Put some pants on, dude

I tend to get excited by the prospect of seeing other people—women, actually—naked. The thought of other people seeing me nude, not so much. This guy is apparently an altogether different story.

Police arrested a motorist accused of twice visiting a coffee stand while naked from the waist down.

Garry Scott Harding, 37, of Bend [Oregon] was arraigned Tuesday on public indecency and stalking charges.

A 16-year-old worker at the stand told police that a man without pants or underwear visited the stand twice over the last few weeks and returned Monday fully clothed, according to a report written by Roberto Robles of the Bend Police Department.

She called police during the last visit and officers stopped Harding before he could leave. During an interview with investigators, Harding explained that his ex-wife had once removed his pants before the couple visited a drive-thru window in Montana, according to authorities. Harding apparently said he couldn't stop thinking about the experience and wanted to try it again.

Having gone into the place sans trou once, it's pretty interesting that the guy got away with it a second time. I get that—he got his dirty little thrill again. But what I want to know is why he'd go back to the same place, fully clothed.

Maybe he figured they wouldn't recognize him. After all, I'm pretty sure his face probably wasn't the most distinctive thing about his appearance those first two times.

Stripping for the children

Here's a story to warm the cockles of your heart. And also your pants.

The Clark County School District kicked off the first day of school Wednesday with scant resources. But it got a major donation from the scantily clad.

The same day the nation's fifth largest school district began the year with some 400 teaching vacancies, the nonprofit corporation that supports it, the Public Education Foundation, accepted a $2,500 donation from a strip club, Scores Las Vegas.

[...]

Scores raised the funds at an Aug. 23 back-to-school event called "Detention" that featured strippers dressed as teachers, schoolgirls and librarians.

"It's back to school time and you know what that means. Detention for everyone who has been bad!" one advertisement read.

The performers peeled off clothes and offered lap dances to customers, [Scores Marketing Director Shai] Cohen said. Patrons also left more than $1,000 donations in a jar that the club said would go to the Clark County School District. Scores matched the donations roughly dollar for dollar, he said.

"In this town, money is money, regardless," Cohen said. "We're a respectable business. We pay taxes like everybody else. We have a business license. It's for a good cause."

"Education is very important," he said.

And really, who knows the importance of a good education better than someone who works with strippers? But seriously, good job you dirty, dirty girls.

No parking

Parking in most big cities is a real bitch. That said, I don't think this is really an appropriate response to a parking dispute. Unless you're a magician.

A street parking attendant in Brazil's crime-ridden city of Rio de Janeiro was charged with sawing a woman in two over a parking space dispute, police said on Wednesday.

The 29-year-old male suspect was arrested on Tuesday night and confessed to murdering businesswoman Edna Souza, 51, in a house she was trying to rent in the middle class Botafogo district, a police spokeswoman said.

"Only the bottom part of the corpse has been found. Today police are going in force to the city waste dump, which will be combed to try to find the upper part," the spokeswoman said.

Well, now, doesn't that sound like fun?

The parking attendant told police he had had an argument with Souza some time ago when she left her car in front of a building where parking was banned, ignoring his protests. The last time she came to the neighbourhood on Monday he followed her inside the house and killed her.

Police received information that the two had quarrelled and questioned the man, who confessed the murder. He killed her with a knife and then used a handsaw to dismember the body, police said. The man said Souza had humiliated him.

One can only wonder what depraved depths of violence he would've sunk to had she, say, parked in front of a fire hydrant.

Gas and hump

This is funny, especially because of the use of the phrase "pump prices." That's just how my mind works.

Hot and bothered by rising pump prices? Australian brothels are offering clients discounts based on their gas bills.

Brothel owners claim the system works much the same way as supermarkets which offer shoppers discounted gas prices by presenting their grocery bills when they fill up their tanks.

"If you come in and spend time with one of our lovely ladies, we'll give you a discount of 20 cents a liter," Kerry, manager of Sydney brothel The Site, told Reuters Wednesday.

There is no link between brothels, petrol providers or supermarkets but brothels like The Site and Madame Kerry's say the system is simple.

