Blaming the victim?

Did you know that an underage person appearing in sexually explicit photos could be charged with child pornography? Well, it seems like that's the case here.

Two teenage girls face child pornography charges after posting sexually explicit photographs of themselves on the Internet.

The pornographic pictures of Elizabeth Muller, 19, of North Smithfield [Rhode Island], and an unidentified 16-year-old Lincoln girl were discovered on MySpace.com, a social networking Web site, said a spokesman for the attorney general's office.

The photos of the two teenagers together were posted on each of their respective Web site accounts, spokesman Michael Healey said. The 16-year-old was arraigned before a Family Court judge Monday on a charge of child pornography and violating a court-ordered curfew, Healey said.

Now, that just seems weird. I can understand how the 19-year-old, as an adult, would be charged with child pornography--and she is, but I would tend to think that the younger girl would be viewed as having been exploited. Maybe the age of consent in Rhode Island (which, according to this site is sixteen) comes into play here, but it still seems odd.

And of course the pictures were posted on MySpace. It seems like teens who commit crimes (or are about to do so) are drawn to MySpace like moths are drawn to a fire.

Slander!

You're not going to believe this (I know I sure as hell didn't) but Snoop got arrested! Say it ain't so, Snoop!

The U.S. rap star Snoop Dogg and five of his associates have been arrested in Britain after a disturbance at London's Heathrow Airport.

Police told British media that the musician, who was born with the name Calvin Broadus, and members of his entourage were being held on charges of "violent disorder and affray."

The group was waiting for a flight to South Africa, where Snoop Dogg was to perform in a concert Thursday, when it was denied access to a first-class lounge at the airport. Police said members of the group later threw bottles of whisky in a duty-free store and scuffled with police.

Okay, I actually didn't believe it because Snoop got arrested and there was apparently no weed involved. Other than that, yeah, I can believe it.

Still ain't nothin' to say

According to the title of this article, the English language now has one billion words. Or maybe not.

Oxford University Press lexicographer Catherine Soanes said the database is not a collection of 1 billion different words, but of sentences and other examples of the usage and spelling.

A lot of this stuff is recent slang and jargon like "celebutante" and "retail politics." I have no idea what the latter even means.

Launched in January 2000, the Oxford English Corpus is part of the world's largest-funded language research project, costing $90,000-$107,000 per year.

It has helped identify how the spellings of common phrases have changed, such as "fazed by" to "phased by" or "free rein" to "free reign."

"Buck naked" increasingly has evolved to "butt naked."

Dang, I gots to get my hands on some of that sweet, sweet research cash. I think I could put together a study on the usage of terms like "n00b" and "teh sux0rz." Cha-ching!

Rick Monday, patriot

Take that, hippies!

Thirty years ago today, when I was little more than a month old, the Chicago Cubs were playing a game here in L.A. against the Dodgers when a father and son jumped out of the stands and into the outfield, where they tried to burn an American flag. Cubs center fielder Rick Monday, who would later play for the Dodgers (and is currently one of their broadcasters) saw what they were up to and managed to grab the lighter fluid-soaked flag away from the protesters. Afterward, the crowd spontaneously broke into "God Bless America."

You can read more about the incident (and hear Vin Scully's play-by-play account of it--yay INTERNET!), which was recently named one of baseball's 100 greatest moments by the Hall of Fame, here and here.

Update: Welcome Florida Cracker readers! Feel free to look around and leave comments. Thanks for stopping by.

You can't dust for vomit

Okay, this is a little weird. I'm not exactly sure why the cops are involved. Maybe it's part of a crackdown on littering.

Sheriff's deputies in Henry County [Iowa] are stuck in the middle of a less than appetizing investigation. Investigators are trying to find the person who has dumped bags of what appears to be human vomit in ditches in a 1 1/2-mile area northeast of the city.

Deputy Dan Wesley said as many as 50 garbage and trash bags containing regurgitated food has been dumped over the past three years.

Bags, ranging in size from small white trash bags to large black lawn bags, have been found with only a couple of inches of the substance in them, Wesley said.

They ought to keep an eye out for a skinny teenage girl with subscriptions to several fashion magazines. That, or Karen Carpenter.

