Top 10 Crazy Stories of 2014

As 2014 draws to a close, it's time to go back through the archives to search for our Top 10 Crazy Stories of 2014.

10. Pilots Arm Falls Off While Landing Plane:  While trying to land a small commuter jet in Belfast, the pilot (name has been withheld) momentarily lost control of the plane when his prosthetic arm fell off.  He thought he had secured the arm in place but evidently did not.  Due to heavy winds he had switched from the auto landing to manual.  When asked why a person with only one arm was flying a plane FlyBe's Safety Director Captain Ian Baston said that the budget airline had a policy as an equal opportunity employer.  Next up is a blind man in the cockpit I would think.

9. Don't Use Fire to Remove TP From a Tree:  Cheryl Crausewell of Dora, Alabama, found that someone had TPed the trees in her yard one night in January. The family tried to clean up the mess, but some of the toilet paper in a magnolia tree was out of their reach. What to do? Maybe they should have tried a ladder, but instead they set it on fire. A small piece of paper drifted out to the yard and ignited the grass.  Within seconds the fire spread to the house where the propane tank exploded.  No one was hurt in the blaze.  One word....IDIOTS

8. Sewer Blocked By Big Pooh:  Scottish Water, a national public utility, has found some unusual objects blocking the sewers underneath Scotland over the past year. That includes a huge plush Winnie-the-Pooh bear in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire. But they say the list also contains a fax machine, a bike, a snake, and blue jeans. How does anyone get such items down the drain?  The most common objects that block a sewer are grease, diapers, and baby wipes. A new public awareness campaign hopes to discourage people from putting anything into the sewer system that will cause blockages. Unstopping the pipes costs the utility more than £7 million every year.  This equals $8.9222 million U.S. dollars.  I knew the Scots were full of "Pooh".

  

7. Drunk Driver Busted by Parrot: Guillermo Reyes was driving home from a bar in Mexico City when he encountered a DUI traffic stop. When police talked to him, they heard a voice from inside the car saying, "He's drunk! He's drunk!" They shone a light into the car, but there were no other passengers, just Reyes' parrot. Apparently he'd heard people say that phrase enough to learn it. The cops gave Reyes a Breathalyzer test, and concluded that he was, indeed, driving while impaired. Reyes was sent to the drunk tank overnight, and the parrot was allowed to accompany him.  I'm surprised that bird saw the light of day.

6. Two Dogs Take Truck on Joyride:  A pickup truck came very close to plunging into the Arkansas River in Tulsa, Oklahoma in February. The truck, belonging to a man identified only as Scott, was parked on a hill. While Scott was inside a house, his two dogs Luna and Roscoe were left in the truck.  "I got around to the front of the house where the truck was, and it's like not there," he said. "And I was like 'did I get towed?' and I just thought no it didn't.  One of the dogs put the car into gear and they took off.  "Approximately three blocks down a hill," Tulsa fire-fighter Clay Ayers said.  The dogs missed drivers on Riverside Drive, runners on the trail and narrowly missed landing in the Arkansas River.  The truck was stopped by the brush along the river. The vehicle was badly damaged. Roscoe and Luna were uninjured, and were let go with a warning.  Our local cops would have wanted to put these dogs down.

5. Virginia Man Claims African Country to Make Daughter a Princess:  Bir Tawil is a stretch of land between Egypt and Sudan that neither country wants. Jeremiah Heaton of Abingdon, Virginia, now claims it as his own. Last winter, Heaton’s six-year-old daughter Emily asked him if she could be a princess. He said yes, and has worked since then to make it so. To that end, Heaton has claimed the 800-square-mile territory of Bir Tawil, renaming it the Kingdom of North Sudan. He planted a flag there on June 16, Emily’s seventh birthday. That makes him the king, and Emily a princess. Sheila Carapico, professor of political science and international studies at the University of Richmond, told the Bristol Herald Courier last week that Heaton would need legal recognition from neighbouring countries, the United Nations or other groups to have actual political control of the land.  Heaton, who ran for Congress out of Virginia’s 9th district in 2012 and lost, plans to reach out to the African Union for assistance in formally establishing the Kingdom of North Sudan and said that he is confident they will welcome him. Representatives from the Egyptian and Sudanese embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.   The area is desert, but Heaton plans to turn it into an agricultural area, which should please both Egypt and Sudan.  Looks like an easy attack for Isis.

