Have you ever wondered why, in today’s modern times, people across the world still tend to think that South Africa is a primitive country where you have lions walking around in your back yard, or that we don’t have the internet!? I mean, really, come on people! That would be like me thinking that Australians ride to work on kangaroos! But just how far does it go?

We hereby present to you a list of snappy answers to really stupid questions about South Africa:

Q: Does it ever get windy in South Africa ? I have never seen it rain.
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

Q: Will I be able to see elephants in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you’ve been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Durban to Cape Town - can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it’s only two thousand kilometres, take lots of water…

Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in South Africa ? (Sweden )
A: So it’s true what they say about Swedes..

Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in South Africa? Can you send me a list of them in JHB, Cape Town ,Knysna and Jeffrey’s Bay? (UK)
A: What did your last slave die of?

Q: Can you give me some information about Koala Bear racing in South Africa? (USA)
A: Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the pacific. A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe which does not…oh forget it. Sure, the Koala Bear racing is every Tuesday night in Hillbrow. Come naked.

Q: Which direction is north in South Africa ? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 90 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we’ll send the rest of the directions.

Q: Can I bring cutlery into South Africa ? (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys’ Choir schedule? (USA)
A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is…oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Hillbrow, straight after the Koala Bear races. Come naked.

Q: Do you have perfume in South Africa ? (France)
A: No, WE don’t stink.

Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in South Africa ? (USA)
A: Anywhere where a significant number of Americans gather.

Q: Can you tell me the regions in South Africa where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay nightclubs.

Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in South Africa ? (France)
A: Only at Christmas.

Q: Are there killer bees in South Africa ? (Germany)
A: Not yet, but for you, we’ll import them.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Cape Town and is milk available all year round?
A: No, we are a peaceful civilisation of vegan hunter-gatherers. Milk is illegal.

Q: Please send a list of all doctors in South Africa who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)
A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca, which is where YOU come from. All South African snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.

Q: I was in South Africa in 1969, and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Hillbrow. Can you help? (USA)
A: Yes, but you will probably still have to pay her by the hour.

Q: Will I be able to speek English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you’ll have to learn it first.

Do you have some of your own snappy answers? Feel free to drop them in the comments.

(blog.travelcrossings.co.za)

BEIJING – Chen Fuchao, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern China for hours when a passer-by came up, shook his hand — and pushed him off the ledge.

Chen fell 26 feet (8 meters) onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chen’s “selfish activity,” Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest,” Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. “They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”

Xinhua said Lai was “taken away by police” but did not elaborate.

A police officer who answered the telephone Saturday at a station close to the bridge confirmed the incident and said it was under investigation. He refused to give any other details and hung up.

According to Xinhua, Chen wanted to kill himself because he had accrued 2 million yuan ($290,000) in debt from a failed construction project.

On Thursday, he made his way to the Haizhu bridge, where 11 other people have tried to take their lives since April.

Lai volunteered to talk Chen down but was turned away by police, Xinhua said. Lai then broke through the cordon, climbed to where Chen sat, greeted him with a handshake, then pushed.

Photos in the Beijing Morning Post showed Lai, shoeless and in a T-shirt, saluting after Chen fell.

The paper said Lai was released on bail Friday but did not give any details. It said he had been on medication for “a mental illness” for decades and had been on his way to a hospital for his pills.

Chen was recovering in the hospital, Xinhua said.

(Yahoo News)

One man explaining to another why he fired his secretary:

“Two weeks ago,” I said, “was my forty-fifth birthday and I wasn’t feeling too hot that morning anyway. I went into the kitchen for breakfast knowing that my wife would be pleasant and say ‘Happy Birthday’ and probably have a present for me. She didn’t even say ‘Good Morning’ let alone say ‘Happy Birthday’.

“I said to myself ‘Well that’s wives for you. The children will remember.’ But the children came into breakfast and didn’t say a word. And when I started to the office, I was feeling pretty low and despondent.

“As I walked into my office, Janet said ‘Good Morning, Boss–Happy Birthday’ and I felt a little bit better that someone had remembered.

“I worked until noon. About noon, Janet knocked on my door and said, ‘You know it’s such a beautiful day outside and it is your birthday, so let’s go to lunch, just you and I.’ I said, ‘By George, that is the greatest thing I have heard all day. Let’s go.’

“We went to lunch. We didn’t go where we normally go, we went out into the country to a private place. We had two Martinis and enjoyed lunch tremendously.

