Hats on to you!

I don't know whether this woman is a Democrat or a Republican, but in the interest of continuing to make congress look ridiculous (no matter which party is in power, that's a good thing) I hope she succeeds:

[Representative-elect Federica] Wilson, a Florida state legislator known for her collection of fancy hats, says she's trying to ask Speaker-apparent John Boehner to waive a House rule that bars members from wearing hats while the chamber is in session, The Miami Herald reported Monday.

"It's sexist," Wilson said of the rule. "It dates back to when men wore hats and we know that men don't wear hats indoors, but women wear hats indoors. Hats are what I wear."

She said people "get excited" when they see her hats.

She must be from a rather sleepy corner of the Sunshine State.

If you were wondering why I said that a reversal of the women's hat ban would make congress appear more ridiculous, well...

She managed to show off at least one hat in Washington when she arrived for orientation wearing a sequined black cowboy hat.

Yeah.

Booming headaches, booming business

Now, why the hell didn't I think of something like this?

Your head aches, you're hungry and your house is littered with sticky plastic cups. Who ya gonna call? Hangover Helpers.

Two University of Colorado graduates are marketing a new business by that name in Boulder, home of CU's main campus. They'll bring in breakfast burritos and Gatorade the morning after a party — and clean up the mess.

The Daily Camera in Boulder reports that Marc Simons started cleaning party houses about a year ago for extra cash and realized he'd found a niche, despite the bad economy.

Oh, right. It's probably because I'm much less of the driven entrepreneur-type than a member of their targeted client base.

Since it's Friday night...

...and that's as good a time as any for drinking and/or smoking, why not join Anne Hathaway for a bit of both?

The black and white, smoking, and her haughty look makes it artsy and European. This is what Europe is like, right?

Next time, go to the Better Business Bureau

I really don't know anything about patronizing hookers, but when a couple of them rip you off, I'm pretty sure that's not something you want to tell anybody about, least of all the cops:

Investigators said Ryan McNames, 19, of Columbia, told them he offered two women $60 if one would show him her chest and the other would perform oral sex on him, but they took his money and left after completing only the chest-showing portion of the agreement, the Columbia Daily Tribune reported Wednesday.

Police said McNames asked an officer to contact the women and get at least $40 of his money back. They said McNames admitted to knowing his actions were illegal.

I guess the verbal contract he had worked out with the hookers had a sliding price scale, where the flashing was twenty bucks and the beejay was forty. The article does not mention whether or not he was able to get his refund, but I'm guessing that no, he did not.

He did, however, bond out of jail for $500, so, money well spent, huh?

The bishop beats himself

Seeing as how I'm an American, I really don't pay much attention to the British (or any other, for that matter) royal family, I have no idea whether or not this guy's comments have any merit:

A Church of England bishop apologized on Monday for suggesting that the marriage of Prince William and his fiancée Kate Middleton would only last seven years and that the couple were "shallow celebrities."

Pete Broadbent, the Bishop of Willesden in northwest London, said he was sorry for his online comments about the couple, who announced their engagement last week, which were picked up and condemned by the British media over the weekend.

"I don't care about the Royals," the bishop wrote on the social networking website Facebook, saying he was a republican and that there were "more broken marriages and philanderers among these people than not."

Okay, remember what I said about not knowing whether or not the bishop in question knew what he was talking about? I mean, the royals may be a bunch of syphilitic, inbred dumbasses, but...

Even a Yank like me knows a little bit about the history of the C of E and how the head of the family he just insulted happens to be the boss of him.

That's probably not good for your job prospects.

Also, though I'm not a religious person, it doesn't strike me as a very Christian thing to do.

Plan for traffic

That was something that these kids and the adults driving them should have done, but wasn't something the other motorists in the area could have possibly done:

A dance troupe from Florida caused a rush-hour terror scare when they ditched their cars in the Lincoln Tunnel and tried to run to a TV appearance in Manhattan while wearing their camouflage costumes.

The dancers drove about 1,000 miles so they could appear Wednesday on BET's live "106 & Park" show. But they hit traffic at the tunnel, which connects New Jersey and New York City and is just two miles from the TV studio.

The five young women and three young men decided to sprint the rest of the way. They left their adult chaperones behind and ran through the toll plaza.

When a bunch of people in camouflage go sprinting through a tunnel and a toll plaza, that raises a few eyebrows. A few police and counter-terrorism eyebrows, to be specific. And those raised eyebrows caused traffic to be shut down for 45 minutes.

