News of the Weird

[stumbler]

Shopper bitten by rattlesnake in Walmart

SALMON, Idaho -- When Mica Craig reached down to brush what he thought was a stick off some mulch in the garden section of a Washington state Walmart, it turned around and sank its fangs into his hand.



The Friday encounter with a rattlesnake sent Craig, 47, to the hospital, where he said he remained in excruciating pain and may lose feeling in two fingers. Wal-Mart Stores Inc has apologized.


"I reached down to grab the stick to move it out of the way, and the snake stretched out, turned around and got its fangs in my right hand," he said. "I slung it off and I did a tap dance on it until it was dead."


Craig was rushed to the hospital by fellow customer Maria Geffre, who told Reuters she saw him crumple to the ground after crying out that he had been bitten by a snake.


"He had punctures on his hand and there was the dead rattler he'd stomped on," Geffre said, describing the snake as at least a foot long with four buttons, or rattles.


Craig, a married father of two, said the mulch was for his marijuana plants, which he is licensed to grow for medical reasons. It was unclear whether the snake came from an adjacent field or arrived at the store along with garden supplies.


"It's the most scared I've ever been in my life," Craig told KIRO FM from his hospital bed in Lewiston, Idaho. "I was screaming bloody murder through the parking lot."


'Isolated incident'
Craig said emergency room doctors sent him home because there was little swelling initially - he had iced the wound - and they thought the snake had inflicted only a "dry bite," or one that did not inject venom.


But his hand quickly swelled up to "the size of a grapefruit," Craig told KIRO, and he returned to the hospital. Doctors treated him with six bags of anti-venom, Craig said.


"As of right now, my little finger doesn't move at all and my ring finger barely moves," he said according to KIRO. "I'm just hoping that my hand works."


A Walmart spokeswoman offered an apology to Craig and said the retailer was looking into how the incident could have happened at the store in Clarkston, in eastern Washington.


"At this point, it appears to be an isolated incident. We are working with a pest management team, which is conducting a sweep of the property to ensure there is no additional rattlesnake activity," Walmart spokeswoman Kayla Whaling said.


Travis Taggart, director of the Center for North American Herpetology, said about half of documented rattlesnake bites, which are usually defensive when directed at humans, are "dry" but still cause severe pain.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20...n-walmart?lite

[smcaaphd]

[Cheltenham]

[Cheltenham]

Weird News: Tree man who grew roots may be cured
Posted by admin in Tuesday, November 20th 2007



An Indonesian fisherman who feared that he would be killed by tree-like growths covering his body has been given hope of recovery by an American doctor – and Vitamin A.

Dede, now 35, baffled medical experts when warty “roots” began growing out of his arms and feet after he cut his knee in a teenage accident.

The welts spread across his body unchecked and soon he was left unable to carry out everyday household tasks.

Sacked from his job and deserted by his wife, Dede has been raising his two children – now in their late teens – in poverty, resigned to the fact that local doctors had no cure for his condition.



To make ends meet he even joined a local “freak show”, parading in front of a paying audience alongside victims of other peculiar diseases.

Although supported by his extended family, he was often a target of abuse and ridicule in his rural fishing village.

But now an American dermatology expert who flew out to Dede’s home village south of the capital Jakarta claims to have identified his condition, and proposed a treatment that could transform his life.



After testing samples of the lesions and Dede’s blood, Dr Anthony Gaspari of the University of Maryland concluded that his affliction is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers.

Dede’s problem is that he has a rare genetic fault that impedes his immune system, meaning his body is unable to contain the warts.

The virus was therefore able to “hijack the cellular machinery of his skin cells”, ordering them to produce massive amounts of the substance that caused the tree-like growths known as “cutaneous horns” on his hands and feet.

Dede’s counts of a key type of white blood cell are so low that Dr Gaspari initially suspected he may have the Aids virus.

But tests showed he did not, and it became clear that Dede’s immune condition was something far rarer and more mysterious.

Warts aside, he had enjoyed remarkable good health throughout his life – which would not be expected of someone with a suppressed immune system – and neither his parents nor his siblings have shown signs of developing lesions.

“The likelihood of having his deficiency is less than one in a million,” Dr Gaspari told the Telegraph.

Dr Gaspari, who became involved in the case through a Discovery Channel documentary, believes that Dede’s condition can be largely cleared up by a daily doses of a synthetic form of Vitamin A, which has been shown to arrest the growth of warts in severe cases of HPV.

“He won’t have a perfectly normal body but the warts should reduce in size to the point where he could use his hands,” Dr Gaspari said.

“Over the course of three to six months the warts should be come smaller and fewer in number. He will be living a more normal life.”

The most resilient warts could then be frozen off and the growths on his hands and feet surgically removed.

Dr Gaspari hopes to get the necessary drugs free of charge from pharmaceutical firms. They would then be administered by Indonesian doctors under his supervision.



