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Honolulu Lite

CHARLES MEMMINGER

Friday, May 11, 2001


Buff brahs block
for bankers

While spelunking though my usual Internet sources for odd news items for this space, I was shocked to come across a dispatch concerning the hiring of University of Hawai'i football players as security guards for this week's Asian Development Bank shindig.

It's insulting really. What is odd about dressing up enormous linebackers and linemen in aloha shirts and pith helmets and stationing them around a convention center? If Seattle authorities had hired the Seattle Seahawks front line and put them on the street dressed up in cute little rain slickers, there might not have been rioting during that city's big old global economic conspiracy thingy.

I got an email from someone who attended the non-riot in Honolulu who found herself rather stimulated by all the security and police presence.

"It was a great display of the biggest, the buffest and best looking guys in town," she wrote. "It was a great event for $5,000 per person. I really wish the gov would throw more of these."

I suspect she's either being ironic or sarcastic, but I always get them confused.

Now for some REAL odd news.

Cashing in on corpses

VIENNA (Reuters) >> Austrian police will be paid more cash for undressing weighty corpses and sifting through human excrement for evidence. The new rules allow officers to charge $21.78 for undressing a heavy corpse or sifting through feces in search of drugs.

(Those cops needed better negotiators. I wouldn't strip a fat dead guy for less than $21.95.)

Getting goosed in Oslo

OSLO, Norway (Reuters) >> A swan named Oscar, famous for his short temper, attacked an elderly woman, biting her bottom, dragging her into a lake and dunking her twice before letting go.

"Oscar came flying from across the other side of the lake and bit me in the buttocks before dragging me into the water," reported Kerstin Arbsved.

(Arbsved allegedly said later that she found the entire episode "terribly unsettling but strangely exhilarating" and plans to visit Oscar more frequently.)

Weird Web site of the week: Gary is officially Alo-Ha Friday's designated Weird Web Site Commando. He's proven to be a master at ferreting out the most entertaining sites on the net and sending me the addresses. He's come through again with this week's site: "TheDialectizer." (www.rinkworks.com/dialect) It basically converts on any other web site into different dialects, like redneck, jive, cockney and Elmer Fudd. The most staid and dull sites suddenly become a hoot. Part of the Star-Bulletin's online home page read in Elmer Fudd-lish: ADB cwitics hit the stweets, Hawaiian pwotest peacefuw; No contest muwdew pwea; Waising Cane by Wob Pewez.

As Rinkworks would say in redneck: Cuss it all t' tarnation, see Honolulu Lite in Sunday's Star-Bulletin for a full report on this dern site, fry mah hide.

Quote me on this: "Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." -- Frank Zappa




Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.



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