My imagination ain't what it used to be

I had a pretty weird dream last night, and I don't remember all of the details, but I do remember that the grand finale to the whole thing was that I'd won some sort of sweepstakes, and as a result I got to meet...Jon Lovitz.

The man of my dreams, apparently.

Don't get me wrong, Lovitz is a funny guy, but couldn't I meet someone a little more impressive than that? Or maybe a sexy woman? I guess not.

Bike crimes and misdemeanors

I had forgotten about George W. Bush's bike accidenmt at the G8 summit last year until I read this story earlier tonight:

US President George W. Bush was busily waving to security officers guarding the G8 summit when he swerved into one of them, leaving the hapless policeman on crutches, according to a British police report.

Bush -- described in dry police style as a "falling/moving object" -- was treated for scratches on his hands and arms after he went tumbling on a break from the summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, last July 6.

Although the accident was reported at the time, the police incident report, published in the Scotland on Sunday newspaper, gives further insight into the chain of events.

I'll spare you the summary of the accident: he was waving to some police who were there to guard against smelly hippies and poo-flinging anarchists, when he ran into one of the cops, injuring him. He got scraped up, too.

Anyway, he later called the guy to apologize, which is the stand-up thing to do. But here's the kicker:

The newspaper suggested that in Scotland, such an accident could have meant police action.

Earlier this year Strathclyde Police issued three fines to cyclists as part of a crackdown on careless riders.

Okay, moonbats, that's your cue to write your congressman an indignant letter demanding Bush be impeached. Or come up with a new rhyming slogan about how awful he is. Whatever gets you through the night.

Grisly mystery downgraded to amusing anecdote

Via Ace, we now find out that yesterday's horrifying severed penis story wasn't actually so horrifying after all. It's actually somewhat amusing, it turns out.

Police had been investigating a report that a customer handed a clerk a severed penis to heat up in the store's microwave.

Investigators have since learned that it was not a real body part; but instead, it was part of a couple's alleged plan to pass a drug test.

According to McKeesport's police chief, a man and a woman had inserted urine into a fake penis that the woman was planning to use to pass a drug test.

Um, call me crazy, but wouldn't it have made more sense for the man to try and use a fake penis to pass a drug test? And shouldn't they have learned from the cautionary tale of Tom Sizemore that this wouldn't work?

One of them then went into the store and asked the clerk to microwave the object, which they had wrapped in a paper towel, so the urine could reach body temperature.

When the clerk noticed an unusual odor, she unwrapped the item to discover what she thought was a severed body part.

[...]

Upon hearing media reports about the incident, the couple contacted police to explain the situation.

The couple could face charges of harassment, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.

And I don't think they'll be passing that drug test, either.

More Cthulhu

I know everrybody just loved my Cthulhu post from yesterday, so why don't you checka-check this out? And while you're at it, check out Cthulhu's blog. He doesn't seem to have posted in a few years, but I'd imagine he's got other things to do. Sleeping, mostly.

I hope you haven't eaten recently

Because this story might just make you puke if you did:

Customers going in and out a Get-Go convenience store in suburban Pittsburgh Thursday didn't know what to think when they saw police activity there.

But, what occurred at this mini market has everyone baffled.

Police say a man came in to the store and asked a female clerk if she could use the store microwave to warm up something he had wrapped in a paper towel.

In and of itself, that's not an unusual request.

But, concerned about an unusual odor from the oven, the clerk opened the microwave to check on the item and found a severed human penis, wrapped up in a paper towel.

The clerk called the cops, but the guy ran away, and apparently hasn't yet been found. I'm assuming this guy wasn't involved since he's probably still locked up in Germany. At least I hope he is.

But whoever did it, you might want to use the microwave at home next time you feel like heating up somebody's crank.

Sorry...

...about the lack of posting this week. I've had a lot of work to do lately, and I've been feeling sort of...not sick, but just "blah," if you know what I mean. I'll try to get back into posting a little more sometime soon.

In the meantime, check out Tales of the Plush Cthulhu*, via Andy.

*If you don't know what Cthulhu is, check this out.

You think you had a bad day?

