That's Odd




And you thought odd things only happened to you? Here's some really odd stuff from all over the place. In some cases it really does make you wonder whether the inmates have taken over the asylum - you couldn't make it up - really!
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Gettin' the wind up .... Margaret Waddicor and her friend, Babs Doswell (a sprightly 75 year old) went kite flying at Stoney Cross, in the New Forest, in England. Everything was going fine and their 6 foot stunt kite (bought the day before) was flying very well - too well in fact. a Sudden gust of wind tore the control from Miss Doswell's grip and the pair could do nothing other than look upward helplessly as the kite took off with a mind of its own.
Very disappointed, the pair made their way home to Colehill, 16 miles away. When they arrived they discovered that they had been beaten to it. Lodged firmly in a neighbours tree, awaiting their arrival, was the errant kite. It was a mystery as to how the kite had missed electricity pylons and a whole countryside full of other trees on its journey. Needless to say the pair were over the moon, which, for all anyone knows, was where the kite had been!


Troglodytes of the world unite .... When Mr. and Mrs Baker wanted to build an extension to their cottage in Staffordshire, UK, there was a problem. An ancient right of way ran just where the extension was going, and the local by-laws said it had to remain open. Their solution? Build a 40 foot long paved tunnel under the cottage with automatic lights for those evening ramblers.
The UK Ramblers Association is more than pleased with the arrangement. "We have never heard of a project like this before", said the RA's deputy Director. As for the Bakers, the previously derelict cottage, bought at auction for £28,000 ($46,000) is now worth some £175,000 ($300,000).


Officialdom States-side ....
In one year the Pentagon can expect to be successfully hacked 161,000 times.
The Pentagon has also managed to 'loose' all but 36 of the 200 pages of the official record of the gulf War.
The CIA failed to predict the breakup of the USSR despite a budget of $2 billion a year spent monitoring the former Soviet Union.
The FBI spent years filming a CIA agent making regular visits to the former Soviet embassy with bulging files in his possession, and exiting empty handed. Despite knowing the CIA were hunting a mole in their organisation, the FBI never quite put two and two together.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept. recently released 23 prisoners, some of them dangerous, by mistake. The excuse - a clerical error!
And finally. Milwaukee Sheriff's Deputies, training dogs to sniff out explosives at the airport, hid a packet of the stuff which the dogs failed to find. Unfortunately they forgot where they'd hidden it and so the explosive is still waiting to be unearthed. This was the second time they mis-laid explosives at the airport.

Chinese translations of some popular film titles ....
"The Full Monty" - Six Stripped Warriors
"As Good As It Gets" - Mr. Cat Poop
"The English Patient" - Do Not Ask Me Who I Am, Ever
"Face Off" - Two Heroes Stealing Each Others Faces
Snappy eh?.

God on the brain ....Recent advances in brain mapping at the University of California have discovered an area near the temporal lobe which when stimulated produces intenses feelings of spiritual transcendence. An interesting thought is that, if God exists, it's not unreasonable to think he might have in-built a biological mechanism for us to comprehend him.

A vacuum between the ears ....A PhD student from the laboratory of Musical Acoustics in Paris has identified what makes the sound of a vacuum cleaner intolerable or acceptable. She recorded 26 vacuum cleaners and played the results to 56 volunteers. Her findings? That loud vacuum cleaners are less popular than quiet ones..

Squishy or what ....Each August, the Spanish town of Buñol in Valencia celebrates in Tomatina festival. The 2 hour festival, which dates form 1945, involves residents and tourists throwing more than 100 tons of tomatoes at each other, until everyone in the town's plaza is ankle deep in tomato puree.

The bathing season .... In Japan holidays are often taken for the express purpose of having a bath. At natural hot springs resorts (onsen) washing is a serious business invloving vigorous scrub-downs before a long soak in the onsen. Between April 1996 and march 1997 143 million people visited the spa town inns; Japan's population is 125 million.

Give me a ring .... European tourist centres, concerned about crime against foreign visitors, note that tourists themselves are not always entirely innocent. A recurrent theme in local newspapers is of tourists stealing bells from the cows.
And the rest ....


From the Cape Cod Chronicle - "The Rose Book Shop is looking for artists to expose themselves on the walls of the shop"..

A sign by the car park of a Glasgow shopping centre, "Parking for one million cars - 750 at a time".


A selection of wise sayings from the airline pilot's magazine, "The Log":

Don't believe in miracles - rely on them
A bird in the hand is safer than one in the engine
If you explain it so clearly that no-one could misunderstand, somebody will.