Most insane story of the year

Man, this may just be the most lurid, crazy-ass story I've read this year. It's got a grisly murder-suicide, nudity, a cheating lover, and even voodoo! You just can't make this sort of stuff up.

A note found on the body of a suicide jumper led police to a French Quarter apartment where they found a woman's charred head in a pot, her arms and legs in the oven and her torso in the refrigerator, police said Wednesday.

Zackery Bowen, 28, leapt from the seventh floor of a luxury hotel in the Quarter on Tuesday night, police said. His note, found in his pocket, identified the woman as his girlfriend but did not mention her name.

The body was found in the second-floor apartment that Bowen and his girlfriend, Adriane Hall, had shared on the edge of the Quarter above a voodoo shop, according to the landlord. Authorities said they were trying to find Hall, but did not speculate on the identity of the dismembered woman.

[...]

The apartment's owner, Leo Watermeier, said he last saw Hall on Oct. 5, four days after the two put down a deposit on the one-bedroom, $750-a month flat. Later that same day, Watermeier said, Bowen called him, angrily saying the woman was kicking him out.

Watermeier said Hall told him she had caught the boyfriend cheating.

[...]

The couple was profiled in several news stories following Hurricane Katrina as resilient residents who remained in the city after the devastating hurricane despite evacuation orders and a lack of power and water.

A story published by Newhouse News Service described the couple gathering tree limbs for cooking fires at night and trading beer and alcohol — easy to get because of their jobs as bartenders — for clean water. The couple also figured out a creative way to make sure police continued to patrol their house: Hall would flash her breasts at police vehicles to make sure they kept driving by, according to a profile in The New York Times.

I'm going to go ahead and blame this on the couple's proximity to the voodoo shop. There must've been some powerfully bad juju coming from that place.

But seriously, this sounds like something out of a movie. This one comes to mind.

Going medieval

After an incident like this one, can we expect calls for stricter crossbow-control legislation?

A Little Rock man whose SUV was cut off in traffic was arrested after he allegedly shot at a motorist with a crossbow following a brief chase. "It was a drive-by crossbow shooting," said Steve Gilgenbach, a pitcher for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock baseball team who said he was the man's intended target. "I've never been shot at by a crossbow before."

Wayne Allen Dierks Jr., 26, posted bail after his arrest Sunday on charges of committing a terroristic act, possession of an instrument of crime, driving while intoxicated and driving on a suspended driver's license. Committing a terroristic act is a felony; the other charges are misdemeanors. An arraignment was set for Oct. 25.

I feel at this juncture that it's important to note that crossbows don't kill people—people do.

And now for the least surprising part of the story:

After Dierks' arrest, officers found a crossbow with a scope, four crossbow bolts and a cooler containing 11 unopened beers and one opened can. Dierks registered 0.12 on a blood-alcohol test. The legal threshold is 0.08. [emphasis mine]

Anybody who knows me knows that I like to get my drink on during the weekend, so it's not like I'm a teetotaller or anything. But if you're an angry drunk, you shouldn't be driving around in that condition. And you really shouldn't be driving around with weapons in your car. That's just begging for trouble.

You wanted a Brealanche?

If you only get one visitor when a blogger like Patterico throws you a link, I don't know what kind of traffic you should expect from me, but here you go, SeeDubya.

The way my traffic has been lately, you can actually expect hits to start dribbling away from your Sitemeter.

Bras behind bars

As if doing time wasn't bad enough, authorities in Indiana are making it tougher for prisoners to get a peek at some dirty pillows:

Revealing tops are out and bras are now a must for women visiting prisoners at the Vanderburgh County Jail. Jail officials imposed a new dress code policy after several incidents in which women visiting the jail exposed themselves to male prisoners.

The new policy, posted at the jail's front desk, states that women cannot wear halter tops, sleeveless dresses and shirts, see-through garments, revealing dresses, and shorts cut higher than 2 inches above the knee.

Spandex and "extremely tight fitting" jeans or pants also are frowned upon.

They may as well make the women show up in a burka. I mean, aren't we fighting against this same kind of repression in Afgahanistan?

And get a load of this part of the jail's draft policy, which was apparently written by Yoda:

"Adult female visitors, as well as females who would have need of a bra, shall be required to wear a bra," the draft policy also states.

Uh...okay.

Finally, I found the following part of the article pretty interesting:

The jail's commander, Maj. Dave Wedding, said some women have exposed themselves to male inmates in video visitation booths, located in plain view in the jail's main lobby.

[...]

Many female visitors bring children, and Wedding said he hopes the dress code will create a more family friendly environment.

When I think "family friendly," things like restaurants and ballparks come to mind. Jail, on the other hand? Not so much.

Fourth time's a charm

I don't know a whole lot abbout Spain, so I'm not sure if kidnappings are common there or not. If they're not, then this seems remarkably stupid.

A Spanish woman staged fake kidnappings of her son four times and got his father to pay her more than a million euros ($1.26 million) in ransom money, newspaper El Mundo reported Friday.

[...]

The father paid ransoms after the first three fake abductions without realizing the involvement of his son's mother, from whom he had separated. He became suspicious the fourth time and hired a private detective, El Mundo reported.

Oh, he became suspicious the fourth time, did he? The first three times his son was snatched, I guess he just figured the boy was prone to being kidnapped. I can just picture him getting the third ransom demand and thinking, "Well, here we go again."

Beware

Today is Friday the 13th, and bad things seem to happen to some people on a day like today. Like this guy.

(Then again, bad things seem to happen to him fairly often.)

It's a miracle!

Well, how else would you explain someone who's in this situation getting pregnant? Huh, smart guy?

A death-row inmate held in solitary confinement in Vietnam for almost a year is pregnant and is seeking a pardon to give birth, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper quoted a police doctor as saying tests in September confirmed that convicted heroin trafficker Nguyen Thi Oanh, 39, was then 11 weeks pregnant.

The report said it was the first time that a death-row prisoner had become pregnant in Vietnam and that police were investigating how it had happened.

Oanh's husband was serving a jail sentence at another prison in another province, the newspaper said.

So, if her husband wasn't there, how could she have possibly been impregnated?

What's that you say? A male guard? Well, you'd have to be awfully cynical to believe that.

More fun than...you know

If you've ever lived in a large-ish city, you know that a lot of them have problems with pests like rats and pigeons. Well, that's true in American cities. A city like New Delhi, however, has a rather different pest problem.

The Supreme Court ordered wildlife authorities to catch hundreds of monkeys that roam the Indian capital, often terrorizing residents, and relocate them thousands of miles away, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

The roughly 300 Rhesus macaques will be shifted from New Delhi to the dense jungles of Madhya Pradesh state, whose government will receive $54,000 from the federal government to cover the cost of reintroducing the monkeys to the wild, the Hindu reported.

Government buildings, temples and many residential neighborhoods of New Delhi are overrun by an army of macaques. The monkeys scare passers-by, and occasionally bite or snatch food from unsuspecting visitors.

And like pigeons, people feed them, which encourages them to stick around. But I doubt people feed pigeons for the same reason that people feed monkeys...

For years, state animal welfare agencies have tried to rid the capital of the simian scourge, but their efforts have been defeated, in part, by Hindus who believe that monkeys are manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman.

Many feed the monkeys nuts, bread and bananas, encouraging the animals to frequent parks, temples and other public places.

I really don't think many New Yorkers believe in a pigeon god. Some, sure, but not many.

Anyway, check out the ad that was running alongside the article when I initially read it:


How appropriate.

Neener-neener-neener, you're going to prison!

You can't say kids aren't good for anything:

A group of school children helped foil an attempted armored van robbery by memorizing the getaway car's registration plate in a school yard chant, police said Wednesday.

A passer-by who spotted the car, but feared she would forget the plate number so she asked a group of children to memorize it, police in the northern city of Liverpool said.

The group of nine and 10-year-olds remembered the registration details by turning the numbers into a chant, before a classmate arrived with a pen. The three thieves were traced and arrested within 40 minutes, police said.

How much do you want to bet that the defense attorneys (or barristers or solicitors—whatever they call them in the UK) question the reliability of the kids, or say that using kids to catch the suspects was "inappropriate"?

Anyway, good for you, you little snot-nosed punks.

Showing some skin at the office

Some people get to be naked at work. Art school models, strippers, porn stars—all of those people get to hang around at work in the buff. City prosecutors, not so much.

