Baseball field = Gitmo

I'm having a bit of a hard time deciding which side of this story to come down on. On the one hand, you've got a guy who didn't follow procedure. On the other hand, you've got his neighbors, who seem to be a bunch of hyperbolic jerks. I'll let you decide:

Even a field of dreams needs a permit. Town officials in this posh San Francisco suburb [Danville] voted unanimously Tuesday to order David Lowe to tear down an 18,000-square-foot Little League practice field he built for his son.

The private equity investor spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building the field _ complete with Astroturf, a batting cage and motorized pitching machine _ on a prominent ridge. He said he did it because he couldn't attend his 11-year-old son's regular afternoon Little League practices, but still wanted to find a way to coach the team.

Now that's nice and all, but he didn't get the proper permits ahead of time, which is something he really should have thought of. Now, let's look at the other side...

Neighbors in the multimillion-dollar housing development below the ridge have compared the ball field to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay because of its highly visible 14-foot fence.

Uh-huh. Don't you people think you're exaggerating just a little bit by comparing a baseball practice facility to a military prison? And what do you want to bet that a bunch of these people are liberals who picked that comparison explicitly to blow this out of proportion in the minds of likewise liberal local officials?

Anyway, he offered to lower the fence and landscape the hillside to hide the field from his neighbors' nhighly sensitive eyes, but no dice.

A weed grows in prison

I'd imagine it's hard enough for prison guards to keep people from smuggling in drugs, but when the drugs are actually growing inside the prison, well..

A Japanese prison is scrambling to eradicate marijuana plants that keep sprouting up on its exercise ground, officials said Tuesday.

The marijuana plants started sprouting at Abashiri Prison on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido about a year ago, said prison official Takeshi Okamura. He said officials plucked out as many as 300 marijuana plants and treated the ground last year, but several more sprouted again this year.

Now, that's unusual enough, but check this out:

Prisoners reported them to the guards.

Those must be some of the most ethical convicted felons on the face of the Earth.

Nice work if you can get it

I'd like to know how this guy pulled off his scam for so long without anybody catching on:

A French tax official cheated the government out of 600,000 euros ($820,000) by creating a phantom identity as a university professor and claiming a salary for some 15 years, the government said Monday.

Education Ministry officials uncovered the scam in June and began legal and disciplinary action immediately, Budget Minister Eric Woerth said in a statement.

Didn't anybody at the university he was drawing a salary from notice that he was, you know, never there? Or that he didn't seem to be doing any work?

Whew!

After Ervin Santana had arguably his worst outing ever, going only 1/3 of an inning and giving up five runs, the Angels came roaring back to beat the Mariners 10-6. This team is hungry to win, and they're looking good heading into the home stretch.

Old blow

Man, what is it with the elderly and illegal drugs? Yesterday, we had the pot-growing granny. Now, check out this coke-dealin' oldster:

A 93-year-old man was charged with cocaine-trafficking Thursday, the same day police netted three other people on charges of possessing heroine [sic], opium and a slew of prescription drugs, police said Friday.

William C. Tinnen, also charged with possession of cocaine with intent to sell, was jailed before being released Friday on $200,000 bond, said Kammie Michael, spokeswoman for the Durham Police Department.

Tinnen also was sentenced for cocaine possession in 2001, and given a suspended sentence, Michael said.

It's nice to see old people keeping active.

Shades of Norman Bates

Well, to be fair, this guy didn't kill anybody (that we know of), but he did something incredibly creepy nonetheless:

A German left his dead mother seated in her favorite armchair at their shared home for two years because he could not face organizing a funeral, police in the southern town of Fuerstenfeldbruck said Friday.

The woman died of natural causes in the chair in July 2005 at the age of 92, a police spokesman said. A doctor called to the scene at the time gave the son a death certificate but he did not register the death.

There's no word in the article about whether or not the guy had been seen running around in his dead mom's clothes, but they probably would've mentioned that if he had.

Green thumb granny

Gardening is an activity that many of our senior citizens really love. Some of them love it more than others, though:

A 71-year-old woman was arrested on drug charges after a chest-high marijuana plant was found in her yard, a plant she said was meant to keep animals away from her garden.

A sheriff's deputy saw the plant as he drove past Betty Holt Walker's home earlier this month, according to Capt. Tony Caliendo of the Guilford County Sheriff's Department.

Well, I'm sure it was just a mistake. I mean, it's not like this sweet old lady knew what the plant was, right?

The deputy stopped to investigate and found five smaller plants behind a shed, as well as marijuana stems and seeds, and a water bong made from a soda bottle inside the house, Caliendo said.

Oh. Never mind.

Weird tales of the Sitemeter V

I got a hit from a Google search for "men in girdles." I'm baffled.

Update: Found it.

Why you should always wear clothes around your bitter ex-wife

What's worse than a burning sensation in your nether region? This guy found out:

A woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said Wednesday.

Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was "difficult to predict."

The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat, something common in Russia where property costs are very high.

The guy told a newspaper that he didn't know what he had done to deserve this. His ex-wife isn't quoted, but I'm sure her response would be that yes, he does so know what he did. But in Russian.

One-armed robots menace Tokyo

Well, no, not really, but people have been seriously injured by a video game:

Lose a game of chess to a computer, and you could bruise your ego. Lose an arm-wrestling match to a Japanese arcade machine, and you could break your arm.

Distributor Atlus Co. said Tuesday it will remove all 150 "Arm Spirit" arm wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms grappling with the machine's mechanized appendage.

"The machine isn't that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it," said Atlus spokeswoman Ayano Sakiyama, calling the recall "a precaution."

"We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way," she said. The company was investigating the incidents and checking the machines for any signs of malfunction.

That sounds like a good idea. I mean, sure, maybe people are twisting their arms in weird ways. Maybe they all had brittle bones. Or maybe your robot arm wrestlers are malfunctioning and breaking peoples' bones.

I wish I was at the Big A tonight

Garret Anderson hasn't been having the best season for the Angels this year, but man oh man is he making up for it by kicking some Yankee ass tonight. Two doubles, two homers (one of which was a grand slam), and a total of 10 RBI! That's a team record for the most runs driven in over the course of a single game and the team mark for career grand slams with eight over the course of his career. And the game ain't over yet. It's 5-18 in the top of the seventh.

Update: 9-18 was the final. Box scores and recaps here.

Two reasons why the GQ list of the Fifty Most Powerful People in D.C. is a joke

For some reason, I get GQ at home. I canceled my subscription ages ago, and yet it keeps on coming. It occasionally has a good article or photo spread of some sexy actress or another, but most of it is gay-looking male models in clothes I could never afford; ads for watches, gadgets, and more clothes I could never afford; and insipid conservative-bashing political articles.

Anyway, the new issue came today (Obama's on the cover!), and it has an feature on the fifty most powerful people in Washington. The article mostly (and predictably) heaps scorn on Republicans and lavishes praise on Democrats. But there are two main reasons why I think the article is a joke (and not a good one):

1. The President of the United States of America isn't on the list: Say what you will about Bush's popularity or the whole lame duck thing, the man still holds the most powerful office in the world. Like him or hate him, he has his "Finger on The Button" and all that.

2. Andrew Sullivan is on the list: Enough said.

If, for some reason, you're still interested, you can find the whole list here.

I guess he likes kids

Looks like somebody doesn't see overpopulation as a big problem:

A one-legged Emirati father of 78 is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 children by 2015, Emirates Today reported on Monday.

Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time.

"In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children," the local tabloid quoted Abdul Rahman as saying.

"After that I will stop marrying. I have to have at least three more marriages to hit the century."

The article goes on to say that his family lives in fifteen different houses. I would imagine he has a sixteenth where he stores all the ugly ties he gets every year for Father's Day.

I'm guessing he was probably high

I've known a few tweakers in the past, and they're not the most with-it people when on a meth jag. Case in point:

A man hoping to score some meth asked the wrong person for the drug. The Eugene police vice narcotics unit had searched an apartment on Monday night and were questioning the tenant when a man came by and asked to buy drugs, Sgt. Jerry Webber said.

As detectives stood around with their badges hanging from their necks and latex gloves on their hands, the man asked the tenant, "Can you hook me up?" Webber said.

The tenant was seated on the couch with handcuffs around his wrists. A detective was writing him a citation.

The tenant said, "I don't think I can help you," Webber recalled, but the visitor persisted. He then allegedly turned to a detective and asked him for meth.

