Tag: sermon illustrations

How to know if you’ve had too much to drink

If you start trying to give long dead animals mouth to mouth resuscitation it’s probably time to give up drinking.

Hopefully this guy in America learned his lesson.

Pennsylvania police have charged a man with public drunkenness after reports that he tried to resuscitate a long-dead opossum on a highway…

State police said several witnesses had seen Donald Wolfe, 55, tending to the roadkill about 65 miles (105 km) north-east of the city of Pittsburgh.

One reported seeing Mr Wolfe kneeling before the animal and gesturing as though he were conducting a seance.

Another reported seeing him give mouth to mouth resuscitation to the carcass.

State police Trooper Jamie Levier said the animal had been dead a while, the Associated Press news agency reports.

October 2, 2010

May the best man win…

It’s the stuff B-Grade Hollywood comedies are made of… a comedian frustrated with the political candidates put forward by major parties starts his own protest party. And then wins. Only, it actually happened. In Iceland. In (if you get the Trivial Pursuit question) the northernmost national capital in the world. Reykjavik. Iceland.

“Last month, in the depressed aftermath of the country’s financial collapse, the Best Party emerged as the biggest winner in Reykjavik’s elections, with 34.7 percent of the vote, and Mr. Gnarr — who also promised a classroom of kindergartners he would build a Disneyland at the airport — is now the fourth mayor in four years of a city that is home to more than a third of the island’s 320,000 people.”

“Mr. Gnarr took office last week, hoping to serve out a full, four-year term, and the new government granted free admission to swimming pools for everyone under 18. Its plans include turning Reykjavik, with its plentiful supply of geothermal energy, into a hub for electric cars.”

Here’s the full story.

July 4, 2010

They’re not the Messiah…

Throw three delusional patients of a mental institution together in a locked room and conversation is likely to be awkward. But if you put three with the same delusion in a room it’s a recipe for trouble. Even if a three of them think they’re the messiah… But when you put a psychologist who has a bit of a god complex in the mix bizarre things happen. Here’s the story of the story of “The Three Christs of Ypsilanti”…

“Frustrated by psychology’s focus on what he considered to be peripheral beliefs, like political opinions and social attitudes, Rokeach wanted to probe the limits of identity. He had been intrigued by stories of Secret Service agents who felt they had lost contact with their original identities, and wondered if a man’s sense of self might be challenged in a controlled setting. Unusually for a psychologist, he found his answer in the Bible. There is only one Son of God, says the good book, so anyone who believed himself to be Jesus would suffer a psychological affront by the very existence of another like him. This was the revelation that led Rokeach to orchestrate his meeting of the Messiahs and document their encounter in the extraordinary (and out-of-print) book from 1964, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti…

very little seems to shift the identities of the self-appointed Messiahs. They debate, argue, at one point come to blows, but show few signs that their beliefs have become any less intense. Only Leon seems to waver, eventually asking to be addressed as “Dr Righteous Idealed Dung” instead of his previous moniker of “Dr Domino dominorum et Rex rexarum, Simplis Christianus Puer Mentalis Doctor, reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.” Rokeach interprets this more as an attempt to avoid conflict than a reflection of any genuine identity change. The Christs explain one another’s claims to divinity in predictably idiosyncratic ways: Clyde, an elderly gentleman, declares that his companions are, in fact, dead, and that it is the “machines” inside them that produce their false claims, while the other two explain the contradiction by noting that their companions are “crazy” or “duped” or that they don’t really mean what they say.”

June 19, 2010

Oh, poo bubbles

No, that’s not some bizarre new inoffensive curse… or at least that’s not my intention. Check this out…

Mr. Goltstein, 43 years old, had moved his wife and their three children from the Netherlands to Winchester, population 4,600, about 90 miles east of Indianapolis. They planned to build a dairy farm with 1,650 cows on 180 acres.

He had installed a black plastic liner to keep the manure from seeping into the ground during the flush days of the dairy business, when prices and demand were growing.

The plastic liner has since detached from the floor of the stinky, open-air pool, and Mr. Goltstein says he can’t afford to repair the liner properly. But he says he’s game to pop the bubbles before the manure pool overflows and causes an even bigger stink.

His neighbors aren’t happy with the plan.

“If that thing back there blows, God help us all for miles,” said Allen Hutchison, whose corn and soybean farm is next door. He and other neighbors worry that puncturing the bubbles could cause an explosion of manure and toxic gases.

Hilarious.

March 29, 2010

2m40 – a bridge not even WD40 can help with

This is possibly the funniest “name and shame” blog in the world. An overpass in France has an advertised clearance of two metres and forty centimetres. And you know what. The sign means it. Only truck drivers either can’t read or don’t pay any attention. So 2m40 takes photos when they stuff up – and posts them to the web…


March 26, 2010

Long overdue

A man in America recently returned a book almost 100 years after the due date. What book could possibly have been worth keeping out for that long you ask…

“Facts I Ought to Know about the Government of My Country” by William H. Bartlett”

And what about the overdue fees on a book like this? Just $360, and they waived it.

