It’s been an annual event in Germany for some time, and now it appears that the sport of Christmas tree throwing is spreading! A competition was held over the weekend at the Keele Christmas Tree Farm in Staffordshire, England. Participants tossed a 6-foot, 22-pound Christmas tree for both length and height (trying to get it over a bar). There were about 100 trees of the same height and weight available, as tossing does tend to wear a tree out fast. The event was a fundraiser for the Help for Heroes UK military charity. See more pictures at Buzzfeed.
When a cat sees something it wants, it’s time to go for it, whether it’s behind glass or not. These cats don’t quite understand this magic force field that is keeping them from their object of desire! Strange how these same cats can deal with a window just fine, but maybe they look at windows as the big separation between “inside” and “outside.” A glass table may be more difficult to rationalize. It’s all fun and games until the cat breaks the glass. -via Tastefully Offensive
It’s adorable when little kids do it, and it’s even cuter when a puppy does it. Oakley, a young Australian shepherd, is sleeping in the car when the strains of his favorite song come on the radio. He wakes up and has to sing along! Then when someone changes the station, he goes right back to sleep. -via reddit
How does a fad start? What makes millions of people all jump on the same bandwagon at the same time? Is it coincidence… or careful planning? Here’s a look at an interesting craze of the late 1990s.
TOYCOON
In 1980 Ty Warner left his sales job at a San Francisco stuffed animal company to start one of his own. He named it after himself- Ty, Inc. The business did well from the start, but it wasn’t until 1993 that Warner hit on the idea that would put it on the map. Why not make a stuffed animal so affordable that kids could buy it with one week’s worth of allowance?
So he came up with tiny stuffed animals made of polyester plush fabric that could sell for about $5. The critters came with a heart-shaped paper tag that gave the animal’s name, its “birth date,” and a four-line poem describing it. He called them “Beanie Babies.”
The Beanie Babies’ most novel feature was their filling -as the name suggests, they were loosely filled with plastic “beans” that gave them the feel of a beanbag instead of a stuffed animal. They looked slightly deflated, not stuffed, and when Warner showed his tiny slumping cats, dogs, bears, and other animals to people in the toy industry, they thought he was nuts. “Everyone called them roadkill,” Warner told a reporter in 1996. “They didn’t get it. The whole idea was that they looked real because they moved.”
The clothing company Shinesty sells a variety of ugly Christmas sweaters, and they’ve recently unveiled a new line of men’s suits based on ugly Christmas sweater designs. They are titled, from the left, the Tacky Christmas Sweater Holiday Tree Suit, the Rudolph Suave, and the Ugly Christmas Sweater Suit.
Do you remember all those Christmas parties you went to last year dressed in your mom's baggy vintage '88 Christmas sweater complete with shoulder pads and shedding small trinkets from holidays past with each step you took? Do you remember going home to your sad, cold bed a little tipsy and utterly alone? Thought so. But what is there to do? You don't want to be the stiff who shows up dressed all "normal and boring" to a holiday party. Well luckily for you, daddy (that's us) went up North and got some of Ole man Nick's hobbit friends to whip up something a bit more... dapper.
This short tale starts out very familiar to us, but takes on new meaning with a twist ending. Yeah, some students actually study what they’re supposed to, although he does wait until the night before the exam, as tradition dictates for we procrastinators. This comic is from übertool, a webcomic which I have now added to my bookmarks. -via Daily of the Day
Prominent Sydney human rights lawyer Seth Richardson died at age 52 and the funeral was held Thursday, but not without incident. During funeral preparations, a man jumped into the hearse and drove off- with Richardson in his coffin in the back! Richardson’s brother Tobias called police, who at first thought he was reporting a murder when he said a man drove off with his dead brother.
Tobias Richardson took matters into his own hands, jumping into his car and giving chase. Fortunately the hearse had turned into a cul-de-sac and Tobias Richardson blocked the only way out with his own car.
The police arrived moments later and detained the driver.
The driver turned out to be a man with dementia who had walked away from his nursing home. He was taken to a hospital and no charges were filed. The incident was resolved in 20 minutes, and the funeral proceeded on time.
"Seth would have thought this was so funny, he had a wicked sense of humour," Ms West said.
It was midnight on Christmas Eve when the maintenance staff of Kimble's came to work in the deserted department store. When they arrived at the North Pole display, they discovered every child's worst nightmare, the lifeless body of Santa Claus. He was in a storage room, his head bashed in by the butt end of a .44 revolver.
Santa's off-duty name was Rudolph Pringle. "That's Rudolph's revolver," the manager informed the police. "He started carrying it after a six-year-old pulled a knife on him."
"Do you know anyone who would want to see Rudolph dead—besides the six-year-old?"
The manager cleared his throat. "Santa's been having a lot of fights with his elves. I know three elves who'd threatened to kill him."
The detective had the murder weapon bagged. Then he placed it on the center of the interview table, right where the suspects would be forced to look at it. "Rudolph Pringle has been murdered," he informed each elf. "What do you know about it?"
