Shoppers on Black Friday see a bargain, lose their senses and charge

“This situation must be controlled before it’s too late. They’re multiplying too rapidly!”

This is a quote from George Romero’s 1978 zombie masterpiece Dawn of The Dead. In the iconic film the words are obviously applied to the increasing number of zombies intent on eating brains, but it could be applied to the current occupy movement which is spreading, much like a plague, across the world, as seen through the eyes of the financial and political institutions the movement is, at least in a diluted and unorganised form, trying to change. Now the two worlds of zombie and occupy have collided in Harrisburg where an occupant has been arrested for dressing like a zombie.

For those of you who know, Dawn of The Dead was primarily shot in a shopping mall and so it comes as no surprise that this particular occupy demonstration was taking place in the Capital City Mall on Black Friday, the day the traditional American Christmas shopping season gets under way. Dawn of The Dead is seen by many as a documentation of a consumer society gone mad on its own spending habits, creating a population so obsessed with spending money on material things that when they, for all and purposes, die, the only thing their disintegrating brains can remember is an innate desire to go shopping. In a bid to replicate the message of the film, the occupy protesters descended on Capital Mall dressed as zombies to highlight the folly of spending more money and escalating the debt culture. *

Jenn Hara was a zombie amongst zombies when she was arrested for not complying with mall police. According to a police report she refused to remove the face-paint she was wearing, thus breaking the “no face-paint” laws of the mall; something to do with obscuring a persons face. Jenn Hara claims that she was merely asking for more information on the draconian face-paint rules.

*no economic theories we investigated, researched or in anyway entertained for this article.

Europe maybe collapsing around the very foundations of the monetary mechanism that was imagined and constructed to unite, unify and catapult the EuroZone to the very head of the financial world table, but we don’t have time for that at the moment. First we have to trawl our way through the weeks blame game.

We have coffee, Guns n’ Roses, The X-factor, basketball, serial killers and the President of The United States of America. What do they all have in common? Well, they have all been seduced and bedded by the Italian media, political, womaniser, seducer, bringer of chaos, football club owner, sex addicted megalomaniac and now, thank the Italian food Gods, EX-prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and they all have been pointing and taking the blame this week.

Blame is engulfing Obama, now its lazy people and foreign investment

In order of importance, lets start with coffee. OK, the US president, he is probably more important than coffee. Reading between the lines and creating something amusing out of what, in reality, was a meandering piece of sleep inducing sedativity we are left with the cold-hard reality that the one-term President has blamed lazy, good-for-nothing Americans for the financial maelstrom which is sweeping the modernised world into the proverbial shit-tank. Kind of.

“We’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades”

Really Mr President? Who has been a bit lazy? The people? Way to win a vote contest sir. As the rest of America sat around watching TV, drinking beers, smoking joints, sleeping, lying in bed all day and generally being lazy, the President was in Hawaii (alright for some) having a “scripted” conversation with Boeing CEO James McNerney. Is a scripted conversation what it sounds like? Two men reading a conversation to each other which has already been scripted. How wonderful it would be if that were true.

During the scripted conversation Mr Obama, aside from blaming laziness, was addressing the real problem, as he sees it, for the current lack of foreign investment in the United States. After actually physically arriving on American soil and passing the I’m a celebrity get me out of here bush tucker challenge styled,  jump, I say how high, give me your blood, your boots, your clothes and your motorcycle ivestment screening test, foreign investors then have to counter additional challenges to be given the US seal of approval to merely sell a few wicker arm chairs.

“Because of our federalist system, sometimes a foreign investor comes in and they’ve got to navigate not only federal rules, but they’ve also got to navigate state and local governments that may have their own sets of interests……Being able to create, if not a one-stop shop, then at least no more than a couple of stops for people to be able to come into the United States and make investments, that’s something that we want to encourage”

This isn’t the first time that Obama has blames economic problems on the obscure, only earlier this year he blamed ATM cash machines for the growing and uncontrollable unemployment rates currently afflicting the United States. This time he has at least but the blame on humans.