The detective told the visitor, James Wilkinson, 34, of Eugene, he was under arrest for attempted possession of methamphetamine.

Wilkinson tried to run, but officers grabbed him, Webber said.

I guess he'd finally figured it out by then, huh?

Name games

Hey, it looks like we've got another case of some jackasses who want to give their kid a really stupid name:

A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@," claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.

Now, I don't speak Chinese so I have no way of knowing if this is plausible, but the poor kid's father supposedly has an explanation for this nonsense...

"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.

While "@" is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta," or "love him," to Mandarin speakers.

So why not give him a name like "ai ta" using regular Chinese characters? Oh, that's right. It's because you're stupid douchebags who think that you're clever.

Burning down the house

You try to do a little yardwork, and look what it gets you:

Danny Fendley started more than just his lawn mower when he tugged at its pull cord - he started a fire that destroyed his home.

The mower exploded Tuesday in hot, parched conditions.

Fendley was trying to start the mower in the garage of his two-story brick home in this Atlanta suburb when the machine burst into flames. Before he could extinguish the fire, it had spread through the garage.

Then his wife tried to toss a can of gasoline out a window as the blaze spread, but she missed, spreading the fuel "everywhere," Fendley said.

I'd imagine that it's not easy to be level-headed when your garage is on fire, but it doesn't sound like a good idea to be throwing gasoline around, even if it's supposed to go out the window. Live and learn, I guess.

Nun too smart

You know, when you're looking for some easy money, you probably shouldn't try to rob somebody who has taken a vow of poverty:

The man broke into the 61-year-old Catholic nun's home shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday. When she told him she had no money, he forced her to drive him around in her car for almost an hour in search of money.

As they drove, the robber apologized "to the victim and wonders if he's going to be forgiven by her and the Catholic Church," police spokesman Joel DeSpain said.

The two did not stop at a bank or cash machine because the Sinsinawa Dominican sister continued to tell the man she did not have any money or access to any.

Eventually, the man gave up and had the nun drop him off on Madison's south side. She then drove to the Catholic school where she works and called police.

He won't be going straight to hell, but only because he has to take a trip to the pokey first. The cops arrested him later that day.

Hating life

It's been over 100 degrees out for the last few days, so of course the air conditioning unit would choose today to die. Gah. I must smell all kinds of nasty.

On the plus side, we now have a more energy-efficient air conditioner.

Ouch!

This guy must be a super badass. That, or he's staggeringly unobservant.

A Japanese biker failed to notice his leg had been severed below the knee when he hit a safety barrier, and rode on for more than a mile, leaving a friend to pick up the missing limb.

Now, I realize that he could hardly be expected to do it himself, but that's got to be a damn close friend. You don't just ask a casual acquaintance to go back and retrieve one of your severed limbs, now do you?

The 54-year-old office worker was out on his motorcycle with a group of friends in the city of Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo, on Monday, when he was unable to negotiate a curve in the road and bumped into the central barrier, the Mainichi Shimbun said.

He felt excruciating pain, but did not notice that his right leg was missing until he stopped at the next junction, the paper quoted local police as saying.

And none of the other people he was with noticed that he was short a leg, either? That's the kind of detail I like to think I would pick up on.

Overheard at the local watering hole

Hairy-armed guy in Hawaiian shirt: Did I ever tell you about the time we did PCP?

Slightly attractive woman in her early forties: Um, no, I don't think so....

On the road again

Remember the blind Estonian driver from last week? Well, he's baaaaack:

An Estonian man who was caught driving a car even though he is blind has been at it again, police said on Monday, and this time he faces jail.

Police first arrested the man, 20, a week ago.

"We arrested the same blind man driving his car again on Saturday in the town of Torvandi, near Tartu (in southern Estonia)," said Marge Kohtla, a spokeswoman for Tartu police district.

And wait, it gets better! Actually, I'm not sure "better" is the right word...

"He was drunk. There were three people in the car with him giving him instructions."

Well, at least he wasn't by himself. But again, why weren't any of those other three doing the driving? I mean, even if all three of them were drunk too, it's not like he was good designated driver material.

Leave the goat alone

Something very, very wrong is going on in the state of Washington:

A man accused of having sex with a goat is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday on a animal cruelty charge. Charging papers say a witness saw 63-year-old Arthur Lawton having sex with a goat May 8th in a barn at Eatonville's Pioneer Farm Museum where he worked.

Notice the past tense there. He "worked" at the farm. Somehow, I doubt he's still employed there.

Lawton said he was trying to milk the goat.

Now, I've never milked a goat personally, but I don't think he was doing it right. Nope. Definitely not the right way to milk a goat.

Lawton missed a scheduled arraignment on August 3rd but turned himself in last night to Pierce County sheriff's deputies.

He's the second person charged in the county since the Legislature made bestiality a crime in response to the fatal injury to a man having sex with a horse in Enumclaw.

Okay, people, when you have to enact a new law because people are having sex with animals, you've got a serious problem. Just lay off the sex with animals folks, huh? What do you say?

Just get a divorce, already

You know, I don't really think this guy knows how to take a hint:

Steve Graham might not be in the doghouse over a dispute with his wife, but as far as his neighbors are concerned, he's not far from it. For the past seven years, Graham, 55, has been living in his car parked in the backyard of a house he and his wife, La Donna Graham, own.

Graham said the two have "been having troubles" since 1999 and that he's been out of the house since about 2000. His wife still lives in the home.

Well, at least she hasn't kicked him out of the yard, so there may yet be hope that they can patch things up after all.

"She's not going to support me not having a job and bumming around," Graham said. "I'm trying my best to get a job and get up out of this rut."

Yeah. After seven years, I'm not sure I feature that happening. That's a pretty deep rut.

But his neighbors, who say Graham plays loud music, often spouts obsenity-laced tirades and uses his yard as a toilet, aren't amused. They have asked the city to prohibit such living arrangements.

"You can't enjoy your backyard," said Linda Sanders, whose backyard is across the alley from Graham's property.

Sanders and her family are among more than a dozen neighbors who presented the Pittsburg [Kansas] City Commission with a petition in July asking it to prohibit people from living in their cars on private property within city limits.

What a bunch of snobs! I mean, just because he's a loud, foul-mouthed, yard-pooping loser...well, I can actually see their point.

For real?

Speaking of people who probably shouldn't be reproducing, meet the Wheatons, who seem bent on screwing up their newborn son for the rest of his life. Well, until he's old enough to legally change his name, anyway.

A New Zealand couple is looking to call their newborn son Superman -- but only because their chosen name of 4Real has been rejected by the government registry.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported.

The Wheatons decided on the name after seeing the baby for the first time in an ultrasound scan and realizing their baby was "for real."

They decided 4Real was the best way to write it, but the name was rejected because the registrar said a name had to be a sequence of characters.

Pat Wheaton said he was considering appealing against the decision through the courts, but whatever happens he won't be budged on his choice.

"No matter what its going to stay 4Real," Wheaton told the Herald, "I'm certainly not a quitter."

No, but you're certainly a stubborn asshole. And your son is going to have lots of fun every year on the first day of school when he has to explain to his teachers that his name is spelled S-U-P-E-R-M-A-N but pronounced "for real." Yeah.

You might be a dumbass if...

...you're competing in the Texas Redneck Games:

These competitors forgo the shotput for the "Mattress Chuck" _ in which two-man teams heave a mattress from the back of a pickup truck as far as they can. And if you aren't planning on heading to Beijing for the next Olympic Games, there's always the ugly "butt-crack contest."

By the time the latest Redneck Games ended Sunday, more than 54 arrests and citations had been issued on charges ranging from public intoxication to speeding, according to the Henderson County Sheriff's Department. Officials are considering charges against the organizer and landowners where the event was held.

"I'm an old fuddy duddy and all that, but you got a vehicle, you got alcohol, and you got illegal dumping, and you're making a contest out of that?" said Lt. Pat McWilliams, sheriff's spokesman. "We are very fortunate that we didn't have a fatality."

I don't know if "fortunate" is exactly the right word. I mean, call me cynical and cold, but taking some of these people out of the gene pool might not be the worst idea ever.

Congratulations to Barry Bonds

Yeah, I'm just kidding about that. Fuck him and his big, bald, muscley head. Sure, he passed Hank Aaron on the all time home run list, but everybody and their uncle knows that he used steroids to do it. It's not just that he's a cheater, either. It's also because he's such an insufferable prick, too. And I guess I should mention that I hate the Giants, too.

