Most embarrassing study ever

Oh, dear Krishna, this is just too funny:

Condoms designed to meet international size specifications are too big for many Indian men as their penises fall short of what manufacturers had anticipated, an Indian study has found.

The Indian Council of Medical Research, a leading state-run center, said its initial findings from a two-year study showed 60 percent of men in the financial capital Mumbai had penises about 2.4 cm (one inch) shorter than those condoms catered for.

For a further 30 percent, the difference was at least 5 cm (two inches). A poor fit meant the prophylactics often didn't do the job they were bought for, and led to some tearing or slipping off during use.

Well, I guess it's not all that funny if you're an Indian guy with a tiny, tiny penis. But for the rest of us, comedy gold. And it gets even better:

The Times of India reported the ICMR survey had studied 1,400 men between 18-50 years of age in cities like Mumbai and New Delhi as well as in rural areas in a report. It entitled its story "Indian men don't measure up."

Insult, meet Injury. Do you get the feeling that there's at least one very angry, bitter female scientist behind this? Because I'm sort of picking up that vibe.

Pearl Harbor Day

Click photo to enlarge. (Via The Naval Historical Center.)

Sixty-five years ago today, we were attacked by the Japanese, plunging the United States into World War II. I've mentioned before that my Grandpa joined the Navy and saw combat in both Europe and the Pacific. He's no longer with us, but if he were, today would be a day when I would thank him for what he and millions of others around the globe did during those difficult years. And if anyone reading this served with the Allies in World War II, I'd like to wish you the same heartfelt thanks for your sacrifices.

Hardly surprising

Hmmmmm...see if you can see the most unsurprising part of this article coming:

Authorities in a Malaysian city have warned waitresses and female staff of retail outlets that they face a $138 fine if they wear revealing and tight fitting clothes, a news report said Tuesday.

Wait for it...Wait for it...

The Kota Baru town's municipal council has said it will no longer tolerate indecent dressing and will begin enforcing an existing Islamic law that prohibits indecent dressing, The Star newspaper said.

And there it is. I bet you saw that coming a mile away. I know I certainly did.

Kota Baru is the capital of the northeastern Kelantan state, the only Malaysian state to be ruled by an opposition Islamic fundamentalist party. All other Malaysian states are governed by the secular United Malays National Organization and its allies.

The government in Kelantan imposes Islamic regulations such as separate check out counters for men and women at supermarkets.

The bylaw on proper feminine attire prohibits Muslim and non-Muslim women from wearing body hugging outfits, blouses that show the navel, see-through blouses, miniskirts and tight pants.

[...]

In addition to the general dress code, Muslim women are also bound by law to wear ankle-length dresses and to cover their hair and forehead.

"We apologize to non-Muslims if this comes across as harsh but we must respect our Asian culture and religion in public," State local government committee chairman Takiyuddin Hassan was quoted as saying.

That's funny. I'm no expert on Asian cultures, but I'm pretty sure that there are many of them that don't require women to cover up almost completely. Japan comes to mind. No, I'm actually pretty sure this has a lot less to do with the "Asian culture" thing than it has to do with the religion.

Anyway, this is a really bad idea. Don't they understand that once tight pants are outlawed, only outlaws will have tight pants?

That crying baby doesn't seem so bad

Well, not compared to what happened in Nashville the other day. I mean, that dry, recycled air in the cabins on commercial flights is bad enough without this:

It may be one problem airline security officials never envisioned -- a passenger lighting matches in flight to mask odors from her flatulence.

The woman's actions resulted in an emergency landing on Monday in Nashville of an American Airlines flight bound for Dallas from Washington, D.C., said Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for Nashville's airport.

Other passengers reported the odor of burned matches, but the woman was not forthcoming when asked about it, Lowrance said on Wednesday.

"Of course, she was scared and embarrassed but all the passengers had to disembark, all the luggage had to be searched, a canine team was brought in, and about three hours were consumed in sorting out the situation," she said.

I bet everyone was really happy with her after all of that. I mean, think of all the other passengers on that plane who missed connecting flights because of the farty woman. I bet they were pleased as punch.

She wasn't charged with any crimes, but it seems like she ought to pay for the canine search team at the very least.

Passengers are permitted four books of paper safety matches on a plane but cannot light them during flight, Lowrance said.

"I've had calls from people all over the country about this," she said. "And I don't have the answer to this problem."

Well, you could always try using some of this. Or, you could just lay off the beans and cabbage before heading off to the airport.

"Conveying vulgarity in the society"

I hope nobody shows this Indian lawyer any American teenage sex comedies like American Pie or Porky's. He'd probably have a stroke.

A kissing scene from a movie starring Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan has irked a lawyer who has filed a criminal case against them, accusing them of obscenity, he said on Sunday.