The evidence is wishy-washy as the current American governmental system is hardly a new one (by American standards). It’s a mixture of lazy people and difficult foreign investment administrative hoop jumping? Then why was the 1990s boom time? Between 1990 and 2001 foreign investment topped out at $300 billion, only to fall 66% in the following 2 years. A sudden case of weekday lie-ins?  Or just cyclical? US foreign investment climbed healthily again during the second term of Bush, only to plummet back down to $150 billion in the early days of the Obama administration. Ups and downs, swings and roundabouts.

Unfortunately for the President, when you call somebody lazy at the start of what you are saying, it doesn’t matter how economically or politically sound or weak your proceeding arguments may be, people stop listening after the word “lazy”. Did you?

Carlo Giovanardi blames cocaine for the instability in the Italian markets

As trading in shares of France-Belgium bank Dexia tumble 36% as news of a £3.4bn bailout by French, Belgian and Luxembourg governments emerge, one Italian man has some ideas about what is causing the continued market volatility that we are regularly witnessing. Cocaine ladies and gentlemen.

Carlo Giovanardi is Undersecretary to Italian playboy/media-mogul/adulterer/sometimes President and master of all he purveys, Silvio Berlusconi, and as such he has been witness and heir apparent to some pretty monstrous ineptitude in his time. Now, after witnessing so much from his leader, he has thrown his own hat into the ring by blaming cocaine use amongst traders for the volatility affecting the Italian (and one supposes, global) markets.

On September 28th Italy extended a ban on short selling of financial shares until the 11th November. Short selling is far too complicated a financial concept for Take The Blame to understand, yet alone explain, but basically it is a concept which falls, almost perfectly, into the deranged hands of the cocaine freak. Because the cocaine freak is just that; a freak. A liar and a cheat who will prostitute the markets for their own gain leaving nothing but instability, volatility and confusion; the mirror image of the night before.

Short selling is the buying and selling of stock that the seller doesn’t own. Its like selling drugs that you don’t own on the promise that they will be there should your client actually want to get mashed. The stock is lent by the broker to the seller from a collection of his clients stocks. The stock is then sold and the money credited to the account of the seller. Now the crux of short selling is that at some point, as the stocks are not actually owned by either the seller or broker, the stocks have to be replenished back into the original account from where they were borrowed by the broker originally. Now, market drops and the seller can buy back the original stocks at a decreased price, thus making a profit on the difference of price. You borrow and sell at $10  then buy back at $6  and make $4 on every initial $10 investment and never actually owned any of it. By that end it is investing on the market falling, an investment in failure. Awesome. Rack up some lines and watch the market destabilise itself.

It is this availability of gambling with other peoples stocks that probably leads Mr. Giovarndi to his theory that there is a worrisome link between substance abuse and market flux. In a telephone call to Italian media, the undersecretary went on to say that Italians are trusting their money to people who are “not capable of making decisions”.

The idea is sound enough. Cocaine makes you confident, reckless, brave and full of your own ability to be a complete tool. Trading on the market gives you the opportunity to unleash these negative personality traits on peoples unsuspecting bank accounts. The problem is that, as almost every single financial institute has demonstrated over the last 5 years, you don’t need cocaine to royally screw things up.

Nogent-Sur-Marne has made looking in bins for food a criminal offence

Nogent-Sur-Marne is a French town in the eastern suburbs of Paris and it has introduced a law banning people from looking in bins. In a bid to clear up the town centre, the Mayor of the French suburb, Jacques Jean-Paul Martin, has made it a public offence to delve, rummage, fish, forage or in any other way look in the rubbish bins of the town. The guilty culprits will be handed a 38 euro fine and repeat offenders could find themselves at the local Gendarmerie facing even sterner punishments.

Obviously some people are not happy at what they see as a piece of cowardice from the city Mayor as he tries to oust the increasing number of poor and homeless who frequent the Parisian streets. William Geib, chief of the opposition sees the new law as nothing more than an outright and blatant attack on the poor of Nogent.

“We see that there is a form of escalation from the mayor. The only thing that remains to do would be to ban the poverty stricken of Nogent.”