Once you've filled up your car, bring your receipt to the brothel and they'll discount the price of your visit.

The bill for a full 50-liter tank at 126.9 cents per liter comes to A$63.45 ($48.22). With the offered 20c a liter discount, the petrol bill would have instead come to A$53.45.

That A$10 difference is taken off the A$150 cost of a 30-minute session with one of the brothel's "service providers."

As the article notes, brothels are legal in most of Australia. They're illegal here, so I don't know how we could work something similar--and, hey, it's a good deal--out. Maybe you could consult your local pimp, though I don't think most pimps are big on the idea of discounts.

Oh, and I love the use of a term like "service providers." C'mon, foax. They're prostitutes. Next thing you know, crack dealers are going to be called "amateur pharmacists."

Tequila sale causes mild annoyance

So, the company that makes Jack Daniel's bought up some tequila maker down in Mexico, and now the locals are furious. Well, somewhat upset, anyway.

"Nothing is sacred. Look, now Herradura tequila has gone," said Heriberto Zuniga, slugging back an aged Herradura tequila in Ardalio, a classic no-frills cantina in Mexico City's Escandon neighborhood.

The 26-year-old plumber said he'd boycott the drink if only he had the willpower. "I'd like to say this is my last Herradura, but it won't be, I like it too much."

Um, Heriberto, up here in El Norte, that's what we refer to as a "drinking problem." You might want to work on that willpower.

I'm just saying is all.

Is multiculturalism dead in the UK?

Well, that's what the author of this article, one Ron Liddle, says. Furthermore, he posits that the Labour politicians who put the multicultural policies in place are responsible for its demise.

Quick, somebody buy a wreath. Last week marked the passing of multiculturalism as official government doctrine. No longer will opponents of this corrosive and divisive creed be silenced simply by the massed Pavlovian ovine accusation: “Racist!” Better still, the very people who foisted multiculturalism upon the country are the ones who have decided that it has now outlived its usefulness — that is, the political left.

It is amazing how a few by-election shocks and some madmen with explosive backpacks can concentrate the mind. At any rate, British citizens, black and white, can move onwards together — towards a sunlit upland of monoculturalism, or maybe zeroculturalism, whatever takes your fancy.

That multiculturalism really is officially dead and buried can be inferred both from Ruth Kelly’s comments last week and, indeed, from the title of the commission that the government had convened in the wake of the July 7 terrorist attacks last year and to which her observations were made.

In fairness, Kelly, the communities and local government secretary, merely posed the question as to whether the creed had resulted in division and alienation. “Have we ended up with some communities living in isolation from each other?” she asked. That she was speaking wholly rhetorically is evident from the title of the commission: the Commission for Integration and Cohesion. You don’t get either of those things with multiculturalism: they are mutually exclusive.

It has all been a long time coming. Some 22 years ago Ray Honeyford, the previously obscure headmaster of Drummond middle school in Bradford, suggested, in the low-circulation right-wing periodical The Salisbury Review, that his Asian pupils should really be better integrated into British society.

They should learn English, for a start, and a bit of British history and a sense of what the country is about; further, Asian (Muslim) girls should be allowed to learn to swim despite the objections of their parents (who did not like them stripping down even in front of each other). Muslim kids should be treated like every other pupil, in other words.

For these mild contentions, Honeyford was investigated by the government, vilified as a racist by the press, ridiculed every day by leftie demonstrators outside his office and was eventually hounded from his job. He has not worked since.

[...]

This is how far we have come in the past year or so. When an ICM poll of Britain’s Muslims in February this year revealed that some 40% (that is, about 800,000 people) wished to see Islamic law introduced in parts of Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality responded by saying that they should therefore pack their bags and clear off. Sir Trevor Phillips’s exact words were these: “If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.”

My guess is this: if such a statement had been made by a member of the Tory party’s Monday Club in 1984 — or, for that matter, 1994 — he would have been excoriated and quite probably would have been kicked out of the party. “If you don’t like it here then go somewhere else” was once considered the apogee of “racism”. People who did not like it here were exhorted to exert their political muscle and change the status quo.