Shailendra Dwivedi of Indore, near Bhopal, the capital of central Madhya Pradesh state, said the scene from the movie, titled "Dhoom 2," lowered the dignity of Indian women and gave an obscene message to youth.

"Bollywood actors are conveying vulgarity in the society," Dwivedi told Reuters. "These films cannot be watched with our families, they are so vulgar at times."

Of course, this seems like an overreaction to you and me, what with all the sex and nudity we have in our movies, but maybe we can turn this to our advantage and get Sharon Stone thrown into prison for Basic Instinct 2.

Heil Santa

So, a chain of stores had to destroy its entire inventory of a certain Santa Claus figurine because people thought it looked like Santa was giving the Nazi salute. Do I even have to tell you which country this happened in? Of course not.

Josef Lange, a spokesman for the Rossmann chain that has 1,200 outlets, told Reuters Friday the figures depicting Father Christmas with his right arm stiffly upright toward the sky and holding a sack in his left hand upset some customers.

"We were astonished by the reaction," Lange said. "It looks like he's just pointing up to the sky and we were surprised that anyone saw the so-called 'Hitler salute' in that. But we responded and had the entire inventory removed and destroyed."

People tend to be somewhat sensitive to something like that in your part of the world, Josef, so I don't see why you'd be "astonished" by people taking offense.

What's up with all the Nazi stuff this Christmas, anyway?

Junk, food

It's bad enough, having to work at a fast food joint, but when some guy pulls a stunt like this, well, that just adds to the suck.

A teen accused of ordering from at least three fast food drive-thrus nude faces an indecent exposure charge. David Gatton, 18, of Columbia City, was found in the parking lot of a McDonald's by a sheriff's deputy after police received a call that the teen had been nude when he ordered from his car at the Arby's drive-thru, police said.

[...]

Sgt. Mike Engle of the Whitley County Sheriff's Department passed the car Tuesday night in Columbia City, 20 miles west of Fort Wayne. Engle said he turned around to stop the car and saw that Gatton had driven into the McDonald's lot.

When Engle got to the car, Gatton was putting his clothes back on. Police said Gatton had a clothed male passenger in the car and the pair had been making the stops as part of a joke. Gatton faces a misdemeanor charge.

Well, I guess the joke's on him, because now everybody knows that he was driving around naked with another dude. And that's kinda gay.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Well, the gay part, anyway. The exposing yourself to minimum wage earners part is pretty wrong.

The not-so-friendly skies

If you thought flying on commercial airlines was bad here in the US, take a gander at what they're doing in China:

A Chinese airline has calculated that it takes a liter of fuel to flush the toilet at 30,000 feet and is urging passengers to go to the bathroom before they board.

As Chinese airlines come under increasing pressure to cut fuel expenditures, China Southern's latest strategy is to encourage passengers "to spend their pennies before boarding the aircraft," Xinhua news agency reported Thursday.

I'm a little bit confused about that "spend their pennies" line. Is that because Chinese airports tend to have pay toilets, or is that a Chinese euphamism for going to the bathroom? Either way, it sounds like the concept of customer service is somewhat alien to the Chinese.

"The energy used in one flush is enough for an economical car to run at least 10 kilometers," Captain Liu Zhiyuan, who flies regularly between Hangzhou and Beijing, was quoted as saying.

Citing a survey by the company's logistics department, Liu said carrying one kilogram of items such as blankets and pillows by air for one hour uses 0.2 kg of fuel.

"This means the blankets and pillows on board the aircraft eat up 60 tonnes of fuel every day. If each seat is loaded with three 450-gram magazines, another 60 tonnes will be consumed," Liu explained.

You know what would cut down on weight? Getting rid of all those passengers. Just think of all the fuel they could save if they flew around in empty planes.

Muscular nerds raise suspicion

I don't know if roid rage is currently a problem in the world of chess, but it looks like won't be in the future.

Chess's world governing body will introduce dope testing at the Asian Games this week, although the sport's top official in Doha said he had no idea how drugs could enhance chess performance.

"I would not know which drug could possibly help a chess player to improve his game," competition manager Yousuf Ahmad Ali said.

"But, yes, there will be official monitors who may demand that players undergo a drugs test after the rounds."

Normally, I'd make some kind of joke here, but I've got to admit that this one has me stumped. Perhaps we should turn back to the article:

Drug testing is the latest move by the World Chess Federation (FIDE) to raise international standards in the hope of making chess an Olympic sport in the future.

Ah, there we go. Chess in the Olympics. Can Yahtzee, the amazing game of chance be far behind?

Anyway, the big winner here is the sport of speed walking, which, if chess makes it into the Olympics, will automatically drop off the top of the lamest sport list. Well, that's if chess is considered a summer sport. If it goes into the winter games, well, move over, curling!

