Glob-a-log

1) Airplane sushi
2) The best of ABBA
3) Ann Coulter
4) Mobile phones
5) Oprah’s book club
6) Crocs
7) Daytime TV
8) Bud light
9) Cricket
10) Victoria Beckham’s new tits

There’s strange.

You know, strange people, and strange habits:

A man who was caught in flagrante delicto attempting sexual intercourse with a bicycle has been placed on the sex offenders’ register.

Robert Stewart earned himself a hearing at Ayr Sheriff Court following the incident last October when two “extremely shocked” cleaners at local Aberley House Hostel discovered him getting down and dirty with the bike.

Stewart on Wednesday admitted to sexual breach of the peace, and was placed on the sex offenders’ register. Sentencing was deferred until next month.

He is not the first man to be convicted of a sexual offence involving an inanimate object, however. Karl Watkins, an electrician, was jailed for having sex with pavements in Redditch, Worcs, in 1993.

And then, of course, there is Steve:

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Quirky crocodile hunter Steve Irwin had a sixth sense that he would die young, his American-born wife Terri said on Monday.

Nope, no sixth sense whatsoever.

“He wasn’t morbid about it, or awful about it, he was open and earnest about it. We’ve got to accomplish everything we can,” she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television’s Enough Rope series. “Steve had a real sixth sense about so many things. He had an odd connection with wildlife. He was extraordinarily intuitive with people. I found it all very, I don’t know if ‘eerie’ is the word, but remarkable, certainly.”

Widows are there, of course, to move us to tears or cheap lust – but truly, steve Irwin was only obeying Darwin’s last call:

Live stupid, die stupid.

Still, when you’ve done strange, and stupid, there are still some quite unbearably disgusting things left:

Aging German playboy Rolf Eden has rarely taken no for an answer. And he’s not about to start.

The 77-year-old Eden has filed a suit against a 19-year-old Berlin woman for the following reason:

Despite a night on the town with Eden, which ended back at his place, she refused to have sex with him, saying the he was too old for her.

He has filed charges with the prosecutors’ office, he said. “After all, there are laws against discrimination.”

Even serving his 19-year-old quarry champagne and playing the piano for her didn’t help.

“There are a few years separating us,” the almost-octogenarian admits.

How cute!

Not unlike George Bush, whispering to the ghost of Einstein, Please, don’t let a few brain cells come between us…

The clock is ticking…

Halloween is now almost upon us…

with the foul stench of witches, ghosts and pumpkins gone bad on the lawn…

and some more weird stories, of course:

WASHINGTON - It was bad enough when the TV and lights inexplicably flicked on at night, Misty Conrad says. When her daughter began talking to an unseen girl named Nicole and neighbors said children had been murdered in the house, it was time to move.

Put Conrad, a homemaker from Hampton, Va., firmly in the camp of the 34 percent of people who say they believe in ghosts, according to a pre-Halloween poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos. That’s the same proportion who believe in unidentified flying objects — exceeding the 19 percent who accept the existence of spells or witchcraft.

That makes it official: more Americans believe in ghosts than in their own president:

George W. Bush’s overall job approval rating has dropped to 25% as nearly seven in ten Americans say the national economy is getting worse according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. This matches the lowest approval rating for Bush recorded by the American Research Group.

By the way, talking of very scary guys – I mean: ghosts… It’s not just Americans who are superstitious. The Italians also have a thing for the supernatural (and electing their own dubious dictator presidents, come to think of it…)

Anyway, here’s what happened in a small town in Sicily…:

Canneto di Caronia, in northern Sicily, drew attention three years ago after residents reported everyday household objects bursting into flames.

Locals were quick to blame supernatural forces and at the time the Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth backed up their fears and said: “I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods. Let’s not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers.”

Mind you, just like Mussolini (or Bush) didn’t quite turn out to be what the idiot voters had expected, so these demons also proved to be somewhat of a disappointment:

Now in an interim leaked report published by several Italian newspapers it has emerged that the Civil Protection Department has concluded the most likely cause was “aliens”. The report was ordered by the Italian government and brought together dozens of experts including a NASA scientist. Their two year investigation has cost an estimated £1 million.

Right, now before everybody goes terribly Anglo-Saxon on me, sniggering at those silly & excitable Italians, wasting the taxpayers’ money on ghost hunts, consider this:

How much would you think it costs to build a zebra crossing?

