What a week it has been. I was out of town for nearly a week and also started a new job (working at the same place, just a new department). Longer hours and the learning curve is steep. So I apologize for not blogging for a while. Just trying to get used to my new schedule.
OAKLAND, California-
In every one of my previous posts I have written about stories that have occurred in the past. I like time to pass between the event actually occurring and my version of it. That way when you read about it on my blog hopefully it’s new and fresh to you. So for the first time I am going to write about a story that is now a viral video sensation on the internet. It is all over YouTube and many other places on the internet. This is an event that will make any MMA (mixed martial art) fighter proud.
It is a fantastic story that I just couldn’t resist telling. But before I begin, I must make something very clear: The video (linked below) is very racially motivated. But I am going to honestly say it has absolutely nothing to do with race for me. I do not see black and white, all I see is a young thug and older (67 year old) man.
There is no mystery about what happens here. When I saw the video for the first time on YouTube I couldn’t help but laugh. Somehow a verbal argument broke out between an older man and a younger man about ’spit shining’ the older man’s Stacy Adams (dress shoes). I really don’t know if any racism was intended by the older man, he claims there was not. When the much taller, older man walked away the younger man followed him and persisted in mocking him, trying to intimidate him, and start a fight. The younger man followed the older to the front of the bus then returned to the back. They bantered back and forth until the younger man made a second approach to the older man and clearly put a hand on him. And all that needs to be said is the older man defended himself (see for yourself below, but please note there is violence and vulgarity).
What else is there to say? Someone talked a lot and got their ass handed to them. Rumor has it there may be a rematch in a real MMA cage with a real referee…….NO JOKE. From what I saw it would be over in about 5 seconds, probably not worth pay per view.
The Moral of the story: NOTICE to all bullies out there: You better watch yourself, you never know when that unexpected guy will kick your ass.
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
SAN DIEGO, California-
The day a high school student gets accepted to a prestigious college is likely the biggest day in the entire life of that young person. I remember waiting anxiously for my acceptance letter to arrive from my Alma Mater. Although, when I was waiting to get accepted I was waiting for a snail-mail letter (this was a few years ago;). Nowadays, it’s much easier and far cheaper for schools to send out that desired letter via email.
So imagine the sure delight 46,377 ‘to-be’ UC San Diego students felt when they received that anticipated letter in their inbox. I’m sure the text messages and phone calls that followed went something like this…….“Yeah Baby, I Got Accepted to UC San Diego!!!” And who knows how much money and time was spent by proud parents and family members on gifts and dinner tabs right after the huge announcement. After all, getting into such a well respected university is no simple task, and not everyone gets in.
Houston, we have a problem. And it’s a BIG one. The 46,377 acceptance letters sent out actually went out to EVERYONE who had applied to UCSD. In reality, only 17,488 of those receiving acceptance letters were actually accepted to the university. The other 28,889 were supposed to have received rejection letters. Oh, I’m sure that went over really well. I guess I could say I would understand how that could accidentally happen to 10 to 20 applicants, ‘accidentally’. But screwing up that bad and breaking the hearts of nearly 29,000 young adults? That’s a little much.
There was no saying whether it was human error or computer error that caused the problem. But I would argue that if it WAS written off as computer error, it’s the same as human error. After all, computers don’t make other computers (at least not yet), humans make computers and the programs that run on them. So UCSD administration, ‘You have some ’splainin to do!’
Do I smell a lawsuit?
The moral of the story: No matter how high tech your system is mistakes can and will happen. It’s always better to double check it.
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
Quincy, Massachusetts-
Forty-four year old Mike Bowes had heard this sort of call hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. He was good at his job and knew exactly what to do each and every time the phone rang. Mike was a 911 dispatcher in Quincy, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston in which 90,000 people resided.
At the time of the incident, Mike was a seasoned veteran. He had heard just about every sort of call known to man, ten times over, and prided himself in always staying calm, and always knowing how to handle each and every situation. He would effectively notify police and/or fire and simultaneously talk the caller through what they needed do, whether it be perform CPR, get out of the house due to fire, or run and hide from a home intruder. Mike was always prepared and nothing really shook him.
That was until 10:45 one Monday evening. Mike sat at his desk and received a call he was very familiar with. The caller said, “My neighbor’s house just blew up!”
Just as he had been trained to do, and had practiced religiously, over his 11 year career as a dispatcher, Mike calmly asked, “What’s the address?”
The caller’s response both shocked and surprised Mike. What were the odds in a city of 90K people that he personally would receive the 911 call when his own home was on fire? Mike had lived in the home for 20 years and was immediately worried about his parents, who he knew were both in the house at the time. Within five minutes of the call police were escorting Mike to his burning home.
In the end, both parents and a third person escaped the fire unharmed. And with another twist of irony, one of the first firefighters on the scene was Tom Bowes, Mike’s cousin. Tom rushed into the house and was able to salvage some old albums with wedding and baby photos, but sadly everything else was destroyed. Obviously very upset, Mike handled his personal disaster with a lot of maturity by saying, “My parents are alive; my neighbors are alive, it’s an inconvenience, but we’ll get through it.”
The moral of the story: Irony aside, all that really matters are the people you love. Everything else is replaceable.
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
(Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on a GREAT season and their first Super Bowl Championship.)
VIENNA, Austria-
It doesn’t really matter where in the world you live, if it’s even somewhat civilized, there will be bureaucratic bullshit. Sometimes things I hear about here in the Untied States really anger me, and I know they anger you too. But I guess the reality is that bureaucratic bullshit is here to stay.
And here is a perfect example of how ridiculous a bureaucracy can really be. Bills are bills and without the risk of destroying ones credit, the bills must be paid. It’s a part of life that everyone over the age of 18 must deal with. In Vienna, Kronen Zeitung actually did pay his trash collection bill on time, however, he misread the amount due and underpaid it by 36 euros cents, about 50 U.S. cents. But instead of tacking the underpayment on to his next bill, the trash company took it to the courts, who sent a debt collector to the man’s house to collect it.
I wonder how much it cost in gas and salary to send a debt collector to Kronen Zeitung’s house, all in the hopes of collecting the measly 50 cents? This is not the first time I have heard of something this ridiculous. It seems to happen all too often, someone or some company spends a small fortune in the attempt to collect a small amount back.
The moral of the story: All too often people and companies get caught up in bureaucratic bullshit and don’t take the time to really look at a situation and ask if it’s really being handled in the correct and most efficient manner. After all, isn’t that what a bureaucracy is really supposed to be about?
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
(In honor of Super Bowl XLIV (44) being played tomorrow here is a re post of 10/17/09. This is a strange Super Bowl story that occurred just over a year ago. I will follow today’s Super Bowl with new material.)
TUCSON, Arizona-
This is one of those things that is hard to believe could ever happen. But it did and was nothing less than shocking!
On February 1st, 2009, Super Bowl XLIII (aka-Super Bowl 43) was being played between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals. It was a good game throughout the first half and the second half only got better. Pittsburgh had led throughout, but with 2:37 remaining in the game, Cardinals’ fans erupted in delight as they watched their star receiver, Larry Fitzgerald, catch a pass across the middle from Kurt Warner, split four Steelers’ defenders and take it 64 yards into the end zone. It was the Cardinals’ first lead of the game, giving them and their fans high hopes that they could pull off the huge upset and win their first Super Bowl title in franchise history. As Fitzgerald celebrated with teammates and looked up at the JumboTron to watch himself sprint into the end zone on replay, Cardinals’ fans watching the game on their televisions in the Tucson, Arizona market got a lot more for their money than they had expected when waking up that morning.
Viewers in certain areas of Arizona got a 30 second clip of a pornographic movie that was somehow fed into the live Comcast feed of the game. Let’s put it this way, if your child saw this, they KNOW what an erection is. My question is: after the Janet Jackson incident during the Super Bowl 38 halftime show, how could this have happened?
Incidentally, the Cardinals lost the game.