And hardly anybody outside of the San Francisco Bay area is happy about this, either, in spite of what the talking heads on ESPN are saying about how he's one of the best players the game has ever seen. I bet he's thanking The Dark Prince, who probably owns his soul now, that he hit number 756 in San Francisco, too. The torrent of boos, garbage, and syringes that would've rained down on him if he hit that homer anywhere else sure would have been embarrassing. What's really embarrassing is that the baseball fans of San Francisco—just a little less sub-human than the Raider fans across the Bay—are so supportive of a cheater and a scumbag like Barry Bonds. They cheered their hearts out for a fake hero. They cheered for an asshole. They'll probably have a ticker tape parade for the bastard and give him a key to the city. They deserve each other.

Well, at least it's over with now and we can stop waiting for it to happen. I just hope Alex Rodriguez can stay healthy for the rest of his career so that he can break the record in a few years. It's not that I'm an A-Rod fan or a Yankee fan, either. It's just that it would allow the rest of us to put this bullshit travesty behind us.

Update: Hank Aaron, who wasn't in San Francisco, still managed to pass on a classy message via video. Ask yourself if you can picture Mr. Surly McDouchebag doing the same when his record is eventually broken.

I didn't think so.

The grudge

Sometimes, you just have to let something go. I think that this would be one such instance.

A Fayette County [Pennsylvania] architect is asking the state Supreme Court to revoke the license of another architect who died in May.

Mark Altman is asking the high court to hear his case against Michael Molnar, who died at age 77. Altman accused Molnar of misrepresenting his college career in Hungary when he applied for his state architectural license in 1960.

Molnar, who was hired by Altman's father as a draftsman nearly a half-century ago and later opened his own firm in Uniontown, told previous hearings that Hungary's communist regime quashed records of his education.

Altman cited a statement from a college in Budapest that there are no records of Molnar studying there. But the state examiner accepted the late architect's statement that Hungary's communist government would not grant him a diploma after he completed his four-year education and thesis.

Um, what's the point here? Like a lawyer cited later in the article said, "If the goal of the litigation is to stop Mike Molnar from practicing architecture, the good Lord has done that by taking him to the other side."

A pretty big blind spot

A few days ago, I had a post about a guy who was driving in spite of the fact that he had no arms and one leg. That seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, compared with this.

Police in the Baltic state of Estonia stopped a man who was driving erratically at the weekend, only to find he was blind.

The 20-year-old was driving in the southern city of Tartu early Sunday -- helped by instructions from his 16-year-old passenger.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why didn't the passenger, who, I presume, could actually see, just do the driving?

At least he wasn't armed when they arrested him

On the one hand, you've got to admire this guy's never-quit attitude in the face of great physical adversity. On the other hand, there are all of his not-so-admirable felony violations.

A man with no arms and one leg who wouldn't stop driving despite a long list of traffic violations was sentenced to five years in prison Friday on felony driving and drug charges.

Michael Francis Wiley, 40, also was sentenced to 15 years of drug offender probation. He pleaded no contest in June to the charges.

"I'd just like to say I know what I did was wrong," Wiley said in court Friday. "I am truly sorry your honor. I am."

Wiley taught himself to drive after losing both arms and a leg in an electrical accident when he was 13. He has already spent more than three years in prison for habitually driving without a license, kicking a state trooper and other charges.

I'm going to go out on a limb [rim shot] and guess he was probably seated in his car when he kicked the cop.

House of 1000 1 Corpses

I've been reading a book about England and Germany in the years leading up to World War I, and it talks about how, after Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert died, she had his clothes laid out every day as if he was still alive and kept a plaster cast of his hand next to her bed so that she could hold it during the night.

That all sounds perfectly sane compared to this:

A woman in Mexico City kept the body of her dead husband by her bedside for a year until neighbors, disturbed by the smell, called the police.

It took them a whole year to notice the smell?

So, anyway, we've got a putrefied corpse stinking up the joint and the crazy lady who couldn't let go. Could things possibly get any worse than that? Why, of course they could.

Police broke down Mercedes Velarde's door on Tuesday and found the putrefied body of her husband Edmundo on the floor of her bedroom.

Authorities said on Wednesday they were investigating Velarde's claim her husband died of natural causes. They believe the man, in his early 60s, had mental problems that may have been linked to his death.

Local media reported that Velarde's son regularly helped remove worms infesting his father's body. [my emphasis]

Gah! You see, that's why you don't keep decomposing corpses inside the house. At least not without refrigeration, anyway.

The article goes on to say that the police believe that another of the couple's adult children also knew she was keeping the corpse, and that the surviving family members are being examined by a psychiatrist. That sounds like a prudent move, if you asked me.

My powers of observation are staggering

I was just watching the teevee, and a commercial for the Toyota Prius came on. I've probably seen this commercial dozens of times, but tonight was the first time I realized that the dude talking about how much he hearts his Prius is a guy I went to junior high and high school with. He even mentions his name and everything.

You'd think I would've noticed that before.

Lucky bastard

I consider myself lucky on any given week if I find a quarter in the laundry. Then, there are people like this guy, who managed to stumble into some extra luck.

A lottery winner doubled his share of the jackpot to nearly 1 million pounds after he mistakenly bought two lucky tickets for the same draw, organizers Camelot said Wednesday.

Derek Ladner, 57, from Cornwall, and his wife Dawn, 60, won with their usual numbers in the mid-week draw, sharing the 2.4 million pounds jackpot with four other tickets.

A week later, he found a second identical ticket in his wallet and realized he had absent-mindedly entered twice.

Their double-share of the jackpot is worth just under a million pounds.

I think I won ten bucks on a scratcher once, years ago. Meh.

No kidding

I've come to the conclusion that I'm in the wrong racket. I think I should have become a research scientist, since that job seems to often consist of figuring out the obvious:

After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It's more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.

College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex _ they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and "it feels good," according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: "I was attracted to the person."

Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money to study the overlooked why behind sex while others were spending their time on the how.

It took these professional researchers five years to figure out that people have sex with each other because they're attracted to someone and that it feels good? Wow. Like I said, I'm in the wrong racket.

Leftovers

I don't know much about murdering people, but I'm pretty sure that when you kill someone and then dismember their corpse, you might want to dispose of those body parts before you move.

Malaysian police have arrested a woman in connection with the murder of a man whose body was chopped into 11 pieces and stuffed into a refrigerator in a posh apartment in the capital.

The remains were discovered in black bin bags when a man who bought the apartment at a bank auction went to clean the unit, which had been vacant for more than three months, the Star newspaper said on Tuesday.

A strong stench led the owner and security guard to the refrigerator, which had been sealed with masking tape.

Newspapers in neighboring Singapore said the victim was believed to be a Singaporean who had been married to the woman and who had been out of touch with his family for nearly two years.

Well, I guess that excuses him from missing all those holidays and family birthdays.

Selling crap to tourists, literally

You know, if any of you are taking a trip to China this summer, you don't have to get me a souvenir. Really, you don't.

The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base has come up with a dung-for-profit scheme that turns droppings from the endangered species into odor-free souvenirs ranging from bookmarks to Olympic-themed statues of the animals, state media and base officials said Monday.

The facility in the southwestern province of Sichuan houses about 40 bamboo-fed pandas who produce less than a ton of excrement a day.

"We used to spend at least 6,000 yuan ($770) a month to get rid of the droppings but now they can be lucrative," Jing Shimin, assistant to the base director, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

The products will be made at a local handicraft company mostly from undigested bamboo culled from the panda waste through a special process, Xinhua said.

An official who answered the phone at the Chengdu facility said the dung is "carefully selected, smashed, dried and sterilized at 300 degrees Celsius (572 degrees Fahrenheit)." He refused to give his name but said the products will be of all colors because they will be dyed.

"They don't smell too bad because 70 percent of the dung is just remains of the bamboo that the pandas are unable to digest," Jing said.

Um, let me make a suggestion here. How about instead of fishing the bamboo out of the panda crap, you just cut out the middleman and, you know, just make the stuff out of regular old bamboo?

Off kilter

Hey, you can't fault a guy for trying to be authentic. I mean, Scotsmen aren't supposed to wear anything underneath their kilts, right? But I guess they frown on that in North Dakota:

A man was arrested on sex charges after an early morning escapade while wearing a kilt.

Police say Nathan Blair, 24, of Moorhead, Minn., was wearing a black kilt when he exposed himself to motorists near a busy street and had sex with a woman in the backyard of a house.

