IT'S ABOUT ADAPTATION...

Hapless robbers target biker meeting

(CNN) -- Two masked and machete-wielding men who barged into a club in Sydney, Australia, couldn't have picked a worse night for their robbery -- a monthly meeting of bikers.

About 50 burly bikers fought back with tables and chairs -- pretty much anything that wasn't bolted down. One would-be robber was tied up; the other in the hospital.

Police arrested both.

"These guys were absolutely dumb as bricks," Jerry Vancornewal, leader of the bikers, told CNN Thursday. "I can't believe they saw all the bikes parked up front and they were so stupid that they walked past in."

Vancornewal and his buddies were at the Regents Park Sporting and Community Club in Sydney when the two men wearing ski masks stormed in Wednesday night. They yelled at patrons to drop to the floor as they emptied cash registers at the bar.

Hearing the commotion from an adjacent room, Vancornewal and his pals with the Southern Cross Cruiser motorcycle club stomped through to the bar area to intervene.

"They (the robbers) thought they had the upper advantage with their knives and their machetes," Jim Webb, night supervisor of the club, told CNN. "They didn't expect to run into a bunch of guys carrying chairs and tables."

One of the would-be robbers crashed through a plate-glass door and jumped off a balcony.

"All he had to do was push the button and it automatically opened," Webb quipped.

New South Wales police said they arrested the 20-year-old man a short distance away.

The second man made a break for it through the club's service entrance, but the bikers tackled him near a neighbor's fence.

"We just grabbed him, crash-tackled him to the ground, hogtied him with electrical wire and left him for the cops," Vancornewal said.

Police confirmed in a statement that club patrons subdued the second man until officers arrived, but did not provide additional details. The suspect turned out to be a 16-year-old boy.

Both would-be robbers were charged with attempted armed robbery and "face disguised with intent to commit indictable offense," police said.

A third person, who was waiting in a getaway car, took off when the bikers threw pieces of furniture at him, Webb said. Police have not located him.

The Regents Park Sporting and Community Club is a place where locals come to enjoy drinks and take part in various games: cricket, soccer, lawn bowling. The biking enthusiasts meet there once a month to plan rides and other club activities.

In the last year or so, criminals have struck the club about 10 times, Webb said. And Wednesday night's incident, while unusual, wasn't the most memorable.

"We have these old bingo players and they are really serious about their games," Webb explained. "They do not like to be interrupted."

When robbers barged in one evening and announced that they were holding up the place, the players turned around and testily told them to be quiet.

"They were making it difficult for the players to hear the numbers being called," Webb said.

The Enema Within
2007 Darwin Award Nominee
Confirmed True by Darwin
 
 
(21 May 2004, Texas) Michael was an alcoholic. And not an ordinary alcoholic, but an alcoholic who liked to take his liquor... well, rectally. His wife said he was "addicted to enemas" and often used alcohol in this manner. The result was the same: inebriation.

The machine shop owner couldn't imbibe alcohol by mouth due to a painful throat ailment, so he elected to receive his favourite beverage via enema. And tonight, Michael was in for one hell of a party. Two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry, more than 100 fluid ounces, right up the old address!

When the rest of us have had enough, we either stop drinking or pass out. When Michael had had enough (and subsequently passed out) the alcohol remaining in his rectal cavity continued to be absorbed. The next morning, Michael was dead.

The 58-year-old did a pretty good job of embalming himself. According to toxicology reports, his blood alcohol level was 0.47%.

In order to qualify for a Darwin Award, a person must remove himself from the gene pool via an "astounding misapplication of judgment." Three litres of sherry up the butt can only be described as astounding. Unsurprisingly, his neighbors said they were surprised to learn of the incident. 

Please allow me to rip my hair out of my head right about......now.

 

Words cannot even begin to describe the amount of stress surging through my body right now. I'm not even joking this past two days has been absolutely destructive to my general well being. I am sitting in the library right now typing a ten page midterm essay on three different topics...and I had to just pick the hardest ones, right?

 

1.) Why is Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" an example of Literary Naturalism? What ironies in the story contribute to its themes and what kind of ethic does Crane offer in the aftermath of Darwin?

 

2.) "Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening" is one of Robert Frost's most famous poems. If Walt Whitman had composed the poem, how might he have ended it and why?

 

3.) Is Edna a vile woman who perpetrates a set of dangerous cultural attitudes in The Awakening or a heroine who shows America how the world of Victorian values is incompatible with a woman's desires for a happy and satisfying life?

 

Yes, I have decided to answer those 'short' questions for my midterm essay. I even thought those were going to be the most easy, but alas I was wrong. I am wracking my brain over this right now and it doesn't help that this godforsaken dungeon of a library has the heat on so damn high.

 

But this isn't the extent of my night. Oh no. I still have to prepare the rest of that presentation for the Canadian Literary Conference this thursday. And my partner is not exactly helping the way I would like her to. The problem I feel is that we are both Leaders and we all know what happens when you get two Leaders and Not enough followers. This is an Academic Conference not some highschool presentation. There are going to be Professors from different countries as well as Grad Students and Counselate Members. This is not just some leisure trip.

 

Or maybe I am putting too much effort into all of this....I don't know right now. I just feel incredibly stressed...

 

 

I need a beer....

i think my visual sense of composition is improving, but i'm throwing away a huge number of decent pictures because of some technical flaw. usually it's focus. it's usually not far off, but it's only right-on about 10% of the time, and the rest are unusable. is it time to go autofocus?

i'm not buying a modern 35mm camera. these rolls cost me $30 to get processed and written to cd and the quality was horrendous. they didn't even let the film dry before they ran it through the scanner, so there are various vertical or horizontal lines on the scans, especially in the shadows of images. after that, they rather sloppily missed cutting between the negatives. i wonder how long it would take for not paying for film+processing to pay for itself in a digital camera that's better than the point-and-shoot i have now.

here's another hodgepodge of stuff.


2nd varsity eight races farmington in april.


darwin, the cat that was the subject of a recent post.


she picked the right place to stand. there was only one public entrance to the esplanade.


a little sliver of the crowd that came out to watch the symphony and fireworks on the fourth in boston.


preshow sound technician. he's gotta be bored.


even in the pre-concert bustle and jockeying for position, some people found peace and quiet in the corner of the oval.


or across from it. (note: this guy stood there for well over an hour)


the national guard was on hand in case anything catastrophic happened. fortunately, it didn't.


as the music began, only a tiny fraction of the attendees were within this oval of trees and could actually see the stage. this picture covers about a third of those who could see.