Lest you be focusing just on the bigger stories in the financial press, such as Disney (NYSE:DIS) feuding withPixar (NASDAQ:PIXR) or CircuitCity's (NYSE:CC) battle againstBest Buy (NYSE:BBY), here's a brief recap of some recent and weird financial news:
- Liberace might be turning in his grave. Clever people at the Swedish packaging company SCA have built some grand pianos out of cardboard. They apparently sound "almost" like the real thing, but cost lots less. They feature integrated circuits that are pressed onto paper and send signals to external speakers.
- In other Scandinavian news, a Danish information technology company is offering an unusual perk to its employees. To keep them "relaxed" and "efficient," LL Media is offering its workers free subscriptions to online pornography. The catch? It's only effective during non-working hours. It's enough to make one wonder whether Playboy Enterprises (NYSE:PLA) should offer its staff subscriptions to The Economist. (Read about Playboy's recent hot quarter.)
- Stakeholders in CBRL Group's (NASDAQ:CBRL) Cracker Barrel restaurant chain can breathe easier. A mother and son who were trying to get some money out of the company in compensation for a mouse allegedly found in a soup were apparently up to no good. The pair has been charged with attempted extortion and conspiracy to commit a felony.
- A German inventor may have made many women happy with his "WC Ghost" invention. It's a device connected to a toilet that speaks when the seat is raised, saying things like "Hello. What are you up to then? Put the seat back down right away." Let's check at Home Depot (NYSE:HD) or Lowe's (NYSE:LOW) soon to see if American Standard (NYSE:ASD) toilets start sporting the Ghost or something like it.
- It's no secret what British cable channel UKTV thinks of reality TV programs. It recently announced one of its own -- a live, round-the-clock webcast called "Watching Paint Dry," which will be just that, for eight weeks. The station noted, "We guarantee that Watching Paint Dry will be at least as interesting as the other reality shows."
- Italian legislators are in the process of mandating what can and can't be called a Neapolitan pizza -- by regulating the diameter, height, and contents of such pizzas. The draft of the law takes up three pages, eight articles, and six sub-clauses. Mama mia.
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Longtime Fool contributor Selena Maranjian does not own shares of any companies mentioned in this article.
