News of the Weird

[Todd]

Hahaha! Idiot!

[derickw]

Group finds toad the size of a small dog

2 hours, 35 minutes ago

DARWIN, Australia - An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a "monster" toad the size of a small dog.
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With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer.

"It\'s huge, to put it mildly," he said. "The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male ... I would hate to meet his big sister."

Frogwatch, which is dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals, picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.

Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia\'s northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia\'s delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

As part of its so-called "Toad Buster" project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights then scooping them up by the dozen.

"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process" that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.

"It turns out to be sensational fertilizer," he added.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070327/ap_on_sc/odd_monster_toad

http://imageshack.us">http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/3915/monstertoadii8.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" />

anyone wanna lick

[Todd]

That\'s a princely toad if I\'ve ever seen one!!

[Spacey]

LOS ANGELES - Maybe Eddie Griffin should leave the driving to his chauffeur.

The comedian destroyed a rare million-dollar Enzo Ferrari on Monday when he crashed it into a barricade while promoting a movie. He was unhurt in the low-speed incident, at Irwindale Speedway, about 20 miles east of Los Angeles.

"The brother\'s good at karate and all the rest of that, but the brother can\'t drive," Griffin told reporters.

He was practicing for a celebrity charity racing event tied to his upcoming film, "Redline."

The car, one of just 400 manufactured, belonged to the film\'s producer, Daniel Sadek. Sadek estimated that the car was worth $1.2 million, and seemed philosophical about the loss, saying he was just happy that Griffin was unharmed.

The real-estate investor has put up his own money for the $26 million picture, and allowed one of his two $200,000 Porsche Carreras to be destroyed for a scene in it.

[Me!]

Spacey you\'re not even trying anymore, that\'s not "weird"


From the Darwin Awards page

(2000, Denmark) A young man who works a few desks away had some car trouble shortly after he got his first driver\'s license. Exhilarated by the freedom a new license allowed, he borrowed a car from his uncle, a car collector, and took his cousin out for a spin.
Denmark winters are usually very mild, but this particular year was so cold that the Baltic Sea surrounding our island, Als, froze over. They drove down to the shore and found that Ketting Bay had iced over. The cousins took a quick walk on the ice, tested it by jumping up and down, and decided that it was thick enough to drive on.

A few hundred yards out, they discovered their error. The ice cracked, and the car sank. Luckily, Ketting Bay is shallow, so the boys suffered no worse than wet pants as they escaped through the car windows. Up to this point, their misadventure could be considered a bad estimate.

The looked the half-submerged car over, and decided that they had better pull it out before Uncle got mad. So they walked back to the farm, found a coil of rope and a strong car, drove back to the beach--and out to the submerged car!

Sploosh.

At this point, we would not be wrong to talk about the foolishness of youth.

The boys climbed out of Submerged Car #2, walked back to the farm with sodden pants and chattering teeth, and fetched a farm tractor. They drove back to the beach--out onto the ice--and sank the tractor, too!

Sinking the first car could be called an accident. Sinking the second could be called plain daft. But sinking the third one seems to indicate some genetic error. Especially since the boys agreed on the actions, and they are blood relatives...

:rolleyes:

[peaches626]

ouch... that hurts

regarding the toad thing... i actually just watched a movie in my ecology class about cane toads.... they are an exotic species to australia, as it says, brought in from hawaii to help control beetles that were eating crops... but the toads and beetles ended up filling different niches in the australian environment, resulting in massive toad population growth, without any significant decline in the beetle population... there were scenes of peoples houses, where hundreds of toads were in their backyards croaking as the people tried to sleep... definitely quite a failed attempt at biological control

[Me!]

^^^ Sounds like the episode of the Simpsons where they go to Australia and Bart infests the country with frogs.

[jocelyn]

I remember learning about the Cane toad issue in like 10th grade.

Why anyone thinks introducing non-native species into an environment is a good idea I will never understand.

Fucking idiots.

[FreeSpirit]

:that: It reminds me of those annoying & vicious parrots that swarm the beaches of West Haven -- they flock around in swarms and attack people/pets.

