— via Obvious Plant
The 1970s was a decade of social tension. Environmental disaster, terrorism, war and foreigners were a constant threat. Many citizens and some of their friends expressed concern about what would happen if the worst came to the worst.
In 1979 the government declared that it was fully prepared for any eventuality. A series of posters and leaflets introduced Pre-Emergency Services which had been set up to supply citizens with essential survival items
including ping pong balls, rubber bands (see poster above), furniture polish, drinks coasters and crocheted toilet-roll covers that looked like Georgian ladies — via Scarfolk Council
In 1970 there was a spate of cases involving brood parasites. Unknown children began appearing in households all over Scarfolk. So inconspicuous were these children that months would go by before a host family noticed a strange child in their midst, sitting at their dinner tables, taking over the bedrooms and toys of the youngest legitimate family members. Social workers reported that it was as if each host family had been hypnotised
into believing the child was theirs.
It was also discovered that these children had been regularly stealing small, family possessions which they then sealed in wax and hair and buried in scrubland beneath a motorway flyover. When unmarked Scarfolk council vans were found collecting the wax-sealed objects, an enquiry was launched. The council rejected the accusation that the brood parasite offspring were part of a secret government deal with an insistent non-human organisation
, and they were pressured to tackle the problem, hence the poster campaign above.
Local corporations generously funded a community aid scheme, whose slogan was The future of our real children is at stake
. Scarfolk Tobacco Company recommended literally smoking out the preternatural children and sent thousands of complimentary packs of cigarettes to infant schools, while Scarf Distilleries Ltd. promoted the regular application of neat alcohol to any suspect minors.
It is now believed that there were very few officially accepted brood parasites and the vast majority of arrests turned out to be normal children rejected by their disappointed parents because of low exchange evaluations — via Scarfolk Council
Until 1975, the standard PSA (Personal Space Allowance) had always been fixed at a comfortable, civilised 20 inch zone around each citizen. The government suddenly amended this, however, citing terrorism and a rising population as reasons to cut personal space along with other social benefits and civil liberties.
The PSA was more than merely reduced: The new bodily zone into which representatives of the state (and even some commercial organisations) were now free to pass was amended to minus 5.2 inches. Naturally, this made human bodies semi-permeable
, legally speaking, and for many people only the depths of their intestines remained private.
Police, security and social services enthusiastically exploited the new laws, as did the health service which randomly pilfered internal organs from unsuspecting citizens, claiming quite lawfully that they were found in communal public places
. The nervous public caught on and by 1977 there were self-help groups springing up all over Scarfolk which helped citizens become as obese as possible in an effort to protect their innermost parts from state interference and even commercial exploitation — via Scarfolk Council
In 1971 a local government survey revealed that the citizens of Scarfolk were, by and large, content. This was of great concern to the council which worried that its people risked developing self-confidence — perhaps even dignity — and worse that they might even have false hopes for a brighter future.
By 1972 a government scheme to stifle these dangerous thoughts was in full effect. Schools were not permitted to grade any student higher than a D
; adults received personalised insults by post or telephone, and families attended compulsory classes which promoted subservience and feelings of shame.
Additionally, every Friday local newspapers published an updated list of individual citizens’ current worth alongside prices for poultry, offal and other meat products. Some citizens’ values frequently fell below that of brain, spleen, heart and tripe.
The poster above was ubiquitous at the time, but this example was found on a wall in Scarfolk hospital’s maternity ward — via Scarfolk Council
In 1978 the Notional Health Service was struggling to cope with its lack of funds. Overspending was unavoidable and the threat of closure was ever present. However, Scarfolk Council’s department for health and knitting hit upon a simple method to radically reduce spending.
Firstly, taking its lead from a household insurance policy, the council recategorised many serious (thus expensive) illnesses as ineligible for treatment. Cases were dismissed due to general wear and tear
or acts of god
, and the council even went as far as to recommend that patients with serious physical ailments contact the manufacturer for further assistance
. Secondly, the spread of disease in hospitals was cut by 90% by removing and prohibiting sick patients.
