Strange
Soundwave was one of the best in the Transformers cartoon
A Polish man is in trouble for offering an online confessional for Catholics who can’t be bothered with church.
Borys Cezar, 37, set up the website which welcomed visitors with the words: “Welcome to the virtual confessional.”
It continued: “Now write down your sins against Lord God. Do you regret your sins?” (yes/no) Do you intend to correct them? (yes/no); now click on next.
“We are connecting you with the Lord God, please wait… Your sins are being transferred, please wait… Congratulations, your sins have been forgiven.”
Lazy Catholics? Do they exist?
NAPLES, Italy – A 74-year-old Italian grandmother who bought a sack of potatoes at her local market found a live grenade among the spuds.
“I found a bomb in the potatoes,†Olga Mauriello said.
“I went to the market to buy some potatoes, and that’s where the bomb was. But this bomb was covered in dirt, and I put it in water and got all dirt off. And then I realized, ‘It’s a bomb!’â€
ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Fake bull testicles and other anatomically explicit vehicle decorations would be banned from Maryland roads under a bill pending in the state legislature.
The measure was filed in the General Assembly on Monday by Delegate LeRoy E. Myers Jr., who says children shouldn’t be exposed to giant plastic gonads dangling from pickup truck trailer hitches. The bill also would ban displaying images of naked human breasts, buttocks or genitals, with offenses punishable by fines of up to $500.
“It’s time to take a stand,” Myers told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail.
Finally!
A German man returned from a weekend away to find his flat had been broken into and completely refurbished.
Astonished Gunther Hagler, 45, called the police after arriving home to find his flat in Frankfurt had been renovated.
Even his fridge had been replaced, the walls given a fresh coat of paint, windows cleaned and new furniture installed.
Yet nothing had been stolen, even the food from the old fridge had been placed in the new one.
BISMARCK, N.D. – Among the thousands of people frantically flapping in the snow Saturday in an attempt to set the record for the most snow angels ever made were parents, children, even snowplow drivers.
And then there was Pauline Jaeger — who on her 99th birthday, was making her very first angel.
“It’s fun,” Jaeger said. “I feel just like a kid.”
Only in North Dakota
LONDON – As pastimes go it is in the same league as watching paint dry, with perhaps a frisson of extra excitement.
English firm West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers has turned a web camera on a rack of its maturing cheddar cheeses to give aficionados a chance to watch in real time the slow process of mould growth for a whole year and without having to leave home.
“It puts watching paint dry in the shade. If you happen to tune in at the right time you will even get to see them being turned,†a company spokeswoman told Reuters by telephone.
A Chinese zoo is looking for six volunteers to live in the monkey enclosure for five days.
Xi’an Qinling Wildlife Park, in Xi’an city, wants three men and three women, reports Sanqin City News.
Ren Feixiang, general manager of the zoo, said: “Their lives are going to be exactly the same as the monkeys and they also have to mimic some of the monkeys’ actions.
“They have to beg for food from tourists except for a small portion of food brought in by the zoo staff each day.”
A farmer whose cows produced pink milk after eating carrots got them to produce normal coloured milk by feeding them white carrots instead.
Peter Houguez from Jersey added carrots to the cows’ diet of grass and hay.
After the milk turned pink Mr Houguez contacted his local vet who told him to feed them white carrots, imported from France.
According to the Metro, Mr Houguez said: “The cows go mad for carrots. White carrots taste just same as orange so the problem was solved.”
ONTARIO, N.Y. – It’s not your typical church breakfast. An event billed as “Porn and Pancakes” is being hosted by a church in rural upstate New York.
The breakfast discussion on the pornography industry in America is planned next month at the Living Word Assembly of God Church in the town of Ontario, about ten miles east of Rochester.
A billboard advertisement near the church shows the words “Porn and Pancakes” written in syrup on a stack of flapjacks.
Organizers told a Rochester TV station that the event on February 10th will be an honest discussion about pornography and its impact on society.
BEIJING – Hundreds of chickens have been found dead in eastern China — and a court has ruled that the cause of death was the screaming of a 4-year-old boy who in turn had been scared by a barking dog, state media reported Wednesday.
The bizarre sequence events began when the boy arrived at a village home in the eastern province of Jiangsu in the summer with his father who was delivering bottles of gas, the Nanjing Morning Post reported.
