Oddly Enough...or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Strange

[X.]

This is a thread where we can collect strange and oddly amusing REAL stories from around the world.

Porn Moguls Ask Congress For Help
7 January 2009 7:56 AM, PST | From wenn.com

Porn moguls Larry Flynt and Joe Francis are appealing to the U.S. Congress to grant the adult entertainment industry a $5 billion (GBP3.3 billion) bail out - because it is suffering from the global economic meltdown just as much as others.

Hustler magazine entrepreneur Flynt claims adult DVD sales have plummeted in the last 12 months, with figures down 22 per cent from 2007.

He says, "With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It's time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America."

Meanwhile, Girls Gone Wild creator Francis is planning to travel to Washington D.C. to make his point heard, because he's adamant the porn industry is a key part of the U.S. economy - just like the financial and motor institutions.

He tells TMZ.com, "Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation's most important businesses; we feel we deserve the same consideration."

[ozzylogic]

LOL, good find AK!

[X.]

Here's another...make sure you prepare yourself for the final paragraph:

Victim of huge loss decapitates himself
By Mariam M. Al Serkal, Staff Reporter | Published: January 09, 2009

Sharjah: A Pakistani businessman decapitated himself after he suffered the loss of millions of dollars due to the economic meltdown, police confirmed on Friday.

The businessman owned several contracting companies in Sharjah and Dubai, a senior officer at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Sharjah Police said.

The businessman committed suicide by cutting his head off with an electric saw on Wednesday afternoon.

In a statement made by the deceased's wife, she said the 60-year-old man had been losing large amounts of money and was under alot of pressure. The businessman had recently been forced to lay off the workers at his companies.

The businessman committed suicide at his apartment an Al Qassimia. His wife told police she last spoke to her husband that morning and had arranged to meet up with him at one of his companies. By midday she became worried about his whereabouts and went home where she found his body at 2.40pm.

Brigadier Abdul Rahman Sahoh, of the forensic department at Sharjah Police, said the wife discovered her husband's body in a pool of blood with the electric saw still running. She switched off the saw and covered the body in a sheet before calling the police.

Police say they are expecting a rise in suicides as the financial crisis deepens and lay-offs increase, leaving many with high debts and no income.

[safra23]

Police say they are expecting a rise in suicides as the financial crisis deepens and lay-offs increase, leaving many with high debts and no income.

Not good at all....

[X.]

U.S. arrests pilot accused of faking death
Jan 14, 2009

MIAMI (Reuters) – U.S. marshals have arrested a pilot accused of parachuting out of his plane and letting it crash in an apparent attempt to avoid financial fraud prosecution by faking his death, an investigator said late on Tuesday.

The pilot, Marcus Schrenker, 38, was arrested late on Tuesday at a campsite in the north Florida town of Quincy, Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Sgt. Scott Haines said by e-mail.

Details of the arrest were sketchy and Haines could not confirm local media reports that Schrenker was hospitalized after cutting his wrists in an apparent suicide attempt.

Schrenker was the only person aboard the small plane that took off for Florida on Sunday from Anderson, Indiana.

Investigators said that as the plane flew over Alabama the pilot made a fake emergency call, then put the plane on autopilot and parachuted out.

The empty plane crashed in a swampy area a few hundred yards (meters) from several homes near the northwest Florida city of Milton. No one was injured and no structures were damaged, investigators said.

Schrenker parachuted safely to the ground near the Alabama city of Harpersville on Sunday night, got a police officer to give him a ride to a hotel and then fled, investigators said.

He had previously stashed a motorcycle near that hotel and got away before local police learned of the plane crash, police and local media reported.

Schrenker was wanted in Indiana on financial fraud charges alleging he misled consumers who invested money in his wealth management companies and misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton, editing by Philip Barbara)

[animatedude]

can this thread include stories of our own? i can tell you the story when i went to jail...or the story when the police chased me.

[madali]

I want to hear the jail story!

[animatedude]

hehe..it's long and complicated.it's full of suspense i can turn it into a good movie...many ppl asked me to write it down...but i think if i did it will not be as exciting as if i say it face to face.but i'll make sure i write it down one day and post it here...

[X.]

So why did you offer to tell us your interesting stories if you are not ready to tell them?

[animatedude]

i'm ready to tell them but not ready to type them yet...been meaning to for months.

[X.]

In the print and online world, ready-to-tell and ready-to-type means the same thing, dude!

But post it whenever you can. Will be interesting to read.

[safra23]

Talk about having a bad day...

Sheikh in the Kaka
By STEVE HAWKES and VIRGINIA WHEELER
from The Sun Newspaper
Published: 17 Jan 2009
 
MANCHESTER City owner Sheikh Mansour lost £440MILLION yesterday — nearly DOUBLE what he is set to spend on Brazilian soccer ace Kaka.

The Arab tycoon, who hopes to sign AC Milan’s Kaka in a £243million deal, was stunned as Barclays shares crashed by 25 per cent — wiping £27BILLION off the bank’s market value.

The Sheikh, 38, had plunged £3.5billion of his estimated £33billion fortune into Barclays last October, giving him a 16.3 per cent stake.

But a banking insider said last night: “It’s fair to say Sheikh Mansour had a day from hell.

“Talk about being in the Kaka. He must have watched the news with his head in his hands.

“You wake up preparing to make history with the biggest ever offer to a footballer. Hours later, you’re down £440million.”

A £440million loss is equivalent to the gross domestic product of African nation Gambia.

Abu Dhabi royal Mansour bought Man City, managed by Mark Hughes, last September — raising hopes of an influx of star players.

The Sun revealed yesterday that he hopes to take Kaka, 26, to the club by splashing £108million on a transfer, another £108million on the attacker’s wages and £27million in fees.

He bought into Barclays when it raised £7billion from investors rather than lose independence in a British government bail-out. His stake is now worth £1.3billion.

Barclays insisted last night it was not in any financial difficulty.

BANK of England deputy governor Sir John Gieve warned yesterday Britain faces the worst recession for “decades.”

[shariqq]

Painter finds fakes at art show

A leading Indian artist has said he was "stupefied and outraged" to find that many of his paintings at a show he was inaugurating were fakes.

SH Raza was inaugurating the exhibition at an art gallery in Delhi.

The Dhoomimal Art Gallery closed its show as soon as Mr Raza pointed out the fakes but said it had sourced them from the painter's family.

There is a flourishing market for fakes of most leading painters in India, art gallery owners and experts say.

The gallery was hosting an exhibition of Mr Raza's work, which was to run till the end of the month.

'Original fake'

Mr Raza, 86, said when he reached the exhibition on Saturday, he found that a number of the paintings were fake.

"At this stage of my life, this was the last thing I wanted to do - grace an exhibition of my own fake paintings. I am so upset and cannot get over it," Mr Raza wrote in the Mail Today newspaper.


He said he had been advised by his friends to take legal action, but he had not decided.

"This shows Indian art in a very poor light. We need to find out how this happened," Mr Raza wrote.

The owner of the 70-year-old gallery, Uma Ravi Jain, told the BBC that Mr Raza's paintings for the exhibition were sourced from the painter's nephew.

Only two of the 30-odd paintings which were being displayed were from the gallery's own collection, she said.

"The rest came from Mr Raza's family, so we did not suspect they were fakes. This is the first time we've had such an experience," Ms Jain said.

One of Mr Raza's friends, who accompanied him to the exhibition, said the paintings were obviously wrong.

"If you have an original and you make a copy, you still retain the style of the artist. But when you make something totally unrelated to what the artist is known for and then pass it off under his signature, it is actually an original fake," writer Ashok Vajpayee told Mail Today.

Mr Raza, whose paintings have sold in leading galleries around the world for record amounts, lives and works in France these days.

The owner of the gallery admitted that fakes had become a big problem in India's growing art industry.

"There are a lot of fakes moving around in the market. They have become a big problem," said Ms Jain.

[X.]

I won't tell you who this is:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/QAi-5FVpf7E&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/QAi-5FVpf7E&rel=1</a>

Then this:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/fhLJPGI7a7k&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/fhLJPGI7a7k&rel=1</a>

[animatedude]

lol...man..this guy has nothing to lose...i mean..NOTHING.do you know when you are in that stage of your life when you have nothing to lose? yea...