I'm sure Jimmy Carter was devastated

One of his good buddies isn't feeling well enough to attend his own birthday party:

The ailing Fidel Castro was not well enough to attend the kickoff Tuesday of his 80th birthday celebrations, attended by hundreds of admirers who traveled here to fete him.

A government worker at the gala launch of the five-day birthday bash read a message which he said came from the Cuban leader. It said Castro's doctors had told him he was not in condition to go to the party at Havana's Karl Marx Theater where about 5,000 well-wishers gathered.

"I direct myself to you, intellectuals and prestigious personalities of the world, with a dilemma," said the note.

"I could not meet with you in a small locale, only in the Karl Marx Theater where all the visitors would fit and I was not yet in condition, according to the doctors, to face such a colossal encounter," it added. The reading of the message was broadcast live on state television.

The crowd, which included hundreds of guests from other countries and thousands of Cubans, responded with a standing ovation.

I wonder if they were applauding his statement, or the fact that they wouldn't be subjected to one of his long-winded speeches. Probably the former, judging by the guest list full of thugs and useful idiots in attendance:

More than 1,300 politicians, artists and intellectuals from around the globe were expected to pay homage to the man who governed the communist-run island for 47 years.

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rene Preval of Haiti have confirmed they will attend the celebrations along with former Ecuadorean President Rodrigo Borja and Nicaraguan President-elect Daniel Ortega.

Also expected are Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Argentine human rights activist.

I'm pretty sure none of those people braved shark-infested waters in rickety, jerry-rigged boats to get there. Funny, that.

Oh, and get this:

Noticeably absent will be Castro's good friend and political ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is up for re-election Dec. 3. In his absence, Chavez promised to dedicate his electoral victory to Castro.

Well, someone sounds awfully sure that he's going to win that election. I wonder why that would be. I'm sure it's just that he has good polling data.

Is that a guitar in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

No, it turns out it was actually a guitar in the guy's pants.

The guitar-shaped bulge in Morgan Conatser's clothing tipped off a music store owner that there might be a crime in progress. Clifton Lovell, owner of Guitars and Cadillacs on U.S. Highway 71 in De Queen [Arkansas], was talking with a customer last week when he saw Conatser, 29, walking out of the store.

"I saw him walking out to his pickup truck and the bulges in his leather jacket. I said, 'Hey what have you got there,'" Clifton Lovell said.

He said Conatser, 29, replied, "Nothing."

Lovell pointed toward the unnatural shapes in Conatser's jacket and pants and said, "You've got something."

Conatser then removed a solid body electric guitar from his pants leg and from underneath his jacket.

I'd like to know how he managed to shove the guitar down his pants without anybody noticing. That can't be easy. And although the guy sounds like kind of a dumbass, perhaps the guitar theft was a brilliant ploy—misdirection:

With the guitar back in the store, Lovell didn't intend to call the sheriff's office. But then he discovered a wireless sound system was missing. Lovell called the Sevier County Sheriff's Department and gave a description of Conatser and his pickup.

Deputy Jeff Wahls called Conatser's father, who told Wahls how to find the house.

The deputy found Conatser at home, where Conatser went to his bedroom closet and retrieved the sound system, Wahls said.

"He made a statement saying he needed the property because he needed to make ends meet," Wahls said.

The article doesn't say whether or not Conaster snuck the sound system out of the store in his pants, but if he did, those pants have got to be nice and roomy. Maybe the authorities should have checked inside them, just to be sure he didn't have any drums or saxophones in there.

Father of the year material

Hey, dumbass, did it ever occur to you to, you know, call a doctor? No, I guess not.

A Canadian man who could not figure out how to deal with his girlfriend's feverish 10-month-old daughter put the baby into a freezer to cool her down, a local newspaper reported on Friday.

Derrick Hardy faces charges of criminal negligence and assaulting the infant, who was rescued when her mother came home, the Charlottetown Guardian said.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said the mother found the girl crammed into the freezer alongside ice cubes and hamburger meat. Hardy said he had left the door ajar but the mother said it had been closed when she returned.

He told a court in the eastern province of Prince Edward Island on Thursday the child had only been in the freezer for about 40 seconds.

I don't care if she was in the freezer for ten seconds. You just don't put a human being in a freezer at all. Well, unless that human being is dead, and you're a coroner. I guess you could make an exception there. But the live baby, not so much.

Hardy, 21, who admitted to police that he had no real parenting skills to deal with a sick child, said he had noticed the girl was very hot and put a cool cloth on her face, but this had no effect. [emphasis mine]

I don't think he has the parenting skills to deal with a healthy goldfish, much less a sick child.

Update: Great minds think alike, apparently.

