Archive for the ‘Hard Core!’ Category
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
Boy, 7, goes on animal killing spree in Australian zoo:
The director of an Australian zoo said on Friday he is “horrified” after a seven-year-old boy broke into the zoo, fed an assortment of animals to a crocodile and clubbed various lizards to death with a rock.
The boy’s attacks happened early Wednesday and were captured on a zoo security camera, said Rex Neindorf, director of the Alice Springs Reptile Centre in Australia’s Northern Territory.
The boy, whose identity cannot be revealed, jumped the zoo’s security fence before bludgeoning three lizards to death with a rock, including the zoo’s much-loved 20-year-old goanna, which he then fed to “Terry,” an 11-foot, 440-pound saltwater crocodile, said Neindorf.
The boy also threw several live animals into the crocodile’s enclosure, and at one point tried to clamber over the fence surrounding the enclosure in an effort to get closer to the crocodile.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Hard Core!, Yuck! | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Asteroids record: James McAllister sets new high score
A VIDEO game addict clocked up a new high score on arcade classic “Asteroids” – smashing the previous record set 28 years ago.
Locksmith John McAllister, 41, played the simple joystick-controlled shooting game for 58 hours straight to rack up 41,338,740 points, The Sun reported.
The marathon gaming session was even broadcast live over the internet from his pal’s basement in Portland, Oregon.
“The Asteroids high score record is considered a holy grail. It’s a title that a lot of people would want, and I wanted it,” he told KGW-TV.
The previous high score of 41,336,440 was set by 15-year-old Scott Safran in 1982 – the longest-held high score of all time.
McAllister went without sleep during his game, which could not be paused, and racked up enough extra lives to dash to the toilet without getting a game over.
His score needs to be verified by official referees before he is entered into the record books.
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Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Skydiving From Space:
The Red Bull Stratos team has kept itself under wraps until today’s press conference at the New York Academy of Sciences in NYC. The ambitious project marks the first major attempt at breaking an old but daunting skydiving record, one that starts at the edge of space.
In 1960, U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger stepped out of a capsule at 102,800 feet above the Earth’s surface and, in just minutes returned to the surface by simply falling. The falling part was easy. The surviving part was not—his first jump, from the Excelsior I module nearly ended in disaster when a parachute cord wrapped around his neck. His main chute, attached to a timer, deployed and saved him.
In Excelsior III, he failed to report a malfunctioning glove and nearly lost his hand to depressurization. But his record-breaking jump was successful, and having fulfilled its mission, the Air Force stopped jumping from record heights. His would-be successor is cut from the same mold, but has traveled a far different road.
Felix Baumgartner wears two tattoos—one, on his arm that says “Born to Fly” and another on his back, 502, that marks his BASE-jumping code—and has built a career out of from skydiving with frightening regularity and launching himself from architectural landmarks like the Gold Gate Bridge and Taipei 101 with a parachute on his back.
He is a daredevil, but according to Kittinger and the rest of the Red Bull Stratos team, he is a calculating one that has survived thousands of skydives by knowing how to prepare and when to back away from a jump.
So then, is this jump a stunt? In a way, it is. This is sponsored by Red Bull, after all, which has associated itself with extreme, entertaining, and daring sporting endeavors for the last decade or so, from the Dakar Rally to snowboard racing.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does, Hard Core! | No Comments »
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
New York Restaurant Owners Turn Evil:
Times are tough, and people are sat at home chewing bellybutton fluff instead of eating out or ordering in. What are restaurant owners doing? Some are not paying staff, and others are sending abusive emails calling them “fucking lazy motherfuckers.”
Vadim Ponorovsky, the owner of Paradou, a restaurant in the Meatpacking district, described on its website as a “light-filled, airy oasis… filled with warmth and charm,” really REALLY wants waitstaff to collect email addresses from customers, presumably so he can spam them.
Here’s the happy, team-building email he sent out, from a tipster.
To All,
Please read this email carefully.
