Pencil Sharpeners Don’t Kill People, Idiots With Pencil Sharpeners Kill People

Some days I find myself thinking that we really ought to just wipe the world clean and start over. After seeing
this,
it’s safe to say that today is definitely one of them.

First it was the shatterproof ruler. Then came the compass with a soft point.

Now one of the UK’s biggest stationery manufacturers is redesigning the pencil sharpener to stop it being used as a weapon.

Helix is producing a tamper-proof version of the trusty sharpener, which has been employed by generations of schoolchildren, after complaints from teachers.

Schools have reported incidents in which pupils unscrew blades and use them to attack classmates. Some head teachers have been forced to ban them altogether.

In an announcement yesterday, Helix, which sells two million sharpeners a year, said it was redesigning its products to allay fears over their safety. The new sharpeners will have a special screw head which the company claims, cannot be removed, even with a screwdriver.

A primary school in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancs, has banned sharpeners after a pupil slashed another child’s neck and a Derby junior school imposed a ban after children were found stamping on them to remove blades.

A Question for The Wrestling Fans

Am I the only one who thinks that Monday’s WWE draft lottery is totally useless and a complete waste of time? I must be, considering how excited people are getting about it. All of the analysis and argument I’m seeing and hearing over who should go where and why is driving me friggin nuts. Change this, revitalize that, freshen up storylines there, create new feuds here, just shut up already! And by shut up I don’t mean stop talking about wrestling, I only mean save your thought energy for things that actually mean something.

Like I said up top, the draft is pointless. If you don’t believe me, you need to go back and watch pretty much every WWE show from at least the end of 2006 until now, and especially everything from the Royal Rumble on, and then you need to answer a few questions. Questions like how many times have we seen someone from one brand show up on another for no good reason and then just stay there? Or why are there no single brand PPV’s anymore if everything is supposed to be separate? Or how many times have guys from one brand come out on another’s show and cut a promo or wrestled a match like it’s no big thing, and how many times have the announcers treated it the same way, not even caring that some Raw guy is taking up valuable Smackdown TV time? And then there’s the biggest question of all. If the wrestlers and announcers and management don’t respect the boundaries of the brand extension, why should we?

In a world where until last Monday we had tag champions who were singles wrestlers on separate shows and where ECW pay-per-view angles are the most prominent thing on RAW, what good is a draft going to do for anything? WWE has done nothing but repeatedly pound into our heads that the brand extension doesn’t mean a thing, so why should we care that they’re messing with it? The only thing the draft is going to change the face of is the WWE.com roster page. Everything else is going to remain largely unchanged. Sure we might get some different match combinations, but we would have gotten those anyway without the 3-hour ratings grab disguised as a major event. You can’t expect me to believe that without a lottery we’d never have the chance to see Jeff Hardy against CM Punk or Randy Orton in a feud with Jimmy Wang Yang. Anything you think the draft might make possible is already possible now. this isn’t a real brand split like WWF and WCW was. What we have now are 3 shows produced by one company that tend to feature different guys from week to week, but whenever they want it to, that can change just because they said so.

So while everybody else is on the edge of their seats Monday night waiting to see who the next pick will be, I’ll be watching Raw like it’s any other show, and bracing myself for the hundreds of angry columnists and feedback contributors who’ll be putting out articles in the next few weeks about how not much has really changed and how WWE sucks for the same reasons it’s been sucking for years now.

Feel free to disagree and to take a shot at selling me on how great this is going to be, but I’m afraid you’ve got an uphill climb and it’s all WWE’s fault. I want to catch a great big case of draft fever and look forward to Monday night like I did when I was young, but when something is designed to be so obviously meaningless, I have no choice but to treat it that way.

Ok, I Think I’ve Just Officially Heard It All

This
is one of the most ridiculous explanations I’ve heard for anything in the entire history of ever.

A Rochester man who said his poor eyesight caused him to molest his girlfriend’s prepubescent daughter was ordered to prison today.

Monroe County Court Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr. sentenced Eric Kennedy, 38, to 12 years behind bars for repeated sexual contact with the girl from February 2001 through August 2004.

Kennedy was arrested last year after the girl, now 13, reported the abuse.

While being interviewed by police, Kennedy blamed the girl, saying she placed his hand on her body.

He also said he had poor eyesight that might have caused him to mistake the girl for her mother, with whom he was living.

I can safely say that not many people in the world have worse eyesight than I do, and in the nearly 30 years I’ve been around, even being as dumb as I am sometimes I’ve never managed to molest somebody by accident. I’m not sure who this goof thought he was going to fool with that one, but thankfully it turned out to be nobody. I hope they tack a few extra years to the end of his prison sentence just for being a humongous fucking idiot.