“On the way back to the office, she said, ‘You know, it’s such a beautiful day we don’t need to go back to the office, do we?’ I said, ‘No, I guess not.’

“She said, ‘Let’s go by my apartment, and I’ll fix you another Martini.’

“We went to her apartment. We enjoyed another Martini and smoked a cigarette and she said, ‘Boss, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go into the bedroom and slip into something more comfortable’ and I allowed her as I didn’t mind at all.

“She went into the bedroom and in about six minutes she came out of the bedroom carrying a big birthday cake followed by my wife and children. All were singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and there I sat with nothing on but my socks.”

(netfunny.com)

NEW DELHI (AFP) - An Indian man who fathered seven daughters has not washed for 35 years in an apparent attempt to ensure his next child is a boy, newspapers reported. Kailash “Kalau” Singh replaces bathing and brushing his teeth with a “fire bath” every evening

when he stands on one leg beside a bonfire, smokes marijuana and says prayers to Lord Shiva, according to the Hindustan Times.

“It’s just like using water to take a bath,” Kalau was reported as saying. “A fire bath helps kill germs and infection in the body.”

Kalau, 63, from a village outside the holy city of Varanasi, outraged his family by refusing to take a ritual dip in the river Ganges even after his brother died five years ago.

“I still don’t remember how it all began,” he said in Saturday’s edition of the paper. “I just know it started about 35 years ago.”

Kalau’s hygiene regime has taken its toll on his professional life.

The grocery store that he used to own closed when customers stopped shopping there due to his “unhealthy personality” and he now tills fields near Varanasi airport.

Kalau, who wears two pullovers all through the Indian summer, said his pledge not to wash was a commitment to the “national interest.”

“I’ll end this vow only when all problems confronting the nation end,” he said.

But his neighbours in the village of Chatav said there was another reason for Kalau’s washing boycott.

“A seer once told Kalau that if he does not take a bath, he would be blessed with a male child,” a man called Madhusudan told the paper.

Most Indians prefer sons, who are typically regarded as breadwinners, while girls are seen as a burden because of the matrimonial dowry demanded by a groom’s family and the fact that their earnings go to their husband’s family.

The world may be full of able runners, but it takes a special sort of athlete to compete in multiple marathons at once. That’s exactly what Japan’s Shizo Kanakuri, born in 1891, managed to do—though he may not have planned it that way.

A member of his country’s very first Olympic team, Kanakuri was running for Japan in the 1912 Stockholm games when he dropped out due to heat. He took refuge in a nearby garden, whose owners provided him with an hour’s worth of refreshments and company.

But rather than rejoin the race afterward, Kanakuri fled in disgrace and scuttled back to Japan on his own. At that point Swedish officials lost track of him, and despite his turning up again at the 1920 and 1924 Olympics, they would conclude that he had disappeared altogether.

Then, in 1966, someone in Sweden apparently got to wondering where Japan’s pioneering marathoner had gone. After, presumably, a thorough search of the Bermuda Triangle, Swedish Television tracked him down in Japan and invited him to Stockholm to finish his run.

The gracious Kanakuri took advantage of the opportunity, and finally made his triumphant entrance into Olympic Stadium, clocked at a blistering 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 8 hours, and 32 minutes.

That must be what they mean when they talk about skill: During the course of that one race, Shizo Kanakuri had not only participated in several other marathons; he also married and had six children and 10 grandchildren.

He died in 1984, the proud holder of a record unlikely ever to be broken.

(weirdasianews.com)

A TAIWAN carpenter bought a porn DVD only to find secretly taped motel footage of his wife having sex with his friend, whom the husband later stabbed.

The husband, identified only by his surname Lee, discovered the illicit sex on the DVD in 2002.

The sexual acts apparently had been recorded using a hidden camera and were on a pornographic DVD, titled Affairs with Others’ Wives, which the husband bought from a vendor to watch at home.

Lee, who lives in Taoyuan County near Taipei, divorced his wife after viewing the DVD. His friend, a butcher, fled their village.

In August 2008, Lee spotted the butcher in Chungli City, returned with a knife and stabbed his former friend in the thigh.

The butcher sued Lee for causing bodily harm. Lee sought but was unable to countersue the butcher for adultery, because of a five-year statute of limitations.

Prosecutors urged the men to settle the case out of court, but they refused.

With the failure to resolve the case, Lee was indicted on Tuesday on a charge of causing bodily harm to another person, the Liberty Times reported.

Prosecutors were seeking a sentence of less than six months in prison, which can be converted into a fine.

