Fifty-second sign of the apocalypse: facial hair transplants. Meh. It's elective surgery, so (one presumes) they're paying for it out-of-pocket. Probably with their parents' money, but still. Their face, their money, who cares?

Science correspondent Miles O' Brien lost weight the wrong way. Who designs bodies like these?

It really was only a matter of time: Google glass seems to have acquired it very first "adult themed" app. Maybe I'm just weird, but to me one of the points of grown-up fun is admiring one's partner, with perhaps the occasional glance in a mirror to see two people having a lot of fun. That said, there is the whole "Jersey Shore" angle. Bah. If you want to watch yourself doing your significant other while you're both wearing goofy-looking glasses, knock yourselves out.

And in the "so this is a thing" file we have men dressing up as anatomically correct female dolls. That time I said "bronies" were the most inexplicable thing I'd ever come across? Yeah, I'm gonna have to take that back.

Is that a gun in your...waitaminute...that's not a pocket! I'd think that would at least itch a bit.

"PATIENT STATES HE WAS EXPERIENCING AN ITCHY RECTUM AND INSERTED A REMOTE CONTROL TO SCRATCH"

"Unless the reality of Secret Space War phenomena is openly revealed and corroborated with hard evidence in public and admitted by all world governments, this knowledge cannot be yet be received or processed by the masses."

Personally, I think if you set your criteria wide enough it includes an entire century you'll find people dying in weird ways pretty easily. This article seems to prove that right. I'm not sure it's possible to overestimate just how deadly-dumb people can be.

Another year, another German cannibal finding someone willing to climb up on his dinner table. I'm not sure if this is a German thing, or if it's just Germany that's going after these people.

It's all fun and games until the pig farm explodes. I get that people want bacon quickly, but there are limits.

A Swiss forensic team is expected to reveal that Yasser Arafat was poisoned. The Palestinians, naturally, blame Israel. This time around they may have the case, since that's the only group I can think of in the region with access to Plutonium. You'd think rat poison would be easier.

It's all fun and games until the maggots in your hair weave start eating your scalp. Jeebus, that makes me itch.

Let's just say I'm glad guys aren't typically invited to baby showers. And I don't eat cake all that often, either. Meh. Your money, your party.

Home owner: "Damn these stupid drivers, I'm stopping them ending up in my lawn once and for all."

Drunk idiot: "Challenge accepted."

There's a house in Arlington that's literally at the top of the west-bound Glebe Road exist on I-66. We've always wondered how many cars have ended up in their yard over the years.

Our long national nightmare is over: Facebook is allowing graphically violent video content to be shared again. I visit LiveLeak regularly, so it's nothing I haven't seen before, but it's yet another reason Olivia won't be getting unsupervised internet access any time soon.

And now, monkeys trained to look like people, right down to wearing masks to seal the deal. I wouldn't had that my money because I'd be too busy screaming and rolling the window up. Or, better yet, not roll down the window at all.

For most of us, discovering a worm living in our mouth would result in frantic calls and doctor visits. This guy isn't most people. Meh. It's his mouth, it's not like I'm kissing him.

Now, my politics says I can't condemn this, because it doesn't violate the Three Rules*. However, can I get a, "EWWWWW!!!!" from the crowd here?

---
* Stay out of trouble, pay your taxes, keep off my lawn.

Every time I think the movie industry can't get any more self-absorbed they go and prove me wrong again. Here's to hoping the movie has an art-house sized release, because explaining to my 10 year-old why these people look funny is a job I'm not much in the mood for at the moment.

And now, hornets as big as the palm of your hand. And yep, they're big enough to kill people with their sting. Strangely, they don't live in Australia.

Dude, when a helicopter blows your hat off, just let it go. I'll bet that sort of carelessness came from the same place that caused that beauty queen to get chopped up by a plane's propeller. Spinning blade-like things should be treated like, well, spinning blade-like things. Be careful, people!

Color me unsurprised: Fiat is delaying Alfa's return to the US again. This is not a repeat from '96, '99', '03... you get the picture.

News: Suspect in string of burglaries photographed. WTF: in a "resplendent" silver suit. Hey, fashion is expensive. Me, I bet it has something to do with avoiding motion detectors.

Good: 'asploding targets! Bad: idiots being creative with 'asploding targets. It's not like the current administration needs an excuse to meddle in our lives, let's give them a legitimate excuse to do so!

It seems that stuffing cash up your backside is a wee bit dangerous. Who knew? I'd like to think it was wrapped in a condom or something, but I have a feeling someone with decision making skills this poor probably didn't think of that.

It's all fun and games until the office building melts your car. From the "John Hancock Tower" school of unintended consequences. I guess they'll have to block off those parking spaces from now on, or maybe put something on the windows to stop this from happening.

Darwin on the river: young man goes swimming in crocodile-infested river, chew-larity ensues. I mean, Australia tries plenty hard enough to kill you on a good day. There's no need to go and make it easy.

It's just like I tell my daughter, this is what happens when you don't pick up after yourself. Of course, she's not likely to lose THAT. Me? I'm married. I always know where mine is--in that purse over there.

On the one hand, yeah, fleeing the US in your own boat because of various beefs with the US government is a pretty ridiculous idea. On the other, they did manage to survive more or less intact for 90 days in the Pacific ocean. Sounds like they almost got it right. Still, I'd think next time a plane ticket or three might be a better idea.

Well, they DO use social media to make announcements, after all. Yeah, I know, but I hear Hell has beaches!

This collection of disaster pictures is pretty darned impressive, but "stromboli volcano?" What's next, "pizza hurricane?" Mmm... Pizza...

There's "Holy crap, a spider!" and then there's OMFG! SPIDERS! F- YOU AND YOUR CONNECTING FLIGHT I'M OUTTA HERE! Personally, I don't have a problem with this. Some of my friends would likely want the tower burned to the ground and rebuilt before they set foot in it again.

Now, I know you'll be just as surprised as I am, so sit down before you read this. "Sugary drinks" have been tied to childhood obesity. I have a feeling the BMI of the parents will be a stronger predictor than anything the kid actually consumes.

I'm not completely sure if this is for-real or not. Normally the real deal are about 20 lbs heavier and speak with a heavy Southern accent. The one on the right especially seems like she's auditioning for a role or something. I'm sniffing shenanigans, but it's teeth-clenchingly funny regardless.

Exactly how that last guy avoided being squashed I'll never know. When I was young and reckless I used to stand at the edge of the platform. After a few graphic LiveLeak examples of what happens when someone gets run over by a train, I stay well back until the door opens.

It's all fun and games until the utility pole comes through the windshield. Doesn't seem to have killed the driver to death, but I can't help but think injuries were involved.

There's "lose your memory bad," and then there's "lose your memory and only speak Swedish" bad. They don't come out and say it, but it seems that the guy actually is Swedish, so there's none of that "go to sleep with one language, wake up with another" nonsense. But it's still pretty darned bizarre.

Making the rounds: a New York rabbi has been accused of impersonating a police officer multiple times as he pulled over people who upset him in traffic. Yes, he was recently hospitalized for mental health issues. Very perceptive of you!

Stop me if you've heard this one: setting land speed records is dangerous. Meh. He knew the stakes, and he didn't hurt anybody else.

It's all fun and games until the rocket tips over and heads for the ground. Usually there's a range safety officer who'll blow the thing to bits before it gets the chance to come back down, but maybe it all happened too fast for the guy to react. At any rate, seems even good ol' Russian hardware will fail, on occasion.

Close-up video is here.

Sometimes it's hard to remember we're 98% chimpanzee. Other times, it's hard to forget.

There's a reason they strap a car down when it takes a dynomometer run. Looks like it fragged his rear suspension. Hopefully the guy who owns the machine has insurance, because I'm pretty sure the regular car-type won't cover this.

So, does Islamic culture emphasize women must cover up to express humility and modesty, or is it to try and provide at least some protection against their men? I'd wager the truth is far closer to the latter than any intellectual would care to admit. I also agree with the producers of the documentary: the only way to change this is to investigate and expose it. Good luck to them.

The stuff you find out trolling Wikipedia's "on this day" list: Introducing Sada Abe, who:

... is remembered for erotically asphyxiating her lover, Kichizo Ishida (石田 吉蔵 Ishida Kichizō?), on May 18, 1936, and then cutting off his penis and testicles and carrying them around with her in her handbag.

There's bound to be at least a short story in there, but I'm not gonna be the one to write it.

A Florida (naturally) restaurant is experiencing a bit of a backlash over its "lion tacos." Yep, you read that right, lion tacos. In other news, somewhere in the US there seems to be a farm that's raising lions for meat. I bet it's really hard keeping herding dogs around on it.

I'm all for raising awareness of any cancer, but some kinds just don't lend themselves very well to a mascot. Different cultures, different strokes. You know, as it were.

And yeah, the seventh seal was opened. I've only ever seen poutine, but I think Ellen's actually tried the stuff. She gags at the thought. Acquired taste, I suppose.

Who the hell gets bitten by a... basically by any damned thing in Australia and then goes on a mile and a half run? Just about the only thing that's not viciously venomous is, oh hell, I dunno, probably some of the sheep.

I guess even statues can piss off gangsters: a mysterious, giant floating head was found recently in the Hudson river. I'm thinking it might be from some sort of abandoned amusement park somewhere upstream, but heck I guess anything's possible.

Ever wonder what it'd be like to be on the roof of a building when it was imploded? Just ask this guy. The camera was zoomed in real close, so it's really hard to tell what was falling where. To me, it looked like he missed getting clobbered by a brick wall by just inches.

News you can use: "If you're going to get your vagina high, you should definitely do so thoughtfully and with the uttermost respect." All those times women have shaken their heads at the goofy crap men get up to between fifteen and twenty-five? Yeah, I just found at least one counter-weight to that.

It's all fun and games until an arm falls out of the bowling pin machine. I've seen the manual for one of those things. It's a giant collection of moving parts that will fold, mutilate, and spindle a person in a heartbeat. Reaching in to one that's turned on? Well, he already got what he deserved.

It looks like one of the Marathon bombers may have played a role in a bizarre triple murder case from 2011. Apparently he knew one of the victims. Me, I think it smells a little bit of "let's pile on," but who knows? Maybe it will lead to something.

Assuming the story can be believed, a Chinese woman is on trial for killing a man by squeezing his junk. And by "junk," I'm not talking about the trash in his back yard, ya know?

Judith Grossman: A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast Unsubstantiated accusations against my son by a former girlfriend landed him before a nightmarish college tribunal. I've read accounts of these tribunals before, in a scenario almost identical to this one. The sad thing was, that account was satire.

And in the "Well, that's comforting" file we have a study that aims to find out if you can get a lifetime's dose of hard radiation flying through a thunderstorm. This should make the regular air travelers in my circle of friends much more comfortable, I'm sure. And yes, when you read the article expect to say "sensationalize much?" a LOT.

Hey, nobody's making me drink one, and it's not happening on my lawn, so when it comes right down to it I don't have a problem with this. Well, with someone ELSE mucking around with it. Or, you know, rubbing one out for it... sort of thing.

Well what am I supposed to say about something like that?

It's fine to over-estimate, say, what's needed to make a bridge strong, or an airplane safe. When it comes to cracking open an ATM, that's not the best strategy. Then again, it didn't seem to set the cash on fire. I'm just glad nobody was anywhere near the thing.

I guess we just have to say it much more slowly: Stop trying to sleep with the teenagers you meet on the Internet. I guess we really do need to bring Chris Hansen back

Someone call the AP! The story: "Swedish feminists are going after the way men sit on the train." The reality: a single blogger has set up a site that takes pictures of guys sitting funny on a train. Meh. It's not like I plan on visiting the place anytime soon. But, now that I think about it, guys who sit like that on Metro trains are pretty obnoxious.

So, is this a rubber too far? Meh. If it means you and your partner have more fun, why the hell not? Just no pig jokes, please.

The prostitute that gave infamous serial killer Joel Rifkin AIDS has been identified. Well, her head's been identified, at any rate. Yeah, it didn't end all that well for her. It seldom does, for streetwalkers.

There's car wrecks, and then there's put your car four feet up the wall of a house car wrecks. No word if alcohol was involved. A twenty-something guy in a fast, red car doesn't need anything as dangerous as alcohol to pull a stunt like this.

Another year, another call to retire all the Navy's super-carriers. As long as we're willing to put up with slower, less capable ships, the cost savings are substantial. This is not a repeat from 1950, '60, '70, '80, '90, or '00, even though it looks like it.

I dunno... I think I'm calling "shenanigans" on this one. Mostly because I can't think of any position I can accidentally get myself in that would result in a junk-ectomy and NOT cut something else off with it. There have been cases in the past of dumb guys injuring themselves attempting a clever wank. Not saying that's what happened here, but it definitely seems fishy.

"Hey, Frank!"

"Yeah, Lou?"

"Do you think we need to strap this bridge down more?"

"Nah. It weighs tons. It's not like anything's gonna shift it."

In the "not-sure-if-serious" bin today we have news that Taylor Swift was probably inducted into the Illuminati during the most recent AMA's. Because, when I think of how new members join secret organizations, a performance at a live, nationally broadcast event is definitely top of the list.

The crap you discover, trolling Wikipedia: On this day, not quite 100 years ago, the collier Cyclops disappeared without a trace. It remains the single largest loss of life in U.S. Naval history not directly involving combat, and it happened in the Bermuda Triangle. Two of its other four sister ships also disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. The fourth was converted into the nation's first aircraft carrier.

So, in a genuinely bizarre twist of fate, every aircraft carrier the US has ever built is connected to a place where things are supposed to vanish without a trace.

A finer metaphor for the Federal Government simply could not exist...

It looks like the US isn't the only place with religious hard-liners who have skeletons in their closet. It'd be nice to think Muslims will eventually figure out that a code of laws meant to keep starving goatherds alive doesn't apply all that well to the modern world. It'd also be nice to think I'm Warren Buffet's long-lost nephew. I'm not holding my breath over either one.

Doing flavored water all wrong: police are still searching for clues as to how a Canadian tourist ended up dead in a hotel's water tank. Bonus: it was complaints of foul-tasting water that led investigators to discover the body. All together now: GROSS!!!

All those other tweets threatening the president? Well, yeah, those were probably about Obama. But the one you arrested me for? That one was about Syria. Definitely Syria. Threatening the president is one of the few things absolutely guaranteed to be both noticed and prosecuted. It's always amusing to watch what happens to know-it-all malcontents who forget this.

Well, at least this sort of thing is supposed to kill you. Since it's Australia, they've turned it into a tourist attraction and poke at it with sticks. Because, you know, if it just sits there and LOOKS deadly it's just not exciting enough.

Allen approached and noted "a flesh-colored dildo" on the passenger seat, according to the report. He says that when he asked the driver what he was doing, the man replied, "Sucking on a dildo, I'm sorry."

Read the entire article here.

Many people will be taking time out today to do something special for their loved one on Valentine's.

But for one man, this means spending time with the 'love of his life' Lila - a blow-up yellow dragon.

Mark, who features in the TLC TV show My Strange Addiction, says he would even marry Lila because he loves her so much.

Read the entire article here.

Don't forget to watch the insanity on TLC's "My Strange Addiction"!

The world's largest crocodile in captivity has died. When everyone else is talking about some old German guy who wants to putter in his garden, we're bringing you the IMPORTANT news. And, really, when you think of the best place to keep an exotic, dangerous, and high-maintenance animal, why wouldn't you put a remote village in the Philippines on that list?

So, when a progressive agenda reaches its inevitable endpoint of failure, what's a liberal to do? Fix the problem? Leave quietly and let the evil conservatives do it? No! Wait! I know! We'll just deny reality outright. It's often said that madness is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome. I think that's a fine definition of progressives and liberals, too.

There's the Olympics, and then there's the Indian Rural Olympics. They feature "being run over by a tractor, carrying bricks with your teeth and cow chariot racers." No, really!

It seems official: Burger King's whoppers neighed. Meh. No wonder Ellen always gets sick eating the stuff.

Wait, what? This is only supposed to concern the UK? Well, ok then. Whatever helps YOU sleep at night.

Dammit, another slow news day! Let's spin the Wheel 'o Sensationalism... oh, cool, that hasn't come up in awhile. Today's imminent doom is brought to you by the fresh water supply!

Ok, look, the vast majority of us live on watersheds. That means when we use fresh water all we're basically doing is slowing it down on its way to the ocean. The article claims power companies will be the main culprit for fresh water consumption. A power company will not locate a plant in a "water distressed" area, whatever the hell that means.

Think of it as subsidance with Chinese characteristics. With "bombs away" video!

It's official: Ellen is not the craziest cat lady in the world. Amber isn't, either. It's ok, I passed out when I heard the news, too. Let the inappropriate lesbian jokes begin!

Facts: A globally popular politician gives a huge cash reward to the Vatican in exchange for official recognition, in 1929. That money was carefully invested over the years and now has grown into a substantial sum. The Vatican has become extremely skilled at legally protecting its UK investments from various attempts at hyper-taxation and/or outright confiscation.

Headline: How the Vatican built a secret property empire using Mussolini's millions. I don't know why I'm surprised at the spin. Our own MSM, aka the Democratic Party's ministry of propaganda, makes these guys look like amateurs.

The man who provided the voice of Charlie Brown for the iconic Christmas special has been jailed over a stalking charge. Because a role that he had when he was, what, 9 should determine how we look at the guy today. And, you know, link up frivolous stories like this. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Netflix: Here's a neat HD service. Your provider will need to upgrade their internet connection and use this nifty box we developed to make it work.

Progressives: ZOMG!!! The Internet is under attack!

Nothing is free, people. Nothing. When someone tries to claim otherwise, watch out. They've usually got a set of shackles hidden somewhere.

Once more, with feeling: holsters: good, pockets: bad. And that's just the first of his safety failures. I was hoping there'd be a "crime of stupidity" violation, but I think the injury is bad enough.

A Turkish woman is in jail after shooting, then beheading, her rapist. Well, accused rapist, anyway. There were plenty of strange things that happened in my small town when I was growing up. A woman walking down main street carrying a severed head wasn't one of them. Although, now that I think about it, that definitely would've enlivened the day.

It would seem that, in the UK at least, a "bargain burger" is cheap because nearly a third of it isn't made of cow. This being the UK, the fact that the "filler" once neighed means a national moment of angst. Me? If I'm shopping for a bargain, I'm not expecting the distributor to "magically" give me a discount. It's cheap for a reason, you morons. At least it's not China. Hell they'll put lead in a burger to make the weight. That's why anyone in China who can afford it never buys Chinese. I kid you not.

This is definitely something Ellen would do: heart transplant patient gets the ultimate photo opportunity. How do I know? Do you really want me to count all the bits of cats she's hidden away in cabinets in this house? It makes it an adventure to go rooting around in the spice cabinet.

Another day, another progressive attempt to solve a problem that doesn't even exist yet. In other news, Canada already seems to have a "Ministry of Robots and Artificial Intelligence." Well, at least this time it's not my tax dollars paying for it. Sexytime All The Robots!

The shape of things to come: when you have enough people, you eventually end up with a theme park dedicated to anything. I don't actually play World of Warcraft, so I'm not sure how accurate this all is anyway. If any admission is charged at all, most Chinese won't be able to afford it. But even if only 1% can, that's still something like a million people. Economies of scale, FTW!

Ever wonder what sound a submarine makes when it bounces off another ship? You can ask the guys on this boat. They also now probably know what it sounds like when a Captain's career suddenly comes to an end. Article includes a helpful map that shows where the Persian Gulf isn't.

Someone needs to check the transmission on this one. This doesn't happen in DC. Our escalators don't mysteriously reverse, they maim and kill. Progress!

It's official, someone has found the end of the Internet. I wonder if there's a companion judging boob size vs. intelligence? Of course, that one can be artificially enhanced.

We've gone on record about the roach problem in our original apartment, but at least we weren't able to scoop them up by the spoonful. Although, in retrospect, I have a feeling that was more because roaches aren't willing to be scooped up no matter what. I mean, that roach problem really was awful. Pretty much the opposite of good times.

Nice to know NOVA isn't the only place with drivers like this:

It's all fun and games until the homemade hand grenades come out. And all this time I thought an open bar at the office Christmas party was daring. And, apparently, this is common in Thailand, a carry-over from various school rivalries.

For some, it's not enough to simply be successful. You have to be successful in the right way, for the right reasons. This sort of criticism is something I've read about successful black people struggling with for years. I just haven't seen quite as crystal-clear an example of it in quite some time. I heartily agree with the show's host's comments:

'RG3, the ethnicity, the color of his fiancee is none of our business. It’s irrelevant,

'He can live his life any way he chooses. The braids that he has in his hair, that’s his business, that’s his life. I don’t judge someone’s blackness based on those kind of things.

'I just don’t do that. I’m not that kind of guy.'

I guess, if your sample is big enough and homogenous enough, this sort of thing is inevitable. It's still pretty weird. Turns out all those stories of someone assuming someone else's identity have more to them than I thought.

If this article is to be believed, the old Russian practice of putting a frog in a pail of milk to keep it from going sour may actually work. Which is fine, as far as it goes. Me, I think I'll stick with good ol' pasteurization myself. But I'll be plenty happy if it somehow leads to new kinds of antibiotics.

And so, the endgame began: with catfish hunting pigeons. Not babies, either. Meh, I'll bet they've been doing this for as long as pigeons have been within reach. A 30% success rate is actually pretty good in the wild, from what I've read at any rate. With video!

So stop me if you've heard this one before: a Waco, Nebraska woman was recently arrested after she bragged about robbing a bank and stealing a car. No, she didn't blab to a friend, she posted a video on YouTube. High 19 year-olds tend not to have good decision making skills. At least nobody seems to have gotten hurt. And they took her kid away? Really? Ok, Florida, your turn now.

The summit of Everest? Sure. Take a left once you get past Green Boots. If you pass the chick with the tassel, you've gone too far. Ya know, a place that's so forbidding they have to leave your body where it dropped... well, to me that's not really an ADVERTISEMENT. Well, except maybe for crazy, or Darwin.

A shocking video emerged today showing a grotesque bulge in a woman's buttock apparently caused when her botched silicone implant 'flipped inside out'.

Instead giving her a smooth, plump appearance, the implant has popped out and is left protruding in an ugly disc shape at the back of her cheek.

