Reach Out And Touch Someone

Here's a candidate for craziest headline ever : Was woman raped on telephone?

A Tunisian family alleges their daughter was raped during a telephone conversation with a man ... a lawyer representing the family said "The intercourse did take place with all its details but verbally only."

Just in case anybody was wondering, two things should be kept in mind :

1. the telephone only touches people "emotionally" ; and
2. according to Merriam-Webster, one definition of rape is "an outrageous violation"

So now two questions desperately need answering :

1. Is this "rape" outrageous because it violates sanity, public expenditure and the belief that women are useless unless virginal? ; or
2. Is it outrageous because the parents violated their 20-year-old daughter by never teaching her how to hang up a telephone?

Maudite Police

At about 1:10 of this video you can watch the good citizens of Montréal enthusiastically trashing a police car. A lot of pundits wondered why people would do such a thing. Well, maybe they should spend more time chasing down stories like this one :

A Concordia University student found out Saturday Montreal police, if they so choose, can hit you with a $628 ticket for nothing more menacing than sitting on a ledge.

Montreal police Sgt. Ian Lafrenière said Brendan Jones was told "several times" that he was sitting "somewhere else than on a park bench" and in so doing was guilty of an infraction.

"I found this to be absurd, since there were no benches around and there were many other people sitting around the square," Jones said.

Let's hope the Habs win the Stanley Cup.
Again.

...5 ...4 ...Yeah, 3 Feels About Right

Today's dose of duh! features a list of food safety myths, the first of which is this classic :

The three-second rule ... if you drop food on the floor, pick it up within three seconds or so and it will be fine to eat.

A Clemson University study came to the same conclusion last year, back when it was still the five-second rule. Either the microbes are getting slower or the people are, which amounts to the same thing really.

Just Another Day At The Office

It was business as usual at the largest porn convention on the East Coast, with thousands of attendees at this weekend's Exxxotica in Miami Beach ... a loudest-orgasm competition ... a cowgirl engaged in a fierce battle with a mechanical bull ... And then there was Jesus ... plus a pile of 4,000 Bibles.

Top that Ratty. Or this. Or better yet, expense it.

A Dog's Life (Part VIII)

"... shocking we'd tell people with metallic testicles on their bumpers that this is a violation ... better things to spend time debating" ?

How about outlawing bestiality? In keeping with an earlier promise to "keep adding states as they come up," Florida's lawmakers finally got around to addressing certain behaviours that shall remain nameless but were, until April 2008, completely legal. A little convincing was required, however, to help bring them to their senses.

Before the vote, Leon County prosecutor Michael Bauer sent the senators a letter recounting his troubles prosecuting the 2006 case of a blind guy who had sex with his male yellow Lab "Lucky." The man explained "freely about his regular sexual acitivities with his dog and said he would take the dog for a walk prior to sex to 'prevent fecal impact.'"

Choose Not To Choose

** Apathy Party 2008 **

If you're tired of the same old same old in the political arena check out the Apathy Party. Unless you can't be bothered.
... whatever.

Grow A Pair ... And Some Hair

A retired schoolteacher claimed he was a victim of disability discrimination because he is bald.

Thankfully the judge ruled in favour of obviousness : baldness is "not an impairment."

... of course, baldness could be considered an impairment if the schoolteacher was, say, trying to do his best imitation of a Catholic clergyman by putting the pedophile moves on one of his students who then tells him he isn't good-looking enough, even with the prospect of winning a lawsuit worth millions of dollars 20 or 30 years down the road. Besides this exception, however, the judge's ruling has to be considered a blow for the sanity of hairy people everywhere.

The Big Question ... Answered

"The big question is : what sort of properties does a synthetic companion need to have so that you feel you want to engage in a relationship with it over an extended period of time?"

This week, engineers, psychologists and computer scientists begin a major project to develop the first robot personalities.

Because dealing with actual personalities is so ... blech!

Spaced Cadets

Ever have one of those days when you think people are getting stupider by the day? No .. ? Well then, today is your lucky day.

... two very basic evolutionary strategies in nature, competition and cooperation ... Just as with the laws of physics I see no reason why these evolutionary laws do not apply to the whole of the universe.

[Not too bad, you're saying to yourself ... and then BLAMMO!]

This logic is confirmed by the facts available to me involving extraterrestrial reality. Of course this is not a new idea but one that runs though religious texts from around the world.

What the religious texts seem to indicate is that there has been a longstanding attempt by less ethical predatory colonizing extraterrestrials to take over this planet that are being resisted and thwarted by more ethical cooperative extraterrestrial races.

Unfortunately ladies and gentlemen, the Spaced Cadets Tour '08 is far from over. Another, totally unrelated [?] space cadet must "rewrite the 12th chapter" of his book The Coming Human Aliens, because beings from outer space gave him new information when they picked him up outside of Stephensville, Texas, earlier this year. And Don Ray Walton isn't too worried about global warming, either.

In the next four years, humans will be offered salvation from representatives of 143,999 alien races, he said.

Don't forget to pack your own probing equipment, Donny.

Le Retour De La Gloire?

Go Habs!

See No Evil

In one of the funniest stories to come along in a while, Vienna's Roman Catholic Cathedral wasn't "ready for a barrage of angry messages" although "they knew it would be risky to exhibit a homoerotic version of Christ's Last Supper ..."

"I don't see any blasphemy here," he said, gesturing at a Crucifixion picture showing a soldier simultaneously beating Jesus and holding his genitals.

Last Man Standing

First came the vibrator. But now, gentlemen, it appears your days are truly numbered ... Artificial sperm could make you totally redundant !

Attention Treehuggers : Code Orange

According to the recently released Benchmark Analysis for Quantifying Urban Vulnerability to Terrorist Incidents, the City of Trees is at serious risk. "It surprised us too," said researcher Walter W. Piegorsch, a mathematics professor at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study.

Can you guess which landlocked metropolis of 200,000 people is in the top 10 among 132 urban centers, ranked by vulnerability based on a unique mathematical calculation?

A Dog's Life (Part VII)

Dumb : Worry about the psychological ills of canines

Really Dumb : Write aricle "Songs to Soothe the Panicked Pooch"

Fucking Dumb : Convince "Psychology Today" to print article

[Spring] Break With Reality

If anybody ever tells you the most effective sex education program is pronounced "abstinence-only," advise them to do their homework. This story would be a good place for them to start :

A recent survey found some Florida teens believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV ... a shot of Mountain Dew or smoking marijuana will prevent a person from getting pregnant ...