A further £16,000 is spent on the beacons, electrical wiring and road signs while the remaining £87,000 is swallowed up by labour costs, the equivalent of three and a half years pay for the average worker.

Back to ghosts though – and a very scary story indeed… Well, the story isn’t that scary – but one of its main characters sure is. People say, ‘You could scare little kiddies with a face like that.’

Indeed… And that’s even before the phrase ‘pajama party’ springs to mind.

So, on the whole it’s probably a wholesome thing that the guy has now become obsessed with a much, much older quarry…:

Singer Michael Jackson is reported to be bidding on a “genuine Irish ghost trapped in a bottle”.

“I described it as a genuine Irish ghost in a bottle. We wanted to get somebody who would treat it with respect,”

Well, there you go… You truly & deeply & utterly respectfully try to flog a ghost on E-bay and who turns up? Michael bloody Jackson. Indeed, it is as they say, No good deed ever goes unpunished.

And on the seventh day God said, Let’s just give it a rest, boys.

So, it has come to be that on this Christian version of the Sabbath most of us get up late, potter around the house in tatty pajamas or expensive silk dressing gowns, eat a healthy leisurely breakfast (or crap like muesli) and feed our cat or talk to our favourite fish (who is a bit under the weather right now but who might improve – or explode - if he swallows his medicine like the good little boy he is…)

…and read the Sunday papers – rejoicing whenever we see that our favourite columnists have come up with another handful of highly entertaining set pieces.

So, yes, it’s time again to do another round-up of some of the eminent Brit columnists working for the online Times.

First off is Caitlin Moran, who discusses yet another TV travel programme. I have no idea who the person is she uses as her personal scratching post but I’m sure glad I’m not him, reading this:

To be both blunt but also, I feel, totally fair, Boorman comes across as a copper-bottomed, ocean-going, 24-carat prick. The unsuccessful actor son of director John Deliverance Boorman, Charley is the kind of spoilt, charmless boor whose self-satisfied bull-honking floats down from first class on transatlantic flights, and actually makes you glad to be poor.

In the first episode alone, Boorman departs on his epic journey despite his wife being in hospital with pneumonia and a collapsed lung; is questioned by four policemen at Gatwick after telling an air stewardess that he has a bomb; and cuts up rough when McGregor’s wife – who is, let us not forget, left at home with the kids for three months while her husband burns rubber in the Dark Continent – says she wants to join the trip for just ten days.

“I want to protect the experience, and keep it real,” Boorman says, sulkily, standing next to his branded SUV, being filmed by a TV crew.

Ouch.

Still, however satisfying it may be when our columnists get down and dirty and extremely personal, it is also nice to read how our favourite writers would solve all sorts of tricky problems in one fell swoop. Here’s Chris Ayres’s suggestion of what president Bush could do to give the Iraq war a happy ending:

When America’s railroad workers went on strike in 1946, Harry Truman (a Democrat) came up with a simple yet effective plan to get them back to work. He drafted them into the Army.

A radical move, yes. But, by God, it worked. In fact, Truman was only halfway through his speech to Congress announcing the legislation when someone passed him a note confirming that the strike had been settled, “on the terms proposed by the President”.

I mention this because Hollywood is preparing for its own strike: the first in 20 years by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). The walkout is expected to begin next month, when the WGA’s contract with the TV companies and movie studios runs out.

It is, of course, in both sides’ interest to reach a deal. Then again, if the situation gets really desperate, President Bush could always do a Truman and send the striking Hollywood workers to Iraq. Sure, it wouldn’t go down very well in LA. But, who knows, with Steven Spielberg in place of General Petraeus, perhaps the war would finally get a Hollywood ending.

Right, enough world saving for now. Back to the personal abuse. Here’s Rod Liddle, writing about a certain French icon:

Bardot, at 73, is still as breathtakingly magnificent as she was in And God Created Woman, although in a rather different way.

How do you like your sex kittens to age? Gracefully and with the aid of botox injections and prosthetics, so that she can still turn in the occasional dignified cameo appearance in some Hollywood blockbuster as the vaguely glamorous matriarch?

Or as mad as a box of frogs, with the appearance of a scorched bag lady on methamphetamine, surrounded by hundreds of yapping stray dogs and supporting Jean-Marie Le Pen’s facist Front National.