Stanley Dudek returned the book, “Facts I Ought to Know about the Government of My Country” by William H. Bartlett, which was due on May 2, 1910. Dudek said he had found the book in his mother’s possessions after she died in 1998 and didn’t realize it was a library book until last year.

“I didn’t feel I should keep it any longer. It belongs to the people and city of New Bedford, the government. felt it was my duty to get it back to the library,” he said.

Fortunately for Dudek, the fine on the book — about $360, he said, or a penny for each day overdue, which was the charge way back when — was waived.

March 9, 2010

Cool stories from the news

I have starred a bunch of news stories in the last few weeks that were cool but probably not quite worthy of individual posts (in my opinion) in order to clear my queue a bit I’ll post them all at once.

The Brazillian Soccer Heist

Have you seen any bank robbery movies where the robbers tunnel their way into the vault from a vacant neighbouring building? These thieves had. If I was a bank I would be buying up neighbouring businesses and being very careful about who I rented them out to.

Thieves in Brazil have stolen more than $6m (£3.7m) from a cash delivery firm, taking advantage of the nation’s passion for football, police say.

Police believe the thieves – who had dug a tunnel into the firm’s building – struck when season-ending matches were played in Sao Paulo on Sunday.

A security guard later told local media he had heard a loud noise but thought it was fireworks lit by fans.

Farmer plants land mines to thwart potato thieves
Only in Russia is it better to maim small children than have your potatos stolen. How else will you make the vodka that keeps you warm in those long winter months.

A Russian farmer has been convicted of planting landmines around his field to ward off trespassers.

Alexander Skopintsev, from the eastern region of Primorye near China’s border, laid the three devices on his land after building them in his garage.

The 73-year-old had apparently been concerned about the frequent theft of potatoes from his farm.

Ex Power Ranger challenges JCVD to MMA fight
That headline was just fun to write. Did you ever watch the “celebrity deathmatch” claymotion series? It was pretty dumb. It pitted sometimes obscure celebs against each other in wrestling matches that resulted in the untimely deaths of one or both of the clay figurines. This little incident is a bad case of life imitating art. It’s B grade meets D grade in a battle for martial art mediocrity.

The guy issuing the challenge is former White Ranger Jason David Frank, who tells TMZ, he’s had it out for Van Damme ever since 1995 when the Muscles from Brussels — who had been Frank’s childhood hero — allegedly blew him off during the premiere of “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.”

As TMZ previously reported, Frank is now a scary-looking MMA fighter who has a fight next weekend in the Octagon — and Van Damme is reportedly looking to make his own pro fighting debut … so the timing couldn’t be better for Frank to settle the score.



Tattoo artist father wants to create a tattoo using his son’s ashes as ink

Creepy? Macarbe? Heartwarming? I can’t decide. A UK tattoo artist plans to turn his son’s ashes into tattoo ink so that he can recreate a photo of his son as a tattoo both for himself, and his wife.

A father from Herefordshire is to have a portrait of his dead son tattooed on his chest using the child’s ashes.

Mark Richmond, 39, and his wife Lisa, 31, said they wanted to do something as a lasting tribute to their son Ayden.
…
The couple, who own a tattoo parlour in Greater Manchester, plan to mix some of Ayden’s ashes in the ink for a 7in black and white portrait of him.

February 19, 2010

Identikit Fail

The FBI is clearly under resourced. This is funny.

The SMH Reports (this longish excerpt):

The FBI has admitted it used a photograph of a bearded Spanish politician as the basis for a mocked photofit of Osama bin Laden, to show how the terrorist leader might look now.

The US State Department was forced to withdraw the image, which was circulated around the world last week, after the discovery that it was not quite as technically sophisticated as the FBI had claimed.

The image of an older and greying bin Laden was meant to show how he might look without his turban and long beard. It appeared on a State Department website, rewardsforjustice.net, where a reward of up to $US25 million ($26.85 million) is offered for bin Laden, wanted over the September 11, 2001, attacks and the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. The FBI said the photo of bin Laden would be removed from the website.

It created a stir in Madrid when a Spanish MP recognised strong elements of himself in the image and complained to the US.

Gaspar Llamazares, a member of Spain’s Communist Party, said his forehead, hair and jawline had been ”cut and pasted” from an old campaign photograph.

The FBI claimed to have used ”cutting edge” technology to reproduce new images of 18 of the most wanted terrorist suspects. But on Saturday a spokesman for the FBI, Ken Hoffman, admitted that a technician ”was not satisfied” with the hair features offered by the FBI’s software and instead used part of a photo of Mr Llamazares that he found on the internet.

Photo shock ... the FBI said it used ‘‘cutting edge’’ technology to update its composite image of Osama bin Laden, left. But it turned out to be little more than cutting and pasting features of a Spanish politician, Gaspar Llamazares, right.