This is the last time we will be discussing this. This weekend, saturday and sunday we had 451 customers. Guess how many emails we collected? 60? 80? 40? No. None of those. We, or more acurately you, collected 2 emails. Thats less than half of one percent. 2 fucking emails.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ASSHOLES?!?!?! How many times do we have to tell you how important it is that you collect emails. Everytime we have a slow night and you make no money and you sit there bitching about how you make no money, remember its because youre fucking lazy motherfuckers. YOU SHOULD ALL BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY!!!!! ALL OF YOU, INCLUDING THE HOSTS!!!!
Let me guess, youre probably sitting there saying “Vadim is such a fucking asshole. How dare he speak to me like this. I dont need this.” Youre right, you dont, so why dont you get the fuck out. Any and all of you.
Youre probably sitting there saying “How dare he speak to me like this. How dare he not have respect for me”. Youre right there also. I have absolutely no respect for any of you. Why? Because every fucking day, all of you continue to show that you have absolutely no respect for me or Alex. So if you dont respect us enough to do the little that we ask you to do, then GET THE FUCK OUT YOU FUCKING LAZY DISRESPECTFUL ASSHOLES!!!!!
Effective immediately, any server or host who fails to collect at least 20 emails per week, will be fined $100. Anyone failing to collect at least 20 emails for two weeks in a month will be fired immediately. No matter what. No matter who you are. You dont want to do your job, you dont want to do what we ask, you dont belong at Paradou.
Go find another place to work. How dare you disrespect Alex and me this way. How dare you completely ignore what we ask of you time after time after time. I am sick of all this shit, you bunch of fucking children. This is what I have to deal with at 6AM?!?!? I wouldnt tolerate this from my 13 year old, and Im sure as shit not going to tolerate it from any of you assholes.
You give no respect, you get 10 times back.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does, Greed is Good, Hard Core! | No Comments »
Monday, September 28th, 2009
Spider Wranglers Weave One-Of-A-Kind Tapestry
This week in New York, the American Museum of Natural History unveiled something never before seen: an 11-by-4-foot tapestry made completely of spider silk.
Weavers in Madagascar took four years to make it, and the museum says there’s no other like it in the world.
It’s now in a glass case at the museum. The color is a radiant gold — the natural color of the golden orb-weaving spider, from the Nephila genus, one that’s found in several parts of the world
Simon Peers, a textile maker who lives in Madagascar, conceived the project. Weaving spider silk is not traditional there; a French missionary dreamed it up over a century ago but failed at it. The only known spider silk tapestry was shown in Paris in 1900 but then disappeared.
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Monday, September 21st, 2009
McChrystal to resign if not given resources for Afghanistan:
Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal’s team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn’t given sufficient resources (read “troops”) to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan
Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it.
In the last two weeks, top administration leaders have suggested that more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and then called that suggestion “premature.” Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “time is not on our side”; on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the public “to take a deep breath.”
In Kabul, some members of McChrystal’s staff said they don’t understand why Obama called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” but still hasn’t given them the resources they need to turn things around quickly. Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he’d stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy.
“Yes, he’ll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far,” a senior official in Kabul said. “He’ll hold his ground. He’s not going to bend to political pressure.”
Posted in End of the World Update, Hard Core!, War | No Comments »
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Egypt Man Castrates Self for Love, Police Say
A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.
After unsuccessfully petitioning his father for two years to marry the girl, the man heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ, said a police official.
The young man came from a prominent family in the southern Egyptian province of Qena, one of Egypt’s poorest and most conservative areas that is also home to the famed ancient Egyptian ruins of Luxor.
The man was rushed to the hospital but doctors were unable to reattach the severed member, the official added citing the police report filed after the incident.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does, Cultural Oddities, Hard Core! | No Comments »
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
Saudis Behead, Crucify Convicted Child Molester, Murderer
Saudi authorities beheaded and crucified a man convicted of brutally slaying an 11-year-old boy and his father, the Interior Ministry announced.