Finally, A.A. Gill finds himself part of the travelling book signing circus and muses upon the many strange reasons that people buy books:

Books are bought not to be read, but to be given. “Would you make it out to Tony? He’s my son-in-law.” There is the bat-squeak inference that Tony is an uneducated oik, who spends too much time down the pub and could do with a book to keep him at home.

Students get them, too, though why someone who already has a reading list longer than the Yellow Pages would want a collection of Sabbath journalism is beyond me.

I suppose worried parents can’t give undergraduates the same things that everyone else gives them: crabs, chlamydia, cold sores and skunk-induced psychosis.

Men and women are different. You don’t even have to undress them to notice that. In fact, there’s a whole industry, worth millions of dollars a year, spouting incoherent and most often rather unhelpful blather about these differences.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Oh, really? Meet Jane, she’s from the black hole of Calcutta; meet Dick, he’s from the Planet of the Apes.

Yawn, yawn, triple yawn.

Still, it is safe to say that men and women would not make perfect identical twins in any nativity play. For instance,

A New York State University team quizzed over 1,000 students, finding women place a big emphasis on kissing.

They use kissing as a way of assessing the recipient as a potential partner, and later to maintain intimacy and to check the status of a relationship.

But men placed less importance on it, using it to increase the likelihood of sex, Evolutionary Psychology reported.

But kissing was more important as a bonding mechanism to women.

While this would make for all kinds of interesting parlour games, like ‘Would you kiss this man?‘ it would indeed seem to be true that quite a number of men have bonding issues – and some more than others:

The bride might have been tipped off on the honeymoon: The newlyweds went to the Smoky Mountains, where they slept in separate tents.

Her complaint, spelled out in court testimony, led a state appeals court Friday to annul the Jandas’ sexless marriage. The decision means the husband, a Czech citizen, could lose his permanent resident status under U.S. immigration laws and be deported.

Still, you could say that our honeylessmooning Czech friend at least gave it a half-hearted go. Other men seem quite happy to – let’s say – internalise this quest for the feminine principle:

Employees of Kohl’s department store in Joplin were surprised to find a man dressed in women’s undergarments walking about the store Thursday morning when they arrived for work.

“Actually, he was wearing a pink camisole and some pink women’s underwear,” Cpl. Chuck Niess of the Joplin Police Department said of a 52-year-old homeless man arrested on suspicion of burglary and spending some portion of the night inside the store at 301 S. Geneva Ave.

A responding police officer discovered the man asleep under a blanket at the back of the store, he said.

The man was still wearing the pink negligee and panties.

There was reason to believe the suspect had tried on a number of the store’s undergarments for women. Nine pair of panties and four bras were found in a pile near where he was sleeping, Niess said.

He said the undergarments — worth a total of $375 — were deemed no longer salable by Kohl’s. The suspect’s own clothes had not been found inside the store by the time he was arrested and taken to Joplin City Jail, he said.

Others though are thoroughly confused. They would love to be able to go on any honeymoon, for love, or for sex or just for show – but they seem to be doomed to be forever stuck in the dress rehearsal fase of things…:

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A man was arrested after a government agent allegedly found him in an office building restroom lying next to an inflatable, anatomically correct doll with his pants down. Craig S. McCullough, 47, was charged Wednesday with indecent exposure, a misdemeanor.

McCullough’s criminal record includes a 2004 conviction for burglarizing Just For Me bridal boutique. Shortly after the burglary, police officers found McCullough in a nearby alley, carrying a mannequin wearing a bridal dress.

Human beings are endlessly creative. From atom bomb to zebra crossings, from Mickey Mouse to venereal diseases - if our brains can dream up stuff, our opposable thumbs can create it before same brains have had the time to think about the consequences of these actions. Which, more than occasionally, lands us in the soup faster than any Jewish mama can serve it.

Some of our inventions are quite harmless – for us, humans, that is. Rodents (and some Jack Russell dogs) might beg to differ, of course:

Once in a generation, an invention comes that is so brilliant, so farsighted, so utterly right, it changes the world and makes you believe that the future will be a sunny, happy and civilised place.

Sticky-backed mouse mats are pure genius. You peel off the paper and lay them like solitaire aces around the house and garden, and, in the morning, there are mice, glued in comically balletic positions.

