Welcome to the World Wide Weird

BoingBoing report news of a new First Aid product that especially comes in handy on sundays.

Jesus Adhesive Bandages are described thusly-

Treat your minor cuts, scrapes and scratches with the incredible healing power of a designer bandage. And if a fancy bandage isn’t enough to dry up your tears, how about a FREE TOY! Each 3-3/4″ tall metal pocket tin contains fifteen 3″ x 1″ adhesive bandages and a small plastic trinket to help make even the ouchiest owies feel all better in no time.

Makes sense when you think about it. Everytime I smack my head into something I offer a quick prayer to “Jesus!”

World Cup thief’s own goal

A thief who stole a World Cup ticket from a woman’s handbag was caught after sitting down to watch the game next to his victim’s husband.

The 34-year-old mugged Eva Standmann, 42, as she made her way to the Munich stadium for the Brazil-Australia game at the weekend and discovered the ticket in her bag.

But as he took the woman’s place in the stadium he was met by her husband Berndt, 43, who immediately called security.

A Munich police spokesman said: “The thief found the ticket in the bag and decided to watch the game, not expecting to sit next to his victim’s husband, who immediately informed officers on duty at the stadium.”

Dianne Brimble died 4 years ago in mysterious circumstances on one of P&O’s “fun” ships, though clearly the present coronial inquest is no fun at all for her family.

The advertising P&O were running said

More girls. More sun. More fun. There’s nothing else a guy needs to know.

The public would like to know what happened, Dianne Brimble’s family have waited 4 years to find out what happened, but so far the “persons of interest” aren’t telling. The 42 mother was found [dead] naked on the floor of a cabin of four male strangers.

While P&O has apologised (only last week) for the below ad, it says something about the company and their Advertising Agency that it was allowed to run at all. Also note P&O’s lawyer tried to stop THIS being tendered as evidence at the Glebe Coroner’s Court inquest.

Even Larry Tate (McMahan and Tate, well known Advertising Agency of the ’60s) wouldn’t have run this ad!

Fresh in today’s News is this story that purports to be a scientific study that reaches the BIZARRE conclusion that women have a longer life expectancy than men because they do more housework. BAH! I say. BAH! again, and you can quote me on that.

According to this so called study:-

The more free time a man has on his hands, the more likely he is to suffer poor health and die young,

What a crock!

The in-depth study of time-use diaries kept by almost 200 Victorian men, presented by Leonie Bloomfield at a Social Policy Research Centre seminar yesterday, found the boredom and lack of meaning most men reported during such free time acted independently to increase mortality risk.

Dr Bloomfield said it was not clear why or how such boredom was a health risk…

Because there IS no link

…but it was possible boredom led to anxious and depressive states, which then hindered the functioning of the immune system.

How do they equate NOT doing housework to being the same as being bored? What about all the chemicals we’re not breathing in?

Our caring, sharing P.M. has been grandstanding lately how the unemployment figures are the lowest they’ve been in ages. Of course this IS utter crap, but if he is to be believed, and if ‘Home Duties’ can be correctly classified as a profession, then by NOT doing housework; by NOT taking some one else’s job, we are actually helping to keep unemployment down aren’t we?

I know I know I will in all likelihood get a very heavy scanpan smacked around the back of the noggin for that last remark but if the truth be told, that pan is in the sink and Mrs Cap Slog will have to wait until I’ve finished the washing up before she can belt me one.

There is that to look forward to I guess.

As we struggle through our drab existence, push past the wearisome hours that become our lives, there are endless chores that must be endured. The worst of these is grocery shopping which for some becomes as near a spiritual experience as one ever gets. If there really is a God how can he allow grocery shopping to happen? It is a cruel and inhuman punishment, it’s torture, and it NEVER EVER stops.

“Dear,” she says, the light of my life, the song of my heart, she for whom I’d walk a thousand miles over broken glass. “Here is a list of things we need at the store.” Insert merciless, tormenting laugh here.

The shopping list is responsible for more evil in the world than the combined books of the Bible, Talmud, Koran and the collected works of Dan Brown. Sure it LOOKS like an innocent list of simple everyday items but it is in fact a reminder of how pathetic guys really are. Don’t get me wrong, I am a guy (last time I looked) and know only too well our collective faults. But to be constantly reminded of these faults with a shopping list is too much. She (who must be obeyed) is more than acutely aware that of the 13,201 items on aforesaid list I’ll be lucky if I can find 10; 9 of those will be the wrong brand, size, colour, or just simply the one we just don’t like anymore.

See women are like that, they are ever changing, just like their ever changing preferences and the fact that we men can’t keep up is sore testimony to our sad and feeble nature. Weep for me Brother for I am male and I went shopping!