According to the statement issued by the ministry Friday, shop owner Ahmed al-Anzi molested the boy and then strangled him with a length of rope. He then stabbed the boy’s father to death when the man came looking for his son. He hid both the bodies in his shop, the statement said, adding that al-Anzi threatened police with a knife when they came to arrest him.
Al-Anzi had previously been convicted of sodomy and owning pornographic films, a crime in conservative Saudi Arabia.
Crucifying the headless body in a public place is a way to set an example, according to the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islam. Normally those convicted of rape, murder and drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia are just beheaded.
Posted in Crazed Dictatorships, Hard Core!, T.R.O.P. | No Comments »
Saturday, November 8th, 2008
Wipeout: the moment a surfer was dumped by a 40ft wave
It was a ?dark, evil wave? that almost killed him, but for Australian surfer Kerby Brown, riding this 12m (40ft) monster in his own backyard was one of the highlights of his surfing career.
The 25-year-old surfed the enormous break at an outdoor reef in the Southern Ocean ?somewhere between Margaret River and South Australia? on the southwest coast of Western Australia (WA) last August.
Local surfers discovered the break ? the exact location of which they want to keep secret ? after deep-sea fisherman alerted them to the amazing waves they had seen about 15km (9 miles) off the coast.
Mr Brown and his entourage, including his brother Courtney, decided to try and ride the dangerous break – which is only suitable to surf about four or five times a year because of the rough conditions – just before the sunset one day when the perfect wave presented itself.
?We sat out there and waited and watched for a long time, and then about an hour before dark the water dropped so we just went for it,? Mr Brown, who comes from Kalbarri, north of Perth in WA, told Times Online.
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Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Police Shut Down Italian Circus After Woman Forced to Swim in Piranha Tank
Police have closed down a circus in southern Italy after a terrified 19-year-old woman was forced to swim in a tank full of piranha fish while her younger sister endured the company of snakes and tarantulas.
Three men have been arrested and charged with holding the Bulgarian women in slavery and breaching international human rights conventions.
The trio, who are accused of running a “circus of horrors,” were named as Enrico Raffaele Ingrassia, 57, the owner, his son William Ingrassia, 33, and his son-in-law Gaetano Belfiore, 25.
The Marino Circus has been offering shows at Petina, south of Naples in southern Italy, in a tent with 200 plastic seats inside it.
Posted in Bad Parents, Concentrated Criminality, Hard Core! | Comments Off
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Exxon wins freeze on $12 billion of Venezuelan assets
Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N: Quote) has won court orders freezing up to $12 billion in Venezuelan assets around the world as it fights for compensation for operations lost to President Hugo Chavez’s nationalization drive.
The largest U.S. company sought the asset freeze to guarantee repayment should it win arbitration over the Cerro Negro heavy oil project.
The move is the boldest challenge yet by an international oil major against any of the governments around the world that have moved to increase their holds on natural resources as energy and commodity prices have soared.
Posted in Crazed Dictatorships, Greed is Good, Hard Core! | Comments Off
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
Biochemist Kills Husband By Stuffing Him, Alive, in Vat of Acid
A Los Angeles jury found a biochemist guilty Wednesday of killing her estranged husband by stuffing him in a vat of acid.
Forty-seven-year-old Larissa Schuster of Clovis was convicted of first-degree murder in the 2003 killing. She could face the death penalty.
Schuster’s former lab assistant got life in an earlier trial.
Authorities say the two knocked out Timothy Schuster with a stun gun and chloroform and dumped him head-first — and still breathing — into a barrel before adding hydrochloric acid.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality, Hard Core!, Yuck! | Comments Off
Sunday, December 9th, 2007
Portugal gets harsh blast from the past
The heads of enemy soldiers impaled on roadside trees. Hundreds of prisoners tortured, killed and dumped in mass graves. Napalm dropped on jungles where guerrillas sheltered, and grass-hut villages torched with cigarette lighters.
