Baby names - NZ style

I sometimes have a laugh about bogan names people give to their kids. I don’t know what the New Zealand equivalent of bogans is, but there are people there who sure like to call their children all sort of weird shit.

One girl, who lives in New Plymouth on the west coast of the north island, is named “Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii”. Her parents have been ordered by a judge in the Family Court to change it. The court was told that the girl was so mortified by her name that she had not told any of her friends her real name.

The judge said he is appalled by the judgement of some parents in naming their children. He says in NZ there are children named Midnight Chardonnay, Number 16 Bus Shelter and Violence.

Wow, I have to wonder how much part hallucogenic chemicals played in these kids’ parents decisions.

Technorati Tags: New Zealand, child names, Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii

Darwin Award, anyone?

Another likely candidate for one.

An 18 year old man in his undies was playing “chicken” with cars on a Melbourne freeway on-ramp when he was hit by a van. He is critically ill in hospital.

Police say they are dismayed at the “utter stupidity” of the 18-year-old and say it was lucky nobody was killed.

Technorati Tags: Darwin Awards, stupid people

eeeeeewwwwww!!!!!!!

I’ve read about some pretty awful things but this must take the cake for grossness.

Police say three men (name and shame:Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke) , carrying shovels, a crowbar and a box of condoms, went to a cemetery in southwestern Wisconsin in 2006 to dig up the body of Laura Tennessen, 20, who had been killed the week before in a motorcycle crash.

Nicholas Grunke had seen an obituary photo of her and asked the others for help digging up her corpse so he could have sexual intercourse with it. Authorities say the men used shovels to reach her grave but were unable to pry open the vault. They fled when a car drove into the cemetery and were eventually arrested.

This has caused some legal wrangling in the state of Wisconsin, after the accused’s lawyers argued that the state’s laws did not outlaw necrophilia. In a 5-2 decision, the high court said Wisconsin law makes sex acts with dead people illegal because they are unable to give consent.

Probably the reason for the lack of specificity in the State’s laws was because no-one contemplated that there would be people sick enough to trawl the obits for suitable dead bodies to screw. This of course ignores one of the fundamental rules of humanity - you name it, someone gets off on it!

Just to be clear about my feelings on this ….. eeeewwwwwww, yuk!

Technorati Tags: Wisconsin, necrophilia, grave robbery, Nicholas Grunke, Alexander Grunke, Dustin Radke, sex with corpses

Woo hoo - I’m not a bogan (officially)!!!

Your result for The Bogan Test…

Paddington Poofter

You are 24% Bogan!

Take The Bogan Test at HelloQuizzy

Found this test via rah.

Did she or didn’t she?

I got around to watching the Schapelle Corby documentary that was on TV the other day - “Schapelle Corby: The Hidden Truth.” (I believe Ganja Queen was an alternative name of the program in some places it has been or will be shown. Can’t say it told me anything startling, although it did have its interesting bits.

It seems now that public opinion in Australia has turned significantly against Corby. A poll found that 53 per cent of people believe she is guilty while just 15 per cent say she is innocent. Almost a third of people remain unsure. This compares with something like 85% support for her innocence at the time of her trial.

I’ve always thought she was guilty. Her story is just so unconvincing in so many ways:

• magically, the marijuana bag just happens coincidentally to fit her bag perfectly
• magically, the baggage handlers in Australia happen to pick on her to smuggle marijuana, something thats never been reported before or since (and then why go to the trouble of smuggling it through airport security when you could stack a car boot full of it and have far less risk of detection moving the stuff interstate?)
• magically, the Indonesian customs officers decide they’ll fabricate their evidence about her evasive behaviour at Customs in Denpasar - oddly no reports of similar fabrications before or since
• it was always suss that the defence team relied on a PR campaign to win her sympathy, with no legally substantive defence offered at all.

And I could go on and on about the dodginess of her family. We were laughing at home that it was like watching a David Attenborough wildlife special on bogans. They are way beyond bogan!

Technorati Tags: Schapelle Corby

Conflict resolution - bogan style

A brawl happened on the weekend between parents watching an under-12 kids’ football game in Maroubra.

The mother of a 12-year-old boy allegedly called a “black c—” by an opposition trainer says she and her husband only reacted violently because the referee should have stopped the game. The woman, Vanessa, told 2GB radio this morning that she believed “any parent would have reacted that way”.

Vanessa said a trainer from Mascot abused her son when he tackled his son.

“Mascot had the ball and my son did a really really big hit on this kid,” Vanessa said.

