Goodbye, 2009

Well, that wasn't exactly a great year, was it? Well...

Happy New Year, Kim Jong Il!

What do you get for the delusional despot who has everything? Well, how about the destruction of an imaginary structure?

North Korea's New Year's wish of seeing the destruction of a massive concrete wall dividing the Korean peninsula never seems to come true -- mostly because there is no such barrier.

Mentioning the wall by the North has been an odd New Year tradition begun by state founder Kim Il-sung and kept alive by a fawning propaganda machine that dares not correct a person revered as a deity. Kim died 15 years ago and is considered the state's "eternal president."

The Korean peninsula is divided by a 4-km wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with razor wire fences on the North and South side, but with no huge, concrete barrier as claimed by the North.

But that did not stop North Korea's ruling party newspaper on Wednesday from coming out with its demand that the wall be demolished because "it runs diametrically counter to the desire and demand of the nation and the trend of the times."

In related news, a local demolition firm founded by a family of leprechauns, a unicorn, the Ghost of Christmas Past, several executives from companies involved in the development of herbal penis-enlargement remedies, and Sasquatch have provided Kim with "a very reasonable estimate" for work on the project.

I wouldn't have known just what to do

Apparently, calling Animal Control (which is probably what I would have done in a situation like this) is the wrong move:

A Georgia man said he knew just what to do when a wounded deer stumbled onto his property: He ran outside in boxers and flip-flops to kill it with a stick.

See, that probably wouldn't have occurred to me.

Joel Borden, whose friends gave him the nickname "Country" shortly after he moved to Clarksville from the considerably smaller town of Savannah, said the deer stumbled into his yard with a gunshot wound in its neck Saturday morning, Gannett Tennessee reported Tuesday.

Um, I have a feeling that his nickname comes from a little more than his small town roots.

911 is a joke

Well, it's not supposed to be a joke, but...

According to the Boston Herald, on December 26, 2009, an angry mom called the 911 dispatcher and asked to have police sent to her house to get her son to quit playing video games. She also told police he kept getting up turning on the lights.

In another odd 911 call, a Kerrville, Texas woman reportedly called 911 in December 2009 to complain that her husband refused to eat dinner. The Kerrville authorities have indicated that the same woman called 911 numerous times in the past months to tell them she could not find items of clothing and to complain about random things.

Meanwhile, various useful structures burned down and several kittens remained tragically stuck up in trees.

Have a Merry X-Mas!

Click for bigger. And be sure to be Merry.

The solution is obvious

If the squirrels are eating all of your Chrimmas lights but the red ones, why not just string up a bunch of red lights?

Gray squirrels gobbling up outdoor LED Christmas lights are confounding officials in the eastern Canadian city of Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Bruce McCormack, general manager of a business improvement group told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. this is the fourth year the rodents are feasting on the lights, although he says they're particular.

"They'll come out … and they go up and they perch themselves in that tree and they gnaw away at the lights -- but not the red ones," he said. "The squirrels, I think, are getting the better of us."

When the squirrels are getting the better of you, it's probably time to sit down and think seriously about where things went wrong. I mean, if the apes outsmart you, that's one thing, but squirrels?

Oh, wait. These are Canadians we're talking about...

The most wonderful time of the year

This year, it just got a little more wonderful, seeing as how, for the first time, I did 100% of my Christmas shopping online. I didn't go to a single store, I didn't wait for a even a minute in line, or have to jockey for a parking space.

I love you, Amazon Prime.

Since it's Friday night...

...and blah, blah, blah, here's Evangeline Lilly, about to fall off a chair:

Seriously, while you look really hot, it looks like you're about to break your tailbone.

I like a good grilled cheese sammich...

...just not quite this much:

Melt Bar & Grilled is running a promotion for customers willing to show their love of grilled cheese sandwiches.

The Detroit Avenue restaurant is offering a 25% discount to anyone who gets a grilled cheese sandwich tattoo. "We ask people to take our core logo and kinda change it around, make it something personal to them," said owner Matt Fish.

