• Channel 9 host Ray Martin criticised by army medicos for making them wait in monsoonal rain for 15 minutes because he was doing a live telecast, and then for trying to encourage them to sing C'mon Aussie C'mon. "This is offensive. People died here," one disgruntled Digger said. "Rain one, Ray zip," another added.

• A bloke complaining about swearing in a Disney Interactive Gameboy Advance "Monsters Inc" game turns out to be using a pirated copy, and to be complaining about the splash screens inserted by the game's hackers. (Thanks Jamie)

• Minnesota police get out the pepper spray to deal with an 85-year-old during a traffic stop. (Thanks Jerry)

• UK Government files released for the new year reveal civil service toilet paper buying policies over the decades. (Thanks Amanda)

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(Sending me news items? Cool: email to danielbowen at gmail dot com. But make sure you send the URL of the story, not just quoted text. And try to make the subject line not look like spam.)

• Just one amazing story from the tragic Asian tsunami disaster... the ten year-old British schoolgirl who recognised the early signs of the oncoming tsunami from her geography class, and raised the alarm.

• The tsunami wave kept on rolling, and hit New Zealand 17 hours later.

• British scientists have invented a robot "Ecobot II" that powers itself by eating houseflies.

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(Sending me news items? Cool: email to danielbowen at gmail dot com. But make sure you send the URL of the story, not just quoted text. And try to make the subject line not look like spam.)

• Outhouse falls on man. (Thanks Debbie)

• Meet the Vatican's computer person. (Thanks Amanda)

• Doctor amputates wrong foot. Oops...

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(Sending me news items? Cool: email to danielbowen at gmail dot com. But make sure you send the URL of the story, not just quoted text. And try to make the subject line not look like spam.)

• Two real estate agents fined for not telling a house buyer that the house was the site of a gruesome triple murder. (Is the word "gruesome" redundant here?)

• Italian tourist SMSs his wife from a plane to say it's been hijacked... for a joke.

• Three thousand pillows shaped like women's laps sold in Japan. (Thanks Amanda)

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• Yeeehaaa... The Goodies are coming to Australia for a stage show.

• Metal death kill destruction! Yikes... Heavy metal fan opens fire at ex-Pantera band members at a concert.

• Sun Microsystems head honcho Scott McNealy, doing a presentation, uses a photo of a future home computer as envisaged in 1954. Uh uh, it's a hoax pic. (Dunno about you but I've had it arrive in my email twice so far... it set off the BS/Snopes detector straight away.) (Thanks James)

• Are you an American travelling abroad? Considered dressing as a Canadian?

• On the low-fat or skim milk, but want to get even healthier? How about horse milk? (Thanks Amanda)

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• Come in cow number 47264673A, your time is up. Japan to get national Cow ID numbers.

• Almost posted this on geekrant, but decided to put it here instead: USB Mince Pies. Shame they're not real. (Thanks Phil)

• In Spain, you can now destroy consumer electronics for fun. That's right, it's a commercial of VCR destruction. (Thanks Tony)

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• Am I the only one a little cynical about the whole Virgin Mary in a toasted cheese sandwich thing? (Thanks Dan)

• Bridge weakened by piss. Too many people are relieving themselves on a support of a bridge in Indonesia.

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• Oops. Australian Idol winner Casey Donovan's web site was advertised in today's newspapers... but the address is wrong, it goes to a gay porn site.

• Oh, tasteful. A new videogame called "JFK Reloaded" recreates the JFK shooting. Can you shoot him?

• Employer arrested after he decided to discipline two 19-year-old female employees by spanking them. Senior management said of him "We've never had a complaint". Well you have now! (Thanks Jerry)

• Swearing navy parrot is allowed to rejoin its crew. Apart from the expletives, among her phrases are: "Zulus! Thousands of 'em!" and "You ain't seen me, right?" (Thanks Phil)

• It wasn't me: Daniel Bowen of Cook County, Illinois, found dead in jail after being charged with the murder of his wife.