[Todd]

Why anyone thinks introducing non-native species into an environment is a good idea I will never understand.

Fucking idiots.

Multiflora rose was another failure. Initially introduced for soil conservation, now it overtakes EVERYTHING. And it\'s a bitch and a half to hack through while trying to survey a piece of property!

[FrankZappa]

will.never.get.old

[FrankZappa]

not that weird, actually kind of cool that something like this could survive that long in that part of the world.

ATHENS, Greece - Archaeologists on a Greek island have discovered a large Roman-era tomb containing gold jewelry, pottery and bronze offerings, officials said Wednesday. The building, near the village of Fiscardo on Kefalonia, contained five burials including a large vaulted grave and a stone coffin, a Culture Ministry announcement said. The complex, measuring 26 by 20 feet, had been missed by grave-robbers, the announcement said.

Archaeologists found gold earrings and rings, gold leaves that may have been attached to ceremonial clothing, as well as glass and clay pots, bronze artifacts decorated with masks, a bronze lock and copper coins.

The vaulted grave, a house-shaped structure, had a small stone door that still works perfectly — turning on stone pivots.

On a nearby plot, archaeologists also located traces of what may have been a small theater with four rows of stone seats, the ministry said.

Previous excavations in the area have uncovered remains of houses, a baths complex and a cemetery, all dating to Roman times — between 146 B.C. and 330 A.D.

source

[Stephengencs]

I am sure you have all heard this one.....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Keith Richards says he snorted father\'s ashes
Stones guitarist mixed remains with cocaine — ‘it went down pretty well’

LONDON - Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all.

In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine.

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

“He was cremated, and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,” he said, adding that “it went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

Richards’ father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.

Richards, one of rock’s legendary wild men, told the magazine that his survival was the result of luck, and advised young musicians against trying to emulate him.

“I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it’s a way of life,” he was quoted as saying.

“I’ve no pretensions about immortality,” he added. “I’m the same as everyone ... just kind of lucky.
 
“I was No. 1 on the ‘who’s likely to die’ list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list,” Richards said.

The rocker, who underwent an operation in New Zealand last year after reportedly falling out of a tree in Fiji, also took a swipe at some of the big musical acts of today.

“Everyone’s a load of crap,” he said. “They are trying to be somebody else, and they ain’t being themselves. Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party? Load of crap, load of crap. Posers, rubbish.”

[FrankZappa]

LONDON (Reuters) - A British man has met and married a 22-year-old woman after, by his own account, dreaming of her phone number and then sending her a text message.

David Brown, 24, says he woke up one morning after a night out with friends with a telephone number constantly running through his head. He decided to contact it, sending a message saying "Did I meet you last night?."

Random recipient Michelle Kitson was confused and wary at first but decided to reply and the two began exchanging messages. Eventually they met and fell in love.

"It was really weird but I was absolutely hooked," Kitson told the Daily Mail newspaper. "My mum and dad kept saying \'But he could be an axe murderer\', but I knew there was something special about it."

After a long courtship, the oddly matched couple -- he\'s six foot seven inches tall and she\'s five foot four -- have just returned from their honeymoon in the Indian resort of Goa.

A love-struck Brown said: "I\'ve no idea how I ended up with her number in my head -- it\'s only a few digits different from mine."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070409/od_nm/britain_text_dc

:shrug:

[Spacey]

something for the couples...

BERLIN (Reuters) -
Business is booming for a Berlin entrepreneur\'s unique service -- delivering break-up messages for a fee.

Bernd Dressler, who charges 50 euros ($68) to tell people they have been dumped, says he has helped end 200 relationships in the last 11 months.

"I almost never get invited in for a coffee," he told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper on Monday. "Most of the time they\'re totally surprised."

Breaking the bad news only takes about three minutes and often leaves the message recipients in a state of shock, said Dressler, a trained economist.

People wanting to dump their partners in person can make use of coaching sessions given by Dressler, who also offers help for those wanting to save their relationships or apologize for going astray.

Reuters Link