A security camera caught a city prosecutor walking around naked in a government building after business hours, authorities said.

Scott Blauvelt, 35, was arrested Monday and charged with two counts of public indecency. He was released from the Butler County jail and is awaiting a hearing in Hamilton Municipal Court, where he usually works, sheriff's Maj. Anthony Dwyer said.

Oh man, I bet he's not looking forward to that particular hearing. That's gonna be awkward.

A guard monitoring a security camera spotted a nude man investigators identified as Blauvelt in a building that houses county offices Thursday night, Dwyer said. The night before, security video had captured Blauvelt naked in another area of the building, where city offices are located, he said.

Dwyer said investigators don't know why Blauvelt, who was alone, wasn't wearing clothes. The indecency charge carries a sentence of up to a month in jail and $250 fine if convicted.

Who knows? Maybe working naked helps him concentrate or something. Or maybe he felt like a badass, knowing that he'd been nude in areas where his colleagues work. Either way, I kind of doubt that he'll ever have the chance to walk around naked in thqat particular building again.

Woo-hoo!

I got mentioned by big-time Aussie blogger Tim Blair!

(Okay, so he didn't actually, you know, link to my blog. I take my victories where I can get them.)

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion

Well, we're not quite there yet. But, slowly, we're getting there.

It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?

Antacids, anybody?

I like to eat, and I like spicy foods, but this might be a little excessive.

A 62-year-old retired accountant from Nevada swallowed 247 peppers in eight minutes to win the Jalapeno Eating World Championship at the State Fair of Texas.

Richard LeFevre won $2,000 for prevailing in Sunday's contest, which was sponsored by the International Federation of Competitive Eating.

"I love to eat, and I love to compete, so the two go pretty well together," said LeFevre, the world's eighth-ranked eater according to the federation.

LeFevre is a "professional eater," which means that he enters a lot of these eating contests. And, well, maybe this sort of thing should be left up to the professionals:

Christopher Huang, of Arlington, entered the competition even though he doesn't normally eat spicy foods.

"I eat mild salsa," Huang said. "But there's nothing like putting yourself through a lot of pain for no reason."

The 26-year-old required several minutes of recovery time after eating 53 jalapenos.

"I cant [sic] feel my face," he said when he was able to speak again.

After eating a whole mess of jalapenos, it wouldn't be my face that I'd be worried about, if you know what I mean. A medical professional quoted in the article sure does:

Dr. Daniel DeMarco, a gastroenterologist and director of endoscopy at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, said the amount of jalapenos consumed in an eating contest is more harmful than the burn.

"It's really pretty stupid," DeMarco said. "Like any sort of abuse of your body, it doesn't make any sense."

He said long-term complications are unlikely, but there are some risks.

"If they get sick, they're going to be vomiting it up, and that can cause esophageal tears," he said.

Dr. DeMarco doesn't go into what could potentially happen at, um, the other end, but I'd imagine it's none too pleasant, either.

I got nothin'

Well, that's not entirely true. What I've got is a cold. I've also got a box full of Zicam chewables, which start out tasting like strawberry and end up as a horrible, flavorless mush. I've been chewing them for a couple of days now, so hopefully I'll be feeling better by tomorrow.

Oh, and as if that's not bad enough, the teenagers across the street are singing hollering karaoke again. Yay.

Courthouse or monkeyhouse?

Though the judge later said this didn't factor into the guy's eventual sentence, I'm pretty sure it probably didn't help:

A Chicago man apologized for spreading his feces around a courtroom during his trial on drug charges.

Vandale Amos Willis, 28, apologized Wednesday before being sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Willis was convicted earlier of importation of a controlled substance, cocaine, and two other charges.

"Im going to take full responsibility for everything I did in Duluth," Willis told the court. "I want to apologize for everything I did in court. Im sorry, your honor."

Well, I guess it's nice that he took responsibility for flinging his poo around. Seeing as how the majority of people who behave that way are either toddlers or mental patients, most don't have the presence of mind to apologize for it.

Next time, just pick up a snow globe

In this day and age, when you can't take nail clippers and shampoo on airplanes, what makes someone think that this is appropriate, even if it's in a checked bag?

A grand jury returned a two-count indictment charging Howard MacFarland Fish, 21, with carrying an explosive on an aircraft and entering an airport in violation of security requirements, U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle said in a news release on Wednesday.

Fish, a student at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, was stopped at Houston Intercontinental Airport on August 25 on his way home from Argentina. Customs inspectors found a small stick of dynamite, a fuse and a blasting cap in his bags.

And why, you ask, did this dumbass bring these items back from Argentina?

He told investigators he had picked up the items as souvenirs while visiting a silver mine in Argentina.

Thus, the title of this post. I guess it's a good thing he didn't visit a nuclear plant, huh?

I hope those souveneirs were worth it, by the way, because Fish is facing up to eleven years in prison and $350,000 in fines.

The Harry Potter conspiracy

First it was fluoridated water, and now, they're trying to brainwash the youth of America with this:

A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban Harry Potter books from its schools.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County [Georgia] Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction books are an "evil" attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

Sounds pretty likely to me.

Board of Education attorney Victoria Sweeny said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban "Macbeth" and "Cinderella."

So, then, it's onto the pyre with those two as well, then. Seriously, anything at all that even mentions witches is obviously an attempt to brainwash the children into Satanism.

In June, the county's library board eliminated the $3,000 that had been set aside to buy Spanish-language fiction in the coming fiscal year. One board member said the move came after some residents objected to using taxpayer dollars to entertain readers who might be illegal immigrants.

Days later, the board reversed its decision amid accusations that the move was anti-Hispanic.

You know, I would hope that they'd reverse the decision amid accusations that it was a really stupid thing to do—I mean, they probably teach Spanish in some of the schools down there—but that's just me.

Keep your eyes peeled

Hunting for wanted fugitives has never sounded quite this entertaining:

A German plastic surgeon who was cheated out of payment by several women has given pictures of their enlarged breasts to police, in the hope the photos will help trace them.

So, uh, does that mean the cops are supposed to stake out the local strip clubs? I bet they didn't have any trouble finding volunteers for that duty.

"The women registered under fake names," Michael Koenig, a surgeon in Cologne, told Bild newspaper. "After the operations, which lasted about an hour, they just ran away."

"Tanja" went out for "fresh air" after 8,000-euro ($10,000) surgery to enlarge her breasts. "She never came back and never paid," Koenig said. He now plans to demand payment in advance.

Yeah. That might be a good idea.

The article goes on to say that a large photo of "Tanja's" naked breasts was published in a newspaper. As a public service, of course. You know, it's like a neighborhood watch. With nudity.

Wearing Bad Idea Jeans

There's a right time and a wrong time for almost everything. This would definitely be the wrong time to be really, really wasted.

A Little Rock woman facing her fifth drunken-driving charge in the span of a year and third in less than a month showed up to a court appearance drunk Tuesday morning, a court official said.

Susan Marshall, 55, was arrested for contempt of court after a brief appearance in Little Rock District Court, said chief probation officer Sheila Farley. Marshall later had a blood-alcohol level of 0.147 percent, Farley said. The legal limit for adult drivers in Arkansas is 0.08 percent.

Marshall said she did not drive to her court appearance and had no keys when arrested, Farley said.

Well, that's nice and everything, but you still probably shouldn't show up for your DUI hearing with a snootfull. I mean, when I went to my murder trial, I had the good sense not to show up dragging the corpse of one of the hoboes I strangled.

I mean, allegedly strangled. Yeah.

Another 9/11 "Truth" takedown

And this one comes from someone (Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi) who isn't a fan of Bush. I haven't really agreed with this guy a lot in the past, but I do here:

[If] large numbers of people in this country can swallow 9/11 conspiracy theory without puking, all hope is lost. Our best hope is that the Japanese take pity on us and allow us to serve as industrial slaves in their future empire, farming sushi rice and assembling robot toys.

Read the whole thing. What's especially good (and funny) is the part where Taibbi imagines the meeting where Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld sketch out the conspiracy.

Though I disagree with his ultimate conclusion, it's nice to see that there are people on the left who are calling bullshit on the likes of the nimrods behind Loose Change.