Read the whole thing. It goes into some things about British politics that I'm not really familiar with, but the main point seems to be that even "progressive" Labour politicians are waking up to the idea that having large, unassimilated, hostile groups of people living in their country might be, you know, a bad thing. Dangerous, even.

(via Andrea Harris)

God bless the nude heroes of Florida

I don't throw around terms like "heroes" very often, but in this case, I feel it's appropriate.

A nudist getaway that received top mention in "Playboy" magazine was the recent host to a very enticing fundraiser.

The Caliente nudist resort in Land O'Lakes, Fla. hosted Relay for Life, raising money for cancer while baring it all in true nudist fashion, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

Various methods were employed to raise funds for the American Cancer Society, including topless kisses for $5 and "Titty T's" shirts available for $10 a pop.

The main event, the relay, had naked participants prancing around resort grounds, strolling pool-side and crooning on the karaoke machine. At least one attendee was said to be dressed, namely, Giggles the clown, also known as the county commissioner.

That's good, because clown nudity is just wrong. But seriously, raising money for cancer research is always a good thing. And when you can pair that with topless kissing booths, well, that's something special. Heroes, I tell you.

[wipes away single tear]

Yikes!

Man, what the hell happened to Ray Liotta's face? He's got some kind of Joker thing going on with his mouth.

Image via The Internet Movie Database.

Go for the syrup, stay for the nudity

Hey, perverts! What are you doing hanging out here, reading my pathetic little blog, when you could be ogling nude teenagers in Vermont?

Some have appeared naked in a downtown parking lot. Others rode their bicycles or simply strolled the streets in the nude.

Teenagers in the quaint Vermont town of Brattleboro are raising eyebrows this summer with brazen displays of nudity.

So far they haven't been arrested or ticketed: public nudity isn't illegal in the town of 13,000 people, unless it's done to arouse sexual gratification.

And yet, here in California, if I "forget" to wear pants when I go out to get the paper, everybody makes a big deal about it.

Of course, somebody had to spoil it for everyone else...

Nobody, including the police, seemed to take offense until one local, Theresa Toney, went before the town government in August to complain about a group of youngsters naked in a parking lot.

"The parking lot is not a strip club," she said. "What about children seeing this?"

But it's natural, maaaan! You need to get over your hangups.

Of course, we're talking about Vermont, the land that brought us Ben & Jerry and Howard Dean, so some of the nudity is, how shall we say, idiot-related.

"We have a nuclear power plant a few miles away and a ridiculous war in the Middle East, countries getting bombed," said Ian Bigelow, a 23-year-old who had gathered with some of his friends outside a bookstore. "So why's it such a big problem if we chose to get nude?"

I honestly don't know how to respond to a statement like that. My brain hurts.

Auf Wiedersehen, Hitler Gaststätte*

Remember the Hitler-themed restaurant in India that I posted about the other day? Well, it looks like the owner has decided to scrap that idea.

The owner of a restaurant named after Adolf Hitler said Thursday he will change its name because it angered so many people.

Puneet Sablok said he would remove Hitler's name and the Nazi swastika from billboards and the menu. He had said the restaurant's name _ "Hitler's Cross" _ and symbols were only meant to attract attention.

Sablok made the decision after meeting with members of Bombay's small Jewish community.

"Once they told me how upset they were with the name, I decided to change it," he said. "I don't want to do business by hurting people."

I still can't believe this guy didn't realize that having a theme restaurant which was based on Nazism was, let's say, in poor taste.

Sablok said he had not yet decided on a new name.

Let's see...how about Stalin's Gulag Experience Russian Tearoom? Or perhaps a sushi joint based on Japanese atrocities in the Pacific? I can see it now: "Tojo's--a Place for Sushi."

*title courtesy of Alta Vista Babel Fish

Cheers to Milwaukee!

While nearly everybody knows that there are rankings released every year for best "Party School" (I think the University of Texas won this year), I honestly didn't know that they had a ranking for Party Cities. I guess you learn something new every day.

Milwaukee has been ranked by Forbes.com as "America's Drunkest City" on a list of 35 major metropolitan areas ranked for their drinking habits.

