Curse of the Day:
• May you sleep as deeply as you tip generously.

It's not just a deadly jellyfish sting, it's a new species with a deadly sting!

Do they seem a bit blasé about those "worse than death" symptoms, or is it just me?

The story of how they found the jellyfish in the first place is somewhat similar.

Interesting scientific method they have in Oz, huh? On the bright side, you might just be eaten by a shark instead.  After all, it's less embarrassing to be killed by a huge, carnivorous animal, rather than some jellyfish you never even see.

• The good old days of being able to use your work PC as a fun machine are probably over, as more and more companies are using monitoring software, to keep track of what their employees are up to when online.  So if you are reading this from work, you might want to make it a quick visit, and lay off the farm animal porn too.  The software being used is mostly blocking stuff, like what you put on your AOL so your 11 y/o can't get into the kiddy porn chat rooms; they do use logging equipment too, but the odds of them sifting through your browsing history to find every site you've been aren't high.  Mostly since it takes all day to snoop through it, and by that time they could have been doing productive work themselves.

Back in 1997 or so, when I was playing Diablo, I had a couple of friends who were on Battle.net like 9 hours a day from work.  One guy worked for the IRS in Pittsburgh, and would play Diablo for like 5 hours straight every day, and then take a lunch break before playing Ultima Online for 3 or 4 hours until it was time to go home.  He'd have to alt tab out every hour or so if his boss came by his office, but he had more time to play at work than he did at home, where his wife was always after him to get off the machine.  He was a nice guy, but at the same time I'd often think, "My tax dollars are funding his item runs."

• South Korea partied hardy after beating Spain in the World Cup.

Let's hope they don't win the entire thing, or they might not survive the celebration.  Either that or the North will launch their invasion then, and roll over the South, what with everyone drunk off their asses? 

• You know you're hardcore when you get kicked out of a private Catholic school for being too religious.

• I want to quote this entire news story, it's so funny.  Preacher giving an eulogy for a dead man calls him a "drunkard and a fornicator", and gets a punch in the nose for his opinions.  The best line is from his no-doubt shrewish wife, who added,

You can just about bet the farm that anyone who actually uses the word, "fornicators" has got a lot of Jesus issues.

• Article about Egyptian driving habits cracked me up.

• A couple of students apparently made the old "seig heil" Nazi salute in a yearbook group photo, I'd assume as a joke.  Teenagers today aren't exactly weighing the emotional weight of tragedies from 60 years ago when they screw around in photos.  Unfortunately for them, someone who obviously has no sense of humor about this sort of thing is on the case.

The school principle says they'll look into it and interview the students who may be making the inappropriate salute.  Of course since the kids have already graduated, the odds of their reply to the school including the words, "fuck" and "off" seem to be pretty high.

I'm certainly not encouraging Nazism, but my uninformed guess is that this is 99.8% certain to be a dumb prank.  Not even a prank, more like one guy saying to his friend, "Let's do the Hitler salute in this stupid picture while everyone else is waving." Another version of the old "rabbit ears" where you put up two fingers behind someone's head.  I guess there is a very remote possibility that the guys really are neo-Nazis, and if so I'll be very very sad.

I think that 99.8% of kids who are Neo-Nazis aren't really anything of the kind anyway; they're just dumb kids who, in typical teen rebellion mode, pick the pose that they think will most infuriate their parents/elders, and is outlaw, and therefore kewl.  And Nazis are all evil and stuff, though they had some cool clothing, and are the bad guys in numerous video games and war movies, so are natural identified with by troubled teens who don't really give a thought to historical precedent.

ne problem with owning a house is that you might end up next to some psycho.  In an apartment you can get them evicted, but if they own their own house they can do just about anything with the property, providing they don't violate zoning ordinances.  If you are in an apartment, you can easily move, but if you own the house it's a lot more complicated.

This story details about the biggest asshole neighbor on earth.  Some old guy named Joel Wells, who obviously hates cats (and people).  He puts baited traps in his back yard, catches neighborhood cats, and takes them to the animal shelter to have them gassed, claiming they are feral.  He's killed at least 9 of them so far.

He got one in April, owned by a 14 y/o girl who lives next door.  The animal has a collar and tags, he knows what it looks like from seeing it around, but he has it killed anyway.  Probably removed the collar and such, to make it seem like a stray.  Obviously the girl is upset by this, and her family is as well.  They should have sued the asshole then.  Anyway, they've been feuding ever since, and he built a big wooden fence just recently, which they thought would be nice, so they'd see less of him.  When it's done he paints it pink and writes, "Meow meow" in giant letters on it, pointing at the girl's bedroom window. There's a picture of the fence in the news article.

He's a real classy guy.

Mandie Borkowski's teenage daughter Alesha, who owns three cats, went over to see the trap for herself. She picked it up and ran home. Mandie Borkowski insisted her daughter return it, and within 15 minutes the cage was back in Wells' yard. Wells and Alesha talked it over, and Wells told her everything was okay, that he wouldn't press charges.

The next day, though, Alesha was arrested at school and taken to juvenile hall, charged with petty theft and criminal mischief. She was ordered to undergo counseling, perform community service and write a letter of apology to Wells.

You know the girl was probably sobbing her head off over this prick murdering people's pets, and probably was broken-hearted, fearing her cats would be trapped next.  So the guy lies to her and her mother, says things are okay, and then chooses to get the cops involved the next day, during school, when the girl will be humiliated in public.  Rather than having them come over after school, or on a weekend, etc.

As I said, he's possibly the biggest asshole on earth.

One would hope that all the kids in the neighborhood would declare war on him, and do whatever they could to ruin his life.  Throw rocks at his windows, key his truck, TP his house, etc.  Of course you know he's got to be a total psycho, and would probably hide in the bushes all night and try to shoot some kid, or take photos of them and get them arrested.  Nutty guys like that have nothing but time, and meaningless lives, so doing what they can to piss off other people is really all that gives them direction.

I wonder how long killing pets will be enough to satisfy his inner demons? He'd be better off dead, before he starts trying to trap children, assuming he hasn't already.