Well, compared to what happened to these people, I bet it was pretty good:

A village in the German state of Bavaria is recovering after being flooded with liquid pig manure.

A tank containing the fetid fertiliser burst, sending a deluge of porcine waste into the courtyards and streets of Elsa, police said.

The sewage was half a metre (1.6ft) deep in places.

That's fucking disusting. Anyway, I'm not sure if something was lost in translation in the following, but get a load of the classic German understatement:

"It was not very pleasant for the villagers," Volker Munk of Coburg police told the BBC News website.

Well, Volker, thanks for clearing that up for me.

Notable for its absence

This article on rising tensions between blacks and Latinos here in California is interesting.

For those of you who live outside of the Golden State, there have been a series of serious fights between black and Latino inmates in Los Angeles County jail facilities lately, but that's only a part of what the article deals with. It's also got this sort of thing:

Channa Cook, a teacher at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, said that even in her school, routinely regarded as one of the best in Los Angeles County, African American students each year skip school on May 5, the day when Mexicans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a 19th-century military victory over France. Mexican gangs have warned in graffiti that they will shoot blacks attending school that day.

Charming. There's also this:

Hate crimes experts also point to a worrying trend among the two communities in Los Angeles County. Unlike in the past when whites were involved in the lion's share of hate crimes, now, in anti-black hate crimes, 73 percent of the identified suspects are Latino and in anti-Latino crimes, 80 percent of the suspects are African American, according to a report by the county Commission on Human Relations.

Now, I've read through the article twice, and there seems to be something missing. A certain word that would seem to apply to this sort of thing, but which never, for some reason, gets mentioned. What could it possibly be?

Hmmmmmmm....

A revelation

If you live anywhere near an In-N-Out, go and order some "Animal-Style" fries.

Now!

The thing that wouldn't die

Drudge is saying that the MSM is going to keep flogging the Cheney shooting story next week. Yay.

Anyway, my favorite part comes at the end of the article:

On CNN's RELIABLE SOURCES, WASHINGTON POST reporter Dana Milbank fretted that the White House is exploiting the public's growing disdain for the mainstream media. "Of course they succeed,” Milbank said of Bush aides. “The press always looks awful. They will once again make us look awful.”

CNN's Candy Crowley added: "The perception is that we're whining."

White House correspondent Bill Plante of CBS agreed.

"The vice president and the White House have both used the constant press coverage of this story as a wedge,” he told RELIABLE SOURCES host Howard Kurtz. “It plays to the prejudices of the people who are predisposed not to like us, and it's one way to distract attention from what happened.”

Keep digging, boys!

Hmmmmmm...Why would the public have a "growing disdain" for hardworking MSM folks like Dana Milbank?


You know, I really have no idea.

Slow news day

Well, I'm glad we finally got this cleared up:

British rocker DAVID COVERDALE has confirmed the urban myth that his band WHITESNAKE was named after his penis.

Tawny Kitaen was unavailable for comment.

She doesn't have a leg to stand on--again

Dang, this is just low.

For the second time in recent months, somebody broke into a 16-year-old girl's home and stole her prosthetic leg -- including one that had been donated following the first crime, authorities said.

The thieves took a $12,000 cosmetic leg and a donated $16,000 leg that Melissa Huff uses to play softball, her mother, Lisa Huff, said. She said a camera in the room was untouched.

"It's insane. Who hates her that bad?" Lisa Huff said. "I went back to the girls' room and the room was trashed. Mostly Melissa's stuff."

In the first theft, on Nov. 1, someone cut a hole in a window screen and also took video games and other items, authorities said. Her doctor and two real estate finance companies donated money for a new, shock-absorbent "sports leg" with a flexible foot.

This has got to be something personal. I'd be checking out her classmates as suspects--it sounds like something a catty sixteen-year-old girl with a grudge would do. That, or somebody else who's missing a leg. Those shifty legless bastards can't be trusted.

The big kiss-off

The Oregon Court of Appeals is probably going to catch hell for this from opponents of three strikes laws:

It may have been a borderline call, but it was still a third strike. The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a ruling that sent Nicholas Meyrovich to life in prison under a 2001 three-strikes law. Meyrovich got his third strike, a felony sex offense, for delivering an unwanted kiss.