Unusual hoedown

I've complained a couple of times before about the kids across the street screaming into their karaoke machine, but I haven't mentioned the neighbors next door, who also have a karaoke machine. Well, today, they seemed to be having some kind of karaoke hoedown. Which sounds a little strange, I guess. Stranger still...it was in Chinese.

Oh well. At least they can actually carry a tune.

Singapore swing

Remember a few weeks ago, when I wrote the post about wife-swapping in China? Well, it seems that the whole continent of Asia is mired in the sexual seventies, if this article about swinging in Singapore is any indication:

Every two months, dozens of couples meet in a pub in Singapore, have drinks, mingle, and then decide whether they want to sleep with one another.

They then climb into their thirty-foot-long Cadillacs, which they drive home before frantically tearing off each other's double knit polyester outfits, platform shoes, and gold medallions before having sex on the shag carpeting. Okay, so I made that last part up.

In Sydney or Seattle nobody would bat an eyelid, but the couples are part of a thriving underground swinging scene that is an anomaly for a country where oral sex is illegal and Playboy magazine is banned.

There are at least 10 swingers clubs in Singapore, most of them private, some of them online. With more than 6,000 members, the Web-based United SG Swingers is one of the biggest.

"Most" of them are private? Does that mean that some of them are run by the government, or just that anybody can walk in off the street and trade in their missus?

For all their enthusiasm, few swingers tell family and friends about their lifestyle, although the practice is not illegal in Singapore.

Is that really very surprising? I mean, I don't tend to discuss my sexual proclivities with my family and friends, either. Besides, I don't think they'd really want to hear it.

Anyway, read the whole thing, especially if you're a pervert who wants details about the Singapore swinging scene. My favorite part is the way the article ends:

A 34-year-old Australian who attends swinging parties told Reuters that Singapore's scene is just evolving.

"It's very innocuous here, it's not like other countries," he said. "Compared to Australia and Europe, it's more discreet and less lively. Singaporeans are pretty reserved in a lot of ways."

Right. Because nothing says "prudish" like having sex with somebody else's spouse.

Happy Thanksgiving

There's a lot to be thankful for today. Nancy Pelosi hasn't even taken over as Speaker of the House, but she's already fixed global warming. Thanks, Nancy! And it kinda seems wrong to be thankful for the misery of others, but when a bunch of scum and criminals are having a bad year, well, that's a good thing. And by "scum and criminals," I mean the fans, too.

Seriously, though, my mom's back is healing, slowly but surely. She's getting a little better and a little more mobile every day, and I'm truly thankful for that. On a related note, since she's not 100%, she's not cooking dinner tonight, so we decided to order a catered turkey dinner from one of our local supermarkets. And I'm really thankful that my brother noticed the small print in their ad yesterday that says you have to allow two to three hours for heating of the whole thing. Thanks to his good eye, we won't have to wait until 9:30 tonight to eat.

Know your rights

I work for a small newspaper company as a reporter, and there's a large-ish suburban city nearby that's part of my beat. As a part of my job, I go to their City Council meetings, and that's where I was last night.

Now, last night's meeting was a little different because they were reorganizing the council, which is to say that they chose who would be the new Mayor and Mayor Pro-Tem, largely ceremonial positions.

The problem is that politics have gotten kind of nasty there over the last few years, so even choosing who gets a ceremonial role on the council has become a big freakin' to do.

One of the council members is under investigation by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office because he allegedly got a sweetheart deal on an SUV from a dealership owner and developer who had business with the City. The investigation has been dragging on forever, and the DA hasn't filed charges against the guy so far, but the head of the division that investigates corruption insists that it's an ongoing investigation.

As a result of all of this, the council member has been passed over for Mayor Pro-Tem, and last night it looked like he would be passed over for Mayor as well.

Well, this didn't sit to well with his supporters, many of whom came out last night to give the council a piece of their mind. For two hours. They said that the situation smacked of discrimination. One of them brought up "social justice." Etc.

But here's the kicker. A bunch of these people kept getting up at the mic and talking about how, in this country, we have the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Over and over and over again, innocent until proven guilty. It made me want to scream.

You are presumed innocent until you're proven guilty...in a criminal trial. This constitutional right does not extend to a procedural vote at a City Council meeting.

I'm sure the same sort of thing happens all over the country on a regular basis, since people seem to be staggeringly ignorant about their constitutional rights. Country music radio stations stop playing the Dixie Chicks? Why, that's censorship! This guy doesn't get to be Mayor? You've presumed him guilty before he's even been charged with anything! It's un-American!

Oh, and by the way, injustice prevailed and the guy got passed over again. Democracy is dead, if you're judging things by the size of the mob that came out to demand that they elect him to lead the city.

I weep for our Republic.

Comedian's wife knows better than you

Laurie David, wife of Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David, Manbearpig's movie co-producer, and all-around global warming nag, is going out on tour with Sheryl Crow to talk down to the rubes about her pet issue.