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• US National Guard F-16 fighter jet accidentally fires on a school. The rounds were intended for a military target range 3.5 miles away. Oops. Thankfully school was out. (Thanks Lauren and Scott)

• Qantas plane delayed taking off by a naked Canadian man wanting to go to Australia. (Thanks Jerry and Christie)

• This one gave me a chuckle as I read the paper on Saturday morning: Omar Yusuf claims to be as rich as Kerry Packer -- and has the web site to prove it. And he's looking for investors to deposit $36,000 with him.

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• US Department of Homeland Security raids a small-town toy store, looking for... fake Rubik's cubes. (Thanks Jekke)

• Looking for that unique Christmas gift that says "I love you, keep on living"? Amazon have the Philips HeartStart Home Automated External Defibrillator on special for only US$1495. (Thanks Jerry)

• Human hobbits! Homo floresiensis rocks the scientific world. Almost as entertaining are media outlets' efforts to hide the hobbit genitalia.

• US scientists analyse the difference between Republican and Democrat brains (assuming both have them) with possible uses in "neuromarketing". (Thanks Amanda)

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• Equal opportunity in the Royal Navy means a technician on HMS Cumberland is allowed to perform satanic rituals on-board ship, and to have a Church Of Satan funeral if he's killed in action.

• Mosaic outside a library in California has 11 famous people's names spelt wrong... including Shakespere, Eistein and Van Gough. (Thanks Marie)

• New formula developed to measure how skilled you are at using chopsticks. (Thanks Shane)

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• Man complains his backyard including hedge and lawn have been damaged. By four runaway elephants. (Thanks Marie)

• FBI demands to know who borrowed a book about Osama Bin Laden from a small town library. Hmm, maybe they should be checking who bought it for the library? (Thanks Jekke)

• Authorities refuse to allow a Chinese man to name his son @. (Thanks Debbie)

• MediaWatch uncovers 13 year old kids writing porn for magazines.

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• A tad worse than the Simpsons episode... 11 year old attacks babysitter with a machete. (Thanks Jerry)

• Hopefully it'll all be above-board this time: US gets foreign observers to oversee the 2004 election. (Thanks Jekke)

• Research shows headlice may have been with us for thousands of years, doing the rounds in prehistoric primary schools and kindergartens. (Thanks Amanda)

• Gentlemen, prepare to be squeamish: an elderly Romanian man attempting to cut a chicken's neck instead chops off his own penis. Then... his dog eats it. (Uh, thanks Phil)

• McKay, Queensland is abuzz, as a vibrator inside a rubbish bin shuts down the airport for an hour. (Thanks Marie)

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• Those no-fun conservatives are up in arms over Neighbours depicting their first lesbian kiss.

• Seven, count them, seven people dead and more than 100 injured at a kite-flying festival. One throat cut by a kite string, three electrocuted using metal kite lines that hit electricity lines, two people fell off roofs, and one run over by a car while chasing his kite. Jeez. (Thanks Peter)

• Meanwhile in other cheerful news, a woman has been shot dead by her husband, who mistook her for a monkey. (Thanks Marie)

• The Last Starfighter: The musical. Nuff said. (Thanks Phil)

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• German radio station starts broadcasts in Klingon (Thanks Amanda)

• Nananana, nananana, nananana, nananana, Protest! Bloke dressed up as Batman invades Buckingham Palace. (Thanks Richard)

• Swear as much as you like at work. Letting the F-word drop could be good for team morale. (Thanks Shane)

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• A man trying to shoot puppies is shot by one of them. Ah, sweet canine revenge. (Thanks Phil and John)

• US Army surgeons to practice on goats. Injured goats. Goats with combat wounds. (Thanks Jerry)

• You know they breed them tough in Oz. Some Australian prison inmates are using redback spider venom to get high. (Thanks Waleed)

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• Forget about flying saucers... apparently the latest trend is flying triangles. Those aliens are tricky, you know. (Thanks Jerry)

