Flash!

Ships and passengers frozen in ice near Sweden:

Thirty to 40 ships — including several passenger ships — were stuck Thursday in ice off the coast of Sweden, said a spokesman for the Maritime Search and Rescue Center in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The area of the Baltic Sea worst hit by the ice were the waters bounded by mainland Sweden, the Stockholm archipelago and the Finnish island of Aland, said Tommy Gardebring, press officer with the Swedish Maritime Administration.

The center identified one of the passenger ships as the Amorella, with 753 passengers and 190 crew members.

Several passenger vessels from Viking Line were stuck, he said. One of them had been freed.

Of course, according to global warmening theory, such an event is unpossible. An event like this would put the North Dakota Banana Growers Association into receivership. But never fear, true believers! We here at the Blue Crab Boulevard Academy of Scientifical Studies have applied the Jones-Mann-Hansen “Hide the Decline” formula to the temperature data from the Baltic and have great news! The ships, their crews and the passengers are not actually frozen in the ice.

They actually flashed to incandescent gas when the scientifically corrected temperature hit 25,000° C.

Hot, Hot, Hot

A German man decided he needed to bring out the heavy artillery to thaw his frozen car. So he tucked a heater under the hood and went back inside the house to stay warm. The resulting explosion and fire totaled the car and scorched the siding on the house.

A 76-year-old German man trying to thaw out his car incinerated it instead when he decided to speed things up by putting a blow heater under the hood.

Now, we really are not sure what, exactly, a “blow heater” is. Is it a salamander heater (kerosene fired with forced air (the sound closely resembles a jet taking off) or an electric heat gun, sort of like a blow dryer, but with a serious attitude? Or just a forced air electric heater? We simply don’t know.

Heck, it could have been a goat for all we know:

Side note: We here at Blue Crab Boulevard plan on using rubber gloves to handle all currency in the future. We simply cannot be sure where it comes from.

Last Ditch Effort

In a bid to save Harry Reid from the wrath of the voters in Nevada, Barack Obama, the Wizard of O himself, will make a campaign appearance for Harry next month.

In the wake of Obama’s amazing victories with last minute personal appearance appeals for favored causes such as the great win for Chicago in its bid to host the Olympics, the world shaking climate change agreement forged by the won in Copenhagen and the resounding electoral victory for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, Harry is a shoo-in.

A shoo-in right into the last ditch on the left. Just call Harry “Fill” from here on.

Seriously, the only way this could be worse for Reid is if the joint appearance was to be held in Copenhagen where the Wizard has a perfect record.

Advice to Democrats: If the won offers to help you with a campaign appearance, run screaming.

(H/T to Jim Hoft)

Practice Makes Perfect

The GOP Mascot Precision Drill Team practices their 2010 election signature routine, the Donkey Stomp.

That Icy Finger Of Sarcasm

Heh.

Signs Of The Times

The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid:

Some British tourists arrived in a hotel in Budapest to find a sign saying that the lift was being fixed for the day and during that time the management regretfully informed visitors that their stay would be unbearable.

Another sign in a Zurich hotel lobby stated that because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.

In Yugoslavia, the flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid and in Japan visitors are invited to take advantage of the staff.

And in Rome, the notice in launderettes’ windows promises that if women leave their clothes they can spend the whole afternoon having a good time. Similarly, in Bangkok men are asked to drop their trousers for the best results.

A couple of the signs reported in the article may, in fact, be jokes. Children left unattended will be sold as slaves or sold to the circus may simply be tongue-in-cheek. Some of these are pretty hard to figure out, though.

There are several sites (probably more than several, actually) devoted to collecting funny sign translations. This one, this one and this one just for starters.  

Back to the possibly joke signs, my wife and I have actually thought of selling our children to the circus at times.

But we’ve never had enough money to do so.

Going Green

Pepsi Green is out. But you might not want a can.

The “disgusting” blob in Fred DeNegri’s Diet Pepsi can was probably a frog or toad, the Food and Drug Administration said.

DeNegri was grilling in his backyard tiki bar in Ormond Beach, Florida, when he popped open a can of Diet Pepsi, took a big gulp and started gagging, his wife, Amy, said.

He emptied out the can down a sink but something heavy remained inside. He shook the can until something resembling “pink linguini” slid out, followed by “dark stuff,” Amy DeNegri said.

But the heavy object inside the can never came out, she said.

“It was disgusting,” said Amy DeNegri, 54. “And now, what started out as a normal afternoon in our tiki bar has blown up into this crazy thing.”

The DeNegris took pictures before calling poison control and the FDA, which showed up the next day to examine the can in question and collect it for lab testing.

The couple received a copy of the completed report last week from the Food and Drug Administration Office of Regulatory Affairs, which concluded the foreign matter appeared to be a frog or a toad.

“The animal was lacking internal organs normally found in the abdominal and thoracic cavity,” the report notes.

Personally, I’d still be throwing up. Judging from the rest of the story, it does not sound as if Pepsi is handling this well at all. I’m also quite sure that the family home now has a nice, new, thick hedge in front of it.

Made up entirely of lawyers. 

Exit question: Has anyone seen Kermit lately?

To Serve Man

Apparently, an ObamaCare supporter, possibly associated with MoveOn.org, bit the finger off a 65-year old opponent of Obama’s scheme yesterday.

The finger-biting incident occurred after a member of the group protesting health care reform, William Rice, 65, of Newbury Park, became involved in a heated discussion with a member of Code Pink, sheriff’s Capt. Ross Bonfiglio said.

After the argument, Rice returned to where his own group was standing.

A man from Moveon.org’s area then walked over to the opponents and verbally confronted Rice, allegedly calling him names and acting aggressively, Bonfiglio said.

