C’est Rire category archive

I am surprised an American hasn’t thought of this: Italians are organizing a “divorce fair.” It sounds sort of like a job fair and career re-entry training for the spousal market place:

Organisers say the event in Milan aims to help divorcing couples with legal proceedings and how to start afresh.

Services include life coaching, beauty tips and advice on how to get rid of ex-spouses who turn into stalkers.

. . . strikes again:

A year after a masseuse was killed, allegedly by a man responding to her Craigslist posting, the company’s efforts to discourage sex advertisements by charging more and collecting credit card information are instead generating added profits, prompting a renewed investigation into its practices.

In Boston alone, Craigslist’s revenue from “adult’’ ad postings is anticipated to increase to $942,500 this year, from $160,000 in 2009, according to a consulting firm that tracks the classified ad website.

Frankly, I don’t see how Craigslist was to blame for the actions of a lone nutcase, but I guess it’s a convenient target.

Full Disclosure: I’ve used Craigslist once, to find new homes for my dogs before I moved. The effort was successful.

Whoever had my land line number before I got it is about to have his or her cell phone service cut off for lack of payment.

I’d answer the phone and inform the callers that the person they are calling isn’t here any more, but none of the callers are human and I don’t have the stomach for jumping into a phone number menu hell, especially with Verizon, proprietors of the worst customer service phone system in the known world.

Headline:

Hot air closes court

The few times I have been to the courthouse, I wore at least a tie. When I was the plaintiff, I wore a suit.

I understand that some folks just do not have Sunday go-to-meeting clothes.

Nor, as my grandmother would have said, do they have the sense they were born with.

This is the type of story that makes being a news junkie worthwhile:

A Massachusetts church is scheduled to launch a new monthly worship service — for dogs.

(snip)

Rev. Thea Keith-Lucas tells The Salem News dogs will have a say during service because barking won’t be banned.

Afterthought:

I look forward to when the videos hit AFV.

Strange (emphasis added):

Eleven-year-old Micaela Reyes’ best friend and four other students were sold into slavery last week during a private-school lesson in Roman history and behavior reinforcement.

The exercise was incorporated into a fifth-grade history lesson titled “Rome, Ruler of the Ancient World” at Eagle’s Nest Christian Academy, a school in Milton for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.

The five students who were auctioned off to classmates had low merit points, said Reyes’ mother, Margaret, who called the lesson “demeaning.”

The school says that “(i)t was for one day only and students were not slaves but paid servants,” The task was to carry the books of their masters/employers, but, again according to the school, no one was actually compelled to do it.

What I find curious was the reference to “merit points.”

It’s difficult to tell whether this was an attempt to teach or to punish or some teacher’s idea of cutesy-poo pedagogical creativity.

But it is definitely strange.

If your pet is green, has four legs and crawls on the ground, would you be allowed to take it for a walk on the (Ocean City, Md.–ed.) Boardwalk?

Ocean City Councilwoman Margaret Pillas posed the riddle to her colleagues at a budget meeting, and now the council is set to reconsider just what it means to have a domesticated animal in the resort.

At a recent budget hearing, Pillas wondered aloud whether such a beast would pass the litmus test of being allowed out and about on a leash, and she questioned the town’s current ordinances that define a pet.

Pillas hedged on specifics, but fellow council member Mary Knight sniffed out the details.

“I think I know what this is about,” Knight said. “I’ll say it –I call him Iguana Man.”

According to the story, Iguana Man seems to like to walk his Iguana along the Ocean City Boardwalk and it causes some to be discomfited.

Having spent a lot of time in Wildwood, I suspect that no one on that portion of the Joisey Shore would look twice. Cape May, now, would be another story.

One evening, back when I was a road warrior and stuck in a hotel with a colleague, my colleague said, “Wow!” and pointed out the window towards another wing of the hotel.

Just as she turned away from the window.

Webbed wonder wraps up would-be wastrel:

Sadly for the would-be shoplifter, he had not reckoned with the arachnid acuity of Michael Baulderstone or, more precisely, his CCTV cameras.