"In 17 years in this job I've seen a lot of different things. This is a new one," Fargo Police Lt. Pat Claus said Friday.

Claus said Blair and a 20-year-old woman were arrested about 3:30 a.m. Friday after police found them having sex behind a home. The couple first ignored orders to "cease and desist," and then refused to cover up, Claus said.

Both of them had been drinking, Claus said.

You don't say. And here I thought a guy who flashes traffic in his kilt and screws some girl in somebody's backyard was probably as sober as a Deacon.

Dead sexy

If you're into necrophilia (and I know you are!) you may want to consider a move to Wisconsin:

Three men who dug up a young woman's corpse to have sex with it after seeing her obituary photo cannot be charged with attempted sexual assault because Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

A judge was correct to dismiss the charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21, because lawmakers never intended to criminalize sex with a corpse, the District 4 Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 ruling.

The three men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin on Sept. 2 to remove the body of Laura Tennessen, 20, who had been killed the week before in a motorcycle crash.

The men used shovels to reach her grave. They abandoned their plan and were eventually arrested after a vehicle drove into the cemetery and reported suspicious behavior, authorities said.

Well, hey, it's not like they even got to get it on with the corpse, so no big deal.

Anyway, I find it fascinating (and, yes, deeply disturbing) that these three guys were sitting around, saw the woman's obituary photo, and apparently came to an agreement that it would be a good idea to dig her up and have sex with her corpse. That must have been an interesting conversation.

Oh, and by the way, you necrophiliacs may not want to move to the Dairy State after all. A State Senator has introduced legislation that would make it illegal. The spoilsport.

It's so hard to find good help these days

I guess maybe this is the downside to being rich and idle enough to have someone else literally carry your water for you:

An Indonesian maid has been jailed for six days in Hong Kong for serving her boss a cup of water containing urine, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

The 29-year-old pleaded guilty to a charge of "administering poison or other destructive or noxious substance with intent to injure," but insisted she had used the urine to treat a skin condition and its appearance in her employer's cup was a mistake.

Mistake or not, I'd make damn sure that all the drinking vessels in the house were thoroughly cleaned.

Her boss, Szeto Ching-han, smelled the urine after asking for a cup of water, and then asked the maid to drink it -- which she did. Szeto, however, kept the liquid to have it tested in a lab, the South China Morning Post said.

The defense argued that the maid's employer had not drunk the urine and the substance was not poisonous.

"The only contact the former employer had with the so-called poisonous mixture was the smell," her lawyer was quoted as telling the court.

The magistrate who heard the case said there was no evidence that the maid had suffered any harm after drinking from the cup, but still gave the maid a six-day jail sentence, saying the court "must send a message to the public."

I guess that message would be to use the toilet like a normal person. And if they have to send a message to the public, does this mean that there's an epidemic of people being handed cups of pee to drink?

Exciting news!

In addition to not reading what I post here, you can now also disregard what I write over here!

I hope that wasn't too confusing.

Drink up!

Dude, Allah (the deity, not the blogger) would probably frown on a party like this:

A Middle Eastern businessman spent over $210,000 in a five-hour, champagne- and vodka-fuelled spending spree in a London nightclub at the weekend.

Fraser Donaldson, a representative of Crystal, a club favored by Prince Harry, said in 20 years working in the industry it was the biggest bill he'd seen from one customer.

The unnamed big spender entered Crystal at midnight on Saturday with friends -- nine women and eight men -- and ordered a $50 bottle of white wine, a spokesman for the club said.

But before long he was ordering magnums of Dom Perignon at $1,400 each and then called for a Methuselah -- eight bottles in one -- of Cristal Champagne at $60,000 and the party spread.

The festivities ended with a "night cap" consisting of a Methuselah of Belvedere vodka, which cost $2,800. "He basically just said, 'keep the drinks flowing,'" the club spokesman said.

Now, to be fair, he could be, say, a Lebanese Christian, but if he's a Muslim, I'm guessing he's not a fundamentalist.

Whatever his faith is, it sounds like he's a generous guy. And a hell of a drinking buddy.

Wrong place, wrong time

This dude is one very, very unlucky thief:

A woman whose purse was stolen and the thief who took it inadvertently stood next to each other at a Prescott [Arizona] bookstore _ she to complain about the unauthorized use of her credit card, he to get some cash.

The 59-year-old victim went to Hastings Books and Music on Tuesday to tell the store that someone had stolen her purse and used her credit card to buy $200 in DVDs.

Minutes later, while the woman was standing there, a man came up to the counter and tried to return eight DVDs in exchange for cash. The two didn't recognized each other, and the woman even politely made room for the man when he walked up.

When the manager came to handle both transactions, she connected the dots.

It was "as if the world had stopped," said Susan Murphy, another customer who had been browsing through magazines.

The manager "looked at the receipt, looked at the elderly lady and then at the young man standing next to her and said, 'This is the transaction,'" Murphy said. "It just blew us all away."

The cops caught his unlucky ass and he admitted to using her card to rack up over $700 in charges. Which, I guess, means that Arizona cashiers aren't too stringent about checking for ID on credit card transactions. Unless the guy's name actually was Edith or something like that.

"She's a very nice woman"

How come nothing like this ever happens to me while I'm at work? Probably because I do most of my work from home. But, still...

A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday -- wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet.

The tall, slender woman strolled into the shop in the town of Doemitz on the warm afternoon and bought cigarettes, petrol station employee Ines Swoboda told Reuters on Monday.

"I wasn't surprised because she's come in naked before -- she's a very nice woman," Swoboda said, adding none of the other customers was bothered. The woman could have faced charges of creating a public disturbance if anyone had complained.

Um, based on the description of the woman in the article, I'd be surprised if anybody had complained.

And she bought some cigarettes, huh? I guess she probably had her money in her hand when she walked into the shop. I certainly hope she had her money in her hand.

Sex ed

What, you mean they weren't using them to run e-mail scams on gullible, elderly Americans?

Nigerian schoolchildren who received laptops from a U.S. aid organization have used them to explore pornographic sites on the Internet, the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported Thursday.

NAN said its reporter had seen pornographic images stored on several of the children's laptops.

"Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials," NAN said.

The organization that's been donating the computers says that in the future, they'll include filters. The spoilsports.

My civic duty is done

Heh. "Duty." Sounds like "doody."

Anyway, we reached a not guilty verdict relatively quickly. The prosecutor had a really weak case.

Did I mention that we didn't realize that they had cable in the jury assembly room until yesterday? We'd been watching stupid judge shows on the local channels all week long. Judge shows. Ugh.

Mad at the world

So, the case I'm on was supposed to be done by Tuesday afternoon. Well, we just wrapped up testimony and heard the closing arguments this afternoon, and didn't get a chance to do any deliberation before we were sent home. So tomorrow, I have to haul my ass out of bed extra-early to get down there by 8:45. Super.

God, I hope this doesn't drag out much longer.

Ewwwwwww!

Apparently, if you feel like there are bugs crawling under your skin, you might not be crazy after all:

Doctors thought the strange, bleeding bumps on Aaron Dallas' head might be from gnat bites or shingles. Then the bumps started moving.

A doctor found five active bot fly larvae living beneath the skin atop Dallas' head.

"I'd put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head," Dallas told the (Glenwood Springs) Post Independent.

"I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy."

Dallas said he likely received the larval infestation while on a trip to Belize this summer. Bot fly infections are not uncommon in parts of Central and South America.

Adult bot flies are hairy and look like bees, without bristles. The larvae, which are about one-third the size of a penny, were living in a pit 2- to 3- millimeters wide. They were removed Thursday.

"It was weird and traumatic," said Dallas, of Carbondale. "I would get this pain that would drop me to my knees."

You know, I don't think I'm going to be vacationing in Central or South America anytime soon.

911 is no joke

I really don't know who this guy thought was going to show up. The fire department, maybe?

A 38-year-old man was arrested after he called 911 and told a dispatcher he was surrounded by police officers and needed help, authorities said.

Police officers met Dana Farrell Shelton after being called to investigate a disturbance at a bar on Sunday but had found no problems and told him to move along.

Shelton, who officers said appeared intoxicated, then called 911 to report he was "surrounded by Largo police," according to an arrest affidavit.

He was intoxicated? The hell, you say!

Anyway, he could spend a year in jail for doing this. Who's he gonna call when he's surrounded by correctional officers?

God, I hate commies

As if we needed it, here's more proof that communism is a terribly repressive ideology:

Chinese television channels should ban sexist and sexually suggestive adverts during the summer vacation to protect children, state broadcaster CCTV said Monday, citing experts and parents.

