Good week, Bad week

Good week for:

King Juan Carlos of Spain, whose putdown of bombastic Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at a recent summit of Latin leaders—“Why don’t you shut up?”—has instantly become the most popular ring tone in Spain. About 500,000 people downloaded the king’s insult in one week.

Barbecue, after a French chef set a world record by roasting a 1,213-pound camel in Morocco. In re-creating an ancient local tradition, Christian Falco used three tons of wood to slowly spit-cook the intact dromedary, upon which 500 Moroccans happily feasted.

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The Matrix, after Dutch police charged a teenager with stealing $5,000 worth of virtual furniture from a virtual hotel in an online game. The teen allegedly hacked into the accounts of other players in the Habbo Hotel game, took virtual furniture they had paid for in real currency, and put it into his own virtual hotel room.

Bad week for:

Squirrels, after two of them crawled into separate municipal power transformers in Wisconsin and Michigan, got zapped, and knocked out electric service to two communities. Power was quickly restored by crews, which found two extremely crispy critters inside the transformers.

Shoplifters with poor depth perception, after police in Derby­shire, England, installed 10 life-size, cardboard cutouts of policewomen in shops to deter thieves.

Hubris, after a Manhattan restaurant that introduced a gold-laced, $25,000 dessert as a publicity stunt last week was shut down when health inspectors found the kitchen infested with live mice, flies, and dozens of cockroaches. A red-faced Steven Bruce, owner of Serendipity 3, said, “We’re rectifying it as quickly as we can.”