Happy Halloween

I hope you all have a safe, fun night. Those of you who have kids, enjoy the cute costumes and trick-or-treating!

Big day

So, today marks my first blogiversary, or whatever you call it. Wow, a whole year of making fun of ridiculous news stories about underpants and naked people and the like.

Coincidentally, it happens to also be Riley's first birthday. Weird, huh? My dog was born on the same day as my blog. And dog rhymes with blog, too. Spooky.

Unfortunately, blogging is going to be light over the next few days, partly because my mom went into the hospital for back surgery today. My dad called a couple of hours ago to tell us she's in recovery, but I probably won't know a lot about how she's doing until tomorrow. Oh, and did I mention that I slacked off on work pretty much all last week? Well, I did, so I have to do about a week's worth of work tonight and tomorrow.

I'll see you in a little while, once all this real-world stuff subsides.

Update: My dad just got back from the hospital, and he told me the surgeon thinks the procedure was a success. I hope he's right.

World Series chumps

I am referring, of course to the Detroit Tigers, whose staggering ineptitude on both offense and defense cost them the champiionship. Hell, the way they played they'd be lucky to win a regular-season series against the Kansas City Royals.

The postseason was kind of like a microcosm of the Tigers' season, if you think about it. They started strong, looking like the most dominant team in the game, then faded dramatically down the stretch.

Anyway, congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals, who were the better team hands-down, and especially to Series MVP David Eckstein. He was always one of my favorites when he played for the Angels, and he's continued to be a scrappy player and a great leadoff man in St. Louis.

What the hell, people?

Billy Ray Cyrus? That's the best you could do for game 5 of the World Series? You've gotta be shitting me.

Update: Fox just made up for that a little by playing the intro to this.

Creepy nerds seek like-minded creepy nerds

Well, these people are British, so they've got the pastiness thing going for them already:

Vampyres are prowling for new recruits in London as Halloween approaches to partake in wild parties, trips to Transylvania and bat spotting nights -- but coffin-dwelling, blood drinkers need not apply.

Okay, I might be mistaken, but I thought the whole point of being a vampire was that you fed on the blood of the living.

With a penchant for custom-made fangs, striking make-up and gothic clothes, members of the London Vampyre Group (LVG) say it's their fascination with the romantic notion of vampires, rather than any darker intent, that draws them together.

"People who think they're un-dead, hundreds of years old, or that you have to drink blood if you're interested in the dark side of things, we can put them right on that," LVG's Mick Smith, 57, told Reuters in an interview in a London pub.

Oh, now I get it. You silly people aren't vampires, you're sad, creepy role-playing goths. Read the rest, which includes their equivalent of Star Trek conventions ("Vampyres are transformed by flamboyant clothes after dark for the Dance of the Damned Vampire Ball and Requiem of the Resurrected parties"). Really, if it wasn't this close to Halloween and you replaced all the information in the article with stuff about people who dress up like Klingons, nobody would give a shit.

Against the dress code

I like this story for two reasons—it's utterly ridiculous and it prominently features one of my favorite "comedy gold" words. See if you can guess which one:

Captain Underpants has battled talking toilets and Professor Poopypants, but he was no match for a high school principal who banned students from dressing up as the children's book character.

Long Beach High School Principal Nicholas Restivo took the action Wednesday after three 17-year-old girls wore beige leotards and nude stockings under white briefs and red capes on the school's Superhero Day.

"Yes, I know they weren't naked," Restivo said. "But the appearance was that they were naked."

How can you be naked if you're wearing underpants? And why am I just now hearing about this character?

Anyway, isn't this kind of a stupid thing to be freaking out about in these days of crazy people locking themselves in schools and killing a bunch of kids? If they dressed up as Crazy Guy Who's Going to Kill a Bunch of Kids Man, I could see how sending them home to change might be a bit more justifiable.

Failing with flying colors

What's just about the worst thing you could possibly do during your driver's license test? This Indiana woman found out.

A young woman's goal of getting her driver's license crashed this week _ right into the license branch. The 20-year-old woman was pulling into a parking spot outside the license branch when she hit the accelerator instead of the brake, Assistant Fire Chief Mike Bucy said.

The car jumped a small curb and went into the building about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, tearing out a large glass window and damaging a door and low brick wall.

Neither the driver nor the examiner, who weren't identified, were injured. Bucy said a person in the building sustained a hip injury and was examined by emergency medical personnel but declined to be taken to the hospital.

Needless to say, she failed the test. At least she didn't kill anybody.

"Several people" ruin it for the rest of us

A lemon tree? A damn, filthy lemon tree? I'm outraged!

A shower gel advert which featured a very young-looking woman sitting naked under a lemon tree was slated by Britain's advertising watchdog Wednesday which ruled it "offensive and inappropriate."

Although the model in the television advert for Original Source shower gel was an adult, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said she might be taken for a child by some people.

"Because some viewers were likely to believe that the model was a child, we considered the sexual overtones and nudity in the ad were offensive and inappropriate."

Okay, so the lemon tree wasn't really the part that people would be offended by. But lemme get this straight—if they'd used an older-looking model things would've been peachy keen, nudity and all? Apparently, yes.

Several people had complained about the ad because the model looked under 16 and was shown in what they considered to be a sexually provocative way.

A nude young woman is sexually provocative? Well, I guess so, if you're a straight guy or a lesbian. Otherwise, nope. No problem there. Except, it seems, for "several people" with weird hang-ups or who, I guess, like ogling naked grannies. Not that I'm judging them or anything.

Of course, the company that produced the ad is protesting its innocence.

Defending the advert, PZ Cussons said they had wanted to portray the naturalness of their product and that the question of how old the model looked was subjective.

Right. Because it's not like sex sells or anything.

