Weird Part Deux

Even More Weird

Spork Robbery
So it appears a man was robbed with a spork.

That's got to be a bit embarassing.

Unless of course, it was *my* spork, which is made of metal and just short of six feet tall.

Source: AZCentral

Jerks and Prison
So this one jerk found out that an ATM was only deducting 1/1000th of the money he took out of the machine from his account.

He promptly withdrew thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Then the man wasted all the cash, and, well, things caught up with him.

BEIJING -- It seemed like a gift from heaven in a country where very little is free. When security guard Xu Ting went to an ATM in the southern city of Guangzhou on a Friday night in the spring of 2006 and withdrew $140, he noticed that it only deducted 14 cents from his account. Over the next eight hours, he made 170 more withdrawals, pocketing upward of $24,000.

During the next several months, he lost some of the money to a thief on a train, tried to start up a company that failed, and gambled most of the rest on thousands of lottery tickets that turned out to be losers. With little cash left, he got a job.

Then a routine police ID check led to his arrest.

Xu's disappointment at how little the windfall had changed his life was nothing compared with what happened next. He was ordered imprisoned for life by a Chinese court late last year. The crime: bank robbery.

...

"We are not saints," said an anonymous posting on a popular website, Tencent.com.

Xu's father, 50, says his son can hardly be expected to follow the sort of mores he did growing up. When Chairman Mao led the nation, most people were scrupulously honest and society shared a common sense of purpose.

...

Supporters say Xu's bank is partly to blame for not maintaining its ATM. They also note that the bank never actually suffered a loss, since the $24,000 was refunded by the ATM manufacturer. "The analogy in Xu's case might be to someone finding money on the street and not turning it in," said Wu Yichun, Xu's lawyer. "This should be a civil, not a criminal, case."

First of all, you think Chariman Mao is the example to hold up? Yeesh. Sure, he might not have taken the money from the ATM, but he probably would have been busy murdering thousands of people in the town next door anyway.

As for the civil vs. criminal thing, the guy's absolutely right. His client is a douchebag, not a bank robber.

Source: The LA Times

Fox Does Air the Terminator Show..
So Fox News, going off of an obscure cotton candy academic publication on the potential future use of robot drones by terror orgs, published an article themselves.

On how terrorists might turn Roombas into weapons.

Accompanied by a picture of another killer robot... a Dalek from Doctor Who.

I swear I am not making this up.

Like many liberals, I’ve never had a high opinion of Fox News, but even I was willing to believe they tried to adhere to some journalistic standards. And apparently, they do - except that they’re using the same standards as The Onion.

Yesterday, Fox posted a scaremongering story entitled Scientist: Terrorists May Use Robots in Future Attacks. The story relies on the incredibly lazy “journalism” of simply reporting on a press release and embellishing it with a few facts the reporter no doubt gathered by typing the word “robot” into Google.

But personally, my favorite part of this story is the accompanying photo (shown here). Apparently, the robots the terrorists are going to use to kill us are none other than the Daleks, the brutal, ruthless mutant cyborgs developed by Terry Nation in 1963 for the BBC science fiction show Doctor Who. It’s a wonder Fox News didn’t call for the arrest of Nation’s heirs, not to mention the show’s current writing and production team, as terrorist sympathizers.

A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.

Source: Scholars and Rogues
Fox News (the original piece, at least until they yank it)

Stephen King Musical
Seriously. He's gotten together with John Mellencamp to make a musical.

King, who has written numerous best-selling novels, has written the script for "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County," with music by John Mellencamp.

The play will open at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre in April 2009, with the object of getting it ready for
a Broadway run.

The Alliance, which announced the project on Tuesday, described it as "a sultry Southern gothic mystery with a blues-tinged, guitar-driven score."

The story is set in the fictional town of Lake Belle Reve, Miss., and centers on the deaths in 1957 of two brothers and a young girl and the legend that grows out of the tragedy.

Peter Askin, whose New York credits include "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," will direct.

It will no doubt tell the story of how being a writer/painter/artist/musician leads to certain doom.

Like Cell/Hearts in Atlantis/Lisey's Story/The Dark Half/Salem's Lot/Stationary Bike.

I'm sure I missed a few.

Source: AZCentral

Call Animal Control Early, Call Often
Otherwise your pet might get eaten by a 16 foot snake.

Seriously.

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) -- A 16-foot python stalked a family dog for days before swallowing the pet whole in front of horrified children in the Australian tropics, animal experts said Wednesday.

The boy and girl, aged 5 and 7, watched as the scrub python devoured their silky terrier-Chihuahua crossbreed Monday at their home near Kuranda in Queensland state.

Stuart Douglas, owner of the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, said scrub pythons typically eat wild animals such as wallabies, a smaller relative of the kangaroo, but sometimes turn to pets in urban areas.

"It actively stalked the dog for a number of days," Douglas said.

"The family that owned the dog had actually seen it in the dog's bed, which was a sign it was out to get it," he added.

"They should have called me then, but (the snake) got away and three or four days later, I was called and went around and removed it" after the dog had been killed, Douglas said.

By the time Douglas arrived, all that could be seen of the dog was its hind legs and tail.

There's a great picture of the adorable snake eating the dog.

I WANT ONE

The snake I mean. Not the dog. Especially not the half-eaten dog.

Source: CNN.com