Still intrigued by the origins of Dede’s peculiar immune condition, the doctor would like to fly him to the United States for further examination, but fears the financial and bureaucratic barriers would prove too difficult to overcome.

“I would like to bring him to the US to run tests on where his immune condition has come from, but I would need funding and to get him a visa as well as someone to cover the costs of the tests,” he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire career.”

Watch the video clip here

[AZRIEL]

[darthel0101]

Originally Posted by Cheltenham

Weird News: Tree man who grew roots may be cured
Posted by admin in Tuesday, November 20th 2007

……

After testing samples of the lesions and Dede’s blood, Dr Anthony Gaspari of the University of Maryland concluded that his affliction is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers.

Dede’s problem is that he has a rare genetic fault that impedes his immune system, meaning his body is unable to contain the warts.

The virus was therefore able to “hijack the cellular machinery of his skin cells”, ordering them to produce massive amounts of the substance that caused the tree-like growths known as “cutaneous horns” on his hands and feet.

…



…

Watch the video clip here

I have to wonder if this is caused by one of the strains of HPV which is affected by the Gardasil immunization.

[tenguy]

So who does the measuring?

-- For a September beauty contest of female college students in China's Hubei province, certain minimum body requirements were established at the outset (beyond the traditional chest, waist and hip sizes). Among them, according to a report in China's Global Post: The space between the candidate's pupils should be 46 percent of the distance between each pupil and the nearer ear, and the distance between a candidate's nipples should be at least 20cm (7.8 inches). [Agence France-Presse via New York Daily News, 9-7-2012]

Hmmmmmmm

Unclear on the Concept -- Punishment Must Fit the Crime: (1) In September, Britain's Leeds Crown Court meted out "punishment" to a 25-year-old man convicted of sneaking into the changing room of China's female swimmers during the Olympics: He was banned -- for five years -- from entering any female toilet or changing room.

(2) In September, the city of Simi Valley, Calif., adopted Halloween restrictions on the residences of its 119 registered sex offenders, forbidding enticing displays and requiring signs reading "No candy or treats at this residence." Shortly after that, several of the sex offenders sued the city for violating their rights, in that none of the offenders' convictions were for molestations that occurred during Halloween. (The lawsuit is pending.) [BBC News, 9-17-2012] [Los Angeles Times, 10-1-2012]

Doh

-- In October, Britain's Gravesham Borough Council, weary of neighbors' complaints about the noise and smell from Roy Day's brood of 20 birds, ordered him to remove them and find them a new home. Day, a member of the National Pigeon Racing Association, told reporters of the futility of the order: "They are homing pigeons." Said a friend, wherever Day sends them, "(T)hey will just fly straight back to him. ... He has never lost one." [Daily Telegraph, 10-19-2012]

I sure hope it was already dead

Redneck Chronicles
In October, eight units in the Clear View Apartments in Holland Township, Mich., were destroyed, with two dozen people displaced, when one resident, preparing a meal of squirrel, had a propane torch accident as he was attempting to burn off the rodent's fur. [Associated Press via Washington Post, 8-19- 2012] [WOOD-TV (Grand Rapids), 10-11-2012]

[tenguy]

These just in from our California brethren.

Disgraced but Not Contrite
Chutzpah! The former police chief of Bell, Calif., Randy Adams, had resigned in disgrace after prosecutors charged eight other city officials with looting the municipal budget. Adams had been recruited by the alleged miscreants (at a sweetheart salary twice what he made as police chief of much larger Glendale), and his resignation left him with a generous state pension of $240,000 a year. Rather than quietly accept the payout, Adams immediately appealed to a state pension panel, claiming that his one inexplicably rich year in Bell had actually upped his pension to $510,000 a year. In September, with a straight face, Adams pleaded his case to the panel, but 20 times during the questioning invoked his right not to incriminate himself. [Los Angeles Times, 9-21-2012]

-- Many visitors to San Francisco's historic Castro neighborhood are shocked at the city's culture of street nudism (virtually all by males). Only if the display is "lewd and lascivious" (with the purpose to arouse) is it illegal, but a September report in SF Weekly suggests that the nudity must be total -- that calling any attention at all to the genitals may suggest lewdness, such as by rings worn around the scrotum. [SF Weekly, 9-7-2012]

Be careful with how you treat your grandkids, stumbles:

Family Values "Why You Little ...!" (1) A teenager, apparently fed up with his parents' commandeering of their home's basement for an elaborate marijuana-growing operation, turned the couple in in August. The Doylestown Township, Pa., couple (a chiropractor mom and software engineer dad) had sophisticated hardware and 18 plants. (2) Police in Athens, Ga., searching for Homer Parham, 51, at his house in September, came up empty, and his wife said he wasn't there. But as officers were leaving, the couple's young daughter said, "Mommy locked Daddy in the closet." Parham was found hiding in a high-up crawl space. [PhillyBurbs.com, 8-19-2012] [Athens Banner-Herald, 9-20-2012]

[tenguy]

This is an interesting Muslim ritual, maybe it explains the rise in beleivers of Islam:

-- At the religious festival of Pon, thousands of Muslims travel to Gunung Kemukus, on Indonesia's main island of Java, to have the required sexual intercourse with a stranger. The experience, which supposedly brings good fortune, has become heavily commercialized, but nevertheless, about half the participants are "pure," in that no money changes hands. More than a quick tryst is involved, according to an October Global Mail dispatch. The pilgrims must first pray, then bathe themselves, then select their proper stranger, then bathe themselves afterward (carefully saving the water for later re-use), and finally return seven times at 35-day intervals to refresh their ritual. [Global Post, 10-11-2012]

Perspective

"In beautiful La Jolla Cove," wrote The New York Times in November, describing the cliffside-vista community near San Diego, "art galleries and coffee shops meet a stretch of unspoiled cliffs and Pacific Ocean" -- unspoiled, that is, until recently, when seagulls took over. Now, because of California's showcase environmental regulations, use of the cove has been restricted, and cleaning the bird droppings from the land is subject to a permit-application process that might take two years. Some residents profess not to mind ("Smells just like the ocean," said one, "but maybe a little 'heightened'") while others are appalled ("As soon as we pulled up, it was like, this is awful"). Even though the smell grows "more acrid by the day," according to the Times, residents' and visitors' only short-term hope is for cleansing by the traditional winter rains (which, fortunately, do not require California permits). [New York Times, 11-25-2012]

Guess he was pissed:

A 35-year-old man was shot to death in Wilkinsburg, Pa., in September when he took a break from a game of dominoes on a second-floor balcony around 11 p.m. and urinated over the rail. Unfortunately, an unidentified man was walking below. He yelled, "Yo! Yo!" and fired several gunshots, killing the urinator. [National Post, 11-20-2012] [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9-19-2012]

[tenguy]

Now I understand why baller16 loves Philly:

Government in Action -- The Philadelphia Traffic Court has been so infused with ticket-fixing since its founding in 1938 that a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court report on the practice seemed resigned to it, according to a November Philadelphia Inquirer account. One court employee was quoted as defending the favoritism as fair (as long as no money changed hands) on the grounds that anyone could get local politicians to call a judge for him. Thus, said the employee, "It was the (traffic) violator's own fault if he or she didn't know enough" to get help from a political connection. Traffic Judge Christine Solomon, elected in November 2011 after a career as a favor-dispensing "ward healer," said the ticket-fixing was "just politics, that's all." [Philadelphia Inquirer, 11-25-2012]

And this explains Kimi's ambivalence towards public debt.

-- More than 200 school districts in California have covered current expenses with "capital appreciation bonds," which allow borrowers to forgo payments for years -- but at some point require enormous balloon payments. A Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that districts have borrowed about $3 billion and thus are on the hook for more than $16 billion. "It's the school district equivalent of a payday loan," said California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a former school board member who said he'd fire anyone who sought such loans. (Some defenders of the loans pointed to schools' occasional need for immediate money so they could qualify for federal matching grants -- which, to the districts, would be "free" money.) [NPR, 12-7-2012]

Car 54 Where Are You?

-- One of the principal recommendations following the Sept. 11 attacks was that emergency and rescue personnel have one secure radio frequency on which all agencies that were merged into the Department of Homeland Security could communicate. In November, the department's inspector general revealed that, despite $430 million allotted to build and operate the frequency in the last nine years, it remains almost useless to DHS' 123,000 employees. The report surveyed 479 workers, but found only one who knew how to find the frequency, and 72 percent did not even know one existed (and half the department's radios couldn't have accessed it even if employees knew where to look). [ProPublica.org, 11-21-2012]

[69magpie]

Seriously, snakes on a plane.








IT wasn't a scene from a Hollywood blockbuster when passengers on a Qantas flight from Cairns to Port Moresby looked out the window of their airborne aircraft and saw a 3m snake clinging to the wing.
The amethystine python scaled new heights when it hitched a ride on the Bombadier 400 aircraft.
But unlike Snakes on a Plane, the 2006 thriller, starring Samuel L Jackson as an FBI agent, there was no danger to anyone inside the aircraft.
It was not long into the flight early Thursday morning before a passenger saw the snake and raised the alarm.
There was nothing anyone could do to help the stricken python in the chamber just a short distance from Qantas's famous flying kangaroo logo.
Altitude was taking its toll as well as freezing temperatures and the high speed of the aircraft.


