Glob-a-log

Okay, this is a strange one.

Have you ever been thrown out of a restaurant because you were caught eating at one of their tables?

Or been banned from your local cinema for watching a movie? Thought not.

Still, that is – more or less – what happened to Andy Heatman, from Maghull:

A KEEP-FIT fan has been barred from his Merseyside gym after complaints that he was sweating too much.

Andy Heatman, from Maghull, was left humiliated after he was told there had been 15 complaints about his personal hygiene. The 42-year-old psychiatric nurse, who teaches patients about cleanliness and hygiene, was confronted by staff at Cheshire Lines Health Club, in Maghull.

The father-of-three said he was angry and embarrassed about what had happened and now feels paranoid about his body odour. He said: “I work out for two hours, four or five times a week. I use the bikes, treadmill and cross trainer so of course I sweat. But no-one has ever said anything about my body odour, I use showers, shower gel, deodorant just like everyone else.”

Cheshire Lines gym owner Bill Martin said: “We did everything humanly possible to avoid humiliating him. We have standards here as well as any other gym has standards.”

The song ‘Summertime’ is great for singing under the shower:

‘So hush little baby
Don’t you cry
One of these mornings
You’re going to rise up singing
You’ll spread your bingo wings
And take to the sky’

But till that morning you might have a hard time explaining what you did, so it might be wise to leave the phone off the hook:

PDT White Plains, N.Y. (AP) — A New York Roman Catholic Church official says the long-serving pastor of a suburban parish is under investigation for allegedly using church money to feed a gambling habit.

There was no immediate comment Sunday from the priest. His home telephone mailbox was not accepting messages Sunday.

Anyway, the long-serving and soon to be long-suffering pastor may take comfort in the knowledge that Jesus would not have minded all that much. The Good Book states that the Son of Man did have it in for the money changers in the temple but It keeps reassuringly schtumm about throwing it away on dubious horses or ill-tempered bingo cards.

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be laughing – a man died, after all. Still, sometimes it must be great to be a cop.

The stories you hear – the stories you can tell…

Facing the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun on a dark West Baltimore street, Roland Scott fought back. He pulled out his own weapon - a fake handgun - and wrested the shotgun away from his attacker, city police said.

Scott ordered the man to strip naked in the middle of Laurens Street, took $800 from him and forced him to march into the laundry room of a nearby apartment building.

“He starts beating him, telling him to get more money, saying, ‘Get me a cell phone or I’m going to kill you,’” said Sgt. Dennis M. Raftery Jr., a supervisor in the Police Department’s homicide unit. “He is beating him with the butt of a sawed-off shotgun.”

Raftery said the shotgun, then pointed at Scott, discharged, hitting Scott in the stomach and killing him. Authorities said his death will be ruled accidental.

“It is unusual,” Raftery said yesterday. “I don’t know how to put it. It is sort of like one for the books.”

Yup, and any bookie would have given you incredible odds for that one to happen.

Definitely one for the Darwin Awards

Okay, so I’m not trying to be judgemental here but could it be that the men in Japan are a bit too busy playing with robots and trying to invent ever smaller cell phones and ever more complicated DVD-recorders?

I mean, it does seem that they are neglecting some other, fairly elementary and rather important duties…

Housewife Miyuki Yanagisawa cannot recall the last time she had sex with her husband. She is certain, though, that their physical estrangement can be measured in years, not months. Yanagisawa is not alone. According to a new report by the World Health Organisation, a quarter of married couples in Japan have not had sex in the past year. The problem worsens with age. While the study found that the 42 per cent of couples in their twenties who had lived together for fewer than five years had sex at least once a week, almost 38 per cent of married couples in their fifties have none.

The Japan Society of Sexual Science deems a marriage ’sexless’ when a couple go for a month or more without having sex and does not expect the situation to improve. People trapped in sexless marriages blame long working hours, a claim backed up by global surveys of sexual activity conducted by Durex. According to the condom maker, Japanese couples have sex 45 times a year, well below the global average of 103 times.

According to one study a fifth of Japanese husbands say they are bored with intercourse, while about 15 per cent say they are simply too tired. A similar proportion of women agree that the spark has gone out of their love lives, although fewer than one in 10 blames their lover’s poor performance in bed.

Well, since those lovers don’t even bother to show up for a performance, I’d say it’s not that simple to assess their potential - so to speak.

Again, maybe it’s time for all Japanese men to stop developing ever more sophisticated electronic and digital toys, put away those stupid Manga porn magazines and try to spend more happy time with their wives. So that these wives can greet their hubbies at the door with a demure, “Is that the new Nokia in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

It has not been a brilliant week for the clergy. First, a judge announced that a church deacon had to stand trial over a bit of testicular bother in a bar last June:

PDT Oklahoma City (AP) – A judge ordered a man Wednesday to stand trial on a felony assault charge after a bar confrontation that escalated from football trash-talking to a near castration. Allen Michael Beckett, 54, will be tried on a charge of aggravated assault and battery, Special Judge D. Fred Doak ruled.