Explicit commercials that promote breast enlargements, women's corsets and cosmetics and unproven medical treatments are common on local stations.

"Advertisements that contain sexual hints or flirtatious language are easily seen on some local television channels," CCTV said on its Web site (www.cctv.com.cn).

In one breast enlargement commercial, a woman with small breasts walks by while a man is heard saying "too small to be good." Another woman with bigger breasts shows up and the man shouts "bigger is better!."

Dang, man. Can we be far from seeing people like this thrown into the gulag?

I don't know why I never mentioned this...

...but I was quoted by the amazingly funny Douchebag1 after leaving my first-evah comment at one of my favorite humor sites, Hot Chicks with Douchebags. My original comment was left on this thread.

It was quite an honor, and I wish I had thanked the DB1 here at the time.

And, yes, I am belatedly showing off. Because I'm funny, damnit.

Kumbaya

I'm so utterly confused and baffled by this story that I'm not even going to bother making any jokes about it. Nor am I going to excerpt it. You'll have to go to the link and read it for yourself.

I mean, do you believe for a moment that this actually happened? For some reason, the thought that the events described could have really transpired in that fashion fills me with a deep, dark sense of horror.

Vacation, all I never wanted

Thanks, but I think I'll save my money and just hang around in Compton for my summer vacation:

Sinaloa, the northern Mexican state that spawned the country's most fearsome drug cartel, hopes to lure tourists to rustic cabins in a rugged area infamous for opium fields and violent kingpins.

Generations of farmers have grown opium and marijuana in the hilly and remote Badiraguato region, a stronghold for powerful drug gangs and the birthplace of Mexico's top capo and most-wanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

But Sinaloa's tourism minister Antonio Ibarra said renting out mountain cabins could wean some of the local population off illicit activities.

"Every well-paid job we create gives people an alternative, a decent life," he told Reuters on Thursday.

Few outsiders venture outside the state capital of Culiacan, but Ibarra said the "El Perico" cabins, in a pine forested mountain area known for its rich wildlife, could attract adventure tourists who like outdoor activities.

You know, outdoor activities like harvesting opium for heroin production, or trying to outrun homicidal drug dealers.

Sounds like fun, no?

No.

Jury duty

No, I'm not talking about the smash hit comedy starring Abe Vigoda, I mean the sit on my ass all day while the judge and the lawyers blather kind. And in spite of my work reporting on local crime and my nutty political views about taking marijuana off the black market so that it can be taxed and regulated, they put me on the jury. With eleven women. Yay.

I'm starting to think that I should've accepted my brother's offer to draw a swastika on my forehead.

Call of Cthulhu

So, they find an "octosquid" last week. And now, this.

The end is coming, people.

What we have here...

...is a failure to communicate:

Teacher Dave Barclay flew thousands of miles across the Atlantic to Wales to attend his friend's wedding, only to discover he was a year early.

Barclay, 34, was told about the wedding earlier in the year and assumed it was to take place in 2007.

It was only when he had flown into Cardiff from Toronto, Canada, and rang the bridegroom seeking details of the venue that he discovered the wedding was in 2008.

[...]

The groom, Dave Best, had emailed his friend at the start of the year.

"He just said July the 6th and I assumed it was this year because if you tell the guy July 6th, they're going to think it's this year," Barclay said.

So, these guys are obviously good friends. If they were just casual acquaintances, I doubt Barclay would've flown all the way from Canada to Wales for his buddy's wedding, right? And yet, he never bothered to call Best or even send him an e-mail saying, "Hey, I'm stoked about your wedding! See you in Cardiff next week"? Because that would seem like a good idea. The kind of thing that could, say, keep you from making an unnecessary trans-Atlantic trip.

Dumbass.

You don't say

Wow, some eggheads conducted a study and found a result that was completely, utterly obvious:

Muscular young men are likely to have more sex partners than their less-chiseled peers, researchers at the University of California Los Angeles said on Monday.

Their study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggests muscles in men are akin to elaborate tail feathers in male peacocks: They attract females looking for a virile mate.

"Women are predisposed to prefer muscularity in men," said study author David Frederick of UCLA.

No shit, genius. They're also attracted to money, expensive sports cars, and large, tastefully furnished houses. And I didn't even have to do any kind of big, fancy study to figure any of that out.

What the?

Oh no. Hell no.

Erecting a new building

Uh, good luck attracting tenants to a building that looks like, well...

The developer said his design for a 40-story resident tower proposed as a gateway to downtown San Diego looks like a flower. A city consultant said it looks like a giant phallus.

"With its rounded forms and swelling of the uppermost floors...this building structure is very phallic," wrote Gwynne Pugh, a Santa Monica architect hired by the downtown redevelopment agency to review building designs.

San Diego-based Sandor Shapery's proposal for a 160-unit hotel and condominium tower was expected to go before the redevelopment agency for initial feedback this month. Instead Shapery has asked for more time to "revisit" and perhaps "tone down" the design because he does not want to offend anyone.

Then you might want to rethink the whole "building that looks like an enormous cock" thing.

You can find a picture of the design here.

Thanks, SeeDub

SeeDubya over at JunkYardBlog linked to my post about the eleven-year-old drunk driver yesterday, and I got what would normally be about a week's worth of traffic over the course of a day. I think that really says something about his popularity. And my lack thereof.

Her parents must be so proud

I don't think precocious is quite the right word to describe this girl:

An 11-year-old girl was charged with drunken driving after leading police on a chase at speeds of up to 100 mph that ended when she flipped the car in an Alabama beach town.

A video camera in the police car captured the look of surprise on the officer's face when he approached the wrecked car and got a look at the motorist.

The Mobile Press-Register newspaper said the patrolman saw the Chevrolet Monte Carlo speeding and flashed his lights to signal the driver to stop. Instead, the car sped faster, traveling at up to 100 mph (160 kph) before sideswiping another vehicle and flipping over in the Gulf Coast town of Orange Beach, Alabama, on Tuesday night.

The young driver, who lived nearby in Perdido Key, Florida, was treated at a hospital for scrapes and bruises and released to relatives. Police also charged her with speeding, leaving the scene of an accident and reckless endangerment.

I don't know if releasing her to relatives was such a good idea. I mean, it doesn't exactly sound like her family was doing a bang-up job of looking after her.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

I don't like the looks of this. No sir.

For lack of a better joke, love is, apparently, blind

You know, I think I'd have probably dumped the crazy bitch after the first time she maimed me:

A Hong Kong woman who blinded her boyfriend in one eye in a fight six years ago has been jailed for jabbing a chopstick into his other eye, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Last November, Po Shiu-fong, 58, accused long-time boyfriend Kwok Wai-ming, 49, of having an affair, the South China Morning Post reported.

During the row, Po stabbed a plastic chopstick into his left eye, which she had already blinded six years ago when she poked it with her finger.

Wait, I thought she stabbed him in the other eye. Oh, she did. Apparently, being jabbed in the same eye twice wasn't enough to get this guy to leave her...

"Po became hysterical when she saw the wound and mopped it with a towel. The pair then went to bed," the paper said.

"The next morning they had another argument in which she grabbed a chopstick and stabbed Kwok's right eye," it said.

Two days later, he sought medical treatment and filed a police report against Po, whom he had dated since 1993.

The paper said he didn't report the attack six years ago, telling the court his silence was "a love sacrifice".

He says he's not going to forgive her this time, but what do you want to bet they end up back together? It's like Ike and Tina Turner, if Ike was a woman and Tina was a really whipped dude. And they were both Chinese.

We are the champions

At last, our long national nightmare is over—after six years of domination by a skinny Japanese guy, an American is once again the hot dog eating champion of the world:

In a gut-busting showdown that combined drama, daring and indigestion, Joey Chestnut emerged as the world's hot dog eating champion, knocking off six-time winner Takeru Kobayashi in a record-setting yet repulsive triumph.

Chestnut, the great red, white and blue hope in the annual Fourth of July competition, broke his own world record by inhaling 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes _ a staggering one every 10.9 seconds before a screaming crowd in Coney Island.

"If I needed to eat another one right now, I could," the 23-year-old Californian said Wednesday after receiving the mustard yellow belt emblematic of hot dog eating supremacy.

Normally, I'd write some sort of wisecrack here, but I'm just so damn proud. *Sniff* I promised myself I wouldn't cry...

Happy 4th of July!

