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.

Fine steep for creepy peeper

I guess the lesson here is that you should be fully clothed while you spy on your neighbors:

A man has been ordered to pay more than $13,000 to his former neighbors who he spied upon while sitting naked in his house.

A jury Thursday ordered William Andrianse, 59, of Des Moines, to pay damages to Julie Weissinger, 40, who said she and her family were so upset they had to move away.

Andrianse pleaded guilty in 2004 to harassment and public exposure. After the Weissingers filed their lawsuit, he countersued claiming his neighbors violated his privacy by videotaping him with a night-vision camera they borrowed from police.

Jurors decided that Andrianse owed the Weissingers, and that they owed him nothing.

So he gets busted for getting nekkid and looking at his neighbors, but when they use the tools of the fascist police state to make salacious videos of him, um, looking at them while nude, they get a free pass? And it gets even worse—he was provoked!

Court records showed that Andrianse claimed that Julie Weissinger provoked his actions by"walking around in the house wearing a black teddy and bending over."

The police report said that Andrianse thought it was a mutual act and that he did not know Weissinger was "an unwilling participant."

Go figure. So, does that mean my neighbor's wife doesn't want me to spank myself or rub ice cubes on certain "sensitive areas" of my body?

I just lost my appetite

I like Chinese food as much as the next person, but I have my limits. Those limits most definitely include things like this:

The dish in front of me is grey and shiny.

"Russian dog," says my waitress Nancy.

"Big dog," I reply.

"Yes," she says. "Big dog's penis..."

We are in a cosy restaurant in a dark street in Beijing but my appetite seems to have gone for a stroll outside.

Nancy has brought out a whole selection of delicacies.

They are draped awkwardly across a huge platter, with a crocodile carved out of a carrot as the centrepiece.

Nestling beside the dog's penis are its clammy testicles, and beside that a giant salami-shaped object.

"Donkey," says Nancy. "Good for the skin..."

I don't care if it's going to give me heat vision, Nancy, much less good skin. I am not going to eat any kind of penis.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Click on that link, by the way, for some horrifying pictures and plenty more descriptions of awful, awful things you can order at Nancy's evil restaurant.

Update: Is this place Jade Garden? After all, "they put mega ding dongs in their food!"

Coup not cool

If you weren't concerned about that coup in Thailand, well, you should be now. The leaders of the coup sound seriously uncoool.

Thai coup leaders have banned go-go girls from dancing near tanks and troops on Bangkok streets as a distraction from the serious business of power, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

"It is not appropriate to entertain soldiers while they are on duty," Colonel Acra Tiprote told Reuters after a troupe of 10 women in tight camouflage vests and shorts posed with soldiers and tanks while making a music video.

What kind of topsy-turvy world are we living in when people are placing restrictions on where Thai go-go dancers can perform? And seriously, these coup leaders are just begging for a mutiny. If they were smart, they'd be requiring go-go girls to dance near soldiers. That's how things will work when I rule the world.

How to get cheap hits (and lots of them)

Write a post like the one I wrote yesterday with the word "sex" in the title and you'll have to beat away the perverts Googling "sex" with a stick. I've had more than 100 visitors today.

I bet a lot of them were disappointed with what they found here, too. I know I would be.

Dirty British sex perverts

Pastiness. Bad teeth. Snooty costume dramas. Horrible food with funny-sounding names. These are the things we tend to associate with our cousins across the pond. But not red hot dirty sex, right? Right?

Historical attitudes to sex in Britain will be laid bare for all to see this week in archives which reveal a nation rich in sexual experience and enthusiasm.

Oh boy. I can hardly wait.

The historical documents, to be given a public outing by the Center for Archive Studies at Liverpool University, include Britain's first ever sex survey, conducted 57 years ago but deemed too shocking for publication at the time.

The survey shows many British men had homosexual experiences, many were frequent visitors to prostitutes and many British wives were active in the pursuit of sex outside marriage.

Well, that all sounds pretty healthy. Buncha whoremongering poofters and cheating wives. Swell.

Caroline Williams, of the Center for Archive Studies, says the archives show that while sex has always been a part of major part of British -- and human -- life, attitudes have changed and broadened over the years.