Don’t get me wrong, supermarket shopping isn’t the end of the world, but you can surely see it from there. You also see other wretched, downtrodden men there too, shuffling their pathetic frames towards the supermarket with lists a lot like mine. In fact their lists look identical to mine, I’ve looked. Girls, you are all in this together right? Is this a case of women of the world deciding as one, – he watched TOO much sport this weekend so he needs to be punished. “Honey, would you get a few simple things for me?”I walk to the supermarket like a condemned man walking the last mile.

My shopping list in hand I commence my search for a suitable shopping trolley. Memo to self: there is no such thing as a suitable shopping trolley. They are all the same, all evil, just like the shopping list. I used to think it was a coincidence that every trolley I touched had a club wheel that would, with a mind of its own, collide with contents of the shelves every 10 yards. I tell you these things just come to life like Christine in Stephen King’s novel of the same name, and in an equally destructive manner. But it isn’t a coincidence at all. They are made this way. They are built so as to cause the maximum amount of damage as possible.

The speed with which the items on the shopping list AREN’T being collected is staggering, and I think I know the reason for this. What I have on my list are not items we need, instead it’s a list of items the store is out of. Completely! The store must publish a ‘We Have No More…’ list on the internet and housewives the world over turn this into a shopping list. How else to explain why I am unable to find a single one of the things I’ve been ordered to collect?

Forget Josef Stalin telling his world Cup squad not to come home unless they won, I know I MUST return home. I will of course be lucky to have a small fraction of the essential groceries our family needs, without which we shall surely perish. I already know I shall be castigated and browbeaten into submission because I was unable to locate any Gorgona Anchovies. Strangely I know my entire family don’t even LIKE anchovies, yet here I must find a particular brand of anchovies that no doubt ceased production back in 1972. If by chance I AM somehow magically (because it would be magic) able to locate this prize then I know it would be the wrong size. I cannot win and thus am doomed to failure. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will buy the wrong toilet paper. Despair!

I have watched women shop and it never ceases to amaze me how they do it so easily. They spend the entire time in conversation with women they have never met before yet they chat as if they have always been closest friends. While they talk their hands snake around the contents of the shelves and propel groceries into the trolley. They don’t even need to look. It’s “Hi Georgina,” (yes they know each other’s names telepathically) “I was just getting …” (hand reaches out and gathers a can of baby corn) “… some New Zealand Finest baby corn, 350 grams here and …..” It just isn’t fair!!!

Do you know what isn’t helpful when you go shopping? What isn’t helpful are those little signs at the ends of the isles that categorise all the goods found in that particular place. There must be a couple of hundred items stored in each isle so when you are fruitlessly looking for a totally obscure item such as, say bread, you have to decide if it is more likely to be found in the isle marked ‘plastic wear, baby food, toiletries’ or the one marked ‘canned vegetables, prophylactics, frozen yoghurt’. Once you have been to the store often enough to remember that the eggs are up in isle 14 along with bleach and pet food, they start moving things around.

In fact I can’t argue with conspiracy theorists who claim that the staff surreptitiously time male shoppers to make sure they don’t find the things they are looking for within a couple of hours. Once we guys start discovering where certain things are kept, the grocery elves (I kid you not, there are grocery elves) wait till the store is deserted and start to randomly reorganise the shelves. I know, otherwise why is the toothpaste sitting next to the sliced cheese one day and then with stationery supplies the next?

See girls, let me explain something to you about shopping. We just don’t get it, ok? It’s not who we are. We were no more born to shop than you were to spend a night out with the boys over indulging in beer and playing pool. It’s not that we LIKE to drink and play pool but we have to, It’s a genetic thing. And likewise we don’t have the necessary genes to go shopping. There is a gene (I think it’s called the shopping gene) that you have and we don’t. It really is as simple as that. Why then do you insist on sending us to the store? Why why why???

Historically man has never shopped. It was always a case of “Honey, me and the boys are going to go out and kill a 20 tonne Woolly Mammoth. We’ll risk our lives in order to put food on the table.” And still your reply was “Oh, well then seeing you are going out can you pick up some milk and some cereal?” Milk and cereal is YOUR department, not ours, so don’t ask us. We don’t like to go shopping for deeply religious reasons, which I’ll gladly explain as soon as I can think of some.

Remember the French Revolution? Do you remember how it started? It wasn’t a case of the hungry poor overthrowing the shackles of the monarchy, it was Marie Antoinette telling Pierre “We’re all out of cake, run down to the store for me dear and get some more.” Lord Lucan isn’t hiding, he’s down the road at the local supermarket lost somewhere while he tries in vain to find that small jar of mayonnaise Mrs Lord Lucan probably isn’t even going to use. Why do you do this to us, why do you send us shopping if not but to punish us?