Read this blog or face the wrath of the emoticon army!!

• 30Dec 09

  Crono's Useless Blog: Stolen Goods on eBay (Part 1)

  Just because I'm in a useless information mood, I'm going to make another useless blog following the one that I made yesterday. This blog came from Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, and is about people's precious stolen possessions soon being found auctioned on eBay. Here it is, in the book's words:

  The Bathroom Reader Institute wrote:

  Hey! That's MY GPS!

  In December 2006, a man in Long Island, New York, had his GPS stolen from his car. In January 2007, he called police and told them that he'd found the device on the Internet auction site eBay. Officers tracked down the seller's contact information and raided the secondhand shop of 25-year-old Daniel Rangkar in Queens. They found the GPS- along with more than $50,000 in stolen goods. The device's owner, who remained unidentified, said he recognized it on eBay because of its nonstandard power card.

  Hey! That MY Paramotor!

  Paragliding instructor Geoff Soden of Huntingdon, Enland, had two specially made "paramotors" stolen during an exhibition in early 2007. The compact engines, which drive small propellers, are strapped onto paragliders' backs to enhance their normally wind-powered flights. Soden had the motors custom made in Italy for about $16,000 eah. A month later he found them listed on eBay at a starting price of $2,000. "I don't think the theives knew how valuable or rare these motors were," Soden said, "or they wouldn't have put them on eBay for all to see." By "rare" he meant that one of the motors was a prototype-the only one like it in the world. Soden contacted the seller and got an e-mail address and phone number, which he then gave to the police, and within five hours the thieves were arrested. Stephen Cresser, 46, and Donald Bennett, 43, who had been employed at the exhibition, pleaded guilty to theft and were fined $1,000.

  Hey! That's MY Camera!

  A German businessman was dining at aneighborhood restaraunt in Berlin when he set his Samsung GX-1 digital camera down on the table and went to the men's room. When he returned, the camera was gone. A few days later he logged on to eBay to buy a replacement-he wanted the exact same model so his accessories would still work. He quickly found a Samsung GX-1 and was about to buy it...until he noticed that the seller lived near him in the same area of Berlin. Suspicious, he reported it to the police, who promptly arrested the seller. Bonus: He got his camera back.

  Hey! That's MY album!

  In October 2005, the British band The Darkness saw a copy of their second CD, One Way Ticket to H*ll...and Back, for sale on eBay. One problem: It hadn't been released yet. Only a handful of people had a copy of the record, all of them record company executives or music journalists. They never found out who the thief was, but they bought the CD- for 350 pounds. (About $700)

  Hey! That's MY Trailer!

  Carpenter Richard Keen of Barmouth, Wales, was desperate to replace his stolen flatbed trialer, and went on eBay to look for another. He soon became the winning bidder on his own trailer, which he of course recognized. After winning the bid, he got the seller's adress. Stefan Rowe, 37, was arrested and pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods, and led police to the man (who was not identified) who had stolen it. "I am glad to have trailer back," Keen said later, "and I did my bit to help the police."

  Just so you guys know, this useless blog is going to be a two-parter, since there is a second part of that subject in the book and I don't feel like typing out several more eBay-related articles. I'll try to make it tommorow or maybe even later today, so be ready for another dose of useless information.

  -Crono

  • Posted Dec 30, 2009 10:02 am PT
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• 29Dec 09

  Crono's Useless Blog: Incredibly Ridiculous Accidents

  Yep, I'm keeping my promise, here's another useless blog through and through. This one comes from The Best Book of Useless Information Ever, and is about multiple insanely bizarre accidents that have happened across the world. In order to preserve the maximum hilarity of these stories, I'm going to quote it exactly as written using a quote tower. Here it goes:

  The Useless Information Society wrote:

  -An Austrian woman who hid behind her boyfriend's truck so that she could jump out and surprise him was taken to the hospital after he reversed over her.

  -An Ohio student hurt his head when a train struck him. He told police he was trying to see how close to the moving train he could place his head without getting hit.

  -A Thai man who held the record for spending time with snakes died after being bitten by a mamba.

  -An 83-year-old Canadian woman was rescued after spending two days wedged behind her toilet.

  -A British woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waste toward the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment, he had been happily listening to his Walkman.

  -Two West German motorists suffered a head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was driving slowly near the center of the road, and at the moment of impact both of their heads were out of the windows. Both men were hospitilized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched.

  -After assassinating President Lincoln at Ford's Theater, John Wilkes Booth jumped to the stage. As he jumped, he tripped over an American flag and broke his leg.

  -A Cuban man was struck by lightning five times in twenty-two years.

  -Travis Bogumill, a construction worker in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was shot with a nail gun that drove a 3.5-inch nail all the way into his skull. He was not killed, not even knocked unconcious. The only result from the incident was a decrease in his mathematics skills.

  I remember finding this part of the book in my English cla$$ last year, and me and the guy sitting next to me were laughing insanely hard for the rest of the period. There you have it. This blog was short, but I hope you enjoyed it, and there's plenty more to come, hopefully more of them being posted by the end of this week. 'Til then!

  -Crono of the Magus36

  • Posted Dec 29, 2009 6:21 pm PT
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• 28Dec 09

  You may not see me so often for a while

  Some of you guys probably noticed that I was gone for a few days since last week. This is because my stupid computer has been having some issues, and the internet is acting terrible. It's not a virus or anything, it's just that Windows Vista is one of the worst kinds of computers ever created. Just letting you guys know.

  Here's what I got for Christmas this year:

  -Brutal Legend (Xbox 360)
  -Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (DS)
  -An AC/DC "For Those About to Rock" shirt
  - "Mothership" by Led Zeppelin, a three-disc album featuring two disks of the band's greatest hits and one disc full of hours of concert and interview footage
  -An SNES!! (One of my friends had more than one, apparently, so he gave it to me)

  And with the SNES:

  -Super Mario World
  -Earthworm Jim 2 (One of the most random games ever)
  -TMNT: Turtles in Time

  And my mom said she'd buy me a Wii Points card when she gets the chance. It's just that the game store was too crowded when she went back to get it, so she decided to wait until later. Pretty awesome presents this year.

  And about the stupidity test blogs: I've decided to just forget about giving the answers and move on to the next useless blog, since I've gotten tired of taking so much time just to make one three-part blog. I'll make the next useless blog as soon as I find something worth blogging about.

  Here's this blog's useless information:

  -Dr. Seuss is the inventor of the word "nerd", and Shakespeare is the inventor of the words "assassin" and "bump".

  -During World War II, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs (We'll do anything to make us do less work, won't we? )

  -Moose have such bad vision that some of the species have attempted mating with cars.

  That's all for this blog, I'll be on Gamespot as often as I can with my terrible internet.

  -Crono

  • Posted Dec 28, 2009 6:18 pm PT
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