[...]

Meyrovich, 60, an exterminator, was inspecting the home of a Salem woman in October 2003 when he suddenly grabbed her and kissed her. The woman pushed Meyrovich away, but he took hold of her again and sucked her on the neck, stopping when a neighbor walked in.

Meyrovich was later convicted of first-degree sexual abuse, which under Oregon law requires the forcible touching of the "sexual or other intimate parts" of another person.

He argued that the neck isn't an "intimate part" of the body, but the court disagreed with him, citing the fact (and I'm paraphrasing here) that one adult doesn't generally touch another's neck like that during the normal course of business.

He also argued that the sentence "violated the Oregon Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment." And hey, he engaged in a little unwanted kissing and neck-sucking, but is that really grounds for putting a guy away for life? Well...

The court also disagreed that the sentence was cruel and unusual, noting that the three-strikes law was not aimed at the gravity of a particular crime but at habitual offenders. [Judge David] Schuman wrote that Meyrovich had been convicted of nine prior sex offenses before the kiss. [emphasis mine]

Yeah. Cry me a river, then, suck-boy. It's probably a good thing that neighbor walked in when he or she did; otherwise I wouldn't be able to write this snarky blog post about the case, if you know what I mean.

A worm in the Apple?

For years now, Mac users have been crowing about how there are no viruses that attack Apple machines. Well, pucker up, guys:

Reports indicate that someone has let loose a “Trojan horse” or worm for Mac OS X users. The program is hidden within a package that purportedly contains screenshots of Apple’s as-yet unannounced next major revision to Mac OS X. Whether it’s a Trojan horse or worm seems to vary depending on the source of the information. The code has also elicited a response from Apple, and a warning to its customers.

The package, called “latestpics.tgz,” first surfaced recently on a Mac rumors Web site. Independently verified by Ambrosia Software president Andrew Welch, he’s dubbed it the “Oompa-Loompa Trojan,” because the files in question check for the presence of an attribute called “oompa” — an apparent reference to the movie and book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

This is such a new phenomenon that the exoerts can't even agree on whether this thing is a Trojan Horse or a virus. Welch says it's the former, and an anti-virus company called says it's the latter, as does Symantec.

Apple told Macworld that it's not a virus:

“Leap-A is not a virus, it is malicious software that requires a user to download the application and execute the resulting file,” said Apple. “Apple always advises Macintosh users to only accept files from vendors and Web sites that they know and trust. We have a guide to safely handling files received from the Internet at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108009.”

Either way, I'd say yhtis was bound to happen sooner or later, and it'll probably get worse as the years go by. I've frankly never understood why there weren't more viruses that attacked Macs. Is it because they have a superior operating system, or because the kind of geeks that program viruses would rather just stick it to Microsoft?

Related: Learn to write a f'n limerick. Seriously, that just sucks.

Photo finish

Hey, guess where something creepy is going on?

Japan's obsession with camera-equipped mobile phones has taken a bizarre twist, with mourners at funerals now using the devices to capture a final picture of the deceased.

"I get the sense that people no longer respect the dead. It's disturbing," a funeral director told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

A disturbing trend? In Japan, you say? Get out of here!

The article says that some people look at it as a "memento" of the deceased. That's kind of nice, but I think I'd really prefer a photo of my friend or loved one from when they were still alive and kicking. It's just this thing I have--call it a hang-up, if you must--about not really wanting to look at pictures of the corpses of people I know.

At one ceremony, several people gathered round the coffin and took out their phones to photograph the corpse as preparations were made to begin a cremation, she was quoted as saying.

"I'm sure the deceased would never want their faces photographed," she said.

Well then, I guess they ought to have closed-casket funerals, shouldn't they?

Well, to be fair...

...the whole "democratic elections" thing hasn't really been working out as of late for Barbara's friends, either, now has it?

I'm confused

This couldn't possibly be halal, could it? Heck, it's probably not even kosher. Maybe somebody should ask.

