It’s back again: Saturday Light Fare

Posted by: Fredster on: December 19, 2015

• In: Afternoon Widdershins | dis 'n dat | Lighter news | Odd News | Open Thread | You Tube
• 64 Comments

Good afternoon Widdershins!

Are you in the Christmas uh holiday spirit yet?  Have you been fighting the (madding or not) shopping center or mall crowds?  Well cheer up bunky, you won’t find that stuff here today.  Nope, you’re just going to find some odd or funny news stories and a few youtube clips.

So if you thought your job was bad
consider this one

In the movie Patton, George C. Scott as the general makes a speech about “shoveling sh!t in Loozeana”.  If you live in India and were born into a certain sect or class then it’s your life’s calling.

Dharamani Kale emerged from the manhole, sewage clinging to his body. Next to him, Sona Bai gathered filth in a small round basket and carried it on her head to the end of the street. The unpleasant process had started at dawn and would continue for at least 12 hours.

This is how sewers are cleaned in most Indian cities, including Mumbai, the nation’s booming financial capital: Workers use metal scrapers, brooms or their bare hands to clear drainage and sanitation lines twice a year, before and after the annual monsoon rains.

Add in this little tidbit too:

More than 95% of sewer workers are members of India’s lowest social class, the Dalits, once known as “untouchables,” according to the government’s figures. Labor activist Milind Ranade said the jobs still exist because of widespread apathy toward Dalits, who remain severely marginalized despite efforts to end caste-based discrimination.

And as bad as that may seem, being part of the Dalits caste, even that group has a hierarchy:

Rajni was only 10 when her mother told her that she would spend her life picking up human excrement from dry latrines. They belong to the Valmiki caste, regarded as the lowest among the Dalits – formerly India’s untouchables.

“She said that we are born to do this. First, we clean the waste of others and then we get to eat,” Rajni recalls her mother saying.

Now 21, Rajni remembers how sick she felt for most of her childhood; the stink emanating from the excrement; and the flies that followed her when she carried the waste in a basket fetched from the households in her village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

“The worst days were when it rained. The waste would drip onto your neck and shoulders,” she told Al Jazeera. “You wanted to keep throwing up.”

Rajni was married as a teenager and continued to be a manual scavenger in her husband’s village until 2012 when Sulabh International, a non- profit organisation, replaced the dry latrines in her village with flush toilets.

Supposedly India passed legislation: “The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and the Rehabilitation Act 2013 prescribes a prison term for one year or a fine of $826 (50,000 rupees) for engaging manual scavengers”, but guess what?  It still goes on.    So the next time you want to kvetch, gripe or bitch about that job…think again.  There’s more info at the two links if you wish to read it.

Forget about running with scissors

Just don’t run into those damned knives.  It’s just the peskiest of damned things.  There you are, just standing around your house extending a knife and your husband just runs into the thing!

The 32-year-old woman who is accused of fatally stabbing her husband in the Hollygrove neighborhood told investigators that he “ran into” her knife during an argument the previous evening, New Orleans police said. Katrina Lampton-Tollette, booked Tuesday night with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice, is expected to appear for a bond hearing Wednesday (Dec. 9) in Orleans Parish Criminal Court.
[and what’s more he didn’t want any medical attention]

A preliminary police report states that Lampton-Tollette and her husband, 42, were in a fight Monday night when she “armed herself with a knife.” Her husband “ran into” the knife, she told police, but he “refused medical attention.”

Now this happened on a Monday night and Ms Lampton-Tollette said she “discovered her husband was ‘unresponsive’ ” on Tuesday morning.  Gee, ya think?

It was homemade fried chicken but was it
finger lickin’ good?

I’m just gonna paste it in because sometimes there’s nothing left to say.

Houston police found a man later identified as Darwin Perez Gonzalez, 34, lying dead around 11:30 p.m. outside near the entrance to the Monte Carlo Apartment Homes on Lakewood Estates Drive.

Several witnesses saw the fight, which started between Gonzales and roommate Reinaldo Cardoso Rivera, 38, over the last piece of homemade fried chicken, a drumstick. They went outside to fight over the chicken, and that’s when Rivera allegedly stabbed Gonzalez with a steak knife.

 Four or five Cuban men live in the apartment, police said.

“There was a single drumstick in the pan,” according to HPD Homicide Detective Fil Waters. “You can’t script this stuff. It’s someone getting killed over a piece of chicken. Pretty tragic.”

Yep, pretty tragic.

Are the Norwegians telling us something we already knew?

Ah the good Norwegians.  They sure know how to explain or describe crazy.  And hell, they haven’t even met the politicians from the gret stet!

If you’re Norwegian or happen to spend a lot of time around Norwegians, then this fact that absolutely blew our minds might not be news to you, but apparently the word “Texas” is slang for “crazy” or “wild,” as in, “the end of the [whatever sport they play in Norway] game was totally Texas!”

Usually, when the word “texas”—as an adjective, most often without capitalization—appears in Norwegian, the context involves the phrase, “det var helt texas,” which translates to, roughly, “it was totally/absolutely/completely bonkers.” You wouldn’t call a person “totally texas”; it usually describes a chaotic atmosphere. –

I’m sorry Texas Monthly, I’ve seen and heard Texas politicians and I’m going to call them “totally texas”, like it or not.

 

Some assorted youtube clips

This guy definitely should have read the owners manual first.  Supposedly he just drove it out of the dealership.

This cat is definitely showing his stuff against the big ole tiger.

These next two bad lip reading clips are especially for Laker and Prolix.

and part two:

Okay Widdershins, this is completely open so discuss as you wish.  Remember there is a Democratic debate tonight and perhaps it will get interesting with the unauthorized data usage thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tags: christmas, holidays, odd news, Star Wars, Youtube