Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler

Funny old world, eh?

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— orudge @ 06/01/2005 11:19 pm

Hmm, can’t be bothered to write anything myself today, so I’ll post this which I nabbed from The Orcadian web site…

It’s a funny old world – it says so on the Internet

It’s time for Bumpkin’s end-of-year review of some of the stories from around the world that you may have missed over the past 365 days. All of the following have appeared on the Internet so they must be true – mustn’t they?

The Kirkwall Ba’ game is not for the faint-hearted but it is, perhaps, somewhat tame compared to the sporting tradition in the town of Todos Santos in Guatemala where the 3,000 inhabitants take part in an annual horse race.

Competitors drink non-stop for eight days before the race (and abstain from sex).

The racecourse track is 400 metres long and at the end of each lap, riders have to drink a tankard of rum before they continue.

The contest ends, usually after about eight hours, when only one man remains on his horse. Eight people were killed in last year’s festival. Two were murdered, one drank himself to death, four died from injuries sustained from falling off their horses – and one was run over by a bus!

Salt Lake City has proposed a change in the aviation code that would end Santa Claus’s exemption from low-flying.

The unseasonal storms in the Atlantic ocean during August sucked up a load of fish from the sea and then dropped them on the small town of Knighton — 60 miles from the sea on the English-Welsh border.

An American newspaper had to publish a correction to a caption to a dinner party photograph after a lady called Mai Thai Finn was inadvertently described as one of the items on the menu.

It was a shock for mother-to-be Julia Paul when she was told that she would have to make a 130 mile trip by ambulance from Essex to Leicestershire when she went into premature labour.

It was an even bigger shock when the ambulance men had to borrow £40 from her boyfriend to pay for the petrol.

Men in the Italian village of Campodimele live, on average, to the age of 90 – compared to the European average of 74, and just 69 in some areas of Glasgow.

Don’t accuse the authorities in China of lacking urgency. A fire has been burning in a deep underground mine in that country since 1975 and has so far consumed 20 million tons of coal. The authorities have now set a target of 2018 to extinguish the blaze.

Ducks have different regional “accents�, according to a research team at Middlesex University. Cockney ducks make a rough raucous sound that can be heard above the noise of the traffic (much like their human counterparts) while country ducks quack with a softer tone.

Princess Anne was to make a visit to Caithness and, in advance, her senior protection staff explained that there would have to be a radio – tuned to Radio 3 – to drown out any noise in case Her Royal Highness needed to use the badly-insulated lavatory. A week later, another section of the security forces said they would have to blow up the radio to make sure it did not contain a bomb.

An Italian court has ruled that a prostitute, aged 73, can continue to provide her personal services, operating from a camper van parked in a lay-by.

A mother, on her deathbed, called her children around her to make a final confession. Their father had not – as she had told them – perished in a car crash in 1990. In truth, he was lying in a freezer at Planet Self Storage in Somerville, Massachusetts. They checked – and she was right.

Spare a thought for Mr Udaynath Dakshiniray, from India, who has had 90 wives (at the last count) and now “wants to complete his century.�

The world’s cleverest woman, according to Mensa, is Daniela Simidchieva, a qualified industrial and electrical engineer and a teacher, with an IQ of nearly 200 and five masters degrees from universities in Bulgaria and Britain. Ms Simidchieva, one might think, would be a certain target for employers. In fact, she’s been on the dole for two years.

Patricia Pattison, a 54-year-old grandmother from Leicester, phoned her local benefits office. After joining the telephone queuing system, she stayed on hold for more than six hours. “They said they were busy,� said the forgiving Ms Pattison.

Washington State schools this year stopped children celebrating Hallowe’en “because it may offend witches.â€?

There are ways of proving that blindness is not a handicap other than by becoming Home Secretary. A Romanian called Alin Popescu was so determined to prove that his lack of sight was no obstacle that he decided to steal a car. He managed to break in, start the ignition with a screwdriver, and even drove half a mile. Then he encountered a tree!

Birmingham mother Christina Cooke went on the Internet to book a family holiday. She booked a week in the Avalon Hotel and flights for all the family to the Costa Del Sol. All went well until their arrival in Spain when Mrs Cooke discovered that the Avalon Hotel was 1,000 miles away in Konigslutter, Germany.

A financial adviser living in middle England received a letter from Prudential which promised to save him money on his home insurance. Curiously, the letter began: “Dear Mr Shagslikeadonkey.� This, apparently, is not quite his real name.

A German pensioner was arrested after fitting a chainsaw engine to his wife’s bike and riding it down the street at 40mph.

Beryl King, the boss of two Hampshire recruitment agencies, claims that her advertisement seeking “hardworking� warehouse packers was rejected by the local jobcentre because asking for “hardworking� staff would discriminate against those who are not blessed with the presbyterian work ethic.

A naked man found in the ladies’ lavatory of an American synagogue explained to the court that he was “waiting to catch his rocket ship.â€?

I salute Marjan Camber who, according to his local paper in Bosnia, has just consumed his 400,000th bottle of beer – a total he has reached by drinking 30 a day for nearly 40 years. He is quoted as saying: “I once drank 80 bottles in one day to see how far I could go. I still didn’t feel drunk.â€?