“The trainer ran on the field and said ‘You’re nothing but a something something black something.”

She said her son told his father about the abuse after the game.

Now here comes the bit that is just pure gold. Vanessa said:

“My husband confronted the trainer. He denied it so my husband hit him. He hit my husband back. Then the Mascot coach’s wife hit my husband so I hit her,”.

Yep, thats the way to resolve conflict between parents, and set a good example for the kids.

Technorati Tags: football, brawling parents, Maroubra, racial abuse

Anger Management

Anger management has been quite topical in the news this week, due to an incident on the weekend involving Federal Labor politician Belinda Neal and her husband, NSW Education Minister, John Della Bosca (more of that later, but I’ll mention a couple of other angry people first).

A man in England was punched and knocked unconscious, and is now fighting for life in hospital, after being accused of queue-jumping in a supermarket. He was accused of jumping the queue by a woman, who then rang her boyfriend. When he arrived minutes later, the woman then allegedly pointed to the man, who the boyfriend then punched. According to a supermarket employee:

“He fell backwards and his head hit the ground. He just never got up. I didn’t see the punch but I saw the blood everywhere.”

Another man said:

“The victim was simply standing at the entrance to the shopfloor. He was hit once with a powerful punch and slumped to the floor.”

The injured man is not expected to survive. All because some stupid woman could not just chill out in the line, read a magazine and just wait a few minutes, and happened to have a violent thug for a boyfriend. Arseholes.

Then we had Sarah May Ward, who allegedly ran down Eli Westlake in Sydney last weekend, after an argument in a convenience store. It is alleged that the argument started over some cheese balls being thrown by Mr Westlake or his friends at Ms Ward’s car. The argument continued for about five minutes as Ward drove along Lithgow Street until she allegedly told her passenger: “I’ve had enough of these guys.” Ward allegedly drove the car once into Mr Westlake and her car collided with Mr Westlake’s leg and he was pushed to the side of the car. Security camera footage from a nearby bar allegedly shows Mr Westlake trying to walk away and Ward reversing the car out of the driveway on Lithgow Street. Shortly after, further footage shows Ward “deliberately driving the motor vehicle at the deceased and other witnesses, mounting the curb, crossing a grass nature strip and travelling over a small tree [before] striking Mr Westlake.

According to police:

“CCTV shows this to be a deliberate act by the accused with the vehicle accelerating towards the deceased and with no attempt to stop the vehicle prior to or after the collision.”

Ward was arrested and taken to Chatswood police station, where she was charged with murder, dangerous driving, driving without a licence and mid-range drink driving. Police alleged that Ward drank two bottles of wine, smoked two cones of marijuana, and took four five-milligram valium tablets and an ecstasy tablet during Friday, at a party at a friend’s house and at a bar in Chatswood (obviously just a quiet night out for her?). She has an extensive history of traffic offences, “including previous low and mid-range [drink driving] and unlicensed offences”, police said. She had also been prescribed dexamphetamine and valium tablets for depression. No doubt all this drug use will be trotted out when it comes time to defend the murder and other charges ….as I’ve said many times before drug or alcohol impairment should never be allowed to be accepted as a defence or mitigation to crimes - I believe if you render yourself senseless, you’re entitled to be fully responsible for your actions in that state …. don’t like that, don’t write yourself off with drugs or piss. Simple!

So because a 37 year old woman, who should have been mature enough to deal with it, but obviously wasn’t, due to being off her face on drugs on alcohol, was unable to control her temper, a young man is senselessly killed. Hope she ends up getting the maximum for murder, she deserves it.

Finally we have the angry Belinda Neal, who with her husband John Della Bosca last weekend, allegedly got into an argument with staff at Iguana’s restaurant in Gosford, Ms Neal apparently objected when their group was asked by staff to move to a different table, and during the argument things got heated and she threatened to have the place closed down, to get staff sacked etc. Eventually they left, which is another story as Della Bosca drove home, something which he had told NSW Parliament he wouldn’t be doing, as he had recently lost his license for speeding offences (technically he still has a license as the revocation process hasn’t been completed yet).

