’Tis the season for giving

The buck stops here

There’s never an acceptable reason for stealing an ambulance, but there are some really interesting ones.

For instance, last month Leon Holliman stole an ambulance in Jacksonville, Fla., after breaking out of a psychiatric facility. Police eventually found the 37-year-old escapee driving the ambulance through North Carolina dressed like a doctor. But that’s not even the weird part.

When highway patrol examined the ambulance, they discovered that Holliman had stuffed a dead deer into the back of the vehicle. The six-point buck appeared to have been dead for some time.

When asked why he was transporting a dead deer in a stolen ambulance, Holliman told a North Carolina trooper that he planned to “feed [the deer] to his people.”

Help is on the way

Everyone has someone on their Christmas list who is impossible to shop for. Well, leave it to the annual Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog to make life easier.

This year the catalog features the M400 Skycar, the world’s first vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. The catalog says that the vehicle is “designed to elevate individual drivers above the headaches of commuting and the dangers of highway travel.” The Skycar can travel at 350 mph while running at an efficient 21 mpg. The catalog even claims that it is “as safe, affordable and easy to use as an automobile.”

That is until you read the fine print. Drivers must first pass International Traffic in Arms regulations as well as receive Federal Aviation Administration authorization before they can even operate the Skycar.

And as for affordable, the price tag for a shiny new Skycar is currently $3.5 million. But hey, at least you won’t have to worry about someone else buying your brother the same thing.

In a roundabout way

If you’ve got a young driver on your list, you owe it to yourself and your insurance premiums to check out the new Pivo from Nissan.

Perfect for the parking-challenged, the electric Pivo has an egg-shaped body that can pivot 360? while its wheels stay put.

Backing in and out of parking spots becomes a cinch because many of the Pivo’s moving parts, including the steering and wheels, are controlled electronically by wireless or electronic signals, not mechanical links between the cabin and the chassis.

Teens also will appreciate cameras on the outside of the Pivo that display blind-spot areas. That way even while merging, their attention can remain focused on the radio.

The gift of knowledge

When it came time to plan this year’s autumn road safety campaign, police in Japan wanted to try something fresh and exciting. So instead of hiring a celebrity spokesperson or coming up with a fancy ad campaign, they put a “traffic safety” sash on a toy poodle and had it walk on its hind legs across a street.

Surprisingly, the campaign worked. Passersby were so impressed by the poodle that they actually called police afterward and said that the dog had given them renewed recognition of the importance of road safety.

The police were so pleased with the dog’s work (or completely unacquainted with the concept of sarcasm), they called the poodle back in to receive a special honor. His owner was given a certificate of appreciation and the dog received a handful of treats, but not before being personally thanked by the station head.

Give peace a chance

For the royalty in your family, the best Christmas gift may just be some peace and quiet. For them, there’s the new Desert Challenger motor home from Action Mobil. The 40-ft-long Challenger comes complete with a state-of-the-art kitchen, a high-tech outdoor surveillance system and a ridiculously large and inefficient engine—everything you need to feel like a genuine dignitary.

In fact, the Challenger guzzles so much gas (it gets a mere 5 mpg), the only one in existence is owned by an oil sheik who wanted to be able to travel through the desert for weeks at a time without needing any outside support.

Independence doesn’t come cheap, though. The sheik’s Challenger cost $1.75 million.

Now maybe you don’t live in the Middle East, but it’s like they say: one man’s trip to the desert is another man’s trip to his in-laws’.