With video goodness!

21st century problems: Germany to reinstate anti-bestiality laws in an effort to shut down "erotic zoos." Not only will people eat anything that doesn't eat them first, they will also (apparently) f- anything that doesn't, well, you get the idea. Geeze. I guess there really are still guys (and I'll wager it's 99.99% guys) who haven't heard about the internet.

A pair of Canadian thieves recently got a lesson in 21st-century trucking. This is the first time I've ever read about GPS being used in precisely this way, but I can't help but think it's one of the main reasons for installing such a system. I imagine it only costs a fraction of a whole truck, let alone its cargo.

Now, let's be clear here. Under no circumstances does "milking" make anyone in the West anywhere near as weird as even the most normal person in Asia. But it's still pretty strange. Also seems like it'd be really cold, too. When cameras became a ubiquitous option in mobile phones, I'm not sure anyone would've picked "silly picture themes" as a logical outcome.

Making the rounds: a Swedish woman has been arrested for "violating the peace of the deceased" after photos of her in "sexual situations" with skeletons surfaced on the internet. Since it's the Daily Mail, you betcha that the article contains a few (SFW) examples of same. This all seems to have gone down (as it were) in September, so no idea why it's only come up (I can do this all day) just now.

Just when you thought Japan had the Weirdest Country in Asia race all wrapped up, China comes roaring up on the outside lane. I'm studying this place, doing research for a new book, and it still doesn't make any sense.

Yes, actually, they are watching you. I grew up in the 70s, an era when there were only 4 channels and parents thought nothing of plunking their kids in front of whatever was the "Movie of the Week." Which seemed to include a large share of scary mannequin movies. Or at least, that's what I remember. And those giant oil paintings in the parlor room, with the eyes that... Wait... I could swear those things just... AAAGG!!!!

The more you know: Never, ever, EVER piss off your Thai wife.

Solving the real problems: San Francisco city council narrowly passes an ordinance against public nudity. But don't worry! Several exemptions were carved out to ensure winkies will wave proud during various festivals held throughout the year. Remember, folks, the vast majority of people who want to be seen naked by strangers are the last people in the world who should be seen naked by strangers.

An elderly California man has been arrested for murdering and dismembering his wife. Bonus: the couple were well-known in the neighborhood, she for chasing people around with a knife and walking in public without any pants, and he for a habit of cross-dressing. Not that there's anything wrong with... well, you know, except for the whole "tossing bits of the wife into trash cans" bit. That part's definitely wrong.

Remember that scene in Indianapolis with the houses blown apart into match sticks? There's a reason you've never seen such devastation from a simple natural gas explosion.

Don't think of it as a haunted highway, think of it as a ghost hotel you can drive through. Looks like someone showed up to Halloween a little late this year.

When the cure is almost as bad as the disease: a trial with monkeys suggests a valid treatment for inflammatory bowel disease may be... worms. As in, "the kind of thing you give your dog a pill for" worms. I know IBD is a pretty awful thing, but... really? And I thought leech treatments were weird.

Ok, yes, getting an olive oil injection probably won't do someone any good, but cancer? Really? The injection was five years ago! Seems more coincident-y to me, is all I'm sayin'. SFW.

An Arizona woman has been arrested for aggravated assault for allegedly hitting her husband with her car because he refused to vote. Surprisingly, "alcohol was involved" is actually NOT part of the story. I still think it was probably involved in the crime itself.

Old and busted: love hotels for people. New hotness: love hotels for dogs. I get it, that childless singles and couples tend to anthropomorphize their pets. Hell Ellen does that so convincingly she gives them all distinct voices. But a hotel for the pooch to get their freak on? Bah. Your money, your rules. Just don't steal the towels.

Ever wonder what it looks like when a whole house really explodes? How about two of them? Neighborhood seems kinda upscale for there to be a meth lab involved, but stranger things have happened. Seems like the simplest answer would be a leaking gas line, but who the hell knows? With picture!

And in the "just when you thought nature couldn't get any more f'd up" file, we have a parasite that substitutes itself for a fish's tongue. The article includes very helpful, and skin-crawl-inducing, pictures of the beastie. Oh, and by parasite? Yeah, not the itty-bitty ones you can barely see. Yeesh...

Judging by the MRI images of her injury, F-1 test driver Maria de Villota is indeed lucky to be alive. From what I've gathered from the autopsy reports of Indycar driver Dan Wheldon's fatal accident last year, this is very similar to what his injuries looked like. Only he was going about 120 mph when he hit. Anyway, if Alex Zenardi can have a race career without his legs, I can't help but hope Ms. de Villota will be able to persevere with her injury.

Remember that Bentley stuck somewhere downtown when Sandy hit? I'm betting this is the one. It's probably just as well he's not being all that careful with it. There's probably not that much left to salvage.

It's one thing when the mean drunk is a big guy with an attitude. It's something else entirely when the thing with the mean attitude weighs north of two tons.

And now, tarantual cakes. And by "cakes," I'm not talking about a big round one with a frosting spider. I'm talking about a full-on correct and to-scale version of a common nightmare that just happens to be a bit more edible than the original. And it ain't cheap, either.

To be fair, it's not like they're submarines or anything. You haven't been able to submerge a conventional car and get away with it in at least thirty, more likely forty, years. The catching fire and exploding part is a new feature, though.

A nurse in Brazil is accused of manslaughter after she killed someone with a coffee injection. That's right, coffee straight into an IV line. This one doesn't even pass the smell test for me, and I'm more gullible than most. Something tells me it was time for gramma to go and someone "arranged" this little accident. But that's just my opinion.

"Ok... a little to the left... Now two steps forward... One step to the right... Now, hold still!" Subtlety has never been the strong suit of "Best Korea."

I only thought this sort of thing happened in the South: a pee-wee football game in central Massachusetts saw five players out with concussions, two coaches fired, and all the officials suspended. Ta-da! There's definitely something weird going on here. I have a feeling we're not hearing the entire story.

Experiment: dump 100 tons of iron dust in a remote part of the ocean, and watch what happens when the algae come a'callin'.

Observation: Climate change scientists should stop relying on press releases from interest groups to get their news. And I thought anthropologists were the ultimate reactionary turf warriors.

Update: link fixed!

Today's "wheel o' sensationalism" brings us news that... [spins]... crows are gonna kill us. Well, ok, this particular article is actually on the low scale of "ZOMG!!!", but really. If crows actually were a deadly threat, you'd think they would've killed us all long before now.

This collection of 77 "creepy" old photos seems to be heavy on the Russian stuff, which will pretty much automatically make them seem weird to us. That said, there are definitely some strange things going on in there. Two are very marginally NSFW.

All those times your mom said your room was a pigsty? Now you have a few counter-examples. Who the heck just drops cigarette butts on a keyboard, anyway? I've actually run into a few keyboards about that nasty. None of them were mine. Ellen doesn't gross them up, she just destroys them, usually 2-3 per year.

Today's entry in the "women will put anything on their face if it's called a beauty product" comes to us courtesy of a Frenchmen's favorite mollusk. I dunno. Your money, your face. Put whatever you want on it. And someone please pick Ron up. It's so annoying when he passes out giggling.

Just when you thought nature was done being all weird and stuff, along comes a turtle that pees through its mouth. I think it's at least as interesting that scientists are only figuring this out right now. Useless information? Who knows. Seems worth it just for the "ick" factor.

No, Ellen, you can't have one.

A man involved in a live roach eating contest has subsequently died. Grim death with a macabre twist that doesn't actually make sense and would probably make you sick if you thought about it too much? You'll just have to guess which US state this happened in.

This is why you don't want cheap cookware: a man was treated and released at the scene after his wife hit him twice in the head with a frying pan. If anyone got hit in the head with our cast-iron Lodge, they would absolutely not be treated at the scene. Well, unless it was for prepping the body's trip to the morgue. I'm just sayin'...

Today's "ERMERGERD, DANGUR!!!" warning will be (spins Wheel o' Sensationalism) ... too much caffeine. It's as if millions of adults suddenly cried out in terror, and then grumbled through the rest of their day. Or, you know, just went blind anyway.

You know when they say a risk of hoarding is the fire hazard? They're not kidding. As long as cats don't burn well, Ellen's future life as a hoarder will likely be safe.

Today's "freaky teen recreating an anime look" comes to us from the Ukraine. At first I thought she was using the old "giant eyes painted on the eyelids" technique, but the included video makes me think she's using contact lenses. When they're that much bigger than the iris, they're supposed to be really really uncomfortable.

I'm thinking this one falls into the "yes" category: are there risks in becoming a 'bagel head?' Bonus: apparently this has all come to the attention of the MSM because of an episode of a National Geographic documentary series, Taboo. Which Ellen has on season pass. Probably going to give it a pass, anyway. Oh, and there's a video clip featured with the article. Blech...

I think that'll be a closed casket service: police are facing an uphill battle to try and figure out what killed a local farmer. The investigation is complicated by the fact his pigs ate most of his body. Yeah. I'm calling it "revenge bacon" now.

Sometimes it's a rejuvenation, other times things don't work out all that well. Me, I'm of the opinion stickin' needles in the face is generally a bad idea all around, but I'm a guy. I've never completely understood the lengths some women go to in an effort to look good.

Shades of Spinal Tap: a band's drummer had a heart attack and died on stage. Yes, yes, it was a disco band, get yer hate all out first. At any rate, now that so many rock groups are approaching their... "golden years," I wouldn't be surprised to find this happening more and more often.

And coming up on the outside of the "Weirdest Country in Asia Derby" we have perennial favorite... Japan! At least this seems to be temporary, but it IS Japan. I'm expecting to see middle-aged Asians with sagging brows in a few years if this trend catches on.

A hospital in China is taking the problem of inadequate sperm donors seriously. Hands free! It's not completely clear to me if this is some sort of catheter thing or yet another "helping hand." Personally, it makes me think of one of those milking machines farmer use. To which I must say, no thanks!

Point taken: if you have a chance to avoid road debris, take it. Especially if you're in Russia. And what is it about Russia, anyway? Have they got some sort of requirement to have a dash cam in ever single vehicle on the road? That's what it seems like!

I'll take fake explosives and a party dress, for the win! The perpetrator was experiencing "mental issues?" You don't say!

Most car jackers use guns, knives, and other weapons. And then there's this guy. "Influenced by an unknown substance." You don't say?

Sometimes it's hard to improve on the Fark headline: Man arrested for doing something that we've all contemplated at some point. But that's never happened to me. Nope, not at all. My story, let me show you it...

It looks like they're really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get all the undecideds not to notice the huge unemployment numbers, sky-high prices, and flash-fried ambassadors: The Obama administration is emphatically denying any plans to invade Canada. I dunno. You all do realize that something like 80% of the population of Canada lives just a few hours away from our border, right?

Hey, did you know using a car to spin up a playground turntable might be dangerous? Since he was 20, I'm thinking he probably didn't leave behind a family, but since it's Germany that's not guaranteed. I haven't sen the video. I wonder if he wore a helmet?

If the Daily Mail is to be believed, contact lens wearers are in a lot of trouble. I was always under the impression people were supposed to use a special cleaning solution instead of tap water. But, don't despair! Swimming in a pool supposedly exposes you, as well. Sensationalism? In my media? It's more likely than you think.

You'd think this would happen more often: a Chinese visitor to a Sri Lanka gem exhibit has been arrested after being accused of swallowing a $13,000 diamond. Then again, who puts on an exhibit of gems that allows visitors to, you know, touch them and stuff? And it could've had a pointy bit on it, too. Ah, well. I wonder who's ticked off the chief of police lately? I think they're about to get a really crappy job.

Maybe if the executives at my company did this, they'd be happier: the executives of an Australian trucking company have been warned after an incident involving aprons depicting penises and simulated sex with a toy donkey. Then again, I've seen our executives. It probably wouldn't do them much good.

Event: idiotic airline employees find a sex toy in someone's luggage, dip it in axle grease, and then attach it to the bag it was found in before sending it up the luggage ramp. Result: ORMERGORSH! HRT CRIME! Ok, first, I got no idea how the plaintiffs have managed to prove the employees in question had any idea a gay couple owned the luggage. Second, axle grease is, by definition, slick. I really don't get how the tape would hold all that well. But who knows.

Regardless, having something weird and embarrassing happen to you in front of a group of strangers who will almost certainly never see you again in a million years in no way shape or form constitutes a hate crime which caused "negligence, emotional trauma and privacy violations directed at them because of their sexual orientation." But hey, this is America. That's just how we roll.

Steal a phone, get ebola. I'm all for punishment suiting the crime, but a fatal disease for a stolen phone seems a little much. Ellen, who treats her phone as only slightly less important than her child, would likely disagree.

Good: Ban plastic bags! They are the Devil Capitalists work! Go green instead! Re-useable bags for all!

Bad: Drop dead from food poisoning.

I have to admit, outright death is definitely one of the more extreme of the greens' "bad luck." Not completely unexpected, just extreme. And wash your damned grocery bags, you dirty hippie!

Me, I don't mail anything all that valuable to begin with, but you'd think someone at an art gallery would know better. The rules are probably different in Norway. It's probably a lot easier to successfully file a claim, which makes the insurance more expensive. That's all I can think of, anyway.

A federal judge has recently dismissed most of the claims in a wrongful death lawsuit over a fatal goat attack in a national park in Washington state. Yeah, let's roll that around the ol' noggin for a bit. Fatal goat attack. And now we watch Ellen scramble to explain why we need goats. Well of course she wants them, this is Ellen we're talking about here.

Alcohol, unsurprisingly, was involved. Holding a flame to a vent on a port-a-pottie filled with gasoline would seem to be a "you're standing too close" sort of moment, but there's no mention of any injuries. Puts a whole new meaning to the phrase "stink bomb," I'll give you that.

And in the, "I'm so very glad mine has grown past this stage," we have the case of the little boy who had a toy car wheel stuck up his nose, for three years. The worst Olivia managed to do was stuff a VCR full of cheese balls. Nowadays she wouldn't recognize a VCR if it bit her. Or, you know, something.

They're not so little any more: a new ad created for a Venezuelan plastic surgery company has Little Mermaid's Ariel recovering from an encounter with Ursula with... enhancements. If the article is to be believed, they did this without a proper license agreement from Disney. Can you say "cease and desist notice?" I knew you could.

Only in Detroit: police have released pictures of tattoos found on human body parts discovered by maintenance workers in a Detroit sewer pipe. De-boned, no less. Judging by the tats, I'm thinking "drug lord dumping ground," but what do I know?

I am not surprised that this is going to be a new trend.

NSFW!

Another day, another guy getting shot in the ass. So, unintended consequence of concealed carry laws, a statistical clustering of dumbass outbreaks, or just the same stuff on a different day? You decide.

Ah, but you see, it didn't happen in the South: a New Hampshire man is recuperating in the hospital after shooting himself in the butt. No, really, that's what he did! He claims to have been hunting a squirrel. No, it doesn't make all that much sense to me, either, but since he's not dead it's not like he was doing anything unnatural with the weapon. I hope.

Happy Monday morning: if a Chinese paper is to be believed, a woman recently spent five days with a spider in her ear. And that's a lovely picture they've got there, too. Hey, it's not like I posted this up just before bed!

... it gets worse. With 442 years of jail time on the dock, you'd think he'd be more than willing to give up the guys he "helped." Of course, it's not like his moral compass points the right direction to begin with. I'm pretty sure it doesn't have an arrow at all.

Not news: driver dies in single-car crash. News: caused by road collapse triggered by gopher holes. All you people living out in the country, have a nice drive home this afternoon.

There's laughing so hard you cry, and then there's laughing so hard you swallow a butter knife. Yeah, you heard me, butter knife. Had to do with her proving she had no gag refle... Oh, stop it. Stop it! I will not abide your inane giggling!

I'm divided on this one. Either it's brilliant satire, or yet another example of what happens when a bi-polar wobbles off his meds and into a manic fugue. It could go either way. Heck, it may be both at the same time. Seems like it's been out there a long time, too. But since I'd never seen it before, important people didn't know about it. So there!

Pop quiz: When you want to call attention to a nearby despotic government do you a) stage a protest, b) start a campaign, or c) risk getting your butt shot off air-dropping teddy bears on the place? Fortunately this is one of the last of the Stalinist states, so the guys who ran the air defense were off drunk or whoring or something, so our intrepid protestors managed to get away with it. I'd like to think they're both sleeping on the couch for awhile, though. I'd be lucky to be in just that much trouble, were I in their shoes.

I guess we'll call this one: Bird: 1, Airplane: 1. I think it looks so bad because the strike was in JUST the right spot. The nosecone of modern airliners is a thin composite, because of the radar living behind it.

Just in time for Christmas: Ebola has traveled to the capital of Uganda. Still as nasty and deadly as it was fifteen years ago, but with the frisson of Mayan doomsday predictions in the air. Of all the ways to go, getting killed by bleeding out of every available orifice is... well, it's dead last. As it were.

It's nice to know the US does not hold a monopoly on stupid drunk men. The worst I ever did was fire bottle rockets from my hand, and even that was twenty years ago. Thank you, Jackass, for giving idiots all over the world this wonderful idea.

It turns out cars have become safe enough to fall five stories and protect their occupants. Fortunately nobody seems to have been seriously injured. And that, folks, is yet another reason it's a dumb idea to try to drive a private car in Manhattan.

I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. Some of them actually work!

What better way to remember a loved one than an urn shaped like their severed head? I guess I should feel lucky they don't do cats. Otherwise my house would be filled with the darned things. And, boy, wouldn't THAT be something to stare at you at 5 AM in your underwear?

I'm not sure it's possible to say "ouch" enough to cover this one: Swedish man is severely injured when the tow hitch on a children's ride bulls-eyes his backside. From the article, it doesn't *sound* like he was trying to creatively get his jollies off, but weirder things have happened. I think.

This just in: some nutter has paid somewhere north of $350 for a slice of toast from Prince Charles' wedding. You know, 31 years ago. I tell you, for that kind of cash there better be a savior's face on the food, s'all I'm sayin'...

What in the world is this country coming to? It's getting so's a man can't even dress up as a goat and run with wild herds without worryin' 'bout gettin' shot anymore. Also, goatse.

I bet this made everyone's visit to the Smithsonian more memorable. My sister-in-law, Nina, used to be terrified of escalators, which was a problem since the DC Metro system has more of them than any other place in the country. I made sure to tell her that over the years only a few people had been killed on Metro's escalators. She didn't seem to find that comforting.

A UK motorist has joined the Film Hall of Shame after being taped driving through an English city in a car with only one front wheel. Luckily nobody got hurt. I also thought it was funny the cop seemed to hit his door locks just after climbing out. Loseyourcarmuch?

Anyone who is, like myself, scarred by... ahem... "experienced in" fast food restaurant employment knows the Angry Assistant Manager, and the Violent Sociopath Cook. These are the positions bullies achieve when they graduate high school but haven't slid into military service yet. Most of the time nobody ever calls them, really calls them, on the crap they pull. I'm very happy to say that, this time, they've been well and truly caught.

Yes, it's Paris (natch), and so far he hasn't got much traction on the incident. But the dude's got the photographs to prove his case, and now he's starting to get national attention. Unfortunately this is obviously France, home and heart to the ultimate of progressive ideals, so it'll likely be impossible to fire these ignorant idiots. Because we don't want the oppressive, giant multinational to exploit the lowly shift worker by SIMPLY firing them. The employer must prove, and prove again, and again, and AGAIN, that there is cause. Workers have rights! They must not be abridged!

So now an artist has created genetically engineered mice which (supposedly) incorporate DNA from Elvis Presley. Ok, a) W. T. F., and b) WHO THINKS IT'S A GOOD IDEA TO LET ARTISTS PLAY WITH GENETICS?!? I mean, really...

The circle is squared: jihadi cleric: "However, to undertake this jihadi approach you must agree to be sodomized for a while to widen your anus so it can hold the explosives." Article is SFW, although mind bleach may be advised.

Dog bites man: wild turtles are spreading salmonella to the public. Man bites dog: turtles are amphibians. In case they change the article, the direct quote is "The outbreak is slow-moving, like the lumbering amphibians themselves." Hooray for New Jersey!

Ever wonder what would happen if a know-it-all broad sat in a comedy club with a far from politically correct comedian on the stage? Wonder no more. It takes a certain size of balls to be rude out loud in a place where it'll disturb other people. Rape is also not something I'd think would be the subject of jokes. In other words, I think everyone in the situation got exactly what they deserved.

Products in the 21st century: a novelty company is suing a food processing company because their Zombie Blood^tm spoiled faster than predicted. No, really. Because everyone knows something that's bright green and comes in a clear IV bag-like package is going to be good forever, right?

The Church Of Scientology allegedly believes it's most famous celebrity convert Tom Cruise has telekinetic and telepathic powers, it has been reported. Tom, 50, is the most famous follower of the religion and an investigation by Rolling Stone back in 2006 revealed that he had reached an advanced level of Scientology and was known as an ‘Operating Thetan’ or an ‘OT’.

‘OTs can allegedly move inanimate objects with their minds, leave their bodies at will and telepathically communicate with, and control the behaviour of, both animals and human beings.’

Tom, who is understood to be at the advanced stage of OT VII, has practised the religion for 30 years and therefore has allegedly reached a rarefied state of enlightenment after travelling what is known as the Bridge to Total Freedom.

If you have the $$ you can buy yourself Total Freedom. All I have ever heard was how much money you had to put into this company to be enlightened. Crazy. Bat shit crazy.

It looks like North Korea has decided to kidnap Disneyland. I've read about half a dozen books about this place, each one enforcing the idea that this place is much weirder than your wildest fantasy. This definitely means something, but it certainly isn't what WaPo, or probably even the State Department, thinks it means.

Look out, Australia, Nadia Suleman may be heading your way. She's apparently got family down there, which means she might have a place to stay. Then again, we're talking fifteen people, most of whom are under the age of 4. Hell, how does she even afford the air fare?

For yet another view of just how quick and violent the (what they now seem to be calling) 'derecho' storm was last Friday, how about this security video? That's Winchester, VA, *far* to the west of our place. And we slept through it!

Sometimes, the idiot who's not paying attention to the road gets exactly what they deserve.

Via Honor Among Thieves.