A sample was taken from one of the bags and sent to a private lab for analysis.

"We haven't found any DNA or anything yet," he said.

[...]

"We were just hoping ... whoever is doing it will stop," Wesley said.

But if that happens, how will you catch this nefarious fiend? I mean, someone definitely ought to be in prison for this kind of crime spree.

Oh no, it asplode!

If you like seeing things like a fighter jet crashing into a wall and exploding over and over and from several different angles, you should probably click here.

You're not helping, perckerwoods

The debate over illegal immigration reform can be heated and contentious, but this kind of thing is ridiculous, and it sure as hell doesn't help the side that wants to strengthen our border security and see the laws enforced.

Prominent Hispanic elected officials, including the mayor of Los Angeles and California's lieutenant governor, have received threats in the midst of a heated national debate over immigration policy, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday.

Schwarzenegger told reporters about the threats against Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, both Democrats, during a news conference in his office Monday.

"There's something very important that I need to speak to my fellow Californians about," he said. "It has come to my attention that our Lieutenant Governor Bustamante and our Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa and other elected officials of Mexican heritage have received disturbing and hateful death threats."

[...]

Bustamante spokesman Steve Green said the lieutenant governor appeared at some immigration rallies with Villaraigosa at the end of March and received "nasty e-mails" afterward. The threat came about three weeks ago on a blank postcard, he said.

"We got one postcard from Pasadena that said words to the effect, 'All you dirty Mexicans should go back to Mexico. The only good Mexican is a dead Mexican,"' Green said.

And there you go. Some racist asshole makes threats like this, and I can guarantee that this just gives ammunition to the other side of the political debate. "Look at the racist bullshit that they're espousing," someone will say.

If you want to disagree with someone's politics, that's your right. This kind of thing is beyond the pale, though. Stupid, too. Really stupid.

The power of logic

Man, don't you just hate it when something like this happens?

HAYWARD, Calif. - A man who spent five hours naked and stuck in the chimney of his stepmother's home was arrested on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs, police said.

Really? Drugs? I never would've guessed.

Police say Michael Urbano, 23, locked himself out of the house early Saturday morning and decided to get in on a cable TV wire through the chimney.

But the wire broke and Urbano fell, getting stuck about three-quarters of the way down. He was freed when a firefighter pushed him to safety.

"We get him up, and he's naked as a jaybird," said Hayward police Lt. Gary Branson. "He tells us he took his clothes off because there would be less friction going down the chute. We did find his clothes. So that part checked out."

Now, with solid reasoning like that, I just find it hard to believe that this guy was on drugs. I mean, what would you have done?

Sen. Giant Douche, D-Mass.

John Kerry took time out of his busy schedule of doing...what, exactly...to give a speech in Boston last night about how dissent against the war in Iraq is patriotic and compared it to (surprise!) Vietnam.

I was listening to ABC News on the radio on the way home and heard the following nugget, which they didn't include in the story they had on the speech on their website:

Then, and even now, there were many alarmed by dissent—many who thought that staying the course would eventually produce victory—or that admitting the mistake and ending it would embolden our enemies around the world. History disproved them before another decade was gone: Fourteen years elapsed between the first major American commitment of helicopters and pilots to Vietnam and the fall of Saigon. Fourteen years later, the Berlin Wall fell, and with it the Communist threat. You cannot tell me that withdrawing from Vietnam earlier would have changed that outcome.

Maybe not, Sen. Giant Douche, but my friend's dad, who spent time in a communist "re-education" camp after the fall of Saigon and subsequently fled Vietnam with millions of other refugees, could not be reached for comment.

Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, quipped, "The American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. They must do the same today."*

*Yes, that was a cheap shot, but I just couldn't help myself.

What was that about the "culture of corruption," again?

Oh, snap! This is hi-frigging-larious.

The top Democrat on the House ethics committee agreed Friday to leave the panel to defend his financial conduct and ease the political burden on a party that has made Republican corruption a major campaign theme.

Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., decided on his own to step down at least temporarily, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said. His presence on the committee, while under an ethics cloud, would have undermined Democratic accusations that majority Republicans allow a "culture of corruption" in Congress.

