I bought a cake mix because I didn’t want to spend my whole day in the kitchen. My big mistake however, was when I decided on baking cupcakes instead of the usual cake. Cupcakes are really fantastic! Most reason people tend to like them more? I’ve witnessed this weird phenomenon a couple of times. With my husband’s birthday I used the same cake mix, and baked cupcakes until I ran out of time, and then used the left over batter to bake a cake. At the birthday party the cupcakes were finished before anyone had even touched the cake, and people were rather reluctant to try the cake.

The problem with cupcakes is that they take you about ten times longer to bake. I only have ONE muffin tray, and ONE oven rack… And since the batter made SEVENTY cupcakes I had to go through the baking process six times, where a cake would’ve been done in one round. Now I’m not sure I’ll be baking cupcakes anytime soon – regardless of whether my guests prefer them. I suddenly have much more respect for people who buy cupcakes instead.
Anyway, what I was actually getting at. The reason why I stayed indoors on my birthday wasn’t merely the weather. I picked up a bad case of flu somewhere between Pick ‘n Pay and home, and I’ve been battling to get rid of it. At first I thought I could manage to scare it away with some Vitamin C and pain killers, but when my voice started sounding like that of a goose, I decided to give up and visit the doctor.

I got a whole paper bag full of medicine, which – wonder above wonder – seems to be working. I got antibiotics, which I usually HATE, because even though they relieve the problem at hand, they seem to break another hundred things. My voice is still not 100%… I try to sing along to songs on the radio, and I sound like a bad mix between Bonnie Tyler and Jimmy Hendrix. Good news is that my throat is not as sore anymore, and I don’t cough too much anymore. Also, I’ve been shunned to a life indoors, and I’m not even allowed to stick my head out the door after four in the afternoon (which is probably not a bad thing, since that’s when the icy cold settles over Pretoria).
For now, I am resting since the doc booked me off till tomorrow, plus my meds make me extremely drowsy. I’m sipping my hot chocolate while sitting in bed, and enjoying the warmth of my bean bag by my feet… Reading when I’m not sleeping, and sometimes finding myself drooling on my magazines from pure exhaustion

While some think the bony limbs may be a mutation of some kind — or even a Siamese twin growing inside the cat — others speculate it’s a genetic change perhaps caused by chemicals ingested by the kitty’s mother while she was pregnant.

Source: msnbc

In the meantime, if you’re as bored with the old SIMS as me, here are some ways to kill your SIMS…

Electrocution.  Really too random to be an effective murder tool. If a Sim with no Mechanical points attempts to repair an appliance, the result is almost always fatal. There is also a 1% chance of electrocution while changing a light bulb, regardless of Mechanical skill. This death can only affect family members, not neighbors or most NPC’s. Sims can also be electrocuted if they attempt to use an electric appliance while they are standing in water. This CAN kill neighbors and NPC’s.

Guinea Pig Disease.  Again, another death that’s fairly random. If you don’t take proper care of the guinea pig, it may bite and infect your Sim with the dreaded Guinea Pig Disease. Unless steps are taken, the Sim will die from it. The disease apparently does not affect neighbors or NPC’s. The disease starts as mild cold, with minor coughing and the occasional sneeze, gradually progressing to a major illness, and eventually death. See below for cures, if you want to save your Sims for some weird reason.

Woodworkers Disease.  One of the rarest deaths, continuously operating the woodworking table in a room with no windows may result in a Sim becoming ill. Cures are probably similar to those for the Guinea Pig Disease. This disease probably does not affect neighbors or NPC’s.

Spontaneous Combustion. The most extremely rare form of Sim death. I’ve only heard of this one, and never seen it. There is no known cause. The Sim just randomly bursts into flames. It is unknown if neighbors or NPC’s can suffer from this.

Slurm Overdose.  The Slurm Vending Machine (It’s highly addictive!) is a download available on the Internet, it does not come with the Sims. It’s a fairly cheap vending machine, a mere $100. However, if your Sim drinks too much Slurm, he/she will double over in pain, collapse, and die. This may affect neighbors, but probably will not affect NPC’s.

