The stories and the record scores accumulated in a fast pile. Not only did this John Montague play great and goofy golf, he seemed able to outdrink, out-eat, out-arm wrestle the world. His appetites and abilities seemed almost superhuman. He routinely showed off his strength. Need to change a tire? No jack was necessary. Montague could simply hold the proper end of the car aloft while someone else attached the spare.
In a town of interesting characters, he moved rapidly toward the top of the list. He became someone to know.
As it turned out, John Montague turned out to be a thief from upstate NY. Follow the link to find out more.
Heard of a plague of grasshoppers? Well, there are enough birds (I’m assuming they’re starlings) in the sky in this video taken in California to be a plague of starlings. But what is even more intriguing is the sight they make when they fly around. It’s a huge number of birds making changing formations in the sky, swirling around and ballooning out making various elliptical shapes. There are many groups of them, and as they fly around it makes undulating black patterns as all the birds move to one spot or another.
For example, at one point, there are four sections of birds: a neatly-contained elliptical shape at the top, two smaller groups underneath, and a more scattered-apart group coming in from the bottom. The bottom group moves upward and forms a bulging “head”, compresses down into a dense mass and then puffs outward and dissipates. The top section of birds flies upward, condensing as it goes into a small black blob. Meanwhile one of the smaller, side-groups pushes a narrow arm into the other side group, which spreads out, swirls downward, thickens as it moves up, rushes forward and collides (or seems to; they’re really two distinct layers) with the small dark blob, which is so thick with birds it looks black. The group thins on one side as some birds go behind the dense blob, which seems to fall apart and collect again, undulating with the added birds; meanwhile on the other side, it swells out. That was only a few seconds worth; at another point there are even more groups. Anyway, you can go see for yourself!
Around the middle of the video they seem to disappear, but keep watching; they come back in an even more impressive display.
The men, enjoying the sunny spring weather with their wives, couldn’t get the coal to light with their lighter liquid so the 37-year-old host decided to pour a glass of petrol on it instead.
That did the trick. “The resulting darting flame made him drop the glass of petrol. That in turn startled his 28-year-old friend who dropped the petrol canister, which contained between three and five liters, onto the floor,” police in the southwestern German city of Kaiserslautern said in a statement.
The burning liquid ran off the balcony onto the host’s car which burst into flames. The fire then engulfed his wife’s car next to it as well another car parked on the other side.
The first link comes from Soma. Now before you click on the link a little context is in order. Soma advertise itself as the only English language Kurdish newspaper around. We shall have to take there word for it as we don’t really feel like fact checking that fact. According to the blogger over at Live a Life Worthy…..
On the back page of every paper, these two men have a chat about…well, everything. Their conversation rambles and jumps and rabbit-trails, never to return.
But we think that anyone who has ever followed a conversation in the Ethereal Land will have no trouble following the logic of conversation on the back page of Soma.
Our second link comes from Doctor Bob. Let us just say that some people should not self medicate.
Our third link does not really need to be read in its entirety. We are just brining it up because it articulates a philosophy that we share. Namely….
See, I can be reasonable. All I ask is that the bureaucrats paid to harass me and violate my privacy do it with a bit of irony, and I’m willing to play ball. Irony about the crappitude of the situation gets me in a good mood. Giving orders and pulling the loyal citizen BS gets me in a bad mood.
It is poor form to post a second video from the same source and in the same style so close together. But I think both this and the Art video are hilarious.
Berlin Zoo had put the carp into his moat to help keep the water clean by eating algae. But the 140-kilo (309-pound) bear shocked onlookers by catching the chubby fish and playing with his live prey until they stopped flapping. Then he gobbled them up.
“He ate them all in just a day and a half,” the zoo’s bear expert Heiner Klös told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “Whatever people may say, he’s a good hunter, and it’s all part of being a polar bear. This shows he’s totally fit. We won’t be placing any more fish in his moat, though.”
Germany’s top-selling daily Bild reported that onlookers were disgusted by the spectacle. The newspaper ran the headline “Knut Embroiled in Carp Scandal” and quoted animal welfare campaigners as criticizing the zoo for letting Knut eat live vertebrates in breach of German animal protection regulations.
If you have never heard of the Blog called “Things that White People Like” your cultural awareness is sadly lacking. In just a few short months the blog has become an overnight sensation.
Its title is misleading. It is all about what yuppies like, not white people in general. But we can forgive them this false advertising because its title is deliberately designed to poke fun at the yuppies reluctance to talk about race. (It works; the comment section always has a bunch of people complaining what a racist he is)
In support of its broader goal of telling it like it is, we thought we would make his post on white people and shorts rant of the week.