(news.com.au)

SEATTLE—Employees at Classmates.com—an online service that enables users to find and communicate with people from their past for a monthly fee—have done everything in their power to keep the company’s CEO from finding out about the wildly popular social networking site Facebook. “He knows something is going on,” Classmates.com web coder Josh Krzysch said while combing his boss’s newspaper and removing any offending articles. “The other day he asked me why people aren’t interested in getting in touch with old friends anymore, and I told him that the Internet just isn’t very popular right now. What else was I supposed to say?” Employees claim that unless things somehow miraculously improve by next month, they plan to quietly pack up their desks and leave in the middle of the night.
(theonion.com)

A boss and his secretary who were having an affair saw their romantic tryst interrupted in a wince-inducing manner - after a car crash led her to accidentally bite his penis off.

According to reports in China Press and Sin Chew Daily, the 30-year-old woman was performing oral sex on her boss in a car in a Singapore park, when the car was struck by a reversing van.

The impact caused her to bite the man’s penis off.

Just in case this wasn’t already bad enough for those involved, the incident was observed by a private detective who had been sent by the woman’s husband to catch them out.
Woman bites lover’s penis off in car crash
He described how, shortly after parking, the car started to ’shake violently’ - but then was hit by the van. He said that the woman screamed loudly, with her mouth covered in blood.

Helpfully, the investigator called an ambulance to take the man to hospital. His lover followed him there, with part of his penis.

The investigator said he’s never seen an incident like it before.
(metro.co.uk)

Aaaatchooo!

“What are you all looking at? Haven’t you seen a baby sneeze before?”

(weirdasianews.com)

Seeing is believing, one bike carrying EIGHT people. Here’s three children, two men, two women and a baby whizzing down the road on ONE motorbike.

The pictures were found on a Chinese blog and were taken from a passing bus. Where in the world they were snapped is uncertain.

(jmick.co.uk)

Nectar of the Broke: The World’s 5 Worst Ways To Get Drunk

Getting drunk on a tight budget is practically a rite of passage. Just about all of us have some tale to tell about nights spent getting shitfaced on Olde English 800 or some equally putrid swill.

But party all the time as we might, it’s doubtful any of us have stories that involve being so broke, we had to resort to throwing down any of this. If we had, we’d likely not have lived to talk about it.

Nothing about tharra, a home-brewed alcohol native to India, sounds too bad at all. Granted, its 90 percent alcohol content will end your shit, but that’s the point of homemade alcohol, right? But unlike other homemade swills you’ll read about later, tharra is rarely mixed with other less drinkable alcohols to improve its potency. It is simply made by fermenting the mash of sugar cane pulp in large ceramic containers. It sounds kind of delicious really, and it may very well be at first.

And you can drink it right out of a bag!

But before you go dipping into that bottle of finely-aged tharra that grandma brought back from her trip to India during her days as a high school floozy, there’s something you should know. Unlike other spirits, whiskey for example, tharra doesn’t benefit from aging. In fact, let it sit long enough and it turns from barely consumable alcohol into full on poison.

But if the numbers are any indication, a little copper formaldehyde poisoning isn’t going to stop anyone from getting their drink on, because tharra continues to kill hundreds of people each year.

Just last September in the Pakistani city of Karachi, 22 men died after drinking tharra from an illegal brewery run by a police constable. And why were they drinking tharra when regular old alcohol is plenty legal in Pakistan? For the same reason any of us would have. It was the middle of the holy month of Ramadan and the liquor stores were closed.

For all of you who still think communism is evil, hear this. During the reign of communism in the Soviet Union, alcohol was one of the few things people could afford. In present day Russia, steep excise duties have put alcohol out of the price range for many working-class stiffs. We’d take communism any day, thank you very much.

To get around the pricing problem, many Russians have turned to the most horrible of options: surrogate alcohol. For those unfamiliar with the term, your liver thanks you, because surrogate alcohol refers to any number of products that have high alcohol contents but are not intended for human consumption. In Russia, in a pinch, common cleaning products will do, but the surrogate alcohol of choice is usually cologne or aftershave.

Boasting a 97 percent alcohol content that should earn it a skull and crossbones on the label, the cheap aftershaves are often bottled to resemble cheap vodka, because, you know, drinking out of an actual aftershave bottle would just be humiliating.

No one knows how widespread the whole “getting drunk off aftershave” thing is, in or out of Russia. “These are products that are often consumed by people living on the margins of society,” said professor Martin McKee, head of the Department of Shit We Already Knew at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Thunderbird is far and away the most normal drink on this list. It’s perfectly legal to buy and finding it is as easy as following the trail of broken souls to your nearest crime-ridden neighborhood liquor store.

