Love bites

I've heard a lot of people say that it's a bad idea to get back together with your ex. This guy learned that lesson the hard way:

A woman bit off her ex-boyfriend's lower lip as they were kissing in bed, likely disfiguring him permanently, authorities said. The 49-year-old man and the woman kissed several times Monday night when, without provocation, she bit off his lip and spat it out, he told King County sheriff's deputies.

Deputies were called to the house in White Center, an unincorporated suburb south of Seattle, and found the man bleeding on the porch.

"There was quite a bit of blood," sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said. "He could talk, but just barely."

Deputies reported finding the man's lip on the bedroom floor, covered with cat hair. Doctors at a hospital were unable to reattach the lip, and deputies said he was likely to remain disfigured.

Authorities said a 44-year-old woman in the house cursed and attacked one of the deputies with a pillow before being arrested. She was jailed on investigation of domestic violence but had not been charged.

Surprisingly, the article goes on to say that the police had been called to the same residence an hour earlier because the woman was "drunk and disruptive." Oh, wait, that's not really surprising at all.

Who you gonna call?

Hey, when armed robbers bust into your place and steal stuff from you, you'd better call the cops, right? Well, not always:

A man was arrested for drug possession after telling authorities that two masked gunmen had stolen 150 pounds of marijuana from his home.

Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies arrived at the home near Penitas in South Texas to find the door kicked in and nearly 15 pounds of pot lying on the floor, Sheriff Lupe Trevino said.

You know, I'm sure he was feeling stressed after the holdup, but it probably would have been a good idea to clean that up. On the other hand, we don't seem to be dealing with a real genius here.

Jose Guadalupe Flores, 35, escaped while the men ransacked the house but returned later and told the deputies he had been wrapping the drugs for shipment when the intruders arrived.

"The guy walked right up and said the drugs were his," Trevino said. "That's not the smartest move."

Flores, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was charged with felony possession of marijuana at an arraignment hearing Monday. Because of his immigration status, Flores will be jailed until his case is heard.

I don't know a whole lot about the Mexican justice system, but that may have something to do with why the guy called the cops. Perhaps, south of the border, it's okay to call the police if someone steals your drugs, so long as they get to wet their beaks. That might also explain why he left fifteen pounds of the stuff lying around.

That, or maybe he's just a huge dumbass.

No smoking

Why on Earth would anyone do something like this?

A man is facing drug charges after he allegedly walked into the Danbury police station puffing on a marijuana-filled cigar.

Capt. Robert Myles says Scott Snow walked into the station early Saturday and blew smoke from his cigar into a small opening in the bullet-resistant glass separating desk officers from the public.

Myles says the 24-year-old man was told there's no smoking inside the building and he allegedly stubbed out the cigar on the counter.

Officers came out and smelled the distinctive odor of marijuana and arrested Snow.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that he was probably really, really high.

Religious experience

Wow, this may be the most inspirational story I've read all year:

What man taketh away, modern technology helps giveth back. The Subway sandwich shop at the True Bethel Baptist Church in Buffalo was robbed at gunpoint on Friday night, but the crime was recorded on the store's surveillance video.

During Sunday church services, Rev. Darius Pridgen gave a sermon about the harm people do to one another. Pridgen included footage from the robbery and it was showed on two large video screens. His sermon also offered a $3,000 reward for the arrest of the suspect.

Within minutes after the service ended, four anonymous tips identifying the robber were received. A few hours later, police arrested David Glass, 45, and charged him with robbery and petit larceny.

A church with its own Subway! That's amazing! It's like a one-stop destination for all your sammiches and salvation needs.

The age of innocence

Man, am I really glad I don't have any teenage kids after reading this:

Is your teenager a virgin? That depends on your teen's definition of "is" - as well as a few other words that parents might want to run past their kids.

A study suggests 70 percent of kids 12 to 16 believe they're virgins even if they've had oral sex - and 16 percent believe anal sex doesn't count either.

Uhhhhh...the oral sex thing is kind of a gray area, but I'm pretty sure the ol' squeakhole counts double. At least.

Sheesh.

(Via Fark.)

Dead man walking

Man, if anything like this happened to me, it would freak me the hell out:

Police said Friday they had begun an investigation after a woman oversaw the cremation of a body she believed was her son — who turned up alive the next day.

Greater Manchester Police said the mix-up began when the body of a man in his 30s was discovered in Manchester, northwest England, on Oct. 12. He was identified as Thomas Dennison, 39, by a care worker who knew him. Officials contacted Dennison's mother, Gina Partington, 58, who identified the dead man as her son.

"Following normal procedures, the body was released to the family of the missing person and cremated on Oct. 30," a police spokesman said, on condition of anonymity in keeping with force policy.

The next day, Dennison was discovered alive in Nottingham, 80 miles away.

Police said they believed they knew the identity of the dead man, who had been living on the streets, and were trying to contact his relatives in Ireland.

Partington said the resemblance between the dead man and her son was remarkable.

"I held his hand and kissed his head. I stayed with him for about 40 minutes and would have sworn he was my son," she was quoted as saying by the Manchester Evening News.

"We held his funeral on Tuesday this week at Southern Cemetery and there were genuine tears, because Tommy is a lovely lad."

That must have been one hell of a close resemblance. But you'd think she would have known that her son wasn't a homeless guy. Maybe they weren't that close.

Web of lies

Bug bites are unpleasant, sure, but they don't lead most of us to kidnap and rape anybody:

An Australian man who kidnapped and raped a woman blamed his actions on a spider, local media reported on Thursday.

Philip Spiers pleaded guilty to the kidnap and rape, but told a court that the poison from a funnel-web spider bite had left him with a viral illness which led to his actions.

But a toxicologist told the New South Wales state District Court there was no medical evidence to suggest a spider bite could be responsible for anger and hatred.

Nope. That sort of thing is usually caused by being exposed to gamma radiation, not spider bites.

(See what I did there? I made a joke about the Incredible Hulk. And, by doing so, I also made a joke about Spiderman. You know, because he got his powers after he got bit by a spider. And he didn't rape anybody as a result. But I guess the Hulk wasn't a rapist, either, as far as I know. He just smashed things. You know, "HULK SMASH!" And then, there was that sad piano theme where Dr. Bruce Banner hitchhiked to the next episode without raping anybody, even after he had turned into a green Lou Ferrigno. Damn it, I lost where I was going with this.)

Ugh

I know it's a cliche to complain about how early they start advertising the Christmas season every year, but I saw my first Christmas commercial last night, before the last trick-or-treaters came to the door. And it was a godawful commercial that Ross feels the need to show every year. C'mon, people, let's at least wait until the jack-o-lanterns are cold before we start commercializing the holiday season.

Have a Happy Halloween

Just not too happy, if you know what I mean. Me, I'll be passing out candy to the kids while trying not to be too horrified by what the little girls are wearing these days.

Ewwwwwwwwww

Sexually abusing a corpse is just plain wrong, but if you're going to do it, at least pick one that's not quite so...well...you'll see what I'm getting at...

A Teaneck hospital lab technician has been jailed after being accused of sexually abusing the corpse of a 92-year-old woman, authorities say.

Authorities said a security guard allegedly saw Anthony Merino, 24, of Manhattan, engaging in sexual activity with the body in the Holy Name Hospital morgue on Sunday.

Bergen County officials charged Merino with desecrating human remains, which is punishable by up to 10 years in state prison.

[...]

Merino, who had only worked at Holy Name as a per diem employee for 14 days, was immediately fired, the hospital said in a statement. The woman's next of kin also were informed after his arrest.

Am I the only one who has the horrible feeling that this was the express reason that Merino took this job?

Im in ur yard...

...selabratin mah burfday.

Dead drunk

Man, don't you just hate it when you pass out and people mistake you for a corpse?

Passengers on a German train mistook a Halloween reveler dressed up as a gore-covered zombie for a murder victim and called the police.

The 24-year-old man fell into a drunken slumber on his way home from a Halloween party in Hamburg, police in the northern town of Bad Segeberg said Monday.

Believing his hands and face were smeared with blood, passengers alerted police after getting no response from him.

A first aid team called to the scene soon cleared up the confusion. Police told the man to remove his make-up after which he was allowed to continue his journey.

Well, on the bright side, I guess that means he had a really, really good costume.