Starve them. Remove all fridges, phones, anything that’s a way of getting your Sim fed. Removing the phone is important, because otherwise your Sims will keep calling for pizza (or Chinese after you have University). Your Sim will whine, cry, and yell at you for not feeding them, but ignore it. After they whine and cry for awhile, they’ll curl up into a ball and die.

Death via broken elevator.
This one took me a while to discover, as I hadn’t really made use of the extra building tools that came with the Open For Business expansion pack. The advent of elevators, however, has ‘opened new doors’ in the death arena. If you’ve got no handy mechanical Sims in your house (and are too cheap to hire a repairman), a poorly repaired elevator can send your Sim plummeting to his or her death in a quick trip to the bottom floor. Just like a bad soap opera.

Fire – rocket. You know those really cool outdoor rockets you can buy? Ever set one up inside? With lots of carpets surrounding it? And your Sim in the middle?

Burn them. Get a Sim that is bad at cooking. Buy the cheapest stove - or even better, a microwave. Cook a big dinner. Then let it burn away. For maximum effect, fill the room with wooden furniture and plants, and delete the door. Remember to remove any fire alarms, as this will automatically call the fire brigade. If all of your Sims are good cooks, buy the decoration that shoots fire. You can find it in Decorative/Misc. Simply place it adjacent to any item in the room, including your Sim.
Buy a fireplace and a heart-shaped rug. Place the rug in front of the fireplace and light a fire. Before long, the rug will catch fire. You can also buy a rug made of flowers, found in the Decorative/Misc. section

Fire Storm.  The absolute most spectacular way to commit mass-murder. Simply place rugs through a room, so that the rugs overlap each other. Leave one square uncovered. Then place the model rocket launcher in the room. When someone launches a rocket, it will land in that one empty square and the entire room will ignite at once. The number of flames appearing could potentially crash a slower computer, so try not to make the fire too big. Because you can easily kill a dozen or more Sims at once, it may take the Grim Reaper several minutes to collect all the dead. This will kill anything in the room, including neighbors and NPC’s.

Drown them. Get a pool with no ladder, just a diving board. Make your Sim jump into it. They will soon drown. Or, if you have Seasons, tell them to jump into the pool; you won’t need a diving board. A relative can’t plead with the grim reaper because they can’t access the death site, so the drowned Sim has no opportunity to be revived.

Do a double whammy. Create a family of about 8 Sims and just put them on a lot. No house, nothing else and just hit that fast-forward key until the grim reaper shows up. Once everyone’s dead, exit, but do not bulldoze the lot. Place another family on the lot (feel free to build a house this time if you like). Do this often enough and you will have a lot full of urns and tombstones in no time.

Watch clouds/stargaze without a telescope. If you wait long enough, a satellite will fall down and crush your Sim.

Make them talk on the phone a long time. Each time they use the phone (not the cell phone that comes with University) there is a small chance the phone will burst into flames. This only works if they are cooking in a different room.

Scare your sim to death. After you’ve killed all of the other Sims, their ghosts may very well scare the living daylights out of your survivors.

Allow your Sim to be eaten alive by vicious bugs. Put your Sim in a narrow hallway filled with rotting food/dirty dishes. Stepping on a tile with rotten food carries a small chance that a swarm of flies will engulf your Sim.

Refuse to care for a sick Sim, and it will die from its own illness (unless that illness is morning sickness). Also, you can’t die from a cold, but colds turn into pneumonia, which can kill you.

Build a small room to trap them in (1X1 with no door should be fine). Enable the movement cheat (type “moveObjects on” exactly as it is seen here, minus the quotes, into the cheat box. The cheat box can be displayed by pressing Ctrl, Shift, and C at the same time) and, in Buy Mode or Build mode, use the Hand tool to drop your Sim into the room.

Bring up the cheat box and type “boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true”, and then hold down the shift button and click on the Sim you want to kill. Go through the menu until you see the spawn option. Click on it, then go to Rodneys death creator. A little tombstone will appear next to your Sim, click on it, and chose the way your Sim dies.