The 45-year-old owner of the Adelaide Comic Centre, who was dressed as Spider-Man, clocked a customer “behaving suspiciously” at the back of the shop. So he sprang – or rather loped – into action.

Details and video at the link.

. . . has gone right into the crapper.

Karen D’Souza discusses this in the San Jose Mercury-News. A nugget:

Certainly the ranks of words that once were verboten but now seem ho-hum are growing. Kelly Clarkson was nominated for a Grammy for her pop hit “My Life Would Suck Without You.” Hit Girl, the pint-size killing machine in the movie “Kick Ass,” is proud of her potty-mouth patois. Even that bastion of good taste, The New Yorker, recently featured a cartoon with two whales bemoaning that they should have “grown feet and kicked ass.”

My older son was horrified when I informed him of the history of the term “sucks.”

It never occurred to him.

Critical linguistic analysis does not seem to be a trait of the young. (I’m getting old; he’s a Captain in the Army and not young any more. I’m even more not younger.)

He still didn’t stop saying it, though.

There is no escape from now:

The actress who played Thelma Lou on “The Andy Griffith Show” was robbed in the town that inspired the show’s idyllic Mayberry setting, after moving to the area to avoid big city crime.

Sleeping on the job may go from a firing offense to a jail term:

A would-be thief who apparently fell asleep while burglarizing an East Palo Alto home last month pleaded not guilty to the crime Tuesday, a prosecutor said.

When you already have outstanding warrants, it is a good idea not to attract extra attention to yourself.

Police said the incident started when Thomas Kinsler Jr. started honking the horn of his truck, trying to get the driver of the Acura to move out of the way. When the Acura didn’t move, Kinsler pulled beside the car and began to swerve, ultimately striking the Acura, according to a report.

More details here.

The state revokes a license plate. Follow the link to decode what it might mean:

The state DMV received five complaints about the plate, “14CV88,” agency spokeswoman Melanie Stokes said.

A photo of a truck with the plate came to light when it was posted on the Internet. The truck has a Confederate flag on its rear window and a picture of the World Trade Center attack with “Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11” on its tailgate.

Addendum, Two Days down the Road:

Picture here, via Not Larry Sabato.

Much Later:

Not necessarily so, says the plate’s owner:

(The plate’s owner) tells The Washington Post that he has Jewish relatives and there’s no way he has anything to do with Hitler or Nazis. He says the digits, 14 and 88, are the car numbers of his favorite NASCAR drivers — not references to the phrase “Heil Hitler” or a white supremacist credo. He says the plate featuring the logo of the Sons of Confederate Veterans honors a forefather who served during the Civil War.

Addendum-dee-dum-dum:

Raw Story dissects the denials. The owner of the 14CV88 plates has a rather long record of public statements that belie his protestations.

. . . and it’s nowhere nearly so exciting as this one.

Watch for it soon on Court TruTV:

A would-be burglar was easily captured early today after getting stuck in the ventilation system of the Maryland convenience store authorities say he was trying to burglarize.

See also “The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight”:

An erroneous news release issued Tuesday by the Delaware Republican Party on the location of a Sussex County tea party demonstration Thursday resulted in a cease-and-desist order, warning demonstrators not to meet in the parking lot of the Kmart on Del. 1 outside Lewes.

The tea party group had decided to demonstrate on the sidewalk in front of the Home Depot, also on Del. 1, but the GOP apparently never got the word, according to Steve Hyle, one of the initial organizers of the tea party group.

The persons keep vanity plates from being profanity plates:

To encourage candid talk, committee meetings are closed to outsiders. Stokes did provide a list of last year’s rejects – 726 in all. Most aren’t fit to print in a family newspaper. Around 120 involved some shorthand for the “F-word,” followed by letters aimed at a range of targets – an ex’s initials, ALYAL, OBAMA, even DADMV.

H8 was also a popular prefix – as in H8VICK – and CMY (see my… fill in the blank).

Other rejects that we can probably get away with printing here: BITETHS, IHAV2P, LVVODKA, PMPNVAN, IGETHI, NOGOD, AHCRAAP, and a whole batch of applications containing the letters SUX.

URNBRED and USTUPID were voted down as well.

They are running in to anything that is not moving.