We are family

It's usually nice when families can do things together, but in this case, not so much:

A couple, first the husband, then his wife, were arrested on Saturday on drunken driving charges. Police told The Ann Arbor News that they first stopped the man and gave him a preliminary breath test after watching him run a red light.

Police said the test registered a 0.11, three points over the legal limit of .08. The man had his 12-year-old son in the car.

Police told the boy to call his mother to pick him up. But after she arrived with her 9-year-old daughter in the car, she also appeared to have been drinking, police said.

There's no word on whether or not the kids were subsequently picked up by their drunk grandparents.

Dysfunctional isn't a strong enough word

Not when it comes to this family, anyway.

A 39-year-old woman forcefully had her 13-year-old daughter's genitalia pierced to make it uncomfortable for her to have sex, the girl told jurors in her mother's child abuse trial.

The girl, now 16, told jurors Wednesday that her mother asked a tattoo artist friend in 2004 to shave the girl's head to make her unattractive to boys and later held her down for the piercing.

"She was trying to protect me, but it hurt me," the girl testified. "It not only hurt me physically, but it hurt me mentally. ... That's emotionally scarring. That's physical abuse."

Prosecutor Steve Maresca said the mother called on a friend to shave the girl's head and do the piercing after realizing that she had been having sex, including with the mother's boyfriend.

Should there be any family reunions in the future (which seems unlikely, at this juncture) they're going to be awkward.

Drastic measures

Now, I've never participated in a hunger strike, but I'm pretty sure you don't have to do something like this in order for it to be effective:

Prostitutes in the Bolivian city of El Alto sewed their lips together Wednesday as part of a hunger strike to demand that the mayor reopen brothels and bars ordered closed after violent protests by residents last week.

"We are fighting for the right to work and for our families' survival," Lily Cortez, leader of the El Alto Association of Nighttime Workers, told local television.

Well, I guess that means she didn't sew her mouth shut. Way to show your commitment to the cause, Lily.

Speechless

I'm not even going to make a joke about this, seeing as how I couldn't possibly think of anything to say that would be funnier than the article itself:

An Australian barmaid has been fined for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts while an off-duty colleague has been fined for hanging spoons from her friend's nipples, police said Wednesday.

Police in Western Australia said the 31-year old barmaid pleaded guilty in the local magistrate's court to twice exposing her breasts to patrons at the Premier Hotel in Pinjarra, south of the state capital, Perth.

The woman "is alleged to have also crushed beer cans between her breasts during one of the offences," in breach of hotel licensing laws, police from the Peel district of Western Australia said in a statement.

The barmaid and the hotel manager were both fined A$1,000 ($900), while an off-duty barmaid was fined A$500 for helping to hang spoons from the woman's nipples, police said.

Uhhhhhhh...okay.

Japan, again

Man oh man, I love those crazy, mixed up islands floating out there in the Pacific Ocean that the world knows as Japan:

Did you just grope me? Shall we head to the police? That's the message women are flashing on their cell phones with a popular program designed to ward off wandering hands in Japan's congested commuter trains.

"Anti-Groping Appli" by games developer Takahashi was released in late 2005 but has only recently climbed up popularity rankings, reaching No. 7 in this week's top-10 cell phone applications list compiled by Web-based publisher Spicy Soft Corp.

The application flashes increasingly threatening messages in bold print on the phone's screen to show to the offender: "Excuse me, did you just grope me?" "Groping is a crime," and finally, "Shall we head to the police?"

Users press an "Anger" icon in the program to progress to the next threat. A warning chime accompanies the messages.

The application, which can be downloaded for free on Web-enabled phones, is for women who want to scare away perverts with minimum hassle and without attracting attention, according to Takahashi's Web site.

I don't know if pepper spray is legal in Japan, but I guess it would be problematic to unleash a cloud of the stuff in a crowded subway car. It's an interesting cultural difference, though, that Japanese women would want to "scare away perverts with minimum hassle and without attracting attention," whereas American women are taught to make noise and attract people's attention when something like that happens. Notice also how polite even the "angry" message is: "Did you just grope me? Shall we head to the police?" If it didn't involve sexual assault, I'd say that was cute.

You so crazy! No, really.

You know how some women are kind of crazy, but in a hot, sexy way? Well, this one sounds like she's just plain crazy:

A woman who stabbed her tied-up lover so she could drink his blood has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Tiffany Sutton told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Udall that she was sorry for the incident and said she never meant to hurt anyone, but received the stiff sentence anyway after he called the crime especially heinous.

Sutton, 24, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in August. She was arrested by Tempe police in February after she repeatedly stabbed her lover during an alcohol- and drug-fueled sexual tryst.

According to police reports, the victim, 46-year-old Robert McDaniel, agreed to be tied up during sex but became alarmed and asked to be untied when Sutton pulled out a knife and said she liked to drink blood. Sutton then attacked him, slicing his leg, puncturing his arm, shoulder and back and cutting his neck and stomach. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.

Now, I'm thinking Miss Sutton probably manifested some signs of instability before she tied up the victim (i.e. the alcohol and drugs), which leads me to believe he was something of a dumbass.

Now comes the least surprising part of the story:

Sutton's attorney, Elizabeth Houck, told the judge at Tuesday's hearing that she suffers from a personality disorder that causes instability and has taken responsibility for her actions, according to the East Valley Tribune. [my emphasis]

Personality disorder? Instability? No, you don't say! She also thought she was a vampire, which is not at all insane.

Going on the road

Leave it to the clever Japanese to take peeing in a bottle to the next level:

If you're stuck in traffic when Mother Nature calls, Japan's Kaneko Sangyo Co. has developed the loo for you.

The manufacturer of plastic car accessories drew back the curtain on Tuesday on its new portable toilet for cars.

The toilet comes with a curtain large enough to conceal users and a plastic bag to collect waste.

"The commode will come in handy during major disasters such as earthquakes or when you are caught in a traffic jam," a company official told reporters, according to Kyodo News.

I had no idea that traffic jams in Japan were disasters of the same magnitude as earthquakes. I guess we should all quit griping about the traffic here in L.A.

Not on fire

Although the rest of Southern California seems to be going up in flames, we're doing okay here. I've had distant relatives calling today, wondering if the house was being threatened by the fires. I was able to reassure them that we're just fine. Going outside for a smoke has become somewhat less appealing, though, because it "smells like camping," as my astute brother put it. There's so much smoke in the air that it starts to hurt your eyes after a few minutes.

She almost makes Britney look like a fit mother

Drunk driving is bad enough, but it takes a special kind of moron to drive around drunk with your little kids in the car.

An 8-year-old boy riding in a car with his mom called 911 several times to report that she wasn't "acting normal," leading to her arrest for investigation of drunken driving and other charges, authorities said.

Paulette Lynn Spears, 33, was arrested Saturday after she drove to a fire station and said she had a medical problem.

Guided by her son's description of what he could see from the car, as well as by global positioning technology to track the phone calls, deputies arrived at the station less than a minute later.

"He said 'I don't know where we are, and Mom's not acting normal,'" sheriff's Sgt. Randon M. Walker said.

At one point, Spears took a cellular telephone from the boy, told the dispatcher not to worry and hung up, Walker said. The boy called back, and again his mother cut short the call, Walker said.

"The mother kept interrupting the 8-year-old," he said. "It happened at least twice."

At one point, Walker said, Spears apparently bit the boy's hand to get the telephone away from him.

There was also a five-year-old in the car, but there's no word on whether or not she bit that child, too. Thankfully, the kids have been taken away from her.

So long, top 25

Damnit, damnit, damnit.

Fleaing the police

Oh, God, I can practically feel them crawling on my skin!

Four officers investigating a burglary were attacked, not by a fleeing burglar, but a swarm of fleas in a filth-ridden vacant house. The tiny, biting attackers were so overwhelming that the South Bend patrolmen had to be decontaminated and ended up being sent home early from their shifts.

"They were all over the place — in our socks and even in our shorts. It was disgusting," said Cpl. Ken Stuart.

To avoid infesting their squad cars, the police station or relatives, Stuart, Cpl. Chris Slager and Patrolman Paul Strabavy endured a lengthy flea decontamination process.

A van took them back to the station, where the men showered with flea/lice shampoo and soap. A wife of one of the officers brought them spare clothes.

