Memorial Day

While you're barbecuing and enjoying a beer (or six) today, stop and take some time to remember the brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us safe and free.

Since it's Friday night...

...and none of us (I'm assuming from my own experience) will enjoy the company of a sexy lady tonight, here's a picture of Angie Harmon in her, um, natural state...

Please, please, PLEASE let her need to scratch something!

Something's amiss in Santa's Village

Get ready for your kids receiving a bunch of voodoo dolls as stocking stuffers on Christmas morning, because it looks like the elves have turned to the dark side:

Alaska State Troopers are puzzled by a gruesome discovery in the city of North Pole: 26 headless chickens carefully arranged at a coop.

Police say the fly-infested carcasses found Monday were arranged in a 12- to 15-foot-long line pattern that ended in a circle. There was no sign of the missing heads.

Of course the heads are missing. The head priest needs the heads for some sort of ritual necklace. Or so I've been told by black and white movies starring Abbott & Costello.

Actually, "Abbott & Costello Meet the Voodoo Elves" would be a pretty awesome movie, if they made it today. Back then, the special effects would have totally sucked. Plus, Luke Wilson would play Bud Abbott and Kevin James would play Lou Costello!

Oh, God, the modern world is fucking awful.

The best laid plans

I don't know a hell of a lot about robbing banks, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the way you're supposed to go about it:

Would-be robbers in Germany had to flee empty handed after blowing up everything in a bank except for where the money was, police said on Wednesday.

[...]

"The explosion was so big, they had to run away without the money," said local police spokesman Niels Borgmann. "Something evidently didn't work the way the robbers wanted it to."

I'm pretty sure it doesn't currently exist, but once someone establishes the World Understatement Championship, I'm nominating that guy.

Steal Fresh

I can never get my sammiches to taste quite like Subway's (or any other chain, for that matter) when I make them at home, but I don't think this is the best solution to that problem:

Des Moines police said the burglars, who struck late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, took 6 pounds of ham, 4 pounds of turkey, 8 pounds of roast beef, 10 pounds of cold cuts, 12 pounds of cheese, a case of beverages, 96 cookies and four to six loaves of bread, the Des Moines Register reported Tuesday.

Seeing as how Jared probably has a free pass to get whatever sammich he wants at any Subway around the world, I'm guessing he's not a suspect.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Isn't it odd how in the nineteenth century, we could look at this guy and his beard and think, "presidential material," and now we look at him and say, "hey, those guys with huge beards weren't presidential material"?

I mean, beard fashion and/or beard political viability has really changed since The Reconstruction.

Since it's Friday night...

...and everyone enjoys product placement, here's a photo of Kate Beckinsale holding a Diet Coke:

Enjoy!

On a mission from God

Any number of people have noted that ancient prophets from various religions would be treated as nutjobs in this day and age for claiming they'd talked to God. While I'm no theology expert or anything, I'm gonna place this guy in the nutjob catecory:

Thibodaux police responded to an obscenity complaint around 2 a.m. Thursday and found Shafiq Mohamed walking nude down the street. When approached, Mohamed reportedly told officers that "America raped him" and added God told him to walk the streets naked to save his soul.

Again, not a theology expert (or even a particularly religious person), but a bunch of paintings with strategically-placed fig leaves that I've seen over the years suggest that he might have been mistaken.

As someone who's made cold calls...

...I can attest to the veracity of this study:

The prospect of making cold calls for a week as a salesperson is more unappealing than giving up sex for a month, a survey showed this week.

Also, as someone who has no possible chance whatsoever of having sex this month—um...I think I've said too much.

Judicial restraint

I'm a smoker, so I may be biased here, but I think this is good news in terms of property rights:

Judge Rosie Allred ruled in favor of Linda Garcia, who was sued by neighbors Jesus and Pat Martinez for smoking cigarettes in her own backyard, KOAT-TV, Albuquerque, reported Tuesday.

"After hearing the facts, she said what Ms. Garcia was doing on her own property was not unreasonable," Stephen Lane, Garcia's attorney, said of the judge.

As far as I know, it's legal to smoke on your own property in all 50 states, not just New Mexico. Oh, and if you don't happen to be a smoker but you enjoy something like, say, grilling with charcoal in your backyard, who's to say that one of your neighbors won't object to that someday?

Since it's Friday night...

...and you'd like to glimpse a beautiful woman even more than I'd like to avoid looking for something that I could make a dumb joke about, here's CSI's hottest lab tech, Liz Vassey:

She Blinded Me With Science. (Yeah, you heard me. That's what caused me to go blind.)

How's that working out?

Looks like you've still got some work ahead of you, comrade:

President Dmitry Medvedev, halfway through his four-year term, has pledged to fight Russia's all-pervasive graft and build a law-abiding state, where everyone observes the rules rather than looking for ways around them.

