Welcome to the World Wide Weird

Every year on this day there is an obvious April Fool’s Day story in the press that often gets a run because basically people will believe anything.

So this year I scoured the local press and found the following:-

Firstly a story in The Age explaining how Cornelia Rau may get compensation for being held illegally in a detention centre. Then again I reckon she’s earned it, as you recall I blogged at the time how disgraceful it was that Ms Rau was locked up because she made two mistakes. Mistake one was she was suffering from a mental disorder, and mistake two was that she had a German accent. Forget that she is an Australian citizen and is here legally, lets lock her up because she sounds like that kooky Sergeant in Hogan’s Heros.

There is a precedent, the Commonwealth paid $25,000 to a French tourist wrongly held at Villawood for four days. Ms Rau was held for about 300 days. Gee for that kind of money they can have my bones for the weekend, I don’t have anything planned.

Then I thought it might be the story from News Ltd about how the Treasurer wants to send all stay-at-home Single Mothers back to work. I figured he can’t be that mean can he? Turns out he is.

Could it be the story explaining that ex Secretary of State criticizes President Bush? Nope – that’s legit too.

Don’t tell me its the one that describes how The Department of Environment and Conservation want to charge families that have reduced their water usage even more because they have lost revenue? No, that’s another real one.

So what is the the April Fool story? Pretty obvious eh?

Ananova reports:-

Man grows penis on his arm
Doctors have replaced a man’s penis with one grown on his forearm.
The 30-year-old Russian, named only as Sergei, has his 2-and-a-half-inch penis removed and attached to his arm.

Using tissue it grew to 6-and-a-half inches and was sewn back on his groin in an 11-hour operation reports The Sun.

A Moscow surgeon said the man will be able to have sex in a few months. He said: “Women will never suspect.”

I’m not too sure. Any time this fella is told to “Get your hand off it”, he’s going to reply “I cant!”.

But what I’d like to know is what happens if you have a small penis AND small arms? You’re stuffed then aren’t you?

Please understand that I’m not asking for myself, it’s for a friend.

Friends of the WorldWideWeird will note good ‘ol Captain Slog has made no mention of the tragic Terri Schiavo story. Partly this because it is a sad case where there are no winners; partly because it has been reported ad infinitum in the press and it hardly needs my comments; but mostly because the religious right have tiraded themselves off the planet and I’m happy to just leave them there.

Now however we hear that the husband of Terri Schiavo has had to pre-empt the sad death of his wife by stating he will allow an autopsy in order to:-

silence allegations his plan to cremate her body is aimed at hiding something

While Mrs Schiavo’s parents and supporters STILL try to prolong an already exhausted legal debate, Michael Schiavo continues to be hounded. Now these low-lives have made the accusation that perhaps Terri Schaivo is somehow responsible for the condition of his wife. Do I take that to mean he caused Mrs Sciavo’s anorexia, or the stroke that restricted the oxygen supply to her brain?

The fate of the woman, who has been in a persistent vegetative state since suffering cardiac arrest, has become a cause for Christian conservatives and drawn in Congress, President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. State courts have accepted testimony from Michael Schiavo and others that she did not want to be kept alive artificially. Pressured by the Christian right, Congress passed a special law that allowed the Schindlers to take their case to federal court, and President Bush cut short a vacation to sign it. The effort proved in vain as court after court — all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — rejected a flurry of petitions since the feeding tube was disconnected on March 18.

Here is a man who only asks that his wife be allowed to die with some shred of dignity but instead if you listen to the Christian Loonies you’d think Michael Schiavo had killed someone. He hasn’t, he’s just a brave man who still loves and wants to remember his wife.

Where were the Right-wing crowd when David Koresh caused the deaths of nearly 100 innocent people at Waco? Who remembers Jonestown?

And to think a little time back I felt a small pang of regret when I affixed the following bumper sticker to my car.

I don’t know whether or not this is a joke, the guys, gals and dogs at http://www.dogcondoms.com/ think this is something all dog owners are going to need.

I found this on a nicely designed blog called Unexplained Liberation and I must admit that since I saw these sheepdog sheaths, I feel icky!

These two stories both came out the same day, and have me shaking my head in bewilderment.

