Sunday linkfest

After a slow week, I figured I'd throw together some links.

1. The media mocked Bush, and an pro-Sadr Iraqi journalist threw shoes at him, but the troops he sent to Iraq gave him a tremendous welcome. It's got to be heard to be believed. (via HotAir)

2. Ronald Radosh on Bush and the Jews.

3. From November, but still timely: Don Feder on the Jewish vote.

4. Almost as old but not quite: Mark Steyn on the murders at Chabad in Mumbai.

5. Coming soon to the Mets' bullpen: J.J. Putz. Next headline: "Some Putz blows the lead." Bonus: New York Times uses the P-word, the clinical term, in its article.

6. Gallows humor.

7. Mocking Time magazine may be easy, but it's still enjoyable.

8. This semi-earnest discussion of the grammar to be used when mixing a certain bad word with Gov. Blagojevich's name is quite amusing.

9. Invest in skateboards?

10. Well, at least Obama will receive excellent advice from his new science advisor. Just tell the Messiah not to invest with him. (via HotAir)

Click here to read more . . .

Reboot and roll the dice

If you call tech support with a computer problem, what's the first thing they tell you to do? Reboot it, right? Have you ever wondered why?

Some people say that the Tier 1 techs are given scripts, and they're required to run through the scripts with you over the phone. The script starts with "Make the customer reboot the computer. While that's happening, you can finish your game of Minesweeper."

But I'm not so sure this is actually what happens. Because I've just located the device by which these techs probably come up with their solutions for you: PC Dice. They can't be less useful than simply reading the script.

On an entirely unrelated note (and speaking of stream of consciousness): I couldn't let this article slip by: "Washington prisons settle lost penis case." (via protein wisdom)

By the time a doctor at Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen found Manning had necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating bacteria, and he was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, the bacteria had spread to his pelvic area.

Surgeons had to remove several pounds of flesh, including his penis and a testicle, to save his life, DeLue said. A replacement penis was made with skin from Manning's thigh.

One of the pw commenters had this take: "Is that a thigh in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" "No, it's a thigh."

All I can say is it's too bad body parts can't be rebooted.

Click here to read more . . .

Frontiers of plastic surgery

Here's my pedantic musing of the day: How many times do you have to write about the same subject before you have to stop referring to it as a "frontier"? Four? Six? One and a half? I ask because plastic surgery of the genitalia, female division, is a booming industry, while keen observers will note that the automakers insist on flying to Washington on their private jets to demand a taxpayer bailout.

In any event, the latest on the subject (and I don't mean the auto bailout) comes from Time (via HotAir). Time's article, of course, doesn't play the plastic surgery story completely straight; it's too easy a subject for joking, as I can personally attest.

On the youth sex-education website Scarleteen.com, dozens of teenage girls can be found commiserating about their labia. "i REALLY h8 mine! They hang really REALLY low and r SO long!" reads one comment. Meanwhile, on MakeMeHeal.com, a consumer site that sells special bras and other gear for women recovering from plastic surgery, women of all ages submit photos of their nether regions and ask for feedback on whether they should get nipped and tucked down there. Welcome to the strange new world of female genital cosmetic surgery, where body insecurity issues are fueling a small but growing Western market for such procedures as labiaplasty, clitoral un-hooding, G-spot augmentation and hymen reconstruction, a.k.a. "revirginization."

Although I personally wouldn't participate in a protest -- even if they agreed not to make me wear the costume -- I can understand what motivates these people:

Appalled at the popularity of so-called designer vaginas, a grass-roots organization called the New View Campaign staged its first-ever protest on Monday outside New York City's Manhattan Center for Vaginal Surgery. Two dozen women — ranging in age from teenagers to, ahem, sexagenarians — handed out index cards and held up orange poster boards with the message "No Two Alike," while two members of the group donned giant cloth vulva costumes.

This whole subject is really sad for what it says about our culture, as I've remarked before. But at least Time does stop to acknowledge that it's also a troubling issue for the women's mental health.

And the article closes with what I'd say is pretty good advice. To paraphrase: If you're thinking of this surgery because your boyfriend made a negative remark about your anatomy, you might think about surgically removing the boyfriend.

Previous entries in this vein are collected here.

Click here to read more . . .

Yikes!

Got this from Dave Barry's Blog, where he links it with the warning: "Men: Do not click here."

But, you know, it's kind of silly, isn't it, to tell people NOT to click when you fully expect them to click out of sheer curiosity? Like all those "Dude" headlines at HotAir, when you figure there's about a 1 in 4 chance of confronting something truly awful at the link. But I click, anyway. Naturally.

Which is all a long way of saying that I'm just going to give you the ugly news up front. This story out of Australia sounds really grisly:

A MAN says he could have died after an operation left him bleeding heavily and turned his penis black.

Michael Eglington, 53, went to Royal Darwin Hospital last Tuesday to have a wart removed from the base of his penis, The Northern Territory News reports.

He said he collapsed from blood loss as he rushed back to the hospital less than an hour after being discharged.

Dude. Want more?

"Why did they let me go?" he said. "I could have passed out while I was driving."

The internal bleeding caused his penis and testicles to turn black - and his testicles swelled to more than three times their normal size.

The Northern Territory News reports it has seen photographs to prove it.

NTN has seen photos? And all we get at the link is a photo of the victim of this incident posing as if for a publicity shoot? Aren't we entitled to see the damage in its full glory?

Now, in case you're wondering, as I was, what this man could possibly have been thinking by seeking an operation on that particular appendage, let me assure you he wasn't tricked into the surgery by spam email promising testicles three times their normal size.

According to this NTN article, he was having an operation "to have a wart removed from the base of his penis."

Exit question: What kind of loss of function must this wart have caused to justify his having an operation on "the base of his penis"? Because no man in his right mind would allow a doctor anywhere near there. We'd rather try to convince the doctor we don't even have one.