Try not to blow any fingers off, okay?

Update: You've got to love the one night every year when the sound of sporadic explosions in the distance isn't really cause for alarm.

Awwwww

I guess love means never having to say you're sorry...for taking a bunch of people hostage at gunpoint.

A Brazilian woman whose estranged husband held her hostage at gunpoint on a bus for 10 hours along with dozens of passengers last year has decided to reunite with him.

"I forgave him out of love ... I believe it was an irrational act and that we can resume our life in peace," Brazil's Globo news agency quoted Cristina Ribeiro, 35, as saying on Monday, eight months after the nationally televised hostage drama.

The couple, who have three children, have decided to live together again, Globo reported.

The husband, Andre Ribeiro da Silva, 36, was paroled from prison in late April and is awaiting trial.

"I hear people warning me that he will do it again, but we've talked and grown into the idea of getting back together," the woman said.

I'm sure they'll be fine. I mean, he just took her and dozens of bus passengers hostage. That's hardly a big deal. I mean, it's not like he threatened to turn the situation into a murder-suicide, right? Right?

During the incident, he accused her of having cheated on him and threatened to kill her and then commit suicide. The two had been married for 10 years and separated four months earlier.

Oh. Nevermind.

"You don't see this every day"

Yeah, no kidding.

FBI agents worked Monday to identify burglars who burst through a bank's wall and then made off with the bank's one-ton safe. A gaping hole in the rear wall of the First Community Bank was reported at about 8 a.m. Sunday, police said. Investigators and a bank security expert said the bank's safe was missing when they entered the building Sunday morning.

"You don't see this every day," said Steve Frazier, spokesman for the FBI in Little Rock.

The burglars apparently stole a forklift from a construction site near the bank, then used it to hoist the safe out of the bank. Police aren't sure yet if the burglars used the forklift to ram into the bank, creating a hole, or if they used another vehicle or method to get in.

"I could say without a shadow of a doubt that whoever is responsible for this had (either) put forth a great deal of effort of planning and surveillance or was loosely associated with the bank," Detective Keith Lindley of the Van Buren Police Department said.

After creating a hole in the building, the burglars then disabled a bank's security camera by pulling out its wire and pointing the bank's other cameras away from the safe, Lindley said.

The burglars then drove the forklift through the hole in the wall and took the safe, Lindley said. Authorities believe the burglars may have loaded the safe into a pickup that was parked at a nearby church, where the forklift was abandoned.

"It had to have been a minimum of two (suspects)," Lindley said. "My gut feeling is three or four based on everything I've seen and the level of sophistication."

Frazier said agents were gathering information on who might have carried out the heist.

"We are in the process of trying to determine who did it," Frazier said. "We're not ready to release any names or identities."

"We will locate them, we will arrest them and then they will be prosecuted," Frazier said.

Investigators plan to check the surveillance videos of neighboring businesses to see if any of the burglary was recorded, Lindley said.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that anybody in the area who sees a neighbor lugging around or using torches to cut into an unfamiliar one-ton safe should probably go ahead and call the FBI.

The invisible hand

Economics is an interesting subject, but it's one I don't know a lot about. I do, however, understand supply and demand, and here we have an interesting (and somewhat disturbing) illustration of those forces at work:

The price of machetes has halved in parts of Nigeria since the end of general elections in April because demand from thugs sponsored by politicians has subsided, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria reported.

NAN surveyed prices in the northeastern state of Gombe and found that a good quality machete was now selling for 400 naira ($3) compared with 800 naira before the elections, which were marred by politically motivated violence in many states.

"A price survey on machetes, which served as a popular weapon among political thugs in the state, indicated ... a drop in the price of the implement," NAN reported over the weekend.

Machetes are primarily used as a tool for farming in Nigeria but they are also popular among political gangsters.

"Before the conduct of the general elections, I was selling a minimum of seven machetes daily but can hardly sell one a day now," said Usman Masi, a trader quoted by NAN.

The article goes on to say that around two hundred people were killed during the months of campaigning before the elections, so I guess that puts our "divisive" political climate in perspective, huh?

You'd better be accompanied by an adult

It looks like my blog is rated...

Mingle² - Online Dating

...although that seems to be based on the frequency of such tame phrases as hell, death, ass, and kill. I'm pretty sure that kind of stuff shows up in the Bible, at least once in a while. Hell and death, especially.

They must base the rating on the front page of the blog, since I'm pretty sure I can remember dropping a few f-bombs and otherwise naughty words over the last couple of years. And, although there haven't been any nude pictures so far, I've included several links that hinted at dirty stuff.

It's like I'm Larry Flynt, but nobody's paying attention.

(Via Ace.)

Bad manners

The old proverb about glass houses and stones came to mind when I read this story:

A man who thought the clerk at a fast-food drive-through was rude for not saying "please" and "thank you" punched her in the face, police said. Duane L. Williams, angered by what he felt was the clerk's rudeness, walked into the store to complain just before 8 p.m. Wednesday, Penn Hills police Chief Howard Burton said Friday.

Before the manager could meet with Williams, he walked back outside, pushed open the drive-through window and punched the 19-year-old woman in the face. The clerk was bruised, but not badly hurt, Burton said.

That doesn't exactly sound very genteel on his part, now does it?

"He didn't like the girl's attitude because she didn't say 'please' and 'thank you,'" Burton said.

The store manager ran outside to get Williams' license plate number and called police.

Williams, 46, told police he had "anger-management issues" when he turned himself in later that night, Burton said.

You don't say.

Moral Majority in a Mao jacket

People are always complaining about conservatives pushing their morals on other people, but sometimes that comes from the left, too. In this case, the pretty far left, indeed:

China plans to sack all officials found to have secretly "kept and supported" mistresses, in a move aimed at raising social morals, state media reported on Friday.

The step hardens up previous policy.

"It is a misunderstanding that officials who have mistresses would only be sacked when the situation is serious," the Beijing News quoted a Ministry of Personnel spokesman as saying.

Mistresses and "second wives" are common among government officials and businessmen in China, and Chinese media have said the financial pressures of keeping mistresses have driven some officials to seek money through bribes or abuse of power.

Corrupt officials are a major cause of public outrage in China, and the country's Communist rulers have warned that if graft is not checked it could threaten the party's grip on power.

Perhaps we should be pushing for more corruption (or more mistresses, anyway) in China.

The amnesty thing

I haven't really written anything about it, mainly because it isn't really funny. I've been royally pissed off about what's been going on in the Senate—I told a GOP phone solicitor to go to hell last night, and it felt fan-fucking-tastic—but I was glad to see that the bill failed today.

If you want to see some people who have been following this issue in great detail (and with justifiable rage, if you ask me) check here and here for starters.

Now, back to sex jokes and stories about stupid criminals.

Lighten up, people

I have a feeling that most of the people involved in this story would faint dead away or possibly even have a stroke were they ever to wade into ace's comments:

A teacher who forced a pupil to write "I am a retard" 100 times was acquitted by an Italian court on Wednesday of abuse charges.

The teacher, whose identity was withheld to protect her privacy, forced the punishment on the 12-year-old boy after he blocked a fellow pupil from going to the toilet and called him "gay" and "girly."

The parents had sought 25,000 euros ($33,580) in damages and a public prosecutor had called for a two-month prison sentence, but the court cleared the teacher, a court source said.

Okay, so what amounts to an adult calling a kid a retard is kind of harsh, but thirty three grand and two months in the joint? For that? Give me a break.

And there's even more oversensitivity to go around, this time from the defendant...

The teacher said her punishment of the boy had been appropriate, particularly after a widely publicized case of an adolescent who committed suicide in Italy, apparently after receiving taunts at school about being homosexual.

When the hell did the macho swagger of the Italian people get replaced by the spirit of Sexual Harassment Panda?

Actually, that's the one bright spot that I see in this story—that the kid who got called "gay" and "girly" didn't sue for sexual harrasment. You know that would've happened here.

Wildlife

I just went out for the last cigarette before bedtime, and a couple of coyotes went running down the street. That's not all that unusual—I've seen them run past my house any number of times—but this time, one of them stopped and started to come toward me. It looked like a young one, but I still didn't feel like messing with a wild animal with sharp teeth, so I assumed a defensive posture, waved my arms at it, and said "No, no, no," at it. It eventually turned away and ran off with the other, older-looking one. Whew.

I hope my neighbors' pets are locked up inside, nice and safe. I know Riley is.