Rice later told investigators he felt threatened by the man and punched him in the nose, Bonfiglio said.

The punch set off a fist fight between the two men, during which the tip of Rice’s left pinky finger was bitten off, Bonfiglio said.

Best headline on the incident I have seen yet comes from Confederate Yankee: Yes we Cannibal. My title comes, of course from that famous episode of The Twilight Zone.

Does this mean Obama’s recipe for health care reform is actually a recipe? Does this mean that the Hollywoodenheads pledging to serve Obama have a sick and twisted double meaning?

No, but it was a chance to make those kinds of jokes that will never come around again in a million years.

One simply cannot resist.

Vintage Butter

Ireland is agog over the discovery of a cask of vintage butter. Estimated to be some 3,000 years old, the barrel of butter was dug out of a peat bog.

An oak barrel full of butter, estimated to be roughly 3,000 years, old has been found in a peat bog in County Kildare in Ireland.

The amazing discovery was found by peat workers John Fitzharris and Martin Lane who noticed a white streak in the bog.

When they knelt down to examine it, they saw it was a barrel, or trunk, full of butter. It was largely in tact and had a lid.

How, exactly, they determined that the substance was butter is not clear:

The butter has changed to white and is now adipocere, which is essentially animal fat, the same sort of substance that is found on well-preserved bodies of people or animals found in the bog.

One hopes toast was not involved in the identification.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are not at all sure why this is such a big deal. Having eaten at American school cafeterias over the years, we can attest that many of the dairy products served there were probably older.

Proof Positive

Not of global warming. No, something completely different.

Clams fart.

Sometimes You Wonder…..

From Memeorandum, the funniest juxtaposition of articles I heave seen recently:

We’ll leave it to the casual reader to work this one out.

O-SPAM-a!

Barack Obama’s best and brightest have now decided to enter the fun and exciting world of spam! Yes, they are spamming private citizens who never signed up for any contact from the White House. When challenged, they appear to make things up.

Several people who received the White House e-mails have told FOX News they’re not members of any organization and have not been advocating for any cause. And they’re puzzled over how the White House got their information.

“I find it very disturbing and a little scary to say the least,” said Sarah Griffith, who got a widely circulated e-mail on health care reform from senior adviser David Axelrod last week. “I have no idea how they got my e-mail address, and they have it.”

Griffith, who works for the American Association of Christian Schools in Washington, D.C., said she got the e-mail in her office account even though she’s careful not to use her work e-mail for anything that’s not office related. She said she has submitted questions through the Whitehouse.gov Web site using her personal e-mail address, but those questions were never answered. She said she never signed up for any updates or petitions with any group.

The White House denies any understanding of how such a thing could have happened, then hide under their desks. When pressed on the matter, they refer questions to the Office of Special Procedures for Administration Mass Mailings (oSpamm).

Nuance, Nuance, Nuance

Marc Ambinder:

An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “misspoke” when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option “is not an essential part” of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President.

….

A second official, Linda Douglass, director of health reform communications for the administration, said that President Obama believed that a public option was the best way to reduce costs and promote competition among insurance companies, that he had not backed away from that belief, and that he still wanted to see a public option in the final bill.

….

A third White House official, via e-mail, said that Sebelius didn’t misspeak. “The media misplayed it,” the third official said.

A fourth official, speaking off the record, asked, “Do these pants make my elbow look fat?”

A fifth official, speaking from deep cover, said, “We here at the White House want to assure the American public that, notwithstanding  that last official’s comments, we actually do know our elbows from our…. Oh, wait. I’ll have to get back to you. There’s a shiny object I need to look at.”

 Ladies and gentlemen, the “best and brightest”.

Cash For Flippers

A town government in Israel has announced their answer to the Cash for Clunkers program. The Cash for Flippers scheme will give $1 million for a photograph of the local mermaid.

No, really.

An alleged mermaid, said to resemble a cross between a fish and a young girl, only appears at sunset. It performs a few tricks for onlookers before disappearing for the night.

One of the first people to see the mermaid, Shlomo Cohen, said, “I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way. At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail.”

The sightings apparently began several months ago.

$1 million reward

The town’s tourism board is of course delighted with their newfound fame and local mystery fauna. Taking a cue from the town of Inverness, Scotland (on the shore of Loch Ness), the Kiryat Yam government has offered a $1 million reward for the first person to photograph the creature. Town spokesman Natti Zilberman thinks the reward money is well-spent. “I believe if there really is a mermaid then so many people will come to Kiryat Yam, a lot more money will be made than $1 million.”

Of course, there is no chance at all that this is a publicity stunt, right? Egad. Loch Ness has been riding this little scam for decades, why wouldn’t others try to get in on it. Oh, wait, they have.  (This is still our all-time favorite take on lake monsters, by the way.)

Well, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard can see a great opportunity when it comes along! We hereby claim that $1 million prize.  We expect the town government of Kiryat Yam to remit the check immediately. Here’s the picture!

Hey! Wait a second. Has anyone squealed informed notified the White House about this fishy article by Benjamin Radford? There may be a reward under the double secret Cash for Crankies program run by the White House Office of Progressive Squealers (WHOOPS).

Obama: Health Care Reform=Greater Inefficiencies

A wonderful gaffe:

“The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system,” Obama said in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers. “And greater stability and security to America’s families and businesses.”

Not to mention rationing, higher taxes and a bloated Federal bureaucracy interfering with your health care decisions.

Must be the teleprompter malfunctioned. Or even it couldn’t take the silliness any more. Heck, one of Obama’s teleprompters committed suicide just last week.

Via Memeorandum