Click here to read more . . .

Tuesday night mini-linkfest

A short mini-linkfest tonight.

1. Headline of the day: "Fake penis under attack for staying limp." (via BOTWT)

2. Quotation of the day from the same link: "It's easy to think that it's pretty strange to approve prosthetics that can't get erect, because that is after all what penises do - get erections."

3. How to hide your booze at the stadium.

4. Speaking of booze, here's a beer that uses gene technology and might extend your life.

5. And on the subject of inventions, here's a device for the kid in all of us: a gizmo that makes and throws snowballs.

Click here to read more . . .

Surplusage

Artscroll is the Microsoft of Orthodox Jewish publishing. People use it because it's everywhere, not because it's particularly good.

When I say it's not particularly good, I mean that it doesn't really translate the text as much as it spoon-feeds the reader its preferred interpretation. Sometimes I'll be reading it -- even modern Orthodox shuls have succumbed to the monopoly -- and I'll say to myself, "That can't possibly be what the Hebrew means," and I'll turn to the Hebrew and think, "How in the world did they get that from it?"

The most extreme example is with shir ha-shirim, the Song of Songs. This book is a love poem, and the rabbis decided eons ago that it was really meant as the expression of love not between a man and a woman but between God and the Jewish people. Fine, I guess it has to be that way, or else it would not have been made part of the tanakh. But Artscroll goes a step further. Not only does it inform its readers that this is the true meaning of the book but it refuses to translate the text. In place of a translation, it provides what it calls an "allegorical" reading attributed to Rashi, the great commentator who lived in France in the 11th century and early 12th. The allegorical reading is based on the same idea that the text refers to God's love for the Jewish people. But it drifts into bizarroworld in a few places, like when it "interprets" the line "your breasts are like twin fawns" to be referring to Moses and Aaron. Michael Wex, in his book "Born to Kvetch," has a little aside about young yeshiva boys using "Moses and Aaron" as a euphemism for breasts. Artscroll's insistence on perpetuating this as the only English version it provides is pretty silly.

But that's not what led me to write this piece about Artscroll.

Yesterday, at the end of the Torah reading, God tells Abraham to have all his men circumcised and to circumcise newborn males at eight days. The Hebrew text says "b'sar orlato," which means "the flesh of his foreskin." After initially translating it that way, Artscroll switches abruptly and begins to translate it as "the flesh of his surplusage."

His surplusage? I thought only lawyers used that word. ("We must construe the statute to avoid surplusage.")

So when an uncircumcised man goes to the doctor, does the doctor ever tell him, "You need to keep your surplusage clean"?

And more seriously, when Moses deflects God's order that he speak to Pharaoh by saying, "va-ani aral s'fatayim" (I have uncircumcised lips), is he really saying, "I have extra lips"? No, he's saying "uncircumcised lips." This forces us to confront what the Torah's text could possibly mean by "uncircumcised lips." There are roughly a gazillion pages written on the subject, with all the great commentators weighing in. So why can't Artscroll -- which translates it as "sealed lips" -- simply give us the actual meaning of the text and refer us to the commentary in the notes below? Why does Artscroll think it has to spoon-feed us so that we can't possibly get the "wrong" idea by taking the text literally? And is Artscroll really so prudish that it runs from the f-word "foreskin" as soon as it possibly can? I've been to a lot of brises in my life, and I have never once heard the mohel speak of the boy's "surplusage."

The Artscroll siddur (prayerbook) is another story entirely, but I can't end this screed without citing to the most famous Artscroll publication of them all: the Artscroll Shakespeare. (Warning: it's probably funny only if you've used the Artscroll siddur, but then it's hilarious.)

Click here to read more . . .

Visitor of the day -- 10/27

Yeah, dude, the trick is to substitute the cucumber for it.

Click here to read more . . .

Phallacious reasoning

I thought the whole McCain campaign was supposed to be infused with coded racial messages, but it turns out it's infused with coded sexual messages.

This column by Paul Waldman probably takes the stupidity prize in a campaign already buried in stupid writing. Don't read it if you can't bear to see the word "penis" twice in the fourth paragraph. Don't read it if your tolerance for stupidity is low. Otherwise, read it and weep.

(via HotAir)

Click here to read more . . .

Fourth of July linkfest

For the Fourth of July, instead of re-posting old July 4 posts, I'm going to bring you a linkfest. OK, I'll re-post one old post, too, but here's the linkfest.

1. While we're appreciating our independence and our freedom, some of our fellow Americans are not. Two years ago, I wrote about one such individual. And this week, a peculiarly repellent column out of the City of Brudderly Lub by a dude named Chris Satullo, who wants to cancel the celebration because "we have sinned." (via Stop the ACLU, via Ace) You already know the rest. No reason to read the column.

2. From last week: At the Seattle Mariners' ballpark, love is dead. (via Baseball Crank)

3. Mars, Saturn, and Regulus are converging in the evening sky.

4. "Police suspect giraffe in circus breakout."

5. Drink to Obama's victory? The tee-shirt.

6. Speaking of Obama, Jennifer Rubin explains his problem with Jewish voters in a single word, er, number: 1973.

7. If you're a white dude in England, whatever you do, don't call a white security guard "Honky!" (via HotAir)

8. Finally: A definition of torture.

9. It's hard to believe, but Maryland is only the 19th most corrupt state in the union. Should be higher.

10. David Wissing says you are what you Google. Anyone who's read my "Visitor of the day" series would have to agree.

11. New York dude moves to Atlanta and finds that "New York style" pizza in the South exemplifies major suckitude, so he returns to New York to "reverse engineer" real New York pizza. (via Fark)

12. Last but not least, for the woman concerned about "pelvic fitness," your own spa. (via HotAir) In case you don't understand, the New York Times article explains: "And now comes the first medi spa in Manhattan wholly dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area."

