Drunken Pumpkin

Here I’ve listed some of my favorites. The full list is available at money.cnn.com.

2. Northwest Airlines
In July, bankrupt Northwest Airlines begins laying off thousands of ground workers, but not before issuing some of them a handy guide, “101 Ways to Save Money.”

The advice includes dumpster diving (”Don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash”), making your own baby food, shredding old newspapers for use as cat litter, and taking walks in the woods as a low-cost dating alternative.

3. McDonald’s
In August, McDonald’s runs a promotional contest in Japan in which it gives away 10,000 Mickey D’s-branded MP3 players.

The gadgets come preloaded with 10 songs - and, in some cases, a version of the QQPass family of Trojan horse viruses, which, when uploaded to a PC, seeks to capture passwords, user names, and other data and then forward them to hackers.

4. General Motors
As part of a cross promotion with the NBC TV show The Apprentice, GM launches a contest to promote its Chevy Tahoe SUV. At Chevyapprentice.com, viewers are given video and music clips with which to create their own 30-second commercials.

Among the new Tahoe ads that soon proliferate across the Web are ones with taglines like “Yesterday’s technology today” and “Global warming isn’t a pretty SUV ad - it’s a frightening reality.”

6. Steve Wynn
After striking a deal to sell Picasso’s “Le Reve” (”The Dream”) for a record $139 million, casino mogul Steve Wynn decides to show the masterwork to a group of visitors in his Las Vegas office.

As he gestures, Wynn hits the painting with his elbow, causing what’s later reported as “a distinct ripping sound.” Wynn cancels the sale and spends $85,000 to have the painting restored.

13. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Amid concern about overheating notebooks and exploding batteries, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in September issues a helpful tip on how to use a laptop:

“Do not use your computer on your lap.”

16. Rising Sun Anger Release Bar
“The idea of beating someone decorated as your boss seems very attractive.”

- Chinese salesman Chen Liang, on the newly opened Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing. Bar patrons are invited to rant, curse, smash drinking glasses, and even beat workers equipped with protective gear and dressed as the target of their wrath.

25. BBC
In May the BBC invites IT expert Guy Kewney to its studios for an interview about Apple’s iTunes Music Store. But when the cameras start rolling, BBC correspondent Karen Bowerman finds herself talking to the wrong Guy - namely, Guy Goma, a computer technician who was waiting in the lobby for a job interview.

Goma gamely tries his best, telling viewers that “if you can go everywhere, you’re gonna see a lot of people downloading to the Internet and the website and everything they want.”

The job interview, alas, does not go as well: Goma fails to land the gig.

42. MBA candidates
“You have business students saying, ‘All I’m doing is emulating the behavior I’ll need when I get out in the real world.’”

– Rutgers University professor Donald McCabe, lead author of a study that found MBA candidates the most likely to cheat among North American graduate students. Fifty-six percent admitted to copying others’ work, plagiarizing, or sneaking notes into exams.

45. Cryonics pioneers
The bodies of Raymond and Monique Martinot, pioneers of the cryonics movement — which seeks to freeze the newly dead in the hopes that future scientists will be able to revive them — thaw after a freezer malfunction.

Son Rémy has them cremated.

49. EnBW - German utility
German utility EnBW admits that its employees lost the keys to the most highly secure areas of its nuclear plant in Philippsburg.

After months of fruitless searching, the company announces plans to change the locks.

61. Microsoft
In June, research firm VisitorVille Intelligence reveals that two out of every three Microsoft employees it tracked use Google, not MSN, when conducting searches on the Internet.

64. Powys County Council in Wales
“The name was not sufficiently precise to inform a purchaser of the true nature of the food.”

– From a letter sent by the Powys County Council in Wales, threatening legal action against Black Mountains Smokery, maker of Welsh Dragon Sausages.

The manufacturer is ordered to change the name of its product, since it does not, in fact, contain dragon meat.

72. Amazon.com
On the morning of April 3, Amazon.com sends an e-mail headed “UCLA Wins!” to virtually everyone to whom it has ever sold a sports-related item, attempting to hawk a cap celebrating the Bruins’ stirring victory in college basketball’s championship game.

Just one problem:

The game isn’t scheduled to be played until later that night. When it is, UCLA is trounced by Florida, 73-57.

77. Bank of America
After Bank of America announces plans to outsource 100 tech support jobs from the San Francisco Bay Area to India, the American workers are told that they must train their own replacements in order to receive their severance payments.

78. McCain Foods
A McCain Foods french fry factory in Scarborough, England, is evacuated on two consecutive days after explosives from World War I and II battlefields turn up in separate shipments of potatoes imported from Belgium and France

82. Online-video fans
Besieged by online-video fans who confuse its Utube.com Web site with YouTube, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment sues YouTube in August after getting 68 million hits on its Web site, which ends up crashing, making it unavailable to customers seeking to buy its tubes and pipes.

99. Tesco
“Unleash the sex kitten inside … soon you’ll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars.”

- From a product listing by $75 billion British retailer Tesco, plugging the $100 Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit - which includes an 8.5-foot chrome pole, a “sexy dance garter,” and play money for stuffing into said garter - in the Toys & Games section of its website.

After complaints from parent groups, Tesco decides to keep selling the item as a “fitness accessory” but agrees to remove the listing from the toy section.