A Masked Wrestler Wins the Right to Govern Masked

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In Kawanishi, Japan, the city council has voted on whether its newest member may attend meetings in a wrestling mask. He may.

The Mainichi reports that Billyken Kid, fifty-two, wrestles for Osaka Pro Wrestling and was elected in October. He campaigned in the mask the entire time and got more votes than any other candidate. The council's rules say nothing about masks, because nobody writing them saw this coming.

Four of the council's five groups voted yes, reasoning that voters picked a man in a mask and should get one. The group opposed pointed out that he's appeared both masked and unmasked in the past, and said a public official needs to present himself consistently. He agrees. That's what the mask is for.

His identity gets verified before he enters the chamber, so somebody at city hall knows. Billyken said, "My dream has come true." He'll take the mask off for memorial services.

On Saturday in Detroit, a city bus pulled over on Seven Mile, lowered the wheelchair ramp, and two saddled horses got on. CBS Detroit reports that a passing driver, Ellessia Drew, filmed it. The horses balked at first, then boarded, walked through the bus, and left by the rear doors a few seconds later. They didn't go anywhere. They just wanted to see it.

CBS checked the video's metadata to confirm it isn't AI, which is now a step in reporting on horses. The transit department called the incident "not consistent with DDOT policy," and added that service animals have to sit on the floor or in the passenger's lap. Nobody has said whether these were service horses. The lap was never going to work.

In Christchurch, New Zealand, a conference for people who have left cults was held at the Town Hall. RNZ reports that downstairs, at the same time, was a convention of the Revival Centres, a strict Pentecostal church that some former members describe as a doomsday cult. The church rejects that description.

The conference organizers learned who their neighbors were sixteen hours before opening. On the church's livestream, a song leader announced, "Apparently we've had a few complaints upstairs with the noise, let's just ratchet it up a bit more." A pastor from Dunedin summed up the weekend: "We weren't concerned by them, they were concerned by us." The venue's chief executive apologized, saying, "That's on us." In future, the Town Hall plans to share more about who else has booked the building.

The new Godzilla movie had the biggest opening day ever for a live-action film in Japan. SoraNews24 reports that audiences have one complaint, and it's about each other. People keep getting up to use the restroom. One viewer said the same people went in and out six or seven times. The movie is two hours and fifteen minutes. One theory is that a franchise from the nineteen fifties brings in an older crowd. A commenter heard it called "Godzilla vs King Ghidorah vs The Urge to Pee." Another, who held it to the end, said it finally "came out like a blast of atomic breath."

And the two cattle loose in Marshfield, Massachusetts, are home. UPI reports it took the sheriff's department, a thermal imaging drone, a police perimeter and a tranquilizer rifle. Five days. Two cows.

Over on AskReddit, someone posed a question. Santa leaves you a gaming PC made of warm, breathing flesh. It runs a thousand times faster than anything on the market, but it eats one live rat a month. How do you react?

The top answer: "I would take it for walks and teach it tricks."

Almost nobody said no. One person reasoned that a live rat a month is just a pet snake, and a pet snake that's also a gaming PC would be worth big money. Another noted that if it runs on rats instead of electricity, it might be cheaper than a normal computer.

The concerns were practical. Does it poop? "Do I have to shave it?" One commenter said it depends how the thing reacts when you plug in the cables: "If it likes it too much I'm out." Someone planned to feed it two rats, just to see. And a commenter in Alberta asked if ten mice would do, because you can't buy live rats in Alberta.

Another thread asked IT workers for the most ridiculous thing they've had to fix.

One drove forty-five minutes across town because the mayor's printer wouldn't connect. The mayor used to work in IT, so it couldn't be the cable. It was the cable. The technician pushed it in, the printer started up, and the mayor said, "Tell them it was something really complicated and it took hours to fix. Bill it to me."

One user swore he rebooted constantly. Asked to demonstrate, he turned his monitor off and on. He had no idea there was a tower under his desk. Another complained his monitor was blurry. The monitor was fine. That's how he found out he needed glasses.

During a fire alarm, someone ran out of the building carrying only their monitor. And one user submitted a ticket asking for help peeling an orange.

Alright guys, That’s all I have for you today. Have a great day. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow!