Madness Beckons

We’ve all read about the guy Who played StarCraft almost continuously for 50 hours. He went into cardiac arrest and died at a local hospital.

In a different case a Korean man stabbed his mother to death because she nagged him about playing too much on the internet. He then went to an internet cafe to continue his game.

Now we have a Korean couple who starved their three month old daughter to death while they raised a virtual child online.

Guardian.uk –South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl.

The 41-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who met through a chat website, reportedly left their infant unattended while they went to internet cafes. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her powdered milk.

The police seem to think that the virtual world allowed them to escape their real life problems, including their daughter.

Mike over at the Hostility Blog thinks that the local power company(Nevada Energy) has raised the frequency of the power coming in to our homes from 60hz to 90hz, so the meters will run faster and they can charge more for the same amount of power. –He thinks he’s being charged for 3k every time he uses 1k.

According to a mutual friend, Mike is a systems administrator and programmer for a local finance company. He does his job well. Keeping the network up and making whatever changes are needed to the program. Proving that he’s not stupid.

Why then does he believe what anyone can disprove with an O-scope you ask?

Because, through the use of his superior intellect and phenomenal reasoning capabilities, he has managed to prove, using logic well beyond the ability of the common man to understand, that his power bill on his poorly insulated mobile home is “too high.” Therefore the power company, the source of all evil, has implemented a nefarious scheme to overload our circuits, burn out our motors and make our meters spin faster in order to collect three times as much money as they are entitled to. –It couldn’t be a rate increase or crappy insulation making his bill higher and it couldn’t possibly be happening to him alone, so it must be some kind of a conspiracy.

The human race: Providing endless entertainment to logical people everywhere, since the beginning of time.

Two German women rented a “Wicked” van in Alice Springs, Australia to take on a 17 day trip.

The problem was that whenever they hit a puddle the van would quit. This combined with the vehicle running out of oil by 800km and then again at another 400km, made them call the Wicked hotline. They were told to take the van to Darwin so a company mechanic could look at it.

When they got to Darwin the company said they could return the van if they were unhappy with it.

Let’s review: The van dies whenever a dog pisses on the tires and it sucks down oil like cold stubbies on a hot day. Now why wouldn’t they want to keep it?

At any rate they asked for a refund for the unused days on the rental and were told it just ain’t happening.

The representative for Wicked did have a brief comment for the press.

The Wicked depot boss yesterday would not talk to the Northern Territory News.

“It’s all good and I don’t care, so f… off,” he said.

Wicked spokesman Stephen Sealey was not available for a comment.

Ah, yes. Customer service at it’s best.

From News.com.au:

After a night on the drink, the 19-year-old Ukrainian man scaled down a cliff near Manly but got stuck half way and passed out.

After being alerted by a fisherman, rescue workers found him asleep on his back on a ledge 30m above sea level at North Head early yesterday morning.

And after all the fuss, a $10k rescue will probably cost this drunken tourist about $700.

An Australian man was justifiably sacked(fired) for repeated safety violations. But because of his lack of education and the unlikely prospect of his finding another job, the valid sacking was invalidated and the company was forced to rehire him with compensation.

www.theaustralian.com.au –The nation’s industrial umpire has ruled that a long-term employee who was legitimately sacked for repeated safety breaches must be reinstated and paid compensation because of his poor education and poor job prospects.

It would appear that in land down under being judged too dumb to find another job is the perfect form of job security.