(via More Than Loans)

Nobody's that stupid

So, Little Rock has decided to change its nickname from "The City of Roses" to "The Rock." That's pretty lame. But check this out:

[Mayor Jim] Dailey said he wasn't concerned that "The Rock" would be confused with the former Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay or with the professional wrestler-turned-actor.

Now, I tend to think that people are pretty stupid, but it's hard for even me to believe that anybody could confuse the capital city of Arkansas with this:


Then again, they did keep electing Bill Clinton.

Boche or Blighty

Allahpundit has post over at Hot Air about a wounded British soldier who was confronted in his hospital bed by an angry Muslim. You should check that out.

But I took a look at the article he linked to, and I saw something else that was interesting.

There is also resentment among serving troops unhappy about being treated in a NHS hospital that they believe is unsuitable for military patients.

Soldiers on operations say they would rather receive a more serious injury and go to the top American military hospital in Ramstein, Germany, than end up in a NHS hospital.

They now half jokingly refer to getting "a Boche rather than a Blighty" in reference to the wounds that would send them home. Ramstein has an outstanding unit for brain surgery, and neurological intensive care beds in Britain are in short supply. "The blokes see it that if you are unlucky you get wounded and go to the UK at the mercy of the NHS, but if you get a head wound you get sent to Ramstein in Germany where the US has an outstanding medical facility," said an officer serving in Afghanistan.

"It also does not do morale much good knowing that within 18 hours of being wounded you could wake up in a NHS hospital with a mental health patient on one side and an incontinent geriatric on the other."

It really says something about the quality of Britain's socialized medicine that some of these troops would rather get a head wound that would send them to Ramstein than a more minor wound that would send them home to the tender mercies of the National Health.

The next time somebody tells you that the government ought to be handling our health care, you might want to point them to this.

Fine steep for creepy peeper

I guess the lesson here is that you should be fully clothed while you spy on your neighbors:

A man has been ordered to pay more than $13,000 to his former neighbors who he spied upon while sitting naked in his house.

A jury Thursday ordered William Andrianse, 59, of Des Moines, to pay damages to Julie Weissinger, 40, who said she and her family were so upset they had to move away.

Andrianse pleaded guilty in 2004 to harassment and public exposure. After the Weissingers filed their lawsuit, he countersued claiming his neighbors violated his privacy by videotaping him with a night-vision camera they borrowed from police.

Jurors decided that Andrianse owed the Weissingers, and that they owed him nothing.

So he gets busted for getting nekkid and looking at his neighbors, but when they use the tools of the fascist police state to make salacious videos of him, um, looking at them while nude, they get a free pass? And it gets even worse—he was provoked!

Court records showed that Andrianse claimed that Julie Weissinger provoked his actions by"walking around in the house wearing a black teddy and bending over."

The police report said that Andrianse thought it was a mutual act and that he did not know Weissinger was "an unwilling participant."

Go figure. So, does that mean my neighbor's wife doesn't want me to spank myself or rub ice cubes on certain "sensitive areas" of my body?

I just lost my appetite

I like Chinese food as much as the next person, but I have my limits. Those limits most definitely include things like this:

The dish in front of me is grey and shiny.

"Russian dog," says my waitress Nancy.

"Big dog," I reply.

"Yes," she says. "Big dog's penis..."

We are in a cosy restaurant in a dark street in Beijing but my appetite seems to have gone for a stroll outside.

Nancy has brought out a whole selection of delicacies.

They are draped awkwardly across a huge platter, with a crocodile carved out of a carrot as the centrepiece.

Nestling beside the dog's penis are its clammy testicles, and beside that a giant salami-shaped object.

"Donkey," says Nancy. "Good for the skin..."

I don't care if it's going to give me heat vision, Nancy, much less good skin. I am not going to eat any kind of penis.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Click on that link, by the way, for some horrifying pictures and plenty more descriptions of awful, awful things you can order at Nancy's evil restaurant.

Update: Is this place Jade Garden? After all, "they put mega ding dongs in their food!"

Coup not cool

If you weren't concerned about that coup in Thailand, well, you should be now. The leaders of the coup sound seriously uncoool.

Thai coup leaders have banned go-go girls from dancing near tanks and troops on Bangkok streets as a distraction from the serious business of power, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

"It is not appropriate to entertain soldiers while they are on duty," Colonel Acra Tiprote told Reuters after a troupe of 10 women in tight camouflage vests and shorts posed with soldiers and tanks while making a music video.

What kind of topsy-turvy world are we living in when people are placing restrictions on where Thai go-go dancers can perform? And seriously, these coup leaders are just begging for a mutiny. If they were smart, they'd be requiring go-go girls to dance near soldiers. That's how things will work when I rule the world.

How to get cheap hits (and lots of them)

Write a post like the one I wrote yesterday with the word "sex" in the title and you'll have to beat away the perverts Googling "sex" with a stick. I've had more than 100 visitors today.

I bet a lot of them were disappointed with what they found here, too. I know I would be.

Dirty British sex perverts

Pastiness. Bad teeth. Snooty costume dramas. Horrible food with funny-sounding names. These are the things we tend to associate with our cousins across the pond. But not red hot dirty sex, right? Right?

Historical attitudes to sex in Britain will be laid bare for all to see this week in archives which reveal a nation rich in sexual experience and enthusiasm.

Oh boy. I can hardly wait.

The historical documents, to be given a public outing by the Center for Archive Studies at Liverpool University, include Britain's first ever sex survey, conducted 57 years ago but deemed too shocking for publication at the time.

The survey shows many British men had homosexual experiences, many were frequent visitors to prostitutes and many British wives were active in the pursuit of sex outside marriage.

Well, that all sounds pretty healthy. Buncha whoremongering poofters and cheating wives. Swell.

Caroline Williams, of the Center for Archive Studies, says the archives show that while sex has always been a part of major part of British -- and human -- life, attitudes have changed and broadened over the years.

What a scoop! Sex has always been important to humans! Who knew? Attitudes have changed? Whoah, that's some insight there.

I'd tell you to read the whole thing, but it's really oned of the more boring articles about deviant sex that I've ever read. Then again, we are talking about British people having sex.

Fools

I was at a party this weekend when some of the other guests started talking about how great Loose Change is. Unfortunately, we were all about to leave, so I didn't have time to sit them down and explain in detail why the movie is a travesty of a joke of a piece of shit. I did, however, get them to grudgingly admit that the "controlled demolition" theory of why the towers came down was dubious at best.

Speaking of Loose Change and 9/11 conspiracy theories, this takedown from a humor website is worth a look if you haven't seen it already. I think one of Ace's guest bloggers linked to it a week or two ago. And of course there's Screw Loose Change, your one-stop clearinghouse for debunking and fact-checking Dylan Avery's dumb ass.

Do you like surprises?

Yeah, me neither. But thankfully, I've never had one like this.

A western Iowa woman is recovering from the shock of finding a drowned bat in her tea mug after she sipped from the cup all day.

The brown bat, about the size of two tea bags, was found a few weeks ago by a 60-year-old Woodbury County woman, said Chuck Cipperley, an environmental director for the Siouxland health office in Sioux City.

"I knew the person, so I knew it was no joke," said Cipperley, who took the call from the woman.

The woman, who declined to identify herself, told Cipperley she found the bat when she was cleaning out the mug at night. She said she put the bat in a plastic bag before alerting the Siouxland health office the next morning.

Cipperley said the bat was sent that day Sept. 1 to the University Hygienic Laboratory in Coralville. Results showed the bat did not have rabies.

Just how big was this mug, anyway? (Or, I guess you could ask how small the bat was.) I mean, she was sipping from the mug all day and she didn't notice the dead animal that was in it. That's nice about the lack of rabies, though.

More genius at work

Getting drunk and getting behind the wheel is a bad idea. Trying to bum rush a bunch of bikers with a pool cue—also pretty stupid. Getting hit by your own car in the process? Well, then you've reached a new low there.

An alleged drunken motorist who brandished a pool cue while driving at a group of motorcyclists was hit by his own car after he stopped and attempted to approach the bikers on foot, the California Highway Patrol said.

Richard Brooks, 50, of Concord was pulled to safety by several of the motorcyclists after his car — which he left in reverse — knocked him into the highway Thursday morning...

And why did this potential Nobel Laureate try to attack the bikers? You'll love this:

Brooks, who was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and driving under the influence, told authorities he was offended by skeletons some of the riders wore on their leather Harley-Davidson jackets and what he perceived as their attempts to appear tough.

