French hotel lets you pay to be treated like a hamster.

From Gadling, courtesy of JenK:

Hands up if you ever had the sudden urge to be treated like a hamster for a couple of days? Well, your wish has come true, though it will involve a flight to France.

In the French town of Nantes, you can pay just under $150 a night to eat hamster food, run around in a giant wheel, and sleep in hay stacks.

According to the first two paying guests, being able to experience how a hamster lives helped them "come out of their daily routine". Well, yeah, I can see how pretending to be a hamster for a couple of days will change things a little.

The owners of the "Hamster Villa" run a company that specializes in unusual and bizarre hotels. One of the owners used to dress up as a hamster, making their venture just a bit weirder. Sadly, the new "hamsters" in this hotel are already demanding WiFi access and a flat panel TV, so the current $150/night rate will be going up in the near future.

EasyJet apologizes for "triviliaizing the genocidal massacre of Jews."

Well, there goes our Coozer Files' Hot Babes of Dachau ad campaign. From Daily Mail:

EasyJet yesterday withdrew all copies of its in-flight magazine after it published pictures of designer-clad models posing in Berlin's Field of Stelae Holocaust Memorial which commemorates the six million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide.

After Jewish campaigners accused the airline of 'trivialising the genocidal massacre of Jews', easyJet withdrew all copies - estimated at 250,000 - and issued a 'profuse apology'.

Labour MP Denis MacShane, who heads the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism, said: 'This is further evidence of the banalisation of anti-Semitism.'

The Field of Stelae Memorial is a 19,000 square metre site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or 'stelae' arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. It is designed to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.

Ninja impales himself on fence in failed jump.

Fake ninja jump like grasshopper instead of fly like wallaby. From FOX News:

Seattle police say a man who thought he was a ninja was impaled on a metal fence when he tried to leap over it.

An officer who was looking for an assault victim nearby Monday night heard the man screaming for help.

Police supported him to prevent further injuries until medics arrived and took him to a hospital, where he was in serious condition in intensive care on Tuesday.

Police spokeswoman Renee Witt wrote in a department Web site posting that officers thought the man might have been involved in the reported assault, but he insisted he was just a ninja trying to clear a 4- to 5-foot-tall fence.

Witt says the man was "overconfident in his abilities," and that alcohol likely played a role.

His name was not released.

Coozer-Bits.

Awesome: Costco drops Coke.

Science: Music improves brain function (unless it's Insane Clown Posse).

Yipes: Nanoparticles used in common household goods cause genetic damage in mice.

Yipes: Lion opens car door during safari, tries to hitch a ride.

Cthulhu Watch: Climate change forcing coral to eat jellyfish.

Check-in system failure affects 485 airlines worldwide.

From News.com.au:

ALL Qantas check-ins have been thrown into chaos, after the computer check-in system failed across the country and the world.

The Amadeus program used by Qantas to check in passengers went into meltdown at about 5pm (AEDT) yesterday across the network, the Herald Sun reports.

The computer glitch was rectified just after 8pm, but the airline reported delays of between 45 minutes.

Qantas said services across the country are returning to normal.

During the system shutdown staff were forced to check people in manually, which was the major cause for delays.

All Qantas flights across the country were affected, along with another 485 airlines across the world.

Major airlines such as British Airways, Air France, South African Airways, Thai Airways, Lufthansa and United Airlines were all affected in the global check-in chaos.

Tokyo is world's best place to eat.

From BBC:

Tokyo has leaped ahead of Paris as the city with the most Michelin three-star restaurants, confirming its status as the "world capital of gastronomy".

Tokyo now has 11 three-star restaurants compared with 10 for Paris, according to the latest edition of the Michelin guide to Tokyo.

The Japanese capital also has more of the coveted stars in total than Paris - 261 shared by 197 restaurants.

New York, by comparison, has four three-star restaurants.

After controversy over earlier Tokyo guides that used non-Japanese inspectors, Michelin said it used only Japanese inspectors for the latest edition.

Japanese restaurateurs and food critics had been sceptical that non-Japanese could adequately judge the country's cuisine.

Butchered man used for kebabs, meat pies.

From The Sun:

Suspected cannibals killed a young man, ATE part of him and then sold other bits to a KEBAB house.

Cops also believe the 25-year-old victim's body parts may have been used to fill PIES too.

The trio of homeless men were arrested in Russia - accused of murdering the man with knives and a hammer.

Prosecutors revealed: "After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up - part of it was eaten and part of it was sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies."

Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the Russian city of Perm - which is 720 miles east of Moscow.

Man poses as father-son team to bed women.

From News.com.au:

A 55-year-old Taiwanese man tricked up to 20 women into having sex with him in an elaborate scam where he posed as both a handsome young man and that man's ailing father, local media reported today.

Hsu Shian-ming, who was arrested on Saturday, allegedly posted photos of a youthful male model online, claiming to be that person, and attracted numerous calls from women interested in romantic liaisons, the China Post reported.

Hsu would then use the telephone conversations to tell his victims he had a father whose medical condition required constant sex to stay alive, sweet-talking them into doing what was necessary to save him, it said.

The women would then meet up with the "father", also Hsu, waiting for them at various hotels in Taipei, according to the report.

One of his victims eventually became suspicious after several attempts to see the handsome "son" were unsuccessful, and after she uncovered the truth with the help of private investigators, police became involved, the paper said.

Super Mario Bros. beat up cab driver.

This is why I ride Yoshi instead of taxis. From the NY Daily News:

The cabbie beat up by thugs dressed as Super Mario Brothers spoke out about his ordeal Sunday and demanded tougher laws against assaults on taxi drivers.

"I was really scared....At the time, I really think I'm going to die," said Ndiaye Serigne, 48, of Harlem, who was robbed and pummeled by four men dressed as Mario, Luigi and other characters at a gas station.

"We want more protection."

Serigne said he picked up the group in Gramercy around 3:30 a.m. on Halloween night. Trouble started soon after he crossed the Verrazano Bridge.

"Now it's a free ride," one passenger said as he reached over and turned off Serigne's meter. Then he reached into the cabbie's pocket and grabbed $210.

Coozer-Bits.

Some items from last week. (My wrist is almost better, by the way!)

Duh: Britons are the ugliest people in the world.

WTF: Judge orders church to stop feeding homeless.

WTF: Customs seizes rabbit poop cigarettes.

Sad: Baby dies while doctor plays online game.

Awesome: Metrosexuals banned to curb violence.

Hot Cha Cha: Spain offers masturbation class for high schoolers.

Duh: 2009 was very unlucky.

Games: Video game Modern Warfare 2 has biggest opening of any kind of entertainment.