Menus of madness

While this will doubtlessly help foreign diners, it will simultaneously take food out of the mouths of comedians:

Hungry visitors to next summer's Beijing Olympics won't have to choose between "steamed crap" and "virgin chicken" if Chinese authorities succeed in ridding restaurant menus of mangled English translations.

The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list with 2,753 proposed names for dishes and drinks, designed to replace bizarre and sometimes ridiculous translations on menus, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

Foreigners are often stumped by dish names such as "virgin chicken" (a young chicken dish) or "burnt lion's head" (Chinese-style pork meatballs). Other garbled names include "The temple explodes the chicken cube" (kung pao chicken) or "steamed crap" (steamed carp).

"These translations either scare or embarrass foreign customers and may cause misunderstanding on China's diet habits," Xinhua said.

I can't say I'd be scared or embarrassed by "steamed crap," but I don't think I'd order it. "The temple explodes the chicken cube," on the other hand, well, that sounds too awesome to pass up.

I guess this is what OCD is sort of like

Man, I just played computer solitaire for the better part of an hour, often coming close to winning, only to have the bastard of a card I needed get hung up somewhere where I couldn't get at it. But I finally won a minute ago.

My prizes seem to be eye strain, the onset of carpal tunnel problems, and a headache.

Housebreaking

Dude, I think it's about time to move to a new house.

A German man said Thursday he feared he may have built his own tomb after a vehicle ploughed into his house for the 10th time.

"If we stay, someone's eventually going to kill us. We're living in a time bomb," Manfred Sedlazek, 59, told Reuters.

Sedlazek is reluctant to leave the house he built himself, which is on a bend of a busy road, but said it may be his only chance of survival.

Earlier this week, a 40-tonne truck blasted through the side of the red-brick house in the village of Karlshoefen, in northern Germany. Sedlazek returned home from shopping to find the shattered vehicle sticking out of his living room.

The damage in this case was estimated at about the equivalent of $136,000. Previous crashes have wrecked his kitchen and bedroom.

I don't know how property insurance works in Germany, but I can't imagine there are many companies eager to sell him a homeowner's policy at this point.

Baseball field = Gitmo

I'm having a bit of a hard time deciding which side of this story to come down on. On the one hand, you've got a guy who didn't follow procedure. On the other hand, you've got his neighbors, who seem to be a bunch of hyperbolic jerks. I'll let you decide:

Even a field of dreams needs a permit. Town officials in this posh San Francisco suburb [Danville] voted unanimously Tuesday to order David Lowe to tear down an 18,000-square-foot Little League practice field he built for his son.

The private equity investor spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building the field _ complete with Astroturf, a batting cage and motorized pitching machine _ on a prominent ridge. He said he did it because he couldn't attend his 11-year-old son's regular afternoon Little League practices, but still wanted to find a way to coach the team.

Now that's nice and all, but he didn't get the proper permits ahead of time, which is something he really should have thought of. Now, let's look at the other side...

Neighbors in the multimillion-dollar housing development below the ridge have compared the ball field to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay because of its highly visible 14-foot fence.

Uh-huh. Don't you people think you're exaggerating just a little bit by comparing a baseball practice facility to a military prison? And what do you want to bet that a bunch of these people are liberals who picked that comparison explicitly to blow this out of proportion in the minds of likewise liberal local officials?

Anyway, he offered to lower the fence and landscape the hillside to hide the field from his neighbors' nhighly sensitive eyes, but no dice.

A weed grows in prison

I'd imagine it's hard enough for prison guards to keep people from smuggling in drugs, but when the drugs are actually growing inside the prison, well..

A Japanese prison is scrambling to eradicate marijuana plants that keep sprouting up on its exercise ground, officials said Tuesday.

The marijuana plants started sprouting at Abashiri Prison on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido about a year ago, said prison official Takeshi Okamura. He said officials plucked out as many as 300 marijuana plants and treated the ground last year, but several more sprouted again this year.

Now, that's unusual enough, but check this out:

Prisoners reported them to the guards.

Those must be some of the most ethical convicted felons on the face of the Earth.

Nice work if you can get it

I'd like to know how this guy pulled off his scam for so long without anybody catching on:

A French tax official cheated the government out of 600,000 euros ($820,000) by creating a phantom identity as a university professor and claiming a salary for some 15 years, the government said Monday.