I can only imagine how filthy that house must have been. I guess the bright side, though, is that if anybody actually did break into the house, they were probably infested with the little bloodsuckers, too.

Cleaning the scene of the crime

Man, I just love it when some dirtbag gets his comeuppance.

A burglar in Montgomery chose the wrong family to mess with, literally. Adrian and Tiffany McKinnon returned home on Tuesday after a week away to find that thieves had emptied almost everything the family of five owned, Tiffany McKinnon said through tears.

"Tears just rolled down my face as I walked in and saw everything gone and piles of trash all over my home," she said.

Adrian McKinnon sent his wife to see her sister while he inspected the piles left behind. As he walked back into the sunroom, a man walked through the back door straight into him, Tiffany McKinnon told the Montgomery Advertiser in a story Thursday.

"My husband Adrian caught the thief red-handed in our home," she said. "And what is even crazier, the man even had my husband's hat sitting right on his head."

Adrian McKinnon held the suspect, 33-year-old Tajuan Bullock, at gunpoint and told him to sit on the floor until he decided what to do.

"We made this man clean up all the mess he made, piles of stuff, he had thrown out of my drawers and cabinets onto the floor," Tiffany McKinnon said.

When police arrived, Bullock complained about being forced to clean the home at gunpoint.

"This man had the nerve to raise sand about us making him clean up the mess he made in my house," she said. "The police officer laughed at him when he complained and said anybody else would have shot him dead."

That's actually how my mom used to make me clean up my room, and trust me, complaining doesn't help.

Ah, nostalgia

I'm not generally a fan of theme restaurants, but this is ridiculous:

At the door of the Commune Mess Hall restaurant, a young woman in loose-fitting army fatigues and a cap, with a red "Serve the People" armband and braided pigtails, greets customers.

"Welcome, Comrade! How many?" she chirps.

Huge portraits of Engels, Marx, Mao, Lenin and Stalin adorn a back wall and Chinese propaganda posters hang on pillars and side walls, showing chipper workers, peasants and soldiers toiling.

Blocky, red characters painted on the rafters implore: "Be self-reliant, work arduously" and "Use your own two hands to have ample food and clothing."

The eatery here in the capital of the booming southern province of Guangdong is a throwback to the Mao era, modeled on the communes that dotted the countryside from the 1950s to 70s.

Staff dressed like the Red Guards of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution serve peasant fare. Revolutionary songs play in the background.

Scores of similar restaurants have opened around the country, recalling a turbulent period in China's modern history that many remember with bitterness but which also evokes feelings of nostalgia for what some say was a simpler time.

They are perhaps the Chinese equivalent of America's milkshake and hamburger drive-ins with Motown classics on the jukebox.

Yeah, but at the end of your meal at those drive-ins, the authorities don't pack your kids off to work in the countryside to work on a collective farm and they don't have massive purges of, say, Eisenhower's or JFK's political rivals.

To be fair, I did eat at Medieval Times once when I was a kid, and they didn't examine the harsher realities of life in the Dark Ages there, either.

Head of the class goes missing

I'm not talking about a kidnapped honor student, but an actual head:

University of Illinois officials will take a closer look at this year's Halloween displays for a donated human skull that is missing from the anthropology department.

Students examined the skull in an undergraduate class on human osteology, or the study of bones, said Steven Leigh, head of the anthropology department.

"It's very difficult to get such materials," Leigh told the (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan. "If people insist on stealing them, we will run out."

The skull has been gone for about a month and was probably taken from a first-floor classroom at Davenport Hall, Leigh said. The department waited to report the loss to campus police until this week to make sure it was not being used in another class or for research.

The theft was uncommon, said Leigh and University of Illinois Police Lt. Roy Acree.

"I don't know what you would do with a human skull other than treat it as a Halloween decoration," Acree said. "It was sitting there and somebody probably thought it would be cool to have in a dorm room or apartment and took it."

If I was in charge of the investigation, I'd start by searching in the apartments or dorm rooms of any goth kids in the class.

Well, I guess it's that time of year

True story. Earlier this evening, I was in one of the bedrooms sorting laundry that needed to be washed. I went to the closet to get some more laundry out of a hamper, and I noticed that someone had left the light on in the bathroom, which is across from the closet, so I turned the light off. I went back to sorting the laundry, and when I finished, I went to turn off the lights. The light switch is between the closet and the bathroom, where the light was back on. The thing was, nobody had been in the room the whole time except me.

I tell you, that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Moron on the lawn

In Animal House, Dean Wormer famously told Flounder that "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life." I don't know if this guy is fat, but he's sure got the other two covered.

A man who was out on bail following a drunken driving arrest is back behind bars after he was caught drinking a 12-pack of beer on the Douglas County Courthouse lawn. Martin Ruiz asked the judge to release him on his own recognizance, promising not to drink another beer or drive.

But Judge Michael Gibbons set his bail at $100,000 on Monday, saying he was surprised Ruiz was released on recognizance the first time.

I mean, couldn't this dumbass find anywhere other than the courthouse lawn to get trashed?

"Skylarking"

Hmmmmm...I wonder what the neighbor had to say about this:

An Australian man, clad only in underwear, fell nine stories while trying to build a makeshift plank bridge into a neighbor's flat, but lived to tell the tale.

The bridge collapsed just after midnight Tuesday sending the 35-year-old man plummeting into a building structure below, police in Western Australia state said.

"He was skylarking around, building planks across to his neighbor's place when it happened. He was very lucky. It was an iron and timber structure, possibly a pergola, that cushioned his fall," police spokeswoman Ros Weatherall said.

Funny, but I wouldn't usually think of something made of iron and wood as something that would really "cushion" a fall.

But, more importantly, why was he doing this in his underpants?

I always feel like somebody's watching me

If you're not at all creeped out by people watching you while you eat and messing with you in subtle ways, I know just the place:

Does service with a scowl put you off at lunch? Will you eat more greens if you are surrounded by plants? Does romantic, pink lighting encourage you to linger over your fruit salad?

A new research center -- dubbed the "restaurant of the future" -- at the Dutch university of Wageningen hopes to help answer these questions and more by tracking diners with dozens of unobtrusive cameras and monitoring their eating habits.

"We want to find out what influences people: colors, taste, personnel. We try to focus on one stimulus, like light," said Rene Koster, head of the Center for Innovative Consumer Studies, as overhead bulbs switched through green, red, orange and blue.

"This restaurant is a playground of possibilities. We can ask the staff to be less friendly and visible or the reverse," he said. "The changes must be small. If you were making changes every day it would be too disruptive. People wouldn't like it."

Gee, I wonder what the result will be when they tell the staff to be less friendly.

Anyway, you've got to love the audacity of this project. Most of the time, when you're participating in research, they pay you to participate, not the other way around.

Cola wars

It's nice to know that sometimes, life really does imitate comedy:

The long-standing rivalry between Coke and Pepsi took a physical turn Friday when a Pepsi deliveryman allegedly punched his Coke counterpart in the face at a western Pennsylvania Wal-Mart, state police said.

The two deliverymen were "apparently bickering back and forth" while unloading their wares at the Indiana County store, police said. When the Coke deliveryman left the store, his counterpart allegedly punched him in the face three times, breaking his nose and giving him a black eye, police said.

Tune in next week when the employees of a McDonald's "throw down" with the crew from a Burger King across the street.

"Thank you, Al Gore! You're super awesome!"

Yeah, whatever.

Update: Iowahawk shares some of the perks that come with the prize.

Would you do me a favor?

Gee, who would have thought that doing something like this in a mall restroom could get you in trouble?

A man who was apparently worried about a random drug test asked an 11-year-old boy at a mall for a urine sample.

White Plains Police say Marcos Delacruz, 42, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child. He was arrested several hours after the incident in the men's room at the mall on Wednesday.

Deputy Public Safety Commissioner Daniel Jackson said Delacruz took the sample to his appointment with his probation officer.

The 11-year-old boy told his mother that a man in the men's room had asked him to urinate in a bottle. The mom called police and the boy described the man.

You know what would have been hilarious? If the kid had been really, really high when he gave the guy the sample.

Jimmah spews to foreigners

Check out History's Greatest Monster bashing the Vice President on the Beeb:

"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter told the BBC World News America in an interview to air later on Wednesday.