"It was his impression that they thought they were better than him," [CHP Officer Scott] Yox said. "They were irritating to him and he felt he needed to do something about it." [my emphasis, of course]

Well, you can't argue with that. And I don't mean that his reasons were sound—it's just that they're so crazy-stupid that it would be futile to try.

I hate California Nazis

Oh, this is just lovely.

Two flags or signs depicting swastikas were reported to be hanging from freeway overpasses Friday, the day the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana begins. Another swastika flag was spotted over the 101 Freeway in Encino, north of Los Angeles.

An officer removed one of the symbols reported to the California Highway Patrol around 5:55 a.m. at eastbound state Route 78 at Escondido Avenue in Vista, CHP officer Alicia Contreras said.

The second emblem, reported at the Sea World Drive overpass off of southbound Interstate 5, was not seen by the time officers responded, she said.

Some dickweed obviously did this because the Jewish new year began tonight at sundown, showing that even here in enlightened, tolerant California, you've still got knuckle-dragging troglodytes.

Update: On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that something like this would happen in a "Blue" state.

(via IndeedPundit)

Who are you?

Man, this story is just bizarre:

An undercover police operation took an odd turn Thursday when a Syracuse police officer pretending to be a john met a suspected prostitute who pretended to be a police officer.

The encounter ended with two women under arrest. Police charged Lisa Greene, 31, with first-degree criminal impersonation, prostitution and fifth-degree conspiracy. Elena Irwin, 20, was charged with fifth-degree conspiracy and possession of a hypodermic needle.

Police spokesman Sgt. Tom Connellan said a male undercover officer driving in a neighborhood known for prostitution was flagged down by Greene. The woman got in his car and the two went to a nearby parking lot to negotiate a price for sex.

She asked the cop if he was a cop and the police officer said no.

"That's OK, because I am," the woman told the officer as she pulled out handcuffs and a two-way radio and barked a command into the radio: "Move in!"

The officer, concerned the woman was armed and looking to rob him, forced her from the car, Connellan said. Moments later, officers who had been monitoring the situation arrived and grabbed Greene with the radio and cuffs at a nearby intersection.

A male officer pretending to be a female used the radio to find out who was on the other end, Connellan said.

Police found Irwin waiting in a car in a nearby alley.

So, let me get this straight...A cop pretending to be a john picks up A hooker pertending to be a cop, and when she bails, a male cop pretends to be her to pick up her partner, who seems to be the only one in the story who wasn't pretending to be somebody else. You just can't trust anybody these days, can you?

Well, I guess you never really could trust anybody when trolling for hookers, could you?

How much is too much?

Damn those European socialists, always stifling the entrepeneurial spirit:

A fee of 25,500 euros ($32,000) is way too much for a woman to charge a man for fondling her bosom, a Finnish district court ruled.

The court jailed a couple in their twenties for more than a year for charging a 74-year-old who suffers from dementia a total of 25,500 euros to enjoy the woman's breasts on 10 occasions.

"Based on general life experience alone, it is indisputably clear that a 25,500 euro charge is disproportionate to the compensation in question," Judge Hasse Hakki, who heard the case, told Reuters Friday.

So, uh, Judge Hakki...has "life experience" with paying to cop a feel? Or is he saying that experience has taught him that the old man should've been entitled to, um, more than a feel?

But he said the court in Kokkola, about 300 miles north of Helsinki, would not decide "the proper financial value of the compensation."

Well, why not? I mean, if you can determine that 32 grand is too much for ten boob grabs, shouldn't you be able to set a reasonable price? You never know when that kind of information could come in...handy.

It's for your own good

Do not, under any circumstances, click this link. I'm warning you.

Okay, so you're going to click it. I know, I know. You're curious. Well, whatever you do, don't watch the video over there. Seriously, DON'T.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go see if they make a mouthwash for your mind.

(h/t Dave at Garfield Ridge)

Kind of slow, eh

Uh-oh. I guess this means I should get my "Serial Killer" tattoo removed.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Shylo Kujawski -- who has "Grand Theft Auto" prominently tattooed on his back -- was spotted acting suspiciously in a Vancouver suburb where several stolen cars had been reported.

Using the tattoo to identify Kujawski as a convicted auto thief, police said they then set up a stakeout that nabbed him attempting drive away in a stolen car.

Police said during the stakeout they also watched Kujawski thwart his own attempt to drive away in another stolen vehicle by accidentally disabling the car with the owner's steering wheel lock.

Somehow, I don't think that guy is going to be winning any Nobel Prizes. Unless they create a category for inept auto theft. But how likely is that?

Media figure silenced

In yet another shocking abuse of freedom of speech and the press in Chimpy McBu$hitlerburton's Amerikkka, a member of the media has been bullied into silence after making "controversial" remarks. Oh, wait...this happened in Canada.

The chairman of the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has resigned after remarks about bestiality and ruminations about defecation, Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda said on Tuesday.

Guy Fournier created an uproar in Canada's Lebanese community and in the media when he claimed that Lebanon allowed men to have sexual relations with female animals, but reserved the death penalty for those who did so with male animals.

In comments made in May, and replayed in a CBC weekend interview, he talked at length about the joys of bowel movements.

Now, I don't know where he got the idea that Lebanese men were allowed to have sex with female animals (although this website makes the same assertion--scroll about halfway down the page), but if you're a public figure, you might want to keep your feelings about pooping out of interviews that could be played on the teevee or the radio. After all, that's why they invented internet message boards and forums.

Oh, snap!

So, Hugo Chavez went to the U.N. and called Bush "the devil." Big deal. You can find that kind of thing on a thousand lefty blogs every day. What I liked most about this story was something John Bolton said:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Chavez's remarks were "not becoming for a head of state."

"I am not going to dignify a comment by the Venezuelan president to the president of the United States," Rice told reporters in New York. The main U.S. seat in the assembly hall was empty as Chavez spoke, though the U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told The Associated Press that a "junior note-taker" was present, as is customary "when governments like that speak."

Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.

So, how long do you think it will be before some Dem politico expresses outrage over Bolton's "insensitivity"?

Update: Video of Chavez's freakout is available at Hot Air.

Offense taken

When I began to read this article, I expected there would be obscenities or racial slurs, but...well, you'll see what I mean.

A book of rhymes handed out to kindergarten classes across Maine is being criticized by some parents as inappropriate. "Schoolyard Rhymes" is a compilation of 50 verses included in bags given to 18,000 pupils through the Read With ME literacy project supported by Gov. John Baldacci and his wife Karen.

Get ready to be scandalized, people...

A few of the rhymes have raised some eyebrows. For example, one says, "Ladies and gentlemen, Take my advice, Pull down your pants And slide on the ice." Another one says, "Girls go to Mars to get candy bars. Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider."

Erica Smith of Hampden, mother of a 5-year-old son who goes to the McGraw School, said the book is "completely inappropriate."

"It's rude. There are words in there that I don't allow in my house," said Smith, who complained to her son's teacher as well as the school principal. She also called the governor's office to voice her displeasure.

Man, what a letdown. That kind of stuff was covered with dust and cobwebs when I was a little kid. Heaven forbid any frogs, snails, or puppydog tails get mentioned. There would be statewide fainting spells and they might even have to recall the governor.

"The game of the century so far"

That's what Cindy Brunson of ESPNews called this see-saw gem between the Padres and Dodgers, and I'm finding it hard to argue with that assessment. Seven home runs for the Dodgers (including four consecutive shots to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth--only the fourth time in history that that's been done, by the way), a rare blown save by star Padres closer Trevor Hoffman, two times that the Dodgers came back from four run deficits, and a walk-off homer by Nomar...wow. I just wish I'd been at Dodger Stadium to see it. The fans who were there are going to be talking about this game for years, especially if the Dodgers can gut it out and make it into the postseason.

We're doomed

Scientists have found a shark that can walk on its fins. Next thing you know, they'll be using tools and weapons. And smoking.

Pay attention, morons

I'm becoming more and more convinced that a lot of trouble and heartbreak could be prevented if people would just pay attention to what the hell they're doing. Case in point:

School officials apologized after an X-rated font was used on a third-grade spelling packet handed out to parents. The font showed male and female stick figures in provocative poses to form the letters of the alphabet.

Officials with the Monroe-Woodbury School District in Orange County [New York] apologized last week after parents at Pine Tree Elementary School were given the spelling packet at an open house.