But you have to get there before the dog. If you don’t, you have mouse stuck to mat stuck to Jack Russell face. It’s like the Tar Baby – both funny and disgusting. Then you just pop them in the bin, except, of course, you can’t dump a live mouse embossed on cardboard into the recycle bin bag.

The Blonde said: “Best to fold them in half and hit them hard with a frying pan.” Sometimes it’s useful having a South African round the house.

Other inventions are less benign. Humans have been dreaming up torture machines from the moment we left the relative safety of the African trees. When you look at the collective efforts of mankind it would seem that about half of the things we’ve invented have to do with all the various interesting ways we can cut up and prepare stuff to eat – while, for the rest, we’ve been racking our collective brains to come up with ever more inventive ways to cut up, maim and kill our fellow humans.

One of the more disgusting torture devices invented last century was, of course, the mobile phone. In the past it was always possible to put at least some distance between yourself and the incredible amount of obnoxious creatures that litter our long-suffering planet. ‘Thanks’ to the mobile phone this has become neigh impossible.

Now, it would seem, our bodies are starting to adapt to this cruel and unusual punishment. Not, as one might think – or at least hope – in rebellion, but in a gutless ‘We obey, oh master‘ fashion:

NEW YORK - If your hipbone is connected to your BlackBerry or your thighbone is connected to your cellphone, those vibrations you’re feeling in the car, in your pajamas, in the shower, may be coming from your headbone.

Many mobile phone addicts and BlackBerry junkies report feeling vibrations when there are none, or feeling as if they’re wearing a cellphone when they’re not.

Anecdotal evidence suggests “people feel the phone is part of them” and “they’re not whole” without their phones, since the phones connect them to the world, said B.J. Fogg, director of research and design at Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab.

“As human beings, we’re so tapped into our community, responsiveness to what’s going on, we’re so attuned to the threat of isolation and rejection, we’d rather make a mistake than miss a call,” he said. “Our brain is going to be scanning and scanning and scanning to see if we have to respond socially to someone.”

In certain circles, phantom vibrations are a point of pride.

Of course, with humans, you do have what is known as the iceberg principle. What you see is not always and not even remotely all of what you get. While half our visible efforts have to do with maiming and cutting up meat & veggies and the rest with doing so to other humans, there’s this huge and mostly invisible collective of efforts, culminating into inventions which, besides eating and killing, represent our third main driving force. Sex.

God (or the Texas police) knows how many different kinds of sex toys there already are in the world but it would probably not be far wrong to assume that they will be with us for longer – and in quite larger numbers – than the trees in the Amazone forests.

Mostly these toys are hidden from view – kept in drawers, or just kept in…

Which is something of a pity, because when they do, from time to time, make a public appearance the results are, more often than not, immensely satisfying…:

CHICAGO — Mardin Azad Amin found himself in a tight squeeze last week when security at O’Hare Airport discovered a suspicious-looking object in his luggage.

So Amin, 29, handled the delicate situation this way: He told security the object was a bomb, Cook County prosecutors said.

The security guard then asked Amin to repeat what he’d said to a supervisor. This time, Amin was chuckling as he spoke, prosecutors said.

In fact, Amin was trying to disguise the fact that the black object — resembling a grenade — was a component for a penis pump.

All the same, Amin was charged with felony disorderly conduct and faces up to three years in prison if convicted, said Andrew Conklin, a spokesman with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.

Amin is due in court Wednesday for a preliminary hearing, Conklin said.

Amin eventually told investigators he’d lied about the object’s true use because his mother was standing nearby when the object was discovered and he didn’t want her to know about it, Cook County assistant state’s attorney Lorraine Scaduto said during a bond hearing last week.

Sometimes though human inventiveness leads to pretty weird things – and while it’s true that most people might be more interested in mobile phones (or vibrators) than with saving the fore-mentioned Amazone forests, there are some pretty inventive eco-warriors about as well:

Super trees that suck up and destroy toxic chemicals from the air and water faster than regular trees are the latest creation by scientists at the University of Washington.

When the scientists stick a rabbit gene into poplar trees, the trees become dramatically better at eliminating a dozen kinds of pollutants commonly found on poisoned properties.

