This Reuters item via Yahoo! News:
Scientists from Mexico’s tequila producing region say juice extracted from the blue agave plant, best known when distilled into the fiery spirit, may help dieters shed pounds and cut cholesterol.
Sadly for the world’s growing band of tequila lovers, agave’s possible health benefits are lost when the plant is distilled into alcohol.
Urinals in Amsterdam with flies etched in the bowls.
Why, you ask?
Because guys will aim at the phony fly. Decreases spillage 80%.
Via Dave Barry’s Blog.
A Frenchman in his sixties lived for five years with the body of his dead mother to keep receiving her 700 euros monthly pension, judicial sources said Saturday.
— Reuters via Yahoo! News
Key quote: “a two-room apartment.”
Go look at this photo and tell me that surfer’s arms and legs aren’t already a little messed up.
From a story in the Los Angeles Times.
Feline fans are fuming over a report that a German inventor created an organic alternative to diesel fuel that is composed of garbage, weeds and dead cats. Bild newspaper reported that Christian Koch, 55, uses 20 cat cadavers to produce a full tank of inexpensive fuel, and several online publications reported that Koch heats the decedents up to 300 degrees Celsius to filter out hydrocarbon, which is then turned into diesel using a catalytic converter. Outraged animal aficionados can breathe easy, however: Koch now calls the Bild story inaccurate. “It’s an alternative fuel that is friendly for the environment. But … I’ve never used cats and would never think of that. At most the odd toad may have jumped in.” The story author confirmed that Koch never directly stated that he had used the keeled-over kitties.
The question remains: Would it work with dead cats?
Second question: And who speaks for the toads?
Think of them as amphibious sumo wrestlers. A pack of rowdy sea lions has invaded Newport Harbor, sinking boats, thrashing docks and, with their nonstop barking, turning residents into sleepless zombies.
In a scene that has played out up and down the West Coast, the whiskered creatures are charming tourists but exasperating local officials, who are considering a bizarre array of methods to thwart the federally protected mammals.
Tonight, the Harbor Commission will discuss the situation, which took on added urgency after 18 sea lions piled onto a 37-foot sailboat this month and sank it.
Nature is turning against us wherever we look.
If you were being generous, you could look at it as a refreshing break from the usual corporate sterility. But LaChaina Govan was not feeling generous. She’d been having lot of trouble with Comcast and she knew when she received her August bill from the cable company, addressed to “Bitch Dog,” no whimsy was intended. Govan’s bill arrived after she called at least a dozen times to complain about lousy service. After being transferred all over the place and being treated rudely on a routine basis, she complained about that. Then the bill came. Comcast finally stepped in, tracking down and firing the perps, making an official apology and offering Govan a couple of months on the house. She declined the offer.
From Wired News
Santa Fe resident Moises Gonzales — who in 1985 pleaded guilty to driving drunk in a crash that killed three teenage girls — again has been charged with driving while intoxicated, police said.
The latest charge was the eighth time Moises Gonzales of Santa Fe has been accused of driving while intoxicated. He was arrested on July 1 after he swerved on a road and almost hit a police car.
“I don’t have a problem drinking, but when I do drink, I get caught,” Gonzales told the Albuquerque Journal.
It’s not necessarily the drinking Moises; it’s the driving and drinking!
It seems to me that Parents Against Bad Books in Schools needs more detail than absolutely necessary. This is from the Sample Book Review Documentation Form.
For each type checked above also indicate level of vividness/graphicness using the following as a general guide:
Basic (B): large breasts
Graphic (G): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts
Very graphic (VG): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts with hard nipples
Extremely graphic (EG): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts with hard nipples covered with glistening sweat and bite marks
A psychologist who has spoken out on eating disorders and other issues was arrested after she collapsed in a supermarket, allegedly after inhaling propellant from whipped cream cans.
Lisa G. Berzins, who has been interviewed on television and in newspapers and successfully lobbied for a state law regulating claims by weight loss businesses, was arrested on a warrant Friday charging her in the May 29 incident.
