Tag: bizarre

Pirate hunting, Russian style

Ananova reports on perhaps the most bizarre vacation idea yet: intentionally attracting the attention of pirates (real pirates, as in criminals of the high seas), armed with high-powered weapons. As quoted from the article:

Wealthy punters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.

When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt.

Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.

(Exchange rates at time of writing: £1 = approx. US$1.65 = approx. €1.18)

Not surprisingly, there’s some opposition. Since these are international waters, only the international maritime laws would apply. There appear to be no such laws restricting the arming of a ship against potential pirates, only against the actual acts of piracy themselves.

I personally take a dim view of those who engage in a career of theft on the high seas; as I have written previously, I don’t take the abuse of the term “pirate” to apply to one who violates copyright law lightly. The people who choose to steal and murder on the high seas for a living deserve to meet a bullet or two (or five, or ten, or a hundred) from an AK-47. Some Russian company has found people willing to pay for the privilege. Big surprise.

That said, this is truly a vacation for those who enjoy living dangerously. But, it’s not a vacation I’ll be taking anytime soon. For now, I intend to limit my living dangerously to skydiving when the budget allows, and driving around Houston (and any other large cities I may visit) when it doesn’t.

Paint them like ducks, they still won’t quack

The Daily Mail reports on the incredibly strange story of what some Thailand zookeepers did with their elephants.

These elephants were painted black and white to look like the pandas who have stolen all their fans.

The elephant is Thailand’s national symbol, but the country has gone panda-crazy since the birth of a female panda cub to pandas Lin Hui and Xuang Xuang at Chiang Mai zoo in Bangkok.

Those with animal cruelty concerns need not worry, as later in the story the paint used is a form of watercolor.

I have to wonder what problem the zookeepers had in mind for this rather bizarre solution? You can still tell they are elephants. They still don’t look nearly as cuddly as panda bears. If one were to try and feed them bamboo, I don’t think the watercolor would really help them take a liking to it. Oh, and they are still going to trumpet like elephants, not make the more chipmunk-chatter-like noise one would expect from a panda bear.

Really, I don’t think the kids were fooled.

Does this ad campaign go over the line?

Just when you think you’ve seen everything. The Frisky reports on what may be the gutsiest ad campaign ever attempted. It certainly is the most bizarre I have ever seen–and I’ve seen some weird ones.

Procter and Gamble, the company behind Tampax, has launched a campaign for that product that comes straight out of a science fiction movie. The hero is a fictional 16-year-old boy Zack Johnson complete with his own blog and Twitter account.

This wouldn’t be much of a story if Zack led a normal life. No, on Day 1, Zack wakes up to urinate, and notices he all of a sudden has “the aiming ability of a defective garden sprinkler” and “a super important body part of mine had gone missing.” (Apparently P&G told the ad agency “you can’t actually say ‘penis.'”) Day 2 starts with: “Still in possession of girl parts ‘down under.’ No, not Australia.” Hopefully the story line is obvious enough by now.

I hope they paid the poor young actor hired to be Zack some serious dough. Beyond that, I still have no idea what to make of this.

Kid’s henna tattoo runs amok

From weinterrupt.com comes this story of yet another body art mishap, this time on a five-year-old boy who sat for a temporary henna tattoo while on vacation with his parents in Indonesia.

Cannon Cribb got more than he bargained for when after the henna wore off, he was left with a large welt in the shape of the Oriental dragon tattoo. The scar happened because the “henna” contained a chemical called para-phenylenediamine (PPD), normally used in hair or textile dyes. DuPont, one of the makers of PPD, specifically warns against using PPD directly on the skin as quoted below:

DuPont does not recommend and will not knowingly offer or sell p-phenylenediamine (PPD) for uses involving prolonged skin contact. Such uses may involve, but are not limited to, products formulated with henna for tattoo applications or other skin coloration effects. This use of PPD in prolonged skin contact application has the potential to induce allergic skin reactions in sensitive individuals.

If there is a lesson to be learned, it is this, and this applies equally to anyone doing any type of face/body art: never use chemicals directly on the skin which are not intended to be used in that fashion.

I wish Cannon a full and speedy recovery, and sincerely hope someone out there will learn from his misfortune.

Never mind the dog

This bizarre story in the London Daily Mail almost defies description. Usually, when postmen feel threatened by an animal, it is a dog, typically one of the larger breeds of dog such as a mastiff, pit bull, Rottweiler, Doberman, maybe even a Great Dane.

So Kenneth Ridge and his son Bradley were quite shocked when they got a letter from the Royal Mail threatening them with suspension of mail service. On 2009-06-06 a postal worker (for some reason, referred to as both a postman and postwoman in the article, not that gender really matters here) delivering mail to the Bradleys had been attacked by the their six-month-old, seven-pound kitten Illy.

From the article:

A Royal Mail spokesman said it always treats animal attacks on postmen seriously, however minor they might appear.

‘We record about 5,000 animal attacks on our postmen and women each year with the vast majority being dogs,’ he said.

‘The member of staff suffered a very bad cut to her hand while delivering mail through the letterbox of the address.’

Having been around cats as long as I have, I find the story plausible, but still very bizarre. Then again, I’ve never been to the UK, so it’s entirely possible the domestic felines are much fiercer there.