What beggars believe, to use a badly worded pun, is the reasoning behind the decision of the UMP (the ruling party of President Nicolas Sarkozy) Mayor Jacques Jean-Paul Martin. In a pathetic attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the common man he has blamed gangs of youths who operate in the streets of Nogent ransacking bins and looking for technology that they can then sell on at a later date: iPhone, mp3 players, laptops, coffee machines? The bins of Nogent-Sur-Marne, if the Mayor is to be believed, are a treasure trove of electronic goods; a Dixons, an electronics store, a Christmas stocking where everything is free and just waiting to be found in a bin near you. Speaking to someone the Mayor obviously thinks is a gullible sucker, he said that,

“For several months, some people search the containers and spill on the road in search of objects that could be marketed. These are not people looking for food.”

Really Mayor? The streets of Nogent are awash with gangs of bin looters and opportunistic bin searchers? Obviously this is bullshit. The streets of Nogent-Sur-Marne are no more full of people looking in bins for iPhones than anywhere else. It is a blatant attack on the homeless and poor wrapped in the pathetic, inept ramblings of an out of touch Town Hall. The 38 Euro fine which accompanies the new law is also as inept as the law itself. What people are looking in bins for food who have 38 Euros burning a hole in their pocket? These people have no pockets to have holes burnt in; their trousers are frayed and worn and falling apart at the seams. It is why they are looking in bins for food you arrogant brandisher of power.

This is not the first time that the Mayor and politicians of Nogent-Sur-Marne have tried to oust the poor. Every winter since 2007 the Mayor’ office has banned begging in the streets. Every Winter! Numbers are hard to come by and ever-increasing but it is thought that over 100,000 homeless people “live”in France with hundreds dying every winter on the hard, concrete streets of Paris. When begging is most vital, they ban it. Class act.

All William Warner wanted to do was watch a DVD. What he ended up doing was being shot in the hand by his Toshiba laptop after a fault in the disk loading tray somehow catapulted part of the steel tray out of the DVD drive and through his hand. He never did get to watch the film, thetitle of which remains a mystery.

The painful remnants of when laptops attack!

According to the New Zealand Herald, 52-year old New Zealander William Warner was attempting to put a DVD into the disk drive of his Toshiba laptop when the machine suffered a bout of ineptitude and shot Mr. Warner through the hand. As you can see from the picture it was no surface wound but a full-on gaping cavity that pierced his entire hand. Just what type of spring loading DVD drives do they have down-under?

“I looked at my palm and I was wondering, God what just happened? Then the pain … became excruciating and I had to be rushed to hospital”

Toshiba, bless them, offered Mr. Warner a brand new laptop for his pain. Mr Warner probably wants a new hand.

“I’ve been told I can no longer fish or play golf, and even writing for me now is a struggle. I can’t believe that trying to play a DVD on the laptop would land me with injuries that ended the use of my right hand as I know it.”

Although being offered another opportunity to chop his hands off, Mr. Warner is still seeking financial compensation from Toshiba. The case continues.

armed and crazy? You are still no match for this 12-year old

Whatever drives a man to enter a jewellery shop brandishing a gun and fully intent on robbing the outfit of the entirety of its precious gems is, you would have thought, not going to be threatened by a 12-year old child. On a normal day it probably wouldn’t, but on a normal day the basement of the worlds criminal classes would not be confronting the 12-year old son of Turkish shop keeper Mehmet Karagoz.

When Mustafa S. entered the jewellery shop of Mehment Karagoz in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul he was probably expecting little in the way of retaliation. He had picked his targets wisely: an old man and a small child. What could possibly fuck up proceedings? What could possibly lodge a spanner in the intricate workings of his ingenious plan?

How about the son of the jeweller who, on seeing the criminal mastermind enter the jewellers, quickly calculated the odds of ineptitude, cowardice and malice running through the veins of the assailant, put one and one together and came up with the assumption that this particular piece of putridity had been lounging with the imbeciles of Istanbul a few moments too long and was, indeed, inept. The 12-year old jumped, attacked and won. Istanbul’s most lacking fled the scene. The CCTV cameras recorded the whole affair and quickly hit the headlines, pushing the small child into the hero-stratosphere reserved for people who normally catch falling babies.