First of all, we've got the "chickenhawk" thing going on, which is real original, not to mention very grown up. It's refreshing to see that such an "elder statesman" is taking his cues from the nutroots and moonbat trolls. Then, we have the "his more ancient commitments" remark. Can anybody tell me what that even means? I'd say he's finally lost his mind, but the rest of that joke writes itself.

In closing, I'd just like to ask a simple question: How much friggin' cocaine did you people have to do during the seventies to elect this jagoff? I mean, seriously, that's the only semi-rational explanation I can think of for why this joke of a man ever got elected.

Real Dolls hitting the big screen?

I just saw a commercial for this. Um, is it just me, or does that look like it's going to be an incredibly creepy movie?

Robot shopping carts to annoy Limeys

Since people apparently can't be trusted to make intelligent decisions on their own, British shopping carts (called trolleys over there in that crazy language they speak) will soon begin hectoring them about various issues:

Supermarket shoppers may soon be cruising the aisles with "intelligent" trolleys that warn them if they're buying too much junk food, technology experts say.

While many would be happy enough if they could simply get their trolley to go in a straight line, the high-tech model will be fitted with a computer screen and barcode scanner.

It will read each product's individual code to give customers information about calories, nutrition, ethical sourcing and the environment.

Um, who exactly is going to decide which products are "ethical" and which are good for the environment? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess left-leaning government bureaucrats.

Dear old mom

You know, it's important for parents to be involved with their kids' activities, but this seems like a pretty bad idea:

A 43-year-old woman has been charged with a felony after prosecutors said she helped her son make pipe bombs in her home.

Rae Lynn Funston was charged Tuesday in District Court with felony possession of explosives. She is jailed on $25,000 bail. Police said she told them she purchased the PVC pipe and helped her son make the explosives.

Court records said a juvenile probation officer was conducting a routine search of the Funston residence, which is a condition of her 16-year-old son's probation, when he found the pipe bombs in the boy's room.

My mom never helped me to put together any bombs. Grandpa was the family's explosives expert, so that task fell to him, usually.

Perhaps she's never met any men

I love this story, not for the subject matter (okay, a little bit for that) but for the punchline the artist unwittingly provides at the end:

Tamera Bremer titled the life-size nude self-portrait she laboriously wove into a rug "the sexy sex: all-nude review rug one." Somebody apparently found it fetching, and late Monday it vanished from an exhibit floor at Linfield College.

Bremer said the latch-hook work took thousands of hours and she valued it in the five-figure range.

It was the first in a five-rug project the Portland artist, an adjunct professor at Linfield, has in the works.

The curvy cutout was fashioned from monk's cloth, a heavy cotton, and hand-painted in 10 colors on alpaca yarn.

"I don't understand why anyone would want to steal something like this," she said. "Whoever did it doesn't understand what they've done. It's my life's work."

What's not to understand? It's a rug with a picture of a naked lady on it. I mean, sure, you could just download porn from the internet (or so I'm told) but that doesn't really provide you with a conversation piece like the naked lady rug.

The heebiest of jeebies

This is probably the creepiest thing I've read in a long, long time:

A Russian man accused of murdering 49 people asked a court on Tuesday to add another eleven victims to his tally, and told a jury when he first strangled a man it was like falling in love for the first time.

Supermarket worker Alexander Pichushkin, 33, has been branded the 'chessboard murderer' by Russian newspapers because he hoped to put a coin on every square of a 64-place chessboard for each murder.

"A first killing is like your first love. You never forget it," he said from a cage in the courtroom, after explaining how he started killing at age 18 with the murder of a classmate.

Pichushkin said he had suggested to his classmate that they kill someone, but when his friend refused, "I sent him to heaven." He then smirked at the jury.

"The closer a person is to you, and the better you know them, the more pleasurable it is to kill them," he said.

Didn't O.J. Simpson say something like if he had killed his ex-wife, it would have been because he loved her too much? Hmmmmmmm...

That was weird

I just went outside to savor the last cigarette of the night before going to bed, and it smelled like french fries outside. In fact, it smelled just like the way it smells when you drive past a McDonalds when they're cooking up a batch of fries. The nearest McDonalds is at least a mile away, and there wasn't any wind out there to speak of. Bizarre.

Driven to distraction

I wonder what would possess someone to wake up one day and think that this was a good idea:

Police responded to a woman's complaint on Friday that a naked man was repeatedly driving by in a van and masturbating.

The woman gave police the license plate number, and records showed the van belonged to Spokane Police Officer Sherilyn Redmon. Redmon said she left the van at a Chrysler dealership for servicing.

Police found the van back at the dealership and arrested an employee accused of taking it on a 16-mile test drive.

I certainly hope the dealership offered to clean the van's interior free of charge.

Cable guy

This is a story so awful that I almost feel bad about making jokes about it. Almost.

A thief in Germany was charred beyond recognition by a 10,000 volt electric shock when he tried to steal a live copper cable, authorities said Monday.

Police in the western city of Duisburg found the 32-year-old man's blackened remains by a set of cable cutters and pile of non-live cables he had already stolen.

Only because one of his hands survived incineration were officers able to identify the man as German of Kazakh origin.

Shocking. [rimshot] Anyway, I wonder how they found his body. My guess would be the smell.

Pathetic

Way to roll over and die there, Angels. I guess I'll be rooting for the Tribe to beat the chowder-swilling, Kennedy-electing morons of Red Sox Nation.

Mama's boy

Growing up, I always knew I could count on my mom for support, but she never did anything like this:

Jacksonville authorities say a mother pulled out a gun at a school bus stop because her son was being bullied. The police report says 40-year-old Johnna Briggs pointed the gun at other students getting off the bus and said, "Does anyone have something to say?"

Her son was being bullied on the school bus and authorities say she wanted to put an end to it.

Well, I'd say that will either put an end to it or will give the kids something new to tease her son about. Namely that his mom is a crazy bitch.

10 random songs from my Windows Media Player

These are the last ten songs my computer decided to play. Feel free to leave your list from your media player or iPod in the comments. And, yes, I stole this idea from Jeff G.

1. Gene Pitney - "Town Without Pity"
2. The Smiths - "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want"
3. Pet Shop Boys - "Domino Dancing"
4. The Who - "The Kids Are Alright"
5. Fine Young Cannibals - "Suspicious Minds"
6. Tom Tom Club - "Genius of Love"
7. Massive Attack - "Protection"
8. Happy Mondays - "Wrote For Luck"
9. Scorpions - "Rock You Like a Hurricane"
10. Madness - "The Prince"

Busted

I understand that courthouse security is important, but this is just begging for a lawsuit:

Security guards refused to allow a woman into a federal courthouse until she removed a bra that triggered a metal detector.

Lori Plato said she and her husband, Owen Plato, were stunned when U.S. Marshals Service employees asked her to remove her bra after the underwire supports set off the alarm.

"I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn't have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available," Plato said Wednesday. "They said, 'No.'

"I wasn't carrying a shank in my bra. If it's so dangerous, why did they give it back and let me put it on?"

Patrick McDonald, the U.S. Marshal in Boise, said appropriate security protocols were followed in the Sept. 20 matter, and guards suggested she simply remove the bra in her car outside, or find a restaurant bathroom.

"She's inflating it," McDonald said. "All of a sudden she just took it off. It wasn't anything we wanted to happen and it wasn't anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast."

I'm pretty sure I've read those last three sentences, or some quite like them, someplace else. Hmmmm...

Gratitude

It's nice when you get a thank you note recognizing your thoughtfulness, but isn't the giving the important part? Apparently not for this guy:

A disgruntled Japanese worker smashed up his employer's office in a fit of pique after his boss ignored his gift of jelly desserts, a national paper said on Thursday.

An Osaka court heard that the 31-year-old man, who worked for an online clothing sales company, had given the company president a box of jellies in the summer as a mark of gratitude after landing the job, the English-language Asahi Shimbun said.

Many Japanese maintain a tradition of sending gifts to important business contacts in summer and winter.

When the employee realized that his boss had left the box of jellies unopened under his desk, he smashed 22 computers in the office with a truncheon, the paper said. No one was injured in the incident.

I wonder if Japanese customs dictate that he should send an apology gift.

Aren't toasters a little more traditional?

My bank offers free checking and fee-free ATMs, but they don't offer anything like this:

A Thai bank is pitching into the battle against HIV/AIDS and handing out condoms to customers too shy to get them at the shop.