• Speaking of UFOs, maybe the place to try and spot them is Judy Messoline's farm. She's said byebye to cattle farming, hello to UFO-spotters. (Thanks Amanda)

• Skipper dozes off. Result? 498 ton ship hits the shore, demolishes two houses. Big f-ing oops. (Thanks Andrew)

• Gallery cleaner at the Tate cleans away modern art. (Thanks Niki)

• For all those who nominated themselves as Jedi in the last census (I did), you can now learn the way of the Jedi at the Jedi Academy in Romania. (Thanks Phil)

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• Controversy over Smith's Crisps adverts running during Olympic TV broadcasts, featuring construction workers eating chips as athletes run past in an uncompleted stadium.

• Marathon runner attacked by a drunken Irish ex-priest. Reports of cries of "Feck!" and "Arse!" remain unconfirmed.

• Do they speak English in Australia? Why yes, they do. The British Home Office had to think about it for a while, but has finally decided they agree. (Thanks Ian)

• The BBC is planning a Flashmob opera, to appear en masse by surprise at a busy London railway station. Dudez, Flashmobs are so 2003... (Thanks Amanda)

• Secret undercover air marshals ordered to ask for "the air marshal's discount" in hotels. (Thanks Rich)

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• I scream, you scream, everybody scream. A second Edward Munch "Scream" painting stolen from a Norwegian gallery. Apparently when the first was stolen in 1994, a guard ignored the alarm, and the thieves left a note saying "Thanks for the poor security".

• Do bears get shit-faced in the woods? Yep. And they prefer Rainier Beer to Busch. (Thanks Dan)

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• Merely days after a tennis coach is jailed for underage sex with one of his students, Nike airs an advert featuring teenage girls swooning over a tennis coach. Then pulls it when there's a fuss. Such are the dangers of global advertising I suppose. (Thanks Pratap)

• Shopping bags... no more plastic, it's cow poo bags for me! (Thanks Amanda)

• How many US states? 53. When was WW2? 1938-42. These mistakes and more in a curriculum provided by a California private school. Oh dear. (Thanks Scottie)

• The ants! THE ANTS ARE INVADING! Super ants from Argentina! Run for your lives! Ummm. Come to think of it, I have noticed ants snooping
  around in odd places around the house.

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• Ooh lookie, it's Donkey Kong as art! (I'm going to be kind and assume the wanky artist statement is the artist taking the piss).
• Terry Nation's agent has been (figuratively) exterminated. The Daleks will return in the new series of Doctor Who. (Thanks Amanda)
• A coalition of Australian tax activists (!) and constitutional hobbyists (!!) is out to prove that the Queen has been using the wrong Great Seal to stamp legislation, and thus all laws approved by Governors General going back to 1973 are in fact illegal. Including the entire tax system.

• Who says video games don't kill? A gang go after a stolen X-Box and end up beating five people to death. Nice.

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• Need to drown your sorrows? In Nanjing, China, there's a bar especially for it. They provide tissues, and even onions if you want to cry but can't. (Thanks Niki)
• Weeping and bleeding artifacts at a Catholic centre in Brisbane have been officially declared to be fakes by a special Church investigation. (The Church Police??) (Thanks Amanda)
• Unemployed man auctions himself on eBay. Bet it's been taken down already.

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• US Army offers breast enlargements to recruits, to help military doctors practice their skills. Personally I'm not sure larger breasts help in combat situations, but there you go. (Thanks Brian)
• Microsoft's Slate Magazine recommends using Mozilla Firefox rather than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
• I wouldn't normally go for show-biz news, but this...! Nicole Kidman turns down a date with Michael Jackson.

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• Learner driver caught yet again zooming along at double the speed limit.
• Okay it's one thing for corrupt police to be involved in underworld activities, but RIGGING THE FOOTY TIPPING, that's beyond the pale!
• Rumour spreads in Nigeria of phone calls from "killer numbers", that make the recipient drop dead. What could be worse? Getting involved in international money laundering. Dear honourable sir, my name is Daniel Bowen of the ToxicCustard oil company.