Article from the Raleigh News & Observer via the Detroit Free Press:
At a cost of $9 to $11 for three meals, the single mother of two can afford it. She travels throughout the Raleigh area working construction jobs, and she has never failed to find a McDonald’s somewhere. The whole process of ordering and eating a meal takes maybe 5 minutes, and she mostly eats in her car. Sometimes she hits the drive-through only once, ordering enough food to last the whole day.
Since April 22, when Morgan launched her diet with a Sausage Burrito and a medium Diet Coke, she’s lost 33 pounds, putting her at about 195 pounds. At 5 feet, 9 inches tall, she’s dropped from a size 22 or 24 to a size 15. The size 2X and 3X T-shirts she used to wear look like dresses on her. And despite her friends’ fears about skyrocketing cholesterol, she feels great.
Sounds yummy, too.
A group of people in the Yukon community of Teslin say they saw a sasquatch or bushman over the weekend, the second reported sighting in the area in about a year.
Nine people, some of them children, say a large human-like figure covered in hair passed by a window of a house. They later saw it standing behind an abandoned car near some houses in the community, which is located 180 kilometres east of Whitehorse.
These Photo Contest Winners, “should be professional pictures, but should not be extremely or overly retouched.”
You decide.
Saddam Hussein isn’t thrilled about being cooped up in jail — who would be? — but at least the deposed Iraqi dictator isn’t being denied one of his supreme pleasures: a fine Havana cigar. Saddam receives his cigars from his daughter, Raghad, who sends them through the International Red Cross. The irony, of course, is that Saddam can smoke like a chimney while incarcerated at a U.S. military base but he’d be busted for hawking one on the streets of New York, since the economic embargo against Cuba makes selling the cigars illegal on American soil.
Miss World, the Peruvian beauty queen Maria Julia Mantilla, said Wednesday she was considering suing a plastic surgeon after he told the press he had given her buttock implants and trimmed her ears.
“The doctor is presenting photographs that have been altered and you can see, I’ve never had my ears operated on, I don’t have scars, any doctor can come and look at my ears,” an indignant Mantilla told RPP radio.
“He said he had built me, that he gave me buttock implants and fixed my ears and this is false — I’m not the creation of a surgeon, he just did my bust and my nose,” the 20-year-old said. “So I’m considering suing.”
This from The Smoking Gun:
A Kentucky woman who thought she won $100,000 in a radio station giveaway is suing for breach of contract after learning that her prize was actually a Nestle’s 100 Grand candy bar. According to the below June 22 Circuit Court complaint, Norreasha Gill, 28, claims that she was listening to WLTO-FM on the evening of May 25 when host DJ Slick announced that he would award “100 Grand” to the tenth caller. When Gill, the pregnant mother of three children, was that tenth caller, the radio host told her she could pick up her prize the following day at WLTO’s studio. She subsequently learned that the contest was a “joke,” according to her lawsuit, which names the radio station’s parent company, Cumulus Media, as a defendant. Gill’s lawsuit seeks the $100,000 prize and additional punitive damages.
On the face of it, could her lawsuit have any merit? It seems like typical, and rather harmless, radio fun to me.
JUNE 8–Sometimes, we have to spend a couple of hundred words explaining certain documents. But the one below, a June 6 District Court filing from Frederick County, Maryland, explains it all for you. Here’s what Sgt. Shawn Tyler said transpired when he executed a traffic stop on Lanora Lucas:
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Yes, you did.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about the three children you have in the trunk of the car?”Read the police report from The Smoking Gun.
The Arizona newspapers tackle the Maryland high school bola tie incident.
The official neckwear of Arizona is not a tie. Huh?
Next they’ll be saying ignorance is bliss.
By now, you’ve probably heard. A high school in Charles County, Md. withheld a diploma from a graduate because he wore a braided bola tie under his graduation gown.
The black bola tie with a silver-and-onyx clasp was not considered “acceptable” by school administrators. The youth, Thomas Benya, wanted to honor his Cherokee background by wearing the tie.
But administrators saPOSTID: “No.”
Around these parts, the bola tie is high chic. In a Maryland school district, the single-strand leather tie with a metal clasp, often adorned by a polished stone, is disruptive clothing.