A Madison, Wisconsin atheist group has decided to complain about a 10% discount a Pennsylvania restaurant gives to people who bring in a current church flyer. Such are the things one must tolerate in a free society such as ours. Otherwise these kinds of people* end up fronting political parties and complaining about Jews, and we all know how that song ends.

-----
* Kooks, not atheists.

The youth of Japan are at it again, indulging in a fad that has them "seeing" things all too well.

A Texas inmate in county lockup has managed to off himself with a plastic spoon. The arrest was for misdemeanor charges, which should've seen him out of the pokey pretty rapidly, but SOMETHING happened to get him in lockdown. You'd think there'd be cameras to keep an eye on this sort of thing.

The Air Force has rediscovered the wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1952 with, weirdly, 52 people on board. They'd plotted the wreckage right after the crash, but lost it again after it got buried by storms.

Problem: meddlesome nanny-state low flush toilets don't work worth a damn.

Solution: PRESSURE

Unintended consequence: EXPLODING PRESSURIZED TOILETS!!!

Dog bites man: a guy with no job who lives with his grandmother gets tricked online by a different guy into thinking a South African hottie is in love with him. Man bites dog: he sets out to kill the girl in the pictures sent to him. Why, yes, he was taken to a mental hospital after he was stopped, how perceptive of you!

Via Honor Among Thieves.

Those Chinese are at it again, this time cloning an Alfa Romeo. Well, someone needs to pick up the "pretty but flimsy" flag now that (apparently) the Fiat group has left it behind.

A man colorfully known as "The Dating Game Serial Killer" has been accused of two murders in New York City. The connection is apparently that he appeared on the game show a year before he was arrested for other murders in California back in the late 70s. Since he's been in jail ever since, it won't take a killer off the streets, but perhaps it will give the victims' families some closure.

And the latest attempt to tilt the odds of a high-stakes sport involves horse racing and frog juice. Yes, you heard me, frog juice. Look, I wasn't the one who made it up, they did! Juicy frogs!

Now, I know this will be shocking to you, so sit down and hold your breath: the Obama administration's DREAM decree isn't exactly what it was said to be. "They said, if I voted for John McCain..."

Presenting The Dimensions of Paradise and the Sacred Cubit, wherein we explore the mathematics of heaven. I think. There sure is an awful lot of math in there, and he says "New Jerusalem" a lot. At least it's basic math. God apparently isn't all that into calculus. Maybe that explains black holes?

Pravda is on the case: America's dominance is due to manipulation, wealth, and Kim Kardashian. No, really! Not surprisingly, the man who's come to this conclusion is from the Arab world. How else explain how one can substitute "America" with "The Jews" and have it still make complete sense? One would think this foil-hattery was just the beliefs of a single kook. In my opinion, though, if we were to make people who really believe this actually wear foil hats, it would be impossible to look at the Middle East without a welding mask.

Reason #452 why I don't want to try seafood: a Korean woman got inseminated by improperly cooked squid. "She spat out the food in her mouth, but still had a "pricking and foreign-body sensation" in her oral cavity." [[SHUDDER]]

A civics teacher is in trouble for showing an incredibly graphic video of a murder and dismemberment to his class. The guy warned the students, who seemed to be junior and senior level in high school, took a survey of who did and didn't want to see it, and offered an out for those who didn't. I think his main mistake was not notifying the parents, but it's not a huge mistake, IMO. We let teens that old drive cars, they're definitely old enough to make a judgment about something like this.

That said, during one of my cultural anthropology courses when I was, as I recall, a sophomore in college, we got shown a film which graphically depicted the ritual slaughter and butchering of a pig. Lots of warning was given, and as I recall some students didn't actually attend. Even then, at least two got so upset they had to leave (in tears, naturally), and the professor was visibly embarrassed by it all. Which is to say being warned something is horrible is not the same thing as actually witnessing something horrible.

It's a pretty questionable judgement call, I think. But if the guy is otherwise an upstanding, high-performing, and popular teacher, I'm not sure he should face any serious discipline over the incident.

Sometimes there's no way to improve the lede: "A jury has awarded a Georgia woman $3 million over her husband's heart attack, finding that his doctor should have warned the Atlanta cop against strenuous activity like the three-way sex he was having at the time he died, WXIA-TV reports." Decline and fall of Western Civilization, chapter 26.

Agreed: when teaching someone how to ride a motorcycle, it's better to choose a place that's on the ground. Heck, I wouldn't teach someone how to use a car's stick shift, let alone something that can actively toss a person off the seat.

Shades of Home Alone: a child was accidentally left behind in a UK pub during a crowded and confused party break-up. Oh, did we mention the kid belonged to the Prime Minister? Eight years old is definitely old enough to stay out of trouble and get help rolling in the right direction, which she did. The kid even managed to help out.

It's all fun and games until they have to use an angle grinder to cut the ring off your junk. Bonus: You'd think a guy less than a year from his 70th birthday would know better. Then again, hey, go grandpa! (SFW)

No, really: when ostriches attack! That pretty much defines every little kid's real-life nightmare right there. Fortunately nobody got kicked, and it looks like the bird ended up fine as well.

A dock so big it was at first mistaken for a barge recently washed up on an Oregon shore. So what? It floated all the way from Japan. The article includes an illustration of where the "bulk of debris" is which, if it's to scale, makes it look like you'll soon be able to walk most of the way to Japan from the West Coast.

And in the "people will do anything to get high" file we have scorpions. Yes, scorpions. Seems they cut the tails off, crush 'em up, and smoke the powder. You'd think it wasn't all that big of a deal, since lots of Chinese people eat the damned things all the time. Me, I think I'll stick to good ol' beer and wine, thankyouverymuch.

Chinese piracy has reached a whole new level now that a developer has duplicated an entire Austrian town. Since I'm pretty sure copyrighting geography hadn't actually occurred to anyone writing treaties, it's technically not illegal. This, of course, has not prevented at least some residents of The Village, Actual from being upset, but not so much they skipped the premiere of the copy.

Sorry, though. That Japanese guy who served his junk for dinner is still the gold-standard of Asian weirdness.

It's all fun and games at the wedding until the sprinklers start to explode. We just returned from a really nice wedding this weekend, and I'm happy to say no fire sprinklers were involved. Eww!

Scientists have discovered evidence of a radiation burst 'round about 775 AD. The problem is the only record of it is in tree rings. Nobody else seems to have noticed it, and apparently it was plenty big enough to notice. Certainly an emperor or pope must've dropped dead for no reason 'round about then?

Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder in Australia, it starts raining sheep. No, I'm not kidding. I'm pretty sure those splashes aren't very nice. Yeah, and try explaining that one to the insurance adjuster, too.

Ok, tell me if you've heard this one: two chicks start to push a dead Jetta down a steep hill... It's really pretty surprising how fast a car can get away from you in a situation like that. Fortunately it seems the only serious injuries happened to the house. Hopefully pictures will be soon to follow!

A Minnesota man is in critical condition after an illegal firework backfired and buried itself in his chest. Fortunately it didn't actually explode, otherwise I think they'd be picking bits of him out of the trees.

When they tried to approach him, the man allegedly threw some of his skin and intestines at officers, Heinemann added.

He refused to drop the kitchen knife and allegedly began swinging it at officers.

'The scene was a bloody mess,' a police official said. 'The SWAT team had to be decontaminated due to the amount of blood.'

Read entire bloody article here.

Those of you who bet on "wind" or "water" as the answer to, "how will radiation from Fukushima first make its way to the West Coast?" ... tear up your tickets. Those of you who picked "fish," however, can come collect your prize. Good thing I don't eat the stuff!

And here come the Japanese pushing strong on the outside rail during the Asians are Just Weird Derby: a Japanese man recently held a banquet that had his junk as the main course. No, really. All those times when I picked the Chinese, or the Thais, or the Vietnamese as the weirdest Asian country? Yeah, if I could have those chips back I'd appreciate it.

Chinese police have detained a young couple who hit granny with their car, and then buried her alive at a construction site to hide the evidence. See? It's not just Americans who get liquored up and then do something heinous. It reads like the start of some damned horror movie. Zombie grammas!

In today's "slow news day, Ed" file we have "Gummy Bear breast implants". Yes, that's what I said. Apparently it's some sort of new material that vaguely resembles what the popular chewy candies are made of. Me, I give a golf clap to the doctor who thought to put that in the press release. Free publicity, FTW!

Why have a va-cation when you can have a na-cation instead? Look, you want to go somewhere and wander around starkers, I guess that's your right. It ain't for me, and if a travel agent tries pitching it I may pitch them out a window.

The piece appeared to be the back of a finger, including the pad and extending beyond the first knuckle, said Vail and her friend, Joe Wheaton, who accompanied Vail and Ryan on Friday to Arby’s on N. West Avenue. Vail and Wheaton estimated the portion was about an eighth to a quarter inch thick and maybe an inch or more long.

This would scar me from eating out at fast food places for life.

I guess I'm happy that nobody this famous ever signed one of my yearbooks. I grew up in a small town, though. Kind of a "law of averages" sort of thing.

Oh Lord, bless this, thy Wikipedia without which I would never have known about the Dyatlov Pass Incident, a mystery so incredibly creepy to me it took three tries just to get through the "Wikipedia dry-as-dust" article. Wandering campers, radiation, mysterious injuries, and enigmatic photographs, this story has 'em all. Think Blair Witch, only real, and, you know... Russified.

Taking that whole "blazing speed" all wrong: a fire in an F-1 garage has the organization re-examining safety and storage procedures. An hour after their first win in almost eight years, something in the Williams garage caught fire and basically destroyed it. Fortunately nobody was seriously injured.

Making the rounds: a Chinese developer decided to upgrade an existing apartment block with an underground parking garage. And yes, even in the US it's considered a "best practice" to dig a big hole BEFORE you put a heavy building on top of it. Nope, I wouldn't want to live in a Chinese-built apartment that this was happening to, either.

Oh yes, by all means, the Tea Party is absolutely violent menace haunting the country. I know I'm not changing anyone's mind. Four years of "bad luck" has done that job far better than I ever could. See you this November!

Steal your iPhone? that's a shootin'. What's not clear from the article is whether or not they'd managed to find the right room. That'd be just my luck, chilling in a Super 8 and having some maniac shoot the room up looking for the hooker who stole his phone. Ellen, on the other hand... well, to be honest she never lets her phone get far enough away from her for it to be stolen. The external heart has a distance function, it seems.

Making the rounds: it's pretty scary to catch a big great white shark on your line; it's scarier still when a bigger shark starts nibbling on it. Pictures are gruesome but not overly so. As if I needed any more reasons to stay out of the waters off an Australian beach...

Well, I guess if your two wives have to meet each other and your girlfriend, then having it happen at your funeral is the way to go. Bonus: they each brought one of his kids to the ceremony, and now everyone's fighting over who gets what.

Our parents threatened, these parents went through with it: couple arrested after 911 call reporting them strapping their kids to the hood of a car. Worst my dad ever did was force us into the back of a pickup truck, which contained a redneck set of seats (with seatbelts) for just such an occasion. I think he got them from a boat or something. Good times!

The end is nigh: Japanese "Lolita fashion" is taking hold in Mexico. A fashion developed for rich, spoiled, stick-thin girls to impress twisted old Asian men, transplanted to good middle-class Catholic girls with healthy appetites. Yeah. Can you say, "poor fit?" I knew you could...

A Greeneville, Tennessee man has been reported as defending his sister from an attacker by killing him with... a frying pan. I've had a 12" cast-iron Lodge frying pan for about twelve years now. I think it weighs north of seven pounds. If I got a good swing going I have no doubt the thing would crush a skull like an egg. So, let's all file this one under, "they only get up from a hit like that in the cartoons" file, and move on.

That'll be Octopus: 1, Sky Rat: 0. Apparently these things can weigh upwards of 150 lbs full-grown, so it's more than capable of taking down a rat with wings. Heck, I'm still a little puzzled why they don't take the occasional diver.

An Austin, Texas man has been arrested for murder using an electric guitar. Not surprisingly, alcohol and unwanted sexual advances were involved. No, I'm not saying that makes it OK, quite the opposite. People need to learn to keep their hands to themselves and back the hell off when told.

I'm pretty sure SPF 100 won't do much good here: two teen girls who fell asleep while (apparently) sunbathing in the middle of a road had to be taken to a hospital after getting hit by a car. Bonus: it was the cousin of one of the girls who ran them over. Just when you thought teenagers couldn't get any dumber...

An Australian billionaire has announced the intention to build "Titanic-II." Billed as the ultimate "retro-mod," the ship is meant to be externally identical to the original, albeit with a proper number of lifeboats. It's not clear just how faithful the interior design will be, since the demand for rustic six-to-a-cabin 3rd class bunking has rather declined in the past 100 years.

A series of reforms in Egypt makes it legal for a husband to have sex with his dead wife for up to six hours after death. Remember how Bill Engvall made fun of stupid signs because you knew people were doing them? Yeah, about that.

Can I get a, "EWWW GROSS!!!" around here?

It's all fun and games until someone tries to bite your willy off. I'm calling shenanigans on this one. I've been in my fair share of arguments with ladies over the years, and at no point has it ever happened that they've gotten close enough to my bits to be a danger.

Members of a boy band touring Australia may end up getting a shot from the clap. Kicker: if they did get it, they got it from a Koala. I'll be damned. Even the cute-and-cuddly critters in Australia are actively trying to kill people.

An actor portraying Judas in a passion play in Brazil accidentally died during a suicide scene. I've always been a bit squeamish about those sorts of scenes for precisely this reason. Were I an actor, I'm not sure I could be convinced of the safety of something that dramatic.

And now, a spider big and ambitious enough to take down a tree snake. With pictures! Fortunately Ellen (so far) doesn't want one. Not that she could have it. I'm actually very pleased this is an Australian native. I'm thinking that's JUST far enough away.

Yeah, I think I'd probably be a little surprised, too: a man watching porn "for the first time" discovers his wife is the star. And that's just the first story. You get to guess where this is all happening, with the hint: the first guy is identified as "Ramadan." Hey, it's in the newspaper! It's gotta be true!

Having solve all other sommelier-related problems, California vinters have quietly expanded marijuana-laced wine production. I dunno. Just doesn't seem like it would taste all that good. Then again, I have a suspicion that taste is not exactly the point.

Now I have another reason to avoid those sample trays. Well, aside from the fact that Olivia tends to clean them out before her parents even realize they're there. As a recovering picky eater, I avoid them just on general principles for the most part.

Ah! I get it now! Since your side is *for* big government, slut shaming is A-OK. Whatever it takes to make sure we're not paying attention to the economy, I guess.

And the NFL's latest attempt to curb unruly fan behavior is... to make them take a course about it. I always wondered if anyone could come up with a course more useless than the ones the state forces you to take to get out of a traffic ticket. I now have my answer.

Boobs? Boobs are so common, darling. What you really want is a bigger chin. Yes, chin. Just when you thought women couldn't get any more incomprehensible...

A dozen Secret Service agents have been suspended, the cause definitely might but might not involve Colombian hookers. If they look like Sofia Vergara, I can see how that might happen. That said, if they looked like SV they probably wouldn't be hookers.

"AMCGLTD," we hear you ask, "is it possible to spruce up the ol' vah-jay-jay? It is awfully dark down there." Take heart, woman of deeply tanned nether regions, we're here to help! I know it'll take India a long, long while before they knock Japan off its king-of-weirdness pedestal, but gosh this is a darned good start.

I'll give her this, Courtney Love is entertaining when she falls off the wagon near a smart phone. Unfortunately her latest rant seems to be about as connected to reality as she is. It must be pretty tough when your own kid "divorces" you. I wonder if Dave can sue for libel? Probably wouldn't be worth the chaos. It usually doesn't pay to mess around with crazy.

Today's UFO story involves those clever bastards at NASA, again. I tell ya, if it's not faking up a moon landing it's covering up a GEM. We need to give these people more things to do.

Those of you wondering what could ever top deep-fried Oreo cookies should prepare to be amazed. I wonder what sort of pan is required to make that work?

Today's UFO sighting comes courtesy of a plane flying over Seoul, Korea. This time it looks like a balloon to me. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure last time it looked like a balloon, as well. Those things do get around a lot, don't they?

Looks like there's more than one weird, abandoned war memorial in the former Eastern Bloc. You'd think someone would care about these things. Then again, how many majestic Gothic churches have "horse barn/storage shed" in their resume? Hell, the Turks used the Parthenon as an ammo dump.

A Japanese trawler cut free by last year's tsunami has been found drifting off the west coast of Canada. The vessel is just one of the first, more prominent, bits of flotsam from the disaster to show up off the coasts of North America. Various other bits of junk, and probably a few more ships, are expected to make their way to shore over the next year.

Sometimes there's no improving the lede, again: Swedish twins go crazy, developsuperpowers, and kill a man; no drugs or explanation found. Very relevant, since that pilot who wigged out on that JetBlue flight is still very much in the news. At least he didn't manage to kill anyone, albeit it seems not from a lack of trying. Or, you know, "trei-ing."

Rick K. gets a golden-eared no-prize for bringing us another example of why hi-fi audio is the wackiest of all man's hobbies. If I'm paying that much for something, I better be able to live in it.

Today's "shopped or not" entry is all about UFO love. The first part absolutely looks 'shopped to me. The zoom and shake just do not appear natural, more like something you'd get if you used a "zoom and shake" feature on a CGI editor. The rest of it just looks like a balloon. And you'd be surprised how common it is to see balloons of all sort in the sky. When I was flying my mini-chopper regularly I'd usually see one or two every time I flew.

Sometimes the lede says it all: A vicar claims a potato got stuck up his bottom after he fell on to the vegetable while hanging curtains in the nude. What in the world is up with these people? Remember, folks, it's the 21st century. A dildo is just one website order away!

Remember that story about Zimmerman having no evidence of injury on police security videos? Oh, you had to have seen it, it's been the top story on Google news all day. Except, if you check just now, it's not. It's disappeared completely. Now, isn't that a strange thing? And yes, even to me it very much looks like ABC was messing with the video to ensure that a worrying wound-like mark on Zimmerman's head is hidden behind some graphics.

I mean, I expect them to pull these sorts of stunts for Obama, that's politics for God's sake. I don't pretend to know what actually happened on that terrible night, but I am now officially putting all the MSM's reporting on a mental shelf labeled, "FICTION."

Why, no wonder I never engaged in any office romances when I was single. It never occurred to me I'd need to mark the chairs they were sitting on first. And when I say "mark," I'm not talking about the thing you do with a pen or a sticky note. Of course, the guy works in IT, natch.

A mysterious human leg that washed up on a Florida beach in December has been identified as belonging to a missing, and presumed dead, local woman. Exactly where the rest of her, and her companion, is is still a mystery. Bonus: the lady's brother checked on her apartment in January only to find a tree with presents still wrapped under it.

A Taiwanese woman has committed suicide while actively chatting on Facebook. Lighting up a charcoal grill inside your room with the windows shut will let you do that, it seems. I don't try to keep Ellen away from Facebook for fear of this sort of thing. As long as she can tap on it using her external heart ... phone or her true love... computer, she's fine.

They've definitely found something in Siberia. You'd think people would know it's Bad News to go digging weird bits of metal out of the snow by now, but maybe The Thing never got all that far into Siberia. Me, I think it looks like a bulkhead of some sort.

It's nice to know my side's not the only one who can cough up the ball. Although, of course, if your primary news sources are mainstream or otherwise unrelated to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, you'd be hard pressed to tell. So, which is worse, a candidate's assistant doing something dumb with an Etch-a-Sketch, or the President of the United States offering concessions to a rival in return for "some space?" It'll be interesting to watch the MSM cover his butt on this one. It always is interesting watching rail yard workers clean up a train wreck.

Looks like another video of "bigfoot" has surfaced. Bonus: includes "de-shake-ified" version using a really nifty technique to show us it's still not a particularly clear video. Or, you know, a particularly well done fake.

We somehow missed the "viral picture" of a motorcycle cop's feet sticking out of the back of a BMW convertible, but it turns out the story behind it, and the aftermath, are much more interesting. All those people who complain about privacy violations because of the ubiquity of cameras need to think hard about this case. If this had happened 25 years ago, that cop would've gotten away with it.

Rick gets the coveted "face-palm" no-prize for bringing us news that a middle school teacher turned his class into an opposition research team for the Obama campaign. But it was ok, since they only had to look up where they were supposed to send their findings, not actually send them. That makes it completely acceptable. And right here in Fairfax county, too!

Now men get to have fun too: Walgreens is now carrying a fake vah jay-jay for purchase on its website. I'm not completely sure how it works, but I am completely sure I don't want to know. Best Fark comment: "$78 may seem high for fake p- but it's cheaper than all the real p- i'm not getting."

Mike J. gets a nice, fresh, watermelon-shaped no-prize for bringing us the latest green call for one world government. Glenn, who's followed these things longer and more carefully than I have, just started laughing, so I'm figuring this'll likely give the hardcore greens the vapors for a few days and then fade away. Nice to see SciAm limping around, though.

That'll be Mrs. Plumb, on the deck, with a chainsaw. Desperate depression leads to desperate measures, but I thought women were the ones who wanted to go quietly in full makeup wearing a nice dress. I guess there're exceptions for everything.

Reason I don't ever want to be a farmer #28: mysterious explosions on hog farms have scientists stumped. No, the hogs themselves aren't going "bang," that would actually be better than what's actually happening. Four words: foam covered manure pit.

A pair of preteen girls in China committed suicide in part as an attempt at time travel. At least, that's what the article says. Since they're citing a Chinese-language story, who knows? It might be that they were running late or something.

A Georgia woman spent a harrowing few hours stuck when she fell down a garbage chute. Seems she was trying to grab her cellphone, which she'd accidentally dropped. Ellen would've freaking flown down something like that if her baby were actually at risk. No, not the one going to school today, the one that hooks to a charger and rings when people call it.

Usually it works the other way around: airline flight forced to return to gate due to a disruptive flight attendant. They're union, so it may be harder to get rid of the person than you'd at first think. Me, I think the phrase, "alcohol involved" will pop up eventually as the story unfolds. Nothing else makes much sense.

To what I'm sure is the consternation of breast cancer groups and little girls all over the world, it turns out the color pink doesn't actually exist. Science: coming up with b-s answers to questions we didn't realize needed asking just to frak with our day for 450 years.