Click here to read more . . .

Visitor of the day -- 7/1

Doing the jobs Americans won't do? Nah, can't possibly be.

Mild content warning, so it's going in the extended entry. If you go there, don't forget to click to, er, enlarge. The image, that is.






(In case you're wondering, shacharit is what the morning prayers are called. And there is undoubtedly an answer, as there is to virtually any question.)

Click here to read more . . .

More dangers of externomingent acts

I really didn't think I'd be writing about the dangers of externomingent acts again so soon after the story about the unfortunate dog.

But I am. This tip, if you'll pardon the expression, originally came from HotAir headlines, but the article linked there is not as good as the one at Fark, so I'm going with the latter. Nevertheless, I'd advise you to read the comments at HotAir after you learn what the story is about.

If you ever visit Australia, keep this in mind. For him, it's a story he can tell his children, assuming he's still able to have them:

A ROADSIDE toilet stop ended in pain, embarrassment and almost death for a tourist when a highly venomous snake bit the end of his penis.

The deadly brown snake slithered between his legs and lunged at his manhood as he crouched on a roadside near Laura, 300km northwest of Cairns, about a month ago.

Details of the incident only came to light yesterday after they were confirmed by a paramedic, cairns.com.au reports today.

"It certainly had a swipe at him," an ambulance spokesman said yesterday.

"But it didn’t envenomate him.

"As it came through it must have got a bit of a shock."

The snake beat a hasty retreat, leaving its victim with a scratch, vomiting and abdomen pain.

It got a bit of a shock? Maybe the guy got a bit of a shock, but the snake? The only way it would have had a bit of a shock is if the man's penis had been electrified, which somehow I doubt it was, unless he was making the usual mistake of urinating on an electrical power generator at the same time the snake attacked.

Fortunately for the guy, the ambulance spokesman showed some profound guy-like sensitivity to his predicament:

The ambulance spokesman described him as "lucky", given his near encounter with one of Australia’s most poisonous snakes.

"I think he was a bit shocked and embarrassed," he said.

I'll bet he was lucky. Every day, I bemoan my misfortune in not being bit in the choyl ha-moyed by a poisonous snake.

Click here to read more . . .

Sunday evening linkfest

Passover has (finally) ended, and now, once again, it's time for a linkfest of links that have been forming plaque on the walls of my intertubes for the past two weeks or so. Some of them are seriously OLD, but I want you to have them, anyway. Please stay with me till the end, because way at the bottom of this post, I have a couple of future classics from the Sunday New York Times that are almost worth the price of the paper.

1. In the past couple of weeks, the biggest issue in politics, in case you're a Japanese World War II fighter who's been holed up in the Pacific until yesterday, has been whether Obama flipped the bird at Hillary while speaking to his supporters following the final debate in Pennsylvania. The Hillarosphere demands to know. And Baseball Crank has another photo that may provide circumstantial evidence.

2. The Democrats' Nightmare Scenario (via Instapundit)

3. More popcorn, please!

4. McCain goes to NOLA, and an African-American participant at a town-hall meeting says this: "I want to inform you that everybody in the camp here is not a Republican." Does he mean (a) literally no one is a Republican, or (b) colloquially, not everyone is a Republican? Who cares, anyway, besides anal-retentive grammar wackos like me?

5. As Warner Wolf might have said, if you studied math in school since about 1961 . . . YOU LOST! On a related topic, Hillary Clinton does some math trolling for delegates and votes from Michigan.

6. Gov. O'Malley calls a special session of the legislature to pass a law declaring the official state dessert of Maryland. (Only kidding about the special session. Beats the hell out of raising our taxes, though.)

7. The man-cave: "Like most stories that end up with a man mowing his friend's lawn in a dress, it started out innocently enough." (via Fark, of course)

8. Sometimes it pays to test your personal machinery before reporting its theft by voodoo to police. As the police chief himself put it: "'I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke,' Oleko said.
'But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, "How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it",' he said."

9. Public Service Announcement: Be careful when eating in Canadian restaurants.

10. "Le Petit Singly is a farm that specializes in making cheese from women's breast milk." (via Ace)

11. This one's so old, it's already been overtaken by events. You remember the McLean school that banned tag in the schoolyard? Well, tag's back, but not before a week of "reorientation lessons on playground safety." I swear I'm not making that term up.

12. Patch (for women) aims to make you (not you, you) feel sexy. (via Ace)

13. Rick Monday saves the flag. In 1976. But now, there's a video.

14. American expat in Paris whines about the falling dollar. My heart bleeds.

15. False advertising from Moron Pundit: a very non-moronic defense of the tax deduction for child dependents.

16. Doubleplusundead on more misery with McCain. For me, if you want to know why McCain hasn't sealed the deal with conservatives -- I'm going to vote for him, anyway -- read George Will's column this morning. Two words: campaign finance.

17. The Children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt by a Pharaoh who took great pleasure in persecuting gays, who were brutally forced to arrange flowers for the Egyptians. Hence, the orange on the seder plate. Funny, I had always heard that it was supposed to represent Pharaoh's fear of the vagina.

18. And finally, the moment you've been waiting for -- the two classics from today's New York Times: (a) In the travel section: "In 2007, nude recreation represented a $440 million industry — up from $400 million in 2001 and $200 million in 1992." (b) In Sunday Styles: A family adjusts to the father's sex change -- "Through Sickness, Health and Sex Change."

Click here to read more . . .

Spammers' delight

Every once in a while, it's amusing to check your spam filter to see what you're missing. And by "your" I mean "mine," of course.

While a lot of the spam has to do with Rolexes and cheap prescription drugs, an increasing amount offers male enhancement products, usually spelled in funny ways in an unsuccessful effort to elude those same spam filters (\/1@ g-r/\, for example).