Take The Blame would, obviously, like to bring to the attention the brave feet of daring by the child in question, but also like to draw attention to an armed criminal who was bested by an infant. The Godfather he is not.

Lets play a small game of spot the difference.

One of these is an extremly rare Bengali Tiger. There are 200 left in the wild. The other is a stuffed toy won at a fairground. Can you tell which is which?

How did you do? Did you manage to decipher the code? If you are unsure, the animal on the right of this picture is a Bengali White Tiger. Perhaps you can notice the sharp teeth, the killer look in the eye, the huge clawed feet sporting 9-inch dagger sharp claws or the monumental size of this beautiful, streamlined, killing machine. Or, perhaps, you can just see the picture on the left is a stuffed replica. So if we can tell the difference, why cant the Hampshire establishment?

Saturday Afternoon and the only sound in the air is that of cricket bat on cricket ball in the green fields of Hampshire, southern England. That and the guttural, Indian growl of the Siberian White Tiger as it prowls the hedgerows in search of prey. At least this is what one local resident thought was happening when they noticed the 3-metre Panthera tigris stalking the bushes in this otherwise peaceful part of the world. Paralysed with fear their only hope of survival was Ray Mears or the local constabulary. Not being able to contact the former they opted for the latter and before long the deep, chopping, wooshing sound of a helicopter was heard overhead.

The Hampshire Bengali Helicopter Search and Rescue operation

Unfortunately our good Samaritan had confused a stuffed teddy bear for the real thing which is why the thermal imaging cameras that were housed in the helicopter did not pick up any heat emitting from the bushes. As the helicopter dipped and rose, Ride of The Valkyries no doubt pounding from the door speakers, the infra red showed no sign of the Indian beast.

As this scene from Apocalypse Now was unfolding over a field, nearby word had got out and the locals were running scared. A tiger was on the loose and cover needed to be found. Golfers at a nearby club left the fairway and a cricket match at the Rose Bowl was delayed. The local zoo was contacted and expects were soon loaded up with tranquilizer guns.

Then the helicopter downdraft caused a movement in the bushes below. On closer inspection the culprit was discovered. A teddy bear. We would like to take the blame for the loss of tax payers money on such inept confusion.

A 21-year old student of ineptitude has been arrested in St. Petersburg for freeing up to 10 birds from a cage. The problem? The birds were in the cage because their wings were injured and so flying was, if not impossible, painful and difficult at best. Also, as the man was a student of ineptitude, he filmed himself doing it, addressed the camera by his own name and then posted the video on YouTube (you can see the video below).

After freeing the birds, perhaps in a bid to gain access to the upper echelons of the World Wildlife Fund and carve a career as a fighter for animal rights, Blake Richard Reide was arrested by local police after they had been informed of his actions by a concerned ornithologist who had seen the YouTube videos.

As the birds could not really fly, they were quickly rounded up and put back in their bird prisons. It is worth noting that not only did Mr. Reid release 10 injured birds, they were not your run of the mill sparrows and robbins. A bald eagle, two turkey vultures, a red tailed hawk, two red shouldered hawks and one barred owl were quickly captured, rolling on the ground nearby as their wings would not comply with the messages sent from their tiny bird sized brains. Unfortunately one of the birds was still reported missing as of last night and that was a red-shoulded hwak. It is sure to be seen harassing and pecking at young children in the coming days.

Want to see the video? It is long but you can fast forward to the ineptitude.

The US government has paid out over 600 million dollars to dead people. Sometimes it pays to be 6-feet under

What a curiosity. It turns out that the best way to earn tax payers money these days is to be dead. In a tale of ineptitude that can be seen from the outer reaches of space, the US government has given out over $600 million to people who have been classified as having left this planet. Dead. Bereft of Life, bloodless, erased, expired, pushing up daises. They’ve met their maker, kicked the bucket. They are taking a dirt nap. They are toast, they are ice and they are rich people. Richer than you and me and they are D. E. A. D dead.

According to a report by the United States Office of Personal Management, over the past five years over $600 million in benefit payments have been paid to the aforementioned dead people by the federal government. The benefit payments are normally destined for retired or disabled federal workers but now dead federal workers can be added to that list.

Although the $600 million only covers the past five years, one case of incalculable ineptitude was unearthed that highlights the complete ludicrous incompetence of the benefit payment system. The case in point involved over $500,000 of payments to the son of a man who had died 37 years previously. That is not even close. The bungling impotence only came to light when the son died! Had the father still been alive to enjoy his payments, he would have been 138.

In a system of government which is currently sitting at $14.7 trillion in debt, $600 million accounts for a tiny fraction of the ineptitude. It takes a mighty fine amount of concentration to blow 15 trillion, so what’s a few hundred million between dead friends? But the problem is that this blundering hole in the distribution of federal payments was made aware to the government in 2005. 6 years ago. Have they managed to fill the hole? Having given away 600 million in 5 years, the answer would seem to be a resounding NO. Not only are the federal government made aware of a festering wound in the distribution of benefit payments, they fail to do anything about it. Take The Blame™ would like to point the finger at some pretty fearsome ineptitude.

Once upon a time the bank was the place for cash withdrawals. Now your money is safer here.

In all 6 attempts have been made to rectify the problem since an inspector general’s report revealed defects in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund in 2005, and not one of them has found a way to figure out the, one would have thought, fairly obvious singularity between death and life. Apparently it is too difficult to connect the death records with the benefit records. “Is he dead? yes, stop payment. Is he alive? yes, continue payment.” Mark Zuckerberg has connected 700 million computers, why can’t the federal government connect two?

***** ***** *****

What can $600 million buy you these days? How about Foursquare? No, bit boring? OK, How about 1 week of intervention in the Libya crisis? Thats how much the first week cost. It is what Nokia received from Apple for patent litigation. It’s what a botox maker paid for illegal marketing.

How much could possibly go wrong in the search for a cold beer after a long days’ work? You wouldn’t have thought much, but then you wouldn’t really be thinking, because one hell of a lot can go wrong if you are blessed with the ineptitude gene, reside in Covina, Los Angeles and have the mental abilities of a rotting carcass. Unbelievably there were three such blessed on Wednesday.

The mugshot says it all. INEPT

Andy Huynh, Nicholas Kalscheuer and Nicholas Fiumetto (check out the mugshots) managed to screw up getting a beer so incredibly well that they now sit in a Los Angeles prison cell, awaiting a court hearing on $50 000 bail. So just how did they manage such a feet? It wasn’t easy. At every step in the evenings proceedings it would have been infinitely times easier to not end up in prison.

Step 1. Don’t buy the beer, steal the beer.

Baja Ranch Market, 3pm. Andy Huynh remains in the car whilst his comrades enter the shop. So far so good. Getaway driver, check.

Step 2. Cock things up royally. Avoid stealth. Avoid cunning.

Fiumetto grabs a 30-pack of beer. Decides not to look cagey and hide said beer up his jumper but just bolts from the shop, Kalscheur at his heels.

Step 3. Get chased by shop workers.

Forgetting 21000 episodes of Cops which end in bullets being sprayed and bloodshed, shop workers run after culprits with complete disregard for well-being. Capture 19-year old Kalscheur and detain until police arrive.

Step 4. Up the stakes.

Realising that things have taken a dramatic turn for the worst Fiumetto jumps in the car and Huynh – the getaway driver! His job was to get away, lets not forget – drives straight at a shop worker who jumps on the bonnet of the car. Genius. The shop workers have now entered the battleground of ineptitude. Without even exiting the car park, the car hits a curb and the two remaining assailants run off. Only they don’t get far.

Step 5. Leave you wallet and identification in the car.

Andy Huynh actually managed to escape the scene of the crime – Quite a feet of ingenuity considering what had come before – only to find the police knocking at his door a few minutes later with his wallet and ID in hand. Nice work sir.

Step 6. Run into a car wash, get wet, get caught.