Administrators said the teacher did not use the font intentionally.

Well, that's comforting. And hey, it could've been worse—at leasst it was handed out to the parents and not the kids themselves.

Appreciate modernity.

India may be the world's largest democracy, but in a lot of ways it's still a pretty screwed up third world country. Take this, for example.

The leaders of a village in the Indian state of Rajasthan ordered 150 men to dip their hands into boiling oil to prove their innocence after food was stolen from a local school, a newspaper reported Sunday.

In late August the school's principal informed police that rice and wheat had disappeared but no action was taken, the Sunday Express said.

The council, or panchayat, of Ranpur village, 340 km (210 miles) south of state capital Jaipur, then decided to take the law into its own hands.

After 10 days spent trying to identify those responsible, it issued what the paper called the "medieval diktat."

The 150 men from Ranpur and two neighboring hamlets were told to pick a copper ring from a cauldron of boiling oil. The council elders then announced that the 50 who refused the order must be behind the crime. Many are now nursing their burns.

As they say on South Park, dude, that's pretty fucked up right there! Seriously, edcucated, well-adjusted people just don't do something like that in this day and age.

"I really didn't have a clue."

Sometimes it pays to be detail-oriented. This would be one of those times.

When moviemakers told Gallatin, Tennessee, Mayor Don Wright they wanted to use his office to film a scene with a superheroine, he kindly obliged.

But Wright was startled when the movie's title, "Thong Girl 3," and his role in its making was splashed across the front page of Friday's editions of the Nashville Tennessean newspaper.

"I had no idea what the movie was about," Wright said on Friday. "They told me it was about a superhero woman and there was no nudity or offensive stuff in it. Other than that, I really didn't have a clue."

No clue? You don't say. You know, you might've been spared this sort of embarrasment if you had, oh, I don't know, asked them what the fucking title of the movie was!

Please tell me they cut out the vocals

Speaking of skinny chicks with minimal talent, Paris Hilton's new album has been remixed by Danger Mouse and snuck into British music stores, where the remix CDs replaced 400 copies of the regular version of the CD on the sly. For the remix version, graffiti artist Banksy also redid the artwork. You can see the slightly NSFW artwork here.

(First link originally left in a comment thread here at Treacher's other blog.)

Plus-size models to attack Milan

I'm outraged! If this fascist gets her way, people watching fashion shows in Milan may have to watch models who weigh (GASP!) more than eighty pounds!

Italy's fashion capital is in a tizzy over a ban on overly thin models at Madrid's fashion week, fearing it could be next with its own catwalk extravaganza less than two weeks away.

Milan's mayor, Letizia Moratti, told a newspaper this week that she may bring the Spanish ban on underweight models to Italian shows.

Madrid is turning away models whose body mass index, based on weight and height, falls below a certain level.

"With those kind of rules, we'd have to turn away 80 percent of models. Naomi Campbell wouldn't be able to walk down the catwalk, she'd be too thin," said Riccardo Gay, head of the model agency of the same name that used to represent Campbell in Milan.

He also said Madrid had exaggerated the issue.

"Some designers have used extremely thin models, but we haven't. We tell models to exercise, eat well, go to bed early — sensible rules," he added.

Yeah, and I'm sure they make sure to tell the girls to keep it to three lines of cocaine a night.

Madrid's regional government imposed the rules on fashion week to protect the models as well as teenagers who may develop anorexia as they try to copy underweight catwalk stars.

Mario Boselli, head of the Italian fashion industry's chamber of commerce, said anorexia was a "rare phenomenon" in the fashion business.

And drunkenness ia a "rare phenomenon" at frat parties. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go die of laughter.

Harshing mom's mellow

Education is important, and some parents decide to reward their kids when they do their homework, but this doesn't seem like a very good idea...

A woman facing drug charges admitted in court that she smoked marijuana with her 13-year-old son, often to reward him for doing his homework.

Well, just so long as she didn't smoke with him before he did his homework...

Amanda Lynn Livelsberger, 30, pleaded guilty to several misdemeanor drug charges Monday in Adams Country [PA] court and will be sentenced Nov. 27.

She admitted she had been smoking marijuana with her son since he was 11 and said she had also smoked with two of his friends, ages 17 and 18.

And thus ends the reign of the neighborhood's "cool mom," who, if you do the math, gave birth to her son at the tender age of seventeen. Sounds like someone needs some better decision-making skills.

The article doesn't mention whether or not the authorities were going to bogart her son.

Five years ago

I don't really have anything deep or original to say about the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that someone else hasn't already said (and said more eloquently).

I just remember my brother waking me up that morning, telling me to turn on the TV. Something was going on in New York. We watched the events unfolding all day, unable to look away from what was happening in spite of the horror.

And then I remember the silence in the skies on that day and the following days, as all the flights were grounded. It was unnerving, not seeing or hearing anything up there.

I'll never forget that day, and that's the way it should be.

The chilling of dissent

No, I don't mean that Bu$hitler has forced the Dixie Chicks to play in Canada. I'm talking about the fact that a certain political party is calling for a teevee show to be yanked from the air before the public has seen it.

"Those fascist Rethuglikkkans ought to be stopped," one might say. But "one" would be wrong.

Who are the fascists now? I thought so.

Nude until winter

(Or, Another transparent attempt to lure pervert search engine hits to my blog by using the word "nude" in the title of a post)

Remember the Vermont town with all the nude teenagers that I posted about last month? Well, they're not going to put a ban on public nudity, deciding instead to rely on shrinkage to take care of it for them.

Mother Nature, not an ordinance, will draw the covers over public nudity in Brattleboro.

The town's Select Board decided Tuesday to take no action on an anti-nudity ordinance that was introduced in response to a clothing-optional movement launched by local teenagers this summer.

"Winter is coming. If spring comes and we still have a problem, we'll take another look at it," said Select Board Chairman Steve Steidle.

As I noted in my previous post, there's some hippy-dippy bullshit behind all of this public nudity, some of which was on display when the town debated a ban on public nudity:

One of the nudists, 19-year-old Adhi Palar, told the town board the issue was freedom.

"Our acting in nudity is an act of celebration of this history and traditional values as a place where you're allowed to be nude," he said. "I find that important, and I find that proud."

Uh...yeah. Take another hit off that bong, dude.

Not everybody is having fun here, though:

Town Manager Jerry Remillard said the town's image was tarnished by the uproar.

"We have been the brunt of phone calls from all over the world," Remillard said. "The media made this into nothing less than a circus."

Hard to believe that, in this day and age, people would show any interest in a bunch of teenagers parading around nude in public, isn't it? Next thing you know, they'll be attracting (gasp!) tourists.

Mom and Dad burn out

If your parents sell the house and make you live with them in a VW bus or move the whole family to some stinky hippie commune, don't say I didn't warn you. It seems they're reverting to their stinky hippie ways.

Some moms and dads might want to take a lesson from their kids: Just say no.

The government reported Thursday that 4.4 percent of baby boomers ages 50 to 59 indicated that they had used illicit drugs in the past month. It marks the third consecutive yearly increase recorded for that age group by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Meanwhile, illicit drug use among young teens went down for the third consecutive year - from 11.6 percent in 2002 to 9.9 percent in 2005.

"Rarely have we seen a story like this where this is such an obvious contrast as one generation goes off stage right, and entering stage left is a generation that learned a lesson somehow and they're doing something very different," said David Murray, special assistant to the director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The annual survey on drug use and health involves interviews of about 67,500 people. It provides an important snapshot of how many Americans drink, smoke and use drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Actually, I don't have a lot of faith in the accuracy of these surveys. I mean, when someone contacts the average person and says, "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'd like to ask you about your illicit drug use," I think a lot of people are going to lie. I think a lot of people will even lie about how much they drink in situations like this.

But still, for some reason it's deeply satisfying to imagine a bunch of paunchy, gray-haired baby boomers smoking dope to regain some of their former hippie glory.

Excuse is unconvincing

Do you ever see a string of words which, taken one by one, each make sense, but as a whole are very tough to comprehend? That's what happened to me when I saw the following words: "Speeding driver blames lack of goats." I decided to investigate further (okay, I didn't really "investigate"--I just read the damn article):

A Swiss driver caught speeding in Canada explained that he had been taking advantage of the ability to drive fast without hitting a goat, police said on Wednesday.