While admitting to being nervous about Oscar season, David is moving on to her next headline event to "kick up the dirt" in mid-America and the nation's capital with one of the biggest names in music.

"Sheryl Crow and I are going to go out on her biodiesel tour bus, starting in Texas, and invite friends to join us on various stops," said David, speaking in the garden outside her Los Angeles-area home office overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

"We really want to go to places where people are not talking about these issues as much as they should be." [emphasis mine]

And nobody knows better than the wife of a teevee comedian just how much people ought to be talking about an issue that she happens to be interested in. How incredibly condescending.

During 10 days in April, the two women will drive to Washington, D.C., for Earth Day, where she hopes some of her 525,000 virtual marchers -- people who have signed on to her Web site (http://www.stopglobalwarming.org) -- will join them in person.

"Virtual marchers." That's pretty lame. Although, on the other hand, I guess my internet surfing habits make me a virtual porn star, which is kinda cool.

"The rest of the world is so much more engaged on this issue than the United States," she said. "We're the biggest cause of global warming pollution now and we are doing the least about it and that is not acceptable."

Translation: "All the cool countries (i.e. Europe) are doing it, so we should, too." And while we're at it, let's have some of that double digit unemployment and low, low productivity, while we're at it.

But looking toward the next elections, she said she would do anything to get Gore to make another run at the presidency after he was edged out by Bush in 2000.

"He's not planning on it for the moment but it would be one of my dreams to see him run for president again," David said.

Mine, too, Laurie. But I suspect my reasons are a little different from yours.

Even with the shift in political power, David said her goal is unchanged: "To permeate popular culture in every way I can to get people to wake up to what is going on."

She believes Hollywood is doing an admirable job on fighting global warming, from studios like Warner Bros going green to celebrities like Leonardo di Caprio embracing the hybrid cars her family has been driving for years.

And what is Larry David's role in his wife's crusade? Well, he drives a hybrid on his HBO show, funds some of her activities and, perhaps most importantly, keeps her laughing.

Quick, somebody get these people a brace of medals! After all, they're our betters. And don't you forget it, you unwashed troglodytes.

Read the whole thing, especially if you want to know how her family reacted to her insistence on buying (probably quite literally) scratchy-ass recycled toilet paper. Just imagine how the rest of America is going to react.

I hate Illinois Gingerbread Nazis

Artists, we are often told, are sensitive, intelligent people. Well, that may be true for some artists, but not this dumbass.

An artist's creation of gingerbread Nazis drew complaints after it was displayed in a hardware store window, prompting the store owner to demand the artwork be removed. Charlie Palmer covered the gingerbread men during the weekend and said he wanted them out by of his business by Tuesday.

"He's gone way overboard this time," Palmer said of artist Keith McGuckin. "A few of his other displays were on the edge, but never that crazy."

McGuckin said he chose the subject to provoke thought, not to offend.

"I can differentiate between real Nazis and that the atrocities they performed compared to these little gingerbread men, but I guess some people can't," said McGuckin, 50.

That's not the issue here, moron. The problem is that you can't differentiate between good and bad taste. I mean, did this genius ever stop to think that some people might think that a cute little gingerbread Hitler (and Hitler is included—I saw this thing on the teevee, and there's a little gingerbread Hitler up on a podium, rallying his little gingerbread brownshirts) kind of trivializes the real Hitler?

And by the way, I'm sick of this "I just wanted to provoke thought, not offend anybody" argument. Any time some tard does something guaranteed to offend someone, they trot that line out. It's getting old.

McGuckin is searching for new display space in the town, home of Oberlin College and known for its left-leaning, beads-and-incense image.

Well, in a town like that, there's probably some Jew-hating, pro-terrorist group that would love to accomodate him. Maybe the local branch of this, uh, distinguished organization.

What the hell is going on at Anderson County High?

See what jumps out at you from the first paragraph of this story about a fairly pointless lawsuit filed by a girl named Ambra Phillips who was temporarily taken out of a high school weightlifting class, was quickly reinstated, and has since gone on to college:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Nov 17, 2006 (AP)— An Anderson County teenager has filed a lawsuit over her temporary dismissal from a weightlifting class by a principal who feared male students might try to rape her.

Just what the hell kind of high school is this, anyway?

[Then-principal Bob] McCracken said in a deposition that he was afraid Phillips might be sexually assaulted in the class.

"Having a female with 35 or so male students in an isolated area from the school, it sets a very liable situation in my opinion," McCracken said in the deposition.

Three days after kicking Phillips out of the class, McCracken changed his mind and reinstated her.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley asked [school attorney Arthur F.] Knight if the principal was wrong in removing Phillips from the class.

"She is up there with a bunch of football players, a 24- to 25-year-old coach, the only girl there is a safety issue there. It was a hard call for the principal to make," Knight answered.