Get a Sim to use the most expensive telescope for a very long time. Every time he uses the telescope between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. there is a 5% chance he will be abducted by aliens. Rarely, the aliens do not return him. If it is an adult male, and he is returned, he will return pregnant with an alien baby.

Download the InSimenator. This program comes with many of the methods listed above, such as “Dying of Fright”, sickness, fire, satellite, so on and so forth. There is also an option to have your sim of old age. Find it here [1]. You must register for a free account first, however.

Laganaphyllis Simnovorii. Otherwise known as a ‘Cow Plant’, the Laganaphyllis Simnovorii dangles a piece of something that looks like cake from its mouth, luring your guests into its clutches and an early death. Your Sim, meanwhile, gets to enjoy another full five days of life from the resulting elixir. You couldn’t ask for a better pet really. The Laganaphyllis Simnovorii also makes up for having to wear nothing but fig leaves once you’ve reached the top of the Natural Science career path.  I thought nothing could beat the Cow Plant, until I remembered the dread…

Death Island.  Are those pesky visitors always annoying you? Then here’s an easy and fun way to get rid of them! Build your dream house and add a little something extra. A Swimming Pool Moat all the way round your house. On the side the side-walk is on, place a diving board. On the side your house is on, place a ladder. This means that your visitors come along, dive into your moat and climb up on the other side to ring your doorbell. But when they leave they climb into the moat but can’t get out as there is only a diving board there. Their only option is to return to Death Island, but instead they drown or die of hunger.

Source:  Health24

We made sure that our traveling passes were in order, and found out that we had to drink anti malaria medication. We watched the weather with a hawk’s eye, hoping that it will be clear enough to fly.

I’ve never been to another African country, so for me this was a huge event. Everything was all set for Saturday morning’s early rise. On Friday my friend phoned and let me know that she forgot to get the groom a belt, which I could luckily still buy, and also did.

Friday evening came, and as I started making my lists of all I had to pack, and do before going to bed something told me that I shouldn’t forget my passport. I knew the expiry date was still good, cause I checked it just two weeks earlier. As I opened the cupboard where all our legal docs are kept, I realized with a shock that everything was there except my passport. Needless to say I was in a frenzy, tipping anything and everything over to try and find it. I unpacked boxes with paint which I haven’t used in the past ten years, I turned the everything upside down and inside out. Twice. And nothing. I tried thinking. Still nothing. I had looked absolutely everywhere in this house, and I can guarantee that it is not here. Now. Firstly this meant that there’s no legal way for me to get over the border, which obviously meant that we missed the trip, and my friend’s weddings. And secondly it meant that our flight adventure was canceled.

The trip can still be retaken, but a wedding is a once off thing, and I am so sad and angry that I missed it. I still have no clue what happened to my passport. It pretty much vanished?! I guess someone had to have taken it. Just a pity that their timing sucked so badly.

Source: E-mail from a colleague, however, origin seems to be DispatchOnline

The Cucumber King of Burma

In 931, King Theinhko of Burma ate the cucumbers of a local villager without asking first. The angry farmer murdered Theinhko and then took over the throne as King Nyanng-u Sawrahan. The queen welcomed him, in an effort to prevent political unrest. Nyanng-u was forever after known as ‘The Cucumber King.’ He
reigned over Burma for 33 years until he was overthrown.

Nine Months of French Bastards

King Philip Augustus of France was married to his second wife, Ingeborg of Denmark, in 1193. Sadly, Augustus found Ingeborg to be absolutely revolting and filed for a divorce on the grounds that the marriage was not yet consummated. His wife, however, argued that they had consummated the marriage. As a result, Pope Celestine III refused to grant the king a divorce.

Philip was not easily defeated. He ignored the decision and went on to marry Agnes of Marania.

The pope ordered him to return to Ineborg and to make his point, he imposed an interdict on December 12, 1199. During this time, all churches were closed and the pope determined that as long as the king wasn’t sleeping with his wife, his subjects were not allowed to sleep with theirs. As a result, all children born in this period were deemed illegitimate. The interdict continued until September 7, 1200 –resulting in nine months of bastards born in France. Augustus eventually did return to Ineborg, but not until 1213.

