Category Archives: Weird

the T factor: Belgian vs crocodile

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kid vs croc, somebody call Steve Irwin!You don’t need to be a math genius to lay the odds on this one.

Yes, dunking your fleshy paw in the water and splashing is a great way to attract a crocodile. Works every time.

What’s not such a good idea is the whole “attracting a crocodile” part. Is Belgian sashimi as tasty as Belgian fries? There’s one crocodile in Australia who knows for sure, but I’m not gonna do the interview unless it’s by sattelite.

News.com.au has the story:

Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) spokesman Mark Read says the 24-year-old male tourist splashed water to “attract a crocodile” to photograph it at Cape Tribulation, about 350km north of Cairns, today.

“It wasn’t a good idea,” Dr Reid said.

Thank you, Dr. Reid, for that insight. Can you translate that into Walloon for me? Tourist season is just starting.

Yoohoo! Over here!!!

killer snails on the move!

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Giant African Snails. Icky, icky poo!They are coming…

The snail made a splash as it entered the sea. To drown or to be eaten alive? the professor wondered. He was waist-deep when he stumbled, waist-deep but head under when the snail crashed down upon him, and he realized as the thousands of pairs of teeth began to gnaw at his back, that his fate was both to drown and to be chewed to death.

(Patricia Highsmith, The Quest for Blank Claveringi)

Cool!

via Fark. I have that story in an ancient and mouldy Alfred Hitchcock anthology, and an excellent and creeptastic suspense-filled read it is, too. Everyone loves to watch a bore get what’s really coming to him, no matter how long it takes to get there.

It appears if he lives in Barbados, it’s already arrived. AP reports on the invasion of Giant African snails:

A breed of giant, ravenous snails that first appeared in Barbados five years ago has thrived on the tropical island, destroying crops and prompting calls for the government to eliminate the slimy pests…

“We saw snails riding on each other’s backs and moving in clusters,” said David Walrond, chairman of the local emergency response office that organized 60 volunteers for the hunt…

Ah, but were they the hunters or the quarry, my friend? Let us hope that these comparatively peaceable, although potentially fatal and certainly voracious, snails never call upon their aquatic cousins, the deadly Cone Snails, one of the most poisonous creatures to crawl across the beslimed and horror-struck face of the planet. One message carried through the briny vastness to Rl’yeh and an army of vengence could be unleashed!

In fact, they may already be on their way, streaming towards Barbados by the thousands.

Just. Very. Slowly.

now boarding, at gate 666

blogwars

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It gets ugly out here, people. This is from Greatest Living Poet, also home to the infamous Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.

Duelling bloggers

always use authorized mechanics, and RTFM

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Stolen from EliseTalk, via Fark.

Of course, I’m one to talk. I use my manuals to even out my wobbly desk.

That blithe disregard of indispensable training materials bears not at all on my ability to produce such items, should you be in a hiring mood, by the way. I have, in fact, produced a procedures manual for an authorized Honda dealer and service shop, so I feel the pain of the poor sod who poured the sweat of his brow and the expense account of his employer into the production of the manual for the exquisite Lotus Elise which you see here.

I said, rtfm!!! And it hit toolboxes on the way down, too

I handed them the tire tools and opened the Owner’s Manual to the jacking instructions so they would be clear. We went over all the instructions and they assured me I was in good hands.

We (my father-in-law and I both left)

1 hour later I get a call about the “accident” and that I needed to come down…

Diebold, Die Bolder: electile dysfunction

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Die Bold, DIE BOLDER! Yippee kiyay, motherfucker!

from MSNBC, which I always wanted to hate but which has, too often, far, far too often, taken up the slack that CNN has left as it happily knits itself into a fluffy, news-free straightjacket.

Man 1, Machine 0.

That’s at least one vote that can’t be interfered with; too bad the same cannot be said of the others in the machine. Or, indeed, the rest of the US.

“He came in here very peaceably and showed his ID, then he got on the machine and just snapped,” volunteer Gladys Pezoldt told the Morning Call of Allentown.