You'd think that for showing that level of commitment, you'd get something more than a measly 25% discount.

The tattoo promotion will continue indefinitely and the discounts are good for life.

Yeah, and it's not like restaurants ever close or anything. Then, for the rest of your life, you're explaining to everyone how you ended up with a tattoo of a sammich. And how, no, you weren't drunk at the time.

Not-so-cheap thrills

Many of the ways in which people try to get thrills are things that I consider pretty bad ideas. But even things like bungee jumping and skydiving seem like bright ideas compared to this:

Police in Wisconsin said a well-off couple arrested for shoplifting at a busy department store told officers they committed the crime for the excitement.

Wauwatosa police said the couple, a 39-year-old doctor and his 30-year-old wife shopping at the Mayfair Mall with their two young children, concealed more than $1,500 worth of items in bags from other stores, the stroller carrying the children and the woman's purse Saturday evening, Wauwatosa NOW reported Wednesday.

The not-so-good doctor told the cops that he makes around $150,000 per year and that he and his wife made a "game" out of shoplifting, trying to see how much loot they could get away with. You know what I've heard is a fun game? Setting a good example for your young children by not going to jail. Then again, I'm kind of an old-fashioned guy, so what do I know?

Young man, we need to have a serious discusssion

Just not, you know, over the phone...

Ted Estarija was expecting his cell phone bill to be higher this month after adding his Fremont son to his plan, but not by nearly $22,000.

"When I saw my Verizon bill, I was like, 'Wow!'" he said.

The Hayward resident said his monthly bill is normally $93.79. But somehow, over a month's time, his 13-year-old son managed to run up almost $22,000 in data usage charges — $21,917.59 to be exact.

Um, if someone ran up that kind of tab on my cell phone account, I think I'd have something a bit more harsh to say than "Wow!" There would be at least a blasphemy or two.

Oh, and you'll be happy to know that the phone company credited his account for the full amount that his son ran up and that said son is resting comfortably in a coma.

Wouldn't it be easier to take them off the streets?

Well, I guess that's one of the last places the cops would expect you to steal from...

A man pleaded not guilty in New York to stealing three vehicles from a police impound lot and selling them for scrap.

The District Attorney's Office in New York's Queens borough said Carmine Antonelle, 61, of Selden, N.Y., allegedly used his tow truck to take a 1991 Volvo and 1995 Dodge Caravan from a New York Police Department Narcotics impound lot in Queens, the New York Post reported Monday.

Seeing as how that's the kind of thing that's pretty hard to miss, it sounds like that impound lot needs to hire some new guards.

Since it's Friday night...

...and I just can't be bothered to find anything funny or strange, how about a picture of Allyson Hannigan lounging on the grass?

Um, the zipper on your jacket seems to have come undone...

Whatever happened to stamps and coins?

People collect all kinds of things, but this is something I've never heard of:

A man who said he spent two decades collecting Ecstasy pills of all colors and shapes as a hobby has turned to police for help after they were stolen — because he said some of them are poisonous.

Police say the 46-year-old man, who was not identified, decided to report the theft despite the illegal nature of the collection because he was worried about the possible consequences if anybody were to swallow one of the poisoned pills.

It was not immediately clear why about 40 red-and-white pills out of the 2,400-pill-strong collection would be poisoned, but the police said they fear the drugs could be lethal if swallowed.

See, if he had a coin collection that was stolen, lethality wouldn't be a problem. Unless some of them had razor-sharp edges. Or if his collection included one of these. That could tip over and crush someone.

Dude looks like a lady (but not quite enough, apparently)

Sounds like someone's seen a few too many screwball comedies:

Dressed in his mother's clothes and flashing her driver’s license, a Somerset County man is accused of trying to withdraw $700 from the woman's bank account, police said today.

Tita Nyambi, 25, of Crown Road in Franklin, is accused of multiple offenses, including third-degree forgery and attempted theft by deception for the incident that occurred Monday at Chase Bank in Franklin, according to court papers.

