my phone.)

today's special- free fish & chips

via bits n pieces

man robs pharmacy, then picks up prescription

memo: it probably isn't a good idea to rob your pharmacy and pick up your prescription later.  

Here is the story from Springfield, MO:

A Springfield man has been charged with felony pharmacy robbery after a clerk recognized him when he returned to get his prescription filled.

Douglas F. Manning, 31, is accused of being the masked robber who displayed a gun and demanded narcotics from a clerk at the Walgreens Pharmacy at 2681 W. Republic Road on July 30.

The clerk described the suspect as a white male wearing a tan jacket, gloves and a mask at the time. She also described his silver four-door passenger car, according to a news release.

A few days later Manning returned to the Walgreens to get a prescription filled, where the clerk recognized him and his vehicle.

She called police with a license plate number. Springfield police advised other local agencies that Manning was wanted, and the Republic Police Department arrested him at noon Tuesday, according to a news release.

Manning was charged with felony pharmacy robbery and is being held in Greene County Jail on $150,000 bond.
via

Monday, August 23, 2010

diagnosis: bananaphobia

In the past, my pointless carried stories of unusual phobias... like the fears of buttons, knees and peas.  This metro.co.uk carried the story of another sort of fear... here is the story:

"Fran Dando is so scared of bananas that all it needs is a glimpse of one to make her shake, sweat profusely and even vomit.  The 21-year-old children’s worker suffers from bananaphobia, an overwhelming fear of the yellow fruit.

‘It began when I was seven and my brother put a banana in my bed as a joke,’ said Ms Dando, from Hastings, East Sussex.

‘I felt his horrible, slimy thing underneath my body. I was frozen in panic and hyperventilating. Ever since then, if I see one the same feeling comes back.’

She has since been forced to dodge bananas in shops and turn a blind eye to them in the fruit bowl at friend’s houses.

‘I generally do not explain my fear unless a situation comes up. Then I will say: ‘Sorry I am going to have to leave the room’. It is embarrassing – it is such a nonsensical fear.’

However, Ms Dando’s two-year-old son, Harrison, loves bananas, which has put her in a tricky situation. ‘I have to use a blanket to pick them up and put them in the trolley and then when I am at home I have to wear rubber gloves and use a tea towel to open one and give it to him,’ she said."

http://snipr.com/10rgyf   [www_metro_co_uk]

an expensive way to pay for parking

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

a new hero: college Prof gets thrown out of Starbucks for refusing to use their language

Okay, she may have taken it too far... but there are many people who just don't like the pretentious Starbucks-speak used at the famed coffee chain. Finally a NY English professor snapped. Here is the story:
-----
Lynne Rosenthal, a college English professor from Manhattan, said three cops forcibly ejected her from an Upper West Side Starbucks yesterday morning after she got into a dispute with a counterperson -- make that barista -- for refusing to place her order by the coffee chain's rules.

Rosenthal, who is in her early 60s, asked for a toasted multigrain bagel -- and became enraged when the barista at the franchise, on Columbus Avenue at 86th Street, followed up by inquiring, "Do you want butter or cheese?"

"I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal told The Post. "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.

"Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English."

Rosenthal admitted she had run into trouble before for refusing to employ the chain's stilted lexicon -- balking at ordering a "tall" or a "venti" from the menu or specifying "no whip." Instead, she insists on making a pest of herself by ordering a "small" or "large" cup of joe.

Yesterday's breakfast-bagel tussle heated up when the barista told the prickly prof that he wouldn't serve her unless she specified whether she wanted a schmear of butter or cheese -- or neither...

The bagel brouhaha escalated until the manager called cops, and responding officers ordered her to leave, threatening to arrest her if she went back inside, she said.

"It was very humiliating to be thrown out, and all I did was ask for a bagel," recalled Rosenthal, who said she holds a Ph.D. from Columbia.

"If you don't use their language, they refuse to serve you. They don't understand what a plain multigrain bagel is."

http://snipr.com/10pmv0 [www_nypost_com]

memo to Rosenthal: go to a Dunkin Donuts and say, "I want a large black coffee and a plain multigrain bagel." It works.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

pictures that are hard to explain

Sometimes, we find pictures that are difficult to explain. Since we don't know the story behind them, they leave us to wonder whattheheck happened...

http://snipr.com/10p1cz [www_rgbpicture_com]

Monday, August 16, 2010

inmate eats someone's eyeglasses because he can't see the chaplain.

A Burleigh County Detention Center inmate ended up making a spectacle of himself when he didn’t get to speak to a chaplain.

William Demery, 42, could face a charge of criminal mischief for allegedly snatching another Burleigh County inmate’s glasses and eating them less than five hours after being booked into the detention center.

Burleigh County Sheriff’s Major Les Witkowski said Demery was upset on Aug. 1 because a chaplain had not been to the detention center to speak to him when he thought the chaplain would be there. Demery is accused of grabbing another inmate’s glasses and eating both lenses and a piece of the metal frame.