By taking the waves of seismic data and speeding them up into the range of human hearing, scientists have put a new spin on the 2011 earthquake in Japan. Play the clips as they're shown on the article, not as their numbered. The titled as first seems to have the volume turned way too far down, and if you play them in title order the 2nd one will be unpleasant if you have headphones on.

So I've been told.

China's taken that whole Barbara Walters thing and put a whole new spin on it by having their local version interview condemned criminals just before they're executed. Oh, they make sure not to upset Westerners too much by only interviewing murderers and rapists, and they don't actually show any of the executions. Meh. If it helps pass the time and maybe prevents one or two other Chinese from going at each other, I don't have a problem with this particular aspect of it. The whole death penalty thing is another matter entirely*.

----
* By faith and inclination I think it's a waste of time and resources. Much better for them to attempt enlightenment at the bottom of a dark pit with the occasional loaf of bread and lump of cheese thrown at them. Feel free to disagree, most folks do.

I'll see your giant, extinct flee and raise you an enormous, very much alive, stick insect. It lives on a solitary island in the South Pacific, and I am completely fine with that. Fortunately, Ellen doesn't want one.

The body, wrapped in white cloth with a white sign bearing Colvin's name, has been buried because the rebels did not have electricity to keep her body refrigerated. It had started to decay, a rebel in the film footage explains.

I dunno, if marathons had fewer sweaty athletes and more of... well... more of this, I might be more inclined to participate. Oh, who am I kidding? The only time this road weenie will run is when his bike breaks and he's being chased by something. That said, if it's your cup of tea why not?

I dunno, it's not like there are lawyers in the world who don't need a good shooting. Unexpected? Yep, but it's not clear from the article if he actually pointed it at anyone or merely offered it to her. Handing a gun over safely is no big deal, but pointing it at things you don't intend to shoot is a major no-no.

Tokyo's "oldest man" has been found dead recently. Which would not normally be all that news-worthy, except it appears he died about thirty years ago. It seems the habit of collecting Social Security checks for relatives who no longer need them is not exclusive to the US. However, around here we do tend to actually bury the body. In this case, not so much.

A family who's parents were accidentally "outed" to their teenage daughter as swingers by a goof made in a documentary about same aren't entitled to compensation for the mistake. The article also includes a very practical resolution to the matter. Hey, they're Germans. What did you expect? They don't all want to conquer France, ya know?

When a cell phone is "bricked," which is to say "damaged beyond repair by fault or mischief," it's annoying. Unless you're Ellen, which would make it a soul-destroying tragedy requiring a minimum of four weeks of sackcloth-and-ashes mourning and maybe dressing up a donkey. But I digress. Anyway, when it's a $100,000 sports car, and the "fix" costs $40,000, not so much. Annoying, that is. Not the sackcloth-and-ashes thing. What were we talking about again?

That's not cool: a Florida man is in the hospital with severe injuries when his electronic cigarette blew up in his mouth. Can you say, "product liability lawsuit?" I knew you could...

An Iranian man was discovered carrying grenades in a backpack in Bangkok, police say he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Yeah, just happened to be, you know, transporting them. For a friend.

And now, giant bugs turned into tinker toys. I guess everyone needs a hobby. Bonus: includes a picture of everyone's favorite spidery nightmare, the African bird spider. It'll take a special lady to appreciate a brooch made from a bug as big as her hand.

The man went on to develop 'firm and pendulous' masses on his stomach - a condition known as lipohypertrophy. Mild cases are surprisingly common, however this patient had a severe case as he hadn't changed his injection sites for three decades.

Not X rated in anyway... he is describing this new.. floppy... thing :/

The best stereo speaker in the world? Oh, yeah, we can show you the best speaker in the world. It weighs more than a quarter ton and costs more than five times as much as a Honda Civic. Each. The picture at the top of their website reminds me of Daleks with their plungers removed. EXTERMINATE!

How did we ever live without a recipe for beef jerky underwear? Doesn't look all that flexible to me, but fashion has never been my forte. All the same, I think I'll pass on this one. I bet it'd be awkward trying to explain why all the neighborhood stray dogs keep following you around.

So, what do you think: a monster in Iceland, or a robot? That head looks very, if you'll pardon the expression, pythonesque to me, and from the video it's not completely clear it really is an icy river. Me, I'm calling it some sorta hoax involving someone's pet python going for a swim.

Janey said: "Every time friends visited they were taken aback by Meeka's size and asked if I was sure she was a micro pig. At this point, I still believed she was — just one with a weight problem."

I know... No Ellen, You can't have one.

Most, hopefully nearly all, of us would have people hunting for us very soon after we missed an appointment, work, coming home, really anything. Others, well, others simply aren't as fortunate. In other news, you can run up unpaid taxes to the tune of 30 grand before you need to worry about the revenuers seizing your house. The more you know...

An abandoned leper colony is always an eerie place, especially when it's just off the shoreline of Manhattan. I'm thinking the photographer may have taken some pretty substantial risks. Those floors don't look all that sturdy to me, and falling through the floor of a building in an abandoned leper colony seems... sub-optimal.

Making the rounds: chicken wing cupcakes. Not being a huge fan of either one, I'll give it a pass. The bakery that cooked this up is near a college town, so I'm sure they'll have plenty of takers.

Ah, to be German: If it does not have an expiration date, it will be edible. At least he had it tested first. Ellen's the same way with spices. Except her attitude is more "if it doesn't smell bad I don't care how old it is."

A big soap bar of a ship has taken out a bridge in Kentucky. And by "taken out," we're not talking about dinner and a movie. Amazingly, nobody was hurt. It's not at all clear what went wrong, as this particular boat has gone under this particular bridge several times before.

Continental Airlines Flight 1515 was preparing to take off for Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston when "a maintenance-related engine run-up of the right-hand engine" was carried out, said Roland Herwig, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration's southwest region in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

"Someone on the ground was sucked into the engine," he said.

Pretty messy.

The wriggling, the squirming, the Moro reflex-induced jump... If you want proof that artificial intelligence is thriving, look no further than this robotic -- and yes, somewhat creepy -- baby.

Read all about it and don't forget to see the video.

It looks like Texas has another smuggling problem on its hands. No, it's not coke or Mexicans, it's deer. Yes, deer. They're a damned nuisance around these parts, with carcasses littering most of our major highways around mating season, doing who knows how much damage to cars and drivers. But in Texas the pretty ones are worth a lot of money, and when there's lots of money tied to lots of rules, cheating's just part of the game.

Robert Hegyes, best known for playing Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter, has died. The young actors I watched growing up are now climbing into their sixties. Still, it doesn't seem quite fair that this guy kicks it at 60 while Kieth Richards' corpse still walks the land.

Ever the busybodies, a Nordic dive team has discovered itself two mystery objects at the bottom of the Baltic, one of which is roughly as big as a 747. Me, I'm thinking "bizarre geologic formation" rather than "ZOMG!1!!! ALIENZ!!!" But you never really can be sure. Yet another reason to root for summer to get here.

I guess you'd call that green building: 1, smug hipster: 0. I don't have to worry about it much, because the tin the Alfas are made of will rust long before it melts. The Hyundai, on the other hand, may be something I have to watch out for.

I'll see you your "moon landing's a hoax" wackadoos and raise you psychics who're claiming they've found a space ship on the moon. Check that, they're claiming astronauts found one forty years ago, and are just asking they be allowed to "tell" their story. Good. It's been awhile since we've had a genuine bunch of crackpots in the news lately.

The iconic and consistently mis-identified tower which holds Big Ben is starting to lean to the left. Well, Labor was in charge for most of the past few decades, what do you expect? Apparently they've got plenty of time to sort it all out, which I'm sure they will do presently.

Pop quiz: authorities are investigating a) mysterious lights in the sky, b) mysterious objects in the sky, or c) mysterious snoring in the sky? Ok, now go collect your prize. I was always expecting trumpets to herald the end of days. I am disappoint.

Agreed: "If Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's legislative assault on public sector workers was a prime example of right-wing excess on the issue of organized labor, the story of Buffalo's teachers and their botox should be looked at as cautionary tale for the left." Good intentions does not make a dumb idea any smarter.

Returning electronics is about to get a heck of a lot tougher now that some bastards have figured out a new way to scam the system. Some people admire clever "bandits," thinking they're some sort of modern Robin Hood. I look at the mountains of paperwork I have to complete to get basically anything done and curse the day the first one drew a breath.

Hikers walking their dogs around the Hollywood Hills have made a grisly discovery. Yeah, it's probably some drug lord or something, but still, that's not really the sort of thing I'd want to find on a trail, ya know?

Authorities have discovered radioactive concrete, contaminated by the Fukushima disaster, has made its way into new building construction. An apartment building, no less. The problem was discovered when a student at a nearby school had received a significant radiation dose in a very short time.

A mysterious sonic rumble experienced in May still has scientists scratching their heads in Costa Rica. Somewhere in the vicinity there's a very happy person with a very, very large subwoofer.

Use #13: gold smuggling compartment. This one's high up on the list because it's probably been used that way by smugglers for thousands of years. Which is why I don't ever want to be a smuggler. Not worth the discomfort, sorry.

More than a day after it (presumably) fell to Earth, Russian scientists still aren't sure where Phobos-Ground ended up. Since the trail ended somewhere over Brazil, I'm thinking darkest jungles and wide, deep oceans would be a good guess. It also makes me think they may never actually find anything.

Navigating a port correctly is important, especially if you're in charge of one of the biggest cruise ships afloat. The FARKers are all abuzz as to just how they're going to get something that big out of the mess it's now in. The short answer seems to be, "dunno."

A villager in a remote Russian town got a big surprise when he found nearly 80 Kalashnikov rifles in the scrap wood he just bought. Apparently in Russia it's acceptable to use unopened crates as scrap wood. Who knew?

There but for the grace of God goes my wife: UK woman killed by train attempting to retrieve her cell phone. Ellen's loyalty to her "extended heart and soul" definitely borders on the clinical, but I'd like to think she'd draw the line at jumping in front of a train to save it.

A guy who thought it would be a good idea to get his short arm its very own tat got an unexpected "bonus." Fortunately it seems in this specific case the patient isn't in immediate danger, although I would imagine it does limit the kinds of swimsuits he can wear and still be polite.

How many bug spray cans does it take to make a respectable bomb? According to the Post, about a dozen. I've had static electricity spark to any number of cans of flammable stuff and never seen anything like this happen. I think there's something else going on here...

I've read about, heck I think I've seen video, of hot air balloons hitting power lines. Seems to be a professional hazard for them, sort of like crotch hits and pinatas. I had no idea it had the potential to kill nearly half a dozen people. It seems you can get killed doing damned near anything.

Sweden has officially recognized a religion who's central belief revolves around "anti-copyrights". This sort of reminds me of rednecks who declared themselves members of the Church of the Green Bud in an effort to get legalized pot back in the '80s. However, this is Sweden, so who the heck knows where it'll go?

Having tried everything else to convince the middle that my side is a clear and present danger to life, liberty, and sanity, now they're trotting ol' Pat out again. Robertson has been saying essentially the same things over and over again for the past, what, I think it must be forty or fifty years now. I'm more interested in why anyone thinks he's fresh or relevant than in what he actually says.

Sometimes North Korea crudely photoshops pictures for obvious reasons. Other times, it's just some really weird sh- coming out of the place. Me, I still think it'll end up being some bizarre retouching, but I've been wrong before.

Fortunately we live in the US, where this only happens in the fevered dreams of wacky leftists (when our side is in charge): Turkish military admits to blowing up cigarette smugglers who were mistaken for Kurdish separatists. See? Smuggling cigarettes is bad. Just wanted to put that out there for, you know, some people...

Alternate title: "~ Reindeer got run over then killed gramma ~". When it's your time, it's just your time. How my rural relatives have avoided this fate all these years, I will never know.

All right, once more, with feeling: do not post anything on-line you wouldn't say out loud, in public, within earshot of a priest, a policeman, and your mom. Of course this is a teenage boy. He'd probably shout "yo, dawg!" and confess in front of all three just for "teh lulz."

It's bad enough to find out your daughter is sleeping with the gym coach. It's worse if you're dating him, too. I'm pretty sure there isn't a hole deep enough to measure the amount of trouble Olivia would be in if she pulled a stunt like that. I'd like to think we'll teach her to be better than that, but I'm humble enough to acknowledge it's not a sure thing.

A ship carrying 160 tons of explosives and nearly 70 "Patriot" missiles bound for China has been stopped in Finland. Hey, they labeled the missiles as fireworks! They're really just super-fancy bottle-rockets anyway, right? Right? Which catalog can I order those out of, anyway?

For even more evidence that junkies are idiots we have the case of the man who died after eating the cocaine stuffed up his brother's backside. Wait a minute. If they were handcuffed that would mean he might've had to... EWWWW!!!!!

And now, a 100 year-old Christmas cake. Article includes oh-so-appetizing picture of same. I'm not completely convinced it's legit, but why not? You take the first piece!

Today's "innocent item that will kill you in a horrific way" is... [spins the media wheel of hysteria] ... Neti pots. For those of you who have not married into a family enamored of magic potions and mystic chotchkies, neti pots are used to flush out the sinus cavities. Basically, the user sticks the spout of a teapot up their nose and pours. No, really! I knew I should've taken pictures when Ellen was using hers regularly.

At any rate, two people in Louisiana woke up dead lately, victims of a neurological disease called "primary amoebic meningoencephalitis." Since there wasn't any other obvious reason, the state's health department shot out a press release which may have included the absolutely delightful phrase, "brain-eating amoebas." Quicker than you can shriek, "flesh eating bacteria!!!!" pow, we have our latest public health hysteria. And just in time for Christmas!

That this disease is "exceptionally rare," even though the critter that causes it is "extremely common" and "extremely sensitive to chlorine," and absolutely the only way infection occurs is "direct contact with the olfactory nerve, which is only exposed at the extreme vertical terminus of the paranasal sinuses," ^{1 we encounter nowhere in the original article.}

In other words, unless you enjoy filling a teapot with tap water and then pouring it UP your nose, a lot, you're fine, and so am I. Ellen, on the other hand, well, I'm just glad she lost the thing years ago.

Some enterprising Dutchmen have managed to make off with an entire jet fighter. True, the F-104 is one of the smaller examples of the breed, but it's still a freaking airplane. Oh, I don't doubt they'll be caught, but, dude, nice job!

While the initial report makes it seem like they were right out there in the open, even getting it on in a car below a lighted sign shows some pretty poor judgement. Sheriff. The boy-toy just makes it that much sillier. Really, people, get a room!

During a Pilates stretching exercise known as a Valsalva maneuver the woman reported that her "body swallowed one of the implants," according to the account published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Unfortunately, no matter how irritated you get, it's not a good idea to wave shotguns at people just because. Yet another crazy person wobbling off their meds, I'll wager. At least nobody got hurt.

Color me unsurprised: a former Wal Mart employee chronicles government assistance and the people who use it. Long-term poverty is the hallmark of people with extremely poor decision-making skills. Helping them improve those skills should be a goal of any assistance but, alas, that will never happen. It would reduce their dependence on the state, and That Will Not Do.

All I can say is, if I were the foundation that ponied up the grant that funded this, I'd want my money back: "Researchers collated their results and discovered that alcohol consumption affects decision-making, and that this impact rises with the amount of alcohol consumed." Really? Really? Go for the mush-headed press release, stay and stare at Ramona, the transgendered football linebacker pondering "her story."

Making the rounds: a set of older photos is offering a rare glimpse into life on death row in China. The full set of photos is here. No death or gore, just strangely eerie pictures of women convicted of breaking the law in a society which executes many more individuals for such things than does the US.

For those of you who long ago grew sick of looking at replica man-bits hanging off car trailer hitches: be careful what you wish for (SFW). Haven't seen any of this around here, so far at any rate. Our customizers tend to be of the "beaded seat cover and gold-and-red-crowns" sort, if you catch my meaning.

The sharks, they jump themselves: upcoming Glee holiday episode to feature Chewbacca. Hey, if it means Mayhew gets some cash for Christmas, I guess I'm OK with it. Ellen: "well, that proves they'll desecrate anything." She takes it more seriously than I do.

It turns out emptying the magazine of an AR-15 at the White House from a half-mile away isn't the only thing that marked the guy out as crazy. On reflection, it probably is just a coincidence this guy was party of the Occupy movement. This particular sort of "Coke Classic Crazy" regularly makes its appearance around this town. I used to work with a few of them.

So, what you're trying to tell me is that an alien race capable of building a spacecraft the size of a freaking planet is having their nefarious plot foiled by a, well, let's be honest, a sun fart? See, that's the problem I have with just about every conspiracy theory out there. They all require the bad guys to be inhumanly (ha!) brilliant, right up until "we" notice, then they're suddenly as dumb as a rock with a tomato on it.

By the way, I thought it was supposed to be 12-12-2012??? Looks like someone didn't synch their watch or something!

Look, people, if living with an Italian from New York has taught me anything, it's taught me nothing good comes of a shallow grave. Bonus: perp seems to be complaining that stun guns do not work "as advertised." Hopefully he'll be able to collect his refund in jail.

Ever wonder what Chernobyl might've looked like just a few months after the disaster. I'm thinking it looked like this, only with more vodka and fewer vending machines. Japan is, of course, both richer and better organized than the Soviets. It'll be interesting to see if this can all be reclaimed, or if it will join Chernobyl as another ghost town that glows in the dark.

A new wrinkle in the saga of the Large Hadron Collider: a man claiming to be from the future was apprehended trespassing on the premises. "Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening."

Well that's comforting.

So they say welfare mothers are a myth. I say oh, really? Unfortunately a society which provides a safety net for people who really need it will often find it being used by people who don't. A free society for the smart also means a free society for the stupid, and enabling the state to go all Darth Vader on someone like this means it can go Darth Vader on me, too.

Reason #62 why I'd suck as a junkie's friend: if this is what I have to do to wake you up, your ass is dead. Everyone who thought using a sharpie marker on the face of their passed out friend just got a whole other interesting set of ways to wake them up. Me, I'll stick to whacking the soles of their feet. "Why couldn't that technique have been used for Uma Thurman instead of the needle?"

And now, a cricket eating a carrot. Not just any cricket, mind you, it's a cricket about the size of a tennis ball. Meh. I'm sure there are mosquitoes nearly that big somewhere in southeast Arkansas. They don't call it the state bird for nothing!

Tick off a bunch of college kids, and all you get are smelly hippies camping in a park. Tick off an Indian snake charmer and the results are different, to say the least. No, Ellen, you can't have one.

Well, I guess running over 2500 water balloons has originality going for it as an advertisement. Then again, I use a Tivo. I haven't seen a non-kid-based advertisement since about 2005. It may have in fact been done before. Just not with a car this cool.

Durham Crematorium has submitted plans to install turbines in its three burners which can convert the huge amounts of heat generated during the cremation process into electricity.

But crematorium bosses believe surplus energy from the other two turbines - enough to power around 1,500 television sets - could be fed into the National Grid.

The turbines will be powered by steam released by cooling hot gases used in the cremation process, rather than bodies.

Read then entire article here.

Observation: Russia's delightfully named Phobos-Grunt didn't leave orbit when it should've, and it's turning out to be very difficult to figure out why. Conclusion: It's actually a bio-warfare weapon designed to bring about a global apocalypse. Well, duh!

Originally Rossie tried to have Ryan charged with assault but it turns out this crafty tattoo artist got her to sign a consent form prior to the tattoo and it said that the design was ‘at the artists discretion’, she claims; “he tricked her by drinking a bottle of cheap wine with me and doing tequila shots before I signed it and got the tattoo”. “Actually I was passed out for most of the time, and woke up to this horrible image on my back.”

Oh dear...

She said: "It's like an octopus. It started four months ago. I was lying in bed when I felt this creepy pair of hands.

"I kicked frantically and it went away. Next time it came I hurled the duvet on to the floor!

"But the ghost keeps coming back. I've tried sleeping without the duvet. But it started shaking my mattress.

And in the, "you just can't make this sh-t up" category, we have a "trans gendered woman" who injected a client's buttocks with cement. With fix-a-flat mixed in, no less. Because, you know, it needs to be sticky I guess. Fortunately nobody died, but it's not from a lack of trying.

Passengers on an an airline from India to Britain were recently told to pay for gas or find another ride. Fortunately they were confronted with the request while on the ground. Silly people. Doing it in the air would've been much more effective!

I've long suspected there was a limit to the good bacon could do. Now I've found it. All the women I know are quite meticulous with their hygiene, and understandably so. That makes me think no matter how, well, tasty things are, this one's a non-starter.

Remember the guy who'd raised himself a tame hippo? Yeah, that ended about like you'd think it would. I don't really trust any of our pets to be civilized, but they're all less than 1/10th my size. No way I'd try to even make friends with something that weighed more than my car.

Not content with building eerie, empty cities, the Chinese have also been building weird, abandoned structures in the desert. When they're not talking politics, the Slashdot guys can be useful commentators, and so their ideas are mostly interesting. Has someone tried asking them what it all is yet?

Illinoisans to legally scoop up road kill.

In action Thursday, senators voted 52-0 in favor of the proposed law, which is designed to allow people to collect dead mammals found on roadways.

How many times can f*$ing yuck be used in a sentence?

Just when you thought teens had figured out every weird way to get drunk, they discover vodka tampons and butt bongs. Look, I enjoy a good drink as much as the next guy, but I do have boundaries. Most especially those involving access to my backside.

While, technically, this is not really a "faces of meth," it's close enough for me to shudder. The processes they use to make the stuff are incredibly flammable, after all. Proof positive there are things far, far worse than an addiction to Facebook.

Those crazy Asians are at it again!

It's a fun video and family friendly.

Having solved all other problems, the Obama administration is now out to improve the image of the American Christmas tree. By, naturally, imposing a .15c tax on each and every one sold. I get it now, you all are absolutely right. The only way to success is to give the federal government even more money and power. Look at how effective they are with what they already have!

A well-intentioned effort to control greenhouse gasses may be on the verge of going completely pear-shaped. Yet another example of not thinking past stage one: if you pay people for piece-work, they'll make more, not less, of what you're paying them for.

MADRID — Pushed for space, a Spanish cemetery has begun placing stickers on thousands of burial sites whose leases are up as a warning to relatives or caretakers to pay up or face possible eviction.