Patients with cheaper, non-threatening conditions were admitted to NHS hospitals, but only if they understood that they might share a bed with up to 9 other patients and/or a startup business that had rented the bed as office space. Patients were also subjected to virtually costless placebo trials. In fact, all treatments in 1979 were placebos consisting of either sherbet infusions (the town mayor was a major stakeholder in a Scarfolk confectionery factory) or daily rituals conducted by a coven of witches, who chanted in hospital car parks around an effigy of a nature deity made from balloons.
The cost-cutting scheme was successful and other regions adopted the same model. Not treating people was the only way to keep the NHS a viable, going concern, permitting it to continue what it has always done best: treat people — via Scarfolk Council
Two blokes, Josh and Rhys, sit down to explain the key to the simple beauty of Australian slang: it’s all about abbreviation. If you’ve ever wondered what to say when Tommo asks if you wanna go down the bowlo sarvo for a schnitty and a bevvy before watching some soapies on the telly, this explainer is for you — via Youtube
This advertisement appeared in children’s magazines in the 1970s following studies into child behaviour. Researchers found that children were essentially miniature sociopaths and the only reason they didn’t run amok on murderous rampages was because they couldn’t reach the knife drawer in the kitchen.
Unable to kill en masse, they instead demanded attention by intentionally causing accidents and feigning injury or distress: knocking over boiling pans, slipping in dog excrement, leaping out of police helicopters.
In addition to being irksome, infant tears were deemed to be nothing short of psychological weapons. Parents were warned to arm themselves against the emotional assaults of their offspring, particularly because, if left unchecked, their child might eventually develop dark supernatural powers.
Indeed, for many years people believed that infant sobs contained potentially lethal occult messages. For example, the often-heard whine Please help me, I’m trapped under the front wheels of this bus
, when played backwards sounds like The Moomins will come; they will fuck you up
— via Scarfolk Council
A man has been charged with murder after the discovery of a body stuffed inside a domestic wheelie bin and left outside an Aldinga Beach home on Saturday.
The victim has been identified as an Aldinga Beach man aged 32.
Police said the arrested man, 47, of Aldinga, and victim were known to each other and had been drinking together in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
It is alleged the murder occurred at this time.
The arrested man has been refused police bail and is expected to appear in the Adelaide Magistrates Court tomorrow (Monday).
Police say a man’s body had been found inside a bin, which was left on the footpath at the northern end of Shephard St.
The owner of the adjacent house made the gruesome discovery about 11am on Saturday — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A 37-year-old man who taxied his light plane down the main street in the WA Pilbara town of Newman and parked it at a pub has been fined.
Anthony Philip Whiteway pleaded guilty in the Newman Magistrates Court to committing an act likely to endanger the life, health or safety of a person.
The plane had no wings, but its propeller had been running when it was taxied down the street earlier this month.
Mr Whiteway had just bought the aircraft and was taking it home when he stopped at the Newman Hotel.
Police said there was an exposed fuel line hanging from the side of the plane that was attached to an insecure jerry-can inside the cabin to enable the engine to run.
They said Mr Whiteway, who does not hold a pilot’s licence, left the engine in a potentially dangerous condition with the ignition on.
He was fined $5,000 plus court and towage costs — via redwolf.newsvine.com
At first, my mother was the only one who’d refuse to eat Grandma’s food, and I thought she was being paranoid. Then I started noticing that every time I went to Grandma’s, I’d pass out on the couch or on the train on the way back to the city. When I stopped eating Grandma’s food, my brother thought I was paranoid. But I stopped passing out, and pretty soon he stopped eating Grandma’s food too.