Okay, first of all, if you don't trust your 25-year-old weightlifting coach to prevent a bunch of football players from raping a female student, it's time to find a new coach. And it's probably time to have a serious talk with the football team, too.

Phillips' attorney claims that this was "a pattern of mishandled sex issues at the high school," during McCracken's tenure. Was the football team running wild, raping people willy-nilly? Were the male teachers a bunch of perverts? Do these things explain why McCracken is no longer in charge? And just what did this noted Knoxville resident know, and when did he know it?

Worst. Club. Ever.

Some people have too much time on their hands, so they go to things like Star Trek conventions. Then, there are these people:

Maybe it's the 'vrrp, vrrp' sound it makes when you walk, or the feel of the vertically ribbed fabric that reached a popularity peak in the 1970s -- whatever it is, corduroy has spawned an appreciation club.

More than 800 people around the world have signed up to be part of the New York-based 'Corduroy Appreciation Club,' which meets every November 11 -- the date, when written as 11/11, that most resembles the fabric they love.

The rest of us call that Veterans Day, but hey, whatever.

'It's a requirement to wear two pieces of corduroy to the meeting,' said Miles Rohan, president and founder of the club. 'Fairly often people tell me they're wearing corduroy underwear, but I haven't checked.'

That's probably a pretty solid decision there, Miles. Somehow, I just don't think the corduroy club attracts the beautiful people.

I'd tell you to read the rest, but, well...it's about a club that's based on the love of corduroy. Yeah.

Chimps with typewriters

They didn't produce a Shakespearean play. No, instead they appear to have produced what might just be the most poorly-written news article I've ever seen.

And if it wasn't written by chimps, well, the Associated Press has no excuse. Pathetic.

Update: Just in case the AP can find an editor to fix this hash, I'll excerpt the fourth and fifth paragraphs, where the train wreck really begins in earnest. Mind you, this is how they appear, verbatim:

He said the jinx would sent spirits to posses Secret Service personnel guarding Bush and left them in a trance, leading them into falsely thinking the President was under attack, thus eventually causing chaos in Bogor Presidential Palace, where the American leader was scheduled to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Monday.

Indonesia the world's most populous Muslim country, however many still practicing animist rituals, including black magic, that predate Islam's arrival in the archipelago.

Ugh. That was ostensibly written by a journalist who works for a professional news wire with seasoned editors who, I guess, were either all asleep when this was posted, don't speak a word of English, or are functionally illiterate.

What's the worst that could happen?

When you set out to do a kidnapping, you expect to terrorize someone, have a few laughs, and collect that sweet, sweet ransom. But you certainly don't expect this to happen:

A botched kidnapping ended with one of the assailants shooting himself in the groin, Wichita police said. The man had just stuck the gun back into his waistband when it fired, shooting him in the left testicle.

He cringed, causing the gun to fire again and strike him in the left calf.

For the next kidnapping, might I suggest a weapon with a "heavier" trigger?

Firearms issues aside, he was probably thankful for having shot himself the second time. No, really. It probably provided a distraction from the horrifying pain that comes from shooting yourself in the balls.

Sugar daddies, attractive gold diggers wanted

If this isn't a recipe for true love, well, I don't know what is:

A matchmaking love boat cruise open only to male millionaires and "good-looking and desirable" women is slated to set sail later this month, a state-run Chinese newspaper said Tuesday.

Men on the cruise scheduled to go along Shanghai's Huangpu River must be worth at least 2 million yuan ($250,000), the China Daily quoted organizer Xu Tianli as saying.

Xu said more than 20 men had signed up for the Nov. 25 cruise and that half of those registered to take part were worth more than 200 million yuan ($25 million).

Yep, like I said, true love. Meanwhile, Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, you might want to call your travel agent. Or maybe not:

Fewer than 30 of the 1,000 woman who applied were accepted, Xu said.

"Only those who were attractive in every category can take part in this event," Xu said, without giving the specific criteria interested female applicants had to meet.

[...]

One of the men who signed up for the cruise, identified only by his surname Sun, said "appearance is most important to me."

And I'm sure those good-looking women will love you just because you're a great person, and not because of your money.

Is it just me, or does this sound like it could possibly be the most depressing, soul-deadening cruise ever? On the bright side, I guess they all know what they're getting into.

What media bias?

Did you know that the Messiah hails from Nevada? I found photographic evidence here.

Actually, I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Update: Aw, what the hell. Just in case the link gets broken or they take the picture down, see for yourself:

Be careful, lest you be blinded by his radiance.

What would you do for pie?

I like pie, and I like nudity, so if you added the two together, you'd think it would be a great combination. But when you add in a third ingredient, incarceration, well, that throws the whole thing off kilter.