This snake hitched a ride on a QANTAS flight from Cairns to Port Moresby in PNG.
Passengers could only watch on as the animal's tail was whipped against the rear end of the plane, the impact creating a blood trail, part of which in the photo looks like a tear in the plane's fuselage. The python was dead on arrival when QF191 touched down at Port Moresby at 7.44am with 40 passengers and four crew on board. A crew member said that when the python's presence was first reported the initial reaction was "you gotta be kidding?''
The crew member said there was a lot of commotion on the ground after the plane landed in Port Moresby
"The python didn't quite make it out alive, especially with some flap extension for landing,'' he said.
Qantas yesterday said hitchhiking pythons were not an everyday occurrence.


"We have never heard of this happening before,'' a spokesperson said.
"The python must have taken refuge on the exterior of the aircraft at Cairns Airport overnight before take off.''
The python was handed over to quarantine officials in Port Moresby.
Herpetologist and James Cook University graduate David Williams divides his time time between the University of Melbourne's School of Medicine's Venom Research Unit and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Papua New Guinea in Boroko. He identified the unfortunate hitchhiker as an amethystine python.
"These occur in the Mt Whitfield area directly opposite Cairns airport and probably also in the mangroves that surround the airport,'' he said.
Amethystine pythons can grow to 8.5 metres in length and are Australia's largest snake.

[tenguy]

Originally Posted by 69magpie

Seriously, snakes on a plane.

Wow!

Gotta feel bad for that poor snake, talk about a wake call from hell.

[AZRIEL]

[aesopstails]

I adore "The Onion", your source for comedic half-truths and utter nonsense presented in the form of an actual newspaper/website.

Last month they declared N. Korea's Kim Jong Un as 2012's "Sexiest Man Alive". Funny stuff to begin with, but funnier still when legitimate news sources picked up the story without detecting a note of sarcasm!

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/27/world/...ion/index.html

(CNN) -- China, as one Twitter user wrote Tuesday, has been fooled by the "mysterious Western art of satire."

The merciless comedy website The Onion has declared North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the "sexiest man alive for 2012." And it appears China's People's Daily Online has taken the story seriously.

"I love this one," Onion editor Will Tracy told CNN. "It has a certain delightfulness to it."

The Chinese story reprinted satirical comments describing Kim's "air of power that masks an unmistakable cute, cuddly side," his "impeccable fashion sense, chic short hairstyle, and," the story says, "that famous smile."

A Chinese state-run site was fooled Tuesday by a satirical story that declared North Korea's Kim Jong Un the "sexiest man alive."

The story on People's Daily Online on Tuesday illustrates the mutual backscratching that China and North Korea exercise through their government-run media. The incident also shows foreign media outlets' difficulty in navigating The Onion's brand of satire.

The Chinese website had underscored its story by including its own 55-page photo gallery to accompany the text, which was published in both English and Chinese. But the pages and the images were no longer available Wednesday.
A woman responding to a call Wednesday to the office of the website said it was "impossible that the People's Daily will quote from any unreliable media -- we do verify our news and sources."

The woman, who declined to identify herself, noted that the item had been removed.

The People's Daily Online has a separate office from the print version of the Chinese Communist Party's main newspaper.

Tracy said he's not surprised when legitimate news sites fall for his high-level tomfoolery, but this was the first time The Onion had named a "sexiest man alive." "We knew it would get a response," he said "but we didn't expect it would get life from abroad."

A satirical post on The Onion congratulated the People's Daily for its coverage.

The site "has served as one of the Onion's Far East bureaus for quite some time, and I believe their reportage as of late has been uncommonly fine, as well as politically astute," said The Onion's Grant Jones in a e-mail statement.

"May our felicitous business association continue for centuries to come."
Earlier Tuesday, The Onion pointed readers to the Chinese website: "please visit our friends at the People's Daily in China, a proud Communist subsidiary of The Onion, Inc. Exemplary reportage, comrades."

Twitter users went wild over the editorial faux pas.
"It makes me cry from another room!" Tweeted Francesca Ulivi @fraubass.
"Not sure they know this was a joke," wrote @loweringthebar.
"Curse of the #Onion again," said Colin Freeman @colinfreeman99.

Yes. Again. If this scenario sounds familiar it's because The Onion is no stranger to fooling government-run news outlets.

In September, an Onion satire fooled Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency. Fars published an Onion story claiming that a Gallup poll found that rural white Americans preferred Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over President Barack Obama.

On the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo, netizens made their own teasing comments about People's Daily.

"Foolish foreigners, the party paper was born to be funny," wrote @sheldon-BaiBai.

"The world was fooled by the People's Daily, because no Chinese believes this paper," wrote @Hai_Dao_Wu_Bian.

The Onion never writes its stories with the intention of fooling government agencies, Tracy said. But "it's great when it happens. We hope it happens more often."

This prank, he said with obvious glee, may turn out to be the legendary Onion fake story that veterans will talk about for years to come. "We essentially just fooled the government of China."