4. Car Enters Garage Through the Roof:  George Strother and his wife, of Escondido, California, thought they felt an earthquake early on December 10th. It was only when an Escondido police officer knocked on their door that they found out a car had crashed through the roof of their garage! A BMW had broken through the roof and landed on Strother’s Nissan Pathfinder. His Mazda Miata was also damaged by the falling roof. The driver of the BMW, which was loaned out from a car dealer, didn’t stick around to face the damage. The Strothers' home sits around twenty feet below a roadway, and police estimate that the driver of the BMW took a turnoff too fast. The garage can be repaired, but the two cars were totaled.  How did that car get up there? 

3. Risque Ads Cause 517 Auto Accidents in Moscow:  The Russian firm ADVtruck sells advertising on large trucks. As a promotional stunt intended to show how noticeable the ads are, 30 trucks were decorated with a picture of a woman’s breasts. In the first day that the trucks were deployed in Moscow, 517 traffic accidents were blamed on the distracting image. Moscow police were dispatched to impound all the trucks until the pictures were removed. The ad agency says that the company will compensate drivers for any damages that their insurance does not cover.  Looks like the high beams must have blinded drivers.

2. China Performs Cavity Searches on 10,000 Pigeons:  October first is National Day in China, commemorating the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. As part of the celebration in Beijing, 10,000 pigeons were released over Tienanmen Square. But first, each pigeon had to undergo a security check, which included an anal probe. The process was videotaped by authorities. The procedure drew widespread derision on social media.

“I have not heard of pigeons released at National Day requiring security checks, but it is possible for them to carry things such as explosives,” Mr Yang of website China Pigeon Net, told the New York Times.  “They could carry something on their legs, under a wing, or in their anus. If they carried out security checks they would find them, just like on a person when they get on an airplane,” Mr Yang said.

That last sentence should make anyone wary of booking a flight out of a Chinese airport.  Only in China!

 

1. Man Fights Off Shark, Stitches Up Leg, Goes to Pub:  James Grant of Colac Bay, New Zealand, was spear fishing with friends when he was attacked by a shark. He stabbed the shark with a knife, which caused it to leave. When he got out of the water, he saw a deep gash in his leg where the shark bit him. Grant, a junior doctor, removed his wetsuit and stitched up the wound, using supplies from a first aid kit. Then he and his friends went to the Colac Bay Tavern. The bar staff gave him a towel because his wound was bleeding onto the floor. Sometime afterward, he went to a hospital for a proper re-stitching. Grant planned to return to the water as soon as the stitches are out.  This is my kind of guy!

 

There you have it.  The Top 10 Crazy Stories from around the world in 2014.  I'm sure next year at this time we will be posting even crazier stories.  

 

 

Happy Birthday R2G

Wow, I can't believe that it's been 5 years since I started the Right To Gripe.  It all started in December 2009 with everyone being politically correct and saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.  By the way, Merry Christmas to all my Gripers.  If you want me to say Happy Holidays, forget about it.  Not gonna happen.  It's Merry Christmas or for our Jewish friends Happy Hanukkah.  Five years ago on this day I wrote my 2nd Gripe shortly followed by a 3rd and 4th and so on and so forth.  It's been a half a decade of Griping about topics from government to sports to the idiotic people we all encounter every day in our lives.  In 5 years we have gotten 89,919 hits from all over the world.  The R2G is an international hot spot to Gripe.

The top story of all time on the R2G was The Top 10 Crazy Stories of 2012.  I got 18,345 hits for this story.  The Zombie Apocalypse in May of 2012 came in second with 4,429 hits.  Other top Gripes included the Tattooed Baby and Death By Dangling, The 38DD Killer.  Over the years we reported and bashed the Kids For Cash participants.  Good ole' Chivarella, Conahan and Mericle provided us with weeks worth of Gripe.  We drilled the County on their Levy Tax as well as many other insane decisions that they have made over the years.  It's been 5 years of great Griping.