These gruesome acts were carried out in Portugal’s name two generations ago during its colonial wars in Africa. But for most Portuguese, the events aren’t history — they’re news.
A groundbreaking series aired by public broadcaster Radiotelevisao Portuguesa is confronting Portugal with unsettling aspects of its recent history that for decades have been shrouded in silence. The series has become a top-rated prime-time program and the most-watched documentary in years, regularly drawing more than a million viewers in a country of 10.6 million.
Posted in A Bit of The Old Ultraviolent, Concentrated Criminality, Greed is Good, Hard Core!, War | Comments Off
Saturday, December 1st, 2007
Max Speed on Lamborghini Sets New Record
Authorities have confirmed they are investigating a viral Internet video that shows a driver in a Lamborghini who claims to be driving at 219 mph on an Arizona highway.
“This is still an ongoing investigation,” Lt. James W. Warriner, a spokesman for the Airzona Department of Public Safety, told ABC News. “We will not be commenting until the investigation is complete.”
The video, originally posted on YouTube, runs more than four minutes long and appears to be professionally produced.
In the nighttime footage, an unidentified thrill seeker in a gold Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 appears to be pushing the vehicle to within 1 mph of the its 220 mph maximum. At the tail end of the clip, an unseen man is heard claiming the achievement as a new record.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Crazy is as Crazy Does, Hard Core!, Toys! | Comments Off
Friday, November 30th, 2007
Iconic Daredevil Evel Knievel Dies at 69
Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho’s Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.
Knievel’s death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.
Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.
Longtime friend and promoter Billy Rundel said Knievel had trouble breathing at his Clearwater condominium and died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital.
“It’s been coming for years, but you just don’t expect it. Superman just doesn’t die, right?” Rundel said.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does, Hard Core!, Idiot Celebrities, Superheroes | Comments Off
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
Crazy Stunt: Air Catapult Launches Man Into the Sky, Requires Parachute to Land
This crazy giant catapult, probably built by Wile E. Coyote out of two construction cranes and ACME industrial-grade rubber bands, is designed to send a man into space with no security cables or net. As you will see in the video, after surviving the bazillion-G-force launch in one piece, he has to open a parachute to return safely to land.
Posted in Hard Core!, Toys! | Comments Off
Sunday, October 7th, 2007
Alaska Bird Makes Longest Nonstop Flight Ever Measured
A female shorebird was recently found to have flown 7,145 miles (11,500 kilometers) nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand—without taking a break for food or drink.
It’s the longest nonstop bird migration ever measured, according to biologists who tracked the flight using satellite tags.
The bird, a wader called a bar-tailed godwit, completed the journey in nine days.
In addition to demonstrating the bird’s surprising endurance, the trek confirms that godwits make the southbound trip of their annual migration directly across the vast Pacific rather than along the East Asian coast, scientists said.
Posted in Animal Weirdness, Hard Core!, Weird Science | Comments Off
Sunday, October 7th, 2007
Adventurer ends 13-year human-powered world trip
Adventurer Jason Lewis on Saturday arrived in Greenwich, ending a 13-year round-the-world trip using only the power of the human body.
The 40-year-old completed the final leg of his 46,000-mile odyssey by pedalling his 7.9-metre boat Moksha up the River Thames.
Ending a journey that included capsizing in the Atlantic, breaking both legs, being chased by a crocodile and being arrested on suspicion of spying, Lewis then disembarked and carried Moksha across the Greenwich Meridian line at the Royal Observatory with the help of supporters.
Lewis set off from the same spot — zero degrees longitude — bound for Portugal in July 1994. The 16-leg journey included hiking, kayaking, mountain biking and hiking.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does, Hard Core! | Comments Off
Friday, September 14th, 2007
Man Builds Guillotine to Kill Himself
The body of a 41-year-old man was found in a wooded area next to a guillotine he built and used to kill himself, police said. The man, from the Detroit suburb of Melvindale, was discovered Monday by workers from a shopping center near his home.
