Fabulous Life of...

Breaking news: Acts of kindness still exist. They may be achieved in the most inefficient, Up-inspired way possible, but they exist. And they involve giant test tubes where we will now grow giant test-tube babies. 

Just kidding! Those are balloons. And South Koreans are using them to mail things to their neighbors to the north. Or at least try to. Wind sometimes can be an issue.

Today, South Koreans launched 5 balloons “towards” North Korea, carrying 1000 pairs of socks and “politically innocuous” notes for the people of the DPRK. “All we want is that people in the North wear warm socks over their frozen feet,” says activist Sunny Kim. Such kind-hearted souls. I would maybe try to send them puppies to warm their hearts.  Although puppies may not do well with air travel, and there’s always this problem.

The activists have also sent food in the past, which seems like something the North Koreans might prefer over footwear. But according to Sunny Kim, “Warm socks are so rare they can be easily traded for cash in the North. One pair of socks fetches about 22 pounds of corn, which is enough to sustain a person for a month.”

So why aren’t you just sending them corn?

This is why old people are awesome. They are old, they are in love, they still hold hands, and they will defend each other from rampaging moose.

An elderly couple in Alaska were just casually walking their dogs at the local airport (I guess this is a thing?) when a giant moose decided to charge them. The husband, 82 year old George Murphy, was the initial target of the ungulate’s rage. With nowhere to hide, he opted to dive into a snowdrift. This was a weak strategy. The moose ran over and began to repeatedly stomp on the octogenarian. Apparently, this is an attack strategy. 

Then, George’s knightess in a shining parka, his 85 year old wife Dorothea, came to the rescue. Her initial concern was that she “thought he was trying to kill Fellar, the old dog.” This may or may not also be a metaphor for her husband, in which case she is correct, the moose was trying to kill the old dog.

She grabbed a shovel, specifically one used for shoveling grain (Why this is of importance to USA Today, I have no idea), and whacked the moose several times, saving her husband from death by moose.

As the kind Alaskans they are, neither George nor Dorothea are “upset” with the moose. They understand the plight of the creature who was “at the end of [his] rope” due to the harsh winter. 

Lesson: Alaska is so cold that it’s stressing moose out to the point that they stomp on humans. Time for me to…never go there.

I used to think things like this only happened in states like Florida, where the above picture is from. When you employ retirees and ex-cons to write words on your roads, sometimes they make mistakes. You’d think that in a place like New York City, people would be so cosmopolitan, even the Starbucks-drinking construction workers, that they could spell simple words like “school” in their sleep. But, you would be wrong.

Outside a school on the Lower East Side had an embarrassing mishap with their “School X-ing” street writing, because…they don’t know how to spell. Also, that phrase makes it seem like you would like to X out school. Maybe they already did at this one.

Con Ed is taking the blame for this one, saying they were doing work under the road, removed the tape used for the letters and that when a worker replaced the letters he simply got mixed up. Silly him! Exactly who I want to be installing my water and gas pipes. Can’t wait to get blown up by an exploding manhole cover. 

This is exactly what I would expect in South Carolina.

Great state, but you all just voted for Newt Gingrich in your primary and your “state heritage horse” is the Carolina Marsh Tacky. Also your “state wild game bird” is Wild Turkey. Are you sure you don’t mean “state baby formula”?

Anyways, I digress, South Carolina is a lovely state, with, as their motto proudly states, “Smiling Faces Beautiful Places.” All true. What they struggle with though, is law enforcement. I’ve witnessed it first hand. I was going 85 in a 65mph zone, got pulled over in a car with Massachusetts plates, and they let me go. I didn’t even cry. 

So when the mayor of the town of Norway, SC was pulled over on the highway by a state trooper, he decided to try and get out of it. By pulling the state trooper over himself, once he had already been pulled over. Not quite sure how the logistics of this worked. Maybe they sort of drove in a little circle in the middle of the highway. And why the mayor had a siren and blue flashing lights in his car is also unclear. Maybe those urban legends are true. Anyways, the mayor, Jim Preacher, claimed he was merely exercising his duties as the “town’s chief constable.” He was also time traveling back to the days of constables. And when the Norway Police Department existed. It was disbanded last year. 

The state is investigating if he has any power.

This post does not in anyway condone domestic violence. But as a tip to you abusers out there, if you’re going to get caught smacking your significant other around, maybe you should think of some good excuses. 

While some police officers may be fellow polterphiles, if you live in Wisconsin, cops are way more down to earth. And just way bigger in general.

Michael West, a man in Wisconsin, was arrested last week after his wife told the police that he strangled her and punched her in the face. There were bruises to prove it. First, he tried to play the cool/realistic card, telling the cops that his spouse received her injuries during “several falls.” The police said…you lie! Then, he got down to what really happened: “A ghost did it.” The police said…you’re arrested!