Forbes said Tuesday it used numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rank cities in five areas: state laws, number of drinkers, number of heavy drinkers, number of binge drinkers and alcoholism.

Minneapolis-St. Paul was ranked second overall; followed by Columbus, Ohio; Boston; Austin, Texas; Chicago; Cleveland; Pittsburgh and then Philadelphia and Providence, R.I., in a tie for ninth.

[...]

But officials at Visit Milwaukee, the area's convention and visitors bureau, contend that the city has come a long way in ridding itself of its beer-guzzling image.

Milwaukeeans have plenty of other ways to entertain themselves without drinking alcohol, said Dave Fantle, a spokesman for the group. He noted a new convention center and baseball park had been built and the Milwaukee Art Museum expanded in recent years.

Now, I don't know about the museum or the convention center, but the ballpark...well, it's Miller Park where the Brewers play. So much for that "beer-guzzling image," huh?

Gee, I wonder how they'll celebrate winning the title.

Porno makes him hot

You know, if you feel guilty about what you did at the porno store, you should just do what everyone else does (so I'm told)—cast your eyes downward and try to leave without making eye contact with anybody. You probably don't want to do what this guy did.

Miami-Dade police are searching for the man who was caught on tape starting a fire inside an adult bookstore in Miami.

It happened Saturday, Aug. 12, at about 3:20 a.m. inside the store on Southwest 40th Street.

Police said a man went inside the bookstore and asked the clerk for change for the video machines. The man then went into a video booth.

"The guy came in like a regular customer," said store manager Theresa Jelley.

Police said a few minutes later, the man came out of the booth and told the clerk, "I have a guilty conscience. I'm going to set the place on fire."

"It came out of nowhere. He told the clerk that he felt guilty and then he walked to the booth, opened it up and threw gasoline on the floor and lit a lighter," Jelley said.

Surveillance video inside the store showed that the man pulled out a plastic bottle filled with a liquid and poured the liquid on the ground in the video area. He then ignited the liquid, causing a large fire.

The manager says that nobody recognized him, and that most of the store's customers are "regulars." The real tragedy here is that those people are going to have to find somewhere else for their...self gratification.

(Or, I suppose, they could just use the internets. I hear those tubes are just stuffed full of the naughty stuff. Yep, that's what I hear.)

Bunnies!

I thought I'd kind of go the other way from the psycho killer raccoons. Just because.

"Psycho Killer Raccoons Terrorize Olympia"

This story has one of the more sensationalistic headlines I've seen in a while. Not just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill killer raccoons, these are psycho killer raccoons we're dealing with! They haven't swarmed and killed any people, though...not yet.

A fierce group of raccoons has killed 10 cats, attacked a small dog and bitten at least one pet owner who had to get rabies shots, residents of Olympia say.

Some have taken to carrying pepper spray to ward off the masked marauders and the woman who was bitten now carries an iron pipe when she goes outside at night.

"It's a new breed," said Tamara Keeton, who with Kari Hall started a raccoon watch after an emotional neighborhood meeting drew 40 people. "They're urban raccoons, and they're not afraid."

"Urban" raccoons, huh? I think we all know what that means.

Tony Benjamins, whose family lost two cats, said he got a big dog _ a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix _ to keep the raccoons away.

[...]

"We used to love the raccoons. They'd have their babies this time of year, and they were so cute. Even though we lived in the city, it was neat to have wildlife around," he said, "but this year, things changed. They went nuts."

I place the blame for the raccoons' mental instability squarely where it belongs: on George W. Bush.

Joe Rosenthal, R.I.P.

We've lost an icon of journalism, from back in the day when reporters were actually supportive of our war aims. Joe Rosenthal died this weekend at 94.

Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.

Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

"He was a good and honest man, he had real integrity," Anne Rosenthal said.

His photo, taken for The Associated Press on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.

Now, try to imagine Mike Wallace saying something like the following:

"What I see behind the photo is what it took to get up to those heights the kind of devotion to their country that those young men had, and the sacrifices they made," Rosenthal once said. "I take some gratification in being a little part of what the U.S. stands for."