Education Ministry officials uncovered the scam in June and began legal and disciplinary action immediately, Budget Minister Eric Woerth said in a statement.

Didn't anybody at the university he was drawing a salary from notice that he was, you know, never there? Or that he didn't seem to be doing any work?

Whew!

After Ervin Santana had arguably his worst outing ever, going only 1/3 of an inning and giving up five runs, the Angels came roaring back to beat the Mariners 10-6. This team is hungry to win, and they're looking good heading into the home stretch.

Old blow

Man, what is it with the elderly and illegal drugs? Yesterday, we had the pot-growing granny. Now, check out this coke-dealin' oldster:

A 93-year-old man was charged with cocaine-trafficking Thursday, the same day police netted three other people on charges of possessing heroine [sic], opium and a slew of prescription drugs, police said Friday.

William C. Tinnen, also charged with possession of cocaine with intent to sell, was jailed before being released Friday on $200,000 bond, said Kammie Michael, spokeswoman for the Durham Police Department.

Tinnen also was sentenced for cocaine possession in 2001, and given a suspended sentence, Michael said.

It's nice to see old people keeping active.

Shades of Norman Bates

Well, to be fair, this guy didn't kill anybody (that we know of), but he did something incredibly creepy nonetheless:

A German left his dead mother seated in her favorite armchair at their shared home for two years because he could not face organizing a funeral, police in the southern town of Fuerstenfeldbruck said Friday.

The woman died of natural causes in the chair in July 2005 at the age of 92, a police spokesman said. A doctor called to the scene at the time gave the son a death certificate but he did not register the death.

There's no word in the article about whether or not the guy had been seen running around in his dead mom's clothes, but they probably would've mentioned that if he had.

Green thumb granny

Gardening is an activity that many of our senior citizens really love. Some of them love it more than others, though:

A 71-year-old woman was arrested on drug charges after a chest-high marijuana plant was found in her yard, a plant she said was meant to keep animals away from her garden.

A sheriff's deputy saw the plant as he drove past Betty Holt Walker's home earlier this month, according to Capt. Tony Caliendo of the Guilford County Sheriff's Department.

Well, I'm sure it was just a mistake. I mean, it's not like this sweet old lady knew what the plant was, right?

The deputy stopped to investigate and found five smaller plants behind a shed, as well as marijuana stems and seeds, and a water bong made from a soda bottle inside the house, Caliendo said.

Oh. Never mind.

Weird tales of the Sitemeter V

I got a hit from a Google search for "men in girdles." I'm baffled.

Update: Found it.

Why you should always wear clothes around your bitter ex-wife

What's worse than a burning sensation in your nether region? This guy found out:

A woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said Wednesday.

Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was "difficult to predict."

The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat, something common in Russia where property costs are very high.

The guy told a newspaper that he didn't know what he had done to deserve this. His ex-wife isn't quoted, but I'm sure her response would be that yes, he does so know what he did. But in Russian.

One-armed robots menace Tokyo

Well, no, not really, but people have been seriously injured by a video game:

Lose a game of chess to a computer, and you could bruise your ego. Lose an arm-wrestling match to a Japanese arcade machine, and you could break your arm.

Distributor Atlus Co. said Tuesday it will remove all 150 "Arm Spirit" arm wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms grappling with the machine's mechanized appendage.

"The machine isn't that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it," said Atlus spokeswoman Ayano Sakiyama, calling the recall "a precaution."

"We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way," she said. The company was investigating the incidents and checking the machines for any signs of malfunction.

That sounds like a good idea. I mean, sure, maybe people are twisting their arms in weird ways. Maybe they all had brittle bones. Or maybe your robot arm wrestlers are malfunctioning and breaking peoples' bones.

I wish I was at the Big A tonight

Garret Anderson hasn't been having the best season for the Angels this year, but man oh man is he making up for it by kicking some Yankee ass tonight. Two doubles, two homers (one of which was a grand slam), and a total of 10 RBI! That's a team record for the most runs driven in over the course of a single game and the team mark for career grand slams with eight over the course of his career. And the game ain't over yet. It's 5-18 in the top of the seventh.

Update: 9-18 was the final. Box scores and recaps here.

