Tuesday 1 February 2011

News and various other stories…

I like reading the bizarre news of the world. Sometimes I don’t pay that much attention to what’s happening and make headlines but I will scoop into stories that I find different and far more interesting. For example I don’t know what exactly sexist comments the ‘Sky’ football sportscasters said that got him fired, although I do know of course that it happened.


Anyway, for example I was reading yesterday about the sex scandal of Nazril "Ariel" Irham, the Indonesian mega pop star. The guy had the habit of creating homemade sex tapes with his girlfriends, well known models and actresses of the country. According to what he claims, thieves broke into his house and stole these tapes that were later released on the web. Because of the very strict anti-pornography Islamic laws of the country, ‘Ariel’ was sentenced to 3.5 years of imprisonment!!! Poor guy, he’s going from stardom to prison

TfL (Transport for London) has daily 28 million people taking the tube. We’re talking about half the population of France, in a daily basis. However, according to TfL all these people are not enough to conduct surveys, so they had to hire ‘mystery shoppers’ to evaluate the service provided. They spent £933,000 ($1.49m) during 2009/2010 to hire people to report on train service, station ‘ambience’ and knowledge or helpfulness of staff! This is crazy! We’re talking about a company that is doing staff cuts, leaving stations unmanned and raising the ticket prices without actually providing any better service!

CCTV (China Central Television) wanted to do a story on China’s air force. They wanted to show the world, most likely just the Chinese people, how dominant, reliable and respected their air force is. The footage they had wasn’t what they wanted, so they’ve decided to get some help. What did they do? They used footage from Hollywood movies! The footage showed interviews with senior military figures, fighter jets and nice explosions. Although these scenes were from ‘Top Gun’ and not real…

Earls Court, an area in West London, used to be the gay area of London before ‘Soho’. There were lots of nightclubs and number of businesses targeting mostly gay people. There, the very first public nightclub aimed at a gay clientele, The Copacabana, opened in the late 1970's. Among the available places there was a pub called ‘Coleherne’ public house, a leather bar. The likes of Freddy Mercury, Anthony Perkins or Nureyev had been spotted there. One of the regulars there was Colin Ireland. He is well known as one of the few serial killers targeting only gay men. He pretended to be into only masochistic games, so he managed to tie his victims, which he later killed. 5 men died at his hands. What’s funny (in a very dark way) is the fact that his killings were his ‘New Year’s Resolution’ for 1993! Imagine that…

The Brooklyn comedian Craig Rowin made a video asking for a million dollars. He uploaded that video in youtube and he received it.
That’s it. As simple as that…
Why couldn’t I think of that first!!!

1 comment:

  1. China stealing "Top Gun" footage is funny. Iran loves to fake stuff like that, we know, but China?

    The Chinese military leaders are not the smartest folks out there. In 2007 they decided to test an anti-satellite weapon, so they shot a rocket into orbit and destroyed one of their own satellites just to prove they could do it. It was a smashing success! Unfortunately, the collision left approx. 150,000 pieces of debris in orbit (yes that number is accurate), any one of which can hit another satellite or the space shuttle or the space station and injure or destroy it. Near-earth orbital space is now a minefield thanks to the Chinese. Way to go!

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