At my office, our filtering software sends us an email every morning that lists the blocked spam by sender and subject line, just in case something was blocked that wasn't supposed to be. If there was a false positive, we can click a link to move the mail to our in box and allow the sender's address in the future. (I once found a message from my wife in the list. Never figured out how that happened.)

I've been looking at the subject lines for the past two weeks or so, and for some reason, very few of the enhancement emails fall into the category of deliberate misspellings of product names. I've noticed that there are several other approaches these spammers use in their subject lines.

1. The simple and direct approach.

* Enlarge
* Girls like big
* Size is very important
* Your measurement calls for improvement
* 9 massive inches in weeks

2. The slightly, but only slightly, elliptical approach.

* Don't be looser lengthenn your banana [that's how it was spelled]
* Don't satisfy your wife. Here is the solution
* Increasement of your baby-maker length is not a dream [increasement?]
* Gain valuable growth on your package [not malignant growth, I'd hope]

3. The polygamous approach.

* Enlarge your baby-maker and you will have sex with any wife you want

4. The New Age approach.

* Define your masculine identity

5. The dramatic approach.

* Be the superman she always wanted

But I think my favorite approach -- the one that actually made me laugh -- would have to be called . . .

6. The "even lions will fear you" approach.

* Even lions will fear you

The amazing thing is that these pitches seem to work for some people. There are actually dupes out there who open these spam emails, and some of them even order the pills or creams or whatever it is these folks are selling.

But I believe in Truth in Advertising, and if you advertise that even lions will fear you, we should certainly hold you to it. Just stride confidently right in to that lions' cage at the zoo. Because I'm selling tickets to the event.

Click here to read more . . .

Frontiers of plastic surgery

Everyone once in a while, a story emerges that contains the four basic food groups: plastic surgery, male member mutilation, an exotic foreign culture, and pizza. Sadly, however, this story contains only the first three.

I told Soccer Dad (who sent the story to me) that I wasn't going to use it, but I feel I owe a duty to mankind -- or what was at one point in its life mankind -- to spread the word, because obviously I have a wider circulation than Reuters, from which the story originates.

What I mean by "what was at one point in its life mankind" is this: If you're Thai, and were born with male organs, but you're a member of the so-called "third sex," you may well want what is delightfully referred to as "cosmetic castration," especially if you want to appear in the type of transvestite beauty pageant I wrote about nearly three years ago. But the fact that you want it doesn't mean the authorities want you to have it.

Thailand's health chiefs barred hospitals and clinics on Wednesday from castrating would-be "ladyboys" amid growing concern about the operation being seen as a cheap and quick alternative to a full sex-change.

If you don't know much about Thailand, consider this: If Britain is world famous for haute cuisine and dentistry, and France is famous for snails, white flags, and body odor, then surely Thailand must be famous for something. And it is.

The tolerance shown towards the "third sex," as it is often referred to, has led to the country becoming a world leader in sex-change surgery.

Way to go, Thailand! Aim for that gold medal!

The problem with a ban, of course, is that if castration is outlawed, only outlaws will be castrated. Especially because the ban is so hard to enforce. A senior official admitted that "policing the temporary ban might be difficult as cosmetic removal of the testicles was such a quick operation and easy to conduct in secret." Not to mention the inevitable black market in cosmetically removed testicles.

Which is why I'd also advise you not to eat in a Thai restaurant while you're visiting. Mm-mmm!

UPDATE (4/4): After feeling a little doubtful about this on reflection, I did a search this morning. If I'm being punked, then a lot of others are, too.

Click here to read more . . .

Tuesday linkfest

Once again, I'm here with the extra links I've been saving for no particular reason. Some of them are, in internet terms, pre-historic. But I'll let you make the judgment.

1. Before I begin, I want to mention doubleplusundead, the latest addition to my regular, non-Maryland blogroll. DPUD is a moron. (You'll understand what I mean by that if you read Ace, who's a self-described moron-blogger.) In fact, DPUD has a frequent feature of "links from around the moronosphere," covering the other morons. Since I'm an idiot -- but also an honorary moron -- I've been included a couple of times. Check DPUD frequently, because there are a lot of amusing posts over there.

2. While American forces are doing the hard work, the folks in Prescott, Arizona, are singing kumbaya and erecting a peace post at the fifth anniversary of our intervention in Iraq: "A new monument stands in Prescott - a simple wooden pole bearing the same phrase in four different languages: May Peace Prevail On Earth." (via SondraK, who has a mouseover making fun of this)

3. The Daily Show goes to Berkeley, home of anti-Marine radicalism. Hilarity ensues.

4. Enthusiastic about voting for John McCain? No, but you'll force yourself to do it, anyway? Here's your next stop: The Reluctant Voter (hat tip: fee simple)

5. Eliot Spitzer isn't the only rich dude who uses high-end escort services. "'With the wealthy,' Mr. Prince says, 'it's all about power and control and new experiences.'" (via Fark)

6. Going on a date in China? Looking for a restaurant? Here's my recommendation: "There are several varieties of steamed, roasted and boiled penis at Beijing's quirkiest diner." (via HotAir)

7. Ten great inventions for St. Patrick's Day. Sorry I missed posting this yesterday. Save it for next year. Or consider it on Purim, which falls on Thursday night.

8. "Neocon" transportation policy? (via Heh, indeed.)

9. Shelby Steele on Barack Obama on race bargaining: "And yet, in the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were 'challengers,' not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude. Two sides of the same coin."

