What Caught My Eye Today - Switzerland, China, London, Paraguay, Twerking

Fred's Note: Admittedly, I've posted some rather peculiar stories, but today's collection, may well set a new benchmark.

Switzerland - Switzerland has opened its first strip of drive-in "sex boxes." Sounds rather crude don't it? Maybe something is lost in the translation. Seeing as Switzerland has 3 official languages -- French, German and Italian -- let's see if one of those sounds better. In French, we have "boite de sexe." In German, "sex-box". And in Italian, there is "scatola di sessoo". I don't know about you, but I kind of like the Italian version. Try saying "sesso" without giggling. You can't do it can you? In The city of Zurich set up the facility to get prostitutes off the streets. Each little room has a bed and a panic button the sex worker can use if she feels unsafe. One wonders if there is a button for the "client"? The strip also offers laundry and shower facilities as well as an on-site nurse. I'm thinking an ATM might also be convenient. Prostitution has been legal in Switzerland since 1942, but the number of prostitutes has shot up since the nation joined a European pace on open borders. There's a joke there, but I think we'll leave this alone. 

London - The glare off the skin of a half-built 37 floor London skyscraper known as the Walkie-Talkie is so intense it is said to have reportedly caused part a car to melt. Mind you, the car in question was not your run of the mill jalopy. Nope. We're talking a high end Jaguar.  Sort of makes that pigeon poop on the windshield not seem so bad by comparison. Similar problems have plagued other modern buildings, including in Los Angeles, when neighbors of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall reported heat buildups that required corrective measures. Seriously, this sort of thing has happened before? The land developers said they are taking the complaints seriously and looking into how the building reflects sunlight. Sounds like quite the head scratcher.  You have the sun, which is basically reflecting off a 37 story mirror onto a car parked a few feet away. Yup. I'm stumped. The problem lasts about two hours a day and is expected to continue for another two to three weeks. The builders said they will erect a temporary scaffold screen at street level to minimize the problem and have also asked city authorities to suspend parking in three spaces. Option 1: Spend what will probably amount to thousands of dollars to build a temporary awning. Option 2: Use some pylons and maybe some rope to cordon off the 3 offending parking spots.  Now this is a no-brainer. Option 1, totally.

Fred's Note: These next two items, are pretty disturbing. Consider yourselves warned.  

China - A suspected Chinese organ trafficker gouged out the eyes of a 6-year-old boy to steal the corneas for the black market.  The boy was playing outside his house when a woman kidnapped and drugged him. His parents found him hours later with bloody eye sockets, and the eyeballs were found nearby missing the corneas. Dude, this is so far beyond the realm of wrong, I don't even know where to begin.  Organ donation at death is rare in China, so patients must wait years for transplants. Prison officials routinely harvest organs from executed inmates. You don't think that some executions are fast tracked due to black market demand for human organs? Yeah, I know. That's way too far-fetched.

Paraguay - Eight Paraguayan bus drivers have had themselves nailed to crosses to protest being fired by a transportation company after it rejected their plea for higher pay.  The drivers are on their backs, nailed to wooden crosses laid out on the ground. Large nails pierce their hands at the base of the fingers. I get that the job market is not great, but this seems a bit extreme. Nails through your hands? Damn. They said they took the action in a desperate bid to be heard. You'd sort of hope they would be desperate before resorting to having themselves nailed to crosses.  They have been nailed down for 15 days. Say what? 15 days? Some of the drivers' wives are taking turns being nailed to crosses alongside their husbands. Wrong again. Attaching yourself to a cross? That's impressive. Doing so with nails? That certainly adds some dramatic flare.  Getting your wife to swap spots with you on the cross. That's extreme.

Twerking - You would think that in world where you have drive through brothels, metal melting buildings, black market organ robbers, and protesters on crosses, that the headlines would be dominated by something other than Miley Cyrus getting freaky on the MTV Video Music Awards. And sadly, you would be wrong. But here's the thing. Apparently, twerking has been a thing for quite a long time. Twerking is a dance move that involves a person, usually a woman, shaking her hips in an up-and-down bouncing motion, causing the dancer to shake, "wobble" and "jiggle." According to the Oxford Dictionary Online to twerk is "to dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance. Comparisons have been made with traditional African dances. In the United States, twerking was introduced into hip-hop culture by way of the New Orleans bounce music scene. The dictionary said the word had been around for 20 years, but the evidence for it to be included in the dictionary had tipped the scale when U.S. pop star Miley Cyrus gave a controversial and headline-producing twerking dance at the MTV Video Music Awards on August 25, 2013. You know all those whack jobs who say there are signs everywhere pointing to the demise of civilization as we know it? I sort of see what they are getting at.