January 18, 2010

On guard

A former Guantanamo Bay guard, Brandon Neely, joined Facebook and on a whim searched for some of the released detainees, leading to a remarkable exchange between them that is now the subject of a BBC doco. Pretty cool.

Mr Neely was 22 when he worked at the camp and left after six months to serve in Iraq. But after quitting the military his doubts about Guantanamo began to crystallise. This led to a spontaneous decision last year to reach out to his former prisoners.

“I was pretty new to Facebook and decided to type in their names to see if their profiles popped up and I came across Shafiq’s Facebook page. I decided to send him a little e-mail,” says Mr Neely.

You can read/watch what happened here.

January 16, 2010

A deadly game of cat and mouse

Life has a funny habit of imitating art. For years cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Itchy and Scratchy had rodents winning over felines with unrealistic frequency and methodology. But it hasn’t been like that in the real world. Until now.

Mice may be responsible for a blaze that killed nearly 100 cats at an animal shelter near the Canadian city of Toronto, officials say.

There’s more than one way to cook a cat…

January 1, 2010

If you go out in the woods today…

Don’t wear a disguise. Despite what the nursery rhymes tell you this is actually likely to get you shot by hunters. Apparently.

A Greek man camouflaging himself in a goat skin while hunting for Christmas dinner was shot, and killed, by another party out hunting for their own Christmas goat.

Talk about being a scapegoat…

Police said members of a shooting party made up of families opened fire when Christos Constantinou, 49, moved through the undergrowth.

They are thought to have been confused by the fact the victim was disguised in dark goat skins, which are used to camouflage and to mislead their prey.

January 1, 2010

Raising dough

If you’re here for a post on breadmaking you’re in the wrong place. Robyn might do that later. The only thing I use a breadmaker for is roasting coffee… which tangentially leads into the point of this post.

Today is Robyn’s last day of teaching. Next month I’m giving up my job. We’re going to be poor uni students again which means stepping out of DINK time (double income no kids) into the great unknown of government supported poverty. We’re trying to come up with ways to earn money on the side. I am seriously investigating the possibility of upgrading my roasting capacity and flogging of roasted coffee to friends in Brisbane – if you’re interested in cheap, but quality, coffee beans – let me know.

Anyway, I’ve just read a couple of stories that had great ways to save (or make) money that I thought I’d share with you.

Frequent Flier programs are pretty much a license to print money for some US residents. They’ve cottoned on to this great scheme in courtesy of the Federal Mint. Now, this won’t work in Australia – I bought a $1 coin at our Mint for $2 when I was a young lad… I’m not sure what they cost now…

Here’s the scheme that has been cooked up in the states…

At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off.

Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit.

Brilliant.

BoingBoing reports on a guy who makes $45,000 a year cashing in discarded betting slips that are actually winners.

Mr. Leonardo, who is married with two teenagers, is hardly living on the fringes. He said that stooping brings him $100 to $300 a day, and more than $45,000 a year. Last month, he cashed in a winning ticket from bets made on races at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., for $8,040. His largest purse came in 2006, when he received $9,500 from a Pick 4 wager (choosing the winners of four consecutive races) at Retama Park Race Track in Selma, Tex.

Got any cool money making schemes for Bible College students? Share them in the comments…

December 9, 2009

Rags to Riches

Any bets on how much the movie rights to this story will go for?

“Two penniless brothers who live in a cave outside Budapest are to inherit most of a reported £4 billion ($7 billion) after an astonishing twist in their family fortunes.”

These guys also know that despite what the Beatles say – money can buy you love (unless you’re Paul McCartney who knows only too well that it can’t…).

“If this all works out it will certainly make up for the life we have had until now – all we really had was each other – no women would look at us living in a cave.”

December 3, 2009

Bear fail

I love a good bear mauling story. Like Elisha and the rude youths.

This one is pretty awesome (except for the part where people die – but they were terrorists). A bunch of militants in India were hiding out in a cave.

The militants had made their hideout in a cave which was actually the bear’s den, said police officer Farooq Ahmed.

The dead have been identified as Mohammad Amin alias Qaiser, and Bashir Ahmed alias Saifullah.

News of the attack emerged when their injured comrade went to a nearby village for treatment.

November 10, 2009

Don’t push the red button

Rule number one in the joy flight manual should be “don’t touch the controls”.

Let this guy’s mistake be a lesson for all of us…

“The man, a civilian joyriding with his air force pilot friend, accidentally grabbed the eject lever while trying to brace himself.

He was instantly fired through the aircraft’s perspex canopy and blasted 320ft (100m) into the sky by the rocket-powered chair.

He then floated down to the ground with a parachute that opened automatically.

Experts said he was lucky to escape unharmed from the bizarre accident last week in South Africa.

Air Force bosses scrambled a helicopter to pick him up after the blunder near Langebaanweg airfield, 80 miles north of Cape Town.

The yellow-and-black eject levers are fitted as standard in the jets to allow pilots and their passengers to escape in the event of an emergency. It only needs to be pulled 2.5cm to activate two rockets attached to the chair.”

November 9, 2009