Old people are Japan’s missing resource

Japan is unable to determine the whereabouts of 105 centenarians living in Kobe, including their oldest woman at the age of 125. Whoopsidoodle. An additional 22 geezers over the age of 100 have not used medical and nursing care insurance intended for those over the age of 75.

If this wasn’t bad enough, these are just the findings of Kobe, located in Hyogo Prefecture. There are still 88 more coffin-dodgers in 20 prefectures who are unaccounted for. The municipal goverments have been aware of these missing centenarians after home visits in the past, but did not include their absence in reports to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

Kobe officials plan to visit the residences of its 105 missing centenarians and the 22 who aren’t using their insurance to verify what the hell is going on with them. They note that Japan’s oldest woman has an address listed that has been a park since 1981, which implies that maybe they bulldozed over her house when they fixed up the area as a park.

Congratulations Japan. You’ve got some of the oldest senior citizens in the world, and now it’s like some alien conspiracy zapped them all away. I mean, the worst that we usually do is misplace our sandals. But human beings? Wowie zowie.

Nerd’s mom shouldn’t have thrown out the bathwater with the models

A 29-year-old worker and avid Gundam collector, who was still living at home in Kobe with his mother (which, apparently, are not one and the same), set fire to his room, intending to kill himself when his mother threw out some of his Gundam models that he had built.

Of course, he realized that he didn’t want to die, and so he managed to escape from the house without any injuries, as did his mother, who is clearly and obviously a screaming banshee of a woman. The entirety of the house burned down, though, and the man was arrested for the arson. His words to describe his actions?

“Since my Mom threw out my plastic Gundams, I figured I may as well die.”

Oh, that’s just deliciously sad and pathetic. I wish I could have that emotion bottled up and placed into an aerosol spray bottle so that I could spread it on crackers.