Photos
I know that sometimes my diamond shoes can get too tight, but sometimes it takes a really 
news story to remind you just HOW tight diamond shoes can really get. Like this one, in which a man in Bangladesh won a 14″ color television for killing more than 83 THOUSAND rats. From the AP (via WarmingGlow):
Mokhairul Islam, 40, won a first prize of a color television for killing some 83,450 rats in the past nine months in Gazipur district near the South Asian country’s capital, Dhaka. He collected their tails for proof.
“I am so happy to get this honor,” Islam said after receiving a 14-inch television and a certificate amid cheers at an official ceremony packed with 500 farmers and officials. “I had no idea that the government gives prizes for this… This is an exciting moment. I will continue to kill them,” he vowed.
Oh, incidentally, the “contest” is part of a national campaign to reduce food imports as a step towards domestic resolution of a national food shortage. Yay?
I wonder if they sell suicide guns on QVCHD. “One diamond-plated suicide gun and one golden suicide bullet please. What’s that? It comes with a complimentary last meal? No thank you, I just ate as much food as I felt like and I don’t want any more of the plentiful plentiful food that is all around us. Hello? Hello? Goddamn Palm Pre doesn’t work for shit!”
[Ed. note: the image accompanying this post is a photo of children in Malawi, not Bangladesh. In Malawi you can buy rats off a stick as a delicious snack from child vendors on the side of the road. SO DON'T EVEN WORRY ABOUT IT, CLEARLY THEY'RE FINE.]
 |
 |
You Might Also Like
 We Should All Be So Lucky As To Find Something In This… |  New York, I Love You, But You’re Grossing Me Out |  A Brief Note On The Subway Rat Video |  That’s Your Girlfriend: Dianne Rochenski |
Looks like someone’s homophone shoes are too tight.
Watch out, buddy. Gabe might call you boring.
Well, it’s been corrected. No homophone. GET IT?
Well done, sir!
yay, you’re back!
Yay! It might be an inauspicious return, but I just had to jump right back in there. I’m working toward something great, I just don’t know what it is.
“I had no idea that the government gives prizes for this…”
I’m putting that on my amusing news story and Family Circus comic strips bulletin board.
Those damn kids from the Family Circus strip would probably say something like ‘when you get rats.. make lemonade!”.
That picture makes me
. It reminds me of when I go to visit my family in Tunisia and I see all of these poor children with no shoes selling honey on the side of the road. Underprivileged children. Double 
.
PS, I think you meant “won a 14″ color television” not “one a 14″ color television”.
You just know this guy is saying “King of the castle, king of the castle”.
Jeez,
to the max! Ugh, Gabe, why would you put such a depressing story on your blog, especially now! I just finished eating. [I'm totally joking. I'm not that much of a bitch.]
Have y’all heard about Kiva.org ? It’s a micro-loan lending website that lets women start their own business using startup cash. I’m donating what’s left of the money in my wallet.
Boston.com says microlending is very almost useless:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/20/small_change_does_microlending_actually_fight_poverty/
Yes, Virginia, this is how you ruin everything.
That is ridiculously depressing.
Mokhairul could have gotten much more then a 14″ TV if he teamed up with those children in Malawi.
That’s at least 8,345 of those delicious rats off the stick treats.
Just sayin’.
no that is smart. They could still sell the rat meat and he could keep the tails as proof of the kill! Everybody wins a bucket full of
Ah yes! Brilliant.
there’s a surprising amount of white meat on a rat. it’s more of a crock pot thing, though.
you can get 10cents a nutria tail in some parishes in louisiana. my boyfriend’s father used to supplement his income that way.
Killed 83,450 rats? How? One by one? En masse? Inquiring minds want to know.
Mayor Bloomberg needs to get this guy on the next flight to NYC.
It would have to be en masse or at least in groups. To do it one by one, he’d have to kill a rat every five minutes for the entire nine months with no breaks for sleep, sustenance or waste elimination.
It really makes you curious when you break it down – I did some quick math, and that’s about 300 rats a day. Did he spend every waking moment killing rats?
This post gets more
by the second.
Look, dude said he is happy. He was cheered on by a large group of people. He’s doing what he loves. Nothing
about that.
Anyway, some pretentious American fucks don’t even OWN televisions. Talk about
yeah, there is a much wider array of occupations available to people in third world countries. lands of opportunity, i say! opportunities to kill so many rats! or sell gas out of reused 2 liter soda bottles by the side of the road! or be professional asshole bleachers! (we’ve got that here, too.) so much opportunity!
At first I thought you meant “asshole bleachers” as in outdoor seats for assholes at sporting events rather than people who bleach assholes.
oh, you can do that for a living in third world countries, too. just create a human pyramid with a bunch of your spindly-armed, malnourished pals wherever and tourist assholes can stop to rest on you. opportunity!
Step aside, I will also be boarding the guilt train passin through here. I’m full of ugh cause I was just mentally dreading dinner tonight cause it’s chicken again. Chicken, Santa, not rats. Time to count the blessings….
83,450 rats divided by (9 months x 30 days per month x 24 hours per day) = holyfuckingshitthisguyknowshowtokillrats
I cried because I had no teeth until I met the man who had no rats to eat.
Or is it the other way around?
Indeed.
This reminds me of that famous proverb:
“I cried when I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. And then I laughed. Really hard.”
-Jerri Blank
My diamond shoes fit perfectly. Really, why would even bother with diamond shoes unless I had a decent cobbler? Also, I’ll bet The View and Judge Judy are really going to eat into that fellow’s rat killing schedule.
In the Kingdom of No TVs, the 83,450 Rat Man is King?
I thought it was my ill-fitting diamond shoes that were the problem, but after the tsunamis and earthquakes in Indonesia, Samoa, Malaysia, Singapore, and Tonga earlier this week, I realized it’s that the weather’s still too warm to wear any of the fur coats in my fur coat closet. What the hell it is still tsunami season? GOD.
If he had no idea that the gov gave out prizes for that, was he just keeping the tails as part of his own tallying system? Did he put them around his house on stakes as a warning to other rats?
he probably was aware that they PAID for the tails, but not that they also gave prizes.