Oh my God, he wasn't being objective! It's like he wasn't even trying to see things from the Japanese soldier's point of view!

Anyway, the famous photo is reproduced below:

I'm warning you

Don't click on this link. Seriously. You'll thank me later.

Dining with Der Fuehrer

You know, I don't understand why anybody would possibly be offended by this.

A new restaurant in India's financial hub, named after Adolf Hitler and promoted with posters showing the German leader and Nazi swastikas, has infuriated the country's small Jewish community.

'Hitler's Cross', which opened last week, serves up a wide range of continental fare and a big helping of controversy, thanks to a name the owners say they chose to stand out among hundreds of Mumbai eateries.

"We wanted to be different. This is one name that will stay in people's minds," owner Punit Shablok told Reuters.

"We are not promoting Hitler. But we want to tell people we are different in the way he was different."

So, the restaurant is named after Hitler, has pictures of Hitler and swastikas all over the place, but they're not "promoting Hitler." Yeah, that makes sense.

I must say, though, that Hitler certainly was "different." If, by "different," you mean "megalomaniacal" or "genocidal." Anyway, back to the Hitler non-promotion:

Posters line the road leading up to it, featuring a red swastika carved in the name of the eatery. One slogan reads: "From Small Bites to Mega Joys."

A huge portrait of a stern-looking Fuehrer greets visitors at the door. The cross in the restaurant's name refers to the swastika that symbolized the Nazi regime.

Nope, no Hitler promotion there. Not at all. But for some unfathomable reason, the Jewish community in India (yeah, who knew?) is upset about this. Baffling, I know.

Perhaps it's the slogan. That is a really sucky slogan.

"All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us"

It was inevitable, really, if you think about it.

"Fun" with condoms

Everybody is wearing condoms! But, uh, not in the fun way.

Condoms are very much in style as a fashion accessory at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, showing up on strait-laced men, shy teenagers and African grandmothers.

"There's a great need to de-stigmatize condoms around the world, especially in Africa," said Franck DeRose, executive director of The Condom Project, which aims to get people comfortable about condoms, especially those living in countries where the little piece of latex is considered taboo.

To do that, the project has a program that gets people making their own condom art pin. It all starts with a craft table, packaged condoms, scraps of colored paper, candy and other double-sided tape.

Wow, doesn't that sound like fun? No, not really. And what's up with "candy and other double-sided tape," anyway? Don't these people have editors anymore?

Oh, and I love this little bit of multi-cultural liberal pap:

"We're not pushing it on people. They come to us and the information is there," said DeRose, adding his group teams up with the local information groups in the communities where his team visits.

"I don't think it's healthy or appropriate to change a culture. But we can change the risky behavior within a community."

We don't want to change someone's culture, per se. No, we just want to alter their behavior and attitudes in some fundamental ways. See the difference? What do you mean, "no"? Come back here!

Anyway, click on the link to see a picture of a little girl (seriously, she can't be more than six or seven years old) staring at a dress made of condoms. Isn't that just darling?

Historic hoes

When it comes to the preservation of historic buildings, I'm...less than passionate. Most of the time, that is. But in this case, I think it's important. Very important.

A centuries-old brothel teetering on the verge of collapse has red-faced Chinese officials pondering heritage versus morality behind closed doors, state media reported on Thursday.

A local government in Jinggang, a town in central Hunan province, must decide whether to restore crumbling Hongtaifang, a brothel established in 1733, and face the ire of residents who see it as debauched, Xinhua news agency said.

"The brothel was a place where women were humiliated in the old society," Xinhua quoted Xiao Yisheng, a retired university professor, as saying.

"Its restoration could be seen as promoting prostitution."

Tan Feng, a student from Xiao's alma mater, begged to differ, saying the site was bound to prompt different reactions in different people.

"When I entered the brothel, it reminded me that it was a place where the ancients indulged in sensual pleasures," Tan said.

In other words, he gets a tingle in his no-no place thinking about old-timey prostitutes. But really, if you can get people thinking and talking about history, isn't that the important thing?

No, I guess not.