However, as I started saying: the human brain has this tendency to come up with things which are, to put it mildly, somewhat ill-considered – and that certainly seems to be the case with these so-called super trees.

For I really would love to ask these clever dick scientists if they truly believe there will be enough room on this planet for us humans…

… and a new kind of poplar trees that breed like bleeding rabbits!

They say God moves in mysterious ways. You can easily say the same about women. Some women anyway:

Showing patrons she could crush beer cans between her exposed breasts has cost a West Australian barmaid $1000.

Hanging spoons on the barmaid’s nipples also cost one of her co-workers $500, while their bar manager was fined $1000 for failing to stop the pair, police said in a statement.

Superintendent David Parkinson of the Peel Police District said: “It sends a clear message to all licensees in Peel that we will not tolerate this type of behaviour in our licensed premises.”

Yes, I’m sure that will stop the mad epidemic of women exposing their evil breasts and crushing blameless beer cans between them. Mind you, there lurks some profound message in there – or at least the question: what was God thinking when He created breasts? And what’s the deal with all these different cups and sizes? To put it like this: Why did God create more variations of breasts than there are types of cat food in your average megamall?

Which is not exactly the way a certain Christian woman put it to a doctor on the Christian online forum but it’s close enough to hang spoons on, so to speak:

Dear Dr. Langberg, I’d like your opinion on breast augmentation for a Christian. My husband doesn’t agree with it, but will go along with it because he knows how this issue affects my self-esteem and confidence. I’ve been praying about it for years, but haven’t been able to find total peace.

To which the good doctor, in some boring detail, told her, Forget about it,

I think the God who lovingly chose you before the foundation of the world knew exactly what he was doing.

That’s the way you should think about yourself—including your body. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20,

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit … ? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

Mind you, that last bit sounds more like a marvellous First Amendment for some future hookers’ Constitution than a theological argument but never mind. For it also does begin to answer that more basic question of the overkill of types of breasts. Namely, that they exist because God just didn’t fancy the idea of spending the rest of mankind’s stay on earth looking at just one type of boobs.

In other words, because God is a guy. A very powerful guy, maybe but still, in this respect, a very average guy: he likes to look at as many tits as He can get away with. And since He is God, that means a Hell of a lot of breasts indeed. Some that make their owners long for silicone stuffing, and others that make their owners crush beer cans between them.

Still not convinced of the maleness of the Lord? Well, there’s that very old argument: Would a female God have come up with something so mind-buggeringly stupid, primitive and painful as periods?

I know that some men will now mutter: ‘Yeah, but shaving is a bugger too…’ Which is true enough. Having to spend about two minutes a day shaving is a terrible nuisance. The way dropping your key when you arrive home drunk compares to being dropped into the Grand canyon yourself.

Still, I’m so glad you raised the point. You know how most women simply love the sweet touch of unshaven beards on their tender skin? Yup. About as much as your average deer loves the start of the hunting season. Well, according to this latest bit of research,

Beards grow faster than usual on the day before an anticipated sexual encounter.

Still think the ‘Great Architect’ is a woman? What, not totally convinced yet? Well, I do understand that it’s not a nice image: God as a kind of super Al Bundy, fantasizing about & creating this endless variety of breasts, in between scratching his balls, picking his nose and calling for another beer.

So, I do admit that it is an image of the Almighty that takes some getting used to. It’s still true though. More science:

It is in fact the rush of endorphins produced by eating chocolates, particularly dark chocolates, which is most similar to the bliss associated with a healthy sexual relationship. Chocolate also contains phenyl-ethylamine which is known to stimulate the release of dopamine into the pleasure centers commonly associated with an orgasm.

In addition to this scientific evidence, a great deal of behavioral research has been done to study the sexual behavior of women who eat a lot of chocolate and those who don’t. The conclusion of this is that women who consume large quantities of chocolate have more satisfying sex lives.

Well, according to the male – or bearded – version of the Bible, God created Adam out of clay, or mud. Now, isn’t it absolutely, blindingly obvious that if God had indeed been a woman, she would have made that first male out of chocolate…?! I rest my case: God is a bloke.

And for all of you who don’t believe in any of this – and pray in the church of Darwin, well, consider the following. Long ago, old Tammy sang ‘Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.’ That’s true – that’s still very true, whether you believe in the Al Bundy God or not.