[InTheMindsEye]

He is quite hot though!

[aesopstails]

Originally Posted by InTheMindsEye

He is quite hot though!

Do some fact-checking, man! N. Korea gets an average of 37 days of snowfall each year.

[InTheMindsEye]

Originally Posted by aesopstails

Do some fact-checking, man! N. Korea gets an average of 37 days of snowfall each year.

That's not 3 days per month though is it?!?! Sheesh. He's hot in August, cold in February! Go figure.....

[AZRIEL]

[tenguy]

So this explains a lot. (A lot of what, I don't know):

-- The issues director of the fundamentalist American Family Association told his radio audience in November that God's feelings will be hurt if America stops using fossil fuels for energy. "God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them," said Bryan Fischer, who described Americans' campaigns against fossil fuels as similar to the time when Fischer, at age 6, told a birthday-present donor that he didn't like his gift. "And it just crushed that person." [AFA "Focal Point," 11-29-2012, via Raw Story.com]

Chutzpah!

Mauricio Fierro gained instant fame in December in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as the reported victim of a car theft (captured on surveillance video) when he dashed into a pharmacy. He went to a police station to file a report, but encountered the pharmacy owner making his own report -- that Fierro was actually robbing him at the moment the car was taken. More surveillance video revealed that while Fierro was standing outside the pharmacy, wondering where his car was, a man ran by and stole the stolen cash. Fierro then immoderately complained to the police even more about Sao Paulo's crime rate and lack of security. Afterward, Fierro admitted to a local news website that in fact he had stolen the very car that he was reporting stolen. [New York Daily News, 12-13-2012]

The Continuing Crisis

-- Former undercover cop Mark Kennedy filed for damages in October against the London Metropolitan police, claiming post-traumatic stress syndrome based on the department's "negligence" in allowing him to have such a robust sex life on the job that he fell in love with a woman whose organization he had infiltrated. Kennedy's wife has filed for divorce and is also suing the department, and 10 other women (including three of Kennedy's former lovers) have also filed claims. [The Guardian, 11-25-2012]

Least Competent Parking Enforcers

(1) The week before Christmas, a Nottingham, England, officer wrote parking tickets to drivers of two ambulances that were taking too long to board wheelchair-using schoolchildren who had just sung carols for an hour downtown to raise money for the homeless shelter Emmanuel House. (Following an outpouring of complaints, the Nottingham City Council revoked the tickets.) (2) An ambulance on call, with lights and siren, pulled into the parking lot of Quicky's convenience store in New Orleans in November to treat a customer, but one employee nonetheless obeyed what he believed to be his employer's no-parking rule and applied an immobilizing "boot" to the ambulance. The man, Ahmed Sidi Aleywa, was later fired. A co-worker said Aleywa was an immigrant who had said he was not familiar with "ambulances." [Nottingham Post, 12-19-2012] [WWL-TV (New Orleans), 11-30-2012, 12-3-2012]

[tenguy]

Leading Economic Indicators

Another "Airline-Pricing" Model: The Jiangdu District kindergarten recognizes that providing a quality education requires supporting the child emotionally as well as helping develop reading and other skills, and toward that end, it now requires teachers to hug each pupil twice a day -- provided that the parent has paid the monthly "hugging fee" of the equivalent of about $12.80. An education agency investigation is under way, according to a December Shanghai Daily report, but one teacher defended the trial program as boosting a child's confidence and establishing a "good mood" for learning. [Shanghai Daily, 12-12-2012]

Ouch

Researchers writing in the December issue of the journal Urology reported a "five-fold increase" over 10 years in emergency room visits for accidents caused by pubic-hair "grooming." Unsurprisingly, 83 percent of all injuries appeared to be shaving accidents, but only 56 percent of the patients were women, according to a summary of the research on MedicalXPress.com. [MedicalXPress.com, 12-17-2012]

Least Competent Criminals

-- Demarco Thomas, 30, was arrested in Tucson, Ariz., in November, as a drug courier for what the Arizona Daily Star called a "local cartel," after Thomas himself had called police the day before. Thomas feared being whacked by the cartel because he had come up $20,000 short in the latest delivery. According to police, Thomas brought money in suitcases from North Carolina to his Tucson contact -- except for a little bit that he had somehow "misplaced." A police search of Thomas revealed almost exactly $20,000 on his person, and Thomas, about to be arrested, allegedly asked officers if they would please write a note to the cartel informing them that police had merely seized the $20,000 -- and not that Thomas had tried to steal it. They declined. [Arizona Daily Star, 12-4-2012]

-- Prosecutor's Delight:

Police in Guntersville, Ala., suspected that Tara Hampton had resumed dealing drugs, in violation of a first-offender's program that had kept her out of jail, and they knocked on her door to ask about some evidence they had come across. According to the police report, when Hampton opened the door for them, she was absentmindedly holding a bag of crack in her hand.

