">My Big World Of Crap

Some devious perverts in the confectionary industry are polluting childrens’ minds with pornography on their lolly packaging.  Claims have been made that the fruit figures that appear on Haribo MAOAM sour candies are engaging in sex acts.

Simon Simpkins of West Yorkshire was buying the lollies for his children when he noticed the "pornographic" illustrations of limes, lemons and cherries romping with each other.  He said:

"The lemon and lime are locked in what appears to be a carnal encounter."
"The lime, whom I assume to be the gentleman in this coupling, has a particularly lurid expression on his face”

Mr Simpkins is obviously very easily upset, and his wife a delicate soul, as:

"I demanded to see the shop manager and, during a heated exchange, my wife became quite distressed and had to sit down in the car park."

I leave you to judge – porn or not?

I thought this was both ingenious and damn funny.  Residents of a street in the Sydney suburb of Beecroft were tired of hundreds of cars using their small street each morning during peak hour on a rat run to avoid clogged Beecroft Road.  So one day, a sign appeared, stating "no left turn" was permitted between the hours of 7.30am and 9.30am, expertly nailed into a power pole on the corner of Beecroft and Albert roads. 

It turns out the sign was a fake, erected without the knowledge of the RTA, which controls Beecroft Road, or Hornsby Shire Council, which has jurisdiction over Albert Road.  This didn’t stop the mayor of Hornsby Council turning up at the corner to accept congratulations for the new sign, which residents had been campaigning for for some time.  Nor did it stop police from enforcing what the sign said, and about 200 motorists were pinged over a three-month period, each of them fined $175.

It is unclear when the penny dropped or who first worked out the sign should not have been there.  The RTA says the Council approached it first.  Police urged all drivers fined for disobeying the sign to call the State Debt Recovery Office.

So there you go, don’t like something, and not getting action from the authorities – just take care of it yourself.  Even have your fake law enforced for you by those authorities.

Saw this guy selling bras and undies in the Namdaemun markets in Seoul.  He was doing a very brisk trade with the ladies.

Well done on winning the Ashes cricket series!  I had thought Australia winning the 4th test at Headingley convincingly and levelling the series 1-1 would be enough for us to retain them, but it was always going to be a struggle in this last game after Australia batted so poorly in the 1st innings.

While Australia on the statistics of the series had many more centuries scored than England, and had the most successful bowlers, England seemed to have grabbed the game turning moments when it mattered.  Australia failed to win at Cardiff, with the England tail hanging on and Australia’s bowlers being unable to take the one more wicket needed to win.  At the end of the day, that failure proved decisive.  England took their opportunities, Australia didn’t.

Now for the rematch in Australia in a couple of years time.  Hopefully England backs up this win with a better effort than last time they came here - where they were obliterated 5-0.

I’m on a plane most of today, heading for Seoul in Korea, where I’ll be working for the rest of the week.  I will have the weekend and Monday to do some sightseeing before I head home on Monday night next week.  I’ll even get out of Seoul for a day on the weekend, as I’m off to visit my niece and nephew, and their parents of course, who are a couple of hours train ride south of Seoul – thats on the KTX train which is the Korean version of the French TGV.

There’s definitely no shortage of stories about ugly parents carrying on like dickheads at their kids’ weekend sports, be it football, cricket, netball or whatever.  However, I’ve got to say that this one just about takes out the ugly championship for parenting.

This father:

• ASSAULTED one parent and threatened others;
• HAD to be paid thousands of dollars to quit one club;
• DEFIED a league order he not attend matches;
• LAUNCHED almost 100 legal actions against a junior coach; and
• FALSIFIED his son’s details so he could play in defiance of age regulations.

A source at one club said the foul-mouthed father took one junior coach to VCAT 97 times.  He first came to the attention of junior football authorities in 2005 when he presented false information about the age of one of his sons.  The next year, he went to another club where he allegedly threatened parents and officials before launching legal action.  The club’s insurers paid him money, on condition he leave. The man took his sons to a third club where he is alleged to have punched a parent at a junior football camp, resulting in serious charges which remain before a court.  In 2008, a fourth club allowed the boys to play on condition their father stay away. He was caught at a game soon after and forced to move his children to another league this season.