Death by banquet

I can think of worse ways to go out than this:

Five Chinese power bureau officials have been dismissed or demoted after an auditor died from a series of banquet binges, the Shanghai Daily reported on Tuesday.

The death of Zhang Hongtao, 25, who worked with the Yanshan County Audit Office in northern Hebei province, was blamed on alcohol after banquets provided in April for auditors by the Yanshan Power Supply Co., the newspaper said.

Instead of working, Zhang did little else but eat, drink, play cards and enjoy massages, the official China Daily said.

Well, at least he died doing what he loved. Where can I get a job like that? They hardly ever have massages at my job.

The Silly Party

And people wonder why nobody takes the Libertarian party seriously:

Loretta Nall, the Libertarian Party's write-in candidate for governor of Alabama, is campaigning on her cleavage and hoping that voters will eventually focus on her platform.

"It started out as a joke, but it blew up into something huge," said Nall, a 32-year-old with dyed blond hair.

Her campaign is offering T-shirts and marijuana stash boxes adorned with a photo of her with a plunging neckline and the words: "More of these boobs." Below that are pictures of other candidates for governor including Republican incumbent Bob Riley and Democratic Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley and the words: "And less of these boobs."

Her Web site has a cartoon of someone stuffing bills down the front of her low-cut top. And for $50 donation she apparently offers to show a cartoon of herself flashing her breasts.

Now, I don't want to be mean or anything, but this strategy might work a little better if she were a little more attractive. Click on that link to see what I mean.

Oh, and "marijuana stash boxes" as campaign materials for a Libertarian? I didn't see that one coming, especially from such a classy lady.

Early in her campaign, she talked about how her misdemeanor arrest for marijuana possession in 2002 led her to start the U.S. Marijuana Party.

Then she entertained readers of her campaign Web site with lots of information about her personal life, including a discussion of why she doesn't wear panties.

Okay, I take that back.

Uh-huh

This story isn't exactly new—it's actually from this summer—but it's really interesting. It seems there's a tribe in the South Pacific that thinks Prince Philip, the Queen of England's consort, is their god. Yeah. No fooling.

I just happened to stumble across it while looking for some information about the British Royal Family. Go ahead and read it. It's very weird and very interesting.

He likes them to lie still

Having trouble meeting girls? This probably isn't the best way to do it:

A Detroit man with a history of smashing business windows to grab female mannequins has been arrested for the latest indulgence of his fetish.

Ronald A. Dotson, 39, was arrested Oct. 9 after police say he smashed a window at a cleaning-supply company in suburban Ferndale to get at a female mannequin dressed in a black and white French maid’s uniform. A judge ordered him Thursday to undergo a psychiatric examination at the request of his defense attorney, Edward Cohn. Doctors will determine whether Dotson is competent to stand trial on a charge of attempted breaking and entering.

I don't care what anybody's told you, Ron, this was just a movie. And not a very good one at that.

Dotson had been out of prison for less than a week when he was caught. His erotic pursuit of mannequins over the past 13 years has led to at least six convictions for breaking and entering and a stint in state prison, police say.

“He told his parole officer he was going to buy a mannequin so he didn’t have to do these break-ins anymore,” said Ferndale police detective Brendan Moore. “Apparently that didn’t work out.”

Apparently not. Maybe it's time for him to kick things up a notch.

(My sincere apoligies to Emeril for that. Actually, I apologize to everybody for that. That's just where my mind immediately went.)

Elvis Costello officially uncool

With Oliver Perez on the mound for the Mets in game seven of the NLCS, idiot sportscaster Tim McCarver just made a reference to "Oliver's Army." Way to ruin it for the rest of us, Tim.

The international Panda plot

Panda Bears may look all cute and cuddly, but I've long suspected that the Red Chinese, who seem all too happy to lend them to American zoos, are training them to kill us. Sure, you all scoffed at me and pointed and called me crazy behind my back. Well, who's laughing now?

A panda cub bit off part of the thumb of an American visitor who was feeding it at a reserve in southwest China, state media said Thursday.

The 50-year-old woman, identified only as Lisa, had registered in the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Sichuan province as a volunteer, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

She was wearing gloves and feeding the panda bamboo on Tuesday morning when "suddenly, the panda bit into her thumb," Xinhua said.

"When she cried out, the cub became excited and gripped more tightly,"it said. "Lisa finally managed to wrench herself free."

About 20 percent of the thumb had been bitten off, Xinhua said.

A man who answered the telephone at the center's administrative office said it had no comment.

Of course they had no comment. You think they're going to just blab all their nefarious killer Panda plans?

Besides, it's not like this hasn't happened before.

Most insane story of the year

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

Going medieval

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

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

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

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

And now for the least surprising part of the story:

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

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

You wanted a Brealanche?

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

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

Bras behind bars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh...okay.

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

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

[...]

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

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

Fourth time's a charm

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

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

[...]

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

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

Beware

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

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

It's a miracle!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More fun than...you know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


How appropriate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Showing some skin at the office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Woo-hoo!

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

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

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion

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

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

Antacids, anybody?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I got nothin'

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

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

Courthouse or monkeyhouse?

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

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

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

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

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

Next time, just pick up a snow globe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Harry Potter conspiracy

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

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

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

Sounds pretty likely to me.

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

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

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

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

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

Keep your eyes peeled

Hunting for wanted fugitives has never sounded quite this entertaining:

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

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

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

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

Yeah. That might be a good idea.

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

Wearing Bad Idea Jeans

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

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

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

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

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

I mean, allegedly strangled. Yeah.

Another 9/11 "Truth" takedown

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

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

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

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

(via More Than Loans)

Nobody's that stupid

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

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

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


Then again, they did keep electing Bill Clinton.

Boche or Blighty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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