Darwin Award Nominee #5

David, 46, was sliding down an Italian ski slope one night, riding on padding that he had removed from the safety barriers at the bottom of the run. It did not occur to him that it might be dangerous to sled down the same slope he had stripped of protective padding.

Sauze d'Oulx is one of five villages which make up the "Milky Way" ski area in northern Italy. Hugely popular with British skiers, the resort is known for its party atmosphere. A ski resort spokesperson for Sauze d'Oulx said, "The men had all been drinking when they tore off the padding, and ironically..."

...careened straight into the bare barriers at the bottom of the piste (groomed slope). David died from head and chest injuries inflicted by the unpadded metal. Two of his friends survived with medical attention. A third Darwin Award candidate is still missing after he wandered away "bloodied and distressed."

Darwin Award Nominee #4

A 23 year old man with various body piercings decided to see what it would feel like to connect his workplace test equipment to his chest piercings. Several co-workers tried to convince him that it was a bad idea to connect himself to the electronic control tester. He ignored their pleas and proceeded to connect two alligator clips to his piercings. He hit the test button...

When the police and rescue personnel arrived, his co-workers were stiill trying to revive him with CPR and rescue breathing. They were not successful.

Darwin Award Nominee #3

It was a cold but sunny February afternoon. Lidia, a biology teacher from Sofia, was driving home from a memorial service, accompanied by her husband and a friend. Suddenly, the vehicle stopped. Bystanders saw all three occupants dash from the car to a nearby manhole, and start pouring down liquids and powders from various bottles and jars.

Apparently, Lidia had been doing chemistry experiments in her free time, and had some noxious chemicals left over. It is still not entirely clear what the chemicals were, but two of the bottles had labels: diethyl ether and methanol, both highly flammable substances. The former is also used as a sedative, so one explanation for their actions is that they felt dizzy from the ether vapors, and thought it was a good idea to pour them in the sewer.

As it turns out, a good idea it definitely was not. The cocktail of flammable substances in the enclosed space of the sewer caused an explosion so powerful that it launched the manhole cover into the air, decapitating the (briefly) surprised Lidia. Left without a head on her shoulders, she decided it was time to kick the bucket.

The other two people were not left unharmed, but were alive. They were taken to the hospital with burns on their faces. After several hours in the operating room, it appeared unlikely that they will regain their eyesight, but hopefully are able to speak well enough to tell their children that tossing random chemicals down the drain is not as wise as it might at first appear.

Darwin Award Nominee #2

Snowmobiles and alcohol are a dangerous mix. Then came the rabbit.

After a day spent partying and racing snowmobiles in the wilderness, a group of snowmobilers headed back to their cabin. Up popped a jackrabbit! The snowmobilers gave chase. Several collisions were narrowly averted, and all snowmobiles backed off... except one.

This snowmobiler kept his eye on the quarry and rapidly closed in. The rabbit darted aside to save itself. The snowmobiler closed in again. The rabbit ran toward the road, where there was less snow. Trying to ram his rabbit before it crossed the road, the man accelerated to Mach 1. But the rabbit had other ideas. It escaped into the culvert beneath the road.

Witnesses stated that the snowmobiler never braked. There was a metallic crunch as the accelerating vehicle rammed into the culvert, followed by a blast that shattered the snowmobile into a thousand bits.

This brand of snowmobile had a fuel tank mounted in front. The culvert admitted the tip of the snowmobile, then cut into the cowling, spilling fuel over the hot engine. The body of the snowmobiler was blown twenty feet back into the field.

The rabbit's whereabouts was unknown.

Darwin Award Nominee #1

Today we begin a short series on Darwin Award nominees.

Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

(2 February 2008, New York) A 50-year-old man was bird hunting in Upstate New York with his buddies and his faithful canine companion. They stopped for a smoke, and he noticed that his dog had found a bone. It was a deer leg! The man tried to take the bone away from the dog. Like any right thinking dog, the animal would not relinquish its treasure, and stayed just out of reach.

Frustrated with this blatant show of disobedience, the man grabbed his loaded shotgun by the muzzle and began wielding it like a club. Each time he swung it, the dog dodged. Suddenly the "club" struck the ground and fired, shooting the man in the abdomen. His friends called 911 and he was airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he died from his injuries.

He did remain conscious long enough to confirm this account to police; otherwise, his poor friends might now be under suspicion of murder.

At least he didn't hit the dog!

Phobias

This is entertaining list of phobias. Some I've heard of (or even seem to suffer from), but others are just plain ridiculous!

www.phobialist.com


Some of the more ridiculous ones:

Apeirophobia - Fear of infinity

Aulophobia - Fear of flutes

Barophobia - Fear of gravity

Consecotaleophobia - Fear of chopsticks

Dextrophobia - Fear of objects at the right side of the body

Dishabiliophobia - Fear of undressing in front of someone

Geniophobia - Fear of chins

Genophobia - Fear of sex
Why even bother with living?

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - Fear of long words

Ithyphallophobia - Fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis
This would be a real problem for the males of the world.