10. In my family, we have a running joke about enraged bees. There was a story some years back about a truckload of bees that overturned near the Tappan Zee Bridge, which runs over the Hudson River near where I grew up, and the article referred to "enraged bees." ("When the trailer overturned on the westbound exit ramp leading to the Thruway at 8:35 A.M., millions of the enraged bees emerged.") Today's story of an overturned truck carrying bees comes from California: "Millions of swarming honey bees were on the loose after a truck carrying crates of the insects flipped over on a California highway." This article doesn't mention enraged bees, but it refers to "bee wrangling": "Bradley said several beekeepers driving by the accident stopped to assist in the bee wrangling."

UPDATE (3/19): 11. Too good to pass up. Feminist Marianne Williamson (video): "Well, first of all, I'm not going to vote with my vagina."

12. Ten people to avoid at the ballpark. (via MetsBlog) Some of the comments are better than the post.

Click here to read more . . .

Is that a paintbrush in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

The jokes write themselves.

That is, if you happen to be a guy whose shtick is painting with your male member.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A cheeky artist who uses his penis as a brush has entered a racy self-portrait for Australia's top art prize.

Australian Tim Patch, who calls himself Pricasso, usually exposes his talents at sex product fairs around the world, but has decided to go upmarket by entering a painting for Australia's Archibald Prize -- the nation's top award for portraiture.

In a unique painting style, Patch does not use paint brushes, but his penis to apply paint to the canvas.

I thought I'd heard it all when I learned about a guy who painted with his butt. But that's old hat; as Mr. Patch explains, "'I had to use my bum to paint in the background, because you have to have the occasional break,' Patch told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Wednesday."

Because, in answer to the question you've got all bottled up inside, it's not the most pleasant sensation in the world:

"Painting on canvas for hours on end is not very kind to your skin. It's pretty tiring and it gets really sore."

So, what does his oeuvre look like? Well, you may recognize this guy:



Exit question: What does this artiste think of the new enhanced-privacy urinals? (via Toner Mishap)

Personally, I find it a little creepy, sort of on the level of a photo of the President painted with some dude's hingie-dingie.

Click here to read more . . .

Super Tuesday linkfest

It's Super Tuesday today. So if you've come here to get informed political commentary, you'd better find another site right away.

But if you want a few interesting political links, try these:

1. Sean Hannity gets Frank Luntz to ask his focus group of Obama fans to name one specific accomplishment of Barack Obama. As the Fark line goes, hilarity ensues. Watch the video here. I swear one guy says Obama's a "great oratator."

2. In all the numerous bills of particulars that conservatives are posting against John McCain, the one I haven't seen yet is that, in the days when Cindy Sheehan was a big deal in the media, McCain met with her as if she were a respectable person. I did a photo comic at the time, which I think caught the essence of the encounter: "Cindy and John: He said, she said."

3. A Weekly Standard review (subscribers only) of a couple of books about the United States from Spain is illustrated with a photo of protesters in Madrid in 2001 when Bush visited the city. Sadly, it's not in the web version of the review. Take a look at the photo. Notice what the signs at the lower left and in the middle say? I'm famous. Sort of.



4. This amusing story of voting in the Republican primary in Brooklyn has the ring of truth to it.

**********************************

OK, that concludes the political part of the linkfest. On to other topics. First, sports.

5. You may have heard that the Super Bowl was played on Sunday. But have you heard of the Puppy Bowl? (hat tip: Mrs. Attila)

6. I know that more people read this site than Instapundit, Ace of Spades HQ, and Best of the Web Today combined, so I doubt you'll have seen this one before. First they came for dodgeball and I said nothing. Then they came for Intentional Flatulence, which by all rights should be an Olympic sport. This is nuts: If you force them to hold it in, they'll explode. (hat tip: Soccer Dad, but don't mention that to his kids) [UPDATE 2/6: Story is an exaggeration, apparently taken from a gag sheet prepared by eighth-grade girls. The true school newsletter says: "I just want to make sure parents know this actually is not an official ban or new school rule. Some eighth grade teachers did tell eighth graders that if they continue to disrupt class by intentionally farting, they will get a detention. There is truth to that. Intentional flatulence can be a disruption to class, and we already have rules addressing disruptive behavior." Is that clear?]

And now, other bodily functions.

7. Remote control to undo vasectomy? Surely, you jest:

A man would then use the handset, or fob, to open it around the time of having sex if he and his partner wanted to conceive.

Once the handset is pressed, it sends a coded radio signal through the skin to the implant, which contains a tiny antenna. The antenna picks up the signal and converts it into sound waves that "ripple" through the valve.

Since the valve itself is soft and flexible, the sound waves make it flap open - allowing sperm to pass through. As with cars, each device would have its own unique code so it could not be opened by anyone else.

"It's based on a radio signal, like the device on your key ring, which is coded so that you cannot open someone else's car," Professor Abbott says.

This was a "Dude" headline at HotAir. With good reason.

8. Today's headline of the day (via Fark): "Booze bra gives women a wine rack."

9. Leave it to the Brits: "THE minefield of lingerie shopping for lovers can be avoided this Valentine's Day with a new website which lets you visit a virtual dressing room and ask models to try on underwear." Nearly as good as the Tower of Boobel I wrote about two years ago.

Click here to read more . . .

Wednesday linkfest

Some of this is old news, but I've been kind of busy and haven't had a chance to do anything with it. Hence, a linkfest.

1. I know that some people go into public service because they think they do some good. Others go into public service so they can be sued by their alma mater when they leave the government. Some are "fortunate" enough to do both. (via Instapundit)

John Yoo can be forgiven if he's having second thoughts about his career choice. A Yale Law School graduate, the Berkeley professor of law went on to serve his country at the Justice Department. Yet last week he was sued by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla and his mother, who are represented by none other than lawyers at Yale. Perhaps if Mr. Yoo had decided to pursue a life of terrorism, he too could be represented by his alma mater.

Another reason for you alumni to donate a dollar to Yale so you can tell them you'll never contribute another dollar after this.

