Monthly Archives: November 2008

Bargain hunting – American style

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Black Friday is said to be a big sales day after Thanksgiving in America.

In Valley Stream, New York, shoppers were so desperate to get some of those bargains, that a worker at the Walmart store there was crushed to death.   A police statement said shortly after the store’s 5am opening time, shoppers "physically broke down the doors, knocking (the worker) to the ground".  A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital for observation, and she and the unborn baby were both reported to be OK, said Sgt. Anthony Repalone, a Nassau County police spokesman. Four or five other people suffered minor injuries, he said.

Apparently even as paramedics were trying to save the worker, shoppers continued to stream past them to get to the bargains.

To be fair, this sort of thing isn’t just an American thing.  We have the post Christmas sales here and it gets a bit wild at opening time then.  It was probably just a matter of time before someone was seriously injured or killed.

But the other shopping adventure is one that is classically American, because that is the only place in the world that is crazy enough to allow citizens to carry guns as they go about their daily business.

This happened in Palm Desert, California.  Two women got into a fight.  One woman suddenly started punching the other woman, who fought back as blood flowed from her nose.  The man who was with the woman being punched pulled a gun out, and in response so did the man with the other woman.  After a bit of a chase around the store (Toys’R’Us, by the way, so this would have all happened in front of families with children), the two men ended up shooting each other dead.

Initial suspicions by authorities are that these shootings were not over a disputed toy, but there was a pre-existing dispute between those involved.

Only in America!

 

Amazing research finding – university students drink

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Researchers at the University of Canberra today have presented findings about students’ drinking behaviour at the university.  They have found 86 per cent of students are drinkers and almost half of them drink at harmful levels. 

The most common negative effects of alcohol use reported were:

  • vomiting,
  • embarrassing behaviour
  • memory loss.

Well. duh, students drink, and get pissed.  I wonder how much they spent on the research to establish this fact.

 

Fat Class

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A court in Canada has upheld a decision that requires airlines to make additional seats free to disabled or obese passengers who need extra room.  Under the ruling, airlines cannot charge extra for an obese person who needs an additional seat or a disabled person who needs space for a wheelchair or stretcher or who must be accompanied by an attendant.

The Canadian Transportation Agency estimated the cost to Air Canada at about $7 million Canadian (A$8.7 million) a year.

I have no problem with the requirement for disabled travellers.  There are people whose disabilities require them to need extra space.  Fair enough.  (Although one might argue its not the airlines’ place to pay for this, and that they should pay full fares with government subsidies to compensate for the additional costs).

But WTF with obese people?  That’s a lifestyle choice, and if you get to the point where your arse is so wide that you need 2 seats, I really fail to see why anyone except yourself should be paying for it.  Mind you, as a matter of practicality I could see why it could be in an airlines’ interests to allocate 2 seats to a really fat person …. ie to avoid complaints from the passengers who have to get squeezed into seats next to them (is there much worse on a plane than having the person next to you overflowing into your seat – I mean its a tight enough squeeze as it is).  And I say this as not exactly a lightweight myself – but still way off needing a spare seat to fit my arse into.  So my message to the Canadians on this is get real and tell these fat people to get their acts together, eat better and do more exercise,  so they don’t actually need 2 seats – and don’t expect others to pay for their lifestyle choices.

 

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Taxpayers fucked once again

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Former Tasmanian government minister Paula Wriedt had an affair with her chauffeur Ben Chaffey.  When it went bad, he went off work and claimed damages from the Tasmanian government, claiming his employment as a driver became untenable.  His lawyers were angling for damages of up to $150,000, and threatened to pursue a workers compensation or sexual harassment claim in court if a settlement was not reached.  Mr Chaffey claimed to have suffered psychological, psychiatric and mental illness and a depressed and anxious mood as a result of the ordeal.

paulaben Ms Wriedt took more drastic action when news of the affair with Mr Chaffey, and the legal claim, became public knowledge in August.  She attempted suicide.

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Premier David Bartlett released a deed by which Mr Chaffey agrees not to make any further claim on taxpayers but receives $40,000, as well as $15,000 for legal costs. Mr Chaffey, married with children, will take a $20,000 pay cut to shift to a different job testing government drivers, and Mr Bartlett said the $40,000 essentially covered a reduction in earnings for two years.

Ms Wriedt, who is also suffering depression, remains on sick leave.  She was sacked from the ministry but remains in Parliament.

Mr Bartlett denied the payout was designed to avoid an ongoing scandal.   Right, sure, as if anyone but him actually believes that.

The big question I have about this whole thing is why the taxpayer is picking up the tab for the damages suffered by Mr Chaffey as a result of his and Ms Wriedt’s actions.  Surely his action is against her.  The government should countersue her for any damages paid out to him.

Not only that, but both of them should get fired for fucking around on the job …. no doubt some of their trysts were on the company’s (government’s) time.