Oh, those know-it-all Easterners. They’re hilarious.
But it wasn’t funny for a Maryland high school student in suburban Washington, D.C., when school officials denied him his diploma – which he earned – because he wore his bola tie during the graduation ceremony. Oh, by the way, the 17-year-old student, Thomas Benya, wore his black bola tie underneath his purple gown.
Around these parts, that’s called official stupidity. It’s also a big-time insult to Arizona, where the stylish tie was born.
“It’s an important part of Arizona’s patrimony,” said Diane Dittemore, Ethnological Collections curator at the Arizona State Museum.
The bola tie is Arizona’s official neckwear. It has been since 1971, when then-Gov. Jack Williams made the bola a fashion statement.
Hey, Washington Post, please note: It’s BOLA not bolo.
So, is it also illegal to dye your hair or wear colored contacts or grow a beard (or shave one off)?
An Ohio man has been arrested for wearing a “Grinch” mask in the street. Norman Eugene Gray, 42, says he was dressed as the mean-spirited Dr. Seuss character to protest his employer’s pension policy, but state law restricts the wearing of masks to children, actors in plays, and workers who need facial protection. Officials defended the arrest, saying that criminals or terrorists could use masks to conceal their faces.
Former astronaut Neil Armstrong is suing a barber for selling a snip of his hair to a collector. Marx Sizemore regularly cut Armstrong’s hair at his Lebanon, Ohio, barbershop, and decided to keep a lock. A year later, he sold it for $3,000 to a man who collects hair snippings from famous historical figures. The intensely private Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was infuriated. “I didn’t deny it or anything,” said Sizemore. “I told him I did it.” Sizemore agreed to try to buy the hair back, but told Armstrong the collector wasn’t selling. “Then I got this letter from his lawyer.”
NewMexiKen understands Armstrong’s irritation — clearly this is an invasion of his privacy — but I guess my solution (were I famous and if I had hair) would be to take my business elsewhere.
A Canadian province will shut its 24-hour suicide hotline and replace it with one that operates only during business hours.
Prince Edward Island, a small province on Canada’s East Coast, says it is too expensive to operate the hotline around the clock. Starting June 1, it will be open only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Georgia’s “runaway bride,” whose much-publicized disappearance days before her wedding turned out to be just a case of cold feet, was indicted on Wednesday on two charges of falsely claiming she was abducted, authorities said. …
Wilbanks would face up to six years in prison if convicted on both the charges, Gwinnett County district attorney Danny Porter, said, announcing the indictment by a grand jury earlier on Wednesday.
A crane vending machine can be frustrating enough when you’re trying to snatch a little stuffed toy from its steely clutches. Imagine if the prize it’s denying you is your own 3-year-old son.
James Manges II managed to climb up the chute and inside one of the machines Thursday, swinging around for an hour amid the plush toys he coveted before firefighters freed him.
AP via Yahoo! News
Professor Bainbridge asks a couple of pretty good questions:
The LA County Sheriff’s deputies who shot up Compton last week have apologized to the residents of the neighborhood they terrorized. (Link) This astonishing incident raises two burning questions:
- What the heck possessed the cops to fire 120 shots at Winston Hayes?
- Having fired so many shots, how the heck did they only manage to hit him 4 times?
Trigger happy cops are bad enough. But trigger happy cops who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn are even worse.
NORFOLK, Neb. – So exactly how do you stop a charging deer in Wal-Mart? You take away its credit card.
Shoppers at the Wal-Mart here wish they would have thought of that. It would have been a whole lot easier.
A deer without a grocery list entered through the doors of the supermarket part of the store Thursday.
The store’s greeter didn’t see the deer enter through the exit, but she did see the critter when it hit the slick floor and fell. It quickly recovered and went scurrying down the aisles.
After doing a little looking around, the deer was tackled by a customer. Others of the human persuasion then tied the deer’s legs so it couldn’t kick, placed it in a shopping cart and pushed it outside.
Officials took the animal to nearby Ta-ha-zouka Park and released it.
The deer obviously knew the secret of getting past the annoying “greeter.” Never — never — make eye contact.