Remember ... they walk among us!
The Annual Darwin Awards
It's that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are remembered, honoring the least evolved among us.
Here is the glorious winner:
1. When his 38-calibre revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.
And now, the honorable mentions:
2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and, after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.
3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.
4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.
5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.
6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer .. . . $15.
7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.
8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."
9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.
the real crap-o-day... ready?... here:
GAZA, DECEMBER 31, 2008
To All The Zionists: Read This. (But I doubt you'll understand... let alone accepting the humanity lessons taught since historic times in all human cultures, and yours, and all the sacred teachings of humans, including yours.
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
January 2, 2009
Israel is still using a strategy of domination in its struggle with Hamas, trying to use force to gain security. But this is a recipe for endless war.
Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but dumb. No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighboring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialist South Americans bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for the U.S. to mobilize a counter-attack. Israel has every right to respond.
But the kind of response matters.
Massive bombings of the sort that have thus far killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded 1,000 other civilians is a classic example of a disproportionate response.
Before Israel's massive bombing, the Hamas bombings that began when the previous cease fire ran out had not (thank God) killed any one. The reason is obvious: Hamas has no airplanes, no tanks, nothing more than the weapons of the powerless- mortars that fire to limited range and with limited accuracy. Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamas' indiscriminate bombing of population centers is a crime against humanity, so is Israel's massive attack against civilians (at least 250 killed so far in Gaza, not to mention the thousands killed by Israel in the years of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza).
Hamas had respected the previously negotiated cease fire except when Israel used the cease fire as cover to make assassination raids against Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Hamas argued that these raids were hardly a manifestation of cease fire, and so as symbolic protest Hamas would then allow the release of rocket fire (usually hitting no targets). But when the issue of continuing the cease fire came up, Hamas wanted a guarantee that these assassination raids would stop. And it asked for more. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing acute malnutrition bordering on starvation, Hamas insists that the borders be opened so that food can arrive to Gaza unimpeded by Israeli attempts to starve the Gazans into submission. And in return for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, it asks for the release of a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Hamas has made it clear that it would accept the terms of the Saudi Arabian peace agreement, though it would never formally recognize Israel. It would live peacefully in a two-state arrangement, but it would never acknowledge Israel's "right to exist." This position is unnecessarily provocative, and represents deep self- destructiveness on the part of Palestinians who believe that this failure to acknowledge Israel's rights is the only symbolic weapon they have left. To many Israelis, trapped in their own history as survivors of genocide and oppression, Hamas' refusal to give official recognition is a way of saying, "We'll wait till we have adequate military power, and then we'll break any defacto truce and cease fire and use that power to wipe out Israel, so just give us time."
How do we get out of these dynamics that lead to the current situation in which a small number of Israelis and a huge number of Palestinians are killed or maimed?
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