They didn't make it in time to do their dance routine on the teevee, which is something that I'm sure all those drivers who got stuck in the tunnel just feel awful about.

Since it's Friday night...

...and you're looking for some lady-style hotness, here's a photo of actress Thandie Newton with some strategically (if unfortunately) placed hair:

Yeah, I took the top pic from the result of my Google Images search, but can you blame me?

A likely story

I've made some lame excuses for stupid shit that I've done throughout the years, but compared to this, every one of them seems utterly plausible:

Soldiers accused of breaking into a Colorado medical marijuana dispensary and then accidentally locking themselves inside told police they planned to destroy the marijuana — not smoke or sell it.

The Gazette in Colorado Springs reports a police affidavit says two of the three Fort Carson soldiers told officers they were trying to steal the marijuana so they could get rid of it.

Not only did they break into the place, they managed to get themselves locked in, which I guess explains why they weren't quicker to think of something like meeting a poor little old lady with glaucoma who needed all the weed they were stealing.

The softer side of Putin

It turns out that when he's not busy intimidating journalists and opposition politicians, Vladimir Putin is just a big ole softy:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has invited Russians to help him come up with a name for his new puppy, which he received as a gift from his Bulgarian counterpart over the weekend.

"Anyone who wishes to can send their suggestion of a male name for the prime minister's new dog to his site," a government statement said on its official website www.premier.gov.ru .

After Moscow and Sofia signed a series of accords to boost the South Stream gas pipeline, Putin was all smiles when Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov presented the Karakachan dog to the 58-year-old leader.

Putin, who has a black belt in judo and has cultivated a macho image, snuggled the fluffy, floppy-eared puppy of three months before gently planting a kiss on his snout.

Awwwww...isn't that cute? It's almost enough to forgive him for invading a smaller neighboring country and swiping some of their territory.

Almost, but not quite. I'm sure all kinds of assholes throughout history have loved puppies.

Look out, there sits the spider man

Seeing as how I'm a lazy bastard, I would usually endorse the kind of charity event that entails sitting around for three weeks over, say, running a marathon or going on a long bike ride, but this isn't quite my style, either:

An Australian man has begun his attempt to spend three weeks in the front window of his shop with 40 venomous spiders.

Nick Le Souef said he will spend three weeks in the window enclosure of his opal shop in Melbourne with spiders including redbacks, hairy huntsmen and white-tailed biting spiders, the Melbourne Herald Sun reported Tuesday.

While I don't consider myself irrationally afraid of spiders, I can't say I'm a fan. That said, hanging around with one that's explicitly called a "biting spider" for any amount of time sounds like a really, really bad idea.

There's no word in the article about whether or not his funeral expenses will eat into the money his stunt will raise for the childrens' charity he's doing this for.

The great bake sale bust

I think that taking the rule of law seriously is an admirable quality for a politician to have, but, dude...

Some parents in a New York City suburb are upset because a local politician called police on two 13-year-old boys for selling baked goods without a permit.

Andrew DeMarchis and Kevin Graff had a brisk business selling cupcakes, cookies, brownies and Rice Krispie treats in a Chappaqua (CHAP’-uh-kwah) park.

The Journal News reported Monday that New Castle Councilman Michael Wolfensohn called police when he saw their stand last month.

[...]

Wolfensohn says rules are rules. But he concedes calling the police might have been a half-baked decision.

I don't know much about that area or its crime rate, but, yeah, shutting down a bake sale that doesn't even apparently involve pot brownies or anything like that would seem to be a bit of a waste of police resources.

Since it's Friday night...

...and that means it's time for a picture of an attractive woman, here's actress Emma Caulfield, looking snug on a rug:

Am I the only one who feels both turned on and intimidated at the same time?

Priorities

On the one hand, this deli sounds like it's in a bad neighborhood. On the other, they must make the best damn sammich in the world:

Connecticut police said a man who heard gunshots while exiting a deli went home and ate his sandwich before seeking treatment for shots to the groin and thigh.

Investigators said Miguel Soto III, 25, heard three gunshots when he left the deli Tuesday afternoon in New Haven and continued home to enjoy his lunch, WVIT-TV, Hartford, Conn., reported Thursday.

Police said Soto asked his father to take him to Yale-New Haven Hospital after he had finished his sandwich.

You know, I've never experienced being shot (knocks on wood) but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't even make it home to put my lunch in the fridge before calling 911, much less having the appetite to finish eating before asking someone to take me to the hospital.