But they'll be comfortable about getting them from bank tellers?

Despite Bangkok's reputation as one of the world's sex industry centers, Thailand is a generally conservative country.

Kasikorn Bank launched the "Condoms for Confidence" campaign at 600 branches nationwide and said it would start giving out the sheaths, branded K-Condom and K-Excellence, later this month.

"HIV/AIDS is returning to Thailand since the government awareness campaign started 20 years ago has fizzled out," said a bank spokesman who declined to be identified.

"We want the teenagers to be aware of the problem."

Because there's nothing like the banking industry to spread AIDS awareness among teenagers.

Showing your ass

In retrospect, I think this guy probably wishes he had been able to keep his pants on. Twice.

Mooning a police officer was community activist Steven Lee Myrick's undoing. Myrick, 41, was convicted by a jury Tuesday of raping a Hawthorne woman during a burglary seven years ago.

The crime was unsolved until he exposed his bare buttocks years later and a DNA sample collected by officers linked him to the rape.

Jurors deliberated less than a day before finding Myrick guilty of residential burglary and two counts of rape.

He faces multiple life terms when sentenced Nov. 5 because jurors found true special allegations that a gun was used, the burglary was gang-related and the rape occurred during a burglary while the victim was tied up, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Jodi Link said.

[...]

After Myrick was convicted of mooning officers outside his Watts housing project during a demonstration, he was required to submit a DNA sample for a law enforcement database.

Where he's likely to end up, I'm sure he'll want to keep his pants on as much as possible.

Probably not a popular vacation destination

I wonder where the animal rights wackos come down on this one:

Two centuries after rats first landed on a remote Aleutian island from a shipwreck, wildlife managers in Alaska are plotting how to evict the non-native rodent from the island that bears their name.

Rat Island, like many other treeless, volcanic islands in the 1,000-mile (1,609-km) long Aleutian chain, is infested with rats that have proved devastating to wild birds that build nests in the earth or in rocky cliffs.

"They pretty much made the island worthless for a lot of wildlife," said Art Sowls, a biologist with the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which sprawls across the Aleutians and other Alaska islands.

Rodents have reigned at Rat Island at the western end of the Aleutians since the 1780 shipwreck of a Japanese sailing ship, wreaking havoc on millions of seabirds with no natural defenses against land predators.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the Maritime refuge, is drawing up plans to wipe out Rat Island's rats. A formal proposal is expected in about a month, according to Sowls.

Well, on the one hand, you've got rats, which are animals, yes, but not very lovable. Then, you've got the wild birds, which are probably endangered or something. A no-brainer for the rest of us, but you've got to wonder about the folks at PETA. Will they be chaining themselves to Rat Island for a big "Save the Rats" protest?

Not art

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I think that most modern art is complete and utter crap. Were I in London, I'd be sure to voice that opinion:

Pickled cows, elephant dung paintings and a transvestite potter -- The Turner Prize deserves its reputation as one of art's most controversial awards.

Now art lovers can decide for themselves if the prize rewards pretentious twaddle or cutting edge British art. Almost a quarter of a century of Turner prizewinners went on display on Monday at London's Tate Britain museum.

I think "pretentious twaddle" is probably being generous.

The Turner enrages traditionalists who argue that it is a travesty of modern art, but the show attracts up to 120,000 visitors a year intrigued to see what all the fuss is about.

In 1995, the "Bad Boy" of British contemporary art Damien Hirst won with a pickled cow. In 2003, transvestite potter Grayson Perry wore a frilly Shirley Temple dress to accept his award. Chris Ofili used elephant dung to adorn his 1998 winning entries.

The latter being, quite literally, crap.

Whatever happened to people painting pictures of...things or people? That was nice. You know what else was nice about those days? Artists not using bodily fluids or animal crap in their work. Yeah.

Football insanity

Man, I wonder if there's ever been as crazy a day as today has been in terms of college football. Eight of the top 25 teams lost (if you count West Virginia's loss last night) and my Alma Mater, Cal, is poised to move into the top five with their win at Oregon today, their first up there since 1987. Go Bears!

Where have I seen this before?

So, I watched the series premiere of "Moonlight" tonight. It's about a good guy vampire private detective in Los Angeles who drives around in an old convertible and has a blonde female potential love interest.

Maybe it's just me, but that sounds awfully familiar for some reason.

Cast votes, not spells

Somehow, I doubt this sort of thing is going to be much of a problem around here come next November:

Nigerian police have arrested a witchdoctor employed by a politician to perform rituals at an election tribunal, local media reported Thursday.

Officers caught Oluwole Abiodun Wednesday at the court building in southwestern Ondo state with charms and copies of the Bible and Koran in a black plastic bag.

A pot containing a rabbit, seven eggs, cowrie shells and palm oil was found nearby, the state News Agency of Nigeria said.

"Abiodun said that he was sent by one of the principal officers of the state House of Assembly to perform some rituals in the court premises," the agency said.

I guess witch-doctoring near a courthouse is illegal there. Good to know.

Oh, the (non) humanity

You've gotta love the animal rights whackjobs. In this instance, even a European court shot their stupid idea down:

He's now got a human name — Matthew Hiasl Pan — but he's having trouble getting his day in court. Animal rights activists campaigning to get Pan, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, legally declared a person vowed Thursday to take their challenge to Austria's Supreme Court after a lower court threw out their latest appeal.

A provincial judge in the city of Wiener Neustadt dismissed the case earlier this week, ruling that the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories had no legal standing to argue on the chimp's behalf.

The association, which worries the shelter caring for the chimp might close, has been pressing to get Pan declared a "person" so a guardian can be appointed to look out for his interests and provide him with a home.

Group president Martin Balluch insists that Pan is "a being with interests" and accuses the Austrian judicial system of monkeying around.

"It is astounding how all the courts try to evade the question of personhood of a chimp as much as they can," Balluch said.

Um, Marty, that would probably be because he's, you know, a fucking ape. You see, we humans have words to distinguish things from each other. Like, say, "chimpanzee," which is what your hairy little friend is.

Moron.

Overdue book of the dead

Looking for sympathy? A shoulder to cry on? It appears you won't find them at a certain branch of the Westchester County library:

Even the dead apparently have to pay the fines on their overdue books at one Westchester County library. Elizabeth Schaper said she was charged a 50-cent late fee while turning in a book that her late mother had checked out of a Harrison Public Library branch.

"I was in shock," Schaper said. "This has rocked me to my core."

Schaper's mother, Ethel Schaper, died at the age of 87 on Sept. 16 after suffering a massive stroke. A few days later, Schaper said she found a library book, "The Price of Silence," by Camilla Trinchieri, that her mother had checked out from the library.

"My mother was an avid reader — she read an average of two books a week," Schaper said. "She was a frequent patron of the library."

Schaper said she returned the book last week, and was stunned when the man behind the library counter told her of the 50-cent fee.

"I told him that maybe he didn't hear me right, that my mother had just died, otherwise I'm sure that she would have returned it on time," Schaper said. "His only reply was that, 'That will be 50 cents.'"

It's not like that's a huge fine or anything, but damn, that's still pretty cold.

Red bluenoses

Man, the Chinese commies are starting to look like the biggest prudes in the world:

China has banned "sexually provocative sounds" on television and pulled the plug on a show reconstructing infamous crimes by women ahead of a major Communist Party meeting next month.

The order, issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, is the latest in a raft of measures which have included axing reality shows featuring sex changes and plastic surgery and banning talent contests during prime-time.

"Sexually suggestive advertisements and scenes showing how women are influenced into a life of crime are detrimental to society," it said in a statement posted on its Web site on Wednesday, referring to its decision to axe "Red Question Mark," a crime documentary.

"Commercials containing sexually provocative sounds or tantalizing language as well as vulgar advertisements for breast enhancement and female underwear are banned, effective immediately," said the SARFT notice.

You know, when vulgar advertisements for breast enhancement and female underwear are outlawed, only outlaws will have vulgar advertisements for breast enhancement and female underwear.

Previous Chicom prudery noted here.

Free gift with purchase

You know, there's a reason why people have been saying "let the buyer beware" for centuries now:

A man who bought a smoker Tuesday at an auction of abandoned items might have thought twice had he looked inside first.

Maiden police said the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee.