The first tells us that scientists at MIT have invented an alarm clock called Clocky that rolls off the table to another part of the room after the snooze button is hit. The idea being that if the clock moves to different parts of the room while continually setting off the alarm, you (eventually) have to get up to turn it off.

Now I’m sorry, but any alarm clock in Slog Manor that moves around the room, waking me up every 5 minutes goes out the window. No apologies, just out the window goes Clocky and bouncing down the street. And unless these “scientists” have thought to make Clocky pretty much indestructible they had better make sure they have shit loads of them, otherwise Clocky is going to be right up there with the disposable camera; an interesting idea but useless after the first go.

The second story is about how physicists from the University of London have discovered that credit cards are the best way of removing the silver coating on scratch lottery tickets. Helllo!!!!! Did someone discover a cure for Aids while I was asleep so now the only thing really worthy of being investigated is the best way of scratching off a scratch lottery ticket?

Cancer? SARS? Boring Old Bastard Syndrome? No No No!
Scratch Lottery tickets? – You betcha sweet pocket protector!

What is with these “Scientists” that they have their chrome domes so firmly up their bums that they can’t see the important things in life? Like inventing bread that doesn’t land vegemite-side down when it falls off the kitchen table.

Here’s something you don’t see everyday. Some dude is selling a time machine on eBay.

When it comes to eBay almost everything goes; I’ve heard of people selling bottles of air, their virginity (yeah right!) and even home-made tinfoil hats that keep the aliens from reading your thoughts. But a time machine?

Just in case there are any doubting Thomases in the crowd, the seller provides this by way of proof:-

Hello, I am selling what I believe to be a time machine that was built in the year 2239 by Dr. J. S. Strauss. I found the machine under my house when I was doing remodeling to the bathroom. The machine was hidden in a old rotten wood chest along with some other findings that I believe to be related to the machine like old pictures, letters, ect. I dont know to much about time machines or electronics, but from my observations I believe that the machine might have caught on fire, at some time or another from the looks of the inside, and is now in a non working condition. It also looks like there might be some parts missing on the inside, but I dont know.

Unfortunately there is no descrption as to how such a device would work, but along with the time machine the lucky winner also gets:-

• a letter dated july 3, 1930 by J.S.
• a poem that seems to relate to time travel.
• a check dated dec 23, 1926 with J.S. [sic] signiture
• a photograph of mal, floyd, reuben dated march 16, 1930
• a photograph of who I think to be Dr. J.S. Strauss dated Jan. 1926
• a small key for some kind of suitcase
• two small bottles
• a blank book of matches
• a book of electronic inventions with the name Glenn Thompson written in it (who I think to be a guy who had the machine for awhile in the 1970’s

What more could you ask for? Now admitedly the device from the picture doesn’t look all that high-tech, but then that could just be because Billy-Bob Gates (or one of his decendents) didn’t have a hand in the making of it. When you think about it, the machine looks like something that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the set of the original Star Trek series so maybe it is legit after all!

Now there IS one more thing to consider. Unfortunately Cap Slog was a bit tardy getting hold of the news of this time machine, and it has already sold (for $US 647.59 mind you!). Soooooo this one isn’t going to be any good unless you already HAVE a time machine so that you can go back in time a week in order to put in a winning bid. That can’t be too hard can it?

You gotta love those Yankee Dandy Doodles.

Some nut has decided on a new an innovative way to bring the Bible to the youngest generation. Now this could be a good thing, depending on one’s religious (or non-religious) convictions. What this wacko has done however just defies description.

Go to the link, and see for yourself – Spiderman’s Greatest Bible Stories

Personally, I would have been far more interested in seeing Astroboy feature in some of the classic works of literature. First up would have to have been Hamlet. “Hello Hollywood? I have a movie idea for you….”

So says Bill Caelli, Associate Dean of IT at Queensland University of Technology (article here) and yet Home Banking, and Bill Paying is still being pushed as secure.

The question is who asked for our current Banking system? I didn’t.

The use of automatic tellers is of course useful (even if at the expense of ridiculous fees) and anyone who remembers back when Banks were only open between 9AM and 3PM knows too well how hard it was to get any banking done. Now however our signature, which had a certian level of security, has been replaced by numbers that any man or his dog could type in.

Today, anyone can find their savings account emptied and will find the Banks couldn’t care less.