News Goat

Sometimes when something seems too good to be true, it turns out that it is. Very recently news aggregation site Drudge Report carried a link to a story about Thailand’s contribution to the aid effort following the Haiti earthquake. Apparently 50, 000 bottles of skin whitening cream had been sent for the victims.

The Internet community was soon abuzz with outrage over a quote attributed to Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya. He had allegedly said that “We noticed in the news that the Haitians are all very dark-skinned. This is surely one of the reasons they are living in poverty. With lighter skin they could be more successful “.

Many bloggers expressed disgust and disbelief over the statement. It turns out that they had fallen victim to insufficient fact checking. The original source of the story, you see was a Thai English language site called ‘Not the Nation’. You can read the original story here.

‘Not the Nation’ is however a satirical news site. It is the Thai equivalent of the Onion. Headlines appearing on the front page at the time of writing include “Kim Jong Il’s Pancreas sent to Labor Camp”. The whole thing brings to mind other hilarious mistakes made by lazy journalists and news sites scrapping content without checking the source. Often this is by foreign journalists – you can read an account of this happening several times in China over here.

You have all seen it. With jeans manufacturers opting for low-cut styles, and people in serious denial of their waist size, you often see a lot more arse crack on show than you would really like. The so called ‘builders bum’ phenomenon has been left the building sites and ‘gone viral’.

On the Internet there is one place where you are guaranteed to see pictures of folks doing fashion ‘don’ts’. That place is ‘People of Walmart’. This is a very funny site, with photos of people out shopping in America’s famous budget retailer. That is where this illustrative photo comes from. Note how the subject has combined showing her crack with a ‘tramp stamp’ for ultimate classiness.

Now, help is at hand. Instead of buying trousers that fit you can get this amazing new product. Called ‘Backtacular’ this is basically a patch you tack to your…er…’lower back’. Have a look at this picture of it in action:

This is actually a real thing, here is the product website. So what it is is a small patch of decorated denim that is stuck on using adhesive tape. Seriously. They are also ‘hypo-allergenic’ just in case your buttocks have any kind of allergy to ridiculous clothing.

The patches come with enough tape for them to be used twice. They are being sold online for $15 each. This seems pretty dumb. If you positively absolutely have to expose that part of your body up the top of your jeans might it not be best to invest in some lingerie that you can use more than twice? Maybe you don’t even want to expose the top your underwear, in that case there are even items of clothing available that allow that. Ahem… dresses?

So did you watch the London Marathon at the weekend, then? What an exciting race. Really inspiring for anyone who has started running, but sometimes finds it hard to find the motivation to keep it up and push themselves harder.

The elite race saw one of the most gripping battles of recent years. In the men’s race it was Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede who was triumphant, after the defending champion was forced to pull out with knee worries three quarters of the way through. The women’s race was pretty exciting too.

The world record holder Paula Radcliffe could not represent Britain in the race because she is pregnant. As a result British pride rested on Mara Yamauchi’s shoulders. She managed a plucky tenth place. Just like very year though the most inspirational running came not from the elite competitors but from the rest of the field.

People running in fancy dress to raise money for charity is what the event is all about. There were a big group in heavy rhino costumes, raising awareness s of rhino’s as only a herd of rhino’s running through your town can. I was a bit disappointed that they were only single-man bipedal rhino suits though. If they had been like pantomime horses, with one runner at the front and one runner at the back it would have been better (though probably not very pleasant for the guys in the suits!).

In fact there were a number of records set for running in fancy dress. These ranged from ‘fasted animal suit’ – which was taken by a dude wearing a tiger suit, to ‘fastest leprechaun ‘. Some of these costumes seem a bit more practical for running in than others. For instance, the superhero category looks slightly easier than some of them. Superhero costumes being a bit more designed for vigorous activity than giant caterpillars (which was what Princess Beatrice helped set a record wearing). Time to decide if you’ve got what it takes to take a pop at next year’s marathon!