Today’s Stupid Joke That Made Me Giggle Like A Moron

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person, a death which almost went unnoticed last week.

Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote “The Hokey Pokey”, died peacefully at the age of 93.

The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in, and then the trouble started…

Come On Baby Light My Face

Here’s another one for the hahahaha! files.

A man broke into a convenience store, grabbed some lottery tickets, and set the place ablaze. But while he was spraying the surveillance camera, he set fire to his face. The camera survived and got a pretty good shot of our friend. By some strange feat, he still managed to get away, but now hospitals are on the lookout for a man with burns to his face, neck and possibly wrists.

I guess there have been a string of this style of burglary and destruction recently, so once they catch him, he may have quite a few charges to answer for. I’m sure they’ll find him soon. I think he’ll have a burning need for medical help.

Home Depot: You Can Steal It, We Can Watch.

I always thought that if you were caught stealing in a store, security guards and employees would chase you down, or you would start beeping and a voice would start saying that apparently the nice person at the counter failed to remove the tag from your stuff that you must have bought, you law-abiding citizen you. Either way, you weren’t supposed to make it far before you were caught and the store got their stuff back.

But apparently, at Home Depot, there’s a policy that says employees are not allowed to chase you down, or even call the police if you shoplift there. Huh? I gotta remember that’s the place to go for some free building supplies.

Not only are they not supposed to chase you down, if someone does decide to call the police or help them catch you, they may get fired.

Is this some kind of evil parallel universe? What the hell? Is this to prevent criminals from suing the store for being roughed up while trying to steal stuff? But why can’t they even call police? Apparently, they’re supposed to ask the shoplifter for a receipt and then tell them to have a good day!

Have we lost our minds? Someone explain to me how this makes sense.

Today’s Unintentional Hilarity

A man is suing the makers of the Boost Plus energy drink because he says it gave him an erection that wouldn’t go away, eventually requiring him to have surgery to bring it down. the name of this poor fellow?
Christopher Woods.

I don’t think any more needs to be said, and even if it did, you probably wouldn’t be able to hear me over the laughter anyway.

Stuck In The Middle Of You

The thing that makes
this story
stand out to me isn’t the whole people believing that there are witchdoctors who can make adulterers stick together thing, but rather that in the midst of the chaos that ensued when seemingly an entire village started thinking that it had happened and wanted to see it, the police got tired and decided to go home. Yes home, in the middle of a riot. You’d think that considering the situation they might have at least *thought* about calling in the night shift, but apparently not. The only reason they didn’t wind up knocking off for the evening was somebody’s wise decision to go back and investigate where the shooting was coming from. Good call, and it’s nice to know that at least somebody on the force has a bit of brain power going on.

I’m trying to imagine, even taking into consideration some of the stupid police stories that come from these parts, something like this ever happening here. I mean what must that conversation have sounded like?

“Wow, this is some riot eh?”

“Yeah, sure is huge.”

“So you know what time it is?”

“It’s about 7:30.”

“Sweet, shift’s over!”

“Yeah, I guess it is. Cool shit!”

“So you wanna head out for a beer?”

“I dunno, maybe we should stick around and see how this all plays out.”

“Oh come on, we’re union, and you know how cheap management is. They aren’t gonna give us our double time and a half let alone our danger pay, so screw ’em.”

“Fair enough, but are they calling guys in to take over?”

“What do I look like, the boss? Let’s just get out of here.”

“Ok fine. Say, I hope they’ve got the news on down at the pub, I wanna see if we got on TV.”

Seriously, read the story and try to substitute what’s going on with something like the L.A riots, and then try to imagine what would have happened if the entire LAPD decided they were getting sleepy and that things would sort themselves and all would be well come morning.

Yes, I know I think too much, but if something’s funny it’s funny, and I can’t get this damn visual out of my head now.

Imagine a Phone That Talks

Yea! This is pretty sweet! Singular started doing this in the states, so I was waiting for Bell or Rogers to follow, and now Rogers has.

Rogers is now selling the Nokia 6682RVI with Talks software! I hear you now. And this means exactly what? Talks software has been around for a while. You install it on the phone and it will read the menus, caller ID, all things on the screen, audibly. So suddenly, all those cool and wacky features of a cell phone are opened up and made available to people who can’t read that print on the cell phone screen. This software, on its own, costs about $300 U.S. and then you had to buy the phone. So as keen as I was on having this stuff, it was out of my price range.

But now, rogers is selling a phone bundled with the software for $200 if you sign a 3-year term! Yea! Guess who’s asking some hard questions about whether or not they can upgrade their phone? *grins from ear to ear* I’m such a geek.

I just thought others might be interested, so there it is.