Israeli police are on the lookout for a thief with a super-sized chocolate craving. The robbers broke into a factory in the northern Israeli city of Haifa late Monday and walked away with nearly 100 tons of chocolate spread. [Link]
Please promise you won’t turn me in. I’ll make it worth your while…
Popularity: 14% [?]
New Year’s Eve in Seattle.
I’m still not sure how it happened. I can be an entertaining drunk. But last night I shot straight past the first four stages of inebriation (1. Brilliant Conversationalist 2. Life of the Party 3. Sex Goddess 4. Weepy Sentimentalist) and went straight to No. 5: Floor Decoration. I’m told I didn’t snore. Much.
But never mind. I woke up remarkably refreshed and reinvigorated and in plenty of time to engage in the communal channel surf that has become our shared experience of the end of one year and the beginning of the next. I learned a few things.
Look out, 2008. Here we come!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Korean scientists have created glow-in-the-dark cats. Something the world has been clamoring for and it’s about time science coughed up the goods. Or maybe a hairball. At last I’ll be able to get from my bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night without stepping on fluffy.
But you have to feel a little sorry for the cats. They rely on stealth to stalk their victims. Did science think about that when they popped off willy-nilly and said, “Glow-in-the-dark cats! Cool!”? Hmmm? Mice will see them coming from a mile away and dash for cover. Perhaps it’s part of some evil, dog-loving master plan to rid the world of kitties.
If so, they are doomed to fail: In a brilliant display of turnabout, rival Japanese scientists went and created mice that aren’t afraid of cats.
Popularity: 14% [?]
According to this article the urge to eat chocolate may be due to chocolate-loving bacteria living in our stomachs - rather than the innate, soul-melting fabulousness of that dark and sinful bean.
I have to admit, it makes me wonder if free will is an illusion. Is any thought, desire, repulsion the result of an intelligent brain or simply the random chemical regurgitation of some one-celled interloper? You may feel like an individual, but you are the borg.
However, it does provide a handy cop out. I now have an explanation for all my failings! Not guilty by reason of infestation.
But how about some bacteria that will be a little more helpful, hmm? Here are some suggestions:
1. Hairtearosi tenforticus. This newly bio-engineered organism lies dormant in your body until early spring when it becomes active and does your tax returns while you sleep.
2. Dishwashium vacuumiae. People who have colonies of this bacteria in their bloodstream feel an inexplicable obsession with cleaning products.
3. Gymnasia myachinbacillus. Only, theoretical at this point, this strain is hypothesized as the only possible explanation for people who enjoy working out.
4. Viagrio stiphtacoccus. Scientists are racing to isolate this powerful microorganism which could lead to a new cure for a flagging sex drive.
5. Blogella timewastium. Have you read this far in the post? It may be an indication that trillions of these bacteria have already infected your brain.
Do you know of any others?
Popularity: 7% [?]
Which way is she turning?
The answer depends on whether you are right brained or left brained according to this article in the Daily Telegraph.
Can you change her direction? For me she was resolutely spinning clockwise (right-brained). But after several minutes of concentration I got her turning the other way, though she’ll revert to clockwise if I don’t work at it. It’s easier if you focus on just one part - her foot or chin. Freaky!
Traits of right-brained people: uses feeling, “big picture” oriented, imagination rules, symbols and images, present and future, philosophy & religion, can “get it” (i.e. meaning), believes, appreciates, spatial perception, knows object function, fantasy based, presents possibilities, impetuous, risk taking
Left-brainers: uses logic, detail oriented, facts rule, words and language, present and past, math and science, can comprehend, knowing, acknowledges, order/pattern perception, knows object name, reality based, forms strategies, practical, safe
Popularity: 7% [?]
The blogosphere was atwitter last week by the list of 237 reasons people have sex. I was agog myself that my own reasons were so far down the list. Is it naive of me to be surprised that fun, pleasure and intimacy don’t rank so high for most people? You can see the full list here.