A church choir was picnicking in a rest area near Pine Gorge when they heard the distant squeal of tires. The choir members gazed out over the winding ribbon of road in time to see a red convertible slam through a guard rail and sail out into the steep gorge. The driver was thrown clear of the vehicle seconds before impact. Miraculously, there was no explosion.
The highway patrol found the bloodied body of Mike Ilirium smashed on the boulders. Inside the mangled car were several loose rocks, a tangle of broken branches, and more blood on the seat and the dashboard.
The Ilirium saga was well known to the area gossips. Mike had been engaged to a local beauty. They broke off the engagement when she confessed to having had an affair with one of Mike's brothers; no one knew which.
The authorities visited the Ilirium lodge a half mile up the road from the accident. Mike's two brothers seemed devastated by the news.
When the emperor rose on that April morning, he immediately noticed the silence. "There's no cricket. Where's my cricket?" he demanded. The servants of the bed chamber checked all the usual places, but the cricket was gone—and so was its jeweled cricket box.
The entire royal court was thrown into turmoil until the chirping pet was finally found, housed in a lowly bamboo box and hidden in the corner of a public garden. The emperor was both relieved and outraged. "How dare someone steal from me!" He ordered the captain of the palace guard to find the still-missing box and the culprit.
Finding the box was easy. Lu Ping, a near-sighted gem dealer, bought it from a palace servant and only realized later what he had purchased. With the most abject apologies, he returned it to the emperor. 'I don't know if I can recognize the man who sold it to me," he said with a squint. "I'll do my best."
From the gem dealer's description, the captain narrowed down the suspects to three. But the dealer couldn't make a positive identification, and none of the three would confess. "Hang them all," the emperor commanded.
The murder occurred in the wee hours of the morning on the last Sunday of October and looked like a professional hit. The victim, Sol Weintraub, ran a garbage-collection business that was going in direct competition with a mob-owned company. Days after winning a contract with the city's convention center, Sol was found dead in his suburban home.
The killer had broken into the man's house, shot him once in the head with a silencer-equipped .38, and left, taking no valuables.
It was now early November and the police were no closer to finding their killer. The medical examiner was placing the time of death at between 2 and 3 A.M. But the mob's most reliable "enforcers" all had alibis.
Johnny "Dum-Dum" Falco had been out on the town that Saturday night. Witnesses saw him at the Tropicana Club until 2 A.M. Other witnesses, just as reliable, placed Dum-Dum at a nearby tavern from 3 A.M. until closing. No matter how the police timed it, the murder scene was a good 40 minutes away from both the Tropicana and the tavern.
Victor Conroy's alibi was even better. He'd been a patient at Mercy Memorial. The young hit man had been in a minor car accident and was being held overnight. A nurse checked his room every hour, all night. Mercy Memorial was also nearly 40 minutes from the crime.
"I'm changing my will," Abigail Wallace announced. Her four children might have been adopted, but they were just as spoiled and ungrateful as any natural offspring. "Tomorrow I'm cutting you all off without a cent." And with that satisfying but reckless statement, Abigail rose from the dining room table and headed up to her bedroom.
No one was surprised when a gunshot rang out two hours later. The only surprise was that it had taken so long.
"I was downstairs reading," Manny later told the police. "As soon as I heard the shot, I ran upstairs and down the hall to Mother's room. It was locked from the inside."
Moe had also been downstairs, in the kitchen. "I ran up the back staircase. Manny was already at Mother's door, pounding and calling out her name."
"I was in my own room at the far end of the hall," said Jack, the third child to arrive at the scene. "I suggested looking through the keyhole. But Manny and Moe decided to put their shoulders to the door instead."
It was 1 PM when the two officers heard the cry for help. They responded quickly, racing down an alley to find a woman sitting on the ground, massaging a nasty bump on the back of her head. It took them a minute to get her to speak coherently.
Her name was Mary Ramsey. She worked at a jewelry store and had been in the process of taking yesterday's receipts to the bank. "I do this every day. My boss warned me not to use the alley. Today I had a feeling I was being followed. Like an idiot, I took the alley anyway. I heard footsteps. Before I could even turn around, I was hit on the head.
"I fell down," Mary continued. "But it didn't quite knock me out. He was running away with my money bag. I only saw him from the rear. He was tall and had on blue jeans and a dark-colored cardigan." The officers brought in two men for questioning, both tall and both dressed according to Mary's description.
That didn’t take long. Snooperking saw the teaser trailer for the upcoming Star Wars film and set to work making a LEGO version. It took about twelve hours of work, but he got it uploaded about 4AM just in time to join the family for a holiday weekend visit. -via Tastefully Offensive
Animator Cyriak Harris made four bumpers for Adult Swim in 2014. Here they are, “presented in order of strangeness.” I think he should do full-length regular features for them, don’t you? -via reddit
