Bizarre News

[Omega_Destroyer]

The "thud" makes is funny.

[asandir]

Breasts don't have anything to do with her fertility. She could have half of her inner sexual organs taken off.

If he has his right testicle yet, he can still have children, if not, she could have cement filled in her hole for sure.

hehehehee

that's just super Panda

[ThunderTitan]

And by the way, for all you people who believe in that ridiculous intelligent design concept, NO WAY an intelligent designer hangs such sensitive organs on the outside. That's stupid design if you ask me. (damn sensitive external genitalia...)

Maybe he/she/it enjoys opera...

[winterfate]

But then i wouldn't be able to laugh at winterflake for having something in common with hitler...

I'm not even going to ask...

And besides, you're going to laugh at me anyways...

[ThunderTitan]

He might or might not have had only one ball to play with (damn untrustworthy russian morticians).

[winterfate]

Woah! That's kind of...disturbing.

No, I don't have anything in common with him then...

As stefan would say...Perish the thought!

[ThunderTitan]

And now you never will, because you read that article... my fun is ruined.

[winterfate]

Chin up, ThunderTitan!

I'm sure you'll find something else to entertain yourself with soon.

[ThunderTitan]

Is Prince Philip an island god?

By Nick Squires
BBC News, Vanuatu

Britain's Duke of Edinburgh may be planning a quiet birthday celebration at home this weekend, but there will be feasting and flag-waving in an isolated jungle village in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where he is worshipped as a god.

The Land Cruiser ground up the rough dirt track, pitching and rolling like a boat. The trail was so severely eroded that it was more like a river bed, with miniature canyons gouged out by the monsoon rains.

I had been drawn to this poor excuse for a road by a story so unlikely that it sounded barely credible.

It was one I had wanted to investigate for years.

Legend had it that there was a clutch of villages on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu which - as bizarre as it may seem - worshipped Prince Philip as a god.

How and why they had chosen the Duke of Edinburgh, I had no idea. I fully expected the story to be either false, or wildly exaggerated.

Distant adoration

After an hour's drive we pulled into a jungle clearing shaded by giant banyan trees.

A short walk led to the village of Yaohnanen, a collection of sagging thatched huts, banana trees and snotty-nosed little kids.

With the help of my driver-cum-interpreter, Lui, I was introduced to the chief of the village. Jack Naiva was a bright-eyed old man of about 80, with grey hair and a faded sarong wrapped around his wiry body.

I felt deeply foolish telling him I had come to his village to ask if he worshipped the Queen's husband.

I wondered if it was all some sort of elaborate joke.

But the look on Chief Jack's face told me it was not. He dispatched one of the villagers and a few minutes later the man returned from a hut with three framed pictures.

They were all official portraits of the Prince.

The first, in black and white, looked like it was taken in the early 1960s.

The second was dated 1980 and showed the Prince holding a traditional pig-killing club - a present from the islanders.

The most recent was from seven years ago.

They had all been sent from London with the discreet permission of Prince Philip, who is apparently well aware that he is the subject of such distant adoration.

Ancient legend

Chief Jack squatted on the ground as he told me how the Prince Philip cult had come about.

It seems that it emerged some time in the 1960s, when Vanuatu was an Anglo-French colony known as the New Hebrides.

For centuries, perhaps millennia, villagers had believed in an ancient story about the son of a mountain spirit venturing across the seas to look for a powerful woman to marry.

They believed that unlike them, this spirit had pale skin.

Somehow the legend gradually became associated with Prince Philip, who had indeed married a rich and powerful lady.

Villagers would have seen his portrait - and that of the Queen - in government outposts and police stations run by British colonial officials.

Their beliefs were bolstered in 1974, when the Queen and Prince Philip made an official visit to the New Hebrides. Here was their ancestral spirit, resplendent in a white naval officer's uniform, come back to show off his bride.

"He's a god, not a man," the chief told me emphatically, pointing at the portraits.

Response to colonialism

None of the cult followers can read or write.

They told me - somewhat amazingly - that it was only this year that they learnt the date of the Prince's birthday - 10 June.

As Philip turns 86 and they are planning to mark the occasion with a feast and ceremonial drinking of kava, an intoxicating brew made from the roots of a pepper tree which makes your mouth go numb.

They have even acquired a large Union flag which they are going to run up a bamboo flag pole.

It is easy to see all this as so much South Seas mumbo jumbo.

But that would be a grave mistake, anthropologists told me.