Somebody else, I mean.

(Bareknuckle link via Ace)

Gaze upon the amazing talking weasel!

I was just listening to Hugh Hewitt's radio show on the way home from work, and I heard the following remarkable exchange he had (the transcript is from Radio Blogger) with former West Wing producer Lawrence O'Donnell, who insinuated in a Huffington Post entry that Cheney was drunk when the now-famous hunting accident occurred. Except that he didn't:

HH: But you think the Secret Service knew he [Cheney] was drunk and protected him?

LO: No. Hey, stop lying about what I'm saying. Get this straight. Lawrence O'Donnell has no idea, and has never suggested whether or not the Vice President was drunk. I've never said it, and I never will, because we will never know...

HH: Well now, let's pause on that, Lawrence. Let's pause on that.

LO: ...because the Vice President made sure that you weren't going to be able to put a breathalyzer up to his mouth. He made sure of it.

HH: You said we've never...you said just now, you've never suggested that, but of course, the first line in your post is, the L.A. Times is edging closer to the most likely reason for the 18 hour delay.

LO: It is the most likely reason.

HH: That's not suggesting he was drunk?

LO: It is most likely that Ted Kennedy was drunk on Chappaquiddick. That's most likely, but I don't know it.

HH: But Lawrence, you just said you didn't suggest it. In fact, you just...

LO: It's not a fact. A likelihood is not a fact, Hugh. Wake up. You're better than this.

HH: Lawrence, you just said you never suggested he was drunk.

LO: I've never suggested that he was drunk, no. I've suggested it's a likelihood. [emphasis mine]

HH: And suggesting that he was drunk, and a likelihood that he's drunk...

LO: Hugh, you know the difference between a fact and a likelihood.

This is the kind of thinking you get from the people who rallied behind the man who famously pondered what the meaning of the word "is" is. O'Donnell never suggested that Cheney was drunk (even when he wrote, "I have never gone hunting with ultra-rich Republicans on a Saturday afternoon, but I have seen them tailgating at Ivy League football games, so it's hard for me to believe that any of their Saturday lunches are alcohol free.") but suggested it was "a likelihood." Riiiiiiight. You can't trust your lying eyes.

What do you have to do to get a Dem to own up to something they've actually said or written? Really, I'd like to know.

Update: Via Ace, now some other Huffyposter is insinuating that the whole thing is being covered up because Cheney is having an affair with the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland. Unless he's just saying the affair is "a likelihood," that is.

Sane Planning, Sensible Tomorrow

So, Paramount is going to be releasing Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." This is the movie that the Washington Post described as "a movie about global warming. Starring Al Gore. Doing a slide show." It's described in a little more detail at the above Netscape News link:

Helmed by Davis Guggenheim ("Deadwood," "The First Year"), the film, which had its world premiere at last month's Sundance Film Festival, weaves the science behind the issue of global warming with the former vice president's personal history and longtime commitment to communicating the pressing need to reverse the effects of global climate change.

vuyc63ax76yhuuugbfvffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Oh, I'm sorry. I meant to make a snarky remark about Al Gore's movie, but I passed out on the keyboard there for a second.

But the pills work, right?

I got some bad news, guys. It seems that if you're not already, uh, proportioned like a porn star, those e-mails you've been getting probably aren't going to help.

"For patients with psychological concern about the size of the penis -- particularly if it is normal size -- there is little point in offering them surgery because it makes no difference," said Nim Christopher, a urologist at St Peter's Andrology Center in London.

Well, at least the guy is honest about it. And did you catch the name of the hospital he works at? St. Peter's? Heh.

Anyway, now that we've established that I have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old, let's get back to the article:

Christopher and his colleagues, who questioned 42 men who had the surgery, found the dissatisfaction rate was very high. Often the men requested another surgical procedure.

Yeah, whenever I'm dissatisfied with the way the surgery on my wedding tackle went, I immediately leap to the conclusion that I ought to have more surgery. Makes sense.

He added that spam e-mails advertising penis enlargement surgery were inaccurate and gave men unrealistic expectations.

Damn, if you can't trust spammers, who can you trust?