William Cook Jr., 27, was arrested after a manager at a Wendy's restaurant in Rome, Ga., complained that Cook was acting strange and disturbing customers, and when police asked for his ID, he provided bogus information. In a search, officers found a note in his pocket, reading, "How Bill Cook intends to rob the Wendy's on Martha Berry and get away with it," followed by lists labeled "Plan A" and "Plan B." [WAFF-TV (Huntsville, Ala.), 12-10-2012] [Rome News-Tribune, 12-12-2012]

[tenguy]

THIS HAS GOTO TO GET Y OUR ATTENTION:
LEAD STORY -- Watchers Watching Porn

Perspective: A leading "adult" search engine reported in December that, over the last seven years, just two of the most popular Internet pornography websites it analyzes have been viewed 93 billion separate times, which averages to about 13 views for every person on Earth. Given the average viewing time of 11 minutes per visit, the search engine (PornWatchers.com) calculated that men (and a few women, of course) have spent about 1.2 million years watching pornography on just those two sites. Noted the search engine in its press release, "Say goodbye" to calling online porn a "niche." "It's in every living room on this planet." [Inquisitr.com, 12-19-2012, citing PornWatchers.com/blog/, updated 1-3-2013]

THIS MAY EXPLAIN THE BESTIALITY BAN IN HERE.

-- "Washington State, Known for ...": When a man died of a perforated colon in 2005 in Enumclaw, Wash., while having sex with a horse (at what news reports suggested was a "bestiality farm"), the legislature passed the state's first anti-bestiality law, which was used in 2010 in another "farm" case, in Bellingham, 110 miles from Enumclaw. A British man had sex with several dogs on the property of Douglas Spink, who had allegedly arranged the trysts, and the man was convicted and deported, but Spink was not charged (though instead was re-imprisoned for an earlier crime). In November 2012, with Spink nearing release, prosecutors filed bestiality charges using evidence from 2010, involving "four stallions, seven large-breed male dogs" and "13 mice, each coated with a lubricant." According to the Bellingham Herald, Spink (acting as his own lawyer) denounced state officials and "the bigotry behind the (law)." [Bellingham Herald, 12-7-2012]

[AZRIEL]

nut1.jpg


















































































































































nut2.jpg

[smcaaphd]

[AZRIEL]

[snowleopard3200]

I heard about this one on the radio today...google the subject 'man shoots self with flare gun'

This guy has a flare for the painful.
A 23-year-old man in Lehigh Acres, Fla. had to be taken to the hospital after heaccidentally shot himself in the groin with a flare gun, WZVN reports.
--- --- forgot the gun was loaded when he shot it into the ground. It ricocheted up into his genitals, causing several burns and lacerations, according to the Lee County Sheriff's Office.
It's unclear when the incident took place, but WZN filed their report on Monday.
Perez can perhaps feel the pain of this man who, last Fourth of July, accidentally shot part of his genitals off with a firework.
And, Perez can likely take comfort in the knowledge that people make headlines for shooting themselves in the crotch fairly regularly. Just last month, a security guard shot his penis off and now likely will face charges for having an unregistered firearm.

[cijababe]

Is it just me, or is the surname of the Amish beard cutter (Mullet) hilarious?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21389094

[Rixer]

Sri Lanka phone-smuggling prisoner betrayed by ringing butt


A Sri Lankan prisoner who tried to hide his mobile phone during a search of his cell was caught out when guards heard ring tones from his rear-end, a hospital official said on Friday.
The 58-year-old convict had to be admitted to the national hospital in Colombo where doctors later retrieved the handset from his rectum.
“The man had concealed the phone inside his person,” the official said, asking not to be named.
“Unfortunately for him, the phone rang at the wrong time and guards knew he had a phone at the wrong end.”
He said the man was in hospital for two days but was discharged and sent back to prison Friday after the mobile phone was taken out.
The prisoner is serving a 10-year term for theft at the high security Welikada jail in the capital.

[AZRIEL]

[tenguy]

Another reason to visit the Emerald Isle:

LEAD STORY -- One for the Road
Cliche Come to Life: The Kerry, Ireland, county council voted in January to let some people drive drunk. The councillors reasoned that in the county's isolated regions, some seniors live alone and need the camaraderie of the pub, but fear a DUI arrest on the way home. The councillors thus empowered police to issue DUI permits to those targeted drivers. Besides, reasoned the councillors, the area is so sparsely populated that such drivers never encounter anyone else on the road at night. (The councillors' beneficence might also have been influenced, reported BBC News, by the fact that "several" of the five voting "yea" own pubs.) [BBC News, 1-22-2013]

Seems like justice well served, to me:

-- A man with admittedly limited English skills went to a courthouse in Springfield, Mass., in December to address a traffic ticket, but somehow wound up on a jury trying Donald Campbell on two counts of assault. Officials said the man simply got in the wrong line and followed jurors into a room while the real sixth juror had mistakenly gone to another room. The jury, including the accidental juror, found Campbell guilty, but he was awarded a new trial when the mistake was discovered. [The Republican (Springfield), 12-13-2012]

I swear I do not know even one of these fine folks:

The Redneck Chronicles (Tennessee Edition) (1) Timothy Crabtree, 45, of Rogersville, was arrested in October and charged with stabbing his son, Brandon, 21, in an argument over who would get the last beer in the house. (2) Tricia Moody, 26, was charged with DUI in Knoxville in January after a 10-minute police chase. The officer's report noted that Moody was still holding a cup of beer and apparently had not spilled any during the chase. (3) Jerry Poe, 62, was charged in a road-rage incident in Clinton on Black Friday after firing his handgun at a driver in front of him "to scare her into moving" faster, he said. (Poe said he had started at midnight at one Wal-Mart, waited in line unsuccessfully for five hours for a sale-priced stereo, and was on his way to another Wal-Mart. [Kingsport Times-News via KnoxNews.com (Knoxville), 10-16-2012] [Knoxville News Sentinel, 1-22-2013] [Knoxville News Sentinel, 11-26-2012]

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[tenguy]

The Aristocrats!

Gregory Bruni, 21, was arrested in North Fort Myers, Fla., in January after allegedly breaking into a residence at about 7 p.m. (first scurrying across the roof and jumping on one resident who came to investigate). According to police, Bruni was naked, ran maniacally around screaming in gibberish, failed to be intimidated when the female resident fired three "warning shots" with a handgun, fell to the floor after the third shot and began masturbating, and defecated near the front door and in a hallway. Police soon arrived and Tasered him. [Fort Myers News-Press via WTSP-TV (St. Petersburg), 1-25-2013]

Perspective (I'm surprised that the ratio was that high)

The issue of "background checks" for gun purchases occupies center stage in the current gun-regulation debate, even though, ironically, current federal law on such checks is apparently half-heartedly enforced. In the latest data available (from 2010), nearly 80,000 Americans were denied the right to purchase guns because their applications contained false information (even though applicants swear, under penalty of law, that all information is true). However, The New York Times reported in January that of the nearly 80,000 applicants, only 44 were prosecuted for lying, and federal officials said the practice, well-known among applicants with shaky backgrounds, is known as "lie and try." [New York Times, 1-14-2013]

People With Issues

Lawrence Adamczyk, 49, was arrested in Riverside, Ill., in January after reports that he was loitering at Riverside Brookfield High School during a swim meet. Police said he was quite talkative in custody, admitting that he was at the school to leer at boys (after being tipped off via "brainwave" messages from the singer Justin Bieber) and that moments before police arrived, he had been engaged in a solo sex act while ogling the swimmers. Amazingly, police found that Adamczyk was not on any sex offenders' registry even though he had been arrested (with at least one conviction) for similar incidents in 2005, 2009 and 2011, and was on parole at the time of the Riverside arrest. [WBBM-TV (Chicago), 1-13-2013]

Undignified Deaths

(1) After a 51-year-old man was found dead in Everett, Wash., in January with his heavier girlfriend (192 pounds) lying face down on top of him, sheriff's deputies attributed cause of death as his having been smothered by the 50-year-old woman's breasts. Neighbors said they had heard the man screaming for the woman to get off of him.

(2) In January, New York City police, arriving to check out an altercation and a death on the tracks at the East 125th Street subway station, found that the two incidents were unrelated. The man who was killed had actually fallen off of a train near the station while he was squatting between cars, defecating. [KIRO-TV (Seattle), 1-14-2013] [New York Times, 1-15-2013]

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[aesopstails]

assailant hurt.jpg

[tenguy]

Originally Posted by aesopstails

Attachment 2159549

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[smcaaphd]

[tenguy]

Better stay outta AZ (Arizona) Stumbles:

LEAD STORY -- Guilt That Lingers
An Arizona appeals court ruled in February that someone can be guilty of driving under the influence of marijuana even though its psychoactive ingredient has long left his system. Since tests of marijuana measure both active and inactive ingredients, and since the active substance vanishes quickly but the inactive one remains in the body for weeks, a marijuana consumer may test "positive" even though not the least bit impaired. (In fact, since neighboring Colorado recently legalized some marijuana possession, a Colorado driver motoring through Arizona weeks later could be guilty of DUI for a completely legal, harmless act, as could the 35,000 Arizona medical-marijuana users.) The appeals court majority reasoned that since the legislature did not distinguish the inactive ingredient from the active, neither would the court. [Associated Press via azfamily.com (Phoenix), 2-13-2013]

[albertjones6262]

These are hilarious. The federal goveqrnment could use that 340 ton paper-weight. lol Thank for the laugh.