Providing your own mugshots not a good idea

When you rob somebody, it's probably a good idea not to deliberately give your victim any evidence. Especially not if that evidence can easily identify you.

Two German teenagers robbed a girl but accidentally left their own pictures behind for police on a discarded mobile phone.

After stealing a 15-year-old's shoes, money and mobile phone, the two older girls gave her an old mobile phone, police in the western city of Bochum said on Wednesday.

But the two 17-year-olds had forgotten the phone had their own photos, striking smiley poses, which police published online on Tuesday in an effort to find the culprits.

The two muggers turned themselves in almost simultaneously when the pictures appeared on the evening news.

You try to do a good deed (sort of) and it comes back to bite you in the ass. Ain't that always the way?

Another elderly asskicker

Last week it was the 62-year-old who strangled a rabid bobcat. Now, there's this senior badass:

Bill Barnes says he was scratching off a losing $2 lottery ticket inside a gas station when he felt a hand slip into his front-left pants pocket, where he had $300 in cash.

He immediately grabbed the person's wrist with his left hand and started throwing punches with his right, landing six or seven blows before a store manager intervened.

"I guess he thought I was an easy mark," Barnes, 72, told The Grand Rapids Press for a story Tuesday.

He's anything but an easy mark: Barnes served in the Marines, was an accomplished Golden Gloves boxer and retired after 20 years as an iron worker.

[...]

Barnes said he had just withdrawn the money from a bank machine and put it in the pocket of his shorts before driving to a service station in Comstock Park, a Grand Rapids suburb.

He remembers noticing a patron acting suspiciously, asking the price of different brands of cigarettes and other items. While turned away, Barnes felt the hand in his pocket, so he took action.

"I guess I acted on instinct," he said.

[...]

Barnes said he'd probably do the same thing again under the same circumstances, if for no other reason than what he would face back home.

"I wouldn't want my wife to give me hell for lettin' that guy get my money," he said with a smile.

By the way, the crook that he beat the hell out of, one Jesse Daniel Rae, is 45 years his junior.

Tag, you're going to jail!

I'm no expert on Phillipine law or law enforcement, but I'm pretty sure that this doesn't work:

Philippine police chased down an unfit thief on Tuesday after he ran out of breath and asked his pursuers for a "time out."

"He was panting and gasping for air when we caught up with him after a 500 meter sprint," Erwin Buenceso, one of the arresting officers, told local radio station dzBB.

[...]

The robber asked for a "time out" using hand signals.

The only way that works is if you're touching "safe" or "home base," although the man's lawyers may challenge the validity of the arrest on the basis that the police neglected to yell, "ready or not, here we come," at the onset of the chase.

Lucky to be alive

Yeah, I can see how that could give you a headache.

A woman was arrested Tuesday after her husband woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible headache and later learned he had a bullet lodged in his head.

St. Lucie County Sheriff's deputies initially thought Michael Eugene Moylan had been hit by a stray bullet, but later realized the couple's story did not match up, Sheriff Ken Mascara said.

April Moylan, 39, was arrested Tuesday and was in the process of being charged with attempted murder, Mascara said.

Moylan, 45, woke up at 4:30 a.m. and thought he had suffered an aneurism or that his wife had elbowed him in his sleep, authorities said.

His wife drove him to the hospital where doctors said a bullet had lodged behind his right ear. Authorities obtained a search warrant for the couple's home, located in an upscale gated community, and later arrested the wife, Mascara said.

Evidence indicated that Moylan had been shot at close range by someone in the house and it was clear there were inconsistencies with the couple's story, Mascara said.

I don't really understand how she could screw up her story as it related to that of her husband, since his story basically amounts to "I woke up with a headache and later found that I'd been shot in the head." That sounds pretty easy to stick to.

Don't you people knock??!

Huh. I guess I really don't know what to say about this:

A MAN has been charged with having sex with his bike.

Robert Stewart was allegedly caught in the act by two terrified cleaners who walked into his bedroom in a hostel.

Stewart has denied the accusation, claiming it was caused by a misunderstanding after he had too much to drink.

The 51-year-old bachelor was charged with the bizarre sexual offence after he was disturbed by the cleaner and her colleague in a private hostel in Ayr.

The charge alleges he conducted himself in a disorderly manner, simulated sex with a bicycle and continued to do so while naked from the waist down in the presence of two female employees.

Not that I really want to know, but how exactly does one go about doing such a thing? I've owned several bicycles over the years, and I can't think of anywhere on any of them that seemed...inviting.

(Via Fark.)

The ugly American

I don't think that this is a good way to endear yourself to the locals:

A 22-year-old American man was arrested on Sunday after an early morning naked bath in the historic Barcaccia fountain at the foot of Rome's Spanish Steps, an Italian news agency reported.

The man stripped and bathed in the 17th century Baroque fountain in front of a crowd of tourists, before being led away by police, AGI news agency said.

He faces charges of committing an obscene act, it said.

The article doesn't mention it, but I'm guessing that the vino had something to do with this. And lots of it.

And here I am, single

I'll be the first person to admit that I don't understand women in general, but I really don't understand women like this one:

It began with an inmate pen-pal program. It blossomed into poetry. It led to a marriage.

James Lewis Morgan and the former Tracy Cope are husband and wife. She, formerly of Nottinghamshire, England. He, of death row at Central Prison in Raleigh.

Tracy Morgan began her courtship of convicted killer James Morgan 4 1/2 years ago, visiting him in prison from England five times before she moved to Raleigh with her 15-year-old son.

Ah, well, now her boy has a father figure he can look up to. Great.

Her poetry touched Morgan, she said.

"It was called, 'Where Is My Beloved?'" she told WRAL-TV in Raleigh. "When he wrote back, he was so touched by it, and he said, 'Nobody's ever called me beloved before.'"

Gee, I wonder why.

James Morgan, 52, was convicted of the November 1997 stabbing death of 34-year-old Patrina Lynette King of Asheville...

Hm. Maybe that had something to do with it.

...His new wife says they talked about the crime and it was no longer a concern to her "once I found out all the details."

If only the jury had seen it that way.

The article didn't mention where the happy couple is registered, but I'm sure a nice set of shivs or a few cartons of cigarettes would suffice.

No seal of approval

Hmmmm...I wonder how you would procure such an item. On second thought, I don't want to know:

An Alaska man has pleaded guilty to selling more than 100 fur seal "oosiks" -- or penises -- to a local gift shop that intended to sell the items as an aphrodisiac.

Michael Richard Zacharof, an Aleut and former tribal president from the Bering Sea village of St. Paul, pleaded guilty this week to one count of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Federal law forbids the sale of any raw marine mammal parts unless they have been crafted into pieces of Alaska Native artwork.

What possible market could there be for seal penises? I mean, who in their right mind would want something so nasty?

In Zacharof's case, the former tribal leader sold the raw seal penises to a gift shop catering to customers from Asia [my emphasis]. The shop then sold the items for about $100 each, according to the Justice Department.

But of course. Is there any disgusting animal part that isn't considered an aphrodisiac somewhere in Asia?

Don't enter any drinking contests in Washington

A little while ago, I wrote a post about a woman in Washington who blew an astonishing .47 on a breathalyzer test. At the time, they thought it might be a state record. Well, it looks like they have a new champ up there:

A Pierce County woman apparently tied a record for the amount of alcohol in her blood when the Washington State Patrol toxicology lab measured a blood-alcohol content of 0.50 two hours after she was arrested for investigation of drunken driving.

Ann Marie Gordon, manager of the lab in Seattle, said the reading _ more than six times the legal limit of 0.08 _ tied the highest level ever found by technicians at the patrol's lab. A King County driver also registered 0.50 on a blood test in 2000, Gordon said.

"It certainly would kill many people," she said.

The average blood-alcohol content of drunken drivers stopped in Washington is about 0.15, Gordon added.

Rebecca G. Lingbloom, 45, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to one count of driving under the influence of alcohol on May 10. Authorities contended in an affidavit that she nearly hit a pedestrian that day and was seen swerving all over the road.

A Pierce County sheriff's deputy later found her passed out behind the wheel of her car in the Summit area, the affidavit states.

Sweet Jesus, isn't there anything to do up there but drink yourself to death?

The talented Mr. Rippy

I'm gonna go ahead and nominate this guy for Badass of the Year:

Dale Rippy says he was acting on instinct when a rabid 25-pound bobcat attacked him on his porch in this central Florida suburb.

Rippy, 62, endured the bobcat's slashes and bites until it clawed into a position where he could grab it by the throat.