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• Bidding war between rich kindergarten parents in Toorak gets out of hand, the winner paying $75,000 for a joint class painting. (Thanks Pratap)
• Amusing article on grammar from Lynne Truss (author of Eats Shoots And Leaves)

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• Barbie's new boyfriend is an Aussie. Called Blaine. Yeuch. I mean, c'mon, when was the last time you met someone called Blaine? What is this, The Bold And The Beautiful or something?
• Bomb squad called in to investigate a model aeroplane. (Thanks Jerry)
• "I'm sorry I was late for work boss. My bicycle was stolen. By an elk." (Thanks Brian)

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• An IVF screw-up results in a pair of twins of different colours. Oops. (Thanks Pratap)
• Vietnamese man hasn't cut his hair for 31 years, and has 6.2 metres of the stuff. (Thanks Amanda)
• Doctors' ties found to be a breeding place for germs.
• Gates and Howard: World's nerdiest man meets world's richest.
• Memo Ray Bradbury to Mike Moore: I want my Fahrenheit title back.

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• The joys of fake names: this guy (who works for Microsoft) used Augusto Pinochet as the name on his supermarket loyalty card.
• Scientists have developed self-cleaning fabric. So you need never change your daks again. Ewwwww.. (Thanks Simon)
• Executives from record company BMG face Anti Social Behaviour Orders for refusing to stop commissioning bill posting. (Thanks Andy)
• If you thought London's congestion charge was bad, wait until they implement The Ring Of Steel (tm)!

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• Play School's "My mums are taking me to an amusement park" segment has fired up controversy from all angles. Heaven forbid that anybody should see a kid out with two women! Obviously now toddlers all over the country must be asking their parents to explain all about lesbians. This picked up international coverage from the UK, Singapore, SA, NZ and elsewhere. As if the people ranting about it don't ever see women couples out together in public. Are we really that far backward that something like this should even be noticed?
• Former cheese artist tries out ham instead. (Thanks Niki)
• Having already got one in Madrid, AC/DC may now have a street named after them in Melbourne.

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• Rotting fruit causes a 747 to make an emergency landing.
• At the remote White Island volcanic crater in New Zealand, some joker has glued a small pink toy dinosaur to the geologists' webcam. (Thanks Stuart)
• What with so many wars and other conflicts going on, the US Army is running low on bullets.
• Aladdin Sisalem has arrived in Australia. He was the only asylum seeker at the detention centre on PNG's Manus Island, the staff of guards and cleaners there costing Australian taxpayers $8000 a day for the past nine months.

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• German couple who visited a fertility clinic have to be advised to have sex to get a baby. (Thanks the many who sent this)
• Great headline: Outrage at apostrophe catastrophe. It goes on to say that the good sales of books about language like Eats Shoots And Leaves prove readers care about proper of English. Maybe, but I bet most purchasers already know how to use an apostrophe, and just want to be able to have a text to back them up when they bitch about it.
• Cartoonist Gary Trudeau apologises for a Doonesbury cartoon, drawn several weeks ago (pre-Nick Berg) but scheduled for publication over the weekend, that featured a head on a plate. (If they take it off the site, it's also here.)

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• It's a bit like a PC cliché: the Australian Democrats have a senate candidate who is a one-legged bisexual vegetarian. I can hear the conservative politicians all saying in chorus: "It's political correctness gone mad!" (Thanks Coralie)
• A Sydney man accidentally puts his lotto ticket in three times, and wins three times the cash. The Salvos advert at the top of the page when I read the story was particularly unsubtle. They were probably hoping he was reading. (Thanks Pratap)
• Man charged £769 by his accountant to deal with a tax bill for £0.08. (Thanks Phil)
• Just in case you thought you'd heard enough from Mary Donaldson and that bloody Danish wedding, the glossy mags are trying to decide if she's got the aura to keep appearing on their magazine covers ad infinitum.