Yet, it could have been so much worse…

To any woman out there who ever complained that men were quite useless in bed, I’d like to say, Yes, but imagine we had involved from cats instead of apes:

The male cat’s penis has spines which point backwards. Upon withdrawal of the penis, the spines rake the walls of the female’s vagina, which may cause ovulation. Because this does not always occur, females are rarely impregnated by the first male with which they mate.

In other words: maybe better the Al Bundy or ape you know than some cool cat with a harpoon for a dick…

Health & safety rules are truly one of humanity’s greatest discoveries. More than the harnessing of fire, more than the invention of the wheel, they make all of our lives worth living.

Especially office life. Have you ever seen a case of ‘cubicle freak-out‘? It’s not a pretty picture, I assure you. Happily, a remedy against this does exist. Yes, indeed: those Health & Safety rules.

What subject gladdens the heart as much or warms the cockles more effectively on even the bleakest and most boring day than yet another tale of health & safety rules ‘gone mad’?

Not to mention what a God-sent it is to your average columnist…:

Firefighters have been banned from using their ladders to take down festive bunting because it is deemed a health and safety risk.

In previous years, firefighters have helped remove decorations in the centre of Ampthill, Bedfordshire, after the town’s Gala Day in July. Three months on, the green and white bunting is still there. The festival committee is now trying to find another way of removing the bunting before the winter.

Bedfordshire deputy chief fire officer Graeme Smith said: “It sounds like the world has gone mad. Firefighters will climb ladders to rescue people from burning buildings but not to remove bunting after a festival.”

As an office life saving device Health & Safety does particularly well if certain rulings get in the way of enjoying traditional forms of entertainment (like playing conkers) or certain seasonal festivities. Then there will be much moaning, a great gnashing of teeth and, let’s be honest, much feverish rejoicing about a world gone mad:

London - A bonfire celebration in York, the home town of Guy Fawkes, has been banned on health and safety grounds, the local council said on Tuesday.

Thousands were due to attend the spectacle on the 402nd anniversary of Fawkes’ failed plot to blow up parliament.

But York City Football Club was told their ground was too small to ensure spectator safety, a decision which left the head of the cathedral city’s tourist board “lost for words”.

York Council’s head of licensing, Dick Haswell, declined to be interviewed on Tuesday but in an emailed statement he defended the decision, saying it was made on health and safety grounds.

Of course, Health & Safety rules are not the only pillars on which civilisation (and the columnist) can rest their weary heads. There’s political correctness too – also always ‘gone mad’ of course – that gladdens the heart and puts a spring into the step of your average, umbrage taking citizen. As was perfectly demonstrated during an earlier Guy Fawkes upset/outrage:

Fury erupted today after Guy Fawkes night was banned by “politically correct” council chiefs and replaced by a Bengali folk tale.

Tower Hamlets Council in east London has chosen an “alternative theme” for fireworks night - traditionally based on the attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

Instead council bosses have shelled out £75,000 on a fireworks display based on a Bengali tale called Emperor and the Tiger.

Sunday’s display at Hackney’s Victoria Park is expected to attract 20,000 but there will no mention of the Guy Fawkes plot.

Mind you, while everybody loves a good political correctness story, it must be said that sometimes one feels some people could do with, if not PC awareness than at least with just a little bit of old-fashioned tact:

A 50-year-old man arrested after police said he urinated into milk and left bodily fluids inside a home is believed to be the naked bandit who has terrorized women for years by sneaking into their homes and tickling sleeping victims.

Police said Blacine has admitted to breaking into women’s homes and videotaping them while they slept. However, he has not admitted to tickling women. He was transported to the Volusia County Jail.

So far, so good – and yet, imagine yourself to be that woman. First you’re scared half to death by the original experience. Then, you hear that the naked video artist also routinely pissed in any kind of milk container he came across during these escapades… which is not a happy thought…

… and then, in court, she gets to hear the judge charge the guy with burglary, which is fair enough, but also hears herself described, not simply as a burglary victim but as a… - well, see for yourself, but tactful it ain’t…:

He was charged with burglary and tampering with a consumer product.

That last bit will truly have made that poor woman’s day…

Still, believe it or not, but there are even worse instances of what can only be described as glorious and almost divine tactlessness.