But findings by the Levada Center showed that Russians still pay bribes to obtain better medical services, prefer to "buy" their driving licenses, bribe police when caught violating traffic rules, or pay to ensure that their child can dodge the draft or get a place at the right school.

Of course, people all over the world do things like that, and have done so since the dawn of time (or at least since the dawn of the time when people realized that things someone else values could be traded to expedite favorable cave paintings), but this is a little disturbing:

Watchdog Transparency International last November rated Russia, a G8 country, joint 146th out of 180 nations in its Corruption Perception Index, along with Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, and five other developing nations.

Um, I'm not an expert in international relations or foreign policy or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure that when a major world power with a bunch of nuclear weapons ranks near Zimbabwe on just about any list, that's somewhat problematic.

Liquid courage

In any other situation, I might think that this was a waste of beer:

Sheriff's officials say the would-be robber brandished a gun at the clerk Saturday night at Mr. Fuel and demanded money, then pointed the weapon at several store customers. One customer walked to the rear of the store, got two beer bottles and struck the suspect in the back of the head.

The customer struggled with the gunman, who in turn shot him several times. The customer didn't suffer life-threatening injuries.

The article doesn't mention whether or not the guy was charged for the beers, but I would hope not.

Well, his mustache was (literally) pretty square

When you think of past world leaders who people would rank as "cool," who would rank last? (And, I mean other than Jimmy Carter.)

British ambulance workers say they were given a leadership survey that asked them to rate the "coolness" of German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Hitler's name was included among a list of people workers for the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority were asked to rate on a scale of one to five, The Times of London reported Tuesday.

They were also asked if being gay, funny or black made a leader cool.

I've never read anything which suggested that Hitler had much of a sense of humor, but were he to take the survey himself, gay and/or black wouldn't be things he thought were "cool" in a leader.

Also low on Hitler's list of "cool" traits would be Jewish, Russian, or bearing the surname "Churchill."

Oh, and by the way, this was part of a process to help the organization come up with a new "leadership strategy." I'm hoping that they weren't looking for a response from their employees that was favorable on the Hitler question. Because ambulance services really shouldn't have anything to do with genocide.

Friends don't let friends do any of this shit

This isn't funny when it happens to you. But when it happens to someone else and they get punished for it? Comedy gold...

A Colorado man who claimed he was trying to defend himself from a mugger when he shot himself in the groin has been convicted of illegal discharge of a firearm. Investigators said there was no evidence to substantiate David Leroy Blurton's self-defense claim and jurors convicted the 50-year-old on Wednesday. The shooting happened at the parking lot of a grocery store in Dillon, Colo., on May 2009.

Wait for it...wait for it...

Prosecutors say Blurton had been drinking.

But of course he had. I'm just surprised that there was no crystal meth involved.

Since it's Friday night...

...and I can't be bothered to even make a joke about why I'm not making a joke here, a picture of Ashley Judd is featured here...

Even if she doesn't actually look exactly like that when she wakes up, DAAAAAMN!!!

How to lose friends and influence tourists to go elsewhere

Oh, this is just brilliant:

Japanese visitors to children's author Beatrix Potter's English cabin are being asked for $7 donations to preserve the National Park.

Tourism officials with northwest England's Lake District National Park said Japanese tourists are being singled out by the scheme, set to begin next week, because they travel to the "Peter Rabbit" author's cabin in the thousands, The Times of London reported Thursday.

So, let me get this straight...Japanese people make up the bulk of your visitors, so instead of asking everyone to pay a few bucks to conserve the site, you single them out, asking them to pay for (let me stress this again) everyone who visits. Way to make your most frequent visitors feel welcome.

Smart.

If I didn't know any better...

...I would have sworn that these people had been running Britain since Thatcher left office:

If David Cameron is to become the next prime minister, his first act will be to shake the hand of the self-confessed biggest loony in the country.

The Conservative party leader is certain to retain his seat in parliament representing Witney, a picturesque market town in the Oxfordshire countryside.

But lining up against him is Alan "Howling Laud" Hope, the leader of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, which has a 47-year tradition of fighting British elections from a standpoint of stupidity.

You might not know it, but there's actually been an American branch of this party for years. The only difference is that they call themselves "Libertarians."

(I keed. I keed because I love.)

Driving while stupid

Well, the good news is that nobody died.

Oh, and also, an idiot got arrested. There's that, too.

The house at poo corner

A couple in the UK has decided to renovate a public restroom and turn it into their home:

"Some people joke about it. At work they'll say things like, 'Oh yes, you're the couple who live in a lavatory,'" [Tracy] Woodhouse said. "But we now have a lovely little house with a sea view that used to be a loo. We understand the amusement it causes. It tickles us, too."

Um, you might want to see a doctor about that tickling sensation, seeing as how you live in a former public toilet.