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[cijababe]

Batman is alive and kicking - in Bradford, UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-21654930

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[smcaaphd]

[tenguy]

Originally Posted by smcaaphd

The Chinese version of the movie might be titled "There's Something About Zeng".

[tenguy]

Not only huge corporations outsource work overseas.

Making Outsourcing Work for You
A Verizon risk team, looking for data breaches on a client's computers, discovered that one company software developer was basically idle for many months, yet remained productive -- because he had outsourced his projects to a Chinese software developer who would do all the work and send it back. The employee earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, according to a January Los Angeles Times report, but paid the Chinese worker only about $50,000. The risk team eventually learned that sensitive company information was flowing to and from Chinese terminals, leading the company to suspect hackers, but that traffic was merely the U.S. employee (obviously, "ex-employee" now) sending and receiving his workload. The U.S. man showed up for work every day, but spent his time leisurely web-surfing. [Los Angeles Times via Tampa Bay Times, 1-20-2013]

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

-- One of Britain's most famous "madams" announced in January that she was coming out of retirement to set up a brothel exclusively catering to disabled people and the terminally ill. An ordinary brothel would be illegal in the town of Milton Keynes (45 miles from London), but Becky Adams insists that the government could not shut hers down without illegally discriminating against the disabled. [Milton Keynes Citizen, 1-11-2013]

Something for the scientists in here:

-- Scientists from Sweden's Lund University, reporting in a recent issue of Current Biology, explored the burning question of why dung beetles appear to be "dancing" on the tops of the dung balls they roll away. The answer is that the beetles need to roll their treasures away from the heap as quickly as possible (lest competitors swipe them) and that they can best maintain a straight line away by celestial navigation. To test the hypothesis, researchers actually outfitted some beetles with tiny visors to block their view of the sky, and those beetles mostly rolled their balls in irregular routes, whereas the sky-searching beetles moved in straight lines. [Los Angeles Times, 1-24-2013]

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[tenguy]

THE LORD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

The 14 guests at a jewelry party in Lake City, Fla., were initially incredulous that home-invader Derek Lee, 24, meant to rob them, but when they saw that he was serious (by putting his gun to the head of one woman), the hostess went into action. "In the name of Jesus," she shouted, "get out of my house now!" Then the guests chanted in unison, "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" over and over. Lee, frightened or bewildered, sprinted out the door empty-handed and was later arrested. [WJXT-TV (Jacksonville), 1-27-2013]

BALLER?

Paul Jamrozik, 63, was arrested in Upper Darby, Pa., in January and charged as the man who lured a 12-year-old boy into his home and, under the guise of pretend-podiatry, spritzed his feet with athlete's-foot spray and tickled them before performing an exam of his ears and nose with medical equipment. When the kid asked to leave, according to the police report, Jamrozik withheld his shoes until he promised to bring his friends by the next day to be examined. [Philadelphia Daily News, 1-18-2013]

[smcaaphd]

[DD58tx]

Never been so enthralled with chatter from a woman before! Had to love the girl in the background self awareness and reaction!!

[tenguy]

Interesting civic program:

-- Among the helpful civic classes the city government in Oakland, Calif., set up earlier this year for its residents was one on how to pick locks (supposedly to assist people who had accidentally locked themselves out of their homes), and lock-picking kits were even offered for sale after class. Some residents were aghast, as the city had seen burglaries increase by 40 percent in 2012. Asked one complainer, "What's next? The fundamentals of armed robbery?" (In February, Mayor Jean Quan apologized and canceled the class.) [San Jose Mercury News, 2-28-2012]

But not to be left out, the UK one-upped us:

-- Denials of disability allowances in the town of Basildon, England, near London, are handled at the Acorn House courthouse, on the fourth floor, where afflicted people who believe they were wrongly rejected for benefits must present their appeals. However, in November, zealous government safety wardens, concerned about fire-escape dangers, closed off the fourth floor to wheelchair-using people. Asked one woman, turned away in early February, "Why are they holding disability tribunals in a building disabled people aren't allowed in?" (In February, full access resumed.) [Yellow Advertiser Today (Basildon), 2-6-2013]

But we must give Canada an A for effort:

- Two teachers and three student teachers at a Windsor, Ontario, elementary school somehow thought it would be a neat prank on their eighth-graders to make them think their class trip would be to Florida's Disney World, and they created a video and PowerPoint presentation previewing the excursion. The kids' exhilaration lasted only a few days, when they were informed that plans had changed and that they would instead be visiting a local bowling alley. Furthermore, the teachers captured the students' shock on video, presumably to repeatedly re-enjoy their prank. (When the principal found out, she apologized, disciplined the teachers, and arranged a class trip to Niagara Falls.) [Windsor Star, 2-21-2013]

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