Saturday, August 17, 2013

Greetings fellow Bizarros:

A lot of peoples' fantasy would be to get paid to play games. So many people spend hours and hours online playing games for recreation, how awesome would it be to make money for doing it?

You could ask Kristina Finchman. This nurse from Australia had been working her full-time job by day and staying up all night to obtain and trade goods in World of Warcraft from what her lawyer described as a registered home business. She took payments in cash, finally converting much of that into real gold.

Well, how much cash can you make, really, by spending weeks playing World of Warcraft in order to acquire a "Blessed Blade of the Windseeker" which blasts your enemy with lightning, and then selling it to some other World of Warcraft geek online for a few bucks paid into your PayPal account?

How about 75,000 Australian dollars! In the gaming world this is known as gold farming. Finchman herself estimated that she was making anywhere from $200 to $700 every night she played World of Warcraft.

She invested all of that money in actual gold bullion, which she kept in a safe in her house. Apparently she doesn't have much faith in the economy.

The story so far would be bizarre enough, but it doesn't end there. When Finchman left town for a week on vacation, her house was burglarized, and the safe containing the bullion was among the items that went missing. She claims that her boyfriend at the time tipped off thieves about the gold, "in exchange for the measly sum of $500."

Her insurance company claimed Finchman arranged the theft in order to commit insurance fraud. So she is suing them. But the 75 gold bars she had in the safe are still gone.

So much for gold farming.

Bizarrely,
Lewis

Questions? Comments? Email Lewis


*-- Police: 'Suspicious package' was 'sex toy' --*
JENSEN BEACH, Fla. - Authorities in Florida said a "suspicious package" received by a woman turned out to be a "battery powered sex toy." The recently released report from the Martin County Sheriff's Office said a Jensen Beach woman called deputies July 31 and reported she had received a "suspicious package" the previous day, TCPalm.com reported Thursday. The package had arrived at the woman's home in a U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail envelope. The woman's name was listed as both sender and recipient on the envelope. A sheriff's office spokeswoman said a bomb tech specialist examined the package and determined it to be a "battery operated sex toy." "It was a pink plastic adult novelty item, with some type of a plastic rabbit attached to it," a sheriff's spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. "The recipient says she did not order it."


*-- Bolivian goatherd may be 123, making him oldest person ever --*
LA PAZ, Bolivia - A Bolivian goatherd with documents that show his age as 123 may be the oldest man live and the oldest authenticated person who has ever lived. Carmelo Flores Laura lives in Frasquia, a village 5 hours from the capital, La Paz, and a 2-hour walk from the nearest road, the BBC reported. He has outlived two of his three sons but has 16 grandchildren and 39 great-grandchildren, La Razon newspaper in La Paz reported. In an interview broadcast by the BBC, Flores attributed at least some of his longevity to the varied diet of his youth with animals like lizards on the menu. Previously, the longest documented lifespan was that of Jeanne Calment, who died in Arles, France, in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days. Calment had the distinction of being the last living person to have met the artist Vincent Van Gogh. Jiroemon Kimura of Japan, who died earlier this year at 116 years and 54 days, had the longest documented life for a man. The documentation for Flores' age is a baptismal certificate. At the time he was born, Bolivia was still several decades away from registering births with the civil authorities.


*-- READER COMMENTS --*
Lewis; I read that too much Internet porn can make me stupid. Is that true? Damn it, guess I'll just have to be stupid then. I've already paid for it, so do you think I can stop when Im just a bit dimmer? Since I'm asking you this question maybe I'd better stop, huh?
[If you are paying for Internet porn when there is an infinity of it available for free, then I think you've already answered that question.]

Lewis, if you want to get more subscribers, feature a "fan of the month" nude pic! Male and female to please both genders. --Mark
[Believe it or not I actually tried this once upon a time, but I only ever got one subscriber to send me a nude pic she was willing to let me post online.]

Lewis, just wanted to say that I have been a loyal reader for years, even back when GopherCentral was called ShagMail, and I have both of the Best of Bizarre News books. I just love reading about the depths of human stupidity, and I'm glad you are there to tell us. Keep up the good work! -Chris
[Thanks Chris! It's nice to hear people are still reading after all these years. That gives me a lot of confidence.]

*-- END OF READER COMMENTS --*
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Send comments and questions to: LEWIS