Norwegian and UK man fail in death appeal in DR Congo

BBC, Dec. 3, 2009

“Dude, Where’s My Car” sequel goes horribly awry when pair of Norwegian bachelor farmers former members of Norway’s armed forces try to set up a private security firm in the DR Congo.

One dead taxi driver later, the pair is charged with murder, espionage, spying (which is different than espionage, I guess), and arms smuggling.  Cue the torture, the lack of translators, and witnesses getting paid “$5,000 each in compensation in a country where people earn about $3-4 a day.”

Death by firing squad scheduled for Sept. 8.

UPDATE, 12/4/09, DR Congo: “Did we say firing squad? We meant… tiring… blob.  Of.  Jam.  We like… jam.  Yes.  Please don’t bomb us.”

Norway denies all accusations of espionage.

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Pirates hit navy ship ‘in error’

BBC, Oct. 7, 2009

“Ah, it eez a wonderful night to be in zee Fronch Nav-ee, would you not agree, Guillaume?”

“When you are right, you are right, Jean Luc.  Let us smoke zee silly yellow Fronch cee-gar-ettes on zee poop deck,  oui?”

“Say, iz zat a teensy, tiny, Somali pirate ship trying to overtake us?”

“Er… oui, zat eez what eet appears to be.  Zey do realize that fighting zee pirates is zee only great military success zat we have ‘ad in two centuries, oui?”

“No, mon amie, apparently zey ‘ave forgotten.  Arm ze crusty bread cannons!”

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Cash Money sent me a link that was too good to pass up. The BBC is reporting that a 65(!) year old woman has been arrested in relation to the deaths of two twin midget wrestlers (!!) in a Mexican hotel room. Her supposed accomplice, The Fat One (!!!), is still at large. Authorities believe the midgets were killed by an overdose of eye-drops slipped into their drinks by the women in an attempted robbery.

Mexican midget wrestlers arrest

I think I recall reading this in a short story once. No, wait. That was all in my head.

We’ve officially established that truth is ravenously, frothingly, blood curdlingly, stranger than fiction.

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I can remember a time when I came home from school with the beginning of a migraine, went straight to my room and put on “Plastic Surgery Disasters” by the Dead Kennedy’s not good music for a headache, but I had the CD so memorized that it worked perfectly. I felt like it kept me contained, and has strong enough that my mind couldn’t focus on anything else. That’s exactly what an overstimulated person like myself needed. These days I would probably put something more mellow on, the Smiths maybe?

Another really interesting part of the article, comments on napping customs in the Japanese work place.

< Napping at work isn’t acceptable in the UK, but in Japan dozing anywhere from Parliament to business meetings is allowed. It’s called inemuri, which literally means “to be asleep while present”.

Japan’s ex-prime minister shows how it’s done

The custom is partly a result of how commitment to a job is judged in Japan, says Dr Brigitte Steger. Inemuri is viewed as exhaustion from working hard and sacrificing sleep at night. Many people fake it to look committed to their job.

It’s a concept that seems bizarre in the UK but the Japanese are the ones who’ve got it right, says Dr Stanley.

“The Japanese are right in their assessment that you work better after a nap than before it. There’s a degree of machismo about it, you’re saying look how hard I’ve worked. But that’s better than the macho rituals we have over here, like how late you can send a work email to prove how long you’ve been working.”

Strict rules apply to inemuri. These include who is allowed to do it – only those high up or low down in a company – and how you do it – remain upright to show you are still socially engaged in some way.

“The rules are written nowhere but everyone knows them, they learn them culturally,” says Dr Steger.>

Man wish I could get away with that here. It takes looking busy at work in a whole other direction.

Link

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