But that’s where the normalcy ends. Thunderbird was introduced shortly after prohibition ended by E&J Gallo Winery. According to Bumwine.com, the brothers Gallo wanted to corner the young wine market and began selling Thunderbird in the ghettos of America. Good luck finding that info on their website.

As part of the marketing campaign for Thunderbird, they produced radio ads with the catchy lyrics, “What’s the word / Thunderbird / How’s it sold? / Good and cold / What’s the jive? / Bird’s alive / What’s the price? / Thirty twice.” You know what’s not awesome about that? Not a damn thing.

Thunderbird is so synonymous with vagrancy that several cities have introduced legislation banning its sale in certain impoverished areas. Oh, and one more thing about Thunderbird, despite being pale yellow in color, it has the pleasing side effect of turning the lips and mouth black whenever consumed in large quantities. Scientific studies confirm, that’s pretty fucked up.

Created from fruit, sugar and, oh dear, ketchup, pruno ranks just below anal rape as one of the least favorable alternatives to the luxuries of the outside world that prison has to offer.

When speaking of pruno, it’s not unusual to hear words like “bile” and “vomit” used to describe its unique flavor. Even the type of hardened killers who eat a little bit of their victims probably hold their noses when downing a glass of this fermented goop. While prisoners are famously unconcerned with exactly what they use to make it, just so long as it gets made, the most famous recipe comes from a jailhouse poem and calls for ten oranges, fruit cocktail, 40 to 60 sugar cubes, water and ketchup. Minus the ketchup, that doesn’t sound all that unpleasant.

But most recipes don’t call for hiding the contents away in a Ziploc bag out of the line of sight of prison guards so they can ferment for days on end either. And that is the long and short of the pruno-making process. Add ingredients in a Ziploc bag, let it rot, heat it occasionally, strain it, drink it.

To add to the deliciousness, stories abound about guards who, upon finding batches of pruno being made, have opted to piss in the would-be-hooch rather than confiscate it. Because of its trademark unflinchingly foul taste, most prisoners may never taste the difference. Sometimes revenge is a dish best served lukewarm.

Brewery.

Look, we understand that, as a website whose main talent lies in our ability to place comic book movies in order from least to most awesome, you probably take whatever advice we give you with a grain of salt. But please, we beg of you, if ever there comes a time to view Cracked not as a symposium of dick jokes but instead as a source for information invaluable to your very existence, let it be the time you spend reading the following sentence:

If you’re ever in Kenya and someone asks if you’d like to try some changaa, do not drink that shit.

In a simpler world, changaa would just be another variety of home-brewed alcohol, like moonshine in the US or tharra in India. But in Kenya, the production of changaa is often controlled by criminal gangs who are in competition with each other. With that competition comes a willingness to go to dastardly lengths to make sure one gang’s changaa provides more of a “kick” than the competitor’s changaa.

To up the alcohol level of their product, gangs have been known to dilute changaa with tasty mixers like jet fuel, car battery acid or formalin (a mixture of formaldehyde, water and methanol, if you’re keeping score at home). In case you’re wondering, yes, changaa kills a lot of people every year.

Above: Changaa, powering a small barrel across a lake.

But thanks to its considerably low price compared to traditional alcohol, people still risk it. Of course, some people have opted not to chance drinking tainted changaa and instead have made kiroro their drink of choice. What’s kiroro you ask? Jet fuel, of course! Except without all those needless “meant for human consumption” ingredients. We only wish we were joking.

(cracked.com)

Target: Carla Bruni modelling jewellery in 2003. Police believe the stolen pictures could be posted on the web

Hundreds of ‘highly intimate’ images of the French president’s wife and her former lover have been stolen during a burglary.

The photographs and videos of Carla Bruni, who is on an official trip to Spain with Nicolas Sarkozy, date from the 41-year- old’s affair with philosopher Raphael Enthoven.

Thieves broke into the Paris flat of his brother, 27-year-old actor Julien Enthoven, where the prints and videos were being kept, and stole them.

Police believe the images could be posted on the web, serving to embarrass Nicolas Sarkozy or be sold for a sizeable sum, thanks to his third wife’s status.

A source said: ‘The thieves appeared to know exactly what they were looking for, taking highly intimate prints, a camera full of further images, videos, and numerous computer files.

