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.

Old spice

Sexy poses, near nudity, helping a charity--hey, sounds good, right?

Giving sultry looks and sexy smiles to the camera, 12 Pittsburgh-area women recently posed at Monongahela historical sites, baring it all -- or almost all -- to create a charity-driven calendar. The catch?

Wait, there's a catch?

The nearly nude ladies are all in their 70s and 80s, driven to adventure by a desire to raise money for a historical society in Monongahela, a small community 17 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Gah! The goggles, they do nothing!

The blind leading the stupid

Hey, I'm all for hiring people with disabilities, but in this case, it doesn't sound like such a good idea:

A Chinese court has jailed two officials after they let a blind contractor build a bridge which collapsed during construction and injured 12 people, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday.

Huang Wenge, township head of Bujia in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, and colleague Xia Jianzhong were sentenced to 18 months and one year in jail, respectively, for not stopping the project, Xinhua said.

"Huang Wenge and Xia Jianzhong, who were in charge of road management and supervision, did not ask the contractors to provide certificates guaranteeing their proficiency," it said, citing the court ruling.

Certificates guaranteeing proficiency would be good. You know what would be even better? The ability to actually see the bridge that you're building.

Oh, dear God

This is just six kinds of disgusting:

Animal control officers wearing protective suits and air packs rescued 47 cats from a house filled with feces that in some areas was half a foot deep.

Two kittens were found dead in the one-story house in Martinsburg, said Melissa Susko, director of PIGS Animal Sanctuary in neighboring Jefferson County, which helped remove the cats from the house Thursday.

"They were just in a pile of feces," Susko said.

One pile of cat feces was about 3 feet wide. In other areas, the feces was 3 inches to 6 inches deep, said E.N. Webber of the Berkeley County Animal Control office.

"We were slipping and sliding in there. It was pretty bad," said Star Silva of the Promise Animal League, which also helped remove the cats.

Animal control officers went to the house in response to complaints from neighbors about odors.

Berkley County sheriff's Chief Deputy Kenny Lemaster said authorities were looking for the house's owner, who was not identified. No charges have been filed.

I'm guessing there was probably some kind of crazy cat-hoarding lady involved. Yep, that sounds about right.

Happiness is...

...a big-ass silver trophy.

Seriously, this is great for Andy, who's been a true-blue Ducks fan since the beginning, even when they sucked. Now he knows how this felt for me, when it finally happened.

Burge in '08

Iowahawk throws his hat into the ring and lays out a campaign platform that I think I can get behind. Take a gander at his thoughts on foreign policy:

With our nation facing challenges from extremists and madmen around the globe, Americans are asking serious questions of the presidential field. Questions like, "does this candidate have the mature, thoughtful, and sober judgment to lead us through the threats that confront us?" And, "if necessary, is this candidate capable of doubling down on the crazy stakes to scare our enemies shitless?"

Ask anyone who knows, and they will tell you: when sober, Dave Burge has the mature, thoughtful judgement called for in 50 to 60% of foreign policy situations. These same people will also tell you that after eight or ten Jager shots, all bets are off. And let this be a notice to America's enemies: President Dave ain't gonna put no padlock on the Oval Office liquor cabinet.

If that doesn't get your vote, I don't know what will.

(Via Dan Collins, writing at protein wisdom, whose blog host would make a fine Veep, if you asked me.)

Kid stuff

Ah, an alcoholic beverage that can be sold to kids. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol which they say can be sold legally to minors.

The latest innovation in inebriation, called Booz2Go, is available in 20-gramme packets that cost 1-1.5 euros ($1.35-$2).

Top it up with water and you have a bubbly, lime-colored and -flavored drink with just 3 percent alcohol content.

Okay, so it's not exactly strong stuff, but it's cheap, so the kiddies can get their mitts on plenty of the stuff.

"We are aiming for the youth market. They are really more into it because you can compare it with Bacardi-mixed drinks," 20-year-old Harm van Elderen told Reuters.

[...]

"Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16," said project member Martyn van Nierop.

The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.

Imagine the shrieks of protest if someone in America said something like that. "They're selling poison to children! On purpose!"

