Posts filed under 'Crazy Folks'
Darkly tanned, more than a little dirty and hungry, two men who spent three months crossing the Pacific on a raft made of plastic bottles and an abandon airplane fuslage (seen in image) to raise awareness of ocean debris finally stepped onto dry land. “We made it,” hollered Marcus Eriksen to a crowd of about two dozen gathered at Ala Wai Harbor on Wednesday. “Where’s the food?” Friends greeted Eriksen and fellow eco-mariner Joel Paschal with lei, fresh food and beer to celebrate the end of their nearly 4,200-kilometre voyage on what they call the JUNK raft. “We got used to eating fish and peanut butter,” said Eriksen, who celebrated his 41st birthday at sea.
The pair left Long Beach, Calif., on June 1. Their nine-metre vessel had a deck of salvaged sailboat masts, six pontoons filled with 15,000 plastic bottles and a cabin made from the fuselage of a Cessna airplane. While at sea they realized they were traveling less than a kilometre per hour and it would take them much longer to reach Hawaii than the previously anticipated six weeks. “We had to go to half rations for awhile,” said Paschal, 32.
Without a backup plan, the two used a satellite phone to get in touch with Roz Savage, who was crossing the Pacific solo in a rowboat and happened to be in the same area at the time.
Savage, who was heading from San Francisco to Hawaii, was in dire need of water after both her potable water makers broke. When the three met up, Savage got onboard the raft, Paschal speared a mahimahi and the three dined together. Before parting, the men gave Savage a water maker and she gave them some of her extra food. “We exchanged the necessities of life,” Eriksen said. “And that kept us going.”
Food wasn’t the only problem the men encountered on their trip. The raft, which can only sail down wind, had a hard time leaving the Long Beach area. The raft encountered storms that tore it apart during the first two weeks. Some of the bottles that were supposed to help the raft stay afloat started to sink. Eriksen and Paschal had to anchor the raft 160 kilometres off shore and rebuild it before setting sail again.
The voyage was part of Algalita Marine Research Foundation’s project called, “JUNK.” The third person of the group, who didn’t make the trip, was Anna Cummins, Eriksen’s fiancee. Cummins took care of land support, blogs and fundraising. She said the goal of the trip was to creatively raise awareness about plastic debris and pollution in the ocean, the same goal Savage pursued in her trek across the Pacific.
The three want “single-use plastics” to be banned, saying they’re wasteful and usually end up in the ocean. “Recycling is one solution, but it’s just a small part of the puzzle,” Paschal said. Each day the men posted online videos and blogs of their trip and kept in touch with Cummins. They also spent two to three hours a day maintaining and repairing the raft.
The men said a variety of marine life gathered under the raft throughout the trip. One day, said Paschal, they caught a fish after watching it grow for five weeks. They were going to eat it, but when they cut it open they found its stomach was full of plastic confetti. The team hopes to visit schools around Oahu and share their experiences, and is working on a documentary film about the voyage to raise public awareness of the danger of plastics. Sounds like a very interesting adventure.
September 1st, 2008
Seven High school students arrested, for drugs? Fighting? DUI? - Authorities say seven people attending high school graduations in Rock Hill, South Carolina, are facing charges after police say they cheered while students’ names were being called. Only in the good ole’ US of A!
Authorities say six people at Fort Mill High School’s graduation were charged Saturday and a seventh at the graduation for York Comprehensive High School was charged Friday with disorderly conduct. Police say those arrested yelled after students’ names were called while diplomas were handed out.
A police spokesman says school officials request police patrols to prevent graduation disruptions that include standing, hollering and clapping. He says those attending the commencements are told their behaviour can be prosecuted. This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of, no wonder this next generation is so messed up.
June 11th, 2008
In Ohio they take grass-cutting very seriously. So seriously infact that homeowners who don’t mow their lawns face a stiff fine, even jail time in some cases.
The city council has decided to get tougher by increasing the maximum fine for failing to cut the grass from $150 to $250. And they’ve also added up to 30 days behind bars if a violator is particularly bad. Mayor William Healy says it’s the type of action needed “in order to clean up our neighbourhoods and our city.”
In the US it seems you don’t even get enough jail time for serious offences like assualt and robbery so this was a bit suprising.
June 3rd, 2008
Here are some weird news shorts:
-Police in Arkansas say they found DNA evidence on a half-eaten candy bar helped them zero in on a robbery suspect. Should have eaten the whole thing, eh?
