Bad marketing: don’t use a horse to advertise a butcher shop

by Sean McLachlan on


I spotted this butcher shop sign near my new home in Santander in northern Spain. What’s wrong with this picture? Yeah, the “Equine butcher shop” is using a horse to advertise its product!

Now I’m going to give this hardworking small business owner the benefit of the doubt and assume horse was never sold at his shop. I can’t say for sure, though, since the place went out of business before I arrived. I wonder why?

Want to see more embarrassing adverts? Check out this Facebook page dedicated to bad marketing.

I’m curious, has anyone out there actually eaten horse? What does it taste like?

Junkie steals 100-year-old morphine, doesn’t get high

by Sean McLachlan on


There’s nobody quite as determined or stupid as a junkie.

Maybe it’s hard to buy a hit on the streets of Cashmere, Washington, or maybe this particular junkie was short of cash. In any case, someone with a craving for drugs broke into the Cashmere Historic Museum and Pioneer Village and made off with a bottle of morphine pills dating back to World War One.

A doctor interviewed by the Wenatchee World newspaper said that the century-old pills would have long since lost their potency and wouldn’t have any effect at all, good or bad.

The intruder left a trail of destruction in his or her wake, as junkies usually do. Museum officials found a broken fence, a broken door, and a trashed display case. The case was a rare original from a period doctor’s office dating to 1890. Volunteers are now cleaning up the office so they can reopen it to the public.

This isn’t the first time the museum has been broken into. Its historic saloon has been burgled a couple of times by drunks looking for booze. There’s no alcohol in the saloon, and the folks at the Cashmere Historic Museum and Pioneer Village may want to rethink having real medication on display in their doctor’s office, even if it hasn’t been able to get anyone high since Burroughs was in short pants.

[Morphine cure ad c.1900 courtesy Mike Cline via Wikimedia Commons]

Video of the Day: Walking in Brooklyn

by Grant Martin on

I miss Brooklyn every day, though I never lived there for more than two nights at a time. Today’s video from Ken Ardito is a walk through DUMBO, the swatch of Brooklyn right under the Manhattan Bridge where the architecture is grand, the lofts more spacious and the grocery stores unparalleled. Though I was only there three weeks ago, it fills my heart with longing.

Drunk Australian rides crocodile and lives to tell the tale

by Sean McLachlan on

There must be a patron saint of idiots, because it’s a miracle this guy is still alive.

Michael Williams, 36, got so plastered in a pub in Broome, Western Australia, the night before last that the barman kicked him out. Not having anything else to do, he broke into Broome Crocodile Park to visit Fatso, an 18 ft. saltwater crocodile. Williams climbed the fence and tried to ride the crocodile by sitting on its back. Fatso took exception to this and bit off a chunk of the guy’s leg.

Amazingly, the crocodile let him go. Park owner malcolm Douglas, a documentary filmmaker and crocodile hunter, says that recent cold nights had made Fatso sluggish, otherwise Williams would have become a midnight snack. Williams was able to get back over the fence and go back to the pub. Instead of kicking him out again, at which point he would have probably gone off and done something equally stupid, pub owners called emergency services. He’s now recovering in the hospital.

So the lesson for today is–booze and crocs don’t mix!


Photo courtesy Tourism NT.

The “2009 dumbest moments in travel” – from the Travel Insights 100

by Scott Carmichael on

Travel Insights 100 2009 Dumb Travel Moments

In 2009, the travel industry provided us with plenty to complain about. From new fees to late night TSA subpoenas to bloggers, there never seems to be a limit to the dumb things they manage to come up with. The Travel Insights 100 asked its members to submit their own favorite dumb travel moment.

Several Gadling bloggers are part of the group of 100, and my own dumbest moment is included in the presentation. I picked fees, and the way fees are introduced. Fees beat out anything else the airlines did in my opinion, because it is the one thing that is going to keep annoying us for years to come.

Fees also annoy me because of their copycat status. For some reason, when one airline adds a new fee, others seem to follow within hours. Dumbest fee’s of 2009? The “peak travel” surcharge added to tickets on holidays, and the British Airways seat selection fee.