Operation Overlord

Sixty-three years ago today, these men were fighting and dying to free Europe from tyranny. Spare a thought for them, as well as the men and women serving us today, as you go about your business today. I think I'll watch some of this later tonight.

Hard case

I don't think this is the kind of boost the guy was looking for:

A man has sued the maker of the health drink Boost Plus, claiming the vitamin-enriched beverage gave him an erection that would not subside and caused him to be hospitalized.

The lawsuit filed by Christopher Woods, of Manhattan, said he bought the nutrition beverage, which is made by the Novartis pharmaceutical company, at a drugstore on June 5, 2004, and drank it.

Heh. "Woods."

Sorry, that's just how my mind works.

Woods' court papers say he woke up the next morning "with an erection that would not subside" and sought treatment of the condition, called severe priapism. They say Woods, 29, underwent surgery for implantation of a Winter shunt, which moves blood from one area to another.

The lawsuit, filed late Monday, says Woods later had problems that required a hospital visit and penile artery embolization, a way of closing blood vessels. Closing off some blood flow prevents engorgement of the penis with blood and lessens the likelihood of an erection.

Now, it sounds like this guy has some serious problems with his weenis, but who or what exactly led him to the conclusion that the energy drink caused said problems? Was it a doctor's opinion or a lawyer's?

I'm guessing it was the latter.

Hit parade

Damn. The Angels got 16 runs on 23 hits tonight. Every starting player had at least one hit. That was a fun game to watch, unless you're a Twins fan.

A fool and his money, Chinese edition

If you think Americans are the only people who engage in conspicuous consumption, dig this:

Fancy a diamond-encrusted cellphone for $3.5 million, or a gold-plated, musical Swiss watch costing more than $2 million?

Those luxuries, and thousands like them, were on display at a weekend Millionaire Fair in Shanghai, a lavish exhibition targeting the ranks of newly rich created by China's economic boom and a stock market bull run.

The gold-plated Swiss watch I suppose I can understand, but why the hell would you want a diamond-encrusted cell phone? Carrying something like that around with you is like wearing a t-shirt with "Mug me," printed on it.

Hundreds of wealthy Chinese -- many of them dressed casually in sportswear or slippers, and indistinguishable from pedestrians on the streets outside -- crowded the exhibition hall, looking for ways to spend their money.

"The rich people here are still learning about global brands. We're helping them to understand the lifestyle and how to live it," said David Zhong, one of the organizers of the exhibition.

Nice work, if you can get it, telling wealthy suckers that they should buy ridiculous bejeweled geegaws.

Concerned by social tensions caused by the widening gap between rich and poor, Chinese leaders are promising more policies to reduce income inequalities. Higher import duties were imposed this year on luxury goods from cosmetics to golf clubs.

Hey, what kind of commie crap is that? Oh, right.

Read the whole thing, especially if you want a taste of some delicious irony about the building where the exhibition is being held.

Okay, then

If you enjoy stories about kooky whackjobs, well, enjoy:

A U.S. scientist and a small band of believers are planning a journey to the Canadian Arctic for what they call "the greatest geological expedition in history."

Are they searching for Arctic oil reserves? Documenting evidence of climate change?

Not quite. They're looking for a fog-shrouded hole in the Arctic Ocean that leads -- they say -- to the centre of the Earth, where an unknown civilization is lurking inside the hollow core of the planet.

This time next year, Kentucky based physicist and futurist Brooks Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada's Arctic islands.

"Everest has been climbed a hundred times," Mr. Agnew says. "The Titanic has been scanned from stem to stern. [But] this is the first and only expedition to the North Pole opening ever attempted."

You know why people have done those other things, like climbing mountains and searching for famous shipwrecks? Probably because those things, you know, actually exist.

Oh, and I loved this bit:

While he insists the journey has a genuine scientific purpose, Mr. Agnew also says the expedition will include several experts in meditation, mythology and UFOs [my emphasis], as well as a team of documentary filmmakers.

You don't say.

(Via Fark.)

A fun little game

Okay, let's try something here. I'll take a detail out of the first paragraph of this story, and you see if you can figure out where it happened:

Police found more than 8,000 pieces of women's clothing and lingerie in the home of a...man who stole the items so he could sleep buried in them.

No fair peeking, either!