Millennial movements like this were a highly sophisticated response by islanders in the South Pacific to the arrival of colonialism and Christianity.

By combining the fundamentals of their ancient beliefs with new elements gleaned from their contact with the West, they were able to preserve their culture.

There is, of course, a delicious irony in all this.

Prince Philip, after all, is a man who has a reputation for making politically incorrect gaffes, often about foreigners.

He once advised British students not to stay too long in China for fear of becoming "slitty-eyed".

And he asked a group of stunned aborigines if they still threw spears at each other.

The villagers of Tanna may live a life far removed from the splendour of Buckingham Palace and Balmoral in far away Britain. But they are as firm in their beliefs as Prince Philip is in his.

I suspect that if they were ever to meet, they would get along rather well.

And for further reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Phi ... al_remarks

[ThunderTitan]

Yes Men crash oil expo, propose turning corpses into fuel


Master pranksters The Yes Men crashed the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary this week, impersonating a rep from the National Petroleum Council at a keynote in which they proposed to convert people who died from climate change disasters into fuel.

After noting that current energy policies will likely lead to "huge global calamities" and disrupt oil supplies, Wolff told the audience "that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people who die into oil," said a Yes Men press release.

Yes Man Mike Bonnano, posing as an Exxon representative named Florian Osenberg, added that "With more fossil fuels comes a greater chance of disaster, but that means more feedstock for Vivoleum. Fuel will continue to flow for those of us left."

The impostors led growingly suspicious attendees in lighting Vivoleum candles made, they said, from a former Exxon janitor who died from cleaning a toxic spill. When shown a mock video of the janitor professing his desire to be turned in death into candles, a conference organizer pulled Bonanno and Bichlbaum from the stage.

As security guards led Bonanno from the room, Bichlbaum told reporters that "Without oil we could no longer produce or transport food, and most of humanity would starve. That would be a tragedy, but at least all those bodies could be turned into fuel for the rest of us."

[Panda Tar]

Imagine you filling the tank of your car when an eye goes in there, blinking at you as if saying: "Are you going to leave me!?"

[asandir]

As stefan would say...Perish the thought!

say what?

[winterfate]

@Stefan: What I mean is that I am using an expression you would normally use.

Woah, that last article TT posted is hardcore.

People into fuel...woah!

[Panda Tar]

Now in Germany, a man and his son were challenging each other in a sort of: Spit Challenge. The man, 43, gained mommentum to spit, but ended up swaing dangerously and felt from the 2nd floor. He was taken to the hospital by helicopter severely injured.

http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/PlanetaBiz ... 91,00.html

Ok, smart-spitting boy. If he was Angelspit, wouldn't have happened that accident.

[Panda Tar]

And another more serious issue is about a study. If all countries keep doing nothing to stop or decrease environment harm, countries like France, Italy, Spain, Germany will have lethal temperatures until 2099, as those who killed 13 thousand people in 2003 in France and more 3 k in Italy.

http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Ciencia/0, ... 03,00.html

[Panda Tar]

Aaaaaaand another interesting stuff. Studies reveal that reading books with action, sex, puzzles and emotion might happen to make you lose fat. Not that it would make you get thin in a week, but you burn twice calories as you would by just doing nothing (but awake all the same).

Da Vinci Code is the 2nd in list, making you lose (more or less), 848 calories.

http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Ciencia/0, ... 03,00.html

Hum, that even makes sense. That's easier seeing a thin geek, isn't it?

[Elvin]

Might? Ah well we can try anyway

[ThunderTitan]

Man Fails High School Exams 39 Times

JAIPUR, India -- A 73-year-old man who failed his 10th grade high school exams for the 39th time vowed Friday to try again next year in the hopes that an education will improve his job and marriage prospects.

Shivcharan Jatav, a farmer from the desert state of Rajasthan in western India, had no formal education as a child. He has been trying to pass the exams since 1969, when an army recruiter told him it would improve his chances of being accepted into the military.

"Since then I have been trying to pass this examination, but without any success," Jatav said, days after receiving the bitter news that he had failed again.

Jatav passed only one subject _ the ancient language of Sanskrit _ and he said he scored just 103 out of a total of 600 in the examinations.

Even though he is too old to join the army he has kept at it, hoping to become a more eligible bachelor.

"I could not get married as the girls told my family members that I was not properly educated. It's my fate that deprived me of education and a married life," he said.

Still, he has no regrets. "I am a happy and contented person," said Jatav.

[Elvin]

He must have missed something...

[Panda Tar]

He is really a champion.