The sticker campaign was decided upon to coincide with the Nov. 1 Roman Catholic holiday on which people visit graveyards. Abadia said that since then hundreds of people had called to make inquiries about grave of their relatives.

Nowadays, Spanish cemeteries normally place coffins or cremated ash urns in niches above ground.

Read the rest of the here

Remember how odd China and Japan are? A challenger has appeared. It seems something about recovering from a totalitarian disaster brings out the sincerely weird in people. We'll have to see just how it plays out.

Some countries, well, let's be honest. All countries except one protect their nukes with sophisticated security and heavily defended bunkers. The one hold-out? They create "the world’s most dangerous 1-800-FLOWERS truck." Gives you that "not-so-safe" feeling, eh?

A Russian man has been arrested in relation to a string of grave robberies after the remains of 20 women he'd dressed himself were found in his house. Look, it's all fun and games to make jokes about how much women talk, but this is taking it a little far, don't you think?

Hacker group Anonymous is learning it's all fun and games until the cartel starts sniffing around your house. I learned a very long time ago there's a certain sort of guy you do not mess around with. These guys make those look like pansies. Pro tip: stick to corporations and the US Government. They won't pull your tongue through your neck just to prove they can.

Bird owners everywhere know one of their great talents is chaos. They can foul things up all out of proportion to their size and weight. Don't believe me? check out what one does when he encounters a paraglider. Hooray for safety chutes!

A Burmese python slithering through the Everglades proved that her eyes weren't bigger than her stomach, swallowing intact a 76-pound deer. At 15.65 feet, the python isn't the largest on record. But the size of her prey both impresses and concerns state and federal wildlife scientists and land managers trying to control the non-native species.

"They are large exotic animals that are not naturally from this area," said Randy Smith, spokesperson for the South Florida Water Management District. "The potential to wreak havoc on the natural Florida wildlife ... they don't have true enemies."

Contractors spraying exotic vegetation Thursday came across the female python on an island about 20 miles from Everglades National Park, Smith told CNN Tuesday. It was dispatched, by protocol, with a single shotgun blast to the head.

Well that sucks, but this is what happens when irresponsible people own giant snakes. With picture!

Nicole said that the morning after the arrest, she emailed Safeway to say not paying for the sandwiches was an honest mistake. "It was just a slip, a mommy-brain moment, I guess," she said. Houghton said Safeway accepts her assurance that she simply forgot to pay.

***Here's and idea! Don't eat when you shop! Since when is a grocery store a restaurant? Those places are filithy!*** Nicole said she and her husband were told they were banned from the store for one year. ***Pity Party*** Houghton said she wasn't sure who would have told them that, but Safeway welcomes the family back. Grocery shopping is a chore that now bring some anxiety, Nicole said, adding that she has read countless comments online criticizing her for eating before paying.

***Keep reading them. Just because you are pregnant doesn't mean you are extra special. Babies are born every day. Eat before you go out.***

Really? I'm not totally heartless. Safeway you suck for arresting two idiots who decided to eat while shopping. That is a No-No. You suck even more for calling child welfare and stressing everyone out. You handled the situation poorly.

Again, who the hell eats in a grocery store? You might as well eat off a public toilet seat.

Read entire asinine article here.

A 28 year-old man is using the time-tested "she turned into an ass on the way home" defense in a very novel situation. Turns out the donkey show is a global phenomenon. Who knew? (SFW)

Remember those parents who named their kids things like "Adolf Hitler" and "JoyceLynn Aryan Nation"? Yeah, they're trying to get their kids back. Again. At first, I was all, "it's their kids, give them back please." Then I found out, "Both parents are unemployed and are said to suffer from unnamed physical and mental disabilities."

In other words, these are not racist, hateful, but otherwise productive citizens. They're not Westboro. Instead they're a couple of unemployed clinically crazy people with a proven track record of poor impulse control and bad decision making. It may not be enough to keep their kids away, but as far as I'm concerned it's enough to make that a harder decision than it would at first appear.

Today's "I didn't know I didn't know that" story concerns one Jack Unterweger, a serial killer who convinced his country he was reformed, only to immediately begin killing again on his early release. Yet another item to consider when a paid talking head starts crowing about how something is "definitely settled." Oh, and Malkovich is in a play about him.

I guess I'm officially old now, because I don't have a problem with a Girl Scout troupe rejecting a boy in a dress. Then again, if Olivia were in the same troupe and she came home talking about their new member David well, I'd like to think I wouldn't have a problem with it. When I think about the reverse case, of a girl trying to join up with a Boy Scout troupe, I don't get the same visceral reaction so maybe it is just me. Tolerance makes parenting complicated, I suppose.

Looks like the 99% doesn't include local farmers. But then, what's a little inconvenience as long as it furthers the revolution? It is always better to starve in justice than to dine in the shadow of prosperity!

Another day, another creepy anniversary nobody's ever heard of commemorated by Wikipedia. At least, likely nobody outside the Australian UFO community. You'd think that after so much time they'd be able to pry more records out of the various law enforcement agencies.

Today's "kook mistaken for an audiophile" story is all about how cassette tapes are making a "comeback." Ok, slowly this time: audiophiles are people who spend $20,000 on a single 30 watt monophonic vacuum tube amplifier. Kooks are people who talk a guy down from $30 for an obsolete tape player.

The bones used to be buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery south of town. Heavy rains in 2009 washed away the wall of a neighboring ravine, and a strip of the oldest part of the cemetery slid into the maw. Several headstones and at least one body tumbled down with the soil.

Someone retrieved several gravestones from the ravine and set them at the back edge of the cemetery. Some of them indicate the graves were nearly old enough to fall under the state archaeologist’s authority. One, for a 2-year-old girl named Nellie Beem, says she was buried in 1867, which is 144 years ago.

How hard is it just to dig some new graves and put these people back to rest?

We're (well, Ellen's) getting slow... how else to explain our total lack of albino cyclops shark coverage? Ah, I know. It wasn't an albino cyclops cat! Fish, fowl, feline, the distinction matters. Well, anyway, it's a great Halloween-style link!

Really? I know you are a country of nearly1.2 Billion, but you don't hit a child with car and then run her over.

The horrific part is over 4 people walked past her and she was hit multiple times!

China, you really are one sick country

The things one learns, trolling Wikipedia's "on this day" section. To wit: on this day, 9 people were killed in 1814 during the "London Beer Flood." Sometimes beer does things you don't want it to do.

No, really, Piranha bark. Nature can be weirder than we can imagine, because nature just has to follow rules we're still not completely clear about. It doesn't have to actually be "creative."

A surfer in Oregon got the ride of his life recently. I'd normally say, "yeah, right," but apparently there are witnesses to his little shark dance. Just another reason to stick with swimming pools, as far as I'm concerned.

Besides the noted Thanatron machine, which Kevorkian built, other items to be auctioned include some of Kevorkian's correspondences and invention ideas, a pearl flute, his doctor's bag, a master lock from prison and his signature blue sweater. People can also purchase provocative paintings that he created, which come with brief descriptions from the artist himself, according to Neal.

You know you want own a piece of real American History!

Proof people wobbling off their meds aren't exclusive to North America: a man flipped out and literally tore his eyes out during an Italian church service. No pictures, fortunately.

A Russian woman's life was saved by her (apparently quite large) fake boobies. Or maybe the knife was just small? Save the boobies!

A US man has taken "royal obsession" to new heights: the body of a homeless man with a demented fascination with the royal family lay near one of the royal residences for three years before it was discovered. Camping out on an inaccessible island and hiding out in the bushes will have a tendency to cause that sort of thing. Crazy people... is there anything they can't do?

"Let’s start by sketching out the little that is known for certain. At 7 o’clock on the warm evening of Tuesday, November 30, 1948, jeweler John Bain Lyons and his wife went for a stroll on Somerton Beach, a seaside resort a few miles south of Adelaide. As they walked toward Glenelg, they noticed a smartly dressed man lying on the sand, his head propped against a sea wall..."

What better way to start the month known for the macabre than with a genuine, and deadly, mystery?

Crooked teeth are seen as imperfections in many western countries, and particularly in America, where braces are practically a God-given gift to man, but in Japan, a country where almost everything is different, they are considered cute, even adorable. Yaeba means double tooth in Japanese, but it doesn’t describe major dental deformities, but rather the vampire-like look obtained when the two molars crowd the canines pushing them forward to create a fang effect. According to some sources, yaeba gives girls a feline look which is apparently makes them even more attractive, while others say it’s this little imperfection that makes pretty girls look more approachable as opposed to the flawless magazine cover models of the western world.

Yet another way the Japanese are making themselves into living ANIME dolls.

With Video!

Just when I thought the Chinese couldn't get any weirder, I learn about a festival in which pigs that've grown to be the size of VW Beetles are publicly slaughtered and then their gaily painted carcasses are paraded around town. Still, it's gotta be better than dog meat. I hope.

Standard: an organization responsible for a ridiculous stunt is irritated that someone else is giving the wrong people the credit. WTF: the organization is Al Qaeda, and they're telling Iran's president to stop blaming the CIA for 9/11. Even better, the whole thing was just about prophesied by an Onion parody some time ago.

Fans of Storm Chasers and other weather-related phenomena should not miss this detailed and harrowing account of surviving the Joplin tornado. Best part: they were saved by a beer cooler. Beer. Is there anything it can't do?

Those of you wondering why the economy is still flopping around in the bottom of the boat need look no further than this: new environmental regulations will require 230,000 new employees to enforce, cause 6.1 million businesses to fall under their jurisdiction, cost $21 billion dollars, and probably won't work. No, this isn't some right-wing think-tank report. It's the EPA itself admitting all this effort probably won't work. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure, and is a direct result of electing a community organizer with exactly two years of federal office experience to the Presidency. It's not who he is. It's who he's hired.

See, I always thought people learned to leave wild mushrooms alone back in, you know, first grade or something. As usual, it seems that a few people weren't listening in that class. Darwin missed them by THAT much.

No surprise to anyone familiar with the "wisdom" of diplomats assigned to the UN: diplomat's car stolen and crashed after he left it double-parked and idling while he went and got some tea. The UAE is a comparatively liberal Arab state, so it's not like a religious policeman was outraged or anything.

Update: Actually, it's the diplomat's chauffeur.

Why worry about finances when you're a successful actor and... a vampire?!? Because, really, it's definitely not a faked photo. That's what the auctioneer on Ebay says, and we all know how reliable they are!

A surrogate mom got some startling news when she found out the prospective parents were backing out of the contract, leaving her with twins she never thought she'd have to raise. Fortunately, an adoption agency was able to place the children and everyone seems to be Ok.

Reason #432 that a womb is not a rent-able factory. Ya know?

Making the rounds: a heavily modified P-51 Mustang has crashed at the Reno Air Races. The pilot reported a mayday and pulled out of the race, and then the plane looped over and went in nearly vertically, right in front of the grandstands. Death toll is currently at 3, but may climb higher.

Pilots get killed pretty regularly at Reno, but this is the first accident involving spectators I can think of. Unfortunately it wouldn't surprise me at all if this incident shuts down the races for good.

Fumes at a Georgia McDonalds have sent 10 to a hospital. I always knew the place could smell a little weird, but this is ridiculous. I'm putting a $5 chip down on "stupid teenager mixing bleach and ammonia just to see what would happen."

Good: Airliners are booting thugs off for not pulling their pants up. Bad: get a load of what they'll let on the airplane instead (SFW). I had a point to make, but the picture just, well... go look, you'll see.

With humans, jealousy normally results in the sort of drama that drives the plots of hundreds of soap opera episodes per year. With tigers, the drama is much shorter, and... gurglier... Reason #37 why Ellen can't run a big cat rescue from her back yard one day, that's all I'm sayin...

Nope, it is correct. A nudist dating site.

Lots of sagging, cellulite... and well those models they feature. Yeah right.

A moose drunk on fermented apples was rescued recently when it staggered into a tree and got stuck. And really, they can be mean drunks.

Only in the heartland of all things progressive: San Francisco's latest controversy involves forcing nudists to sit on towels when they're in public. Yes, "sit on," not "wear." Meh. Their city, their rules. It's not like I was planning on visiting Castro any time soon anyway.

Drunk, naked, passed out in an empty hot tub next to a dead guyis no way to go through life, son. Bonus: Arkansas weatherman. Hot water, booze, boy toys, and blow. That's some fine judgement there, very fine.

All the new rules and organizations set up to stop the Wacky Westboro Bunch must be having an effect, since their new target is the rock group The Foo Fighters. Trying to make a lot of noise at a venue that celebrates nothing but noise isn't a particularly good idea, but the Westboro people have never been known for quick thinking. I'm sure Grohl will have a good time with them.

The stupid person mode of transportation.

Mr Satur said the incident was a 'terrible' example of the danger of trying to hop a train. He said: 'It's terrible.

'It really highlights the dangers of trying to hop a train. It is not safe by any means.'

Authorities said the 100-car train was travelling at 18mph when the incident occurred.

The person is lucky not to have lost their life pulling this stunt.

If the documents prove to be authentic, the US government definitely believed in Yeti back in the day. Bonus: It seems the guy who created Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer included a yeti in the story because he was obsessed with finding them. No, really!

Ellen's idyllic San Francisco isn't quite as idyllic at the moment. Meh. People gotta swim, shark's gotta eat, ya know?

A Welsh lady walking her dog in a nice pasture got killed by a cow. Better: this was the second time in two years it's happened. Remember folks, guns don't kill people, cows kill people.

Naked dude: check. Girlfriend: check. Raccoon: check. Alcohol: well, duh.(SFW) The only truly strange thing was it didn't actually happen in Florida.

The installation of the first "body liquifaction" plant in Florida sparked the BBC to take a closer look at the whole process. Dissolving a body to its bones is fine, I guess, but I can definitely see why people would be upset that the results get dumped into the municipal water system. I don't care how pure it really is, the thought definitely gives me pause.

If you picked "less than a day" in the "how long will it take for pictures of a weird dead thing to show up on the tabloids after the hurricane," you can collect your prize. The comments seem to agree it's a bear. I dunno.

Could it be this?

And now, a great big house boat that's been docked. "Docked" as in, "placed on top of." I'm sure the owners are grateful their boat appears undamaged. I have a feeling they may be puzzled about the next step.

Ok, when the sea foam is green, it's a fashion statement. When it's brown, not so much. I constantly wonder what these reporters do wrong to get these kinds of assignments.

Yes Virginia, there are people that are just that stupid.

I'm sure this has made the rounds, but it's the first time I've seen it: I think this is the best "in person" video of Japan's massive quake. It really provides a sense of how severe, and how long, it really was.

A UK woman shot in the chest with a paint ball gun ended up with a lot more than just a nasty bruise. See, just because fake ones look bullet-proof, it doesn't actually mean they are bullet-proof. Bonus: fake ones "make you an easier target."

Not content with all the other nasty things cocaine can naturally do to you, dealers are now cutting it with stuff that makes you look like a black death victim, and then gives you AIDS. Well, ok, not exactly AIDS, but it definitely can fatally weaken the immune system. Hey, man, that's great. They were making it sound like it could kill you or something...

And in today's "can't make this stuff up" box we find notice that King Arthur Pendragon has lost his bid to force the reburial of remains found at Stonehenge. This is not a repeat from 475. Really.

Ok, I get that motorcyclists must be constantly vigilant around other motorists, on account of latter constantly trying to kill the former. What I didn't expect was for the streets themselves to get into the act. It's the whole, "crashed through the barrier" thing that has me puzzled. Was the driver not paying attention? Barriers incorrectly marked? Was he or she driven into them by a motorist? If so, that would be a pretty classic bank shot, no?

Ok, what I want to know is, since when is circumcision considered a routine treatment for inflammation??? Losing his winkie in the bargain just makes it extra-fail-tastic.

Sharks have attacked two people in the past 24 hours off the west coast of Russia. The article helpfully includes a) a picture of the one sort of shark that never attacks anyone, and b) the geographic note that the area was, "4,000 miles east of Moscow."

What is it with high-profile passengers peeing on airplanes? And how drunk does someone have to be to just whip it out and let fly? You know it's only a matter of time before some idiotic celebrity drops trow on a United flight or something.

After being entombed in a chimney for nearly thirty years, a Louisiana man is finally being laid to rest. Nobody knows why Joseph Schexnider decided to climb down a small bank's chimney in 1984, although even some relatives acknowledge his final weeks were spent, "with a bad crowd." His body would likely still be there, were it not for the renovation of the 2nd floor space where the fireplace vented by the chimney sits.

And I'll bet that was a damned interesting day to be a construction worker!

A lady takes her kid to a concert and bemoans the missed opportunities to score political points. Oh, and peers down her puritanical nose at the goings-on before the concert. She even made the classic critic's fumble by not actually saying whether she liked it or not. Compare with someone sent to professionally review what was likely the exact same event.

Quick! is this a new beauty device, or the end of an insect's proboscis? I was going to make a crack about the lengths women will go, but I'll bet this is just as popular with men as well. Just not, you know, me.

"People have been throwing things-- at night--especially at night. When they are partying and they're out of control. They do it. They think it's a joke," he said.

Don't toss stuff off buildings!

Today's Darwin award goes to a Japanese chick who thought slippery rocks didn't apply to her. Bonus: they haven't found her body yet, but they did find a different body of a dude they weren't even looking for and don't know who is. Unexpectedly!

A UK man has been banned for driving for a year after being spotted using two cell phones at once. Oh, and not having insurance. The only thing that keeps Ellen from doing this is I won't loan her my phone while she's using hers.

Not sure how we managed to miss this one: an 18 year old US Olympic ski team candidate may have literally pissed away his chance at the games. Ever wonder why airliners try so hard to keep drunks off the plane? I bet you don't now.

A teenaged Florida girl is dead after a weird parasite crawled up her nose and into her brain. No, really! This time even sticking to pools is no guarantee of safety, since the critter can take root in any body of water "not cleaned regularly." All those times I've walked home smelling like chlorine? Yeah, not complaining about those anymore.

Another day, another slow news day over at Slate. This time, they hired a psychologist to write an essay on the history of autofellatio. Article is SFW. Well of course we're going to link that up! We're classy that way!

They told me, if I voted for John McCain, the State Department would continue to be a source of American arrogance and parochialism, and they were right: US asks China to explain why it needs aircraft carrier.

If this headline doesn't stop you dead in your tracks you must be made of stone: 'My Strange Addiction:' Woman Eats Husband. Turns out she's switched to a diet of cremains, her husband's cremains, to lose weight. Part of my faith is to contemplate the impermanence of things. That said, I can't recall "licking the inside of a funeral urn" being part of the program.

After seventeen years the body of a missing scuba diver has been found in Lake Tahoe. Even better, it seems there are at least four other dead divers hidden in its depths. The locals claim they're haunting tunnels that riddle the lake's bottom, connecting it to the nearby Pyramid Lake.

A meteor explosion is the likely cause of a "surprising 'bang' over a small Pacific island. I'd rather it kerplooey over my house rather than through it.

Rowan Atkinson seems to have inadvertently tested just how crash-proof a McLaren really is. Hey, you don't buy a car from an F1 factory ONLY because it's fast, donchaknow? This time I think the car's probably a write-off.

It seems a guy who's weirdly into Hello Kitty can sometimes have a lot of other problems. Police, and consent laws, can be tough that way. And then the feds can get involved, too. His lifestyle implies rich white parents, which I hope he has, because if he doesn't he's in for a world of... well, you know...

Nothing like finding a live rat in a fresh loaf of bread to start a meal right! Lovely how everyone involved is handling it so gracefully, too. You would've thought someone would've noticed, I don't know, the bread moving or something? Or a hole in the package? A squeak?

... so much for skydiving: Skydiving quadriplegic plunges to death after parachute failures. Jumping out of perfectly good airplanes has never struck me as the wisest of hobbies, but people do it all the time without getting hurt. And when something does go wrong, well, that sudden stop at the end makes for a very quick appearance at the back of the reincarnation line.

A Chinese couple has allegedly sold all three of their children to finance their on-line gaming addictions. Mine's known her own address for years now, so I never seriously considered the possibility.

I'd always known porta-potties were not particularly healthy places. I had no idea they could actually explode. Considering the article itself mentions a Mythbusters de-bunking of this very occurrence, I'm suspicious that perhaps more than just methane gas was involved. In other words...

Boom.

Ok, even I admit a news quiz question about how many pieces a body was cut into is a pretty shocking thing to find on a news site. I would've expected something like that on Fark. Which is, of course, where I found it. Classy!

"AMCGLTD," we hear you ask, "I know those Smurfs are up to something, I'm just not sure what. Is there anything that can help me decide just what those little monsters are out to accomplish?"

Fear not, friendly child show paranoiac! AMCGLTD is here to help! Presenting The Smurf Conspiracy, your one-stop-shop to all speculation about the nefarious machinations of everyone's previously-thought-to-be-harmless kid show stars! If you've ever wanted proof that pushing crazy as far to one side as possible just means you meet crazy coming from the other direction, here it is.

This Japanese delicacy known as odori-don or “dancing squid rice bowl” is a variation on traditional squid sashimi and uses soy sauce to create the disturbing illusion of bringing a dead squid back to life.

This is the reason why they have a fetish with tentacle porn.

SFW!! The link brings you right to the article...not to tentacle porn. We are not that disgusting.

Ok, Ellen, if cow urine therapy ends up on your list of magic potions, you're sleeping in the garage. I'm sure traditional medicine has it all over the Western variety. Doesn't mean I'm hopping in a tub of cow piss. Ever.

Leave it to the Chinese to have a "bee wearing contest." Yes, you read that right. They wear bees. CHINA: Run away from Japan as fast as you can. You're catching it!

Well, fans of all foods Chinese and Chinese-like, it's looking like your favorites are just as bad for you as the stuff from the Golden Arches. However, I do wondering about the portions used. The stuff we get when we do takeout lasts us the whole weekend, say, three or four meals easy.

Me? I prefer Indian food over Chinese.

They told me if I voted for John McCain the government would make sure "don't ask don't tell" stuck around no matter the cost, and they were right! Good thing the rest of you voted for Obama!

The trick with fetishes is to make sure they don't go wrong. Getting careless can mean people get hurt. I think it's just as well no pictures of the principles were included.