Two reasons why the GQ list of the Fifty Most Powerful People in D.C. is a joke

For some reason, I get GQ at home. I canceled my subscription ages ago, and yet it keeps on coming. It occasionally has a good article or photo spread of some sexy actress or another, but most of it is gay-looking male models in clothes I could never afford; ads for watches, gadgets, and more clothes I could never afford; and insipid conservative-bashing political articles.

Anyway, the new issue came today (Obama's on the cover!), and it has an feature on the fifty most powerful people in Washington. The article mostly (and predictably) heaps scorn on Republicans and lavishes praise on Democrats. But there are two main reasons why I think the article is a joke (and not a good one):

1. The President of the United States of America isn't on the list: Say what you will about Bush's popularity or the whole lame duck thing, the man still holds the most powerful office in the world. Like him or hate him, he has his "Finger on The Button" and all that.

2. Andrew Sullivan is on the list: Enough said.

If, for some reason, you're still interested, you can find the whole list here.

I guess he likes kids

Looks like somebody doesn't see overpopulation as a big problem:

A one-legged Emirati father of 78 is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 children by 2015, Emirates Today reported on Monday.

Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time.

"In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children," the local tabloid quoted Abdul Rahman as saying.

"After that I will stop marrying. I have to have at least three more marriages to hit the century."

The article goes on to say that his family lives in fifteen different houses. I would imagine he has a sixteenth where he stores all the ugly ties he gets every year for Father's Day.

I'm guessing he was probably high

I've known a few tweakers in the past, and they're not the most with-it people when on a meth jag. Case in point:

A man hoping to score some meth asked the wrong person for the drug. The Eugene police vice narcotics unit had searched an apartment on Monday night and were questioning the tenant when a man came by and asked to buy drugs, Sgt. Jerry Webber said.

As detectives stood around with their badges hanging from their necks and latex gloves on their hands, the man asked the tenant, "Can you hook me up?" Webber said.

The tenant was seated on the couch with handcuffs around his wrists. A detective was writing him a citation.

The tenant said, "I don't think I can help you," Webber recalled, but the visitor persisted. He then allegedly turned to a detective and asked him for meth.

The detective told the visitor, James Wilkinson, 34, of Eugene, he was under arrest for attempted possession of methamphetamine.

Wilkinson tried to run, but officers grabbed him, Webber said.

I guess he'd finally figured it out by then, huh?

Name games

Hey, it looks like we've got another case of some jackasses who want to give their kid a really stupid name:

A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@," claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.

Now, I don't speak Chinese so I have no way of knowing if this is plausible, but the poor kid's father supposedly has an explanation for this nonsense...

"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.

While "@" is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta," or "love him," to Mandarin speakers.

So why not give him a name like "ai ta" using regular Chinese characters? Oh, that's right. It's because you're stupid douchebags who think that you're clever.

Burning down the house

You try to do a little yardwork, and look what it gets you:

Danny Fendley started more than just his lawn mower when he tugged at its pull cord - he started a fire that destroyed his home.

The mower exploded Tuesday in hot, parched conditions.

Fendley was trying to start the mower in the garage of his two-story brick home in this Atlanta suburb when the machine burst into flames. Before he could extinguish the fire, it had spread through the garage.

Then his wife tried to toss a can of gasoline out a window as the blaze spread, but she missed, spreading the fuel "everywhere," Fendley said.

I'd imagine that it's not easy to be level-headed when your garage is on fire, but it doesn't sound like a good idea to be throwing gasoline around, even if it's supposed to go out the window. Live and learn, I guess.

Nun too smart

You know, when you're looking for some easy money, you probably shouldn't try to rob somebody who has taken a vow of poverty:

The man broke into the 61-year-old Catholic nun's home shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday. When she told him she had no money, he forced her to drive him around in her car for almost an hour in search of money.

As they drove, the robber apologized "to the victim and wonders if he's going to be forgiven by her and the Catholic Church," police spokesman Joel DeSpain said.

The two did not stop at a bank or cash machine because the Sinsinawa Dominican sister continued to tell the man she did not have any money or access to any.

Eventually, the man gave up and had the nun drop him off on Madison's south side. She then drove to the Catholic school where she works and called police.

He won't be going straight to hell, but only because he has to take a trip to the pokey first. The cops arrested him later that day.