Oneirogmophobia - Fear of wet dreams
This would be a real problem for someone also suffering from Genophobia.

Papaphobia - Fear of the Pope
This is me, not going there...

Cheesetosser!!

This just about sums me up today.

Antigua gambling update

You may recall that a couple months ago I excitedly reported on the results of the Antigua WTO action against the United States for banning Internet Gambling. The island nation of Antigua and Barbuda won $21 Million in annual concessions from the US, and surprise surprise, the US has yet to begin making good on that ruling.

Antigua Ready To Move Forward With Piracy Over Internet Gambling

Antigua keeps receiving favorable rulings over an Internet gambling issue with the United States. The only problem is the U.S. is ignoring the rulings and refusing to pay Antigua.

Call it a ploy. Call it a negotiating tactic. Whatever you want to call it, the reality is that Antigua is now ready to legalize piracy in order to show the United States they mean business.

"Antigua would be breaking the law if it did that," said USTR spokesman, Sean Spicer. The problem is that the U.S. does not take these threats from Antigua seriously, something the Motion Picture Association of America is worried about.

The association is concerned that copying could be devastating. They are also worried that other countries will follow the lead of Antigua if the U.S. continues their unilateral views in their foreign trade policy.

Antigua simply wants the U.S. to come up with a fair solution to the ongoing battle over the Internet gambling issue. "We have been waiting for three months already and there's been nothing. If the U.S. doesn't come in with something by the end of March, my suggestion to the Antiguan government will be to forge ahead and impose IP sanctions," said Mark Mendel, representing Antigua.

Only time will tell whether Antigua's threats are real. Knowing the U.S. and the current administration that is governing the country, chances are they will not respond to any of Antigua's threats until it is too late.

Easter Bunny

I've always wondered what the heck bunny rabbits and a basket of eggs had to do with Easter. This explanation seems as good as any.

---

Celebrating the Seasons
Lore and Rituals by Selena Fox


Spring Equinox

Spring Equinox, also known as Ostara, occurs in the middle of March. It marks the beginning of Spring and the time when days and nights are of equal length. The Goddess manifests as Ostara or Eostre with her basket of eggs. She is accompanied by the Hare or Rabbit, a manifestation of the God. Green has been sacred to this Sabbat since ancient times, because it represents the greening of the land with vegetation. This is a festival of new growth.

Prepare egg dishes and share them with friends. Organize egg games, such as egg hunts. Decorate your home with spring flowers and sprouting greens. Wear green clothing as an affirmation of new growth within yourself and Nature. Bless any seeds you plan to plant in your garden. Begin a new project. Make a growth charm out of a hard-boiled egg -- decorate it with symbols, write on it the quality you would like to manifest more fully within yourself, energize it, and then eat it.

Thriller kitty

Peep show

3am phone call

New Mariners ads for 2008

In my opinion, not as strong as previous years, but still pretty entertaining.

Tim Gunn Network

What would it be like if Tim Gunn had his own television network?

SNL Parody - Democratic Debate

Project Runway winner - Christian - SNL Parody

What if you held an election, and nobody came?

It's happened. And surprise, surprise, it's in that bastion of election oddities, Florida.

TAMARAC, Fla. -- Every vote counts. But what happens when there are no votes at all? That's the situation city officials in Tamarac are facing. No voters showed up Wednesday night to cast a ballot in an annexation referendum for an unincorporated Broward County community.

There are 68 registered voters in the 200-person Prospect Bend neighborhood. Tamarac officials have proposed annexing the neighborhood.

Details were mailed to registered voters. If just one voter had shown up, that one vote would have decided the neighborhood's fate.

The cost of keeping a polling site open for 12 hours with no voters: $2,500.

City officials could take another approach to annexing the area. One option is a mail-in ballot election.

How lazy have we gotten?

Pancakes in a can.

Like it's SOOOOO difficult to take your Krustez or some such pre-mixed pancake batter, add water, and stir. The most time consuming part about making pancakes is getting the griddle or frying pan hot enough to cook the pancake properly.

I weep for our future...

SAN FRANCISCO — You want pancakes, but the idea of adding water to powder and stirring it around just seems like too much effort. Enter Batter Blaster, the pancake you just point and spray.

Gastronomic genius? Or sign of the apocalypse?

It all depends on how you feel about really fast food.

The contents are pressurized and the can has a nozzle similar to a whipped-cream can, which can unleash artistic aspirations in the way of animal, geometric and letter-shaped pancakes.

Preparation: Shake the can firmly before spraying.

Clean up: Rinse the nozzle under running water after using.

The product, which is organic, comes more than a century after the launch of the first convenience pancake product, a powdered mix that eventually would be called Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix.

And Batter Blaster begs comparison to other ultra-convenience foods, such as Easy Cheese, and Reddi-Wip, the ubiquitous canned whipped cream.

Some flip for the pray-and-bake breakfasts.

"They're fantastic," says Keith Bussell, a Los Angeles software developer who picked up a can of Batter Blaster on a lark and was won over by the ease of making just one or two pancakes sans stirring. "It's not an approximation of pancakes. They're really good pancakes," he said.