2. You're angry with your boyfriend. Do you (a) have a "talk" with him; (b) make him sleep in the living room; (c) set his car on fire? The correct answer is (c). And then you return to your boyfriend, "telling him that he 'might want to get some marshmallows.'" (via Fark)

3. John McCain goes to a funeral home and makes the oldest joke in the book. But he says his mother is older. (via HotAir)

4. If they tried to keep away from the guy, why are they complaining? "Lawsuit says protesters kept away from Bush during N.M. visit"

5. Fill in your own joke; the commenters at HotAir certainly did: "Kokomo police say a man accidentally shot himself in the groin as he was robbing a convenience store. * * * A short time later, police found 25-year-old Derrick Kosch at a home with a gunshot wound to his right testicle and lower left leg. He was expected to have surgery at a hospital."

Click here to read more . . .

Visitor of the day -- 1/11

Friday's visitor of the day falls into our "TMI" category. Really, we just don't want to know.

But the good news is: He didn't find the solution to his problem here.

Click here to read more . . .

The dangers of externomingent acts, again

Another reason not to do your business outside.

As with our last report on externomingency, some guy was urinating through a hole in a fence in Cambodia when "a happy little puppy on the other side bit onto his penis." (via HotAir) The article does not explain how we know the puppy was happy.

But we know the guy was not happy, and we'll let the Metro.co.UK article take it from here:

Mr Veasna's puppy/penis misfortune came to light when he turned up at hospital in the Cambodian capital, and regaled them with his tale of mirth and woe.

He was suffering from lacerations to his penis. However, doctors were able to save his organ, and are hopeful that the puppy did him no permanent damage.

The article quotes a doctor as saying, "It's undoubtedly sore now, but luckily it should still be useful to him in the future." And if not, he can keep it in a display case or sell it on eBay.

I'd definitely recommend you click the link for two reasons. First, the accompanying photo of a cute little white pooch has this caption: "A delightful little doggy: probably wants to savage your penis." Second, there are links to two other somewhat related articles: Man in unfortunate saw-mill penis incident and Cambodians warned over DIY penis enlargement.

Because you can never have too many stories of male member mutilation.

Click here to read more . . .

Wednesday mini-linkfest

1. Headline of the day: "Police say woman pinned boyfriend to wall with buttocks" (via BOTWT)

2. Everything you always wanted to know about "natural" breast enhancement but were afraid to open those spam emails to read about. This is a real article from a real site (featured at MSN). The article is actually written by some chick named Martica Heaner, who claims to have some degrees at something or other. To give her some cred, I'll tell you she is quite a bit less than 100% behind the various techniques. And there are more of them, by the way, than I had ever realized. Exit question: Why did the husband write to Ms. Heaner, instead of the wife, if it's the wife who allegedly wanted enhanced breasts?

3. If you play baseball, you might actually be interested in a cup that will "protect your boys" which, in case you're wondering, does not mean your sons. But even if you don't play baseball, you might just be interested in watching some dude who used to be a pitcher in the majors take a fastball in the nuts (to demonstrate the toughness of the cup he sells). I got the video at HotAir, where I'm sending you to see it. Also, after you watch the video, don't forget to click through to the Nutty Buddy website (which speaks of protecting the boys) and to the Fox News video at the "Update" link.

Click here to read more . . .

New hobby for Thai women

A lot of my readers have been complaining that I haven't been keeping them up to date on the latest news in mutilated male members.

Let me just say, "I hear you."

From Thailand, there's an AFP video report (via Ace) that I find very troubling. A British Thai(?)-accented woman, reporting from Thailand, says this: "Penis slashing by Thai women is so common that Thai surgeons have become world-renowned specialists when it comes to penis reattachments."

You really should check out the video, which, I'm sorry to report, doesn't always load. [Try using Firefox.] A Thai surgeon is interviewed, and although his English is hard to understand, Breitbart.tv quotes him thus: "Sometimes they chop into pieces. In those cases we cannot put it back."

You'll be relieved to know, however, that the surgeon says there'll still hope: "But we build a new one for the patient." He says that the best chance of success is when the detachment occurred within 6 hours. The member is complete, "but we cannot guarantee function."

The female reporter maintains, throughout, her neutral reporter's voice, but you can just tell she's enjoying it: "In this male dominated society, women have few options to assert their rights." She interviews a psychiatrist psychotherapist who says that jilted lovers might kill, "but to kill is not enough for Thai women."

[Also: I forgot to mention that at the end of the video is a scene of a market, in which a woman hesitantly reaches for a bunch of bananas. As George Carlin would say, You don't have to be Fellini to figure that out.]

Not totally related, but close enough: Rebecca Gomez, on Fox Business, interviews a plastic surgeon, Gary Alter, who apparently has a TV show called Dr. 90210. (Alter, by the way, is a classic name for a plastic surgeon.) She asks him what the craziest procedure he's had on his show is. The transcript, courtesy of Portfolio.com's Mixed Media (via HotAir):

REBECCA GOMEZ: What is the craziest procedure that you've had on your show so far?

DR. GARY ALTER: Well, on the show, probably it's a man who had a buried -- or hidden -- penis.

GOMEZ: Where was it hiding?

ALTER: Well, it was hiding in his pubic fat...

GOMEZ: Come on!

ALTER: And in his scrotal sack. And he was 49 years old -- never had intercourse.

GOMEZ: No way!

Dr. Alter, of course, was the only guy who knew how to handle this. (Although he doesn't say how the man was able to urinate, which strikes me as a major life activity.)

Gomez and Alter go on to discuss labiaplasty, and Gomez says that if you want to get plastic surgery, you have to "do your homework." She adds: "I mean, it's like stock picking. You gotta do your homework."

Click here to read more . . .