Sadly, the woman got blood on her Packers jersey, but since it’s Wisconsin, she probably has a few dozen to spare. And her husband is in jail so she can always borrow his.

This could be the first thing that comes to your mind when someone says “Spy Rock.” But if you’re a British spy, you might be like, “Oh shit, they know.” Always the imaginative types, British spies have been caught red-handed, using a fake rock to spy on the Russians. Allegations of this incident first came out in 2006, and it has taken six years for the English to finally own up to it. Understandably. But I think the Russians should actually be more ashamed of this, since they got tricked by a rock. However, it’s hard to tell the fake rocks apart from the real rocks, or even from your children, for that matter. Vodka is delicious. 

Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, James Powell, admitted to the BBC that “The spy rock was embarrassing. They had us bang to rights.” Unclear what he means by that last part, although it probably involves sex and some variety of scones. You know, spy things. 

Asked the 94 hamsters living in the home of a Massachusetts man. “Yes! You can!” he said.  You can have all my welfare gruel. I will starve myself in order to feed you. This actually happened. Until he decided he needed his Tupperware back, and called the MSPCA to get them to take the little fluffballs off his hands.

It all started so innocently. All the guy did was buy two hamsters. Little did he know that these things are the poor man’s version of rabbits. They multiply. They just don’t get their own religious holiday. Yet. In a year and a half…94 hamsters. This posed…an issue, since 1) 94 fucking hamsters 2) the man is on welfare 3) he couldn’t use his buckets for carrying things like water or Gak, as they were housing all of his rodents.

Luckily, an animal shelter in Metheun, MA was willing to take the hamsters, so now the dude is just chilling on his own, eating his own welfare food and finally getting to use all those fishbowls he bought for normal purposes. Like drinking alcohol out of them.

Great news, Sims enthusiasts! If you can tear yourself away from moving virtual furniture around for a few minutes, listen up: Katy Perry is moving into your imaginary neighborhood. 

“I always like to think of myself as a cartoon, and now I’m a Sim,” said Perry in a news release about the deal. This seems to be the first issue: you imagine yourself as a digital character. However, I guess you got yourself a computer game deal out of it, so…keep up the crazy. 

The news Sims games will include “Katy Perry themed in-game content and virtual goods.” How much will it cost to buy Katy Perry and install her as your couch? All the fake money or some just some of the fake money? Can I sell her as a domestic servant in order to buy myself a rollercoaster? 

So many questions.

As useful as this may be to humanity, since parasols don’t just balance themselves, it turns out that dolphins can be used to serve a higher purpose. And I don’t mean jumping through hoops or balancing people on their noses or sustaining the rainbow world of Lisa Frank. I mean detecting mines in the ocean, specifically in the Strait of Hormuz so the Iranians don’t bleed the world of all our oil. 

We’ve got dolphins,” says retired admiral Tim Keating, articulating the American military strategy for the Northern Hemisphere.  Finally, I have faith in the United States Navy. This is way better than submarines. Since dolphins have killer sonar, they can detect the small floating mines from far away. If they get confused and swim into them, they can also accidentally explode the mines/themselves. But don’t tell PETA. They’re already pissed off enough that dolphins can’t fit into suits of human skin. It’s only fair right?

The whole “Imported from Detroit” slogan for Chrysler can be a little confusing. Is Detroit actually a different country? Is it part of Canada? Has it been officially demoted to Third World status yet? Is it ruled by a Union kingpin who feasts on poutine morning, noon and night? Most likely yes to all of the above. 

However, every now and then, we get some comforting reassurance that despite Chrysler’s best efforts to convince us otherwise, Detroit is still solidly American. They still have Chuck E. Cheese and grandmothers still get beat up when they go there. 

Yesterday, a nice old grandma was celebrating her grandson’s 7th birthday at the Cheese. Ok, the grandma was 50 years old. But this is a semi-foreign country, and the birth rate is very high as the life expectancy is much lower than the rest of the continental US. A lot of Ebola. Need to make sure some survivors remain.

So granny was trying to celebrate, making it rain with tokens and stuff. A table near her was using some potty words, so as a responsible adult, she requested that they please clean up their language. As manners in Detroit would dictate, they told her to “shut the fuck up and turn around.” Sometimes you can talk out your feelings. But sometimes…you can’t. It’s unclear what Granny did at this point, but for the haters shooting their mouths off at table 2, words were not enough. Actions, it is. This lazy Sunday, action took the form of jumping over the table, throwing punches into faces, and grabbing the grandmother by the hair and dragging her around for a bit. 

Luckily, the family under assault was refunded their money by Chuck E., and the grandmother just had to go to the hospital to treat a few facial lacerations. Considering this was a Chuck E. Cheese fight, things turned out pretty well. At least she didn’t get shot.