[...]

Nyambi pulled into the bank’s drive-thru lane on Elizabeth Avenue at 1:22 p.m., Sgt. Philip Rizzo said. He was wearing his mother’s pink blouse, her black coat and head scarf and tried to speak in a high-pitched voice, according to the affidavit Detective Brian Stillwell filed in Superior Court.

His one mistake was that he failed to wear her glasses. No disguise is complete without glasses. Fools 'em every time.

Heist of the century

See, the genius here is how they managed to get into the place by tricking the cops into arresting them on an unrelated charge:

A Kentucky man is facing charges for allegedly stealing candy, a police hat and a two hypodermic needles from an Ohio police headquarters, officials said.

Derek Kidd, 32, and his girlfriend were allowed inside the Middletown Police Department's detectives area Dec. 2 to make a phone call after having been released 45 minutes earlier on charges of disorderly conduct in an unrelated incident, the Middletown Journal reported last week.

While his girlfriend placed the call, Kidd allegedly stole the items, the police report said.

Kidd tried to conceal the police cap under his own cap, Maj. Mark Hoffman said.

Boy, the police in Middletown must be a bunch of super sleuths, foiling a criminal mastermind like that!

Stick to ex-girlfriends, dude

Sure, it may be tough to remember seven or more digits when you're trashed, but drunk-dialing 411 or 0 would probably get you in a little less trouble:

[Robert] Zettwoch, 57, had called Murfreesboro Police dispatch a total of 47 times since September 2008, according to MPD officer Mark Moghaddam.
The officer was dispatched to Zettwoch’s home after emergency services personnel arrived and found him drunk, but not in need of medical attention.

“Mr. Zettwoch was intoxicated and had been drinking vodka,” Moghaddam reported, adding that Zettwoch admitted he was drinking.

When Moghaddam asked Zettwoch why he had called police, he replied that he didn’t know, according to the report.

“I’m just drunk,” Zettwoch reportedly said to the officer.

I wonder who he called when they got him to jail.

Since it's Friday night...

...and it's easier to download a photo of a sexy woman than to come up with jokes, here's a photo of supermodel Marisa Miller:

Hey there, what are you listening to?

Overdoing it

Um, you might just be doing that.

Um...

...you're an idiot, professor:

A Canadian researcher said he had to cancel a pornography study because he could not find any adult men who had never viewed sexually explicit material.

Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse of the University of Montreal said he had to drastically alter his study on how pornography impacts the sexuality of men due to the limitations he discovered in finding volunteers, The Sun (Britain) reported Wednesday.

You might as well spend your money on time travel, seeing as how pretty much every man EVAR since the invention of photography has seen sexually explicit material.

Oh, God, Think of THE CHILDREN!!!!!!

What do you want to bet a whole bunch of taxpayer money got spent on this?

Beverage can tops are still finding their way into the stomachs of some children, especially teens, despite being redesigned in the 1970s to keep people from swallowing them, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

A 16-year study at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center found 19 children had swallowed the safety tabs, which are designed to fold back but stay attached to cans for soda and other beverages.

Why, that averages out to like a whole 1.1875 kids per year (can you even actually have 1.1875 whole kids?) that swallow one of those tabs! Nearly ONE AND A QUARTER of them!!! But not quite.

I'm pretty sure a ban is in order.

Great news, sports fans!

The Dodgers have announced that they've signed legendary announcer Vin Scully for his 61st season in the booth, which is a record for all sports broadcasters:

Scully just celebrated birthday #82 Sunday and he shows no signs of slowing down.

When Scully first called a Dodgers game, the team was in Brooklyn, Harry Truman was president, gas cost $.27 cents a gallon and minimum wage was $.75 an hour.

There was a game I was listening to sometime during the last season or two where he actually mentioned a childhood memory of seeing dead horses on the side of the road in New York City, and yet, here he is in L.A. six decades after beginning his career, still the best baseball broadcaster in the business. I hope he's here for another decade or two, though he says he'll "take it year-to-year" after the coming season.