But here’s the thing: You don’t want to believe your grandmother is poisoning you. You know that she loves you—there’s no doubt of that—and she’s so marvellously grandmotherly and charming. And you know that she would never want to poison you. So despite your better judgement, you eat the food until you’ve passed out so many times that you can’t keep doubting yourself. Eventually, we would arrive for holidays at Grandma’s with groceries and take-out, and she’d seem relieved that we wouldn’t let her touch our plates. By then, her eyesight was starting to go, so she wouldn’t notice the layer of crystalline powder atop that fancy lox she was giving you.
So the question became: How did we explain to guests, outsiders, that they shouldn’t eat grandma’s food? One time, maybe on Passover, my brother brought his new girlfriend, an actress. Grandma had promised not to prepare anything, and it seemed she’d kept her word, so we didn’t mention the poisoning thing to the girlfriend, but after we’d eaten lunch, Grandma came out of the kitchen with these oatmeal raisin cookies that looked terrible. They were bulbous, like the baking soda had gone haywire. My brother’s girlfriend ate two of them, maybe out of politeness. We looked on, aghast. She had a rehearsal in the city, but she passed out on the couch and missed it — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Most people don’t notice I’m polite, which is sort of the point. I don’t look polite. I am big and droopy and need a haircut. No soul would associate me with watercress sandwiches. Still, every year or so someone takes me aside and says, you actually are weirdly polite, aren’t you? And I always thrill. They noticed.
The complimenters don’t always formulate it so gently. For example, after two years ago at the end of an arduous corporate project, slowly turning a thousand red squares in a spreadsheet to yellow, then green, my officemate turned to me and said: I thought you were a terrible ass-kisser when we started working together.
She paused and frowned. But it actually helped get things done. It was a strategy.
(That is how an impolite person gives a compliment. Which I gladly accepted) — via redwolf.newsvine.com
This statue of a fossilised Tyrannosaurus Rex stands on the Google Campus. His name is Stan. The Googleplex is also infested with a flock of plastic flamingos, which have ganged up on the dinosaur to pick the bones clean. Stan seems to not mind at all — via Neatorama
A 15-year-old Japanese schoolgirl has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a classmate and dismembering her body, local media have reported.
The suspect, whose name was not released as she is a minor, has admitted to strangling the victim and severing her head and left hand, according to the Kyodo news agency.
She allegedly delivered blows to the head of 15-year-old Aiwa Matsuo with a metal instrument before strangling her in the city of Sasebo, in Nagasaki Prefecture, southwest Japan.
The victim’s body was found on a bed in the suspect’s apartment early on Sunday and investigators discovered tools nearby, reports said.
The suspect, who lived away from her parents though in the same city, told police she acted alone in the grisly killing, Kyodo added.
Matsuo had reportedly gone out to meet friends on Saturday afternoon, but her parents notified the police when she failed to return home at night.
The two girls graduated from the same junior high school — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office is asking for the public’s help to find who donated three human skulls to a Bellevue thrift store.
There is no information about who donated the skulls to the Bellevue Goodwill or how they came to be in the donor’s possession.
The KCME said two of the skulls of from adults and were clearly used in a medical clinic or teaching setting.
The third skull appears to be the fragile remains of a Native American child. Forensic anthropologist Kathy Taylor said the skull is that of a 5 or 6-year-old and is at least 100 years old.
According to state law, the Native American skull must be returned to its tribe of origin, but the ME needs more information to identify the correct tribe.
The office is asking that the person who donated the skulls come forward, without penalty, to provide more details about where the skull came from — via redwolf.newsvine.com
I’ve made a discovery about what is buried under the swimming pools and basement conversions of wealthy west London. This booty is worth about £5m. More revealing, however, is another fact: this £5m was tossed away like small change tipped into a busker’s hat. It is not Nazi art, or plutonium that has been used to kill the enemies of Russian oligarchs. It is a fleet of diggers.
