Offbeat News - From Offbeat Chronicles

The Diet Starts Tomorrow

I was reading a couple of days ago about an Italian mayor who was so concerned over the weight of his town’s residents that he offered some cash incentives for them to diet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2148119,00.html

In fact, I was so impressed that I decided to begin a diet myself – starting tomorrow.

Now I’ll just have that last burger.

 

Ugly People Pictures!

Fat Footballers

When I was at school there was this fat boy. He used to sweat a lot, and smell a lot come to think of it, but he used to like to play football. Not proper football, with the kit and the grass field. But a variant played on the playground tarmac.

Strangely enough, I can't remember him at PE lessons at all. I think he must have got a note excusing him, or something. What I do remember are the lunchtimes in the playground. Our school had quite large playing fields and a concrete lip that ran the length of the perimeter marked the boundary of the playground. It was bevelled and about two inches with the grass fields extending behind it. A couple of screwed-up pullovers placed six feet apart and draped over the lip and our goal area was established. All we needed now was a scruffy tennis ball, and fat George in goal and our game was ready.

The skill was to keep the ball as close to the ground as possible, ideally so that it just skimmed over the tarmac on its way to the concrete lip. If the ball hit the lip that constituted a goal and the point was allotted to the boy who had made the shot, although I'm not sure whether a record of the score was kept, the glory of the moment being sufficient reward.

I have recollections of George pirouetting and diving for the ball, although I'm sure that these are just illusions that have attached themselves to my memories of the event. George certainly did move with amazing speed and displayed a sort of elephantine grace.

This reverie was initiated by a news item a couple of weeks ago about a Sumo wrestler playing hooky - well football actually, while he'd got a sick note. A bit reminiscent of George actually. Not only that, but when I saw the picture of the guy the link was complete.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/02/wsumo102.xml

And while we’re on the subject, here are a few more footballer fatties.

http://shinymedia.blogs.com/whoateallthepies/2006/07/top_10_fat_foot.html

Going Bananas

Every week when I go shopping I always buy bananas. It’s a rather sad expression of hope that somehow things will change. That somehow, that bunch of cool and hard oversized greeny-yellow fingers will remain in pristine condition in the fruit bowl until I am ready to consume them.

But by the end of the week there they are shrivelled and brown ready to ooze a powerful smelling slime.

I suppose buying the bananas is more an expression of confidence in myself rather than in the bananas. You could say that it has now become a superstition and that I can’t pass bananas without buying them. If I don’t then surely I’m lost; I’ll never ever be able to get anything right. Never be organised enough to eat one single banana while it is still edible.

And I suspect that one man’s relationship with bananas will never be the same again either. An alleged Indian thief, Sheikh Mohsin was forced to eat fifty bananas after he had swallowed a necklace that he had supposedly stolen. Police believed the bananas would act as a laxative.

Eventually nature took its course and a cleaner was paid to retrieve the jewellery from the toilet. Apparently it took him the best part of an hour, and a police official was reported to say ‘He didn’t have his heart in it; he was just going through the motions’.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6932216.stm

Unfortunately a less happy ending was reported in a copycat crime where the thief had swallowed a charm bracelet. The recovery demanded the consumption of nearly twice the number of bananas as in the other case, and involved a lot of cursing and screaming.