The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility, so investigators contacted the mother and son who had rented the space where the smoker was found.

The mother, Peg Steele, explained her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg following the surgery "for religious reasons" she doesn't know much about.

She says he's going to pick it up from the proud new owner. Now, I'd like to know why, if he wanted to keep his leg for weird religious reasons, why did he keep it in the smoker in a storage facility?

The article doesn't say, but I'd like to know: did the dude smoke his leg to preserve it?

Wife with a knife

Who would have thought that jealousy could lead to serious problems in a bigamous relationship?

Malaysian doctors have reattached a man's nearly severed penis after his first wife, enraged by his comparison of her sex skills with those of his younger second wife, decided to chop it off with a kitchen knife.

The man, a 43-year-old Indonesian worker in southern Johor state, was lying in bed with his 48-year-old wife talking about his newly wed second wife, who is in her 30s, when the incident happened, the New Straits Times newspaper reported.

Despite his shock and pain, the man managed to pull on his trousers and ride his motorcycle to a nearby hospital, where doctors had to put in 11 stitches to reattach the organ.

You know, a motorcycle probably wouldn't be my first choice of a vehicle in that sort of situation, but I guess you use what you've got.

By the way, make sure to click on the link to see the rather unusual file photo that Reuters has chosen to accompany this story.

Update: In the comments, maggie suggested that I post the photo in case they get rid of it, so here you go (with the original caption)...

A knife is used to cut gammon in Stuttgart May 15, 2006 in this file photo. (Michaela Rehle/Reuters)

Dumbass

You know, when you're trying to reconcile with your ex-wife, it's probably not a good idea to send her a message like this:

The wife of former Australian cricket champion Shane Warne says their marriage reconciliation is over after he mistakenly sent her an incriminating text message.

Simone Callahan, who reunited last December with the spin bowler known also for his womanizing, told a woman's magazine she caught Warne cheating on her while he was in London.

As Callahan got the couple's three children ready for school in Melbourne, a text dropped into the inbox of her mobile phone, she told New Idea magazine.

"Hey beautiful, I'm just talking to my kids, the back door's open," the message from Warne said.

"You loser, you sent the message to the wrong person," Callahan sent back.

I could make a "back door" joke here, but I won't. I'm classy like that.

Stolen valor, stolen booze

Man, how many kinds of scumbag can one guy be?

A 23-year-old man who police say ran up $4,000 in bar bills after falsely claiming he was an Iraq war veteran faces arraignment on Cape Cod.

Management at Pufferbellies in Hyannis says Christopher Lee Proe was allowed to write personal checks over five nights in August after telling staff he wanted to celebrate his safe return from Iraq and honor the memory of fallen comrades.

The checks turned out to bogus. Proe was tracked down last Friday at a Yarmouth home.

Okay, so he's a phony vet who writes bad checks. But there's more...

Barnstable Police Sergeant John Murphy says Proe has outstanding warrants from three states, including for impersonating a police officer in Ohio and failing to register as a sex offender in Indiana.

Sounds like a charming fellow indeed.

Light up the halo!

The Angels clinched the A.L. West title today, which is cause for celebration. Of course, it would've been nice if they'd done it yesterday, while my brother and I were at the stadium, but it's still sweet.

Not the kind of copper they wanted

This isn't exactly what I'd call a "dumb criminals story," but it's still pretty funny:

Two men who police said broke into a building to steal copper wiring got more than they bargained for: a room full of police officers. Police said 26-year-old James Ayers and Frederick Guilliee, 38, broke into the 40,000-square-foot building at about 6 p.m. Tuesday.

What they hadn't planned for is the Antioch police K-9 unit who was holding a training session there.

Unlucky bastards. Not only do they break into a building full of cops, but some of the hardest cops to hide from.

Getting a head in the polls

You know, people are always complaining about elections and political campaigns in this country for various reasons, but they could be a lot worse:

Six grisly murders in Togo in which the victims were decapitated and drained of their blood have raised fears of a resurgence of ritual killings ahead of parliamentary elections in the West African state next month.

The serial killings occurred last weekend in the southern Vo and Lacs prefectures, east of the capital Lome. The victims included a 12-year-old boy and a 63-year-old woman and their severed heads were carried off by the killers.

The discovery of the headless corpses has shocked Togolese and triggered a wave of speculation that the killings were ritual murders. This is a practice still found in parts of Africa in which people kill to obtain body parts and blood in the belief they will bring social success and political power.

Police announced the arrest of four suspects, including one from neighboring Benin, the West African home of the ancient Voodoo religion, who confessed to killing the 12-year-old boy.

Togo holds legislative elections on October 14, and international observers hope they will strengthen the weak grip of democracy in the small former French colony, which like Benin is wedged between Nigeria and Ghana on the Gulf of Guinea.

In a society where traditional beliefs still have influence, some Togolese saw a link between the killings and the ambitions of aspiring candidates for next month's polls.

"Some of these deputies are ready to do anything to keep their seats and you hear that they're carrying out sacrifices," said Joel Attigan, a geography student.

Think about that the next time you hear someone complain about how nasty our political campaigns have become over the years. I mean, it's not like any politicians in this country are carrying out human sacrifices to gain power.

(Insert Hillary Clinton joke here.)

Whorehouses to become just plain houses

If you're planning some sort of Euro-sleaze vacation in Amsterdam, you might want to hurry:

About a third of Amsterdam's red-lit windows for prostitutes will disappear from the city center as one of the main brothel owners is set to sell his empire to a real estate company.

A housing company is to buy 18 premises, currently featuring 51 windows, for about 25 million euros ($35 million), Amsterdam city council said.

Last November, the city revoked the trading licenses of 33 brothels because they were suspected of criminal activities including money laundering and drug dealing. However, the brothel owners appealed successfully against the decision.

Well, that's a relief. I mean, really, who could seriously believe that there was a bunch of criminal activity going on in brothels?

Want to read something really stupid?

If you answered yes, I would suggest this utter piece of crap from today's L.A. Times sports section. Somebody thought they were being really clever, when, in fact, their idea was sub-moronic.

Hi, uh, have you guys seen my cocaine?

Thank God for stupid criminals, for they let us feel better about ourselves while providing us with much-needed laughter. Case in point:

Federal agents thought there was something fishy about Leroy Carr. On four occasions since last December, Carr either crossed the Canadian border or was found near it with thousands of dollars in cash, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court. He also sometimes carried night vision goggles and a GPS device programmed with coordinates for a well-known drug-smuggling trail.

But Carr refused to speak with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and they let him go — until he called to ask if they had seen his cocaine.

Yes, you read that right. He actually called the Feds to ask if they knew where his blow was. But it gets even better...

According to the complaint, he told agents that on Aug. 3, he had stashed two blue backpacks containing 68 pounds of cocaine by the entrance to a Boy Scout camp near the Canadian border. When he returned the next day, they were gone, he said.

Carr, of suburban Federal Way, asked if ICE could put out a news release saying that federal agents had seized the drugs. That way, according to the complaint, the organization he was working for would believe his statements that he hadn't stolen them. [my emphasis]

That's so friggin' awesome. Needless to say, Leroy got arrested. And I guess, now, the people he was working for know that he didn't steal the coke, which was found by a Boy Scout.

Punch drunk love

They say that drinking and driving don't mix. You know what else doesn't mix with drinking? Ex-girlfriends, as this dumbass found out:

Firefighters had to tear though a wall to rescue an intoxicated man who became stuck while trying to climb down a chimney into the residence of his former girlfriend.

Alejandro Valencio said he was drunk when he got into the chimney about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday.

"Everyone do stupid things sometimes when they're drunk," he said.

Yes, Alejandro, everyone "do." But most of us limit things to phone calls that we regret the next day.

Firefighters requested assistance from police after arriving because they said Connie Deweese was hampering the rescue effort by blocking the fireplace.

"I told them to leave him in the chimney and let him die," said Deweese, who received misdemeanor citations for disorderly conduct and interfering with a firefighter.

I guess his little stunt didn't exactly win her back over. But Alejandro's apparently got a never-say-die romantic spirit...

Valencio returned to the residence after being treated at a hospital and was filmed by a local TV station as Deweese hit him with a garbage can and pelted him with bottles.

"Get off my porch, and don't you ever come back here," she yelled.

