Posts filed under 'Bizarreness'
Channel Seven’s “The Morning Show” has just been renamed “Sitting On The Couch with Larry and Kylie” by Dorothy, one of Clinton Maynard’s callers on 2UE this morning. Apparently she watches it on Thursdays.
If this, and the callers Stuart Bocking had about an hour ago (one whinging about his licence and registration being suspended while he was overseas for five months, because he deliberately did not pay two parking fines before he went away, and the other caller who was going on about something to do with running out of fuel for his heater and some competition running on another radio station…although most of his words were merged with the next three words so I missed most of whatever he was talking about) are a sign of things to come, this could be a very amusing night.
Samuel
April 19th, 2008 at 12:33am
So, a green bag just walked half a metre across my bedroom, and a brown blob decided to peep over the shower curtain. I think this proves that I’m not getting enough sleep…it’s a pity that I can’t get enough sleep, because I really don’t want the ceiling to fly away during the night.
Samuel
March 31st, 2008 at 11:21pm
I could have been certain I misheard this story this morning:
We could see graphic warnings on alcohol bottles .. and a ban on under-age drinking at private parties .. under a national plan to curb binge-drinking.
Prime Minister KEVIN RUDD will ask state and federal leaders meeting in Adelaide on Wednesday .. to consider labels warning about the dangers of excessive drinking.
The graphic warnings I don’t really mind, but the “ban on under-age drinking at private parties” is the part I thought I misheard…did anybody stop to think, before issuing the press release, that it would be a ban on something which is already illegal. I would have thought the term “underage” would have been enough to work that out.
Samuel
March 24th, 2008 at 11:54am
It seems that Stephen has managed to convince himself that Weston Creek is the centre of Canberra, and spent a bit too much time coming up with a theory to prove it.
The theory seems to revolve around the ACT government selling a mis-spelled and possibly discounted and uninhabited version of Gungahlin to the New South Wales government. Based on the fact that Queanbeyan is on the diagram of “important parts of Canberra”, I assume that the theory involves the ACT government purchasing Queanbeyan and turning it in to a suburb of Canberra, possibly as a straight-swap for Gungahlin.
The article is well worth a read, for entertainment value if nothing else.
It reminds me of the endless stream of studies, surveys and theories that get released by various universities, seemingly for the sole purpose of making us all ask “who paid for that, and what substance did they inhale beforehand?”.
Samuel
March 18th, 2008 at 09:10am
I can’t find any logic for this one…(source)
BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) – The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.
In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that “all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.”
It added: “Offenders will be severely punished.”
The mayor said he was forced to take drastic action after an administrative court in the nearby town of Pau ruled in January that the acquisition of adjoining private land to extend the cemetery would not be justified.
Lalanne, who celebrated his 70th birthday on Wednesday and is standing for election to a seventh term in this month’s local elections, said he was sorry that there had not been a positive outcome to the dilemma.
“It may be a laughing matter for some, but not for me,” he said.
I suppose I can think of one explanation…actually no, I take that back…does anybody want to try and explain the thought process behind this mayor’s directive?
Samuel
March 8th, 2008 at 11:19pm
A bounce message from a Japanese mail server
This is the Postfix program at host mfgw215.ocn.ad.jp.
I’m sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.
For further assistance, please contact
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the message returned below.
The following sentences are Japanese.
このメールと共に返信されているメールは一つ以上の宛先に対
して配信できませんでした。
エラーメッセージの原因や対処法については下記のサイトで
ご案内しております。
http://www.ocn.ne.jp/0/faq/mail/errormail/
上記のサイトでも解決できない場合は、
へご連絡ください。
ご連絡の際には、この障害レポートを一緒にお送りください。
このメールに添付されているお客様の元のメールは削除しても
構いません。
Apart from the possibility that the person receiving the bounce message doesn’t have the Japanese character set installed and might see a string of gibberish in place of the Japanese characters (in which case they would have received all the information they needed from the English text) I can’t see any logical reason for including “The following sentences are Japanese.” in the message.
In case you’re wondering, Google’s automated translate and garble service believes that the Japanese text says:
Reply to this email with email has been the recipient of more than one pair
We were unable to deliver.
Error messages about the cause and deal with the following sites
Please show.
Http://www.ocn.ne.jp/0/faq/mail/errormail/
The site also does not solve the above case,
Please contact.
Please contact when the crash reports please send us together.
This provided in the e-mail your original email will also delete the
Fine.