So, I’ll leave you to the tender care and mercy of St Margaret’s Health Centre in Auchterarder, Perthshire:

It is probably not the best way to reassure patients, but a health centre brushed aside criticism yesterday after handing out appointment cards sponsored by a local undertaker.

St Margaret’s Health Centre in Auchterarder, Perthshire, was accused of insensitivity after issuing cards to patients that include an advert for the town’s funeral director.

One patient, a 23-year-old mother of one, said:

“I thought it was hysterical when I first saw it, but it isn’t funny really. I see the card also contains an ad for the local florist so evidently the doctors hope to provide their patients with all necessary information in the event of failing to cure them.”

Some decades ago George Harrison recorded a song, called ‘My sweet Lord’ which was, indeed, quite sickeningly saccharine and tooth-ache inducing.

So much so, that when, decades later the following story appeared in the papers I fully sympathised with the RC church, for the first and most probably last time in my life:

A New York art gallery has decided to cancel an exhibit of a chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ after protests by a US Catholic group.

The six-foot (1.8m) sculpture, entitled “My Sweet Lord”, depicts a naked Jesus Christ with his arms outspread.

The sculpture, by artist Cosimo Cavallaro, was to have been displayed from Monday at Manhattan’s Lab Gallery.

The timing, over Easter Holy Week - the most important part of the Christian year - provoked an outcry.

The Roger Smith Hotel housing the Lab gallery decided to cancel the exhibition after the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights called for a boycott.

Alas, like Rambo pictures, Paris Hilton, periods and other most unwelcome phenomena, some stories can be buried but will always rise again, like a cash-hungry & vapid Hollywood vampire:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A life-size chocolate sculpture of a naked Jesus will finally be displayed in New York starting in late October, seven months after an outcry by Roman Catholics forced a different gallery to cancel its exhibition.

The chocolate Jesus will be joined by sculptures of several fully clothed saints, but the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said it will not protest because, unlike before, there are no plans to put the “anatomically correct” Jesus in public view during Holy Week.

The Proposition gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood will present “Chocolate Saints … Sweet Jesus,” an exhibition timed to coincide with All Saints’ Day on November 1. The show will run October 27 to November 24.

Mind you, the church was always fighting a losing battle here. I’m not sure what it is with the George Harrisons of this world, but to some people chocolate goes with Christ as Hannibal with Lecter:

In Colombia, the image of Jesus has been seen on the side of a mug of hot chocolate. Specifically, the face appeared on the side of the mug in a pattern of drips. Because this week, the week before Easter, is known as “holy week” by the Catholic Church, the are rumored to be investigating the appearance. In the meantime, a shrine has been set up for visitors to view the cup in the kitchen where it was discovered.

And when it’s not Jesus – Man or Boy – discovered in or covered with chocolate it’s His Momma:

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — Workers at a chocolate factory located at 17290 New Hope, in Fountain Valley, claim the Virgin Mary has appeared as a chunk of chocolate.

They claim the chocolate dripped down and formed a small statue resembling a drawing of the virgin Mary.

Workers have placed rose petals and candles around the figure.

All of this can lead to some thorny if captivating chunks of faith-based speculation of the ‘What would Jesus do?’ variety – and, more to the point maybe, to the sticky question of who would have the true belief, or balls, to follow in His footsteps?

Well, this guy had:

Kenosha, Wis. — It might sound like a chocoholic’s dream, but stepping into a vat of viscous chocolate became a two-hour nightmare for a 21-year-old man Friday morning.

Darmin Garcia, an employee of a company that supplies chocolate ingredients, said he was pushing the chocolate down into the vat at Debelis Corp. because it was stuck. But it became loose and he slid into the hopper.

It was in my hair, in my ears, my mouth, everywhere,” said Garcia, who has worked at the company for two years. “I felt like I weighed 900 pounds. I couldn’t move.”

The chocolate was 110 degrees, hotter than a hot tub, said Capt. Greg Sinnen of the Kenosha Fire Department.

Co-workers, police and firefighters tried to free the man but couldn’t get him loose until the chocolate was thinned out with cocoa butter.

Enough with the chocolate already.

Although…

Okay, if you think being covered with chocolate is bad, spare a thought for the visitors of a certain ballet, ‘The Snow Queen.’

It was a night to remember when Duncan Poulter took his wife to a performance of The Snow Queen at Bristol Hippodrome.