A Dead Woman Crowned Queen

Ines de Castro was a loving mistress to Dom Pedro, heir of the Portuguese throne. Unfortunately, the current ruler, King Alfonso, was paranoid that the pair was plotting against him and ordered Ines to be assassinated in 1355.

When Pedro was crowned as king in 1357, his love for Ines had not yet faded. He sought revenge on the assassins and made them suffer through horrendous tortures. That wasn’t enough though, Pedro was still determined that Ines should take her seat beside him as queen. He had her body exhumed, dressed in proper royal attire and the entire candlelit coronation ceremony proceeded as usual. Ines’s body was anointed and crowned, the subjects were made to swear allegiance to her, and the nobles were required to kneel and kiss her cold, two-years-dead hand.

The Ghastly Death of Mary Queen of Scots

If you ever played Bloody Mary in the mirror as a youth, you know that it is quite a terrifying ghost story. While there are many proposed “Marys” that could be referenced in the story, Mary Queen of Scots has a terrifying ghost story thanks to her botched execution.

On February 8, 1587, Mary was led to the execution block. The executioner, likely drunk, failed to knock off her head on the first blow. Instead, he hit the back of her head, at which time, her servants reported that she muttered “Sweet Jesus.” He managed to remove her head on the second blow and he lifted her head up by the auburn hair on her head, right then, her head fell from his hands, revealing that she actually had short gray hair covered by thick wig. Also strange, her lips continued moving for the next fifteen minutes, likely caused by a nerve damaged during the first execution attempt.

As if all this wasn’t enough, Mary’s dog was discovered to be hiding under her skirts. When the pet was pulled out, it insisted on lying between the shoulders and decapitated head of her body. Eventually, Mary’s servants took the dog, but not until it was thoroughly soaked in its dead master’s blood.

Even for the people of the time, jaded from by frequent public executions, Mary’s beheading was full of exceptionally terrifying surprises.

A Strange ‘Divine Right’

Normally a king’s “divine rights” seem to include things like violating virgins and taking food and money, however, in 1627, Charles I decided to declare rights of a much different nature. He ordered all of his subjects to turn in their urine to official collectors once a day in the summer and once every other day in the winter. These collections were to help the country create saltpeter, a component of gunpowder. Charles also claimed rights to all soil loaded with animal waste. The so-called ‘Saltpeter Men’ were permitted to dig up the floors of stables, slaughterhouses and other areas without permission of the property owners.

Louis The XIV’s Enema Obsession

Imagine trying to hold a conversation with someone receiving an enema. Now imagine that someone was King and he was holding court throughout the experience. King Louis XIV was known for performing this type of activity regularly. The enema was a quite popular medical procedure at this time, but few people seemed to love the activity nearly as much as the king who is said to have received over 2,000 enemas throughout his lifetime – many of them in public.

The King of Debt

King Theodore of Corsica wasn’t much of a king. For one thing, he wasn’t nobility by birth, he was merely a soldier who asked to be king in exchange for helping aid the Corsicans in a revolt. When the revolt had proven to be ineffective and a the Genovese government put a price on his head, Theodore started to lose popularity amongst his people. He decided that he would be better off ruling overseas.

Unfortunately, once he left the country, he was never able to return to his kingdom. Eventually, he ended up in debtors prison in Amsterdam, and later, London. He was freed from Holland’s prison easy enough, but the only way he could earn release from the London jail was by giving Corsica to his creditors.

When he died in London in 1756, his epitaph read:

Theodore this moral learned ere dead:

Fate poured its lessons on his living head,

Bestowed a kingdom, and denied him bread.

After his death, an opera was made from his tale in 1784. Additionally, ‘King Theodore of Corsica’ started to be used as a nickname for gin, joining the ranks of ‘Cuckold’s Comfort’ as a slang for the drink.