Today's "ZOMG!!!!11! Teh wurld iz endin!!!" prophecy comes courtesy of (shakes big 8-ball) the planet Nibiru. Bonus: includes "but what about the CHILDREN!!!" angsting by the interviewed scientist.

A small private aircraft spun in and crashed into a California hospital. Unfortunately, as with most plane crashes, not everyone walked away.

A Chinese egg processing company is demanding an apology from CNN for broadcasting a slur against a traditional Chinese egg dish called "century eggs." Keep in mind real Chinese cuisine often involves stuff like scorpions and live eels.

The irony is, of course, very strong when a motorcyclist protesting a helmet law gets killed bashing his head against the ground. The motorcycle pros I know not only wear helmets, but a veritable armored suit of sweat-inducing gear. I guess that's why they're fine (so far) and this guy definitely is not. That said, as a libertarian I support this guy's right to splatter his noggin. They don't call them "donorcycles" for nothing!

A woman who thought her mother was buried fifteen years ago has been informed she is in fact alive and well in Florida. Bonus: they buried something they found in their back yard, and now don't know who's remains those actually are.

An effort to firmly establish just how much money an Indian temple is (literally) sitting on has revealed a horde worth an estimated 22 billion dollars. The amount is expected to rise as other vaults under the (previously unguarded) temple are opened and inventoried.

And now, a man who claims he's innocent of rape because he thought the victim was dead. Yeah, I had to do a double-take too. There's a whole lot going on there, and none of it's good.

The guy who hid in a porta-potty tank has been found and interviewed. As expected, he's a complete nutter, who's sense of smell seems to be as impaired as his judgement. Bonus: he seems to have been peeping on women in bathrooms all across Boulder. It's not clear from the article if he was interviewed in jail.

Sorry, that's all I have, time to hit the shower. *shudder*

Progressives have finally lost their damned minds: San Francisco city council is seriously considering a ban on all pet sales. Remember that article that was surprised at California's "unexpected" decline? Yeah, about that...

So, did the Jackass star smear & fry himself off the side of a road, or didn't he? The rumors that he may not have actually died seem to be taking root. Will the Porsche of truth mow this down as well? Hell, some people still believe Elvis is alive, so anything's possible. Remember, folks, you heard it here first!

Junkies, like most other people, can be inventive and ingenious when it comes to getting what they want. The problem is, of course, that what junkies want makes them do crazy, violent things, and then kills them.

Here's one that'll make you read the headline twice: Amish man in Indiana arrested, accused of sexting girl, 12. I know, right? Since when did the Amish move to Indiana?

Great. Just great. Now Ellen will be even more spastic about port-a-potties. Heck I'm not sure I'm ever going to be the same now, and all I did was read about it. So, of course, we're linking that bad boy up right away!

People are not meant to have "litters". Let alone then depend upon the community for helping raise them. You might as well stick them all in a box and write "FREE PUPPIES" on the side.

Their close-knit community has already rallied round the couple. Friends have begun extending their log home, local firms have promised to supply diapers and formula milk and a car dealership may donate a van.

Read entire article here.

"A couple of them were worried they might bear children with long faces," he joked.

Men have not been so keen on the concoction.

"The men were very stand-offish. But a few have manned-up and said it is palatable."

Mr Varley admits to trying the drink himself which he said was "ok", and "like custard".

I vomited in my mouth just reading the article.

All I can say is I hope whoever was in that SUV got out OK. I've yet to see a more graphic depiction of what makes tornadoes so destructive. Makes my involuntarily sitting through a hailstorm years ago pale in comparison.

Clarence Clemons, saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, died yesterday at the age of 69. Five marriages and four kids... he was a busy guy in more ways than one, I suppose. He'll be missed.

Proof that it does actually happen in real life: steam roller driver killed in bizarre accident. Thing is, I'm pretty sure they haven't actually been powered by steam for decades. File that one in the same folder that has us all still saying, "tin foil."

Reason #212 why Ellen would hate jury duty (in the UK, at any rate): a juror who admitted contacting a defendant via Facebook has been sentenced to 8 months in prison for contempt of court. Even though it may vaguely resemble some sort of office, the justice system is part of the State, not the private sector. The rules are different, and you break them at your peril.

One rich eccentric's effort to recover Bin Laden's body likely will be in vain. So, pictures of his corpse, or his body as fish food. The modern world presents one with such unexpected quandaries...

Is that a... ok, what *is* that in your pants? (SFW) Speedos are bad enough. I can't wait for some chav or Jersey boy to get the bright idea to double up on one of these. Well, check that. I'm pretty sure I can wait a long, long time.

Ok, a small girl stabbing a man who's assaulting her mother seems pretty brave and effective. That is, until it's revealed she's done it before, to the same guy, for the same thing, when she was seven! I'm figuring "alcohol" wasn't mentioned because it goes without saying.

A tiny English village has become the latest victim of, "the hum." In other news, weird humming sounds have been bedeviling various small towns, apparently around the world, for years. In Northern Virginia, we call this, "construction."

If you picked a Pathfinder, a highway, and a black bear, you just won the weirdest game of Clue ever. Unfortunately two people and the bear won't be able to play the game again. Remember, folks, guns don't kill people. Flying bears kill people.

Today's "Mark Twain Truth vs. Fiction" award goes to the story of a man carrying a dead weasel who got arrested for assault. As the article notes, it was actually a marten, not a weasel. Because, you know, that's the important part of the story.

Wisconsin's public sector unions are at it again, this time crashing a Special Olympics ceremony. Bonus comment: "I don't know about anyone else but Im alright with this." And no, you're not the only one who spotted a Westboro Baptist Church angle.

Today's "sensationalize much?" entry in the slow news day contest is brought to you by the article that explains how the Internet is destroying the planet. No, surprisingly, they're not screeching about tentacle porn, but instead about global warming. Caused by the Internet. Really!

What to get the newlywed couple who already have everything? This one asked for just one thing: a boob job. Bonus: excellent use of the word, "tittays."

Buried deep inside one of those cheerful "the more you know" puff health articles lies a truly terrifying revelation: "Mosquitoes are more attracted to people after they drink a 12-ounce beer." Well, that's easy enough... let's up it to 24 ounces then!

I think we can now officially declare that the whole zombie thing has jumped the shark. Presenting the gynecological survival guide for the zombie apocalypse. Zombie sex is just more than I'm wanting to imagine, even though I'm nearly certain porn has gone there at some point or another.

There's dedication to the iPad, and then there's dedication to the iPad. All those times I've made fun of friends and their obsession with this glorified touch screen? Yeah, I'm not taking those back. I am, however, making room for a whole new level of obsession when it comes to fruit products.

A new study indicates North Korea is one of the happiest places on Earth, because they say it is! Well of course... all the people who disagree are stuck in camps way up in the mountains!

"Experts" are saying cellphones are possibly cancerous. "[T]he study raised serious concerns because it showed a hint of a possible link between very heavy phone use and a rare but often deadly form of brain tumor. " Sign me and Ron up now, our wives are goners...

When confronted with the growth of hookah bars, what's the proper response? Mount an educational campaign to ensure everyone knows this really isn't much safer or healthier than regular smoking, or use the hammer of the state to pound round pegs into square holes? Hey, man, these nails won't drive themselves in, ya know? Silly me, still clinging to the notion that common people can be trusted...

Nothing like a loud, unexpected BANG to make cleaning up a nuclear disaster just that much more fun. I'd ask, "what could be next?" but I'm pretty sure nobody really wants to know.

There's regular tasteless, and then there's Hustler tasteless (SFW). I would've picked the South Park guys to be the first out of the gate with some sort of Osama parody. It never occurred to me that Flynt's bunch would get there first.

The skull is allegedly that of St Vitalis of Assisi, an Italian Benedictine monk from the 14th century.

It belonged to an Anglo-Irish family from County Louth, and is housed in a Queen Anne case dating from the 17th century.

Everyone needs the Patron Saint of "genital disease" on their mantle!

With the recent passing of Randy Savage, more than 25 percent of the performers from Wrestlemania VII have died. While I respect the sport, I've never been much of a fan. Ellen, however, actually attended Wrestlemania at least once. I'll wager some on that list may surprise her.

In the, "ya don't say" file we have news of the death of a man who'd sat in a chair so long he'd literally fused to it. Everyone concentrates on these morbidly obese people. Me, I want to know about the family members who keep bringing someone like that food long after it's patently obvious they need to stop eating.

The nights are long and lonely up north of the arctic circle. How else explain a Norwegian-modified Pontiac Trans Am? And not just any mods, oh no. We're talking 1400 hp and 1100 lb-ft of torque. Did I mention the 'bird in question started life as an '86 with 185k+ miles on the clock? Yeah, that's how it started. I'm predicting how it finishes involves a loud "boom" followed by tiny bits of neo-viking softly pattering down to the ground.

A new book is claiming "[t]he UFO crash at Roswell was actually Josef Stalin’s “War of the Worlds” stab at mass panic using German flying “discs” carrying deformed children aviators engineered by Nazi mad doctor Josef Mengele." Because a weather balloon is just so much harder to believe.

Oh noes! One of our favorite and colorful characters of Celebrity Rehab succeeded in OD'ing.

Grease star Jeff Conaway is in a deep coma in hospital after taking an overdose of painkillers, it has emerged.

The actor, who played T-Bird Kenickie in the classic 1978 film, is unlikely to pull through, according to his manager.

Conaway has now been in a California hospital for a week after being found unconscious on the floor of his Encino home on May 11.

This is one messed up guy.

Thomas said not only were the bodies not refrigerated but the containers of remains were actually stacked, allowing the remains to be exposed if the containers fell open. Maggots were also seen on the boxes and the surrounding floor.

"If you are unable to refrigerate them you leave them with the funeral homes or seek assistance from another source," Thomas said. "Lambert kept accepting the bodies from different funeral homes despite the fact that he couldn't take care of them."

Here is a sad fact, when we send cats out for cremation at my work, they come back in 24-48 hours. Wouldn't you want to know where your loved one is if you don't get them back within a week?

Ok, if labor loses a race in West Virginia... well, that's pretty much like having your mom, YOUR mom, admitting you may not be all that attractive. To your face. When you're 14. I thought libertarianism would never catch on, until Obama won the White House...

The curious Australian practice of "planking" has claimed it's first victim. No, it's not some strange thing a jackaroo thought to do to a sheep, it's the practice of... oh, hell, go take a look. SFW.

Speaking of China, it seems farmers there are having a problem with their watermelons, well, exploding. Hmmm... I wonder where I've heard of that before?

A German hairdresser has won the World Beard and Mustache Championship. Oh go on, you know you can't resist.

And in today's, "Asians are the weirdest people" file, we have (eventually) the story of an erotic 3D movie who's principal is the recipient of a donkey wang transplant. Sorry, folks, "3D donkey penis" is so far beyond where I'd draw the line it's on the other side of the world. Sheesh...

The shark, which was confirmed as a great white by a state expert, was circling the carcass of a minke whale off of Gay Head, said Reginald Zimmerman, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Jeff Lynch of Chilmark, a commercial fisherman who sails out of Menemsha, said he was headed out to go mackerel fishing this morning with two friends when they spotted the dead whale, then saw the great white swimming around underneath it.

Yes, Jaws is alive and in Martha's Vineyard!

Ok, I'll admit, Olivia has a particular sense of humor. But she never... presented... one of her toys. Hey, I'm not judging. The video is horrifying and hysterical at the same time. Which is the point. If this doesn't somehow win an AFV prize there is no justice in the world.

Sometimes... well, sometimes you literally have to scratch your head. Like when a guy with a sexual fetish involving slashing exercise balls gets arrested, again. Let's all ponder that one for a moment. Nope, still doesn't make any sense.

see more Wedinator

Is it me, or does the bride look like she is about to eat the groom?!?

After years of struggling with his sexuality, Chaz Bono finally opened up about his transition from female to male on the Oprah Winfrey show today. The 42-year-old, who was born the daughter of singer and actress Cher and the late Sonny Bono, was christened Chastity, and spotted regularly - all blonde locks and cutesy smile - on the couple's TV show in the 70s.

But in a moving interview, Bono told Winfrey that he felt his body was 'literally betraying' him when he went through puberty, as he watched in horror as it changed shape from athletic to curvy.

Why would you want to spill your guts out on something like this?

Need some attention maybe? Hmm?

For those of you who think today's advertisers cannot sink to any lower depths, we proudly present this 50 year-old Pepsi advertisement which declares Coke's rival is the "force fluid" of choice for restrained mental patients. Oh, I know. The only reason they don't do it now is the reaction it'd trigger.

What do you get when you combine a guinea pig feeder with a pencil sharpener? Well, the Japanese call it "telekiss." Well, ok, they don't, more like "Telluu Kissuu" but you get the point. Or straw, if you get my drift.

That guy that's been knocking on people's doors all morning? You know, the one with a pitchfork and horns on his head? Red skin, parka, snow on his shoulders, trying to get us all to knock it off? Just hand him this last straw. That's right, folks, PETA itself not only said nice things about the military, they're even sending them chocolate, and you won't believe the kind of mold they used.

Like any other baby, Stanley sleeps in a crib, wears diapers, and loves nothing better than being comforted by his mother as she bottle feeds him.

Except Stanley Thornton is 30-years-old - and his 'mother' is really his room-mate.

Not right. I need eye bleach!

Yvette Vickers, an early Playboy playmate whose credits as a B-movie actress included such cult films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead last week at her Benedict Canyon home. Her body appears to have gone undiscovered for months, police said.

They said she might have been dead for a year!

I'll give the communists this... they certainly knew how to build... well, ok, wait a minute. I have no idea what the hell they thought they were building. You, over in the commie section of the peanut gallery! You're an engineer! How's all that, well, you know... work?

It's illegal to import live snakeheads into New York because they have been known to devour fish, ducks and mammals, upending the aquatic food chain in rivers and lakes.

"It is disheartening that people are willing to take a chance of these fish escaping and wreaking havoc on our eco-system for mere monetary gain," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown

When there is $ involved, most of the time people like Yong Hao Wu could give a shit about the eco system. Look at the rest of the crap they introduced, and managed to ruin as well.

*With vomit worthy photo*

The event is a bit like karaoke, its organizers say, but instead of singing performers take the stage - fully clothed - and put on their best sex moves with an imaginary partner. The show begins at 10 p.m. Thursday at Stonefly Brewery, 735 E. Center Drive.

"These are gladiators, warriors . . . all making pretend love to imaginary partners," Trew said. "Hopefully some people will show up in costumes with choreographed routines."

The question is WHY???

A 78 year old woman who was accidentally dropped into the Arctic Ocean has died. 26 degree water for 8 minutes, no less. Can you say "gramma-sickle"? I knew you could...

It's official: E.T. lives in Russia, not Roswell, and he's really, really tiny. With video! Oh, don't worry, I don't think so either. But it does make for a fun start to a Thursday!

"Everyone showers, and everyone encounters this issue," Ross told AOL News. "I just wanted to create a simple solution to a very common problem that people don't often discuss."

Ross came up with the idea for the product in his own bathroom after his fiancee had a traumatic post-shower experience of her own.

"She got out of the shower and accidentally used my towel. When she realized what she'd done, she was thoroughly grossed out and found herself wondering where my towel had been. I didn't know how to answer that since I really didn't know myself. That sparked the idea for the towel," Ross said.

I have a better idea. It's called get another towel.

Air traffic controllers at Andrews Air Force Base ordered the first lady's plane to make a series of maneuvers to avoid contact with the 200-ton C-17 military jet as it approached the airport. Eventually, controllers decided to abort the 737's scheduled landing after they determined the military plane would not have enough time to clear the runway before the presidential plane arrived.

What is up with ATC lately?

Another day, another remarkably horrifying video of the Japanese tsunami. I find it remarkable how the Japanese manage to not QUITE video tape the moment someone gets washed away in this thing. I guess they're just not as morbid as I am. Oh, and what an f-ing mess!

Mark gets a no-prize that should serve as a lesson to all gun enthusiasts for bringing us this graphic lesson in why pistol powder and rifle powder don't mix. I didn't even know there was such a difference. I'll stick to small helicopters. Less likely to kill.

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) -- Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband says he and his wife are planning to have a baby with the help of artificial insemination and a surrogate mother.

According to Anhalt, his 94-year-old wife has always dreamed of having a child with him -- preferably a boy -- to carry on the Gabor name, because "when she goes, the whole family will be gone."

Odd.

Alternate title: A380: 1, puddle jump jet: 0. With video! Fortunately, nobody got hurt. I'm thinking there will be plenty of blame to go around for this one, but the place to start will likely be the airport's taxi controller. Good times...

Japan's nuclear safety commission has now declared Fukushima a disaster of epic proportions. The article includes this helpful definition: "One terabecquerel is one trillion becquerels." Ya don't say!

"AMCG," we hear you ask, "that recent Southwest flight peeling open like a ripe can of sardines... well, it got me thinking. Just what would happen to a person if the can opener started right above their head at 30,000 feet?" Fear not, gentle one-time-skydiver, AMCGLTD is on the case! And that, friends, is why we both sit with seat belts synched down tight whenever we fly.

Remember that Mythbusters episode when they ginned up experiments to see if explosive decompression could suck someone out of a cockpit? All they really had to do was ask this guy. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if the episode was inspired by the story, but I don't recall them actually mentioning it in the film.

Coming soon to an Indian buffet near you: dead chick curry. And all this time I thought it was rural Korean cuisine we needed to be careful about.

I need one of these!

Literally, this guy was on Howard Stern last week. Tonight, he was on the TIVO talking about his "Tuggers".

Just when you thought mainland China couldn't get any more twisted, streetcorners in Beijing start sprouting vendors selling live animals sealed in bags as "key chains." Yes, it's cruel, no, it's not illegal. That said, the advice at the end of the article is quite good: if people stop buying them, vendors will stop selling them.

Headline: Water Walking Balls Have Risk Of Suffocation Drowning And Injury. Personally, I think they should be called "Jesus Balls." What? You really didn't think I'd pass that opportunity up, did you?

Ok, ok, a Wisconsin GOP congressman stepped on his own crank on camera, I get it. But... dude!!! Duffy ended up an f-'ing politician! I remember watching this guy on Real World and Road Rules. The mind boggles.

Update: He married Rachel, and they have six kids! There really is life after MTV. Who knew?

Fox News headline: "Japan's Nuclear Rescuers: 'Inevitable Some of Them May Die Within Weeks'" Content of article reveals: they literally rang up one of the workers' moms and let her sob into the phone for an hour. Look, I get it that the workers are heroes and are doing amazing things. But his mom? I'm over 40 and my mom still worries when I catch a cold. Moms are not a source for objective news.

I don't know, I guess I shouldn't be surprised Adam Ant is now a fat middle-aged white guy. Ellen's always amazed at how naive we all were about sexuality in the 80s. All I can say is when the guy wearing makeup and Indian feathers ended up being straight while the guy in the jacket and jeans was not, well, how were we supposed to get it right?

Another day, another amazing video of just how destructive a tsunami can be. I'd like to think the people who lived and worked in all those buildings had long since evacuated to higher ground. "Prevarication in this instance may help."

Lisa, a full-time carer, said she was sceptical when her children started complaining about hearing noises and seeing objects move on their own.

But she became suspicious after her pet dog was mysteriously killed last October after apparently being shoved down the stairs.

I'd move. '

Er... Many thanks to Ron for something this odd.

Reason I only want small helicopters, #5: the batteries won't literally blow my garage to pieces if things go wrong. Then again, it may all be a hoax. Still, food for thought.

Ok, Ellen's been annoyed, more than once, by dog owners who use our yard without picking up the mess. But even she has never been quite this annoyed. The price of real liberty would at times seem to include wacky people doing stupid things. Fortunately nobody got killed.

In some places (like Texas!) the spiders can cocoon entire trees. Unlike the article's author, as long as they stay in their damned trees, I think anything that can kill zillions of mosquitoes at a time is just about as angelic as it can get.

The couple choose and name the "girls" together and go shopping once a month for new outfits, wigs and make-up, costing £100,000 so far.

Uh...uncomfortable moment.

With a video too! SFW!

"We have a duty to ensure the safety of our guests, our employees and other volunteers, and we take that responsibility very seriously," said Craig Pugh, the zoo's executive director and chief executive officer. "We will not tolerate such action. We are fully cooperating with law enforcement in its active investigation, and appreciate the close coordination between zoo security and the Tampa Police Department."

This is why you escort your kids into public restrooms. You wind up with sick S*%t like this!

The teens thought it was a ghost, but when they went to the bedroom on the third floor of the home, the boy noticed that the door to the room was closed, although he had remembered leaving it open, Dangerfield said.

Well, duh: capitalism may be to blame for the lack of life on Mars. No, sorry, that really is what he said. Hey, if it means a one-way trip for Micheal Moore, I'm all for it.

Everyone's favorite symbol for pederasts (and, really, who DOESN'T have a favorite symbol for pederasty?) is featured prominently in an ad for a computer repair center founded in part by a convicted sex offender. Supposedly everything is on the up-and-up, as it were, and this is all a gigantic coincidence. Me? Meh...

In the, "I'm surprised it's taken this long" box, we now have an iPhone app that promises to help "cure" homosexuality. Naturally, some people have a problem with this, which is fine with me. Predictably, some of those people want the app pulled outright, which is not fine with me. "If you don't like it, don't watch it" would, it seems, only apply to the "correct" sort of speech.

Chris gets a... a no-prize for bringing us a guy who stuffed a cellphone, MP3 player, headphones, cash, and some pot up his backside before going to jail. Bonus: TSG invents "Keystered." I've long known junkies were stupid. I had no idea they were, well, a specific sort of flexible.

They told me if I voted for John McCain the next administration would use the school system itself to spy on my children, and they were right! Oh, and the section of the peanut gallery going, "you're just exaggerating what's actually a very minor policy change?" Yeah, let's all go back in time to 2002, to other sorts of protests you've obviously forgotten.

Nothing quite like a collection of "swipe-able" before and after pictures to put a natural disaster into perspective. Not much else to say, really.

And then there's this...

A Maryland woman arriving home by herself has been killed by her own car. And that, folks, is why God invented the parking brake.