Then he strangled it.

Daaaaaaamn! Sounds like the dude has balls of steel.

Rippy said it was clear the crazed bobcat had to be stopped.

"I was bleeding everyplace," the Vietnam veteran said of the May 30 attack. "If that cat had attacked a child, it would've been really bad. It wouldn't have quit."

I find it amazing that he could think that clearly in such a batshit insane situation. Me, I'd probably be wetting myself, certainly not thinking about the safety of the neighborhood children.

"We give this guy a lot of credit for what he did," said Pasco County Animal Control Manager Denise Hilton. "The man was definitely using his head when he did that. If he let the cat go, we could have had more victims."

Not to mention the fact that he would probably be dead, too.

The purloined lettuce

I've never burglarized anybody's home before, but if I did, I think I might try to swipe something a little more valuable:

Someone kicked in the door of a man's apartment, stuck a knife in the door and took a chilled salad from his refrigerator.

Somerset police said the man reported the bizarre burglary on Monday. He told investigators someone broke into his apartment while he went to a nearby tavern. Nothing but the salad was missing, police said.

Police say they have a suspect. I think we can rule out this guy.

Sexual healing?

Sounds like the doctor is in...the nude:

A Malaysian traditional folk healer who dances in the nude while treating her patients has upset some people in the conservative, mainly Muslim country, a newspaper said Tuesday.

Mokhtar Mohamad Noor, 53, a teacher who wanted his sick wife to be cured, said the healer gave his wife a drink and spoke an incantation before she and some male followers in their 20s and 30s started dancing in the nude, the Star newspaper reported.

"She kept muttering unintelligible incantations which sounded like the singing of Koranic verses," Mokhtar said, adding that the woman sat under a yellow umbrella and the dance continued before he left with his wife, tired of the group's antics.

Uhhhh, dude, you took your wife to a friggin' witch doctor. What did you expect? Antics are kind of what they do.

The local Muslims are, as you might expect, not amused.

"I want the state religious affairs department to take stern action against the bomoh [shaman] whose healing practice is against Islamic teachings," the Star quoted a neighbor, Fuzi Nor, as saying.

Malaysia is a relatively modern and relaxed Muslim country where about 40 percent of the population is non-Muslim, but authorities in Kelantan, which is ruled by an opposition Islamist party, frown on departures from Koranic injunctions.

I guess naked dancing qualifies as a "departure from Koranic injunctions." Yeah.

Call it a comeback

This may well be the best come-from-behind win I've ever seen in a ballgame. And Figgins going six for six? Icing on the cake, my friends. Man, I love the way the Angels have been playing as of late.

Not smart

I think I can see why this kid was afraid of flunking:

A 16-year-old Berlin student was so worried he would have to repeat a year at school because of poor marks he convinced two friends to storm his class and steal the report cards with his bad grades.

"The student probably honestly believed that he could avoid repeating the school year if he made the report cards disappear," said a spokesman for local police Monday.

See, that's brilliant, because it's not like the teacher would remember that he had flunked or anything if she didn't have the report card to remind her. Nope.

His buddies didn't even get away with the report cards, either.

The youth sat quietly at the back of the classroom as the two masked robbers, aged 14 and 15, burst in and threatened his teacher with a steel bar if she did not hand over the reports.

After grabbing them, the two tried to flee but dropped the reports as other students leapt to defend the teacher. The two were arrested close to the school, and told police their friend had devised the raid because he was afraid of flunking a year.

He may be going to jail for this, but on the bright side, I guess that means that he won't be going back to repeat that year of school right away.

Happy Father's Day

A lot of us take our dads for granted, but today's a day to be thankful for them. And to be thankful to them as well. So, if your dad is around today, give him a hug.

(Or a manly handshake, if that's more his style.)

Tequila!

I guess this means some adult ended up with a glass of apple juice:

Kim Mayorga was confused when her 2-year-old started making funny faces and pushing away the apple juice he had ordered at Applebee's. The explanation came when she opened the lid of the sippy cup and was hit by the smell of tequila and Triple Sec.

The restaurant staff accidentally gave Julian Mayorga a margarita Monday. He grew drowsy and started vomiting a few hours later and was rushed to the hospital.

"I wasn't going to make a big deal about it," the mother told the Contra Costa Times on Thursday, "but then he got sick."

She seems pretty laid back for the mother of a toddler. If that had happened the me when I was a little tyke, my mom would've gone berserk.

The apple juice and margarita mix were stored in identical plastic bottles, and the manager mistakenly grabbed the margarita container to pour the boy's drink, said Randy Tei, vice president for Apple Bay East Inc., which owns the franchise restaurant and nine other Applebee's in the San Francisco Bay area.

Now, I'm not a bartender, but don't they usually keep the tequila and the margarita mix separate? Maybe not at this place, because I really can't see someone being so boneheaded as to pour the margarita mix into a sippy cup and then pouring tequila in and snapping on the top without thinking, "Oops!" and pouring it out.

Still, they might want to start using different-looking containers for the two liquids.

Persistence doesn't always pay

It's good to have goals, but, dude, just give up already, or you'll probably die alone.

A 73-year-old Indian farmer who vowed not to marry before passing his high school exams has failed to get through for the 38th time.

Shiv Charan Yadav has been taking the exams -- normally given to schoolchildren at the age of 15 -- every year since 1969, without success.

[...]

This year, he failed everything except Sanskrit, scoring only 103 out of a possible 600 points.

[...]

"Once I pass I want to get married to a girl who's under 30," Yadav, who lives alone in Kohari village in the western desert state of Rajasthan, told Reuters.

Yeah, good luck with that, dude. Try looking for a girl with daddy grandpa issues.

When you care enough to send the very worst

Looks like somebody decided to send out some hate mail.

A foul-smelling package that led to the evacuation of a post office next to the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum contained two cans of spinach and a dirty diaper, authorities said.

"No wonder it smelled," said Deborah Yackley, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service. "I don't know why it was being mailed."

My guess would be that somebody is an asshole with a nasty sense of humor.

I'm not a cat person...

...but this shit cracks me up every day.

Dedicated drunkard

Some people have drinking problems, sure, but then, there's this guy:

A man was cited for drunken driving twice in the same day, by the same officer, and jailed after authorities said he showed up drunk for his arraignment.

Court records said Adam T. Lundgren, 42, was cited for misdemeanor drunken driving after being spotted driving erratically at 5:30 p.m. Monday.

He was later released to a sober friend, but jumped from the friend's car and returned to downtown Missoula, where he continued drinking, court records said.

At about 10 p.m., Lundgren drove into a bridge railing and started to run away. Witnesses captured him and held him until police arrived.

Officer Cody Lanier of the Missoula Police Department again cited Lundgren for drunken driving, along with reckless driving and failing to heed a stop sign.

It's too bad that they don't have a Nobel Prize for public drunkenness, because this Lundgren guy could probably win.

Everybody wins!

It's a match made in heaven. On the one hand, you've got a hotel that needs to be renovated, and on the other, some people who need to blow off some steam in a bad way:

A Spanish hotel chain is running a competition for stressed executives to let off steam in a fashion usually reserved for rock stars -- by smashing hotel rooms.

NH Hoteles will allow 30 people chosen by a team of psychologists to help demolish the interior of the 11-year old NH Alcala hotel in central Madrid as part of its refurbishment, it said.

The chosen 30, armed with mallet and hard hat, can destroy any part of the 146-room building, NH said, from bringing down walls to smashing windows.

Damn, that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. Too bad I'm not a highly-stressed executive. Or Spanish.

Germans will apparently eat anything

I don't know how to say this without sounding kinda gay, so I'll just say it—I enjoy sausages. All kinds of them. But I want nothing to do with any of these:

Hoping to spice up their summer business, German butchers have introduced a new line of exotic-tasting sausages with flavors ranging from kiwi, maraschino cherry, lemon and even aloe vera.

The wide variety of new ingredients may seem like heresy to what is for many ordinary Germans the national dish. But for others the new flavors may help negate stagnant demand for the greasy Bratwurst you can find on almost any street corner.

Berlin butcher Uwe Buenger has developed a "chili-honey" Bratwurst while rival Dankert has come up with a "kiwi wurst" that also includes pineapples and maraschino cherries, Bild newspaper reported Tuesday.

I'm sorry, but I just don't want a sausage that's full of fruit. I'll take the greasy Bratwurst from the street corner, thank you.

Wow. That all sounds gay, too. Really gay.