The man insists his boys win club awards and that they be played in prominent on-field positions.  According to one of those on the wrong end of this guy’s dickheadery, who gives him a great character assessment:

"He’s a nut,"

In other footy related fun:

• A 19-YEAR-OLD has been charged after a junior footy brawl that saw one youth hit with a mallet in Melbourne’s north yesterday.  This happened at an under-16s match between Tullamarine and Northern Saints.  A 16 year old is also expected to be charged over the fight by police.  Hands up, who thinks that its normal and reasonable to take a mallet to the footy?
•  death threats made to 2 under-10 football players in Tasmania
• a huge brawl involving about 100 youths after a rugby game in New Zealand between 2 of Auckland’s top rugby schools.

  

• a brawl at an under-12’s football match near Melbourne a few weeks ago involving players and parents, which led to teams being banned for a week and a plan devised to require parents to attend lessons on how to behave at junior sporting events before their children can be registered for the next season. What the fuck?  Lessons in how to behave like a normal person?  Maybe these fuckwits need to pass lessons in behaving like civilised human beings before being allowed to reproduce?

Isn’t kids sport fun?  Some parents should not be allowed to (a) breed, (b) failing that, be out in public.

For example, no-one will believe it if you win an election with 100% of the votes, even if you’re in North Korea and your name is Kim Jong-il.

But in Papua New Guinea, the election of Transport Minister, Don Polye, to his seat in the national parliament, with 100% of the votes, was successfully challenged by his opponent.   In PNG, where elections are often rigged and fixed, it’s common for the losing candidate to challenge the elected member through the courts. Alfred Manase took his opponent Polye to court on 35 ground of impropriety.

Judge Greg Lay on Friday ruled Polye was not duly elected due to errors and omissions by electoral officers and supporters during polling. One issue with the election win was that Polye received 100 per cent of the vote, he said.

"Applying common sense, logic and in my almost 65 years of life experience, I have concluded that this just does not happen,"

Judge Lay said.

100%. C’mon, thats just greedy and stupid.  Had Mr Polye gone for a more modest win, like 75% of the vote, and rigged his way to that, at least it would have been within the realms of credibility, much more difficult to challenge.  He should have remembered that you only need 50% + 1 of the votes to win an election.

Murder, that is!

In June last year a Cowra man murdered his wife and 2 grandchildren. He stabbed his wife and hit her on the back of the head with a hammer. When police interviewed him he described the hammer with pride, affectionately referring to it as ”Fred”. According to a report prepared by a psychiatrist, the man ”gave a gruesome account of first drowning the younger girl and then luring the boy to go to the toilet and hitting him over the back of the head with a hammer”.  He re-dressed his five-year-old granddaughter in her pyjamas and put her on the bed. He put the seven-year-old on the bunk next to his sister. He then drowned the family dog and put it under the children’s bed. He told police he was worried there would be no one left to look after it.  When his daughter, a police officer, arrived home from work, he tried to kill her with an axe. He told police he then planned to drive to Newcastle to kill his daughter’s estranged husband.

Less than a year earlier, his younger brother, in England, murdered his partner and 4 year old son.  James Conan, stabbed his partner Kirsty O’Connell in what the court heard was a ”hail of knife blows”. During the frenzied attack, Conan severed his 21-year-old girlfriend’s jugular vein. He then smoked a cigarette, played with their son Patrick, then took him to the bedroom, smothered him with a pillow and bathed him.  He then laid out his son in what the prosecutor said was a bizarre Viking-style ritual. He put a dagger next to the body, a torch in his hand and boots on his feet. He then surrounded the boy with toys ”arranged like treasures”.

Both brothers have been jailed for life for their crimes.  Their parents, had they still been alive, would have been so proud.  Or not.  When interviewed by police, Conan spoke of an appalling and unhappy childhood, in which the family moved from Ireland and eventually settled in a working-class area of Leeds. But his sister and two older brothers, including the Cowra murderer, spoke of an unremarkable childhood.

By the way, Conan wasn’t the younger brother’s real name – he changed his name to Conan, after his hero Conan the Barbarian. 

A new iPhone application lets you see restaurants and cafes in New South Wales that have been fined for breaches of food safety standards.

The application, FoodWatch NSW, brings the Food Authority’s name-and-shame list to your fingertips by using the iPhone’s GPS to show you a list of restaurants near your location that have been added to the list. 

The application is free from the Apple iPhone app store.