Others don't.

"That is just wrong on SO MANY LEVELS!" Oakland accountant Beth Terry wrote in her blog review of the Batter Blaster.

In a phone interview, Terry said her big issue with the product, which she has no plans to try, is that it comes in a can, which she said takes an energy and resource toll even though it is recyclable. "It's not even necessarily about slow food," she said. "Pancakes are not slow."

Steck says the idea is to provide convenience "but it's also about being with a group, being with family. It's not the end of the world. It's just a better world, I think."

A single can, which makes more than two dozen 4-inch pancakes, sells for about $6.

The product is the brainchild of Sean O'Connor, a former restaurateur who was looking for a brisker breakfast and realized it wouldn't be that hard to put pancake ingredients in a can.

He was right. The tough part turned out to be squeezing cash out of investors, many of whom found the idea too out-there.

Hookers aren't trustworthy? I'm shocked!

Somebody's a few fries short of a Happy Meal...

Man reports "theft by escort" to police

A Seattle man who hired an escort to "have fun" told police that she stole $170 from him after she went to her car to fetch some condoms.

The man, who is in his 50s and lives on Whitman Avenue North near Lake Union, had called the escort after spotting an advertisement in the Feb. 21 edition of The Stranger, a police report filed Thursday said.

The woman arrived at his apartment late last month for the rendezvous. He agreed to pay her $150 to "have fun" and $20 to cover her gas.

"At some point into the fun," the woman asked the man whether he had condoms, according to the report.

Upon hearing that he did not, she said she would get some from her car.

As the man waited for her to return, he looked out his window and realized the escort was driving away in a silver car.

Since that night, he has called her "numerous times" to get his money back. "But she has not answered or returned his calls," the report said.

The police officer who took the report told the man it is against the law in Seattle and the state of Washington to pay someone for sex.

But the man wanted to file a police report in case the woman "was doing this to more of her customers."

This is why we love Tim Gunn...

Now that Project Runway Season 4 is behind us, Tim Gunn can focus on his other little show, Tim Gunn's Guide to Style. It doesn't interest me at all, even though I'm into most things 'Reality TV', but this article amused me.

Taken from an interview in the Chicago Tribune:

Besides the nature of the series, he says that the production of the show was also problematic. “There’s nothing about it [Runway] that’s even remotely contrived. ‘Guide to Style’ was more what I think it would be like to do scripted television, but we didn’t have a script,” he said. The fakeness so irritated him that one day, when the director kept insisting upon reshoots, Tim freaked out. Here’s the hysterical story about his “diva moment”:

“So we have a new director, and it’s Episode 6. This new director calls out from the production room, ‘Um, could we do that again and see a little less of the book [Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style, which Tim gave to contestants at the end of the show]?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ We did it again. He says, ‘No, I’m still seeing too much of the book.’ I said, ‘Whats your issue with the book?’ And he said, ‘It just feels like a little too much self-promotion.’

I paused, and then I said, ‘Self-promotion? This show is based on this book.’ He said, ‘Well, I just want to see a little less of it.’ So we do it again, and he said, ‘No, I’m still seeing too much of the book.’ So I said, ‘I can take care of that.’

I take the book, I walk through the set that is my office, I walk into the dressing room, where there is a window, and I throw the book out the window. I come back to my place on the set, and I say, ‘You don’t have to worry about seeing the book again.’

The crew and everyone is slackjawed. So then I say, because I’m on a roll at this point, ‘Oh my gosh, I see more of those dreadful books on the bookshelf!’ So I go over, I gather all the books up, I walk through the set, through the dressing room and throw all of them out the window. Then I return to my place on the set. So that’s my one diva moment [laughs].”

Just think if there were chocolate at the finish line...

Women dash for cash in stiletto heels

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Like a herd of antelope, jockeying and shoving for position, 150 young women raced down Amsterdam's most famed fashion street in stiletto heels Thursday, racing for a $15,000 prize.

The race on the P.C. Hooft street called the "Stiletto Run" is only three years old but has quickly grown in popularity and spawned imitation races in Germany, Sweden, Poland and Russia.

The race's motto is "Shopping is a Sport" and friendly competition is encouraged - though not always observed.

"At the start there was a lot of pushing, you really get elbowed over," said Fauve Stukje, 18, who came with a small entourage and a big pink sign - but failed to win, show or place.

She said she slightly regretted her choice of shoes, which were nearly 4 inches high - a little higher than the 3 1/2 inch minimum.

Tamara Ruben, 25, from the town of Veenendaal, claimed first prize in the 380-yard race, running so smoothly you might think she was wearing sneakers.

Asked how she would spend the money, she said: "Anything but high heels."

RuPaul's Jack in the Box Commercial

Vote For Pedro!

I didn't like the movie, but this scene did make me laugh.

Saturday Night Live - Shmits Gay

I about peed my pants laughing the first time I saw this, back in college.

Anna Nicole Smurfette

Conservative banks should be more careful...

...about where their advertising ends up.

Deja Vu is one of our local strip clubs.