‘They broke into Mr Enthoven’s flat in Rue Dauphine, in the sixth arrondissement, on Sunday night, smashing a window in the sitting room which looks out on to the courtyard. Nobody was at home at the time, and nothing else was taken.’

Raphael, who fathered Miss Bruni’s son Aurelien, eight, is believed to have entrusted the pictures to his brother as he did not want them to embarrass his new partner, or Mr Sarkozy, a detective working on the case said.

The Sarkozys arrived in Spain the day after the raid.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy places a protective hand on his wife’s back as the pair met with Spanish prime minister Jose Zapatero (not pictured) in Madrid

But neighbours in the mansion block where Julien Enthoven lives said it was ’suspicious’.

‘It’s almost impossible to get into any of the flats here, and burglaries are pretty much unheard of,’ said Jean-Frederic Avel.

Miss Bruni had been living with the Enthovens’ father, the Paris philosopher Jean-Paul, in the late 1990s before leaving him for his married elder son.

Raphael’s ex-wife, the author Justine Levy, never forgave her, portraying Miss Bruni in a book as a ‘husband stealer’ with a ‘terminator smile’.

Ms Bruni and Raphael Enthoven - who is said to have entrusted the intimate snaps to his brother so that they would not fall into the wrong hands

Ms Bruni with her former lover and their son Aurélien at the funeral of her brother in 2006

Last year, just before a state visit to Britain, nude pictures of Miss Bruni, a former model, were released.

Since then she has been trying to tone down her image.

In February the home of the president’s brother, Francois Sarkozy, in the upmarket suburb of Neuilly was raided, with the loss of official documents and cash.

A week earlier £500,000 worth of jewellery was taken from the Neuilly apartment of Cecilia Attias, Mr Sarkozy’s second wife.

Of the most recent theft, a police source said: ‘We can not rule out a link with earlier burglaries.’

Embarrassment: This 1993 image of Ms Bruni during her modelling days was released by Christie’s just before she arrived in England to meet the Queen

(dailymail.co.uk)

In the northern Indian state of Haryana, courtship is generally intricate business, but the mothers of the brides-to-be have simplified matters by clearing stating to potential grooms: “If you don’t have a toilet, you cannot marry my daughter.”

The slogan, which is a bit longer in Hindi and specifically reads: “If you don’t have a proper lavatory in your house, don’t even think about marrying my daughter,” has been plastered all across villages as part of a campaign to increase the number of available facilities.

The chronic shortage of proper plumbing is ironic in a region of the country where more households have TV sets than toilets.

Believe it or not, it is estimated that in India more than 660 million people still defecate in the open, causing a myriad of medical conditions ranging from diarrhea to polio.

With 8% more men than women, the fairer sex in India have become more vocal about expressing their resentment at having to relieve themselves outside, giving brides more leverage in pre-marital bargaining.

“Women suffer the most from this situation. They must go outside and they have to do so before sunrise or after nightfall so they can’t be seen,” said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh, a company that has built toilets for ten million Indians, and the recipient of this year’s Stockholm Water Prize for developing eco-friendly lavatories to improve public health.

The campaign has yielded very positive results. About 1.4 million lavatories have been built in the state since 2005, many of them with significant government subsidies. “We have more toilets, less shame among women and less disease,” said S.K.Monda, the official in charge of the program.

There are still those who fight progress, as some upper-caste communities are not happy having lavatories in their homes because it is believed such an arrangement is unclean.

(weirdasianews.com)

(i641.photobucket.com)

(kontraband.co.uk)

(.kontraband.co.uk)

JOB APPLICATION

I am apply to my job of security guard to you boss in you company of Shoprite. I complete to Grade 8 examination certificate in 1997.

I am 27 ears to be Born of age and no mallied and no childish.
My father is dead long time ago and my mother mary in Zaire country there 10 years now, no see she so nobody known to help me.

My certificate is just sitting home for itself, but passes in Mathematics, Geography, Science and all subjects but fail in English because of Nyanja teacher, Mr Phiri, teaching me is jelos of myself. Me wear expenses cloth than Ngoni teacher.

I here people you want security guards to you company and I tell you I Am one of that job experience for 2 years. I shot thief dead. I want to Join the company of you and chase criminal out with me AK47.

Please consider my aplication careful and call me any time because me Have celphone. I am red for interview with you. I am very hornest and can speak
English free.

Please also greet your wife. And rememba that English is not our mother land!!please you choose i me good walker.Yours in faithlessness

kiparapara mwandong’onyeng’wa,

My picture frame I look vely smat.

From Mingli NDABANEZE