Now, if they had written “The following text is intentionally nonsensical”, then I might have seen their point…at least it would rule out the possibility of a computer malfunction in favour of insane programmers.
Samuel
March 6th, 2008 at 04:21am
Prophet, over at Random Brainwave, posted the following quote about atheism last week.
The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.
Makes perfect sense.
Whilst I’m not sure that it’s quite a definition of atheism (I actually think it’s a definition of the “big bang theory”), it certainly could be a definition of an aspect of atheism as that usually implies a disbelief in the “intelligent design” theories. I personally think intelligent design is more likely, but I doubt that anybody will ever truly know (whilst they’re alive anyway).
Samuel
February 20th, 2008 at 01:21pm
When one wants a strange quote, it’s hard to beat Yoko Ono. The woman who has previously been quoted as saying that the way she composes songs is by “clearing her mind of thought” had her 75th birthday today. I can’t quite work out whether she said it last year, this year, or both, but according to Yoko all women are witches and all witches are magical beings.
What a weird world we live in.
Samuel
February 18th, 2008 at 08:02pm
How about informing people that federal treasurer Wayne Swan and housing minister Tanya Plibersek would be holding a press conference at 3:30pm?
One wonders if AAP were just watching Sky News, saw the press conference and decided that they better write something, anything, anything at all, about it.
Samuel
February 4th, 2008 at 04:32pm
China’s bureau of meteorology are under strict orders to make sure that it doesn’t rain on the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in August:
CHINESE weather boffins say they have stopped the rain from falling in experiments aimed at guaranteeing a dry opening ceremony at August’s Olympic Games.
With no roof on the showpiece Bird’s Nest stadium, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has been charged with developing methods of preventing wet weather spoiling what promises to be a spectacular start to the Games on the evening of August 8.
“Our experiments with rain mitigation have been aimed at light rain,” said Zhang Qian, head of weather manipulation at the bureau.
“With heavy rain it is more difficult. The results with light rain have been satisfactory.”
But if this is the best the weather manipulation people can do, then we’ll be lucky if a typhoon doesn’t hit the Olympics:
GUANGZHOU, China (AFP) — Millions of Chinese workers battled for a precious train ticket home Sunday as authorities flew in emergency supplies to areas stranded by the worst weather in 50 years.
Food and medical supplies were airlifted to the snowbound southwestern province of Guizhou and neighbouring Hunan where many people have been without power for more than a week, the official Xinhua news agency said.
[..]
The blizzards and icy temperatures that have lasted nearly three weeks now have stranded millions of people at airports, railway stations and bus depots in China’s south, central and eastern regions.
The weather has destroyed crops, hit industrial production, disrupted coal and food supplies and led to power blackouts, for a bill estimated at around 7.5 billion dollars, according to official figures.
At least 105 million out of the country’s 1.3 billion population have been affected and more than 60 have been killed, the government says.
Or perhaps it’s me that should be worried, the department of weather manipulation will probably unleash a cyclone on Canberra now that I’ve had a go at them.
Samuel
February 4th, 2008 at 10:11am
Perhaps I’m just easily amused at the moment, but I just discovered something laughable and of minimal use. There are people on this planet who put the latest weather forecast in the signature of their emails!
An email this morning had a summary of the Bureau of Meteorology’s 4:50am forecast for Melbourne, and an update on the dam levels in Melbourne. The person in question doesn’t work for the weather bureau or any water authority, and if they’re sane, I doubt that they send themselves emails constantly throughout the day.
I hope that the signature is automated, because I would hate to think that they’re manually copying this data in to each email…although I would then have to wonder why anybody would write a script to put such data in the signature of an email.
Does anybody want to explain this to me? Or do you find it peculiar as well?
Samuel
February 1st, 2008 at 01:01pm
It certainly didn’t happen on 2CC…must just be a Sydney thing.
I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when I read Frankster’s piece about Channel Ten playing the wrong episode of The Bold and The Beautiful (or “The Bored and the…oh never mind, where’s the remote?” as I like to call it) yesterday. It seems that at 4:30, Channel Ten started the Wednesday episode of the soap opera, and within moments talkback radio was flooded with callers whinging about it. I’m not sure if this was 2UE’s John Stanley or 2GB’s Phillip Clark, (with 702 ABC Sydney covering the cricket, it can’t have been them) but I’d like to think it was both, simply because of the hilarity factor.
According to Frankster, Ten switched to the correct episode within a few minutes, although there is no word on whether they started the episode at the beginning or a few minutes in.