Oh, I have a feeling he'll be back.

Arrrrrrr!

Today isThis be International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Avast, or some such thing, mateys.

Stay classy, Seattle

It seems that some folks up in the Pacific Northwest share my disdain for sophisticated humor:

Officially, it's the South Lake Union Streetcar. But in the neighborhood where the new line runs, it's called the South Lake Union Trolley — or, the SLUT. At Kapow! Coffee, a shop in the old Cascade neighborhood, 100 T-shirts bearing the words "Ride the SLUT" sold out in days, and another 100 are on order.

"We're welcoming the SLUT into the neighborhood," said Jerry Johnson, 29, a part-time barista.

Some claim — incorrectly, according to representatives of Vulcan Inc., the company that is developing the area — that South Lake Union Trolley was the original name and that it was changed when officials belatedly realized the acronym.

The $50.5 million project should be completed with streetcars running in December. Underlying the lighthearted opposition, however, is resentment over changes in the old working-class neighborhood.

"There was a meeting with representatives from the city several years ago," Johnson recalled.

"They asked us, 'What we could do for you?' Most people raised their hands and said, 'Affordable housing,'" he said. "Then the people from the city huddled together — 'whisper, whisper, whisper,' — and they said, 'How about a trolley?'"

As somebody who goes to city meetings (part of my job, otherwise I wouldn't be there) I love the idea people seem to have that "affordable housing" can be created out of thin air. But I can see how cheap rent would be of interest to a "part-time barista."

But way to fight the power, people. That potty-mouth acronym will sure show 'em!

I wonder what they do to taggers

It sounds like they take those "post no bills" signs pretty damn seriously in China:

Security guards in a southern Chinese city stripped and shaved the head of a man they found illegally posting advertisements on walls to earn a bit of money, a domestic newspaper reported Tuesday.

The victim, Xiao Liu, a 17-year-old migrant worker from the impoverished central province of Henan, was stripped to his underwear by about 10 men in Dongguan in the southern province of Guangdong, the Beijing News said.

The men, who traveled on scooters and identified themselves as "city inspectors," also beat Liu and forced him to get down on his knees so they could shave his hair in punishment, the newspaper added.

"Walking around the streets in only my underwear made me want to kill myself," Liu was quoted as saying, adding that he earned 20 yuan ($2.66) a day posting flyers for a hotel on the streets.

There's probably a joke about leaving menus for Chinese restaurants on people's doorsteps that I could make here, but I won't.

Stereotypes are bad, people.

I say brand it

You can vote on the fate of Barry "Musclehead" Bonds' 756th home run ball here. I think the option to have an asterisk branded on it before it's sent to the Hall of Fame is the best.

Aaaaaargh! Study!

I guess you just can't argue with results:

A Japanese teacher who threw a chair at his students was named "super teacher" by the local board of education despite having been reprimanded several times for using corporal punishment, a news agency said on Saturday.

The 52-year-old high-school teacher in Kyoto has been awarded the title every year since 2005 in spite of a history of aggression in the classroom because his strict teaching methods improved his students' performance.

He was punished three times between 1997 and 2001 for physically attacking students, including throwing a chair at the volleyball team he was coaching, and was again accused of corporal punishment this year, Kyodo news agency said.

The teacher, who was not identified in the news agency report, resigned on Friday, having been on medical leave since the latest accusation. He was selected as a role model due to his "outstanding achievement in leading the volleyball team," Kyodo said, citing board officials.

I mean, sure, the guy was beating up his students and throwing furniture at them, but damn it, that volleyball team was good!

I doubt he'll take the stand

Something (probably the lawsuit) tells me that this guy is a pretty whacked-out crank:

The defendant in a state senator's lawsuit is accused of causing untold death and horror and threatening to cause more still. He can be sued in Douglas County, the legislator claims, because He's everywhere.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers sued God last week. Angered by another lawsuit he considers frivolous, Chambers says he's trying to make the point that anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody.

Chambers says in his lawsuit that God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

The Omaha senator, who skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians, also says God has caused "fearsome floods ... horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes."

He's seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty.

And they say he skips morning prayers? No kidding. I would've pegged him as a regular Charlie Churchgoer.

Chambers said the lawsuit was triggered by a federal suit filed against a judge who recently barred words such as "rape" and "victim" from a sexual assault trial.

The accuser in the criminal case, Tory Bowen, sued Lancaster District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront, claiming that he violated her free speech rights.

Chambers said Bowen's lawsuit is inappropriate because the Nebraska Supreme Court has already considered the case and federal courts follow the decisions of state supreme courts on state matters.

"This lawsuit having been filed and being of such questionable merit creates a circumstance where my lawsuit is appropriately filed," Chambers said. "People might call it frivolous but if they read it they'll see there are very serious issues I have raised."

Um, dude, you filed a lawsuit against God. That sounds pretty damn frivolous to me. Now, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to argue about the merits of that other case, but if you're upset about it, I'm sure there other, more appropriate ways to criticize it than to waste everybody's time with this kind of bullshit.

Wow!

Thanks to see-dubya, who tossed a link to me last night on Hot Air's headlines, I've had more than 500 visitors today. If you want a laugh, check out my traffic stats for the last month.

Update: In case you don't feel like clicking on that last link:

Welcome, perverts

My traffic has been in the crapper for most of this month, so imagine my surprise when I took a look at my Sitemeter today and saw it blowing up (relatively speaking). Well, I guess that'll happen when you write a post like this one, which is, in turn, inexplicably linked by AOL News.

Gee, I wonder why that post got so popular.

Somebody call Frank Serpico

It seems that crooked cops are running wild in the town of Robeline, LA:

This village's only convenience store decided to do something nice for its police officers: give them a free fountain drink or coffee at closing time. But somewhere along the way, investigators say, it got out of control. Now, all three of the village's officers are accused of stealing snacks.

"Over a period of time, it evolved into regular drinks and more," Natchitoches Parish Sheriff's investigator Travis Trammell said. "There's no telling how it got to this point, but the store started experiencing losses and they watch their videotapes and see all of this going on."

Surveillance tapes showed each officer going into the Shop-A-Lott at Lott Oil around closing time and filling plastic bags with dozens of bottled soft drinks, Trammell said. The officers also are reportedly seen eating an assortment of other snacks without paying.

Imagine how much worse this will get once they subpoena the owner of the donut shop.

Housing boom

Who would have thought that planting explosives all over your house could be a bad idea?

A man tired of burglars nearly blew off his hand when bomb-like devices he set around his house exploded in his presence instead, authorities said.

Victor Iacobescu, 50, ran to a neighbor's house Thursday with a bloody towel wrapped around his right hand.

"Apparently, he was trying to set booby traps to get the next guy who tried to break in," fire Lt. Maggie Murphy said.

Iacobescu had been the victim of several break-ins, she said.

The neighbor, Patrick Struble, said the explosives were "like a pipe bomb. He accidentally triggered it, and it almost blew his hand off."

I understand there are a number of companies that will install burglar alarms in your home, none of which involve pipe bombs. He might want to look into that.

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Good news, pervs!

Now, I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm guessing nude billboards are just around the corner!

Two decades after a nude photo scandal helped cost a Miss America her title, Americans may be adopting a more ho-hum attitude toward people who bare it all for the cameras.

Some experts say the Internet and more explicit TV are fostering a more relaxed response by Americans to public displays of bare flesh, even if many people profess to be more conservative.

Take, for example, the muted reaction to nude photos of 18-year-old Vanessa Hudgens, the star of Walt Disney Co.'s squeaky clean "High School Musical" franchise,

One day after the photos surfaced on the Web last Thursday, Hudgens issued an apology and family friendly Walt Disney Co. said it would continue negotiating her appearance in the third installment of the hugely popular series, one of the most popular programs in U.S. cable TV history.

While some expressed outrage, many fans pledged support on her MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/vanessahudgens.

Not me. Personally, I'm OUTRAGED at the thought of seeing photos of an attractive 18-year-old girl!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go look something up on Google Images.

A likely story

So, yesterday, we had the story of the woman who took a stolen car to court to pay a ticket, and today, well...

A western New York man faces grand larceny charges after being pulled over in a car that he said he stole so he could turn himself in on another charge.

Ontario County sheriff's deputies say they pulled over Vincent Estrada Junior, 29, and found that the car he was driving had recently been stolen from a parking lot.