The Moral of the story: Since Super Bowls are now routinely X rated, it is wise to watch the entire game with your children. You never know when that one thing you don’t want them to see will pop up and you will have some explaining to do.
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma-
This is downright hilarious and definitely something you don’t often see. Judge Wapner’s People’s Court TV show in the 1980s would have titled it, “The Case of the Policeman on a Power Trip.”
An Oklahoma State Trooper was racing to provide backup on a call when he came up on the back of an ambulance that was also in a hurry to get somewhere. With apparently minimal effort the trooper seemed to easily pass the ambulance and within a minute arrived at his destination. The trooper stayed at the call for a minute or two then quickly pulled back out on to the road and chased down, and pulled over, the ambulance. Just as the ambulance came to a stop the parametric in the back exited quickly and confronted the trooper, explaining that he was in charge of the ambulance. The trooper pushed him aside and started yelling at the driver telling him he was going to give him a ticket for failure to yield and giving him hand gestures as he initially drove by.
What the trooper didn’t know at the time was that the ambulance also had somewhere to be in a hurry…..it was transporting a patient to the hospital. You would think that once that was discovered the trooper would send the ambulance on its merry way, so no further danger was faced by the patient. This was not the case at all. I will not get too heavily into the details of this one because luckily the son of the woman being transported was in the ambulance with her, and using his cell phone so graciously caught the whole incident on video for our viewing pleasure and the dash cam video in the police cruiser was released (Both YouTube videos are below). Watching the trooper power trip is fairly entertaining. Watch him as he attempts, but apparently fails, to arrest the parametric in charge. Aren’t these guys supposed to be on the same side of the law and helping each other?
The moral of the story: Someone definitely needs some anger counseling.
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
NEW YORK CITY-
At some point in each of our lives we will all go to great lengths to do something that we truly believe in. Sometimes it comes down to doing something for the principle of the matter, while other times we do it because we believe it’s our duty. Jury duty would be a great example of someone’s sense of civic duty. Despite jury duty being required by law, anyone with the desire and a lame excuse, can usually get out of jury duty, and many people take that route. But that’s not everyone, some people summoned for jury duty take it very seriously and will commit to the long, and sometimes thankless hours required to carry out their civic duty.
But it’s not only jury duty that people take seriously as their civic duty. Another example would be something most people take more seriously than jury duty, however, it’s not forced upon anyone by law, and is a right for most, but also a choice. Voting. In America no one is forced to vote, yet, most choose to because they want to have a voice. Take the case of voting in the Presidential Election every four years. As the saying goes, “Every vote counts,” and if you lump together many thousands of “every vote counts” you may have something that could actually matter. But no matter what anyone says, the odds of any individual vote making a difference in any Presidential Election is zero, after all, the Electoral College is really what decides who the next President will be. But I’m not here to educate anyone about how the President is elected, if you want to know that I would suggest a quick visit to Wikipedia, where you can look up the Electoral College.
But when it comes to voting for the President most people know that they don’t really have any say in the outcome, it’s more about making a statement and voicing their opinion. Still, despite the reality of it, most American citizens still take their right to vote very seriously. And please do not take the tone of this post the wrong way, I fully support every American casting their vote (and I do myself every election). The tone of this post is more to set up what the post is really about.
New Zealand-born Susan Scott-Ker and her Moroccan husband are American citizens. In fact, they had lived in America for 13 years on Green Cards, but got tired of their opinions not mattering, so they became American citizens (just a year before the 2008 Presidential Election) simply so they could vote and have their opinions finally count. But a few months after becoming American citizens Scott-Ker was transferred to India and as of October, 2008, the couple worked and lived in India. While there they had waited very patiently for their New York State absentee ballots to arrive in India so they could cast their ballots for the next President of the United States. As time went on and the ballots did not arrive they began calling around, including the American Consulate. They also considered hiring a round trip courier so they could get their ballots counted. Reality set in and they realized even if they had the ballots in hand, they would not have enough time to get them back in time.