Whilst Mr. Huynh was busy forgetting his wallet, Fiumetto was busy getting wet. He jumped over the retaining wall into the neighbouring car wash, hotly pursued by two police officers. Perhaps hoping to hide amongst the rollers and soap of the mechanical car wash, he darted straight inside. Yep, pincer manoeuvre by the police saw the suspect quite easily apprehended when he exited the car wash, soaking wet and foam on his head.

The Japanese blame the Chinese for a recent outbreak of computer hacking and espionage

Ah China. They must have the worst Internet hackers ever to write code. They just cannot seem to hack without being caught. Not a week goes idly past without a mega-corporation or Sovereign state bemoaning some Internet intrusion by the Worlds biggest toy manufacturer. If it is not China itself complaining of cyber espionage by the Chinese, then it is America. If not America then it is South Korea and if not Google then Yahoo. Twitter is hacked, Facebook is sent into privacy setting meltdown and confusion and little old Myspace is left enjoying the traffic that a bit of Chinese covert hacking can bring. Next up to the cyber intrusion plate is Japan.

Never the best of friends, China and Japan sit within Internet throwing code of each other geographically and historically they share a treasure trove of minefields, war, invasion, battles and that most eastern of doctrines, feuding. Suffice to say, they don’t always see eye to eye. And in this year 2011, the 80th anniversary of the Japanese invasion of northern China, things have taken to the cyber playground – Attacking your neighbours 80 years ago only to see them rise to the top of the Sovereign food chain and sit on the brink of world domination must be akin to bullying the wimpy kid at school, only to see him become a cage fighter with blood lust and get a job working alongside you in your twenties. Now China is the bully and Japan are not best pleased.

The land of the rising sun has pointed the finger squarely at China for a plethora of denial of service (DOL) attacks on both government and Mitsubishi - the largest of the Japanese defence contractors – websites. The bombardment saw major security breaches in the military web-space of Japan. Mitsubishi admitted that its computers and servers had been affected with viruses and tracking bugs, allowing information to be stolen from the network. Perhaps worse than this was the discovery that computers connected to the Japanese submarine fleets were hacked allowing the hackers to remotely control computers (whether remote control submarines were on the menu is unknown, but what fun that would be) and even use the built in microphones of the computers  as listening devices.

According to pro-hackin tricks.com, Mistubishi had “experienced hacking across 10 of its sites in Japan, including its submarine manufacturing plant in Kobe and a facility in Nagoya which makes engine parts for missiles. In total 45 network servers and 38 PCs became infected with eight strains of malware, including Trojan horse programs.”

According to Japanese Police Agency(NPA) 90% of the attacks were born in China, thus, in their eyes, making it the likeliest point of origin.

Take the blame would like to point to the ineptitude of the Chinese hacking department who can’t seem to do their cyber spying in anything approaching secrecy and to the Japanese. Buy a goddamn firewall. Even Norton.

This bunch of zillionaires cant even beat Levante. Who are Levante? Exactly.

Not a bear trap. Not a mouse trap. Hell, he didn’t even blame a trap door. Jose Mourinho blamed a verbal trap for his Galatico megolith getting unstuck against tiny, minnow, microscopic, amoeba sized tadpole of a club Levante at the weekend. Real Madrid went down 1-0, losing their first game of the season and opening a blame game. Just why would such a unstoppable force of unimaginable riches come to a very quick and grinding halt against a such seemingly easy team?

The blame needs to be assigned to Real Madrid midfielder Sami Khedira who managed to get himself sent off, even after the team had studied similar games and installed jedi-mind tricks to not rise to the baiting of other players. In a news conference after the game, the Special one had some very insightful blames.

“The blame in my opinion lies with one of my players who was lured into a trap. They (the players) have to have enough intelligence to avoid situations like that and have a sense of whether the referee will allow it or not.”

The incident that Mourinho is referring to happened just before half time when Khedira, already nursing a yellow card, reacted like a cricket to a slight breeze – that is, completely over the top -  and pushed the Levante captain, Sergio Ballesteros, to the ground. It is unclear what Sergio said to the Real Madrid Galitico but was probably something along the lines of “youre a **** ****** ****** ******* **** **** ***** *****”.

The defeat leaves real Madrid 3 points lower down the league than they would be, had they won.