Posted in Hard Core!, Suicidal Tendencies | Comments Off
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
Surfer Rides Alaska Glacier’s Giant Wave
As the newest extreme sport, it is more “Titanic” than Olympic. Ice surfing gives you the chance to dice with death while enjoying the planet’s ultimate chill-out.
It is not the easiest of pastimes to enjoy. First you have to find a glacier about to “calve,” then wait for up to two weeks for a house-sized iceberg to break off before catching the monstrous wake after it hits the water from 500 feet high.
The reward: Sixty seconds of sheer exhilaration as you ride a 25-foot wall of ice-cold water filled with millions of shards of razor-sharp ice, mud, boulders and debris.
Posted in Crazy is as Crazy Does, Hard Core! | Comments Off
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
China Executes Ex-Food and Drug Chief
China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog on Tuesday for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash, the strongest signal yet from Beijing that it is serious about tackling its product safety crisis.
The execution of former State Food and Drug Administration director Zheng Xiaoyu was confirmed by state television and the official Xinhua News Agency.
During Zheng’s tenure from 1998 to 2005, his agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Hard Core! | No Comments »
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
Rocketman takes to the skies:
A Swiss pilot has turned himself into a ‘rocketman’ by strapping a pair of wings and two jet engines to his back.
Yves Rossy, 45, a former airforce fighter pilot, gave his carbon wings their first test flight in Spain He said: “It is absolutely fantastic. Total freedom in three dimensions, so much speed and power, it was better than being a bird.
Posted in Hard Core! | No Comments »
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
TO HELI.. AND BACK:
IT IS one of the most daring military rescues ever – an extraordinary race against time in the heart of Afghanistan’s bandit country. The men of 45 Commando Royal Marine had just returned to base following an assault on a Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province when the radio on the Apache helicopter crackled into life. One of their comrades – Lance Corporal Matthew Ford – was missing and they had just minutes to find him and bring him back before the Taliban got to him.
…
Realising that unless they acted immediately the fallen Marine had no chance of survival, Tom Smith, a 39-year-old Army Air Corps warrant officer, devised an extraordinary plan. By strapping four troops on to two Apache helicopters – which cannot take passengers – they could reach Matt before the Taliban did.
Posted in Hard Core!, War | No Comments »
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
“I saw a Lonely Planet guide to Australia. There was a map on the back. Perth was on one side and Brisbane on the other and I thought, ‘that’ll do’.”
A British adventurer is on the verge of becoming the first person to skateboard across Australia.
David Cornthwaite will complete his 3,600-mile journey in Brisbane on Monday, having started his journey in Perth, in August.
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Friday, January 19th, 2007
Tax Fugitive Barricaded in House: ‘Show Us the Law, and We’ll Pay’
I want people to realize that there is no such thing as an obligation to pay income tax,” said Edward Brown. “It has nothing to do with the Constitution.”
A jury ruled Thursday that Brown and his wife, Elaine, plotted to hide their income and avoid taxes on Elaine Brown’s income of $1.9 million between 1996 and 2003. Over 10 years, they also used $215,890 of postal money orders broken into increments just below the reporting threshold to pay for their hilltop compound and for Elaine Brown’s dental offices.
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Thursday, January 18th, 2007
Planning a Leap? The Constitution Protects You
The First Amendment protects the right to jump from the Empire State Building with a parachute, a Manhattan judge ruled yesterday. In an eight-page decision, state Supreme Court Judge Michael Ambrecht dismissed a felony charge of reckless endangerment against a California stuntman, Jeb Corliss, because his conduct, “while dangerous and ill-conceived, does not rise to the level of depraved indifference” and is, in fact, “constitutionally protected freedom of expression.”
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Saturday, January 13th, 2007
UK polar team set to make history:
A British team is set to make history by becoming the first people to reach Antarctica’s Pole of Inaccessibility without mechanical assistance. The four-man group began their 1,770km (1,100 mile) trek at the beginning of December, using only skis and kites to pull their 120kg sledges.
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