Airtight logic there, basing your speed on what you're not going to hit. Anyway, here are some more odd words:

"A motorist from Switzerland, used to driving around hills and mountains, takes advantage of the ability to go faster without risking hitting a goat," read the traffic officer's notes of the incident.

Who is this traffic officer? Yoda?

"I've never been to Switzerland but obviously they must have a problem with that there," said police spokesman Joel Doiron, adding that in his 20 years of service he had never found a goat on the highways of eastern Ontario.

It doesn't sound like they have a "problem" to me. Sounds like they have the solution. Want to cut down on speeders on Ontario highways? You need some goats out on those roads.

And to think, the ingrates actually fined him!

Obvious

I'm watching the Dodgers play the Brewers on the teevee right now, and I had forgotten that this guy is one of the Brewers' outfielders. It's a night game, but he hasn't been wearing sunglasses.

I bet he never gets tired of that joke.

An eternity

I'm a baseball fan, and I'm not the kind of fan who leaves a game early. I don't even mind when a good game goes into extra innings, but this is just effing ridiculous.

Talk about extra innings. A baseball game that began at 10 a.m. on Saturday in Alliance [Nebraska] ended Sunday at 4:05 p.m.

That's 30 hours and five minutes between the first pitch and the final out. Game organizers are counting on the contest being long enough to break a world record.

Forty players, ranging in age from 18 to 44, rotated in and out of the 84-inning game in hopes of setting a new Guinness World Record for the longest baseball game.

The record stands at 25 hours, set in Canada nearly three years ago.

There were a total of 234 runs scored in the game. How do you even do that? I'm guessing that they just didn't bother to play any real defense.

Anyway, after reading about that, I don't think I'll ever be bored by an extra-innings game in quite the same way again. I sure as hell hope they didn't cut off beer sales after the eighth inning, which is the biggest problem with games that go long. People would've gone homicidal.

Perspective

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to remind you of the better points of your hometown. This weekend, that perspective was provided by D.C. resident Dave of Garfield Ridge, who's been in SoCal visiting his brother.

He had a great post with great pictures about their trip to Dodger Stadium, which is one of the most beautiful temples of baseball the world has ever seen. He enjoyed one of the tastiest hot dogs available to man and even saw some celebrities. And his bro survived a nasty encounter with a foul ball. As they say, read the whole thing.

I haven't been to Dodger Stadium for a season or two, and his post actually filled me with longing for the place. And for Dodger Dogs. Mmmmmmm...Dodger Dogs.

Dave also got to enjoy the best fast food burger anybody's ever eaten soon after touching down here. Seriously, In-N-Out is one of the reasons why I don't think I could ever live anywhere but California, and Dave reminded me about what a treat it is to have something so good nearby.

SoCal has its faults, but it's a pretty good place to live. Dodger Stadium (and The Big A, too), In-N-Out Burger, and a myriad of other things make this a great place to live. Sometimes, you just need a reminder.

The saddest thing

But what would the Taliban be doing in a diner? Maybe the food is Halal.

You learn something new every day

Hey, did you know that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Stephen King conspired to murder John Lennon? And that they used headlines in news magazines to spread "government codes" announcing their intentions to do so? Well, thanks to the voices in this guy's head, now you do!

Seriously, the internets have to be the best thing to happen to crazy people since Xerox machines allowed them to cobble together their paranoid manifestoes for distribution to their fellow freaks.

(via Ace of Spades commenter krakatoa)

Put some pants on, dude

I tend to get excited by the prospect of seeing other people—women, actually—naked. The thought of other people seeing me nude, not so much. This guy is apparently an altogether different story.

Police arrested a motorist accused of twice visiting a coffee stand while naked from the waist down.

Garry Scott Harding, 37, of Bend [Oregon] was arraigned Tuesday on public indecency and stalking charges.

A 16-year-old worker at the stand told police that a man without pants or underwear visited the stand twice over the last few weeks and returned Monday fully clothed, according to a report written by Roberto Robles of the Bend Police Department.

She called police during the last visit and officers stopped Harding before he could leave. During an interview with investigators, Harding explained that his ex-wife had once removed his pants before the couple visited a drive-thru window in Montana, according to authorities. Harding apparently said he couldn't stop thinking about the experience and wanted to try it again.

Having gone into the place sans trou once, it's pretty interesting that the guy got away with it a second time. I get that—he got his dirty little thrill again. But what I want to know is why he'd go back to the same place, fully clothed.

Maybe he figured they wouldn't recognize him. After all, I'm pretty sure his face probably wasn't the most distinctive thing about his appearance those first two times.

Stripping for the children

Here's a story to warm the cockles of your heart. And also your pants.

The Clark County School District kicked off the first day of school Wednesday with scant resources. But it got a major donation from the scantily clad.

The same day the nation's fifth largest school district began the year with some 400 teaching vacancies, the nonprofit corporation that supports it, the Public Education Foundation, accepted a $2,500 donation from a strip club, Scores Las Vegas.

[...]

Scores raised the funds at an Aug. 23 back-to-school event called "Detention" that featured strippers dressed as teachers, schoolgirls and librarians.

"It's back to school time and you know what that means. Detention for everyone who has been bad!" one advertisement read.

The performers peeled off clothes and offered lap dances to customers, [Scores Marketing Director Shai] Cohen said. Patrons also left more than $1,000 donations in a jar that the club said would go to the Clark County School District. Scores matched the donations roughly dollar for dollar, he said.

"In this town, money is money, regardless," Cohen said. "We're a respectable business. We pay taxes like everybody else. We have a business license. It's for a good cause."

"Education is very important," he said.

And really, who knows the importance of a good education better than someone who works with strippers? But seriously, good job you dirty, dirty girls.

No parking

Parking in most big cities is a real bitch. That said, I don't think this is really an appropriate response to a parking dispute. Unless you're a magician.

A street parking attendant in Brazil's crime-ridden city of Rio de Janeiro was charged with sawing a woman in two over a parking space dispute, police said on Wednesday.

The 29-year-old male suspect was arrested on Tuesday night and confessed to murdering businesswoman Edna Souza, 51, in a house she was trying to rent in the middle class Botafogo district, a police spokeswoman said.

"Only the bottom part of the corpse has been found. Today police are going in force to the city waste dump, which will be combed to try to find the upper part," the spokeswoman said.

Well, now, doesn't that sound like fun?

The parking attendant told police he had had an argument with Souza some time ago when she left her car in front of a building where parking was banned, ignoring his protests. The last time she came to the neighbourhood on Monday he followed her inside the house and killed her.

Police received information that the two had quarrelled and questioned the man, who confessed the murder. He killed her with a knife and then used a handsaw to dismember the body, police said. The man said Souza had humiliated him.

One can only wonder what depraved depths of violence he would've sunk to had she, say, parked in front of a fire hydrant.

Gas and hump

This is funny, especially because of the use of the phrase "pump prices." That's just how my mind works.

Hot and bothered by rising pump prices? Australian brothels are offering clients discounts based on their gas bills.

Brothel owners claim the system works much the same way as supermarkets which offer shoppers discounted gas prices by presenting their grocery bills when they fill up their tanks.

"If you come in and spend time with one of our lovely ladies, we'll give you a discount of 20 cents a liter," Kerry, manager of Sydney brothel The Site, told Reuters Wednesday.

There is no link between brothels, petrol providers or supermarkets but brothels like The Site and Madame Kerry's say the system is simple.

Once you've filled up your car, bring your receipt to the brothel and they'll discount the price of your visit.

The bill for a full 50-liter tank at 126.9 cents per liter comes to A$63.45 ($48.22). With the offered 20c a liter discount, the petrol bill would have instead come to A$53.45.

That A$10 difference is taken off the A$150 cost of a 30-minute session with one of the brothel's "service providers."

As the article notes, brothels are legal in most of Australia. They're illegal here, so I don't know how we could work something similar--and, hey, it's a good deal--out. Maybe you could consult your local pimp, though I don't think most pimps are big on the idea of discounts.

Oh, and I love the use of a term like "service providers." C'mon, foax. They're prostitutes. Next thing you know, crack dealers are going to be called "amateur pharmacists."

Tequila sale causes mild annoyance

So, the company that makes Jack Daniel's bought up some tequila maker down in Mexico, and now the locals are furious. Well, somewhat upset, anyway.