Shut up, really? Later in the article, while trying to blame the resignation of the (and you'll have to excuse me, but I love pointing this out) senior Democrat on the Ethics Committee over shady financial conduct, Pelosi just couldn't help herself and dropped the whole "Republican culture of corruption" line again.

It is to laugh. Well, it would be if these people weren't trying to wrest back control of at least one house of congress.

To think I nearly missed it

Hey all you stoners out there, I almost forgot that today was 4/20, brahs! I bet you guys, like, got totally baked! Did you wake up at 4:20 this morning for a little wake and bakeage?

Oh, I'm sorry to harsh your mellow, but did anybody mention that you were kind of celebrating this guy's birthday?

There she is....

There's an interesting article on Fox News about unusual beauty pagents. Did you know, for instance, that geeks have pagents? Well, it's true.

The Miss Klingon Empire Beauty Pageant, held every year at the Star Trek Convention at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, aims to discover beauties who are out of this world.

But this pageant's definition of beauty might seem alien to most of us — these ladies get glammed up to assume the persona of any female Klingon character, official or created, from "Star Trek."

"[The pageant features] the most beautiful women the Klingon Empire has to offer, to be judged in Beauty, Talent and Personality categories," it says on the Miss Klingon Web site.

There are a couple of pictures at the Fox News link and more at the Miss Klingon site, and let's just say that they have a...somewhat different standard of beauty. That's okay, though. Klingon gals need love, too.

Oh. Yay.

Well, I guess we'll all just have to hold our breath for the rest of the year...

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said on Thursday he was seriously thinking about another White House bid in 2008 and will decide before the year is out.

"I will make that decision toward the end of the year, but I'm thinking about it hard," Kerry said in response to a question at the Latin Economic Forum at the United Nations.

Sounds like the appropriate place for Kerry to be mulling over his future plans for higher office. Wait, no it doesn't. Besides, it took valuable time away from his carping about the Bush administration's foreign policy in Latin America, which is, I guess, his patriotic duty. Or something.

Anyway, here's a little red meat for the moonbats:

"If you can get help me find 60,000 votes in Ohio ...," he joked, referring to the close race in that state on which his 2004 loss to President Bush hinged.

Ah, the plaintive sound of the Democrat sore loser. At least Kerry still has a job (of sorts). If it weren't for that, he'd probably be heading to Crazy Town with Al Gore.

Knock knock, can I cop a feel?

You know, this kind of thing never works. Or...uh...so I've been told.

A 76-year-old man claiming to be a doctor went door-to-door in a Florida neighborhood offering free breast exams, and was charged with sexually assaulting two women who accepted the offer, police said on Thursday.

One woman became suspicious after the man asked her to remove all her clothes and began conducting a purported genital exam without donning rubber gloves, investigators said.

That was when she became suspicious? I think I would have been suspicious when a dirty old man showed up at my front door offering to feel me up, but that's just me. I'm kind of a prude.

The white-haired suspect, Philip Winikoff, carried a black bag and claimed to be visiting on behalf of a local hospital.

"He told the woman that he was in the neighborhood offering free breast exams," sheriff's spokesman Hugh Graf said in a statement.

And they say nobody does housecalls anymore. There's a reason for that, you know--it's because real doctors don't tend to do housecalls anymore, especially not when they're just "in the neighborhood offering free breast exams." Think, people.

Goodbye, cruel world

The sad thing about this story is that there are plenty of people who'd be willing to help the guy for a nominal fee. I know because they're constantly sending me e-mail.

An 18-year-old student jumped to his death because he was convinced his genitals were too small, a Singapore coroner's report said on Wednesday.

In delivering the verdict of suicide, state Coroner Tan Boon Heng said that the incident highlighted the importance of sex education in and outside schools.

The junior college student's death showed that even intelligent young people can be "victims of misinformation," Tan said.

"The deceased was so tormented by his unfounded (belief in his) inadequacy that it drove him to end his life," the ruling said.

Now, if you think I'm going to stoop to making a joke at the expense of the guy's ethnicity (he was Asian), you're sorely mistaken. I have too much class for that.

I will, however, make fun of him for the following:

The youth had confided in his mother in October that he was worried that his private parts were too small.