Pre-Thanksgiving linkfest

Things I'm thankful for:

1. That mine don't itch (video).

2. That I've never had to do this while on TV (video).

3. That my wife doesn't have one of these blenders (also check out the video at the end).

Reposts from previous Thanksgivings:

1. PSA: Don't deep-fry your turkey. And you must, you absolutely must, click on the link where it says "Click here to download the movie." In fact, I've pasted it in here to make it easier for you.

2. A bunch of turkeys tried to get on a commuter train at Ramsey, New Jersey.

Click here to read more . . .

Grand larceny or petty theft?

In the latest survey conducted by the UN Commission on Fraudulent Schemes, a matter about which the UN is well versed, 87.9% of the GDP of Nigeria is attributable to fraudulent emails sent to the U.S. about a mysterious rich Uncle Mopo who died, leaving more than $25 million in a secret account.

This is why I found it quite surprising that there was any free time for a woman in Nigeria to steal her boyfriend's member. (via Fark)

That's his story, anyway. I suspect he simply misplaced it. I'd look in the change drawer, myself.

I have to tell you that I feel a little uncomfortable discussing this story at all, but I'm linking here it in order to respond to readers who have been hounding me with identical form emails written by the Democratic National Committee that read, "How come you've never written about stolen male organs? Do you 'HATE THE CHILDREN^TM'?"

No, I don't hate the children. I just think that we have to address the problem of stolen members, preferably with a hugely expensive government program, or else we're not going to have any children in the future, and if we let that happen, we'd only be proving Mark Steyn right, which I know you don't want to do.

Anyway, back to the story. I've heard tales of Africans who suffered shrunken members after shaking hands with some mysterious person -- this article describes the situation well -- but it rarely is the victim's girlfriend.

An Abuja-based beer palour owner called Grace Igbian has been accused by her lover Kingsley Ulame of 'stealing' his sexual organ. They had been dating for an exteded period of time and they last stayed and slept together for 29 days before he travelled home to see his family in Benin, Edo State. But instead of enjoying his stay with his family, Ulame said he started having problems with his organ. He noticed that he could not have an erection. According to him, his organ stopped functioning and he was frightened that it may result to impotence.

You know what they say about the first time you can't do it twice and the second time you can't do it once. More seriously, this story raises a troubling question: Why did he need an erection when his was visiting his family? I'm frankly afraid to ask.

But this story gets grizzly pretty fast.

Ulame insisted that Igbian had at a point threatened him that he will never regain use of his organ unless he has intercourse with her again. * * * Ulame loudly accused her of stealing his manhood and started demanding for it and called his friends and brothers who pleaded with her to return. He resorted to beating her, eventually wounding her.

When Igbian reported this to the police, her situation got even worse.

According to her, the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Airport Division, Assistant Superintendent of Police, Peter Thazilza invited a herbalist called Haifa, a Fulani woman who thereafter claimed that Igbian had indeed stolen Ulame's organ. Subsequently, Igbian said she was forced to have sex with Ulame by the DPO in his office, because they wanted the man to 'regain his manhood'.

That's really, truly sick if you ask me.

I'm sorry to end here on a downer, but I suppose in some way that's appropriate.

(Previous: here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Click here to read more . . .

The perils of polygamy

In our continuing series on mutilated male members (which would be a good, but not a great, name for a rock band), we will now visit Malaysia, where we find out that it's usually a poor idea to tell one of your two wives that the other wife is better in bed.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian doctors have reattached a man's nearly severed penis after his first wife, enraged by his comparison of her sex skills with those of his younger second wife, decided to chop it off with a kitchen knife.

The man, a 43-year-old Indonesian worker in southern Johor state, was lying in bed with his 48-year-old wife talking about his newly wed second wife, who is in her 30s, when the incident happened, the New Straits Times newspaper reported.

Please note that the linked article is helpfully illustrated with a photo of someone slicing bacon with a kitchen knife.

Now, the New Straits Times article, referred to in the segment above, is entitled "It never pays to compare wives." But that is hardly the best headline on this subject.

That honor goes to "What? Did I say something wrong?" from Reuters/India.

And while we're on this subject, I would be remiss if I didn't mention another incident in what is becoming, sadly, a real epidemic. In Thailand, a woman severed her husband's penis and ran away with it, thus leading to this line: "A 35-year-old Thai woman was at large with her husband's penis Saturday after discovering the man's unfaithfulness, police said." I just know the reporter was dying to get the word "large" into that sentence.

As Ed McMahon might have asked....

Click here to read more . . .

The dangers of externomingent acts

What is it with the Croatians, anyway? Last year, a Croatian lumberjack gets a kidney transplant from a woman and suddenly starts doing housework.

And now, a Croatian biker, minding his own business, does his own business outside and gets hit by lightning. Bad enough, but after waking up in the hospital, he has a chat with the doctors.

"Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis."

Maybe he was wearing rubbers on the wrong part of his body.

But it seems all's well that ends well:

"Thankfully, the doctors said that there would be no lasting effects, and my penis will function normally eventually."

Although if I were in his place, I'd definitely check out that word "eventually."

(via HotAir)

Click here to read more . . .

The burning question

Understanding the differences between men and women is a continuing process.

You might think it's a stereotype that women talk and men act, but it really isn't. For one thing, science says that "women talk roughly three times as much as men -- about 20,000 words a day to about 7,000 for men." (I'm quoting myself, but that's still science, because I was citing a study.)

For another thing, I'm sure all of you guys can come up with an experience in which you talked on the phone for a half hour to an old friend, and when you were finished, your wife or girlfriend asked, "What did you talk about?" Of course, you immediately replied, "I don't know" or "Nothing." And you really meant it.

If you can't come up with such an experience, try this article in yesterday's Washington Post:

[William] Doherty [a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota] recalls being at a conference with another therapist he knew and the therapist's wife. He knew they were having marital problems and wasn't surprised one evening when he got a call from his friend, who said the wife had thrown him out of the room. Could he spend the night in Doherty's room?