Two Lenawee County [Michigan] Jail officers have been fired after authorities say they urged an inmate to strip and run naked around his cellblock in exchange for a piece of cherry pie. "We took decisive action," Sheriff Larry Richardson told The Daily Telegram.

Richardson said firing of the officers _ two of the jail's best employees _ was recommended by the county's labor attorney. Richardson said he learned of the incident in a letter from another inmate.

[...]

Richardson said the officers considered it a prank. An investigation found that the male inmate who was urged to strip saw the two officers eating in August in the jail's glass-enclosed control tower and asked for some food.

The conversation turned to joking about what the inmate would do for cherry pie, the investigation found, and the inmate said he was willing to streak. Richardson said the inmate was allowed out of his cell and streaked.

Well, I hope that was some really, really, really good pie. Partly because two men who were good employees lost their jobs over the incident, but also because it just doesn't really seem like a good idea to get nude in jail. Not if you don't absolutely have to.

Happy Veterans Day

To anyone who's ever served our country, thank you. You can read a history of the holiday here. And Hot Air has some good video stuff here and here.

Junk Science

Click here to read a long and detailed indictment of the UN's global warming reports hysteria. It's long and a bit heavy on scientific jargon, but it's a damning read. The conclusion:

Why haven't air or sea temperatures turned out as the UN's models predicted? Because the science is bad, the "consensus" is wrong, and Herr Professor Ludwig Boltzmann, FRS, was as right about energy-to-temperature as he was about atoms.

Read the whole thing to find out just how badly the "science" is cooked (hint: accountants go to prison for tinkering with the data the way these people have) and who Boltzmann was. You'll want to print out lots of copies to wave in the faces of environmentalist handwringers. I'd personally like to shove a copy up Manbearpig's ass.

Via Ace of Spades Co-blogger Laura W.

A joke for nerds

A robot walks into a bar and tries to order a drink.

"We don't serve robots," sez the bartender.

The robot gets up to leave, then turns to the bartender, saying, "Someday you will."

Fun with maps

A few of my five or six regular readers aren't from California like I am, so they may not be aware that Proposition 83, also known nationwide as "Jessica's Law," named for nine-year-old Florida kidnapping and murder victim Jessica Lunford, passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday night. If you're too busy or lazy to click on the above link, the law requires that sex offenders have to be monitored for life with GPS technology, bars them from living within 2000 feet from schools or parks, and increases penalties for violent sex offenders and child molestors. It passed with the support of more than 70 percent of California voters.

Why am I mentioning this? Well, because there was a single, solitary county here in California that voted against the law. Just one. Click here to find out which one. You may have to squint to see it, since the county happens to be the smallest in the state, comprised, if I'm not mistaken, of the city limits of only one city. But really, take a look.

And you'll never guess who represents the voters who turned down stiffer penalties for child molesters in congress. Well, maybe you can guess, since she's kinda been in the news lately.

Make of that what you will.

Selling Jesus

What's the solution to declining church attendance? Well, if you're the United Church of Canada, I guess it's a dumb, "provocative" ad campaign.

The United Church of Canada hopes an ad featuring a can of whipped cream and the question, "How much fun can sex be before it's a sin?" will fill its pews as Christmas nears.

Ah, yes, because nothing gets me in the Christmas spirit (or the churchgoing mood) like thinking about sex involving whipped cream.

The country's biggest Protestant denomination launched an advertising campaign on Tuesday meant to provoke debate on the "deep and persistent attitudes and images of organized religion."

"In order to get past those stereotypes, we thought we needed an ad campaign that was different, had a head-snap to it, that people would have a second look," Keith Howard, executive director of the campaign, said in an interview.

I'm sorry, but this is just incredibly fucking lame. Church is church (though this sounds like a pretty liberal denomination—they seem to be in favor of gay marriage) and all the "edgy" ads in the world aren't going to change that or get people in the pews.

The C$10.5 million ($9.3 million) campaign targets 30- to 45-year-olds and rotates six images though December issues of Canadian magazines and newspapers as well as Web sites.

One asks, "Does anyone object?" to an image of two plastic toy grooms on a wedding cake. Another features a child sitting on Jesus's knee in the traditional Santa's village of a shopping mall, and asks, "Would you still take your kids?"

What does that even mean? If your goal was to irritate and confuse me, then bingo! If your goal was to get me to go to your church, not so much.

Didn't some church here in the States try something like this a year or two ago? I doubt it got them any more parishoners, either. I'm not a religioous guy, but something tells me people don't want a church that's pretending to be something else, like a sociology course at a liberal arts college.

The bright side

Well, for me, at least. It looks for now like I won't be paying a gazillion bucks for a pack of smokes or a gallon of gas. Thank heavens for small mercies.