"Nothing is sacred. Look, now Herradura tequila has gone," said Heriberto Zuniga, slugging back an aged Herradura tequila in Ardalio, a classic no-frills cantina in Mexico City's Escandon neighborhood.

The 26-year-old plumber said he'd boycott the drink if only he had the willpower. "I'd like to say this is my last Herradura, but it won't be, I like it too much."

Um, Heriberto, up here in El Norte, that's what we refer to as a "drinking problem." You might want to work on that willpower.

I'm just saying is all.

Is multiculturalism dead in the UK?

Well, that's what the author of this article, one Ron Liddle, says. Furthermore, he posits that the Labour politicians who put the multicultural policies in place are responsible for its demise.

Quick, somebody buy a wreath. Last week marked the passing of multiculturalism as official government doctrine. No longer will opponents of this corrosive and divisive creed be silenced simply by the massed Pavlovian ovine accusation: “Racist!” Better still, the very people who foisted multiculturalism upon the country are the ones who have decided that it has now outlived its usefulness — that is, the political left.

It is amazing how a few by-election shocks and some madmen with explosive backpacks can concentrate the mind. At any rate, British citizens, black and white, can move onwards together — towards a sunlit upland of monoculturalism, or maybe zeroculturalism, whatever takes your fancy.

That multiculturalism really is officially dead and buried can be inferred both from Ruth Kelly’s comments last week and, indeed, from the title of the commission that the government had convened in the wake of the July 7 terrorist attacks last year and to which her observations were made.

In fairness, Kelly, the communities and local government secretary, merely posed the question as to whether the creed had resulted in division and alienation. “Have we ended up with some communities living in isolation from each other?” she asked. That she was speaking wholly rhetorically is evident from the title of the commission: the Commission for Integration and Cohesion. You don’t get either of those things with multiculturalism: they are mutually exclusive.

It has all been a long time coming. Some 22 years ago Ray Honeyford, the previously obscure headmaster of Drummond middle school in Bradford, suggested, in the low-circulation right-wing periodical The Salisbury Review, that his Asian pupils should really be better integrated into British society.

They should learn English, for a start, and a bit of British history and a sense of what the country is about; further, Asian (Muslim) girls should be allowed to learn to swim despite the objections of their parents (who did not like them stripping down even in front of each other). Muslim kids should be treated like every other pupil, in other words.

For these mild contentions, Honeyford was investigated by the government, vilified as a racist by the press, ridiculed every day by leftie demonstrators outside his office and was eventually hounded from his job. He has not worked since.

[...]

This is how far we have come in the past year or so. When an ICM poll of Britain’s Muslims in February this year revealed that some 40% (that is, about 800,000 people) wished to see Islamic law introduced in parts of Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality responded by saying that they should therefore pack their bags and clear off. Sir Trevor Phillips’s exact words were these: “If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.”

My guess is this: if such a statement had been made by a member of the Tory party’s Monday Club in 1984 — or, for that matter, 1994 — he would have been excoriated and quite probably would have been kicked out of the party. “If you don’t like it here then go somewhere else” was once considered the apogee of “racism”. People who did not like it here were exhorted to exert their political muscle and change the status quo.

Read the whole thing. It goes into some things about British politics that I'm not really familiar with, but the main point seems to be that even "progressive" Labour politicians are waking up to the idea that having large, unassimilated, hostile groups of people living in their country might be, you know, a bad thing. Dangerous, even.

(via Andrea Harris)

God bless the nude heroes of Florida

I don't throw around terms like "heroes" very often, but in this case, I feel it's appropriate.

A nudist getaway that received top mention in "Playboy" magazine was the recent host to a very enticing fundraiser.

The Caliente nudist resort in Land O'Lakes, Fla. hosted Relay for Life, raising money for cancer while baring it all in true nudist fashion, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

Various methods were employed to raise funds for the American Cancer Society, including topless kisses for $5 and "Titty T's" shirts available for $10 a pop.

The main event, the relay, had naked participants prancing around resort grounds, strolling pool-side and crooning on the karaoke machine. At least one attendee was said to be dressed, namely, Giggles the clown, also known as the county commissioner.

That's good, because clown nudity is just wrong. But seriously, raising money for cancer research is always a good thing. And when you can pair that with topless kissing booths, well, that's something special. Heroes, I tell you.

[wipes away single tear]

Yikes!

Man, what the hell happened to Ray Liotta's face? He's got some kind of Joker thing going on with his mouth.

Image via The Internet Movie Database.

Go for the syrup, stay for the nudity

Hey, perverts! What are you doing hanging out here, reading my pathetic little blog, when you could be ogling nude teenagers in Vermont?

Some have appeared naked in a downtown parking lot. Others rode their bicycles or simply strolled the streets in the nude.

Teenagers in the quaint Vermont town of Brattleboro are raising eyebrows this summer with brazen displays of nudity.

So far they haven't been arrested or ticketed: public nudity isn't illegal in the town of 13,000 people, unless it's done to arouse sexual gratification.

And yet, here in California, if I "forget" to wear pants when I go out to get the paper, everybody makes a big deal about it.

Of course, somebody had to spoil it for everyone else...

Nobody, including the police, seemed to take offense until one local, Theresa Toney, went before the town government in August to complain about a group of youngsters naked in a parking lot.

"The parking lot is not a strip club," she said. "What about children seeing this?"

But it's natural, maaaan! You need to get over your hangups.

Of course, we're talking about Vermont, the land that brought us Ben & Jerry and Howard Dean, so some of the nudity is, how shall we say, idiot-related.

"We have a nuclear power plant a few miles away and a ridiculous war in the Middle East, countries getting bombed," said Ian Bigelow, a 23-year-old who had gathered with some of his friends outside a bookstore. "So why's it such a big problem if we chose to get nude?"

I honestly don't know how to respond to a statement like that. My brain hurts.

Auf Wiedersehen, Hitler Gaststätte*

Remember the Hitler-themed restaurant in India that I posted about the other day? Well, it looks like the owner has decided to scrap that idea.

The owner of a restaurant named after Adolf Hitler said Thursday he will change its name because it angered so many people.

Puneet Sablok said he would remove Hitler's name and the Nazi swastika from billboards and the menu. He had said the restaurant's name _ "Hitler's Cross" _ and symbols were only meant to attract attention.

Sablok made the decision after meeting with members of Bombay's small Jewish community.

"Once they told me how upset they were with the name, I decided to change it," he said. "I don't want to do business by hurting people."

I still can't believe this guy didn't realize that having a theme restaurant which was based on Nazism was, let's say, in poor taste.

Sablok said he had not yet decided on a new name.

Let's see...how about Stalin's Gulag Experience Russian Tearoom? Or perhaps a sushi joint based on Japanese atrocities in the Pacific? I can see it now: "Tojo's--a Place for Sushi."

*title courtesy of Alta Vista Babel Fish

Cheers to Milwaukee!

While nearly everybody knows that there are rankings released every year for best "Party School" (I think the University of Texas won this year), I honestly didn't know that they had a ranking for Party Cities. I guess you learn something new every day.

Milwaukee has been ranked by Forbes.com as "America's Drunkest City" on a list of 35 major metropolitan areas ranked for their drinking habits.

Forbes said Tuesday it used numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rank cities in five areas: state laws, number of drinkers, number of heavy drinkers, number of binge drinkers and alcoholism.

Minneapolis-St. Paul was ranked second overall; followed by Columbus, Ohio; Boston; Austin, Texas; Chicago; Cleveland; Pittsburgh and then Philadelphia and Providence, R.I., in a tie for ninth.

[...]

But officials at Visit Milwaukee, the area's convention and visitors bureau, contend that the city has come a long way in ridding itself of its beer-guzzling image.

Milwaukeeans have plenty of other ways to entertain themselves without drinking alcohol, said Dave Fantle, a spokesman for the group. He noted a new convention center and baseball park had been built and the Milwaukee Art Museum expanded in recent years.

Now, I don't know about the museum or the convention center, but the ballpark...well, it's Miller Park where the Brewers play. So much for that "beer-guzzling image," huh?

Gee, I wonder how they'll celebrate winning the title.

Porno makes him hot

You know, if you feel guilty about what you did at the porno store, you should just do what everyone else does (so I'm told)—cast your eyes downward and try to leave without making eye contact with anybody. You probably don't want to do what this guy did.

