Tuesday, April 22, 2008

US woman uploads divorce rant to YouTube...

YouTube sure has entered people's lives in a 'big' way - a woman has uploaded her divorce rant to the video-sharing website, making it the world's first YouTube divorce writ to millions of people.

The video, by New York's sometime actor and playwright Tricia Walsh-Smith, 52, has attracted 2.9 million viewers and offers to appear on US TV shows such as Today and The View.

The video, in which Walsh-Smith shows tearful ranting about her sexless marriage to a man 24 years her senior, attracted more than 7000 comments on YouTube, which were almost all scathing.

Many comments criticize her as a narcissistic gold-digger who has given her husband ample grounds for divorce.

Her emotional and tearful six-minute rant was apparently recorded in a fit of pique in an attempt to humiliate her estranged husband, Broadway producer Philip Smith.

"We never had sex. He said it was because he had high blood pressure," News.com.au quoted her, as stating.

"Then last year I found Viagra, porn movies and condoms," she added.

She complains bitterly that her husband plans to leave his 64 million dollars fortune to his adult daughters and that he wants to evict her from their nine-room Manhattan apartment.

"I am an idiot, I am the biggest f...ing idiot in the world," she cried.

Walsh-Smith found "a girl with a camera" in the phone book and taped the YouTube monologue after being served with an eviction notice.

"I decided that if I was going to go down, I'd go down screaming," she said.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Cross-dressing maids add spice to Tokyo cafes

"Welcome home, Master," a group of French maids sings out, bowing deeply to a customer entering their maid cafe.

This could be any of the dozens of maid cafes dotting Tokyo's Akihabara district, where geeks engage in role-play with girls dressed as French maids. But don't be fooled by the frilly pinafores: all of the maids here are men.

In this novelty-hungry market catering to Japan's free-spending computer and comic book fans, cafe owners are coming up with ever more exotic formulas to satisfy booming demand.

"I do this for a change since I have an ordinary job," Miyuu Kurusu, one of the cross-dressing maids working at the cafe, said. "I love talking to people, enjoy wearing cute costumes and get a kick out of it when people tell me I'm pretty."

It all started when the manager of "Hibari Tei" cafe, named after a bird, asked a few cross-dressing men to fill in for women working at a different maid cafe. To his surprise, no customer found out they were being served by a male waiter.

Maid cafes generally do not offer sexual services. Customers order typical cafe fare as coffee, tea and sandwiches, served by girlish maids.

Maid cafes first emerged in Akihabara some six years ago. They have grown into a booming business and are a core part of the Japanese "otaku" or "nerd" industry believed to be worth nearly $2 billion.

A jumbo 'brake'

Need to halt an unruly elephant. Apply the 'brake'.

That's what a smalltown innovator in Kerala province of India has come out with: a metallic 'brake' to halt unruly elephants, which the mahout (elephant keeper) can apply sitting atop the jumbo to stop the animal from running amok.

Bhaskaran, who designed the elephantine brake, claims that the device could rein in even the mightiest of tuskers but elephant experts are sceptical of its efficacy.

The device consists of an iron lock to be put on the forelimbs of the animal with a cable linked to it which can be used as a lever by the mahout when necessary.

The device will not be a hitch for the jumbos to move freely in normal circumstances, Bhaskaran claimed.

A furniture shop supervisor in Vadakkancherry, Kerala, Bhasksaran said he was prompted to work on the device following reports of increasing cases of elephant violence in Kerala, especially during the temple festival season in summer.

Though he had written to India's Ahmedabad-based National Innovation Foundation about his invention, he was asked to first get the device approved by recognised veterinarians in the state.

On contacting some vets, they found some flaws in the device, which Bhaskaran is now trying to improve to make it suitable for all types of jumbos.

UK cops hand out gun permits to 7-yr-olds

Police have given gun licences to children aged just seven. A Daily Mirror investigation discovered 5,343 under-18s got permits in last two years because of a legal loophole. All youngsters have to do is fill in a form and attend a routine police interview to get a licence.

These include permits for .22 rifles, .243 rifles, .410 pistols, .410 shotguns and 12-bore semi automatic shotguns. Anti-gun campaigners branded the figures "scandalous." Sussex police handed out most gun licences to kids. It issued 403 permits to children - including four nine-year-olds, three 10-year-olds and 20 11-year-olds.

Fed up with politics, man eats vote...

Ballot stuffing took on a new meaning in Italy's parliamentary election on Sunday, April 13, when a man ate his ballot paper in protest at the country's politicians.

Police in Naples said they had charged the 41-year-old businessman with destroying election materials.

He said all Italian politicians and politics "are crap" and that he was protesting "against the system."

Thief deposits loot with victim

Three days after stealing a rare collection of coins, a thief in Germany took them to the bank for safe keeping -- and delivered them into the hands of the man he had robbed.

"I don't think the thief was expecting that," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Dortmund on April 15th. Soon after the thief made the deposit, a bank worker handling the coins recognized them as the set worth some 50,000 euros ($80,000) that had been stolen from his house.

Police tracked down the 36-year-old suspect and arrested him, securing a haul of other stolen goods in the process.

'What are you staring at?'

An Italian man has been given a suspended jail sentence for staring too intensely at a woman sitting in front of him on a train.

A judge sentenced the man in his 30s, whose name was not revealed, to 10 days in prison and a 40 euro ($63) fine after a 55-year old woman filed a complaint for sexual harassment.

His lawyer said on Friday he would appeal the sentence. The court will explain its verdict later.

The two met on two separate occasions in 2005 on a commuter train going from Lecco, a town in northern Italy, to Milan.

The first time, the man sat next to the woman but she felt he had moved too close for comfort. The next day, the man sat in front of the same woman and according to her complaint, stared at her for the whole journey.

The two did not speak.