First the building's there, then it's not. Go for the amazing footage. Stay for the ridiculously inane commentary. Remember, folks, they're paid to be pretty and read well, but not to think.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) — An eleventh-grade honors student from Windsor High School survived a plunge off San Francisco’s famed Golden Gate Bridge on Thursday, authorities and onlookers told CBS 5.

The 17-year-old was participating in a humanities class field trip and crossing the bridge when he jumped off between the South Tower and Fort Point into San Francisco Bay, said Windsor Unified School District Superintendent Bill McDermott.

Witnesses to the incident, which occured shortly after 11 a.m., used the word “traumatizing” to describe what they had seen.

I like how the surfer was angry at the kid.

Tera Myers, 38, was put on administrative leave at Parkway North High School this week after a student inquired about pornographic films Myers starred in during the 1990s.

Here is the real question. WHY was this kid watching porn anyway? Where are his parents? WTF? I think someone older in the recognized her, that's what I think.

You can catch the entire story here.

Today's, "ZOMG!!! Apocalypse is nigh!" sensational media story concerns anchovies and a California beach. The picture is pretty impressive. I'll bet the smell is, too.

(CNN) -- Warner Bros. Television has fired actor Charlie Sheen from its comedy "Two and a Half Men" after a two-week public meltdown by the star that has included attacks on the show's creator.

"After careful consideration, Warner Bros. Television has terminated Charlie Sheen's services on 'Two and a Half Men,' effective immediately," the company said in a statement issued Monday. There was no immediate response from Sheen to the news.

I wonder what Howard Stern will say tomorrow!

I tell ya, if my electives were like this, I wouldn't have skipped them so much. Go for the story, stay to speculate on the want/do not want of the couple in question. SFW.

Today's "fun fact:" the human backside can accommodate more than 30 items. The more you know...

Two words: Botas Exoticas. Even without actually speaking Spanish, I'm pretty sure that means "exotic boots." Which is what those are, in a very... pointed... way.

Ok, on the one hand, an annoying fundie getting arrested for indecent exposure is darkly amusing. On the other... way too perfect. I trust this report about as far as I can throw... something really heavy. It might be true, but it might be character assassination.

Remember the old saying about getting up with fleas? Turns out there's more to it than just not lying down with your smelly old dog. I thought it couldn't get worse than incontinent cats. I was wrong.

Mike J. gets a no-prize that weirdly evokes Custer's Last Stand for bringing us news that "grown-up" games are coming (as it were) to the Wii. Unfortunately the video's gotten blocked, so the incomplete text is all we have. I'm actually a bit surprised it's taken this long.

The 25-year-old Staten Island mother, and we use the term lightly, told reporters she said to the precinct officer in front of her daughter, "What happens if a parent doesn't want their child?"

She should have been charged with stupidity, because the 6-year-old will never forget that as long as she lives.

Picture? Wonder no more at the losers they are.

Fast fact: It is illegal to deliver the Gettysburg Address on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial without permission from the U.S. National Park Service.

Can we say that park officer was having a bad day.

Asinine!

Another day, another group of propeller-heads prattling on about how "bugs is good eatin'!" I'll believe we're in a genuine food crisis when the US no longer needs to prop up crop futures with subsidies. Tip to the nerds: we pay farmers not to produce around here. All the developed countries do.

The national Christmas tree, a Colorado blue spruce that has stood on the spot since 1978, has been blown down. The mulching of the snapped tree is scheduled for later today, apparently. The winds here really are ridiculous. Dulles is making airplanes fly an approach I've never seen before, well to the East of the normal approach vectors.

Making the rounds: a woman died at work sitting in her cubicle, but nobody noticed until the next day. A Saturday, no less. I've heard that the only way to get government workers out was feet first, but I didn't think anyone meant it literally.

Making the rounds: recent rumors give Steve Jobs only weeks to live. Zsa Zsa Gabor has been trying to die for what seems like years now, so I guess anything can happen. Still, 55 is way too early.

A 60 year old dudecicle is found in an unheated Chicagoland apartment. In February. "Officials" say death was likely cold-related. There's a reason why they stick interns and newbie reporters on the night beat. This is the reason.

A BRITISH local council is planning to use excess energy from a crematorium incinerator to heat one of its swimming pools, it emerged today, but critics slammed the proposals as "sick".

Spiffy!

Her attempt was foiled, however, when her motorised cart got stuck in the exit door.

What has Oakland Co. come to. Tsk Tsk.

YOUR tax dollars at work right there. The scooter, her mental anguish causing her to overeat and have bad joints and not be able to work, but to sit there and watch T.V. and shoplift. Disability benefits at it's best! WIN!

Oh yeah, and Obama wants to help this.

Villagers in a small UK town are outraged because police have informed them they must remove the wire covering their sheds' windows to ensure burglars don't get hurt. Always remember equality is much more important than your stuff, and fairness only works in the direction our superiors wish. They have our best interests at heart, after all.

When asked the question, "which country with nuclear weapons has a population in which a significant percentage believes the sun revolves around the earth, humans lived with dinosaurs, and radiation is man-made" would, since you read our ever-so-neutral MSM, answer "The United States, Sir!" Heck it may even be true. But it's not the only answer.

I'm not sure just how seriously someone claiming the Denver International Airport is... ok, I'm not quite sure what they're claiming, but it involves Satan, Mayan calendars, and a lot of unnecessary concrete. Someone with a higher tolerance for lunacy should go read the text and summarize what the hell his problem is. I just scrolled down and looked at the pictures. Which, I must say, are plenty weird enough.

And, really, what airport isn't a kind of way station for the damned?

He really meant what he said: the Obama administration's upcoming budget will include $53 billion dollars for high-speed rail. Fortunately the grownups are back in charge, so I'm expecting this to literally go nowhere. Unfortunately, it shows The One is still dangerously out of touch with mainstream America.

Well, unfortunate only if you're wanting The One to get re-elected. I have a feeling you may know which side of that fence we're sitting on.

And in the "What a Way to Go" file we have a man in California who was stabbed to death by a fighting rooster. Remember, folks, guns don't kill people, cocks kill people.

What? You really thought I had the power to resist that? You don't come around here all that much then, do you?

Another day, another teen too stupid to follow the basic rules of handgun safety. The only time I remember my dad genuinely scaring me was when he explained, in graphic detail, what he would do to me if he ever caught me treating a gun like a toy. The rules he laid out have stuck with me to this day, one of which is: do not play with loaded guns.

Of course, then there was the time he blew a hole in the carpet with a shotgun he got careless with, but nobody's perfect.

Sometimes the brain gets crossed up for reasons nobody really understands. I always like the simple illusions best. I had a tough time back in the late 80s when those "holographic" posters were so popular. They always looked like colored snow to me.

As the Northeast Regional 111 train chugged south about 8:30 a.m., an engineer spotted the majestic bird and blasted his horn. At first, the eagle didn't budge, Koppie said. Then it slowly took off - too late. The train arrived at Washington Union Station two hours later with the bird stuck to the locomotive, like an emblem.

Oopsie?

A mental hospital in the US state of Oregon is trying to identify the cremated remains of 3,500 patients that were hidden in a storage room for decades.

Room of The Lost Souls

Two words I never expected to see together: corkscrew castration (SFW). Bonus: the accused admits to kicking the ever-lovin' crap out of the victim, but denies killing him. Look, I get the whole "men never ever hit women" meme, but if a chick comes after my personals with a corkscrew I'm sorry, it's on.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum contains a collection of two hundred and nine penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals that can be found in Iceland. Visitors to the museum will encounter fifty five specimens belonging to sixteen different kinds of whale, one specimen taken from a rogue polar bear, thirty-six specimens belonging to seven different kinds of seal and walrus, and one hundred and fifteen specimens originating from twenty different kinds of land mammal: all in all, a total of two hundred and nine specimens belonging to forty six different kinds of mammal. It should be noted that the museum has also been fortunate enough to receive legally-certified gift tokens for four specimens belonging to Homo Sapiens. Besides there are some twenty-three folklore specimens and forty foreign ones. Altogether the collection contains 272 specimens from 92 different species of animals.

In addition to the biological section of the museum, visitors can view the collection of about three hundred artistic oddments and other practical utensils related to the museum´s chosen theme.

Well...err...someone has to collect them.

No matter how well designed or engineered, sometimes you can't count on the highway to save you. I wonder if the car had traction control on it? Regardless, something tells me nobody would blame the car's driver if an underwear change was in order.

Well, hey, if a lady can make her living selling cast bronze lynx penis bone necklaces, who am I to take exception. Aaand all together, now: "No Ellen, You Can't Have One."

Much better than last time.

Suddenly the Japan v. China "who's the weirdest" test was interrupted when a Brit ran onto the field. Food? In the smoke? It's more likely than you think...

Top 10 dirtiest hotels.

YUCK!!!

And in today's "sometimes there's no improving on the actual text" file we have "Scott Riddell, founder of Diavolo Brands, which is marketing Canna Cola, likened it to a "light beer" and said "it's got a mild marijuana taste," compared with heavier tasting competitors with three times the THC".

Which of course means there are other weed sodas in California. And now this guy's gonna start running ads. I love this country!

I guess "soft landing" is a relative thing when someone jumps off the roof of a building. Surviving is not the same thing as walking away, and it sounds as if she's pretty thoroughly injured. Don't try this at home!

And now, a human anatomy ballgown. That'd be another volley in the game of "who's weirder, China or Japan?" Ball's in Nihon's court now, bring on the tentacles!

Via Violins and Starships.

Just when you thought people could not get clever enough.

Yeah. About those "max weight limit" signs? Sometimes bad things happen when you ignore them. Hopefully the driver got out OK.

Ever wonder what a residential gas explosion looks like up close? Wonder no more. Matchsticks in a tenth of a second, indeed.

Making the rounds: Playboy is planning an uncensored edition of Playboy for the iPad. Of all the genuinely bizarre things modern technology allows, looking at pr0n* in public has got to be right at the top. And then there's the problem of keeping the thing clean.

EWWWW!!!

-----
* In the case of Playboy, this is of course to be taken in its broadest sense.

Bull sharks have been spotted swimming down the main street of an Australian town 16 miles from the coast. Leave it to the Australians to decide a gigantic wall of water just isn't enough. It's gotta be a wall of water full of sharks!

BUCHAREST (Reuters Life!) - There was nothing mysterious about the death of a flock of birds in Romania last week -- they were simply drunk, veterinarians said.

Okay, idiots, it goes like this: God is mad that we repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell, because the more honest we allow people to be about their sexuality, the more likely they are to someday marry one another, in violation of "biblical principles." So, God decided to kill some blackbirds in the sky. He wanted to connect the bird massacre to Bill Clinton, because he introduced DADT, but he felt like killing them over Clinton, Arkansas would be too obvious. So he murdered those blackbirds in Bebee, AR, to connect them to the current governor, who connects them to the former governor.

Bat shit crazy person alert!

PHOENIX — Arizona legislators quickly approved emergency legislation Tuesday to head off picketing by a Topeka, Kan., church near the funeral service for a 9-year-old girl who was killed in the Tucson shootings.

Unanimous votes by the House and Senate sent the bill to Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed it Tuesday night. It took effect immediately.

Without specifically mentioning the Tucson shooting, the law prohibits protests at or near funeral sites.

Really WBC? One day an entire crowd is going to beat the living shit out of you all.

Asswipes.

Making the rounds: Neapolitan man survives gunshot wound and sneezes the bullet out of his nose, thereby inventing the world's first small-caliber booger.

Sometimes, all you need is a summary: woman celebrates the birth of her daughter after they both survived a tornado and a falling cow. Definitely not something that comes up very often on storm chasers, the whole "flying livestock" thing.

And in today's issue of "Clueless Scientist Monthly," we have the idea that meat producers should switch to bug farming because of insects' smaller carbon footprint. Fortunately, this one comes to us courtesy of a Netherlands science group, so at least my tax dollars weren't used to fund this "study." Quick! To the private jets! It's time for another climate conference to discuss the implications! I hear Antigua is very nice this time of the year.

CNN: Hundreds of people may have been exposed to Hepatitis A during a Christmas day mass. Yeah, not the greatest gift for the season right there.

It would seem an adequate number of trumpet players has been found. Of course, "beginning of the end" is a pretty easy one to predict. Me, I'll wait until the angels start arcing across the sky, hopefully with enough time for me to yell "HA-HA!" at Joshua. And Ron.

Another day, another chick waking up dead from a botched plastic surgery. Yet another reason to follow the ol' "eat less, exercise more" weight loss method.

If you're 37-year-old Michigan telemarketer Dave Cat, you have the $6,500 rubber lady "reincarnated." Which is to say, you commission an exact replica of her to be stripped, molded and painted. And you bring her back from the freakin' dead.

Funny this is, he was in a TV show called TABOO.

Yuck.

Just when you thought Japan was the wackiest Asian country, China comes along and ups that very weird ante. Ya know, giving yourself a parasitic infection to lose weight is an idea so crazy it just might work. Not.

Remember that pizza delivery guy who got blown up in a bizarre bank robbery scheme? The uncut video that seemed to be required viewing six, seven years ago? Yeah, they're still not completely sure just what the hell actually happened there. Not often you get to say, "dude gets his face blown off, and then it gets weird."

Remember, folks, guns don't kill people, neck massagers kill people. Another day, another freak accident triggers a new ridiculous warning label on an appliance.

Ever wonder why any piece of powered equipment you buy nowadays is covered in so many ridiculously stupid warning stickers you can barely see the paint? This is why. F- kids, how grownups managed to survive all those decades without warning stickers I never will know.

Making the rounds: Hugh Hefner is getting married for the third time, to a 24 year-old playmate. Meh. She's a grownup, it's not like anyone's making her do this. Plus she'll have him around for, what, ten, fifteen years, tops? Hey, I hear the guy has a nice house, how bad can it be?

And you thought figuring out what to do with that puce sweater gramma gave you was tough: the Iraqi government is trying to decide what to do with an entire Koran written with Saddam Hussein's blood. Seven freaking gallons of the stuff, no less. Seems like he had a really great idea back in the late 90s, and the project took two years to complete. Just when you thought everyone's favorite Arab fascist couldn't get any weirder...

"He actually provided a how-to guide to commit sexual battery against children," according to Judd, who said he was shocked and mortified by specific examples and illustrations using 9- and 13-year-old boys.

Judd said he was frustrated that Greaves' book was protected under freedom of speech laws, even though it was created "specifically to teach people how to sexually molest and rape children."

I hope they put this guy away for quite a long time.

And we all know what happens to child rapists and killers in prison? They usually don't make it out alive themselves.

The guy WROTE a HOW TO guide. You would think he would have been put away for publishing it!

Yeah, I know, You'll see Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Drowneder and Blitzen is much funnier, but I gotta try to be original. This would also make for a really nifty redneck trap.

New York City beekeeper Cerise (seh-REEZ') Mayo was puzzled when her bees started showing up with mysterious red coloring. Their honey also turned as red as cough syrup.

Read full story here.

I cannot wait for my house in the country so I can have my small bee colony!

Oklahoma has become the first US state to execute an inmate with drugs commonly used to euthanize animals. Ellen's been advocating this sort of thing for years. She thinks it's likely cheaper than the existing protocol, and just as effective. Hey, man, that's just how she rolls...

What most dads threaten boyfriends with, this German guy actually did. I'd be more along the lines of, "beat within an inch of his life" rather than, "whack off the dangly bits," but I do have to say I can see where this guy was coming from.

Kids like that learn to beat other people, not just animals. His parents suck.

I've heard of blood transfusions and organ transplants, but poo transplants? Yeah, I'd like to see more science first, too. Colitis is both deadly and miserable, so if someone has found an effective treatment, I'm all for it no matter how gross it might be. But it does need to actually work.

What happens when you combine a guy who dresses like a chick, an un-fire-able bureaucrat, and the state of California? If you said, "lawsuit-ilarity," come down and collect your prize. The worst part is this'll likely drag on for years, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and not resolve a damned thing. Hooray for government, actual!

Regional figures show icicles kill dozens of Russians each year. Local authorities responsible for regularly clearing roofs of snow and ice are usually blamed.

Not only do they have to worry about starving to death, dying of alcohol poisoning and other Soviet fun, they have to worry about this!

The (Peoria) Journal Star says the woman attendant told police Thompson asked for "extra nuts" for the squirrel, and began petting it as if it were still alive. She says when she said she didn't think the squirrel was real, Thompson tossed it through the window at her and then drove off.

Read entire quip here.

I suppose you have to have an acquired taste for haggis flavored chips.

Oh wait... I forgot, this was the airport that let the planes fly into the NY Trade Centers too.

With pixes!

Watch how one guy gets pulled into the grave too... poor dude.

Bad weather, resulting in 30-foot waves in the Antarctic's Drake Passage, was said to have caused the technical damage, leaving the 160 people on board at the mercy of the sea.

Glad you are OK Cindy! Go back to rescuing homeless animals!

Bad: explosives-laden home is discovered in a suburban neighborhood. Worse: It's in a state that'll turn getting rid of it into a decade-long project costing millions of dollars. I'd imagine that other places (west Texas, central Ohio, basically any place that has fun fireworks) would be shouting "watch this!" and throwing a match in.

Ok, I admit it, I occasionally follow a few of the ridiculous pop-culture dramas that regularly stream out of Hollywood. I, too, had wondered just what the hell had gone wrong with Randy Quaid. After reading this in-depth profile of him and his wife, I'm still wondering what the hell's gone wrong. It's awfully easy to blame a kooky wife. Then again it's damned rare for two people to fall into the deep end of the crazy pool at the same time. I can only hope they learn to swim out before they drown.

No, really, when cellphones attack. Lucky for me, I hate talking on the phone and therefore do it as little as possible. Ellen? Well, let's just say if exploding cellphones really were a deadly problem, I would've been a life insurance beneficiary long before now.

No, really, why would anyone have a problem with a "snow klansman," complete with hanging noose in one hand? Yeah, it's Idaho, so the eight or so black people who live in the state almost certainly didn't see the thing. From the article, the man in question sounds like a hateful old kook who's annoying but basically harmless. I'm just glad he knocked it down on his own, because I'm pretty sure teenagers in the area would've been less discriminant about it.

Making the rounds: the recent snow storm in the Buffalo area has left drivers stranded on the highway for more than 12 hours. Ok, normally I tell people we don't drive our Alfas in the winter because of the road salt. It never occurred to me it might be possible for me to be forced to camp out in one. Yeah, gonna put this in the, "reasons I don't ever, EVER, want to live in the snow shadow of the great lakes" file, that's for sure.

Just what everyone needs for the holidays!

The end of the world prophecies!

Two ladies that hit and all time low.

No need for shopping bags for these 2!

Making the rounds: the coffin which once held Lee Harvey Oswald's body will soon be auctioned off. What I want to know is, who'd hold onto something like that for nearly twenty years? It's not like it can be used as a coffee table or anything. Well, in a normal house, not like ours, I mean...

Yes, teenage boys wake up dead due to any number of causes. It's not at all common for them to end up that way 800 miles from where they were last seen. The latest theory is he may have fallen out of an airplane wheel well. Police, grasping at straws? Oh hell, I dunno...

Leave it to a Canadian newspaper to explain just what, exactly, is involved in a stoning. Unfortunately this time around "women with false beards on" isn't part of the equation.

Presumably tired of making the lives of veterans' families miserable, the loons of the Westboro Baptist Church have decided to picket a mosque in Dearborn, MI. It's listed as being the largest mosque in the states, so I'm thinking the vast majority of attendees are just normal people trying to get by. Unfortunately, as with any religious community, simple statistics means there are likely even more of the wacko kind of Muslim nearby.

In other words, they seem to have taken on a target that's much more likely to hit back.

And in the, "Thank You, Captain Obvious" folder we find this morning the revelation that city morgue workers treat dead bodies the way the DMV treats everyone else. When you deal with it every day, even the grimmest duty can become routine.

"Doing bad things to dead people" trifecta now in play...

It's now been revealed that, for some forty years, pathologists in the UK routinely removed organs of certain deceased "nuclear workers" without notification or consent of the families of the deceased. Yeah. Tacky.

Deep down inside I still want to try one.

No, really, Australian pro rugby athlete now unemployed after a picture of him doing... something... with a dog gets loose on the internet. The specifics are not in the article, and I'm pretty happy with that. Dog seems to have been unharmed.

Ok, not completely sure it's real, but if it is, this, friends, is an abject lesson about why one "must keep hands, feet, and head in the ride at all times." SFW and not gross, but dang, I bet that left a mark.

Making the rounds: a naked stoner high out of his mind who was arrested on burglary charges was later found to have a mouse stuffed up his backside. For the longest time, folks said rodent felching was a myth. Somehow, I would've been happier holding onto that illusion, ya know?

The Winnipeg Humane Society is calling for a protest over an item in a holiday gift guide — a piggy bank made out of a real piglet, stuffed and mounted.

Making the rounds: a mysterious contrail has been filmed off the coast of California. The armed services aren't claiming it, so officially nobody knows what it might be. Unofficially, current betting is favoring a contrail being lit in a strange way by the setting sun. I'll put a $5 chip down on that square, too.

A Carnival cruise ship is stuck off the west coast of Mexico with broken engines and a full load of passengers. Tow assistance is expected (if I'm reading it correctly) some time tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Coasties are there to, well, I guess make sure Somali pirates or drug lord ships don't crash the party. At least everyone knows where the toilet is, and I hope the folks with lower-level outside balconies brought umbrellas.

Well, if you weren't in the mood to watch the race, maybe the armed assaults at the Brazilian Grand Prix were of interest. Well, they're on to Abu Dabi now, so it'll be much safer there. Right?

Turns out it's a lot harder to stuff explosives in a dog than it is to stuff them in a printer cartridge. The stuff that starts leaking out of a dog is, you know, important. Oh, don't worry, I know, I blame Dick Cheney too.

And in the, "I'm actually surprised it's taken this long" file, we have the blow-up Obama sex doll for sale in China. I mean... well, hell, if we stopped featuring weird, tasteless items you wouldn't come around here so much, eh? Oh, really, tell the truth!

Ever wonder why the engine dyno is in another room? Yeah, this is why. You'd think when it started making the really weird whining sound someone would've hit a kill switch somewhere. That's a damned expensive bomb right there, folks.

Ok, this is just disgusting.

*vomit*

This is why I have no plans to go camping in the bush any time soon. Wait... hang on... dammit, someone throw a bucket of water on Ron. He just passed out from giggling.

