Daily Drivel

Today in History: January 13, 1943: Hitler declared ‘Total War’. He lost.

Interestingly enough, this same day in 1979, the Young Men’s Christian Association filed a libel suit against The Village People for their hit ‘YMCA’. They lost too.

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Link of the Day: http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=8558&display=photoshop#entries

Photoshop contest: beer swap – replace any object with a beer related product.

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There comes a point where sticking to a promise is, well, just plain weird.

Take, for example, the wish of Johannas Pope of Cincinnati OH. Johannas always told everyone that she didn’t want to be buried after her death, because she planned on returning from the Great Beyond. So, when she kicked the bucket while upstairs watching TV in August of 2003, her caretaker did what any good friend would do. Left her sitting in her comfy chair in front of the switched-on television, turned on the air conditioner, and locked the body in the room.

For 2 and a half years.

Family members and the over the top caretaker continued to live in the downstairs section of the house, but nobody was to disturb Johannas. The special discovery of her somewhat chilled remains was made as a result of a phone call from a relative who noticed that he hadn’t heard from her for a couple of years.

See, this is why you send out Christmas cards every year. So people know if your dead body is propped up in front of Wheel of Fortune in an air-conditioned upstairs room, see. ‘Cause it happens.

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I hate it when I go to Hibachi or where ever and the gleeful cook does that thing with his spatula and wings a shrimp through the air and expects me to catch it like a trained seal. The pressure is just too much for me. Now I, and anyone who shares my discomfort with like situations, may call upon the following anecdote as a fine excuse to decline shrimp tossage:

In Mineola, NY, a man with the unfortunate name of Jerry Colaitis stopped in the Munsey Park Benihana for a fun evening of hibachi style food. Jerry didn’t want the chef to throw the shrimp. He REALLY didn’t want to try to catch it in his mouth. So when the chef cheerfully whopped the shrimp towards Jerry, Mr Colaitis ducked violently to avoid being smacked by the crustacean.

Poor Jerry. He wrenched his neck when he ducked. Wrenched it so badly, in fact, that he required surgery. Many months later Jerry developed complications from the surgery.

And died.

Jerry’s family has decided that he never would have died if he didn’t have the surgery, and he wouldn’t have had the surgery if he hadn’t wrenched his neck, and he wouldn’t have wrenched his neck if that dastardly Benihana chef hadn’t lobbed the shrimp at him.

So they’re suing Benihana for wrongful death.

Speaking of the dead…

Jose Serra is mayor in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo. Jose doesn’t like the way the folks at cemeteries are so…er…quiet, and lack energy. He desires to “enable residents to exercise regularly”, and therefore is proposing the construction of circular running tracks in 22 of the city’s cemeteries. Protesters really want Jose to leave the dead alone and not make the living run around with ghosts, but Jose is adamant: "The people of the city are in need of good activity areas, so this is an amazing option to use up spaces with intelligence."

Boo.