Over the years, the R2G has been read by people all over the world.  How do I know this?  I know because the blog keeps track of these things.  Hell, I'm not smart enough to figure it out myself.  Of course, most of our hits come from the USA, 49,622.  The second most hits come from our friends in Germany, 6,316 followed by France, 3,480.  Maybe I should stop calling the French Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys....NOT!  We even get hits from China, Latvia, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Russia, Canada and Turkey. We are International baby!

It's been 5 years of Griping and believe you me there is more to come.  Our side bar features will continue and we have gotten another one year commitment from our good friend Mr. Pissed Off.  He's told me that he thinks he will be more pissed off in 2015 than ever.  I love this guy.  To all of you that come to the R2G, thank you for keeping me motivated to Gripe.  2015 is looking to be another great year of Griping.  If you have a Gripe, post it up on our Facebook page or email it to the email address at the top of the Gripe page.  We will need to keep this thing going so everyone can lay down some Gripe.

PA Game Commission

For the past two weeks Pennsylvania hunters have hit the woods to try to bag a white tail deer.  Before going out, most "good" hunters will scan over the PA Game regulations to check for any changes.  This is a good practice since over the years, the Game Commission has changed the regulations concerning the harvest of antlered deer.  Years ago, if it had antlers of any length it was good to shoot.  Then it changed to the antlers had to be 3 inches in length or more on what we call a spiker.  Now, there has to be at least 3 points on one side to harvest.  The exception to this rule is that a junior hunter can harvest a spiker during the hunting season and during the mentored youth hunt.  A child must be at least 11 years old for the youth hunt.  It is no longer as simple as pointing the gun and pulling the trigger.  I say this because it is not as simple for some, but ignored by others.

I am one of the hunters who hits the woods every year to try to bag the elusive white tail deer.  Me, my son and my good friend Bob W. are also hunters who abide by the rules.  We may not like all of the rules, but they are "Da Rules" and we honor that.  This past year, we encountered a situation where some schmuck hunter did not play by the rules.  As we approached Bob's van after several hours in the woods we noticed a deer lying down about 20 feet from our parking spot.  As we approached we noticed that it was a spiker that had been shot and dressed down or gutted and left there.  There were also two young hunters, maybe in their mid 20's who were standing by their vehicle smoking cigarettes.  They too had seen this "illegal" kill.  To us, the carcass appeared to be about 24 hours old.  Needless to say we were disgusted by the whole thing.  Who would kill a spiker, gut it, drag it to the parking spot and then just leave it there?

Since our day was over, we packed our gear and decided to stop by the Game Commission in Dallas to report the illegal kill.  The Game Warden there was very polite and shared our disgust with what we reported.  He assured us that a representative from Wyoming County would be notified about the illegal kill and that he would go to investigate and retrieve the dead animal.  We left feeling a tiny bit better that next time we go out that carcass would not be there.

With work getting in the way all week, Bob and I did not make it out to hunt until the last Saturday of the season.  After we parked we got out and immediately noticed that the dead deer was STILL THERE!  I believe Bob uttered the words, "Are you freakin kidding me"?  "No one came by to pick up the carcass."  Yep, the decomposing carcass was still there.  No one from the PA Game Commission went by to pick it up.  Now our disgust level just went to Defcon 1.  Those lazy son's of bitches gave us nothing but lip service.  They are just as bad as the hunter who illegally killed the deer and left it there.  As a hunter of 20+ years, I had little faith in the Game Commission and now it is lowered to 0.  These people are cop wanna-be's who love putting on a uniform to harass hunters and fisherman.  They are quick to write out a citation as long as it does not involve them getting their hands dirty.  I can only assume at this juncture that next year when we hit our hunting spot the remains of this illegal kill will still be there melting back into mother earth.  To the hunter who killed this deer and to the PA Game Commission I say, "Drop dead you filthy bastards".