Demery was taken to the Medcenter One emergency room, where a doctor determined he would be OK to return to jail, Witkowski said.

http://snipr.com/10p0xx   [www_bismarcktribune_com]

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

man blames dyslexia for traveling 103mph

Matthew Cook was spotted weaving in and out of traffic as he sped along the A27 between Falmer and Hollingbury in East Sussex.

A concerned driver dialed 999 and officers clocked the 40-year-old doing 103mph in a 60mph limit...

Prosecutor John Marsden Lynch said: “He told the police officer that he did not understand the speed dial because he was suffering from dyslexia.”

Cook admitted a single charge of dangerous driving. Recorder Christopher Morris-Coole said he was “skeptical” about Cook’s explanation and banned him from driving for three years.

excerpted from http://snipr.com/10ht38 [www_telegraph_co_uk]

Cook's dyslexia apparently makes fast seem slow.  Cook hopes to give this new information at the convention for dyslexia which will be held September 21-18.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

prank: paranoia at the grocery store

unfortunate Engrish product names

few titles of the selling goods not speaking into the English beautifully
(or, some product names don't translate well into English)





Monday, August 9, 2010

pull the earth's finger. the Bermuda Triangle mystery solved

(CHICAGO) - According to two research scientists the mystery of vanished ships and airplanes in the region dubbed "The Bermuda Triangle" has been solved.

Step aside outer space aliens, time anomalies, submerged giant Atlantean pyramids and bizarre meteorological phenomena ... the "Triangle" simply suffers from an acute case of gas.

Natural gas—the kind that heats ovens and boils water—specifically methane, is the culprit behind the mysterious disappearances and loss of water and air craft.

The evidence for this astounding new insight into a mystery that's bedeviled the world is laid out in a research paper published in the American Journal of Physics.

Professor Joseph Monaghan researched the hypothesis with honor student David May at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

The two hypothesized that large methane bubbles rising from the ocean floor might account for many, if not all, of the mysterious disappearances of ships and aircraft at specific locales around the world...

Any ships caught within the methane mega-bubble immediately lose all buoyancy and sink to the bottom of the ocean. If the bubbles are big enough and possess a high enough density they can also knock aircraft out of the sky with little or no warning. Aircraft falling victim to these methane bubbles will lose their engines-perhaps igniting the methane surrounding them-and immediately lose their lift as well, ending their flights by diving into the ocean and swiftly plummeting

http://snipr.com/10g7ld   [salem-news_com]

Friday, August 6, 2010

illusion: the girl with the different colored eyes

An interesting optical illusion-- The girl on the left appears to have one cyan eye and one gray eye (but both eyes are actually the same color gray).

this and other optical illusions at link

amazing catch in Japan

I saw this on Baseball Tonight... it isn't a doctored film. :)

things I saw that made me wonder.

I took these pictures on my cell phone recently...


and I wondered-- is it possible to prepay after?  :)


...if  "$6.29 lb" means "$6.29 per pound," then why is the unit price $2.33 per pound?

...why don't all auto-body repair guys use this product of sticky wonder?

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Man falls into toilet pit... for two days...

A Chinese man’s luck hit rock bottom when he got stuck in a poo-filled toilet pit for two days. He didn’t deliberately enter it, though, he slipped down there. Then, naturally, he yelled desperately to be rescued – but to no avail.

It was a full 48 hours before the now very whiffy man, from Wuyuan County, Inner Mongolia, was liberated. A passerby heard his pleas for help and called the emergency services.

Whether nose pegs were used, we don’t know, but fire-fighters lowered a ladder down to the hapless man and pulled him out.  Needless to say, the first thing that he did was rush off and have a wash, in a nearby pond.
The man washes himself in a pond after his ordeal. Mind you, that doesn't look too clean either (Rex)
It turns out that his family had in fact reported him as missing to the police.

He would now certainly seem to be in the running for the title of 'person stuck in the most unpleasant place for the longest'.

However, he'll have stiff competition from the woman who fell down a manhole.

If he doesn't win that, he's certainly in with a shout for the world's smelliest man crown.

http://snipr.com/109hxq   [www_metro_co_uk] 

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

shoplifter nearly gets away clean... but leaves baby behind

WEST PALM BEACH —— After stealing merchandise from JCPenney's junior department Friday, two women made it through the store's exit doors without being caught.

But when JCPenney employees saw the women left a 10-month-old behind, it was over.

Crystal Whitaker, 23, of Lake Park was charged with child abuse without great harm, child neglect without causing great harm, contributing the to delinquency of a dependent and theft, police records show.

Whitaker, and the unidentified woman with her, went into a dressing room with clothes to try on and came out with $256 worth of merchandise hidden in a JCPenney bag.

The police report says an employee tried stopping the women but they ran outside too quickly.

No problem, as the employee the saw the 10-month-old standing on the sidewalk, all of the stolen merchandise on the ground and Whitaker's purse-providing the store with her identification...


The Florida Department of Children and Families came to the store to pick up the abandoned 10-month-old, the report said. 

Whitaker was released on her own recognizance while being supervised, records show.

http://snipr.com/105m59   [www_palmbeachpost_com]