Ryanair Incident Starts Ominous, But Things Change

This passenger on a recent Ryanair flight was confronted by flight
attendants for something he brought on the plane. But this
didn't end the way many recent ugly airline incidents did.

Usually, when an airline doesn't like what you're doing, or you interfere with their efforts to make maximum profits, they abuse you and possibly beat you up.

Ryanair doesn't have the best reputation in the world, but at least in this case, what they did to a passenger who brought on a possession that was maybe a little too big for their tastes looked ominous at first. 

Two flight attendants on a Ryanair flight come up to a passenger and demand to know what's in a large case he's holding.

It turns out to be an accordion. wasn't all that bad. The French passenger in the video below doesn't understand English with an Irish accent, so he gets help from a fellow passenger.

The flight attendents do end up having a demand:  "What us this? An accordion? This is an Irish company and you h ave to play the accordion," one of the flight attendants instructs our guy.

So, the man plays "Dirty Old Town" by the Pogues, and what had initially looked like one of those ugly airline incidents we've seen so much of lately turned out wonderfully.

Here's the video. I wish all issues on airplanes ended like this:

Weirdest Video Of The Year: Dancing Pikachu Deflates: Special Agents Rush In

A Pikachu deflates in South Korea, and agents
move in for the kill. 

There they were, all these Pikachus at the World Pikachu Festival in Incheon, South Korea, dancing to "Uptown Funk"

If that isn't weird enough, it gets worse. One of the dancing Pikachus starts to deflate. Literally deflate.

Emergency!!

Luckily, dark suited special agents rush in and forcibly remove and detail our errant Pikachu away, leaving the rest of our gleeful Pikachus to keep dancing, very badly at this festival.

The fun part is at the 1:12 point in this video.  After the disturbance, the video is just more strange Pikachus dancing. If you're into that sort of thing.

Watch it if you dare:

Would You Swim In This Glass Bottom Pool, 42 Floors Up

There's a very nice brand new luxury apartment building in Houston, Texas that has one great feature.

A swimmer's view through the bottom of a glass bottomed pool on the side
of the 42-story luxury apartment buidling in Houston, Texas

A swimming pool.

Yes, I know. Lots of expensive apartment complexes have swimming pools.

This one, though, is 42 stories up on the side of the building. And hangs over the edge. And has a glass bottom.

Watch the video at the bottom of this post and see if you would use it.

Part of the video was taken by someone walking across the pool in the water, looking down through the bottom of the pool at the street more than 500 feet below.

Yikes!

I doubt you'd fall through, given the pool has an eight-inch thick plexiglass floor, but then again, accidents can happen, can't they?

The pool extends outward ten feet from the side of the building. I hope the braces that hold it in place are strong.

They must be. Imagine the insurance pay out if the pool failed.

I still don't know if I'd try swimmig in this pool. Would you?

By the way, you probably can't swim there. It's a private pool, open only to residents of the building.

Here's the video:

Just In Time For Mother's Day, Kentucky Fried Chicken Offers Romance Of Sorts

Who knew?

A KFC bodice ripper for your mom
om Mother's Day.

It turns out Kentucky Fried Chicken's sales increase markedly on Mother's Day.

I get it that dutiful families don't want mom to cook on Mother's Day, but really? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Whatever.

It gets even weirder.

This year, KFC has issued of all things a romance novel to keep mom entertained on her big day a week from Sunday.

The 92-page novel is called "Tender Wings Of Desire."

The cover image, which is unfortunately in this post, shows a ripped Colonel Sanders in a sleeveless shirt carrying a woman in his arms, who has a purse around her shoulder and a chicken wing in the other hand.

A big bucket of KFC chicken is nearby, in case our loving couple get even hungrier.

You can get this novella on Amazon for free. The story tells the tale of Lady Madeline Parker in Victorian England who needs to choose between a loveless marriage and Colonel saners, a supposed sailor who might not be who he seems.

If you love bad prose, this is totally for you. Here's an excerpt:

"He was the most handsome person she had ever seen; een his beard made him look more manly than unkempt. 

''I've never seen a sailor who wore glasses before,' she said suddenly. He grinned.

'Neither have I. Then again, I don't often look in the mirror,' he replied.