Miami-Dade police are searching for the man who was caught on tape starting a fire inside an adult bookstore in Miami.

It happened Saturday, Aug. 12, at about 3:20 a.m. inside the store on Southwest 40th Street.

Police said a man went inside the bookstore and asked the clerk for change for the video machines. The man then went into a video booth.

"The guy came in like a regular customer," said store manager Theresa Jelley.

Police said a few minutes later, the man came out of the booth and told the clerk, "I have a guilty conscience. I'm going to set the place on fire."

"It came out of nowhere. He told the clerk that he felt guilty and then he walked to the booth, opened it up and threw gasoline on the floor and lit a lighter," Jelley said.

Surveillance video inside the store showed that the man pulled out a plastic bottle filled with a liquid and poured the liquid on the ground in the video area. He then ignited the liquid, causing a large fire.

The manager says that nobody recognized him, and that most of the store's customers are "regulars." The real tragedy here is that those people are going to have to find somewhere else for their...self gratification.

(Or, I suppose, they could just use the internets. I hear those tubes are just stuffed full of the naughty stuff. Yep, that's what I hear.)

Bunnies!

I thought I'd kind of go the other way from the psycho killer raccoons. Just because.

"Psycho Killer Raccoons Terrorize Olympia"

This story has one of the more sensationalistic headlines I've seen in a while. Not just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill killer raccoons, these are psycho killer raccoons we're dealing with! They haven't swarmed and killed any people, though...not yet.

A fierce group of raccoons has killed 10 cats, attacked a small dog and bitten at least one pet owner who had to get rabies shots, residents of Olympia say.

Some have taken to carrying pepper spray to ward off the masked marauders and the woman who was bitten now carries an iron pipe when she goes outside at night.

"It's a new breed," said Tamara Keeton, who with Kari Hall started a raccoon watch after an emotional neighborhood meeting drew 40 people. "They're urban raccoons, and they're not afraid."

"Urban" raccoons, huh? I think we all know what that means.

Tony Benjamins, whose family lost two cats, said he got a big dog _ a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix _ to keep the raccoons away.

[...]

"We used to love the raccoons. They'd have their babies this time of year, and they were so cute. Even though we lived in the city, it was neat to have wildlife around," he said, "but this year, things changed. They went nuts."

I place the blame for the raccoons' mental instability squarely where it belongs: on George W. Bush.

Joe Rosenthal, R.I.P.

We've lost an icon of journalism, from back in the day when reporters were actually supportive of our war aims. Joe Rosenthal died this weekend at 94.

Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.

Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

"He was a good and honest man, he had real integrity," Anne Rosenthal said.

His photo, taken for The Associated Press on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.

Now, try to imagine Mike Wallace saying something like the following:

"What I see behind the photo is what it took to get up to those heights the kind of devotion to their country that those young men had, and the sacrifices they made," Rosenthal once said. "I take some gratification in being a little part of what the U.S. stands for."

Oh my God, he wasn't being objective! It's like he wasn't even trying to see things from the Japanese soldier's point of view!

Anyway, the famous photo is reproduced below:

I'm warning you

Don't click on this link. Seriously. You'll thank me later.

Dining with Der Fuehrer

You know, I don't understand why anybody would possibly be offended by this.

A new restaurant in India's financial hub, named after Adolf Hitler and promoted with posters showing the German leader and Nazi swastikas, has infuriated the country's small Jewish community.

'Hitler's Cross', which opened last week, serves up a wide range of continental fare and a big helping of controversy, thanks to a name the owners say they chose to stand out among hundreds of Mumbai eateries.

"We wanted to be different. This is one name that will stay in people's minds," owner Punit Shablok told Reuters.

"We are not promoting Hitler. But we want to tell people we are different in the way he was different."

So, the restaurant is named after Hitler, has pictures of Hitler and swastikas all over the place, but they're not "promoting Hitler." Yeah, that makes sense.

I must say, though, that Hitler certainly was "different." If, by "different," you mean "megalomaniacal" or "genocidal." Anyway, back to the Hitler non-promotion:

Posters line the road leading up to it, featuring a red swastika carved in the name of the eatery. One slogan reads: "From Small Bites to Mega Joys."

A huge portrait of a stern-looking Fuehrer greets visitors at the door. The cross in the restaurant's name refers to the swastika that symbolized the Nazi regime.

Nope, no Hitler promotion there. Not at all. But for some unfathomable reason, the Jewish community in India (yeah, who knew?) is upset about this. Baffling, I know.

Perhaps it's the slogan. That is a really sucky slogan.

"All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us"

It was inevitable, really, if you think about it.

"Fun" with condoms

Everybody is wearing condoms! But, uh, not in the fun way.

Condoms are very much in style as a fashion accessory at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, showing up on strait-laced men, shy teenagers and African grandmothers.

"There's a great need to de-stigmatize condoms around the world, especially in Africa," said Franck DeRose, executive director of The Condom Project, which aims to get people comfortable about condoms, especially those living in countries where the little piece of latex is considered taboo.

To do that, the project has a program that gets people making their own condom art pin. It all starts with a craft table, packaged condoms, scraps of colored paper, candy and other double-sided tape.

Wow, doesn't that sound like fun? No, not really. And what's up with "candy and other double-sided tape," anyway? Don't these people have editors anymore?

Oh, and I love this little bit of multi-cultural liberal pap:

"We're not pushing it on people. They come to us and the information is there," said DeRose, adding his group teams up with the local information groups in the communities where his team visits.

"I don't think it's healthy or appropriate to change a culture. But we can change the risky behavior within a community."

We don't want to change someone's culture, per se. No, we just want to alter their behavior and attitudes in some fundamental ways. See the difference? What do you mean, "no"? Come back here!

Anyway, click on the link to see a picture of a little girl (seriously, she can't be more than six or seven years old) staring at a dress made of condoms. Isn't that just darling?

Historic hoes

When it comes to the preservation of historic buildings, I'm...less than passionate. Most of the time, that is. But in this case, I think it's important. Very important.

A centuries-old brothel teetering on the verge of collapse has red-faced Chinese officials pondering heritage versus morality behind closed doors, state media reported on Thursday.

A local government in Jinggang, a town in central Hunan province, must decide whether to restore crumbling Hongtaifang, a brothel established in 1733, and face the ire of residents who see it as debauched, Xinhua news agency said.

"The brothel was a place where women were humiliated in the old society," Xinhua quoted Xiao Yisheng, a retired university professor, as saying.

"Its restoration could be seen as promoting prostitution."

Tan Feng, a student from Xiao's alma mater, begged to differ, saying the site was bound to prompt different reactions in different people.

"When I entered the brothel, it reminded me that it was a place where the ancients indulged in sensual pleasures," Tan said.

In other words, he gets a tingle in his no-no place thinking about old-timey prostitutes. But really, if you can get people thinking and talking about history, isn't that the important thing?

No, I guess not.

Welcome back, Dave

Remember how the other day I said one of my favorite bloggers was calling it quits? Well, after two whole days away from his blog, he's back. I kind of had a feeling he would be, considering the fact that the movie event of the year is happening tomorrow and he's been talking about it for months. Dave quitting blogging before at least writing a review of Snakes on a Plane would be sheer madness.

Like a Viking II: Son of Like a Viking

After being ridiculed by pretty much the entire right side of the blogosphere yesterday, you might think Andrew Sullivan would think twice before floating more insane conspiracy theories. You'd be wrong.

I have long wondered whether Cheney and Rumsfeld ever believed that their job was to build a new democracy in Iraq. Rumsfeld had dealt with and supported Saddam in the past; Cheney was extremely suspicious of occupying Iraq in 1990. One subversive theory - which I'm not endorsing, just airing - is that both merely wanted to turn the Saddam regime to rubble, and then play along with neocon democracy supporters, while making sure that the military was never given enough resources to do nation-building. Then Cheney and Rumsfeld could prove their point about the impossibility of reforming the Muslim world, and promote the view that we need merely to pummel enemies, project military fear across the region, and deter Islamo-fascism by "shock and awe." The Likud strategy, in other words.

Where to even begin? One subversive theory--which I'm not endorsing, just airing--is that we are dealing with someone who is crazier than a shithouse rat. Oh, and by the way, good job insinuating that the Joooooooooos! are secretly pulling the strings.

Once again, Ace is right on top of this. With graphics this time, too.