Then we got into a battle of duelling statutory declarations, with a number of Iguanas staff and managers setting out their version of events. Then suddenly the next day the management rescinded theirs and apologised to the 2 politicians, after a series of phone calls. What has also emerged is that Mr Della Bosca and Ms Neal had connections with Ray Awadullah, a part owner of the restaurant. (I can imagine what happened in the various phone calls leading up to the withdrawal of the statutory declarations and the apologies ….owner decides he doesn’t need grief from politicians, leans on managers and staff to pull their heads in, along with threats of legal action, ie “do you really want to press this, I’m going to sue the arse off you if you do?”). However, some of the staff members have stuck by their version of the events as has another witness. Meanwhile, Neal and Della Bosca’s group has provided their own statutory declarations, which are of course very different to the staff’s. Now police are reported to be investigating the possibility that false statutory declarations have been made, which is a reasonably serious crime. I’d be fairly safe betting this will end up going nowhere …. too much of a political hot potato for the police to handle, so they’ll find insufficient evidence to back a charge of making a false declaration (ie someone may have been wrong but they genuinely held the belief that what they said happened did in fact happen).

Anyway, given the choice between who to believe in this case, I know where I stand. So apparently does Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Deputy Julia Gillard, who have called Ms Neal to task over her behaviour. She has been told to undergo anger management counselling. (This last article linked to has plenty of dirt on Belinda Neal - its quite entertaining, and is consistent with stories I’ve heard from friends who live up that way). Many politicians are incredibly arrogant, and quite prepared to thrown their weight around to get their own way, but Ms Neal appears to be extremely aggressive even for a politician. (and its not only politicians, I’ve seen through work some of their hangers on get a very inflated sense of their own importance).

Wank

Parents getting business cards for their toddlers to hand out.

Growing numbers of parents are investing in business cards for their children. Parenting experts have dubbed the notion “preposterous”, believing it to be a classic example of obsessive parenting. Yep, sure is! Competitive parenting is a bit of a sport, with crap like this, the multi-thousand dollar birthday parties and the like. I find it all quite bizarre, but if mum and dad get off on this sort of wankery, I suppose its their money they are wasting. Still I wonder about the sort of values being instilled in the kids by these sorts of parents?

Just another Saturday night in the wild west

2 weddings in Sydney’s west turned nasty last night.

At one wedding in Liverpool, a guest who’d apparently gotten a bit rowdy was asked to leave and was being escorted out of the venue, pulled out a knife and slashed 3 other guests. One man, a 28-year-old, sustained a severe laceration to his stomach, while the other, 29, sustained a deep laceration to his left forearm. The woman, 27, sustained a stab wound to her stomach.

A few things leap out about this one. First, it was a 54 year old man who did the stabbing ….not a drunken youth. Old enough to know better - obviously not! Second, who carries a knife to a wedding (well actually who carries one anywhere in public …”just going out for the night, better arm myself ” is not a thought process I’ve ever had). Third, this happened at 7.45 pm. Bit early to be pissed and obnoxious - either he doesn’t hold grog at all well or got a very very early start - the obnoxious part is probably a permanent state for this dickhead of a guy. Fourth, he comes from Mt Druitt … oh, wait, nothing surprising there, its bogan central.

The second wedding was in Lidcombe, where 3 men were stabbed outside a reception hall. The trio were stabbed outside a wedding function centre after a fight between three guests - aged 18, 19, and 22 - and several other men. Violence erupted a short time later between 70 and 80 people who were concerned for the welfare of the injured men, police say. Police from Flemington Local Area Command attended the scene with assistance from PolAir, Dog Squad, and the Public Order Riot Squad, with additional police from Parramatta and Holroyd local area commands. Lidcombe resident David Bragg said there were about 20 police cars and a helicopter at the scene.

Police are still looking to witnesses for more information about this one, but a 19 year old man was arrested at the scene and charged with resisting police in the execution of their duty. Guess where he was from? Mt Druitt. Wonder if his old man was the one at the Liverpool wedding?

There was also a party in Smithfield. About 50 or 60 people were fighting when police arrived about 11.45pm. Police said they used capsicum spray to subdue several crowd members after bottles were thrown at officers and a police vehicle was damaged during the incident. 5 men were arrested.

Business as usual for the police in Sydney’s west. Drunken bogans on the rampage.

A question of priorities

Police pulled up a car near Alice Springs and found:

• one five year old boy not wearing a seatbelt
• one 30 can slab of beer, wearing a seatbelt.

The policeman who pulled the car over said the driver of the car “just looked at me blankly” when he was handed a $750 fine for driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle, and failing to ensure a child was wearing a seatbelt.

“There were four adults in the car, two in the front seat and two in the back seats and in between those adults there was the carton of beer strapped in with the belt,” he said.

“The child was sitting in the lump in the centre, unrestrained.”

“I asked him about the fact the child was unrestrained and the beer was, and he said he didn’t know anything about it.”

I’m not sure what is more disturbing ….that morons like this drive, or that they breed?