I can see enhancements that could already be made – for example, just add all McDonalds, KFC, Hungry Jacks, Dominos and the like, to give people a more complete list of bad food to avoid.

A Greek woman has shown the way.  At a nightclub in the Greek resort of Mallia, a drunken 20 year old English man was behaving like a dickhead, in particular by dropping his pants and waving his genitals at a number of women.  He then targeted the 26-year-old Greek woman, Marina Fanouraki "forcefully fondling" her and asking her to grab his genitals.  She asked him to piss off and leave her alone, but he didn’t.

So, she poured the alcoholic drink Sambucca over his penis and testicles.  That still didn’t stop him.  So she took a lighter and set fire to his genitals.

He received second-degree burns to his penis and testicles. He remains in a private medical clinic in Heraklion, the capital of Crete.  She is is defending charges of causing bodily injuries to him and endangering private property.  The magistrate and prosecutor agreed to set her free pending trial, indicating they accepted her argument that she acted in "justifiable self-defence".

She is being hailed as some sort of hero. A crowd gathered outside the police station where Miss Fanouraki was being questioned and there were cries of ‘Bravo, bravo’ when she was freed on bail. The incident has struck a chord with many people on the island (Crete) who are offended by the drunken behaviour of groups of British tourists.

Good on her I reckon!  Drunken yobbos deserve all they get. 

It seems that the problem of men looking at hard core pornography on the computers at the library continues up in Maroochydore, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.   After Alison Sheldon saw a man doing it, and complained to the local council about it, her husband  Dr Paul Sheldon presented a petition with over 3,000 signatures to the council, calling on them to install filtering software on the public access computers at the library.

Despite saying this:

"There have been a number of incidents where men have been asked to leave because staff have witnessed them masturbating in front of public computers,"

Councillor Anna Grosskreutz said no action had been taken since the issue was first raised by Dr Sheldon several months ago.  Dr Sheldon said when his wife complained to library staff about the man looking at pornography, she was told similar incidents happened "all the time" and it was "too difficult" to install filters.

Not only that but this is supposedly not an isolated instance, or a peculiarly Maroochydore behaviour, with Cr Grosskreutz saying this was an issue facing all council libraries, not just those on the Sunshine Coast.

I guess this latest update answers clearly the questions I posed in my earlier post on the subject.  Yes and yes, definitely.  Ewwwwww!!!!

Time for some questions of my readers – leave your answers in the comments.

1. Ever felt the urge to watch porn, whip the old fella out and whack off when you’re using the computers at the local library (or internet cafe, or any other public place with internet access)?
2. Are you aware of such masturbatory shenanigans going on at your local library?  I can’t say I’ve ever seen or heard anything re our library here, but they may just sweep it under the carpet (or mop it, undoubtedly more effective in this case than I’d expect a broom would be) and not say anything about it. (Optionally, please include the state/territory/country you’re from, and if you’re a Queenslander, if you are from the Sunshine Coast or nearby ….in the interests of research I am trying to establish if this is some sort of freakish Sunshine Coast thing, or Queensland generally, or maybe it just happens anywhere).

…. at the thought of the possibility of Michael Jackson winning the Nobel Peace Prize.   More than 15,000 people have signed an Internet petition calling for the recently deceased singer to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.  The petitioners’ target is 1,000,000 signatures.  According to the petition:

"Michael Jackson has undoubtedly earned the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize,"

and:

"We the Undersigned, believe Michael Jackson has given of himself completely and selflessly in a lifelong effort to help better global conditions for children, and all of humankind,"

As to the first point, I’d ask how and why?  By dropping dead?

As to the second point, fair enough, I’d agree he did some worthy things, but I think they are vastly overstating his contributions.  Never mind that he also did some things that did not exactly better conditions for some children he knew – unless you count millions of dollars in hush money as bettering a child’s conditions (then again that’s an interesting equation – millions as the price for keeping quiet about being molested – does it represent a net benefit to that child or not?)

However, old Alfred will be pleased to know its not going to happen.  Firstly, Nobel Prize rules stipulate that prizes cannot be awarded posthumously (great news for Elvis fans – he may still be eligible … if only they could figure out where he’s been hiding all these years?).  Second, nominations are only able to be made by certain eligible people, including members of parliament and government worldwide, university professors, previous laureates and members of several international institutes. (damn those elitists in their ivory towers!!!)