Just quickly

Shortly I'll be heading to the Irish Pub here in Trier to catch the All Blacks versus Scotland game. Since New Zealand are 250-1 favourites (I'm not kidding) to win this game, you can expect a Good News Saturday post to follow this evening, celebrating the All Blacks winning a Grand Slam against all four of the home nations for only the second time in 100 years. But, it hasn't happened yet, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

For now, I just thought I'd bang out a quick post to share a couple of really odd news items that have come to my attention in the past few days.

First up, from the Netherlands, is the story of the sparrow who spoilt a world record domino attempt, by flying into the convention hall where the attempt was being made and accidentally knocking down 23,000 of the dominoes. And so what did the famously laid back and tolerant Dutch do? Did they laugh an ironic laugh and think to themselves, "Well, realistically, knocking down thousands of dominoes for a world record is utterly pointless anyway, so who cares?" No, they did not. Instead, someone whipped out a rifle and shot the poor sparrow. The brute! Was that really necessary? The rifle-toting domino-loser may yet get his comeuppance though: the Dutch animal protection agency is apparently investigating the incident because, wait for it, in the Netherlands, the common house sparrow is not common at all and is in fact an endangered species. The sparrow as an endangered species? Huh?! What part of that story is not totally and utterly strange? You can read the full story in the Guardian here.

And secondly, though this story is more disgusting and a bit sad than really weird, is the story of an elderly, drunk German man who got more than he bargained for after wetting his bed:

German man's bad bed day
Nov 23, 2005

A German man drank too much, wet his bed and set fire to his apartment trying to dry his bedding, police in the western town of Muelheim said.

"He was too drunk to go to the toilet," said a police spokesman. "The next morning he put a switched-on hairdryer on the bed to dry it and left the apartment." When the 60-year-old returned, his home and belongings were in flames.

I'm sorry, but he put an electric hairdryer on the bed and left his appartment? There is a word for that man, and it is Dumbarse. On two counts. That story came originally from Nzoom, but unfortunately it seems to have disappeared from their archives, as I can't find the direct link. [Hat-tip to Kiwi in Zurich for bringing it to my attention.]

And now, the rugby beckons.

Weird news