Incidentally, speaking of hilarity, it would appear that 702 ABC Sydney’s webstream is running repeats of the overnight programming during the cricket. Today from 10am to 2pm it’s a repeat of Nightlife with Tony Delroy, and from 2pm to 6pm it’s a repeat of Overnights with Rod Quinn (the only ABC presenter I have ever spoken to on-air…and he was on 666 ABC Canberra in the afternoon at the time). Whilst the timecalls will work as it’s an exact twelve hour delay between the original broadcast and the replay, the “good evening” and “good morning” greetings and any current temperatures will not.
Would it be so hard to have a live national webstream program to fill the void on the local radio webstreams, or just turn the webstream off temporarily like the commercial stations do when they aren’t able to stream something for licensing reasons? Very very odd.
Samuel
January 25th, 2008 at 03:05pm
It almost sounds like a typical piece of spam…”Hello, my name is Jerome, I work for a French bank and I need your help to get $8 billion out of the country”. Well Jerome, if you want to send me a cheque…
It’s being called one of the biggest frauds in history. A junior employee of France’s second largest bank, The Societe General, has been accused of stealing about $8 billion dollars. Thirty-one year old Jerome Kerviel is the suspect, and he seems to have disappeared…or as news.com.au put it, “Mr Kerviel could not be reached for comment”.
The story is a tad confusing, with nobody, it seems, knowing whether Jerome profited personally from the debacle, or exactly how much he apparently defrauded the bank of. It would appear that Jerome has the authorities and the press chasing their tales.
One thing is for sure though, the all-powerful “they” that rule out lives say that money can’t buy you friends, and in the few hours after Jerome’s identity was revealed his list of friends on Facebook dropped from eleven to four. Could just be me, but I’m suspicious of the seven that un-befriended him, I mean that’s a billion dollars a piece if they’re all in it together.
As for me, I’m just waiting for the email from Jerome…
Samuel
January 25th, 2008 at 10:12am
Clive Robertson mentioned this story this morning and I completely forgot to mention it at the time as it is one of the funniest stories I’ve heard in a while.
From Reuters (click here for original article)
“Pet” girl kicked off bus for wearing leash
LONDON (Reuters) – A British bus company has apologized to a girl who is led around on a leash by her boyfriend and describes herself as a human pet after one of its drivers threw her off a bus.
Tasha Maltby, 19, told British newspapers she was the “pet” of her 25-year-old fiance Dani Graves.
Pictures showed her dressed in black Gothic-style clothing with silver buckles on a silver chain — which the driver of a bus from the firm Arriva took exception to.
She told the Daily Mail newspaper Wednesday she was thrown off and told: “We don’t let freaks and dogs like you on.”
Arriva would not comment on specifics but said it apologized if the couple felt they had been discriminated against. It added, however, that the driver was worried about safety and the company told Maltby to take the leash off in the future.
“We have spoken to the driver who has talked about health and safety,” a spokesman said. “Should she be attached to a chain and something happens on the bus, that could be dangerous. All we are saying is that she is very welcome to use the buses but not when she is on her lead.”
Maltby — who lives on state benefits and got engaged in November — said her choice of lifestyle might seem unusual but was harmless.
“I am a pet,” she told the Daily Mail. “I generally act animal-like and I lead a really easy life. I don’t cook or clean and I don’t go anywhere without Dani. It might seem strange but it makes us both happy. It’s my culture and my choice. It isn’t hurting anyone.”
(Editing by Michael Winfrey)
After hearing the self-description of the woman in question, I completely support the bus driver…and why is a self-confessed pet receiving government benefits? Nattie doesn’t receive anything from the government, I have to pay them to be allowed to keep her.
Samuel
January 24th, 2008 at 12:04pm
Back in 2005 ACTION Buses launched a new version of mathematics which seemed to revolve around the notion of more being less and vice versa. At the time they advised that 8:37pm was seven minutes earlier than 8:30pm.
This new version of mathematics hasn’t been widely adopted, however yesterday AAP trialled it in their 4:40pm weather forecast. Amongst the forecasts was “Canberra……………………………Showers increasing. 24 23”. The minimum temperature is higher than the maximum temperature, once again proving that less is more and vice versa.
Perhaps it is unfair of me to pick up on a silly little typo like this, but I found it amusing…I think Clive Robertson found it amusing whilst reading the weather this morning too.
Samuel
January 18th, 2008 at 09:27am
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