A villager was quoted as saying the little boy bent over the henhouse window, screaming for a long time, after being scared by the dog.
Maybe he’s a witch
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AP) — A burger battle is brewing between a Texas state legislator and the owners of a restaurant who claim the hamburger was invented in New Haven, Connecticut.
With the new session of the Texas legislature now under way, Republican State Rep. Betty Brown has proposed a resolution declaring Athens, Texas, the original home of the hamburger.
Brown, an Athens resident, says that a long-ago resident of the town had a luncheonette in the late 1880s and sold the first burgers there.
Those claims are not sitting well with Ken Lassen Sr., 89, the third-generation owner of New Haven eatery Louis’ Lunch, established in 1895. He says his grandfather came up with the first hamburger there.
NEW YORK – A new hand gel is starting to appear on drug-store shelves promising more than just an end to germs or dry skin — this one claims to satisfy users’ tobacco cravings for up to four hours.
Walgreen Co. , the largest U.S. drugstore chain by sales, is now stocking its more than 5,500 stores with packets of Nicogel, a quick-evaporating gel made with tobacco extracts. The roll-out should be finished within a couple weeks, said company spokeswoman Carol Hively in an e-mail, adding that it costs $5.99 for box of 10 doses.
Nicogel, made by a unit of privately held Blue Whale Worldwide Inc., can be used when smoking is inconvenient, such as at work, on an airplane, in a theater or, these days, in almost any other public place.
WAUSAU, Wisconsin (AP) — Who is that mysterious, elegant man? And why is he sitting on a dead horse?
Such are the questions sparked by a black-and-white photograph taken in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, between 1876 and 1884 that has led to nationwide curiosity, speculation and jokes.
It’s a picture of a mustachioed man in a suit and top hat who sits rakishly on the side of an expired horse in the middle of a dusty, deserted street.
The picture was included in a newspaper’s 2007 calendar and the response from readers prompted news articles. From there, it took off on the Internet.
GAMBAGA, Ghana, Jan 1 (Reuters Life!) – Mariama Alidu was cast out as a witch from her village by her own family, yet she swears she has never cast a spell.
The mere suspicion of witchcraft was enough to see her and 80 other suspected witches expelled to a scruffy camp of mud huts on the fringes of the town of Gambaga in northern Ghana.
“It is the work of the devil. I can’t say I have ever practiced it myself,” says Mariama, who has lived in the camp for about 10 years.
Hundreds more women accused of witchcraft live in similar camps in the cocoa- and gold-producing West African country.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Thieves broke into a busy Johannesburg police station, helped themselves to liquor and started a fire in the commissioner’s office, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
Beeld said not even the electronic security doors in front of Commissioner Simon Mpembe’s office in Johannesburg central police station could stop the burglars from lifting his “treasured golden teaspoons.”
Aside from starting a fire on Mpembe’s wooden floor, they also took sweets from his secretary’s office and two cellphones were stolen, the newspaper said.
Ashes thought to be those of Joan of Arc may belong to a cat.
The ashes were discovered in 1867 and have been at a musuem in Chinon, western France.
Joan of Arc prevented a British invasion, before being burnt at the stake as a witch by the English in 1431 at the age of 19.
Carbon-dating tests identified a cat’s femur and rib bone in the ashes.
A single featuring singing sheep is to be released for the second year in a row due to public demand.
The Baarmy Sheep’s version of Jingle Bells appeared on the Cumbria Tourism website last year and received thousands of downloads.
This year, the website has been inundated with requests for the song from around the world.
A Cumbria Tourism spokesman told the BBC: “We really had no intention of releasing this single again and the plan had been to quietly retire the Baarmy Sheep for good.
More than a hundred Elvises have taken part in a sponsored “walk” on a plane.
The Elvises have also broke the world record for the largest number of Elvis impersonators gathered in one place.
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. – A grandmother found with a trunkful of marijuana was convicted of drug running in what prosecutors said was an attempt to earn cash for a bingo habit.
State troopers found 10 bundles of pot totaling 214 pounds hidden in Leticia Villareal Garcia’s car trunk last year when they stopped her outside Bisbee, in far southeastern Arizona.
Villareal, 61, told jurors before they convicted her Thursday that her only regular income was a $275 monthly welfare check, but she frequently played bingo and occasionally won thousands of dollars.