Police said Estrada was wanted on a family court warrant, and he told deputies he stole the car so he could drive to the Geneva City Police Department to turn himself in.

And he would have gotten away with it turned himself in, if it weren't for those meddling policemen!

Car trouble

Next time, maybe she should consider taking the bus, instead:

A woman who went to court to pay a traffic ticket drove there in a stolen car and ended up behind bars, authorities said. Clarendon County [South Carolina] sheriff's deputies received a tip that Amber Renee Helton was going to be in a stolen car when she paid the ticket, Chief Deputy Joe Bradham said.

They arrested her as she opened the door of the 2001 Dodge Intrepid on Tuesday morning, authorities said.

Helton, 21, and her passenger, 35-year-old Terry Lynn Alvery, were charged with possessing a stolen vehicle, Bradham said.

It takes either huge balls or incredible stupidity to show up at the courthouse, where there are likely lots of police officers, in a stolen car. I'm leaning toward the stupidity.

Don't ever forget

It's hard to believe that it's been six years since the attacks of 9/11. But however much time passes, I'll never forget that day. I don't think anybody will.

Fuß in der Öffnung*

You know, if you're any kind of public figure in Germany, there's one group of people you should never, ever praise for any reason whatsoever.

A German public television network Sunday sacked a popular talk show host and former news presenter after she had praised the Nazi's family policies at a news conference for her new book on child-rearing.

NDR television program director Volker Herres said on the NDR website the network had fired Eva Herman, 48, with immediate effect for her comments "that we deemed to be incompatible to her role as a television presenter and talk show host."

[...]

While presenting her book "Das Prinzip Arche Noah - warum wir die Familie retten muessen" (Arche Noah principle - why we must save the family), she said family values that were nurtured in the Nazi era were cast away by the turmoil of the late 1960s.

"It was a horrible time with a manic and dangerous leader who led the Germans into ruin as we all know."

I sense a "but" coming on, and wouldn't you know it...

"But there was at the time also something good, and that is the values, that is the children, that is the families, that is a togetherness -- it was all abolished, there was nothing left," Herman said.

Sheesh. I'll lay it out again: Do. Not. Praise. The. Nazis.

*According to Alta Vista Babel Fish, this means "Foot in mouth."

Dirty mugger

I've never been mugged before, and I've never mugged anybody, so I'm not an expert on the subject. But still, I don't think this is usually part of the process:

Police said a man who robbed a woman of her keys and cell phone then took off her shoes and licked her toes. Commander Kevin Casper said the attack was "weird sexual behavior."

The 24-year-old woman was leaving work around 1 a.m. Saturday when the 27-year-old man approached her and demanded her keys and phone. After that he removed her shoes.

Police say the woman was not hurt.

But I bet she was pretty weirded out, though.

Cut your losses

I wonder what this guy thought the cops were going to be able to do for him:

A marijuana dealer telephoned police after armed thieves stole his quarter-pound stash of pot. The 19-year-old Felton man told police that two men, one of them armed with a handgun, robbed him at gunpoint as he sat in his car on Tuesday night.

"It was unique to have people who were dealing drugs calling us when they've been ripped off," police spokesman Zach Friend said.

After the thieves made off with his stash, the dealer telephoned police. When police arrived, the dealer's story became progressively confused.

First he showed officers a medical marijuana card and told them he bought the pot at a medical marijuana dispensary. Then he said he got the pot from a friend. Eventually the dealer admitted he had arranged to sell the marijuana to the men who stole it from him, investigators said.

If they find the perps, I don't think they'll be returning the victim's property to him.

The article goes on to mention that the cops didn't arrest the dealer. Not surprising, seeing as how he wasn't in possession of any drugs. I guess in that respect, the thieves did him a favor.

G-A on a tear

Garret Anderson has been on fire for the Angels since the All Star break, and tonight he broke a team record by driving in runs in eleven straight games. The man had 15 RBI before the break and he has 56 since. He hit another homer tonight, too. I can't believe people were calling up Angel Talk a couple of weeks ago and bitching about his performance.

Anyway, Andy and I are going to try to catch Sunday night's game down at the Big A. I really hope we can get tickets, since I haven't been to a game yet this season.

Damn commies!

I hated commies in the first place, but now, they've gone too far:

China has banned sexually explicit television shows, such as those featuring sex toys and contraceptives, as it tries to clean up its airwaves and imbue socialist values.

The order follows the axing of controversial "Beautiful Makeover," a reality program in the southern province of Guangdong showing plastic surgery operations, and the banning of shows featuring "public participation" in sex-change operations.

The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television scolded provincial television stations in the western frontier city of Chengdu for broadcasting "lewd and obscene" footage, according to its online Web site (www.safrt.gov.cn).

"All levels of television broadcasters must not air any vulgar content involving sexual experiences or functions of sex toys and birth control devices, effective immediately," SARFT said in the notice.

Okay, so I'm not really all that broken up about the shows about sex change operations, but the rest of it is just plain wrong. Better dead than red, indeed.

The epitome of sincerity

Call me a bastard, but I love it when people who are already in trouble do something really stupid to compound their problems.

Music, books and Hollywood films... China can now add testimonies of regret by corrupt officials to its exhaustive list of copyright violations.

Zhang Shaocang, former Communist Party chief of state-owned power company Anhui Province Energy Group Co Ltd, wept as he read a four-page "letter of apology" during his corruption trial at a court in Fuyang, Anhui, according to a Procuratorial [sic] Daily report reproduced in Wednesday's Beijing News.

But Zhang's sentiments were later found to be strikingly similar to those of Zhu Fuzhong, a disgraced former party chief of Tongan village in southwestern Sichuan province, whose apology letter was printed in the Procuratorial [sic] Daily less than two weeks before.

So, this moron actually lifted phrases word for word from the other guy's apology, which had been published for everybody to read just a couple of weeks before. Next time, he might want to rip off an apology that wasn't quite so fresh in peoples' minds.

Bushitler goons suppress controversial film

What do we have here? More crushing of dissent in Bushco's Amerikkka. Oh, wait a minute:

Among the nearly two dozen television DVDs slated for nationwide release on Sept. 11 is the second season of "Bones," the third season of "Grey's Anatomy" and the miniseries "The Starter Wife" that aired earlier this year. Not on the list on that day or any other in the near future is last year's highly controversial "The Path to 9/11."

The $40-million, five-hour ABC miniseries, which recently received seven Emmy nominations and drew a combined two-night audience of more than 25 million viewers, is for now on the path to nowhere. Its Amazon page reads: "Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock."

With no date for the release, questions are being raised about whether political pressure is behind its current status as a stalled or discarded DVD project. The reasons are murky, but the miniseries' writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, believes it's crystal clear: Powerful forces are out to protect Bill Clinton's presidential legacy and shield Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) from any potential collateral damage in her bid for the White House.

Nowrasteh, also one of the miniseries' many producers, said he was told by a top executive at ABC Studios that "if Hillary weren't running for president, this wouldn't be a problem."

Well, then, never mind. Nothing to see here. Move along, people.

I hope he didn't have leather seats

You don't say:

A naked man driving along the Indiana Toll Road was arrested and charged because his lewd conduct distracted other motorists, police said.

I can see how that could be distracting.

The 37-year-old Chicago man was traveling east to Ohio to visit his mother, police said. He was nude and had petroleum jelly on his hands when a state trooper pulled him over about 10 miles from the Ohio line Wednesday, police said.

I'm not sure which part is the most disturbing—the fact that he was naked, the fact that he had Vaseline on his hands, or the fact that he was on the way to visit his mom.

The trooper, Al Martinez, a four-year veteran of the Indiana State Police, said he walked up to the passenger side of the SUV and saw that the man had dropped a T-shirt across his midsection. Other motorists had called police about the driver, with several calls from truckers who could see into the front seat of the SUV.

Martinez made the man put his clothes back on before handcuffing him and putting him in the back of the squad car.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I'd do, too. Making him put his clothes back on, that is.

Apparently, not a baaaaaad idea

Having problems with your sophisticated jet aircraft? Don't know what to do about it? Well, the answer is clear: animal sacrifice.

Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

To me, the most surprising aspects of this story are that Nepal has its own airline. I mean, really, who knew?

"The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights," said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

Well, you can't argue with success.