An unusual case for social services in Fiji who are trying to rehabilitate a man reportedly raised by chickens. According to the authorities, the orphan was locked in a hen coop by his grandfather at the age of six. When he escaped four years later, he could not walk or talk but could peck and perch while making clucking noises. A local hospital, believing him deranged, then kept him chained to a bed for 20 years.

It’s a man’s life in the Royal Air Force, obviously. One of our pilots was temporarily grounded – after clipping a lamp post in a street in Cyprus at 600mph.

Commentaries on this year’s Olympic Games brought the usual cases of “foot in mouthâ€? disease – including the American TV presenter for the NBC channel who reported from the equestrian events: “This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.â€? Incidentally, one of the pigeons released at the Olympic opening ceremony in Athens apparently turned up in Romania.

A lottery ticket seller from Vietnam, Vo Hai Dao, is claiming to be the world’s smallest living man. He suffered a serious illness as a child and now, at the age of 22, is just 2 foot 10 inches tall.

Keepers at Berlin Zoo put a log into the pen of Juan the bored bear. He playfully rolled it into the moat surrounding his enclosure and used it to float to the other side — into the children’s playground, where the adventurous creature had to be shot by a tranquillising dart.

An Indiana army officer’s reputation for bravery in pursuing terrorists has taken a nose-dive. Colonel H. S. Kohli has been dismissed by a court martial after an investigation discovered that photographs of the dead terrorists actually showed members of his civilian staff, lying very still and covered in ketchup.

An Indiana congressman is campaigning to have the name of the American interstate highway 69 changed on the grounds that I-69 has sexual connotations that might give rise to unclean thoughts.

Another local sporting tradition to rival the Ba’ comes from Simla, in north east India, where an annual stone-throwing festival is held. Two teams of youths pelt each other with rocks until they’ve had enough. The team with the fewest injuries wins.

The authorities called to investigate a blocked waterway in Florida discovered that beavers had built a dam with $40,000 of discarded stolen banknotes.

They’re tough on crime in the USA as illustrated by the case of a Dallas woman, aged 90, recently fined $200. Her offence? Putting out the rubbish a day early.

Patrick Deuel weighed more than half a ton in June but has since lost 26 stones thanks to a diet regime of just 1,200 calories a day in a South Dakota hospital. He is obviously still a big eater compared with Simon Carr, a journalist on The Independent newspaper, who lost 52lbs in six weeks on a diet of just 200 calories of salad and an exercise regime of 300 sit-ups a day.

Staff at a remote Indian school have been sacked after Government officials discovered they have not had a pupil for 23 years.

Luckless Pavel Banaszek was beaten unconscious in a fight in a bar in his home town in Poland. His attackers then dumped him on a local railway line where he was later run over by a train, leaving him paralysed. However, the state railway company then claimed compensation from him for causing a delay to its services. He was ordered to pay £322 in weekly instalments. Unfortunately, Mr Banaszek’s house has now burned down.

The death has been reported of Yang Huanyi, the very last speaker on earth of Nushu, a unique language only spoken by women in remoter parts of China. She was 98, and as The Independent newspaper commented: “It is possible that she’d been trying to tell someone she didn’t feel well for some time.â€?

Another nation has agreed to ratify the international Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Well done, Liechtenstein – you’ve made the world a safer place.

A most unfortunate occurrence in Malaysia: a 70-year-old man looked out of his window and saw what he thought was a monkey stealing fruit from the mango tree at the bottom of his garden. He took his gun and shot the creature. Sadly, it turned out to be his wife.

A Canadian, identified as having died in a train crash, telephoned his family during the funeral to say he’d arrived back from holiday.

An 11-year-old Chinese boy thought it would be fun to give his grandmother a present of one of those joke severed heads made of plastic. Unfortunately after removing the gift wrapping, the old lady died of shock.

A family in Cheshire has apparently become so enamoured with the soft drink, Vimto, that an underground tank has been installed in the garden to enable members of the family to pipe the drink, on draught, directly to the kitchen.

When the little old lady rented the car, she was told to drop it back at the airport in Boise, Idaho. So, came the day, she drove up to the terminal, through the automatic double doors, past the check-in counters and the baggage reclaim areas, and proudly came to a halt by the car rental desk.

The authorities in China have refused permission to a father who wished to name his son ‘@’.

Australian doctors have come across a case that gives new meaning to the term “street walking.â€? They have diagnosed a woman as suffering from the rare disorder of sleep sex. Apparently, she would leave her house in the middle of the night, accost strangers and have sex with them – all whilst still asleep.

A Portuguese shepherd barricaded himself in a garage in protest at his friend who reneged on a deal to swap him 15 goats for a new wife.

According to the Australian bureau of statistics, 31 Australians have died since 1996 after watering their Christmas trees while the fairy lights were plugged in. Another 19 have died after eating Christmas decorations they mistakenly believed to be chocolate, while three breathed their last after testing if a nine volt battery worked on their tongue.

Oops!

A Happy New Year.