What a scoop! Sex has always been important to humans! Who knew? Attitudes have changed? Whoah, that's some insight there.

I'd tell you to read the whole thing, but it's really oned of the more boring articles about deviant sex that I've ever read. Then again, we are talking about British people having sex.

Fools

I was at a party this weekend when some of the other guests started talking about how great Loose Change is. Unfortunately, we were all about to leave, so I didn't have time to sit them down and explain in detail why the movie is a travesty of a joke of a piece of shit. I did, however, get them to grudgingly admit that the "controlled demolition" theory of why the towers came down was dubious at best.

Speaking of Loose Change and 9/11 conspiracy theories, this takedown from a humor website is worth a look if you haven't seen it already. I think one of Ace's guest bloggers linked to it a week or two ago. And of course there's Screw Loose Change, your one-stop clearinghouse for debunking and fact-checking Dylan Avery's dumb ass.

Do you like surprises?

Yeah, me neither. But thankfully, I've never had one like this.

A western Iowa woman is recovering from the shock of finding a drowned bat in her tea mug after she sipped from the cup all day.

The brown bat, about the size of two tea bags, was found a few weeks ago by a 60-year-old Woodbury County woman, said Chuck Cipperley, an environmental director for the Siouxland health office in Sioux City.

"I knew the person, so I knew it was no joke," said Cipperley, who took the call from the woman.

The woman, who declined to identify herself, told Cipperley she found the bat when she was cleaning out the mug at night. She said she put the bat in a plastic bag before alerting the Siouxland health office the next morning.

Cipperley said the bat was sent that day Sept. 1 to the University Hygienic Laboratory in Coralville. Results showed the bat did not have rabies.

Just how big was this mug, anyway? (Or, I guess you could ask how small the bat was.) I mean, she was sipping from the mug all day and she didn't notice the dead animal that was in it. That's nice about the lack of rabies, though.

More genius at work

Getting drunk and getting behind the wheel is a bad idea. Trying to bum rush a bunch of bikers with a pool cue—also pretty stupid. Getting hit by your own car in the process? Well, then you've reached a new low there.

An alleged drunken motorist who brandished a pool cue while driving at a group of motorcyclists was hit by his own car after he stopped and attempted to approach the bikers on foot, the California Highway Patrol said.

Richard Brooks, 50, of Concord was pulled to safety by several of the motorcyclists after his car — which he left in reverse — knocked him into the highway Thursday morning...

And why did this potential Nobel Laureate try to attack the bikers? You'll love this:

Brooks, who was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and driving under the influence, told authorities he was offended by skeletons some of the riders wore on their leather Harley-Davidson jackets and what he perceived as their attempts to appear tough.

"It was his impression that they thought they were better than him," [CHP Officer Scott] Yox said. "They were irritating to him and he felt he needed to do something about it." [my emphasis, of course]

Well, you can't argue with that. And I don't mean that his reasons were sound—it's just that they're so crazy-stupid that it would be futile to try.

I hate California Nazis

Oh, this is just lovely.

Two flags or signs depicting swastikas were reported to be hanging from freeway overpasses Friday, the day the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana begins. Another swastika flag was spotted over the 101 Freeway in Encino, north of Los Angeles.

An officer removed one of the symbols reported to the California Highway Patrol around 5:55 a.m. at eastbound state Route 78 at Escondido Avenue in Vista, CHP officer Alicia Contreras said.

The second emblem, reported at the Sea World Drive overpass off of southbound Interstate 5, was not seen by the time officers responded, she said.

Some dickweed obviously did this because the Jewish new year began tonight at sundown, showing that even here in enlightened, tolerant California, you've still got knuckle-dragging troglodytes.

Update: On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that something like this would happen in a "Blue" state.

(via IndeedPundit)

Who are you?

Man, this story is just bizarre:

An undercover police operation took an odd turn Thursday when a Syracuse police officer pretending to be a john met a suspected prostitute who pretended to be a police officer.

