the blog quebecois

This never happens to me. Damned building codes:

A shocked Russian couple had a narrow escape when a woman in a bath tub came crashing through the ceiling and into the middle of their living room.

Rozalia Valiakhmetova had been relaxing in the bath upstairs when the floor gave way, dropping her and the bath tub into the flat below.

She said: "I had just dozed off and then I heard this huge crash and realised what had happened. The bathroom floor just collapsed under the bath and I came crashing through the ceiling of the people below me.

"They seemed as shocked as I was when they saw me lying there naked in the bath in the middle of their living room."

Most people are unsure about the etiquette of greeting unexpected nude female visitors of the waterborne variety, but it's really quite simple. A tip of your hat and a hearty "Enchanté, Mademoiselle!" is all that's required.

Undoubtably Photoshopped, but it'd certainly be ideal for tootling around the darker precincts of Hell. Maybe if you ask nice, you can get some of those streamers for the handlebars.

Enjoy your stay, bacon boy.

Via Attu sees all

Update: Iowahawk scores an exclusive with the (potty-mouthed) dearly departed himself!

Yahoo News:

Two teams stand on wooden blocks and take turns to knock their opponents off by swinging a five-foot (1.5-metre) dead eel on a rope at them, The Daily Telegraph said.

The oddball antics attracted around 3,000 locals and amused tourists to the charity fundraiser.

But a single complaint by an animal rights activist has put a stop to it after claiming the bizarre sport is disrespectful to dead animals.

Let me just say this: A world that forbids hitting each other with dead eels is not the world my forefathers fought for.

Reuters:

National paper Kommersant carried a letter from Vologda's deputy chief of regional hunting resources management, Sergei Starostin, which accuses hunt organizers of plying a captive bear named "Mitrofan" with vodka-drenched honey and then forcing him from a cage to be shot by Spain's King Juan Carlos.

"His majesty Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with a single shot," Starostin wrote in his letter.

Russian hunt organizers are not complete strangers to such tactics. Keen hunter and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had trouble with his aim in his later years. Some of the animals he liked to stalk were either tied to trees or plied with booze.

OK, Yeltsin was the drunk tied to the tree. It still wasn't an easy shot. You could ask Brezhnev about it.

There's a famous maxim, "You should try everything once except incest and Morris dancing."

But these people seem determined to rehabilitate the hobby:

Orange News:

A 'sexier' version of the Morris dancing costume has been created to try to encourage more people to take part.

It follows a survey which found that one in four of 2,000 people questioned said they would be more likely to sign up for Morris classes if the outfits were sexier.

Almost four out of ten people told the survey, for TV channel Blighty, that the current outfits were 'old-fashioned'.

The new version was created by TV's Strictly Come Dancing costume designers Chrisanne for Blighty.

It still has bells, a neckerchief, waistcoat and ribbons - but the tight-fitting new kit shows more flesh and sparkles with 6,594 Swarovski crystals, valued at £800.

If you haven't seen Morris dancers in action:

Now you could use several adjectives, such as "rustic," or "quaint," or "folksy," or even "corny" to describe this. But "sexy"? I don't care how many Swarovski crystals you plaster on it, it ain't "sexy," full stop.