flanerie.org

I haven't owned a bike for more than 20 years which, given my attempts to be vaguely eco-friendly and vaguely non-obese, is very poor.

I have been wanting to buy one for a while but have been put off by the following hypothetical encounter:

Me: I would like to buy a bike
Shopkeeper: What kind of bike are you looking for?
Me: I don't know
Shopkeeper: Is it for road or off-road use?
Me: I don't know. I will know once I start using it.
Shopkeeper: Mmm'kay, and how much were you planning to spend?
Me: I am not worried about the price - whatever it takes to get the right bike for me.
Shopkeeper: Ah, very good. If you could just drop your trousers and bend over the counter I am sure we can help you.

Thankfully passepartout knows a thing or two about bikes and guided me through the whole terrifying process, and now I and the proud parent of a new bike, which has been christened Omally.

It has wheels and handle bars, 16 valves per spoke, dual overhead cam reflectors, instamatic teflon-coated brakes and is matt black. That is, matt black. I love it for its matty blackness. It is boss.

Now I just need to figure out how to ride the fucking thing.

BERLIN: A German plastic surgeon who was cheated out of payment by several women has given pictures of their enlarged breasts to police, in the hope the photos will help trace them.

"The women registered under fake names," Michael Koenig, a surgeon in Cologne, told Bild newspaper. "After the operations, which lasted about an hour, they just ran away."

"Tanja" went out for "fresh air" after 8,000-euro ($NZ15,333) surgery to enlarge her breasts. "She never came back and never paid," Koenig said. He now plans to demand payment in advance.

Bild published a five-column picture of Tanja's naked breasts. "It's probably the most unusual wanted poster police ever had," the newspaper wrote.
[from stuff.co.nz]

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your viewpoint, Passepartout is into snowboarding and I have been convinced to try my hand (legs?) at it. The hope being that if I am not a complete no-hoper I can progress to an alpine holiday.

And so it was that I found myself at an indoor ski slope last Friday. I didn't know such places even existed. I am sure it was all dry slopes last time I checked, but now you can pay to be in a big fridge with real snow. Well, not real real snow, but artificial real snow. It is like cheese. Real cheese is real cheese. Yellow cardboard is artificial cheese. Kraft slices are artificial real cheese.

I did lessons one and two, which were thankfully very basic, and I can now slide down the hill backwards on my toe edge and forwards on my heel edge. I can't actually aim the board downhill and let God decide my fate. That sort of crazy behaviour can wait until I am in the Alps - if I am going to die strapped to a plank of wood, I want to die somewhere nice.

Of course, now that I am a snowboarder I am cool. And rad, dude.

I need to stop drinking tea and start drinking Mountain Dew while listening to the Lo-fidelity All-stars. I need to talk about half-pipes. I might even need to start smoking half-pipes. Or maybe what I really need to do is buy a snowboarding dictionary so I know what all this weird shit means.

A first aider suffering a suspected heart attack received a pager message sending him to his own emergency.

Roger Flux, 66, a volunteer community responder for Hampshire Ambulance Service, had chest pains in bed at his New Forest home.

Roger Flux an emergency first aider with Hampshire Ambulance Service at his home in Ashurst, New Forest, after being scrambled to attend his own suspected heart attack /PA

His wife called 999 as a precaution and paramedics were on the scenes within minutes.

It was then that Mr Flux got a pager message scrambling him to the emergency at his own house.

He said: "I was on call that evening and during the middle of the night I had severe chest pains right across my chest and jaw.

"In a couple of minutes the ambulance crews were here and investigating and in the meantime I asked my wife to get my response bag.

"While I was sitting down my pager went off, telling me to attend to a man with chest pains. Then I looked at the address - it was my own."

By the time cardiac specialists at Southampton General Hospital decided it had been a false alarm, Mr Flux saw the funny side of it.

"At least it shows the system works," he said.
[nabbed from ananova]

12 October 2006

TORONTO: An animal rights group has called for a North American theme park operator to cancel a competition in which people will try to break the world cockroach-eating record.

Theme park operator Six Flags Inc, based in New York, is staging the contest as part of a promotion leading up to Halloween in which it is also offering customers free entry or line-jumping advantages if they eat a live Madagascar hissing cockroach.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it had been flooded with calls from children, adults and even anonymous employees of Six Flags opposing the record-breaking contest and the overall promotion.

"Insects do not deserve to be eaten alive especially for a gratuitous marketing gimmick," PETA spokeswoman Jackie Vergerio told Reuters.

The competition to beat the world cockroach eating record is being held on Friday at a Six Flags park in Gurnee, Illinois. Anyone who beats the record will win a season pass for four people for 2007 with VIP queue-jumping status.

Competitors will try to break the current world record, which is held by Ken Edwards of Derbyshire, England, who devoured 36 Madagascar hissing cockroaches in one minute in 2001.

However Six Flags spokesman James Taylor said the only complaints the company had received were from people who did not have the opportunity to sign up and eat a cockroach because

only 12 of its 30 parks in the United States, Canada, and Mexico were participating in the promotion.

Taylor dismissed any health concerns, saying the cockroaches were raised in a sterile environment and were as safe to eat as shrimp or lobster with high nutritional value.

Madagascar hissing cockroaches are large, wingless cockroaches that can grow up to 7.6cm.

Taylor said no one who had indulged in this rare delicacy had complained.

"It's something that's supposed to be scary, it's icky, it's gross, it's Halloween fun and it's just one small part of the haunted houses and thrilling rides going on."
[liberated from stuff.co.nz]

HANOI: A death-row inmate held in solitary confinement in Vietnam for almost a year is pregnant and is seeking a pardon to give birth, a newspaper reported.

The Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper quoted a police doctor as saying tests in September confirmed that convicted heroin trafficker Nguyen Thi Oanh, 39, was then 11 weeks pregnant.

The report said it was the first time that a death-row prisoner had become pregnant in Vietnam and that police were investigating how it had happened.

Oanh's husband was serving a jail sentence at another prison in another province, the newspaper said.

Oanh was due to face a firing squad this year after losing her appeal against the death sentence she received last year for possession of a billion dong worth of heroin.

Trafficking more than 600 grams of heroin in Vietnam is punishable by death or life imprisonment.
[found on stuff.co.nz]

A cat has set up home in a bird's nest in Norfolk.

Wendy Hobbs, from Reepham, first spotted the cat up the tree a week ago, reports the Daily Mail.

She was about to phone the fire brigade when she noticed the stray had set up home in the nest.

The cat only leaves the cherry tree to beg for food at her back door then climbs back up the tree.

Mrs Hobbs said: "I don't know why she loves the tree. She sits there watching the traffic. My husband and I think the nest must have been a pigeon's because it's so messy."

Mrs Hobbs has tried to find the cat's owners, she added: "We have phoned the vet's and apparently there have been no cats reported missing.

"I'm sure someone must be looking for her and I've put adverts up everywhere."
[from ananova.com]
---

Surely the cat is just learning the ways of its prey to improve its kill-rate. Or it has gone soft and crossed to the other side. Or it is a pigeon pretending to be a cat. Or Mrs Hobbs is an attention seeking liar.

Who ever said Italy was no good for anything?

---
PERUGIA: Four Italians have constructed what they believe is the world's first full-sized chocolate igloo but they have yet to solve an age-old problem.

It still melts.

"It was a tough thing to do, much more difficult than building a normal snow igloo," Marco Fanti, 45, who used to race cars in desert rallies, told Reuters as he stood beside the 1.65-metre-high, dome-shaped traditional Inuit shelter made of some 330 dark chocolate bricks.

Fanti and fellow instructors at a survival school took 23 hours working with tricky, crumbling chocolate material to construct what they believe to be the world's first chocolate igloo for the Eurochocolate fair in Perugia.

They normally build one made of snow, for survival courses, within three to four hours.

Fanti said it has yet to be decided what to do with the 3.6-tonne igloo – which is kept indoors and will start melting at above 30 C – when the fair ends on Oct 22.
[pilfered from stuff.co.nz]

Vicar saves Inglewood's knickerless women
21 October 2006

WELLINGTON: A vicar has come to the rescue of Inglewood, a town that has run out of women's underwear.

A group of women at the local Anglican church revealed the crisis caused by the only clothing shop in Inglewood no longer stocking women's underwear.

"Someone came up with the point that it was a bit difficult that ladies essentials were not able to be bought in Inglewood," Reverend Gary Husband told National Radio.

"So we're going to have what's been called a knickers run."

Husband, who came up with the solution to the less-than-spiritual problem, said volunteers would take anyone without transport to the nearby city of New Plymouth, about 20km away, to buy their essentials.

Men's underwear is readily available in the town of around 3000, but it also has no shoe shop and no bus service.

Husband said a trial run would be made before Christmas and if successful it would probably become a monthly event and open to all, regardless of faith.

"This is for the community ... the response has been positive, we've had one (other) denomination get in touch with us, so it's spreading."

PHILADELPHIA: The father of a young football player pulled a gun on his son's coach because he didn't think the boy was getting enough playing time, Philadelphia police said.

Wayne Derkotch, 40, was charged with aggravated assault after getting in a fight with the coach over the amount of time the boy was getting on the field at a game for six- and seven-year-olds on Sunday morning, said police spokesman Officer Raul Malveiro.

"There was a physical altercation about what child should play or not play and then he pulled the gun," Malveiro said.

There were no injuries and Derkotch fled before being arrested after a complaint was made by the coach, whose name was not released, Malveiro said.

Parental behaviour at children's sports events has come under scrutiny from groups such as the Citizenship Through Sports Alliance. The group's study gave parents a D grade for their conduct and involvement at kids' games.

An Internet straw poll of nearly 3000 by the US web-based Centre for Sports Parenting found that 85 per cent of the participants had witnessed parents or coaches becoming verbally abusive during games. Forty percent had seen physical abuse.

Police were called in Bulgaria after a mass fight broke out between 23 teenage girls over a handsome male student.

The girls, aged between 15 and 18, used brass knuckles, chains and beer bottles to fight over the lad whose name was not revealed.

The girls, from the Bulgarian capital Sofia, agreed to fight it out and skipped school to meet up in a local playground in the Gorublyane district of the city.

Several girls suffered minor injuries and dozens of passers-by reportedly witnessed the incident.

But the alarm wasn't raised until after the fight when a father of one of the injured girls called the police.

---

That happens to me all the time

The message appeared on all similar signs around Crawley at about 6.45am.

Thousands of motorists travelling into the town would have been subjected to the unsavoury advice.

The signs normally display the number of spaces available in the town's car parks and were installed about four years ago.

A spokeswoman for Crawley Borough Council said the authority had received no complaints from the public, just calls advising them what had happened.

She said: "It is disappointing someone would do this.

"The car park information system was hacked into.

"Crawley Borough Council officers took immediate action to remove the offensive words when this was brought to their attention.

"The system and network are not the council's and are maintained by a contractor. Measures have now been put in place to prevent any further attacks.

"Our apologies for any offence or distress caused.

"Nowhere is foolproof - if hackers can get into Pentagon computers then I am sure they would have no problem with ours."
[full local newspaper story here]