"He came over and we watched TV, talked a bit about sports and went to bed," Doherty recalls. "He didn't owe me any personal revelations about his marriage. Months later, after the couple got back together, his wife told me how pleased he was that I didn't ask him to open up."

It actually may be a good thing in some sense that men are like this. The article says that it's not always a good idea for women to talk incessantly about their problems:

According to Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco, the female brain picks up emotional cues, both verbal and nonverbal, more quickly than the male brain. Starting at about age 12, girls put feelings into words more efficiently than boys. The key thing, though, according to Brizendine, author of the controversial book "The Female Brain," is this: Brains learn by repetition. Repeating negative thoughts can make not only the injured party but those around her more, rather than less, distressed and angry.

I cited this Brizendine character in the link to myself above, where I quoted her as saying this:

"Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," said Dr Brizendine, who runs a female "mood and hormone" clinic in San Francisco.

Or in the words of Prof. Doherty:

Sharing personal information is the coin of the realm for women's friendships. "Men bond around common interests and occasionally turn to a buddy for help," says Doherty. "Women bond through confidences. A girlfriend will feel hurt if she finds out you had a problem and didn't share it. A guy will say, 'Good, you took care of it.'"

This may all seem pretty obvious to you, so why am I reporting it?

The reason is that men and women need to understand each other better. Men have to take the time to listen to their wives or their girlfriends (preferably having no more than one of these at any time), and women need to understand that men are scientifically retarded when it comes to expressing their feelings.

Because if they don't understand each other, it's far more likely that this will happen (via HotAir):

A woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said on Wednesday.

This story raises troubling questions, which the regrettably short article fortunately takes the time to answer. For example:

• What was the ex-husband doing in such close proximity to his ex-wife? Well, it turns out that in Russia, housing's at a premium, and sometimes divorced couple must continue to live together. "The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation."


• Did it hurt? What do you mean, "Did it hurt?" You idiot, of course it did! "'It was monstrously painful,' the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper."


• How did this come about? I'll have to leave that one to the baffled ex-husband. "'I was burning like a torch. I don't know what I did to deserve this.'"

The article, sadly, does not answer another troubling question: Why was this man sitting naked in front of a woman he'd divorced and obviously didn't exactly get along with?

I don't know the answer to that question, just as the man in the story doesn't know what he did to deserve to be the recipient of genitalia flambé, but perhaps you should ask the woman in your life what she thinks about it.

And be sure to listen carefully to what she says.

*****************
Extra: In case the link to the story about the Russian couple should go dead, I want you to have the list of related links given in the article, which alone is worth the price of admission:

RELATED ITEMS
Today's top weird headlines
Cambodians warned over DIY penis enlargement
Man in unfortunate saw-mill penis incident
Row over angry, penis-removing doctor
Wife rejects penis transplant
Naked wife attacks husband

Click here to read more . . .

In the anas*

I'm sure we've all had these moments in raising our kids.

You know what I'm talking about. Your teenager comes up to you to make an announcement. And not just any announcement.

Kid: Dad! Or Mom! Whoever you might be! I know exactly what I'd like to study in college and make my career.

You: You do?

Kid: I've, like, totally given up on the adult-entertainment star idea.

You: That's, uh, that's very good. I'm glad for you.

Kid: That is, like, so totally last year, really.

You: So what's your new plan?

Kid: I'm going to study the reproductive biology of ducks* and do research on the duck vagina.

You:

Kid: Seriously, I just read about it in the Yale Alumni Magazine.

You: Yale? I didn't go to Yale.

Kid: Found it at the dentist's office. Listen! Here's what the article says: "Among ducks such as the mallard, the Pekin, and the long-tailed, the phallus can reach surprising length: 4 to 5 inches is common. The Argentine river duck, the champion in this department, has a phallus up to 16 inches long -- longer than the bird itself."

You: Now I know why you gave up that promising "acting" career.

Kid: But that's not all. In these ducks, the phallus "shrinks to the size of a rice grain after the mating season and grows again the following year," and it's "elaborately coiled." How cool is that?

You: I don't know. I thought that was a pathology.

Kid: Here's some more: "But although this phallus was first described in detail more than 100 years ago, no scientist ever bothered to investigate what seems the obvious corollary. That is, until Patricia Brennan, a post-doctoral researcher in ecology and evolutionary biology, entered the field. 'What kind of structure,' Brennan wondered, 'did he put it into?'"

You: Oh, my! Hold on, I need to sit down.

Kid: You really will have to sit down when you hear this: "Given the size of the duck phallus, Brennan guessed that she'd find 'an enlarged but simple sack' when she dissected female ducks. Instead, she uncovered a coiled organ bristling with detours, roadblocks, and dead ends. Upstream, it coils in the opposite direction from the phallus."

You: Now I remember! I read about this in the New York Times a while back. This researcher said about the phallus and vagina: "Obviously you can't have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car." Sounds like a bad imitation of a Kinky Friedman song, doesn't it? I remember that Brennan has a theory that the duck vagina was designed to prevent rape by ducks who were not her mate, right?

Kid: No, Brennan never had any duck as a mate.

You: I meant . . ., oh, never mind.

Kid: But, yeah, she thinks it has to do with rape. The magazine article calls it "forced copulation."

You: Yale. Anyway, here's my question for you. If she's already done the research, what's left for you?

Kid:

You:

Kid:

You:

Kid: Well, all right, forget about it. I'm back to adult entertainment.

Click here to read more . . .

I'd hate to see the mohel

Or the mohel's clamp, for that matter. Because, um, . . .

And there are more links in the comments there.

(hat tip: someone claiming to be Soccer Dad)

Click here to read more . . .