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.

Update: Welcome, Hot Air readers! Please look around and feel free to leave comments, especially if you like lame jokes about embarrassing sexual situations and dumb criminals. And if you like it here (or even if you don't), be sure to check out This Blog Smells Funny, where I play a small part among some Titans of blogging humor.

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.