The encounter ended with two women under arrest. Police charged Lisa Greene, 31, with first-degree criminal impersonation, prostitution and fifth-degree conspiracy. Elena Irwin, 20, was charged with fifth-degree conspiracy and possession of a hypodermic needle.

Police spokesman Sgt. Tom Connellan said a male undercover officer driving in a neighborhood known for prostitution was flagged down by Greene. The woman got in his car and the two went to a nearby parking lot to negotiate a price for sex.

She asked the cop if he was a cop and the police officer said no.

"That's OK, because I am," the woman told the officer as she pulled out handcuffs and a two-way radio and barked a command into the radio: "Move in!"

The officer, concerned the woman was armed and looking to rob him, forced her from the car, Connellan said. Moments later, officers who had been monitoring the situation arrived and grabbed Greene with the radio and cuffs at a nearby intersection.

A male officer pretending to be a female used the radio to find out who was on the other end, Connellan said.

Police found Irwin waiting in a car in a nearby alley.

So, let me get this straight...A cop pretending to be a john picks up A hooker pertending to be a cop, and when she bails, a male cop pretends to be her to pick up her partner, who seems to be the only one in the story who wasn't pretending to be somebody else. You just can't trust anybody these days, can you?

Well, I guess you never really could trust anybody when trolling for hookers, could you?

How much is too much?

Damn those European socialists, always stifling the entrepeneurial spirit:

A fee of 25,500 euros ($32,000) is way too much for a woman to charge a man for fondling her bosom, a Finnish district court ruled.

The court jailed a couple in their twenties for more than a year for charging a 74-year-old who suffers from dementia a total of 25,500 euros to enjoy the woman's breasts on 10 occasions.

"Based on general life experience alone, it is indisputably clear that a 25,500 euro charge is disproportionate to the compensation in question," Judge Hasse Hakki, who heard the case, told Reuters Friday.

So, uh, Judge Hakki...has "life experience" with paying to cop a feel? Or is he saying that experience has taught him that the old man should've been entitled to, um, more than a feel?

But he said the court in Kokkola, about 300 miles north of Helsinki, would not decide "the proper financial value of the compensation."

Well, why not? I mean, if you can determine that 32 grand is too much for ten boob grabs, shouldn't you be able to set a reasonable price? You never know when that kind of information could come in...handy.

It's for your own good

Do not, under any circumstances, click this link. I'm warning you.

Okay, so you're going to click it. I know, I know. You're curious. Well, whatever you do, don't watch the video over there. Seriously, DON'T.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go see if they make a mouthwash for your mind.

(h/t Dave at Garfield Ridge)

Kind of slow, eh

Uh-oh. I guess this means I should get my "Serial Killer" tattoo removed.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Shylo Kujawski -- who has "Grand Theft Auto" prominently tattooed on his back -- was spotted acting suspiciously in a Vancouver suburb where several stolen cars had been reported.

Using the tattoo to identify Kujawski as a convicted auto thief, police said they then set up a stakeout that nabbed him attempting drive away in a stolen car.

Police said during the stakeout they also watched Kujawski thwart his own attempt to drive away in another stolen vehicle by accidentally disabling the car with the owner's steering wheel lock.

Somehow, I don't think that guy is going to be winning any Nobel Prizes. Unless they create a category for inept auto theft. But how likely is that?

Media figure silenced

In yet another shocking abuse of freedom of speech and the press in Chimpy McBu$hitlerburton's Amerikkka, a member of the media has been bullied into silence after making "controversial" remarks. Oh, wait...this happened in Canada.

The chairman of the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has resigned after remarks about bestiality and ruminations about defecation, Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda said on Tuesday.

Guy Fournier created an uproar in Canada's Lebanese community and in the media when he claimed that Lebanon allowed men to have sexual relations with female animals, but reserved the death penalty for those who did so with male animals.

In comments made in May, and replayed in a CBC weekend interview, he talked at length about the joys of bowel movements.

Now, I don't know where he got the idea that Lebanese men were allowed to have sex with female animals (although this website makes the same assertion--scroll about halfway down the page), but if you're a public figure, you might want to keep your feelings about pooping out of interviews that could be played on the teevee or the radio. After all, that's why they invented internet message boards and forums.