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• Couple loses their $300,000 dream house over a $120 debt. (Thanks Brad... and correspondent Jerry Bowen)
• Anti-censorship web proxy service offered people so they can avoid censorship... censors itself. (Thanks Phil)
• 15-year-old American's anti-terrorism drawing brings the secret service visiting his school to interview him. (Thanks Waleed)

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• Melbourne City Council is thinking about scrapping a proposed study of street sex workers in the city, because it says they don't exist. A prostitutes' advocacy group begs to differ.
• Shrek, the celebrity New Zealander merino sheep visits parliament.

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• A bloke is taking legal action against Channel 7 for daring to broadcast "Prime Suspect" with a character saying "Jesus Christ" in it.
• Futile gesture of the week: The president of Linux Users Los Angeles resigns because the US Armed Forces use Linux, and he opposes the war in Iraq. (Thanks Phil)
• Thief steals a double decker bus. Drives along merrily. Until he tries to go under a low bridge. (Thanks Peter)

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• A town called Dirt (well, in Russian) wins the cleanest town award for its region. (Thanks Andy)
• Belgian motorist gets a speeding ticket for allegedly driving in his Mini at Mach 3 - 3,380kmh. (Thanks Lauren)

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• Man falls out of fourth floor window. But he's a gymnast, so he executes a somersault and lands on his feet. (Thanks Tony)
• It's enough to make you quite queasy: a woman in Mexico performs a caesarean section on herself. (Thanks Scott)
• Jamie Oliver does the Naked Chef thing... literally, and pays the price when he "singes his chipolata". Ouch. (Thanks David)

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• Austrian doctor claims picking your nose (and eating it) is good for you. (Thanks Peter)
• AFL Auskick CD, distributed to 200,000 young footykids accidentally includes a pr0n image. Oops. (Thanks Pratap)
• Furniture beats Windows. Ikea founder Ingar Kamprad overtakes Bill Gates as the richest person on the planet. Or at least, so says the Swedish media.

• At the end of the day, "at the end of the day" is voted the most annoying phrase.
• Arizona introduces new ambulances especially designed for the overweight.

• Oops. Woman charged with drunk driving after crashing into a booze bus. (Thanks Pratap)
• People with too much time on their hands have done a study which found the average toilet seat is cleaner than a computer keyboard, mouse or telephone keypad. Eugh.
• Teenager tries to sell drugs to police officers, whose raid jackets included the word "Police". (Thanks Andy)

• The fuss over McDonalds in the USA abolishing supersize meals... Whoa. No wonder people are worried about McDonald's supersize meals, if they include 200 gram serves of fries, and 1.2 litre soft drinks (about double the biggest serves in Australia)!? For one person?! Blimey. How could anybody consume that amount of food and drink regularly and not get fat?
• Some TV stations in the States give free access to schools and businesses to post news of closings due to snow and other severe weather. Some of them don't vet the messages that go to air...
• The City of Aliso Viejo, California, almost banned that most dangerous of chemicals, DHMO -- better known as water. (Thanks Vince)

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• Brad Shorten of Sunbury tries (but fails) to get to be a Darwin Award nominee, joking with mates about workplace accidents, then firing a nailgun at his own head.
• Lead singer of the Texas Jewboys Kinky Friedman declares he will run for Governor of Texas.
• Trademark taken out on "Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi". (Thanks Pratap)
• Jury rejects plea of self-defence in murder case, noting that the suspect stabbed the victim 193 times. (Thanks Dan)

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• Frankston council orders the bobbitting of a tree sculpted into a 1.7 metre high giant wooden penis.
• Astronomers come within hours of alerting the world (via George Bush) of a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth. What could George have done? Except perhaps send up Bruce Willis?
• The tale of Craig Cockburn (pronounced Coburn), who has to go to extraordinary lengths to get his e-mail through spam filters.
• Metal thieves in the Ukraine steal a train for scrap. A week earlier, they'd stolen a bridge.