But what about the world of fiction? Why do characters in books have sex? In a rigorous scientific survey (an evening spent skimming through a stupendously dreadful Hollywood sleaze 1982 paperback found on the shelf of a hotel room) I can positively state that men have sex for two reasons:
1. She’s so fucking hot he can’t control himself
2. He’s so fucking mad he can’t control himself
Women, on the other hand, are more complex. Yet nowhere does love, lust or even mere pleasure figure into the equation:
1. She was drunk (as usual).
2. She wanted to show that cheating bastard two can play that game.
3. She wanted to stick it to the conniving bitch who got the movie role that should have been hers.
4. She dared him to make her. And he did. And didn’t stop when she changed her mind - the filthy rapist.
5. It was her wifely duty, even though she’d caught him in bed with her twin sister (and was forced her to raise the child that resulted as her own)
6. She wanted to cure him of being (gay/impotent/other)
7. She want to prove to this whole stinking town she could have any man she wanted. Even yours.
8. Even though she still had the abs and tits of a teenager, she knew men would turn away in disgust, now that she’d turned thirty.
9. What’s the point of having the opening of your fabulous artwork at a fabulous NYC art gallery if you can’t boink your ex in the broom closet?
10. There’s been no sex for seven or eight pages and the readers might start to notice the hackneyed prose and ludicrous plot.
I won’t name the book, except to reveal that about 800 pages of it revolve around the making of a movie called “Miami Toast.” Miami Fucking Toast? It did, however, make for a hilarious evening of dramatic readings (”he wore a purple gabardine shirt with orange sequined guns pointing at each other on the chest, skin-tight tan velveteen pants, $2000 snakeskin belt (stolen from a rival) and a white stetson” - how did we ever get through the 80s?)
Popularity: 9% [?]
Chastity is a form of pollution? Maybe.
One could argue that chastity pollutes the sexual environment by reducing the fraction of relatively safe partners in the dating pool.
Imagine a fictitious country where most women are monogamous and all men require two partners a year. That would mean that a very small pool of prostitutes would serve all the men. In time all the prostitutes would become infected with STDs and pass it to their customers who would pass it to their monogamous wives. Now imagine that each wife would take ONE additional partner per year. The market for prostitution would die and the chances of any particular pairing resulting in the the spread of AIDS would drastically drop.
These rather unconventional arguments and others are proposed in the book “More Sex is Safer Sex
We well-meaning people are so put upon when it comes to saving the world. We sacrifice for the greater good (reducing our carbon footprints, boycotting war-supporting businesses, saving the rain forests, flossing) with a grim (ok, perhaps smug) doggedness while our neighbors tool around obliviously behind the wheels of Hummers, sucking sun-grown lattes past puffy gums. And now, here’s yet another demand on my precious time! Sometimes it’s tough to do the right thing, but don’t you think it’s worth the effort to combat the spread of deadly disease?
Popularity: 12% [?]
1. Ah Japan um, Korea! How much did they spend on this?
2. I know it’s low to make fun of people’s names, but I’m short of time today and these people seem to have made easy targets of themselves: Gallery of unfortunate match-ups.
3. Man robs bank disguised as tree. Didn’t we see this one on Monty Python’s Flying Circus? (Bonus detail: The bank was on Elm Street)
4. I love this commercial. I don’t want to give it away by saying what it’s for.
5. PSA: A dire warning of the side effects of Reversa Skin Care products (Watch them all… ladies)
6 Barney sings Tupac. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Popularity: 7% [?]
As if women didn’t have enough things to feel insecure about. Now you can get cosmetic surgery for your g-spot. Be still, my heart.
Would you let this man near your girlybits with a bigass needle? According to this article in the SF Chronicle getting your G-spot pumped up with collagen injections is the latest enhancement for your sad, pathetic body. This is from a doctor (Dr. Spot!) who’s made a career of giving women designa vaginas “to enhance your genital image!”
Oh yeah. Strangers stop me on the street to comment on my unsightly labia. And don’t get me started on the cruel playground taunts I endured over the size of my g-spot. It’s affecting my self-esteem!
Hey, Doc, step away from the bits and no one gets hurt.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Back to the gutter today!
This study reports that when men look at pictures of couples having sex, they look first at the eyes or faces of the women before straying south while women’s eyes went straight for the goods. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. And here’s why.
Popularity: 13% [?]