Just wasting their breath

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A radio advertising campaign is starting this week in New South Wales to educate people not to call an ambulance for such crises as:

  • broken fingernails
  • dropped pillows
  • pizza cravings

The State Government and the Ambulance Service of NSW want to stop people who abuse triple-0 by feigning a medical emergency to get some domestic help. Paramedics are reporting increasing instances of callers faking symptoms so they can be taken by ambulance to hospital, only to skip off to the nearest shopping centre after enjoying a free ride. More people are trying to use the service when they have minor ailments, hoping that by arriving at hospital by ambulance they will receive faster treatment.

About 22,000 out of a million calls each year are for non-emergencies.  One caller requested an ambulance because he was too tired to pick up a pillow that had fallen from his bed. Another wanted help from officers because he couldn’t get to sleep. A broken fingernail prompted another emergency call.

I reckon this campaign is just a waste of time and money. Clearly those people abusing ambulance services for trivial reasons are either too stupid, or just don’t give a rat’s arse about wasting the time and resources of emergency services, so any attempt to either educate them or appeal to their sense of community or common sense is going to sail right over their heads.

More effective would be slugging these idiots for $1,000 bill for wasting the ambulance’s time.  Expensive pizza/fingernail, whatever …. might sink into their thick skulls.

Even more effective, maybe if they call and don’t have a medical crisis, they get given one.  Break their leg, beat them around the head with a bit of 4 x 2, that sort of thing.

 

Marriage broken, not the iphone

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Nice try, but fail!

A woman in America discovered a photo of her husband attached to an email sent to another woman on his iphone.

The content of the photo, in the wife’s words:

“It was a close-up shot of him pleasuring himself taken at the exact moment of maximum pleasure … It’s such a good shot that one must wonder if he actually practiced it a few times before getting it right,”

Pure gold!!!

When she confronted her husband, he admitted taking the photo, but denied sending it to anyone.

“He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent.”

Not trusting him on this, correctly it is obvious, she went onto Apple’s discussion board to find out whether this excuse was plausible.  Most responses stated that the bug her husband claimed was not possible, although a couple of posts did support his claims.

In the end, she thanked the board for their help, noting that “let’s just say that my atty is working on the divorce complaint.”.  She did not post her husband’s photo on the web – she should if you ask me, to embarrass the shit out of him.

I just love the description of the photo …. imagine the co-ordination required to take such a picture.  As she says, its got to have taken quite a bit of practice.  In terms of wankery, its right up there with the efforts of the guy in the Northern Territory who filmed himself masturbating while driving along the highway at 150 km/h.

Wasilla Hillbillies

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I just loved this description of defeated US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s reported $150,000 clothes shopping expedition:

 "Wasilla hillbillies looting (department store) Neiman Marcus from coast to coast"

This reportedly comes as aides of unsuccessful presidential candidate John McCain’s aides dump some dirt on Palin.  Among the gems to have been leaked, one aide estimated Ms Palin had spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $US150,000, and that $US20,000 to $US40,000 was spent buying clothes for her husband, snowmobile racer Todd Palin.  Another is that two of Senator McCain’s senior advisers went to brief Ms Palin in her hotel room. It said "after a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel with another on her wet hair" and told them to chat to her husband while she got ready.

McCain’s aides also claim that Senator McCain rarely spoke to Ms Palin during the campaign, and his advisers deliberately kept him in the dark about the Alaskan Governor’s shopping sprees for fear of upsetting him.  His advisers have previously accused Ms Palin of going "rogue" and acting like a "diva". One aide described her as a "whack job".

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But the best of the claims by McCain’s aides are about her thickness.  For example that she thought Africa was a country rather than a continent (how does one graduate high school lacking this sort of basic knowledge of the world, let alone become a state governor and potential vice-president/president?).   And this, from the completely unbiased Fox News:

Well I wish I could have told you more at the time but all of it was put off the record until after the election. There was great concern in the McCain campaign that Sarah Palin lacked the degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, and a heartbeat away from the presidency. We are told by folks that she didn’t know what countries that were in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement–that being the Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. We’re told that she didn’t understand that Africa was a continent rather than a … country just in itself. A whole host of questions that caused serious problems about her knowledgeability. She got very angry at staff, thought that she was mishandled, was particularly angry about the way the Katie Couric interview went. She didn’t accept preparation for that interview when the aides say that that was part of the problem. And that there were times that she was hard to control emotionally. There’s talk of temper tantrums at bad news clippings …

Palin has denounced the anonymous criticisms leveled at her as lies, and “out of context”, and “cowardly”.  She said she found it frustrating trying to respond to false allegations when she didn’t know who was making them.  She also said:

"That’s cruel. It’s mean-spirited. It’s immature. It’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news. It’s not fair and it’s not right."

Happy campers then, McCain’s people think Palin is a “whack job” and she calls them “jerks”.