She felt her cheeks blush a flame red, and she retreated to the kitchen to stop them from blushing further."

It probably gets worse than that, but I'll let you figure that out if you go to Amazon, if you dare, to pick up this bodice-ripper.

This Video Shows Why Computer-Written News Copy Is Still Horribly Bad

I encountered a news video of a fatal house fire in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts recently.

An elderly man recently died in this Massachusetts house
fire, and an insulting computer generated "news" video
just made the situation even worse. 

The insulting, off the rails report of the fire showed that automation does not work when it comes to reporting on the news.

An outfit called World Today posted the video of the house fire, which was probably lifted from legitimate television news stations who were covering the fire.

The intro features some really bad dance club music, as if a tragic fire was an occasion to party.

The World Today video had an automated, computer generated voice that described the death in the house fire this way: "Police affirmed small time who lived in the house kicked the bucket thus of the fire."

Huh?

We also learned, "A working fire task was struck when firefighters touched bases as the house was immersed in blazes."

When the fire got too big for firefighters to work inside the house, the World Today video reported, "Firefighters were requested out of the building not long after arriving and are just battling the fire all things considered."

What do you mean "all things considered?" I don't even want to guess.

In reality, the fire was tragic. An 86-year old man's lawn mower caught fire, then caught his clothes on fire, and burned down his house. The elderly man died, and the house was destroyed, legitimate news station CBS Boston reported. 

Here's the horrible, cringe-inducing video, but you gotta see and hear it to believe it:

GOP Says Ill People Who Are Poor Should Just Die Already

Jimmy Kimmel tearfully explained his newborn son's
health crisis the other night on his show and pleaded
with lawmakers not to literally kill poorer children
in the same situation through their Obamacare
repeal efforts

I was among the many this week who was struck by the contrast between late night television host Jimmy Kimmel's heartfelt on-air description of his newborn son's health crisis and some members of the GOP, who apparently would like ill children like Kimmel's to just get out of the way and die already.

Kimmel's son Billy was born last week and it quickly became apparent he had a heart defect and needed immediate surgery.

Terrifying for any parent, for sure.

A tearful Kimmel said Billy pulled through, but waiting out the surgery was the longest three hours of his life

Kimmel's rich and has got resources and insurance to cover things like this. But, like most people, he thought about others who aren't so monied and what they'd do without health insurance.

"We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, but until a few years ago millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all, Kimmel said. 

"You know, before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was, there was a good chance you'd never be able to get health insurance because you had a pre-existing condition. You were born with a pre-existing condition and if your parents didn't have medical insurance you might not live long enough to even get denied because of a pre-existing condition. 

If your baby is going to die and doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter who much money you make."

Kimmel added: "Whatever your party, whatever you believe, whoever you support, we need to make sure that the people who are supposed to represent us, people who are meeting about this right now in Washington, understand that very clearly."

Of course, those GOP members that what to repeal Obamacare don't really represent their constituents. There's no money in that. They represent the insurance companies and such that keep the money flowing to these Congress creatures.

Just contrast what Kimmel said with what Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said about health care, as just about every media outlet did on Tuesday.

Basically, many GOP Congress creatures want to let insurance companies charge anything they want to people with pre-existing conditions. In other words, people with such conditions who are not zillionaires will not be able to afford insurance.

You'll never catch any of these GOP members saying this out loud, but what they're telling us is people with pre-existing conditions just aren't profitable, so they need to die and get out of the way

Brooks came close to saying this when he told CNN's Jake Tapper:

"My understanding is that it will allow companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool.....thereby reducing the cost to these people who lead good lives. "

Brooks said people with pre-existing conditions just aren't being fair to people who are healthy: "They're healthy, they have done the things to keep their bodies healthy and right now those are the people who have done things the right way and are seeing costs skyrocket."

I guess Kimmel's son Billy didn't do things the right way. However, my guess is little Billy Kimmel didn't acquire his heart condition by chain smoking and constantly munching on Cheetos during the nine months or so he spent in his mother's womb.

Brooks did concede that some people have health conditions through no fault of their own, but didn't explain what we should do to help these people afford health insurance. Even if it's not their fault, ill people should just go away, apparently.