Madness Doth Not A Kingdom Make

Nouvelle France was a South American territory also called the Kingdom of Araucanìa and Patagonia. The area’s first (and only) king, elected in 1860, was Orelie-Antoine de Tounens, a French lawyer. He supported the local people’s efforts to resist takeover by Chile and Argentina. The people of the area, called Mapuche, thought that Tounens may help aid their cause as he was a skilled European negotiator. He helped the locals draft a constitution and mint coins, but Chile largely ignored him. Tounens tried to convince France to come to his aid and after a short investigation, they determined him to be crazy.

He was arrested by the Chilean government within two years of becoming king. France managed to secure his release from prison by convincing his jailers that he was insane. After his release, he was deported back to France and Tounens then spent the rest of his life trying to take over his kingdom again. In 1869, he made it back to the country, but soon returned to France to gather more money. Tounens attempted to return two more times afterward, but both times he was
captured by Chilean authorities and deported. He eventually died in squalor in France in 1878.

His relatives periodically continued to claim their rightful place as ruler of the country, although the most recent heir has renounced the claim. Since the establishment of Nouvelle France, no sovereign state has ever recognized the territory as a legitimate country.

The Long-Lasting Legacy of Nobility

In 1888, Charles-Marie David de Mayrena elected himself Marie the First, King of the Sedang. Marie was an eccentric French adventurer and he arranged his kingdom to rule over a number of small tribes. King Marie declared the official religion of the country to be Roman Catholic although most of its residents were Muslims and he later adopted the Islamic faith himself. He awarded titles of nobility to his supporters during his two-year rule. He attempted to trade his kingdom to the French, English and Belgium governments in exchange for a trading monopoly, but he received little interest. When he tried to return to his kingdom though, the French prevented him from entering any port in Indochina. He died in 1890, and the details of this death remain a mystery –some sources claim it was by duel, others say it was poison and yet other reports argue he was bitten by a snake.

Over 100 years later, the Assembly for the Restoration of the Sedang Nobility was established in Montreal in 1995. This group consisted of descendants of those who bestowed with titles of nobility by King Marie. The organization claims it seeks to “re-establish and promote the social institutions of monarchy and nobility and practice their principles in a world which has largely forgotten them: chivalry, honor, duty, loyalty, respect, enlightenment, tolerance.” At the same time, they are glad to renounce their claims to the territory, admitting it is undisputedly part of Vietnam. Three years later, they changed their name to the Sedang Royalist Assembly. Although genealogists helped the group find an heir of King Marie, the descendant was uninterested in claiming his title. This organization is
still around and is headquartered in Montreal.

Technicalities Galore

What happens when your country’s official constitution and other historical documents fail to mention one small town? If that unmentioned village happens to be Seborga (flag shown above), you may end up with an “independent principality” smack dab in the middle of your country. The area, that should be part of Italy, declared its independence in 1967 and elected the head of the flower growing collective, Giorgio Carbone, to be the country’s head of state or “Giorgio I, Prince of Seborga.” Giorgio is officially addressed as “Your Tremendousness” by his followers.

Giorgio and other members of the village claim that Seborga was never incorporated into Italy. Although it was sold to the king of Savoy and Sardinia in 1729, the sale was not registered. On top of that, the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the 1861 Act of Unification and the constitution written in 1946 all fail to mention Seborga. Scholars have proven that regardless, the area is still part of Italy, but Seborgians defy this logic.

The principality mints its own currency, the luigino, currently valued at $6 - meaning if it were recognized as a legitimate legal tender, it would be the most valuable currency in the world. Regardless of the area’s claim to independence, most of the residents follow the laws of Italy, pay taxes and vote in national elections.

In 2006, a woman named Yasmine von Hohenstaufen Anjou Plantagenet, who claims to be heir to Roman Emperor Fredrick II and the rightful ruler of Seborga, tried to return the ‘country’ to Italy. The majority of villagers were notably upset and Prince Giorgio commented “The girl cannot give away something she does not own.”

Weirdness is not limited to the paupers, as we can clearly see, and it almost seems as though the royals have a strange right to be odd? If it this is any consolation to me, I’m probably not weird enough to be a royal!!