A special election day message for the kids

Well, folks, it's time once again to do your civic duty. But right now, I'd like to give an extra-special message to the kids. So, adults, go ahead and vote while I give this special pep-talk to the young folks. Thanks.

Okay, punks, listen up. I don't know what a bunch of aging idiot rock stars have told you on the MTV—voting isn't cool. It's done in elementary school auditoriums, libraries, and weird people's garages. When does anything cool ever happen in those places? And when was civic duty ever cool?

Look at it this way: I've voted in every election since I turned 18, and there aren't a whole lot of people clamoring to tell me how cool I am. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not really that cool. Is it because I vote? Who knows. But you don't want to take that chance, do you?

What I'm saying, kids, is that you should leave the voting up to the "squares" with jobs and bills to pay and such. If you stay at home smoking pot, eating Pringles, and playing video games, I'm sure the gears of the Republic won't grind to a halt. Take the day off. You. uh, deserve it. Yeah.

Unless you plan on voting Republican, which, I guess, is okay. Knock yourselves out.

To the rest of you non-youngsters, as they say in Chicago, vote early and vote often!

Next on the agenda: is disco hurting society?

Academics in China are holding a cultural expo, where they're discussing the important issues of the day. That is, if by "the day," you mean the seventies.

Chinese sociologists said that the country should promote bolder attitudes toward sex, but that wife-swapping was off the agenda, state media reported Monday.

Chinese attitudes toward sex have relaxed in recent decades, triggering a boom in extramarital relationships which the Communist Party has blamed on bourgeois mores imported from the West.

"Wife-swapping should not be promoted to the public as it will lead to the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases," the China Daily quoted Zhang Feng, a family planning official, as saying at the fourth Guangzhou Sex Culture Expo at the weekend.

[...]

Zhang's comments echoed the views of other speakers but contrasted the views of Li Yinhe, a sociologist who last year said that wife-swapping was a "normal kind of entertainment" and that "all couples should have the right to do it."

That's how it starts, with the wife-swapping, and it's all fun and games. But then it leads to things like fondue and white polyester suits. Don't make the same mistakes we did, China. You'll be sorry when you wake up one day with shag carpeting and avocado green kitchen appliances. Worse still, you might end up with this:

Aieeeeeee!

Death

That's what Saddam got. It's too bad we won't get to see him swing from the gallows. Maybe YouTube will help us out.

Update: Leo Terrell, who's usually a fairly sensible guy (for a liberal), was just on the radio here in L.A. questioning the timing of the verdict, claiming the trial was a "kangaroo court," and that this was all just meant to sway the voters here on Tuesday. Welcome to Crazy Town, Leo!

Do you need a warrant to search there?

I'd imagine cops never like confronting a suspect with a concealed weapon, but this situation is probably definitely worse than usual:

A naked man was arrested on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon after telling police he had a screwdriver in his buttocks.

The man was lying on a tree stump masturbating beside a nature path near the El Cerrito Bay Area Rapid Transit station Thursday, police said.

John Sheehan, 33, of Pittsburg was initially arrested on suspicion of indecent exposure. But when asked if he was carrying anything police should know about, Sheehan mentioned the tool, said El Cerrito Detective Cpl. Don Horgan.

``You can't get much more concealed than that,'' Horgan said.

Well, technically, I guess you could get more concealed than that, but I don't think any of us want to get into that discussion.

Officers drew their weapons and firefighters were called to the scene, but Sheehan removed a 6-inch metal awl wrapped in black electrical tape without incident.

I think pulling a six-inch metal tool out from between your butt cheeks counts as an incident in and of itself, but that's just me.

Sheehan, who was paroled from state prison last week, was then booked into the county jail in Martinez on suspicion of parole violations, indecent exposure and one felony count of possessing a concealed weapon.

Something tells me he'll be going back to the hoosegow. Actually, it sounds like he wants to go back. It's not exactly like he was being discreet, after all.

Take another picture, dude

I don't care how flattering the photo might be, you shouldn't use one like this for your online profile:

A man who posted his own sex offender registry photo on the social networking site MySpace.com is back behind bars.

Christian Paul Dutton, 47, of Wheeling, was arrested in September for trespassing at an elementary school but later released. He was arrested again Wednesday on charges of failing to register his MySpace account with the State Police.

Sounds like he didn't exactly make it tough for them to find him, doesn't it? Next time, he might just want to drop in to Sears portrait studio on his lunch break.

Actually, he should probably just stay away from MySpace. A 47-year-old sex offender is just begging for trouble on MySpace.

Puppets and Metal, together at last

Sure, they look more like an 80s hair band like Poison than Motörhead (and how cool would it be if the guy had actually made a Lemmy puppet?), but this is a pretty good performance of Ace's unofficial theme song. By puppets.



(Via the genius behind my favorite comic strip.)

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.