I get it that government programs can't and shouldn't do everything for everybody. However, health care, as most industrialized nations already know, should not be fully a matter of free markets.

If you're poor, it's OK to not be able to afford a unnecessary item like, say, an Alfa Romero. But literally causing the deaths of people who can't afford health care, like what some in the GOP want to do, is just pathological.

But I guess the zillionaires have to watch out for one another. Or something.

Conservative pundits piled on, too. Media Matters cited several, including Charles Hunt in the Washington Times, who said Kimmel gave a "slobbering wet kiss to federal bureacracy."  and called him a "dirty self-absorbed narcissistic exhibitionist."

The real problem here, being, that Kimmel called attention to the issue and we are supposed to shut up about it so as not to raise public anger at the GOP's efforts to kill poor people.

Media Matters also noted that Cheryl Chumley said Kimmel continued the left's "uncomfortable habit of slinging around tears to get what it wants."

She missed the point entirely when she said hospitals don't kick people out who need treatment. True, but without health insurance, people do not get the help they need, don't see doctors when they must, don't get life saving medication, and thus die, or at least go bankrupt

And the GOP is forging ahead. House Republicans say they have enough votes to do their Obamacare repeal and will take a vote today. These are terrible people.

Conservative Pundit Erickson Says Noncomforming Gay People Should Get Beaten Up.

Snowflake Erick Erickson wants everybody to look and act like
him because those who don't are so icky that it weirds him out

Erick Erickson, to use the term so often bandied about by conservatives, is a total snowflake.

It turns out that he finds people who are obviously different, especially gay people who don't dress and act like he wants them to, are totally icky and he Just. Can't. Stand. It.

Why can't people look and act like he wants them to? Why does he have to suffer through the torture of seeing guys who aren't as macho as he is? Why can't everybody just make him happy like he deserves? Or something.

This all started when, last week, Republican Senator Mike Enzi spoke to a group of middle and high school students in Wyoming and one of the students asked what he was doing to impro e the life of the LGBT community in Wyoming.

Part of Enzi's response was this:

"In Wyoming, you can be just about anything you want to be, as long as you don't push it in somebody's face."

Then he went on: "I know a guy who wears a tutu and goes to bars on Friday night and is always surprised that he gets in fights. Well, he kind of asks for it. That's the way he winds up with that kind of problem."

No, the problem is solved when, if you see a guy in a bar wearing a tutu and you don't like that fact, you ignore said guy in the tutu.

To Enzi's credit, he apologized for the inartful comments and called the guy who wears the tutu, who reports they had a productive conversation.

Well, pundit Erickson was NOT happy with Enzi's apology.

He responded by writing a column titled, "You Will Get Punched and Others Have Rights Too."

Erickson's column collapses in its very first paragraph, which is:

"You know, I'm really damn tired of all the people running around making other people extremely uncomfortable then screaming about their rights and priveges when called out. If you want to go around making people uncomfortable, you've got the problem, not the the rest of us."

Um, actually, you've got the problem Erick! If you fall apart because some guy is wearing a tutu in the same room as you, that makes you a total snowflake.

And you're the worst narcissist ever. It's not everybody else's job to make you comfortable and happy. You're not the center of the friggin' universe.

Again, the solution is so, so easy: Ignore the people you don't like.  You don't get to punch people who you believe are aesthetically displeasing.

Erickson goes on:

"I know liberals in the coastal bubbles of homogenized whiteness and skinny jeans think everyone has to be think like them - not does, but has to - but the reality is we don't. We are a culurally heterogeneous nation with diverse cultural norms."

Um, since when does anybody think you have to like their point of view and their skinny jeans. Nobody is making you do anything, Erick. You get to think what you want. And if skinny jeans give you the vapors, they you're really a wimp.

Erickson demands in his column that everybody he thinks are icky should "get over themselves." No, Erick, you need to get over yourself.

You don't get to dictate how others look and act. Just like me or anybody else has no right to demand that you act or look a certain way.

Sure, we can criticize you, and you can criticize anyone you want.

But don't go around justifying beating up people you think are weird.

Frankly, Erick, I think you're weird, but I don't want to beat you up and I don't want anybody else to, either.

Just chill.