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• Piranha found in the River Thames.
• Engineering student surprised to be invited to China to speak on economics. Turns out they got the wrong Matthew Richardson, but he decided to bluff his way through it, using a secondary school-level textbook he read on the plane. (Thanks Tony)
• First change in decades: the @ symbol gets added to Morse Code. (Thanks Phil)

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• Last week, the exploding whale... this week, the exploding toilet! (Thanks Les and others)
• It had to happen, right? A Tennessee woman has filed a class action lawsuit against Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, for you-know-what. (Thanks Travis)
• Livestock exhibitors disqualified for putting hairpieces on their cows. (Thanks Dan)
• John Blake Cusack names his son John Blake Cusack 2.0. (Thanks Marie)
• A group of Cubans sail over to Florida in a boat made out of a 1959 Buick car. (Thanks Janice)

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• Is bird flu the new SARS? Maybe, maybe not, but one result is that now there's Kentucky Fried Fish.
• A woman doing research on her date in Google finds him on an FBI wanted list. And speaking of Google, apparently they're not too pleased about the adult search engine Booble.
• The great Taiwanese exploding whale. (Thanks many people)
• America in shock as millions catch glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast (uhhh yes, thanks to BBC news, pics are available)
• Mike Rowe sells his Microsoft demand letter on eBay. Current bid... whoa... $205,000?!?
• Swedish chef (no, not the Swedish Chef, just a Swedish chef) fired for attracting too many restaurant patrons. (Thanks Marie)

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• Mike Rowe, who set up MikeRoweSoft.com settles with Microsoft for an XBox, some software and training and a trip to Seattle.
• Now the question is will Microsoft go chasing after Purax Feather Holdings, a pillow and quilts manufacturer established in 1934 who use the name "Microsoft" to describe their products. (Thanks Peter)
• Finnish tax official drops dead at work - unnoticed for two days. (Thanks Phil)
• Could it be a UFO that was flying over Whittlesea? Well it was apparently flying, and is as yet unidentified, so yes, I suppose it was a UFO. Now the council has put the photo online so you can judge for yourself. Hmm: is that JPEG compression artefacts around the object, or a sign it's been tampered with?

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• Dolls that sing "I want a man like (Vladimir) Putin". (Thanks Amanda)
• Teenagers take control of a Burger King drive-through speaker and tell customers "You are too fat to have a Whopper".
• Casey Council in Melbourne thinks tourists will travel to outer-suburban Fountain Gate for a rooftop view of houses from a monorail... Nah it's more of a Shelbyville idea.

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• Hot competition for this week's frivolous law-suit, as a couple sues Wal-Mart over broken grocery bags, and a man sues his cable TV company for turning his family into lard-arses.
• US government paranoia reaches new levels: they've asked airlines to stop allowing people to queue for the toilet on planes flying to or from the United States. So what can they do instead? Ask people to take a number? Do it row-by-row? "Okay row 17, your turn to use the toilets. Sorry row 8, you've only just gone a little while ago - you'll have to wait." (Also in The Age)
• Meanwhile the Brazilians are getting their own back, by photographing and fingerprinting all visiting Americans (thanks Andy)
• An XBox game accidentally gets published including a room with posters displaying a porn site's URL on them (thanks Stuartt)
• Michael Hastings, 62, of Jerilderie NSW is the rightful monarch of England, apparently. (thanks Amanda)

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• Man trapped for two days underneath a pile of paper.
• Steve Irwin does a Michael Jackson, holding his month-old son as he feeds a crocodile. But hey, at least he didn't put a cloth over his head. Hmm, from the sounds of it, Steve's had almost as much surgery as Michael, but due to injuries from animals, rather than vanity.
• A father and son team of criminal masterminds try to rob a Pizza Hut... with a drill. (Thanks Dan)

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