Dude, going to your mom and telling her that you're worried that your junk is too small is just teh ghey.

(via Fark)

Mmmmmm...sammich

Great googly-moogly, I can feel my arteries hardening just by reading about this, and I love it.

As if the Hardee's family of Monster Thickburgers didn't offer enough meat, the company's latest version adds steak meat on top of an already large slab of beef.

The meat-on-meat Philly Cheesesteak Thickburger, launched Tuesday, features one-third of a pound of Angus beef, along with both Swiss and American cheeses, green peppers and onions. And piled atop all of that is thinly sliced steak meat.

"We actually found in this case, the only way to make a burger taste like a cheesesteak was to literally put the steak on it," said Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing for the St. Louis-based chain.

Personally, I think I'd pass on the green peppers, but that sounds pretty tasty. Unsurprisingly, the usual killjoys have their panties in a twist.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocate for nutrition and health, said Hardee's continues to add unhealthy offerings at a time when the nation is suffering from an obesity epidemic.

"What's next a pork chop on top?" CSPI senior nutritionist Jayne Hurley asked. "I'm always amazed they can always go one step further than I can imagine."

Well, then, I guess we should be on the lookout for a burger topped with a slab of baby back ribs, shouldn't we, Jayne? But last time I looked, we still lived in America, and restaurants are free to sell food to people who are, in turn, free to choose where and what to eat. In other words, fuck off. Anyway, I like Hardee's response:

"We have salads on our menu, we have charbroiled chicken breast and a variety of low-carb options," Haley said. "But we don't see anything wrong with making the delicious, decadent burger available to people who want it.

"You almost get two sandwiches for the price of one."

That's value, people.

Why?

One of my few, simple pleasures is the adult swim lineup on Cartoon Network. They run funny stuff like Aqua Teen Hungerforce, Futurama, Family Guy, and The Venture Bros., along with a few anime shows that I like. In other words, they show cartoons that adults can enjoy. That said, why the hell would they start showing this?

I guess the people who are responsible for programming over at a.s. think it's ironic or funny or something, but the fan reaction has been...tepid, at best.

Terrorist beats spokesduck

Apparently, there's a list of the least sexy men on Earth, and Gilbert Gottfried is at the top of the list. Since Osama bin Laden came in at #8, I guess that means he's marginally sexier than Gottfried. Who knew?

Update: The full list is available here. Contains salty language.

Taking "bite me" too seriously

Remember Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal guy? Well, he's back in the news.

A sex expert at the retrial of a German cannibal jailed for killing a man and feeding on his flesh said Tuesday the defendant had not been motivated by a desire to kill but by his victim's wish to be eaten.

Armin Meiwes, who was jailed two years ago for killing a computer engineer who had begged to be eaten, is standing trial for the second time after Germany's top criminal court ruled that his eight-year sentence for manslaughter was too lenient.

So far, this sounds a little weird, but we're about to take a trip right into the Twilight Zone.

Meiwes's defense hinges on his victim's request to be eaten and that he was simply fulfilling this desire, a view backed up by a sex psychologist who addressed the court in Frankfurt.

"He (Meiwes) was convinced that he wanted it and that he would live on within him," Klaus Beier told the court. "His motivation was not to kill." [emphasis mine]

Ohhhhhh kay. I'm not any kind of expert, but that sounds like some serious crazy.

Beier described Meiwes as an affable, self-confident and positive man, who apart from his crime would have done little to attract attention.

Sounds like the old joke: "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

He told the crowded court how Meiwes had searched the Internet for a suitable partner, trawling through advertisements including one from a 26-year-old who was looking for "a likeable, older gentleman to read me my death sentence."

His search had been fruitless, however, until he met Bernd-Juergen Brandes, who had advertised for someone to "obliterate his life and leave no trace."

Again, I'm not an expert on the law--especially German law--but that sounds like intent to me. He was actively looking for somebody to eat.

Anyway, if you want some of the more grisly details, you can find them at the second page of the article, along with some psychobabble about how he did this because his daddy left him. Yeah.

Perfect for the whiny, emo Old One who has everything

I guess now we know why Cthulhu sleeps so much--it turns out he's depressed!

(h/t Maggie Katzen)