Taco Sauce Pranksters Strike
Fifteen masked men entered an Indiana Taco Bell and returned 25,000 packets of taco sauce that, so they said, had been accumulating in the trunk of their car for the past three years. It required 40 trash bags to carry all the packets of sauce into the store. Maybe they thought that if they saved up enough packets of sauce they could win a free
Liberty Bell.
Unwise Grenade Opening Technique
Reuters reports that "A Brazilian man died Tuesday when he tried to open what police believe was a rocket-propelled grenade with a sledgehammer in a mechanical workshop on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro." Big Gary notes:
"The Darwin Awards have a new emblem."
Lonely Heart Calls Operator 37,760 Times
A Japanese man has been arrested for repeatedly calling information hundreds of times a day just to listen to the voices of the telephone operators. He called so often, 37,760 times to be exact, that it began to creep the operators out. In his defense the man said, "When I made a complaint call once, the operator dealt with it very kindly, so I wanted to hear these women's voices." This guy really needed an
Imaginary Girlfriend. (Submitted by Alex from Colombia)
Fake Hearse Scam
The latest scam in New Zealand is to reduce your car registration by up to two-thirds by claiming your car is a hearse.
"The scam ... came to light last in July when a woman told a radio station she justified her action by saying she carried dead chickens home from the supermarket." I assume she drove her car home slowly in honor of the frozen chickens in the back.
North Korean Defector Sells Fake Aphrodisiacs
A North Korean defector now living in South Korea has been charged with selling unlicensed aphrodisiacs. He claimed that Kim Jong Il had been a user of them. This is where the story gets a little weird:
"The stimulants were sold to blind people, most of them owner of massage centers." Huh? How many blind massage center owners can there be? But this is the part I like:
The police said, "Some who took the stimulants suffered from swelling." So I assume the stimulants actually worked.
Comments
Interesting. I had no idea. A google search brought up this article in The Economist about South Korea's blind masseurs:
The tradition of the blind masseur dates back almost a century to Japanese colonial rule and has been formalised in law. In the absence of a welfare system, the arrangement was designed to give blind people a protected way of earning a living. However, the courts have now ruled that restricting massage licences to the blind discriminates against sighted people who want to pursue the same trade.
Hmm, that depends on which body part(s) was swelling, doesn't it?
Actually, given the ingredients involved, they might very well have been. I know ketchup (catsup, whatever) has a 'theoretically infinite' shelf life...
As for the blind masseur trying to commit suicide, that just opens up an entire *book* of tastless jokes..
... tried jumping out his bungalow window..
... walked onto a busy interstate.. during completely stalled traffic..
... dog wasnt' stupid enough to walk off the pier..
I don't know about owning them but many, many work in them.
Though of course the main idea is providing a role for the blind there is also the feeling that the blind have a unique focus on their sense of touch and therefore have the potential to be superior to a sighted person in this line of work.
Another example of sensitivity towards the blind is most new sidewalks in China have a texured route along them to help the blind feel their way along to their destination throught the soles of their feet.
Which is a simple but great idea and pretty attractive actually, makes the pavement look less boring.