They were showered with pigeon droppings during the ballet and performed their own pirouette, fleeing their £17 seats.

“During the first part we could hear a dull thudding noise, which we discovered was pigeon droppings falling on to a gent in front of us,” said Mr Poulter, 60, a retired engineer.

“We could also smell bird droppings, and the seats in front of us were splattered with them too … We had just got into the second part when I was hit with a real dose of it.”

The Hippodrome, which said it had offered to pay Mr Poulter’s dry-cleaning bill, admitted yesterday: “Over the last few months we have had a few unfortunate incidents with pigeons getting into the building and accessing the auditorium.”

“Accessing the auditorium…” Brilliant!

Or, in the immortal words of Bing – and countless others, ‘Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…!‘

Throughout the ages the old have always complained about the young. These modern days of ours are no exception to this rule.

We do have a few more sticks and stones to throw at our unruly brood though. That’s the wonderful thing about modern technology: you can blame all sorts of things on it:

Young children who watch more than two hours of television a day show clear signs of bad behaviour, lower social skills and disrupted sleep patterns, a study has found, writes Steven Swinford.

The researchers who carried out the study said the evidence against sustained television viewing was now so strong that parents should ration viewing for younger children. They also warned that having televisions in bedrooms posed particular risks.

The study adds to a growing body of research that suggests television can damage children’s health and development. Prolonged viewing has previously been linked to obesity, attention deficit disorders and linguistic problems.

Now, I’m no expert – and life’s definitely too short to spend on doing all kinds of nonsensical research, which may or may not prove that TV turns children into stuttering & psychotic little lard dwarves who have trouble remembering why they have just set the cat or the milkman on fire.

Still, role models, anyone? You know: parents and other grown-ups leading by example?

Like this fine (if not quite upstanding) citizen:

Wheelchair-bound Ian MacKenzie, 47, has been slapped with an ASBO after a string of misdemanours which wound up locals and shopkeepers in Preston, Lancashire.

He also bombarded emergency crews with 999 calls in which he told telephone workers how dolphins mated.

Police collected a dossier of his bizarre nuisance behaviour in the Sharoe Green area and presented it to city magistrates. It included:

* hurling himself out of his wheelchair into main roads and supermarket car parks

* throwing his colostomy bag on the floor in front of shops and threatening to squirt passers-by with the contents

* relieving himself on the pavement in front of local businesses

MacKenzie, of Ashness Close, Fulwood, was facing up to five years jail, but Preston magistrates issued him with an ASBO ordering him to behave himself. The order which bans him from his regular haunts will run until October 2009.

Of course, most of the actual parenting has always been done by women. Which, on the whole, is a good thing, since a lot of men do seem to have trouble picking their nose and shouting abuse at the referee at the same time. In grown males we don’t usually call this kind of thing a Gross Attention Deficit Disorder – but only because it is such a damn mouthful. So, most of the time it gets abbreviated (mostly by women) to a tired ‘Ye Gadd!’

So, when your average male would rather hurl himself out of wheelchairs than set a good example to the young, it is a comfort to know that women are made of more dependable stuff. They can be trusted to show their children what grown-up behaviour is all about.

Right?

Ah well, dream on…:

Rescue crews freed a woman trapped under a sport utility vehicle in Brookline late on Monday morning.

Police said the woman, whose name has not been released, feared her husband was cheating on her. They said she went to spy on him by crawling under an SUV outside her husband’s alleged girlfriend’s house in the 1300 block of Oakridge Street.

She apparently fell asleep under the vehicle and became trapped after someone let the air out of the tyres.

Still, where parents fail, we always have the professionals, who can repair a lot of the damage that is done in the home environment. Yes, our dedicated teachers can always be depended on to come to civilisation’s and our children’s rescue.

Sort of…:

St. Louis - A middle school teacher was arrested after police said he showed up at school drunk, asked one of his students to fetch cognac, then fondled a student and made a sexual remark to another.

The teacher, Sterling Johnson, was charged with misdemeanor assault and a misdemeanor count of disturbing the peace. The school system will seek to have him fired, said Creg Williams, superintendent of public schools in St. Louis.

So, yes, by all means, let’s blame our TV sets for everything.

Hell, it makes as much sense as most of the other things we claim to believe in, hold as true and (hardly ever care to) vote for.