The man took a bullet to the groin, fer chrissakes. I guess he needed his strength.

Happy Veterans Day

I'd just like to thank any of my readers or their friends and family members who have served honorably in our armed forces over the years. People like you are the reason why this is the greatest country in the world.

Cigars are more traditional

Seeing as how I don't have any kids, I've never celebrated the birth of a child, but I'm pretty sure that smoking some dope right at the hospital is a pretty dumb idea:

Uniontown police Sgt. Jonathan Grabiak tells the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that a nurse smelled the marijuana when she took a cigarette break in the same area, and a hospital security guard called police about 3:20 a.m.

Grabiak says the man told him, "I'm having a baby and wanted to get a buzz," then pulled a bag of marijuana from his shoe.

Okay, so this guy wasn't exactly a genius to begin with, but he pulls out his weed and shows it to the cop who was called to the scene?

Good luck, kiddo. With a dad like that, you're gonna need it.

Pornsecution

I realize that different countries have different morals and traditional customs that we're all supposed to respect and everything, but, damnit, this is one of the hugest violations of human rights that our generation has ever seen:

Sri Lankan newspapers on Tuesday published pictures of mainly women police said had acted in locally produced pornographic films, part of a court-ordered crackdown and the latest sign of growing social conservatism.

Police have identified 83 people they say have acted in the films found on websites, and got a court order to have media outlets publish their pictures to help locate the suspects.

"This is illegal and we need them to be identified for investigations," police spokesman Priyashanth Jayakody said.

Okay, so my introduction to this was just a tad hyperbolic, but seriously, you'd think a country like Sri Lanka, which is coming off a civil war and is hardly an economic powerhouse, would have other, more important priorities.

There is a movement within a faction of President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government to ban alcohol...

Okay, this means war.

Fine, bother me instead!

"We have made overtures to him," Fitzgerald said. "And we've had plenty of feedback from people in Storm Lake. He knows the money is there. It appears to be a situation of him not wanting to be bothered."

Click here to find out what the guy doesn't want to be bothered about.

Since it's Friday night...

...and today was the beginning of Diwali, the Indian "festival of lights," here's a photo of Bollywood superstar and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai:

Spicier than any curry I've ever tasted...

Oopsie!

We all make mistakes, but most of them don't involve misplacing a big ol' box full of illegal drugs:

Authorities worked Wednesday afternoon to literally get drugs off the street after a canine handler realized he may have lost about 28 grams of methamphetamine last week along Highway 22.

The canine handler left a black box ­— which contained the drug and has white lettering that says “METH” on it — on his bumper and drove away after a training exercise in the area Oct. 27, sheriff’s Sgt. Lloyd Funk said. When the handler, a Teton County Sheriff’s deputy, realized Monday evening that the drugs were missing, he immediately notified his sergeant, Funk said.

Sheriff’s deputies used dogs to search a small area Monday night and conducted additional searches Tuesday, Funk said.

The box apparently hasn't turned up yet, but if you stumble across it and think "Jackpot!" think again. It turns out that possession of that amount is a felony. Also, thinking that when you find a box full of meth means you're not in a very good place in your life.

This is the worst link I have ever posted

That says a lot, considering that most of the stuff I've linked here has to do with idiots, criminals, perverts, or some combination of those categories. But, no, this is something different:

A British woman has made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for being a 27-time champion of gurning -- contorting the face into a distorted expression.

Anne Woods, 62, a 27-time world champion at the annual competition at the Egremont, England, Crab Fair, said Guinness World Records officials informed her she will be in the next edition of the book alongside 11-time men's champion Tommy Mattinson, The Sun reported Wednesday.

What, if you're reading this (and that makes you an extremely slim part of the world's population), makes this an egregiously bad article?

THEY NEVER FUCKING SHOWED HER FACE!!!

That's right. An article distributed around the world about a woman who made the world's ugliest facial expression did not include a photograph of her achievement.

To be fair, perhaps gazing upon her ugly-ass visage turns one to stone, or something. There might actually be some liability issues there.

Please vote

I don't care about who you plan to vote for (though I'd prefer that you pick GOP candidates) please head to your polling place and do your duty as a citizen. A lot of people have fought and died to ensure that you have the right to choose the government that you want, and taking a few minutes out of your day to exercise your rights is probably the simplest way to honor them.

Also, you'll probably get one of those "I Voted" stickers. And stickers are fun.