-A group of up hundreds of enraged young men killed 11 people who were accused of being witches and wizards in western Kenya, in some cases slitting their throats or clubbing them to death before burning their bodies. I guess they have never seen an of the Harry Potter movies.
-In yummy news, a trailer loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway.
-Only in the Big Apple, a Manhattan restaurant is offering a hamburger that costs $175 and is topped with gold flakes.
May 25th, 2008
A Japanese pin-up model says that her big breasts have not only boosted her career — they also helped her overturn a court verdict. The bikini model, who goes by her professional name Serena Kozakura, was cleared after a court decided she was too well-endowed to squeeze into a room through a hole, as she had been found guilty of earlier.
“I used to hate my body so much,” Kozakura, who has appeared in product commercials on television, told the private Asahi network in an interview aired Tuesday. “But it was my breasts” that won in court, she said.
The case was splashed through the Japanese media on Tuesday, with the Asahi network even inviting her to demonstrate how she could not fit through the opening. Kozakura, 38, was convicted last year of property destruction after a man said she kicked in the wooden door of his room and crawled inside, apparently because he was with another woman.
Kozakura had said the man made the hole himself. In her appeal, the defence counsel held up a plate showing the size of the hole and said that she could not squeeze through with her 110-centimetre (44-inch) bust. “The judges were very good-mannered as they showed no expressions on their faces. I guess they’re well-trained,” Kozakura said. Tokyo High Court presiding judge Kunio Harada agreed and threw out the guilty verdict on Monday, saying there was reasonable doubt over the man’s account. Well that was a nice…story.
March 4th, 2008
The case of a chilli dog on display at a local convenience store prompted an outraged woman to take action. Cindy Gravelle says she took a big gulp when she spotted a miserable looking pooch in the walk-in cooler, pressing its face up against the glass door, during a milk-run to her local 7-Eleven earlier this week.
Gravelle was doubly disturbed the next day to find the same dog, which appears to be an American Eskimo, in the cooler apparently for safekeeping while its owner worked a shift at the store near Centre St. and McKnight Blvd. N.E.
“Eight hours later it was still in the fridge,” the horrified 41-year-old said yesterday.
“What is wrong with these people?”
Gravelle’s dogged pursuit to rectify the situation led Calgary Humane Society officials to contact the store about the strange pet-keeping practice.
7-Eleven spokesman Alyn Edwards said it was “a discretionary decision” based on “unique circumstances” which will not happen again. It appears the dogs owner thought because it was an Eskimo dog it needed to be kept in very cold surroundings.
February 2nd, 2008
An Italian court has ruled that a couple could not name their son “Friday” and ordered that he instead be called Gregory after the saint whose feast day he was born on. “I think it is ridiculous they even opened a case about it,” the family’s lawyer, Paola Rossi, told Reuters by telephone from the northern city of Genoa on Tuesday.
Friday/Gregory Germano was born in Genoa 15 months ago. The parents registered him as Friday in the city hall and a priest even baptised him as Friday — unusual in Italy since many priests insist that first names be of Christian origin. “We named him Friday because we like the sound of the name. Even if it would have been a girl, we would have named her Friday,” the boy’s mother, Mara Germano, told Reuters.
When the boy was about five months old, a city hall clerk brought the odd name to the attention of a tribunal, which informed the couple of an administrative norm which bars parents from giving “ridiculous or shameful” first names to children. The tribunal said it was protecting the child from being the butt of jokes and added that it believed the name would hinder him from developing “serene interpersonal relationships”.
The Germano family appealed but lost their case this month and the story was carried on the front page of a national newspaper on Tuesday. When ordered to change the name, the parents refused and the court ruled the boy would be legally registered as Gregory because he was born on that saint’s feast day.
“I really doubt this would have happened to the child of parents who are rich and famous,” the boy’s mother told Reuters, recalling that some famous Italians had given their children unorthodox names such as “Ocean” or “Chanel”. The appeals court ruled against Friday because it recalled the servile savage in Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe and because superstitious Italians consider Friday an unlucky day.
“I am livid about this,” the boy’s mother said. “A court should not waste its time with things like this when there is so much more to worry about.” “My son was born Friday, baptised Friday, will call himself Friday, we will call him Friday but when he gets older he will have to sign his name Gregory,” she said. I hope he has not siblings named after the other days of the week.
December 23rd, 2007
Previous Posts