The couple weighed their options and considered going on a vacation so they could kick back on a beautiful beach somewhere. Instead they jumped on a plane on a Tuesday evening catching a flight from Bangalore to New Delhi, about 1,100 miles. Then from New Delhi to Chicago, another 7,500 miles. By 5:30 on Wednesday morning, they had cleared immigration and customs at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, and flew the last 700 miles to La Guardia.
They were in New York six days before the election. The entire journey lasted 22 hours and covered 9,300 miles. They went nearly as far as humanly possibly in one direction around the globe, costing them $5,000, all for a right they so dearly wanted, and something many take for granted, the right to vote.
The moral of the story: This one’s twofold……You gotta do what you gotta do……..and no one ever has any excuse again not to vote (that is unless you hate both candidates, and that’s a whole different story).
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
MANHATTAN, New York-
Everyone remembers the tragic oil spill on March 24, 1989 of the Exxon Valdez, where the tanker hit Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef, and spilled approximately 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean; an ecological disaster still be felt today, more than 20 years later. I know, some of you have been trying to forget about that mishap for years, I’m sorry to have reminded you of it. I guess you could say Exxon is not perfect, and that all companies will make mistakes, but the Valdez, that was a biggie and I believe/hope Exxon is still paying for it today out of their deep pockets.
But what about other mistakes the company has made? Mistakes that are more comical in nature than anything else, and don’t really cause any damage to anyone or anything, but really leave you asking yourself, “What the hell is going on?” That’s exactly what Manhattan accountant Frank Van Buren was asking himself after a recent dealing with Exxon. Van Buren is a business owner, and for 17 years has loyally used an Exxon gas card for his company.
One day when Van Buren noticed his card was about to expire, he naturally called customer service and ordered two replacement cards. He received the cards, but two weeks later he received a mysterious box from Texas (left on his front doorstep). In the box he found 1,000 exact matches of the two cards he had already received with his name and account number on each. Immediately, Van Buren called Exxon to complain. Embarrassed and apologetic by the mistake, the Exxon representative asked him to immediately shred the cards, which he did over a three hour period.
End of story? Not quite. Not too long after another box arrived on his door step, looking much like the first box. The mystery box was easily identified on round two, another 1,000 card each in Van Buren’s name and account number. More upset this time, he called Exxon again and they said they had no idea what was going on, but would inquire with Citibank, who handles Exxon’s accounts. Citibank was also baffled and apologetic. Van Buren said he did not want to deal with the cards on round two and wanted to return them, but the return was refused……are you kidding me? In the end it was also disclosed that none of the 2,000 extra cards had any activation stickers, that are used to prevent identity theft. Hmmmmm……. the last time I saw a credit card without an activation sticker was, um, never.
The moral of the story: Some billion dollar companies need to spend a few more billion and get their #$@& together.
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
SANDUSKY, Ohio-
Although, this is by no means a tragic story, it is a little sad in some respects. It’s always nice to help thy neighbor, and just pitch in and help others when possible, but sometimes doing a good deed goes unnoticed, and other times can get you in trouble.
Forty eight year old John Hamilton of Sandusky, Ohio always takes pride in his yard. He likes to keep it in tip top shape, so when he has visitors, or when people just drive by, he can rest assured he has done his best and can be proud of his work and dedication.
So imagine how hard it was for John to stand by idly and watch as the grass at Sandusky’s Central Park kept growing and growing and growing until it was about a foot tall. Seeing that no one else seemed to care, John took the bull by the horns, got out his own lawnmower, and started mowing. I would think the city counsel would thank him and maybe even pay him for doing their job. But instead, John was greeted by a policeman and handcuffs.
The police reports said John was arrested because he refused to stop mowing, and he was charged with obstructing official business and disorderly conduct. Under the circumstances I say I can’t blame him, but the one place I think he missed was once a police officer asks you to stop what you are doing, you better obey or be prepared to pay the price.
The moral of the story: Do what you gotta do, but you better listed to the police if you know what’s good for you. It’s usually not worth getting arrested to prove a point.
© 2010 StrangeRush.com
Print This Strange Story