The object is about 4 feet in diameter. It has moved about 6 feet down the shoreline in the last 24 hours. It 'jiggles' when the waves in the lake hit it… when we prod it, it seems to be spongy feeling… The texture appears to be that of a rock with algae spots on it — it is brown and yellow, with a pattern of some type.

This is when you get it out of the water and get it tested.

That is some pot hole!

With photos!

Sometimes the lead says it all: A person accused of murdering a cross-dressing human rights lawyer is a man undergoing a sex change, it was revealed today. Quick! Get them a reality show!

Of all the excuses not to visit a grave site, I think roving bears eating the corpses is one of the better ones. You'd think someone with an AK-47 and a desire for a trophy would take care of this problem relatively quickly.

And that, friends, is why God invented roll cages. And helmets, and Hans devices, and, well, you get the picture. He walked away, sure, but I bet he was saying, "ow ow ow ow ow" while he did it. That's one seriously rung bell right there, yup.

A time traveler, an alien or just someone with hearing trouble? Watch and decide for yourself.

You have to watch the film.

Ok, I love hot sauce. I put it on nearly everything, but I'm smart enough to read the LABEL before dousing my food with it!

Soon after ingesting the chili mixed with the substance provided by defendant John Doe, Timothy Caleb Gann began to suffer a severe physical reaction, including the flaring-up of hives on his skin, difficulty breathing and severe pain and inflammation of his digestive system including his mouth and throat," the complaint states.

Some people are just stupid.

Perineal therapy is as ubiquitous in France as free nursery schools, generous family allowances, tax deductions for each child, discounts for large families on high-speed trains, and the expectation that after a paid, four-month maternity leave mothers are back in shape — and back at work.

Doesn't France have other issues more concerning than this to spend their ZERO budget on?

One without the pastor with ED.

Ms Ashby, a single mother, said she knew when she was filming the ad that it was in poor taste

But she said she had taken the job because of the money.

"My Visa was calling out for mercy," she said.

"It was against my better judgment to it. I don't like to offend people."

Ms Ashby, who didn't say which Christian church she attended, said the Bible spoke clearly about sex.

Lady jut go take your ball and play at another playground.

If collecting more than 22 grams of belly-button lint doesn't qualify as, "too much time on your hands," I'm not sure what does. It only took him 26 years! What I think is even weirder is how it seems to have changed color over the years.

Ok, tip to the wannabe journalist trying to break into the English language business: running your story through a Google translator results in sub-optimal results. Sub-optimal, but entertaining nonetheless: "A charge of abashed cartage acquired the baby aircraft to lose antithesis and tip over in mid-air during an centralized flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "

Young men, frozen in the Great White North, on a lake, with a gun. Let's spin some bullets! No, really! Far as I can tell, it's legit. Stupid, but legit.

A UK nuclear submarine has run aground. No injuries and no release of radiation, apparently, so that's a relief. It'll probably be a cold relief to the CO and who knows how many of the senior officers, though. Navies tend to view people who drive their expensive ships into the ground with something less than kindness.

Nothing quite like finding a flash-frozen frog in your veggies to ruin the night's meal. With ribbity picture goodness! Damned critters'll get into the craziest places.

Oh yeah, the Mom is the fat one, not the kid!

How bout just purchasing healthy stuff to eat? Or rather how bout not eating your kid's portion of food.

No, really, when chimps attack! Luckily nobody got hurt. You'd think that, after that whole, "chimp rips woman's face and hands off with his teeth" thing a few years ago, people would be smarter than this. Then again, when are people EVER smarter than this?

Remember when they tell you to keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times? Yeah, looks like we should've mentioned keeping your head in, too. Can you say, "closed casket?" I knew you could...

The guy who created Glee has been tapped as the director of a Rocky Horror remake. That sound you heard was basically, well, all of my in-laws suddenly crying out in terror. And, now that you mention it, most of my friends, too. Me? Not quite twenty-five years ago I'd never seen it, and was nearly talked into dressing up as Frankfurter. I've been ambiguous about the flick ever since. Not that, you know, there's anything wrong with that.

Ok, note to rich egomaniacs: don't tick off a well-funded news organization. Nothing good comes from it. I'd like to think a story like this would put paid to the left's argument that money and Republicans have ensured rich people can do bad things with impunity around here. Yeah, don't worry, I'm not holding my breath over it.

The things people can do nowadays with leather and plastic, well, you just wouldn't believe. It's Saturday, don't worry if it's SFW. That said, I looked at that first one nearly upside down, and I'm still not completely sure what's going on there. I'm sure it's naughty, I'm just not completely sure how.

Via Violins and Starships.

Another year, another journalist on a voyage of weird food discovery. I'm quite honest about being a recovering picky eater, and I am under no illusions as to my ability to look at, let alone eat, anything even vaguely weird looking or smelling. I'm hoping to rely on my usefulness with computers and cars to convince others with stronger constitutions to keep me fed when the zombie apocalypse arrives.

It's all fun and games until the boss's husband starts waving his winky about. Partying at the hotel is fun enough, I guess, but do you think the written questionnaire was really necessary? SFW.

Everyone needs a Unicorn Fetus!

You'd think that, with all these celebrities with really bad plastic surgery, other celebrities wouldn't take the risk. And then along comes another one. It's almost as if the genes which give beauty in youth make it impossible to extend its shelf life with surgery. Either that, or it just doesn't pay to screw around with your face.

One of three drugs used in California’s current lethal injection procedure. The drug became a major issue last month when the scheduled execution of Albert Greenwood Brown was called off. During the legal tangle leading up to the stayed execution, it came out that the state’s supply of the drug expired on Friday, October 1–about five hours after the execution was supposed to happen.

I don't get why they just don't use Euthasol or Fatal-Plus that is used in animals, since technically they are.

The line is funny when it's Dorothy and the rest of the crew picking up Scarecrow. When it's the Sheriff's office picking up some lady's husband across a few counties... yeah, not so much. Ellen has scoffed more than once at these amateurs. If you do it right, you're not supposed to find anything at all, she says.

Really, what is it with greens suddenly trying to kill kids? Just one incidence I can chalk up to one out-of-touch group. But two, so close together, and on opposite sides of the globe... well, folks, that sure seems like a trend to me. I always knew they were more interested in telling people what to do than in saving anything, but I didn't know the totalitarian streak would be so easy to bring to the surface.

Actually, I know quite a few friends who likely would be very interested in a nonfiction book which follows a lamp shade made of human skin from garage sale to Buchenwald, including me. If the review is any indication, it's a monument to Mark Twain's quote on the difference between fiction and nonfiction. I think, though, that I'll wait for the trade paperback to come out. That dust cover sounds just that much too creepy.

Well, not attack so much as engage in a fantasy that the rest of us would all just, you know, explode. The original, which is way too long even with all those special effects, is here. Visions of murdering people in spectacular ways because their disagreement with you endangers everything!!!! is only fun when you keep it on the inside. Then again, it's not like the left's ever ignored an opportunity to make everyone else obey. And it always turns out so well...

No, really, when hotels attack! We had a similar problem, albeit on a much much smaller scale, when Ellen left her crystal ball on a windowsill. We'd come home from work on a sunny afternoon and would constantly smell what we thought were cigarettes, even though neither of us smoke. Eventually when we got around to sorting books that were also on the sill, we found two that'd been "lasered"... one looked like it'd been hit by ye ol' deathe raye, the other had a golf-ball sized chunk charred out of it. We moved the decoration shortly afterward.

You'd think a rich, imminently sue-able, casino developer would've taken more steps to ensure this doesn't happen. Can you say "class action suit?" I knew you could...

A box of "inert military-grade land mines" nearly managed to get itself on a passenger flight. An El Al passenger flight, no less. Thing is, if they really were inert, why did the explosives detector go off at all? Something's definitely fishy, or perhaps explode-y, about this one.

What is it with people finding luridly colorful ways of getting killed with wood chippers? I can't walk by one of the things without shivering. And boy, that's going to be a fun thing to clean up, eh?

Ok, dude, don't they have a mall out there somewhere? Did you have to do this at a Wal Mart? Bah. If most men had high standards street walkers would be out of business. So would most strip clubs.

Remember the cartoonist who thought it would be fun to cook up, "draw Mohammed day?" Yeah, I didn't either, but anyway her little stunt has forced her into hiding. It's fashionable to point out that Christians don't do this sort of thing when insulted, but I don't quite think that's true. Christian fundamentalists are quite capable of being violent if someone insults their religion. The difference is, of course, that there are a helluva lot fewer of those sorts of people, they're usually located in well-defined regions, don't travel much, and don't have such a spectacular track record.

Mike J. gets a g-d late no-prize for (eventually!) letting us know that the really attractive chick from Firefly is going to start flying around major cities for real in, like, two weeks. The 14th?!? The *14th?!?* Dude... lame.

Ooooo... Katy Perry and Elmo...

Ok, so everyone remembers that the bite of a vampire bat may be painful, but is not particularly dangerous. What nobody seems to have remembered is bats often carry rabies. That's some bad ju-ju right there, yup.

And in the, "slow news day" file, we have this breathless recycled press release about a bunch of kooks citizens concerned about flying saucers monkeying with our nukes. Hopefully the catering at the NPC is good, because I'm pretty sure the show will be a disappointment.

And now, an idiot doing a kamikaze run downhill at 80 mph on a moped. When I had my off on my bicycle last month, I was doing about 20 mph. I skidded down the asphalt for (when I went back later and measured) about thirty feet, ripped up a bunch of gear, got nasty road rash, and either tore rib cartilage or cracked one outright. It's still sore. On the bright side, falling off here, well, it wouldn't be quick, but it'd be final.

I never was this dumb.

"A huge tree limb, like 25 feet long, flew right up the street, up the hill and stopped in the middle of the air 50 feet up in this intersection and started spinning," said Steve Carlisle, 54. "It was like a poltergeist."

See.. Facebook is good when you have cousins that can complain about this on their afternoon commute!

Sometimes, no matter how hard he tries, it seems God still misses, once in awhile. Or, if you're all about infallibility, sometimes God enjoys a near miss. Or, if you're not about either, sometimes sh-t happens, and sometimes it misses you.

From the "I bet you didn't know that" file, we have the revelation that Lady Gaga's "meat dress" was meant as a protest about the way the US military treats gays. I'm sure she even explained the connection, but it's not in the article. PETA is, at least, being consistent by getting the vapors about the thing. Gaga is the real deal, I'll say that. I just wish I knew what the deal was.

Sorry, gotta say that M-cup boobs which require two implants, each, to achieve, and then force various drains and pumps to be added to fight the infection, well, sorry, just not worth it. I'm reminded of that "film" in Johnny Dangerously about elephantitis, only with boobs. Just, you know, just don't.

Yeah, they got busted because of Facebook, but this 27 year old groom and his 14 year old bride first met in person. I mean, does that even happen anymore nowadays?

According to a recent survey, the Japanese government has lost track of nearly a quarter million centenarians. Pension fraud, you say? Ya think?!? Still, having the trigger be officials discovering a thirty year-old mummy when they went by to congratulate the oldest recorded Japanese man on his birthday is wonderfully macabre.

The entire sequence from that ocean liner that got caught in a storm in 2008 has been released. A story, including a highlight reel of the same footage is here. I guess sometimes there's just no going around a big storm.

Sometimes there's no beating the lead: A dangerous criminal who has no legal right to be in Britain has gone on the run after a judge ruled that to detain him would violate his human rights. Bonus: this charmer enjoyed beating up his girlfriend.

Most of the time, going through the an old storage closet is fascinating. Especially when you find two mummified infant corpses wrapped in 1930s-era newspapers. Nobody's sure what exactly happened, but they have managed to track down the family of the owner of the luggage. Just when you think the world had run out of weirdness...

Australia strikes again, this time catching a giant spider eating a bird. Well, more like "turning it into a protein shake," but you understand the point. Every time I think it would be fun to visit down under, I read something like this. Yeah...

Ok, sometimes the quote makes the story: "I want it just like her but with bigger boobs". Article is SFW. Imagining a 50 year-old man with yet another real doll... well, yeah, that's not so safe for brain. Here, I have some mind bleach to spare.

A hoarder in Las Vegas went missing recently, only to be found imitating a Wizard of Oz witch in her own home. And that, children, is why things should occasionally be thrown away.

And in the, "no, actually, we're not making it up" file we have a guy who's making whiskey from diabetic's urine. Ok, see, all I've ever said was I thought Scotch tasted like postage stamp glue. This stuff...

Proof positive rednecks don't just live in the US: man uses a whole can of bug spray trying to kill a spider, then uses a lighter to try and see if he succeeded. Looks like folks in the UK just don't see a lot of Mythbusters episodes, donchaknow?

And he still looks like he is 12.

Investigators traced the pungent smell to a hearse owned by David B. Lawson Mortuary, the undertaker that picked up Walton's body Aug. 11. Walton, 37, who investigators think died about a week before she was discovered, was still in the back of the undertaker's vehicle.

Mine would not smell. That is what air fresheners are for.

Ya know, sometimes even I'm left speechless. You know, when some Caribbean chick writes a rap song about tickling her vagina. No, really. SFW, I dunno, sorta...

The suspects then likely had to carry the body over the cemetery fence to get away, authorities said.

Leave it to a dumb teenager to create yet another spectacular car crash video. That would be all I need, getting caught up in something like that in the spider. Fortunately the only person hurt this time was the idiot behind the wheel, and it sounds like he'll be paying for his stupidity for a long, long time.

Would that they could learn such lessons more easily.

Mike J. gets a no-prize shaped like a rotting gavel for bringing us news that, in Ohio at least, your rights to your kid's remains do not trump those of the state's. I dunno, for me I think the difference would be in just why the coroner wanted to keep the kid's brain in a jar. Still, I think not notifying the family was at the very least, well, you know, tacky.

Glass eye? Glass eye? Dude, that's so 20th century. Thing is, I'd expect that, within the next five years tops, he'll be able to take high def full-motion video with the thing. Meh, his body, his cash, wtf not?

Barenaked ladies: America's Next Top Model's plus-size winner displays her curves for campaign to beat eating disorders.>

Last time I checked, shoveling food into your mouth all the time is an eating disorder.

Whatever happened to healthy? Not stick figure or fat?

This is why I don't read magazines anymore.

For the power napper who has everything: the "Snazzy Napper." I agree with the article: looks suspiciously like a burkha to me, but that's likely because I've never seen an actual one up close. I'd think it would work better in Asia, where things like surgical masks seem to be considered normal.

The good news: 33 miners have survived a collapse. The bad: it's going to take a few months to dig them out. I'm thinking the "few months" will turn out to be a "few weeks" as their story gets out. As long as they can get food and water down to them, I guess it'll all work out.

Update: Three bad links fixed in three weeks. Geeze.

China's government has, according to the article at least, decided to demolish half the country's residential buildings because of shoddy workmanship. The results are definitely spectacular, but as with most progressive good intentions, there's a down side. Rural Chinese are just as bright as you and I are. They know exactly what their chances are in those buildings. They choose to live in them anyway because they're escaping what a real, actual life in a pre-industrial countryside is like.

So, are they rich enough to build proper buildings fast enough, or will the end result be legions of peasants freezing in the streets as serviceable shelters are demolished around them?

Bah. Your side doesn't even understand the question. Sometimes I don't know why I bother...

Dr. Laura Schlessinger went on the standard white person rant about how some folks get to say the n-word and others don't, and suffers the consequences of that rule. Race really is a fundamental contradiction in our society, and has been since basically the beginning. My rule is one I got from sportscaster James Brown back when he was still doing the Fox pregame show one Sunday while the crew were talking about some football player who'd broken this very rule. "I personally think it's an unacceptable word from anyone, anywhere. There's just too much baggage," is what I recall him saying, and that's how I feel about it.

Cindy J. gets a no-prize that can't possibly be THAT innocent for bringing us an outrageous picture, and it's suspiciously "sensitive" explanation. Yah know, it doesn't matter how much of a coincidence it is, I can't imagine a Japanese immigrant in, say, 1952 1949, putting up a sign in his shop window celebrating "The Honorable Hirohito" because some damned anniversary "just happened" to fall on December 7th.

Oh, stop it. Surely they'd gotten out of the camps before then...

The couple had their hands bound behind their backs and were forced to stand in an empty field as their sentence was carried out, he said. A local Taliban commander, who contacted media but refused to give his name, confirmed the killings. "The couple confessed they had eloped together and based on their confession they were stoned to death," he said.

Under Islamic Sharia law, sex between unmarried people is punishable by public beatings, while punishment for those caught in extra-marital affairs is death by stoning.

Really? And we keep trying to help help these people?

What they need is a few more thousand generations to get out of the stone age.

It seems, according to Salon at any rate, that the whole "ground zero mosque" meme is the product of a single right-wing blogger and, natch, Rupert Murdoch. So, what he's saying is, the media, and the New York Post specifically, took a straightforward story and blew it all out of proportion, just to sell more ads? Say it ain't so!

Look, I appreciate the clarification, but trying to pretend this sort of thing is the exclusive purview of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy^tm went out the door when Journolist walked in.

A few hookers, a tree in the woods, a rope, hey man, that's a party. On the one hand, very, very sad. On the other, well, at least he went out in style.

Yeah, I'd think a giant hole opening up under the pool and draining it while your kids are swimming would make a person... anxious... And that, folks, is why they make you get all those annoying permits and inspections, donchaknow?

Making the rounds: a man went into a hospital thinking he had lung cancer, only to discover it was pea plant instead. Yep, pea plant. Apparently he inhaled one instead of eating it. You'd think cooking would've prevented that sort of thing.

After going missing more than two years ago, a famous French chef's body has been found in a freezer in his home. Nobody's sure if foul play was involved. The man's girlfriend has been charged with, "hiding a body." Who knew that was illegal? Anyone? Anyone? Beuhler?

Sometimes The Sun is full of crap. Except when they come up with a headline like, "Man Died in Sex Stunt with Tree." Ya know, splinters in my hand were bad enough. I always knew they'd kill, if they got stuck in other places. I woulda thought all guys'd know that. Obviously I was wrong.

Stephen Gould used to talk about how evolution wasn't disproved by the elegance of a bird's wing, but proved by the clunkiness of a panda's thumb. I say government incompetence isn't disproved by Apollo, but is proved by warehouses full of coins nobody wants, that cost more to house than they're worth, which will be produced for the foreseeable future. Yes, yes, "it's Bush's fault! It's Bush's fault!" I know I keep forgetting the chant. Did you really have to bring the stick around this time?

This is just nasty.

A market data firm, trying to figure out just what exactly it was that made the market flop around like the fish in the bottom of a boat earlier this year, have instead discovered distinct, and extremely weird, patterns in the stock market data. We're talking patterns it takes slicing the data into seconds to see, which describe trades which have no hope of succeeding. The modern equivalent of a numbers station? Skynet, signaling its minions? Two computers, farting away in the night? Who knows?

Well, I'll tell you, someone does. And they're not talking...

Well, yeah...um..WEIRD.

Ok, NASA, no need to worry about how many Space Shuttle missions might actually be in the pipe. God is on the job. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if the whole rig was engineered to survive that sort of thing. Cost enough, it better.

Making the rounds: yet another example of someone wobbling off their meds in front of a computer screen. It's just possible the author is perpetrating one enormously entertaining hoax. However, in my experience it takes a genuine loon to have that kind of energy over that amount of time.

Ok, "Man nearly killed when eel swims in bottom" reads like an editor being clever. You know, like the bottom of a lake or something. But no, it really did swim up his backside. I guess when there's more than a billion Chinese, weird stuff is going to happen more often to them just due to raw numbers.

Sometimes there's just no improving the Fark headline: Meet the Bodybuilding Neo-Nazi Porn Star Who Embalms Dead People for a Living. Ellen's two of those four. She's married, so that knocks out the third one, and she hates everyone, but as long as they stay off our lawn she couldn't give a sh-t, so that knocks out the second one. My colorful life. Let me show you it...

The first systematic survey of the Chernobyl exclusion zone has found marked, and negative, effects on wildlife. While this would at first seem to be one of those "dur" conclusions, there was (and is) plenty of anecdotal evidence that the removal of humans was increasing wildlife diversity.

Campers make sure all food is secure, campsite is properly situated, everything is arranged correctly, get eaten anyway. Inveterate camper/hikers Ron & Amber will have their, "yeah, but"'s ready, but, far as I'm concerned, that's all the proof I need to watch campers on TV, instead of being one.

Looks like something went "boom" next to a tanker, and now the captain's going to have to call Geico. I'd like to think this was hajji using a small bomb to take out a big boat, but I tend to agree the most likely cause is a nearly-dead mine from the old Iran-Iraq war. Still, that's going to take a whole lotta bondo to fix.

Put it this way... you probably don't want to go swimming in a swamp, anyway. And dude, you definitely need a bigger boat.

Don't you normally find these portraits at flea markets with tacky gold frames along with tiger blankets?

Mike J. gets a no-prize he'll need four department stamps and six forms filled out in triplicate to receive for bringing us a brilliant example of what a progressive looks like dining on ashes. "Peak state," like its cousin peak oil, is a chimera built on the assumption that everyone else is stupid and will remain so until and unless they wake up and recognize that the elite really do know what's good for them.

That everyone else is just as damned smart as they are, and that, with the proper incentives, everyone else can come up with some damned clever ideas indeed, never once occurs to the folks on the left side of the peanut gallery. Quite the opposite, they're already sneering at this, thinking how I court destruction and chaos for even mentioning the possibility.

You know, that every one of us has the potential to succeed, and that together we can do amazing things. Yeah, that's definitely a terrible thing to talk about.

Jesus is coming! Quick! Look busy!

I always liked, "Jesus Saves Sinners, and Redeems Them Later for Valuable Prizes" better.

And now, the world's strongest beer. Inside of a squirrel. Yeah, you heard me, squirrel. That would make for an interesting companion to Ellen's "vomiting frog," donchathink?

Uh...wow...

Either he fell off, or he really did end it there. Not gory, but NSFW due to the ads.

The children were enjoying Popsicles and were being bathed in vinegar, which is a common treatment for jellyfish stings. They also were given antihistamines and anti-inflammatory medications.

Really, what is this world coming too. Too many odd things going on.

2012 is only a year and a half away.