Beginning in the 1990s, buyers of London’s most expensive addresses began to feel a little hemmed in, even claustrophobic, inside their houses. Where could one take a swim, for example? Or watch a film on a cinema-size screen? Obviously, the idea of leaving the house to pursue such pastimes — and thus engaging with the human colour and spectacle that were once considered inextricably bound up with living in a city — was too ghastly to countenance. No, all pleasures had to be brought within the boundaries of one’s house, thus protecting the owner from the dangers of face-to-face interaction with normal civilians.
So, many of the squares of the capital’s super-prime real estate, from Belgravia and Chelsea to Mayfair and Notting Hill, have been reconfigured house by house. Given that London’s strict planning rules restrict building upwards, digging downwards has been the solution for owners who want to expand their property’s square-footage.
The challenge of adding new subterranean floors to London houses has become a highly lucrative business. The heavy lifting — or, in this case, the heavy digging — is usually contracted out to basement-conversion specialists. These firms discovered that it was reasonably easy to get a small digger (occasionally two) into the rear garden of a house on an exclusive 19th-century square. Sometimes they simply knock a hole in the wall and drive the diggers straight through the house. In other cases, the windows are so large that a digger can squeeze through without dismantling the bricks and mortar.
The difficulty is in getting the digger out again. To construct a no-expense-spared new basement, the digger has to go so deep into the London earth that it is unable to drive out again. What could be done?
Initially, the developers would often use a large crane to scoop up the digger, which was by now nestled almost out of sight at the bottom of a deep hole. Then they began to calculate the cost-benefit equation of this procedure. First, a crane would have to be hired; second, the entire street would need to be closed for a day while the crane was manoeuvred into place. Both of these stages were very expensive, not to mention unpopular among the distinguished local residents.
A new solution emerged: simply bury the digger in its own hole. Given the exceptional profits of London property development, why bother with the expense and hassle of retrieving a used digger — worth only £5,000 or £6,000 — from the back of a house that would soon be sold for several million? The time and money expended on rescuing a digger were better spent moving on to the next big deal.
The new method, now considered standard operating practice, is to cover the digger with hardcore
, a mixture of sand and gravel. Then a layer of concrete is simply poured over the top. Digger? What digger? The digger has literally dug its own grave — just as the boring machines that excavated the Channel Tunnel were abandoned beneath the passage they had just created — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A Dunedin man has changed his name to the longest legally allowed, after apparently losing a bet five years ago.
The 22-year-old man from Normanby is now legally known as Full Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Superheroes Combined With Frostnova
— just one character shy of Department of Internal Affairs’ (DIA) 100 character limit.
A message on an online body building forum, written by someone describing themselves as a friend of the man, said the name change was the result of a lost poker bet and the man realised his drunken consequences only when his passport expired.
DIA Births Deaths and Marriages spokesman Michael Mead said the change of name was registered in March 2010.
The name met the requirements of naming rules and the applicant paid the fee and completed the form correctly, he said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Wildlife broadcaster David Attenborough took on a new species to commentate for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics curling — via Youtube
Police in Australia have rescued a naked man who got stuck inside a washing machine while playing a game of hide-and-seek.
The man reportedly hid inside the top-loading machine so he could surprise his partner.
But he became stuck and it took 20 minutes for rescuers to dislodge him using olive oil as a lubricant.
Firefighters, paramedics and a search-and-rescue squad were also called to help with the situation.
The incident took place on Saturday in Mooroopna town, north of Melbourne, in Victoria state — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Police are still trying to figure out why a group of unknown suspects would break into a Vaughn Street home just to smoke marijuana and dye their hair.
A woman discovered the burglary when she came home the day after Thanksgiving following a two-day trip to celebrate the holiday. Oddly enough, nothing was missing from the residence, located in the 500 block of Vaughn Street, according to a Murfreesboro Police Department incident report.
(The woman) stated that when she returned to her residence, she noticed her front window open,
Officer Christopher Williams said in the report, and a cover had been placed over the window, and (she smelled) the odour of smoked marijuana.
Williams said the woman also pointed out that someone had dyed their hair red in the bathroom
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
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