Beckett, a federal auditor and church deacon, is accused of tearing the scrotum of Brian Christopher Thomas, 35, in June. Thomas said he received more than 60 stitches and still endures pain, although there was no permanent damage.

Then came the news that an FBI search party for a missing pastor came to an abrupt halt when they found the good shepherd alive and well and drooling over bits of naked female flock:

PDT RIVERSIDE, Ohio (AP) – Police say a pastor who was reported missing from his home in western New York has been found at an Ohio strip club. A police officer patrolling the K.C. Lounge parking lot Friday morning in the Dayton suburb of Riverside spotted out-of-state license plates on 46-year-old Craig Rhodenizer’s car.

The FBI and New York authorities had been searching for Rhodenizer, who disappeared Wednesday after telling his wife he was getting his computer fixed at Best Buy. He is the pastor of a church in Lyndonville, N.Y. Detective Matt Sturgeon said Rhodenizer was disoriented when confronted by police and said he felt “emotionally guilty.”

So, it was a most welcome relief to hear that the other news to come out today concerning the clergy was not about priests brawling in bars or running away to join a strip joint:

LYNCHBURG, Va. — The wife of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell has written a book recounting the half-century she spent with the Moral Majority founder. Macel (MAY’sell) Falwell’s book, “Jerry Falwell: His Life and Legacy,” is set for release on May 15 _ the first anniversary of Falwell’s death at age 73.

Macel Falwell told The News & Advance of Lynchburg she has been working on the book since September. The book will relate her experiences with her husband and tell of the founding of Thomas Road Baptist Church. The book is being published through Howard Books, which said it will include insight into Falwell’s often controversial statements and his relationship with Ronald Reagan.

Of course, with the kind of press the church has got lately it should not come as a big surprise if the book would claim that Falwell’s ‘relationship with Ronald Reagan’ came with lots of vaseline, handcuffs, whips, butt plugs and leather hoods – with Nancy watching and filming the procedures on video.

If so, the inevitable based-on-the-book movie should be worth waiting for.

Now here’s an interesting story for you.

Let’s say you want to buy a house – and you’re offered one quite cheaply. Of course, you’re not an idiot, so you want to know why the place is going for so little money.

So, you check things out – and all seems to be well. No-one is planning to build a new highway, a railway or an airport in your backyard. The land hasn’t been used as a chemical waste dump. It’s not close to some crumbling cliff or an overbearing volcano. Faultline nor river runs through it…

It’s just a perfectly okay house, in a perfectly normal environment – so you buy it and you can expect to live happily ever after.

Well, okay, not quite:

After enduring howls in the night and creaking staircases for the past three years, an Italian family is preparing to sue the previous owners of their house for not telling them it was haunted. Gaetano Bastianelli, 57, and his wife Stefania paid €120,000 (£94,000) for the modern home in the Umbrian town of Spoleto in 2005 - encouraged by the fact that all the furniture and fittings were left by the owners, right down to the coffee cups. “We considered it the deal of the century,” said Mr Bastianelli.

The couple claim they were unaware that the house in Santo Chiodo road had been built close to the disused Pozzi Ginori cemetery, or that strange goings-on at the address during the 1970s had necessitated an exorcism - and prompted a visit from Perugia University’s paranormal research team.
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“The ghosts started their haunting on the first night,” said Mr Bastianelli, a former long-distance lorry driver. “I woke suddenly at around one or two in the morning. There was water seeping from under the bathroom door. The hot water tap was pouring out boiling water and the room was full of steam. My wife was stunned, because she had turned off everything before going to bed.”

He claimed that by next morning, malevolent spirits had left “luminous green mould all over the walls”. After that things got worse. He said the sound of chains rattling had alarmed his 10-year-old daughter, and claimed that the lawnmower and his wife’s car had spontaneously combusted.

Now Mr Bastianelli has engaged a lawyer, Antonio Francesconi, to sue the previous owners for failing to inform him that the house was haunted. “We have a good case,” said Mr Francesconi. “Under article 1490 of Italian law, you have to tell buyers if there is anything wrong. I think that the previous owners will settle out of court.”

Well, I wish Mr Bastianelli good luck with his case but I can’t say I share his optimism. I’m not a lawyer (praise the Lord) nor an exorcist (ditto) but I’d say he doesn’t have a ghost of a chance.

Did you ever hear the expression, ‘Jesus on a sweaty old sock!’?

No? Well, that – and other verbal hiccups of blasphemous & honest surpise might come very handy when you read the following tale.

A story of love and furniture – a story of outdoor love and perhaps consenting furniture – a story of…

Well, read it for yourself; I feel another headache coming on:

BELLEVUE, OH — A man in central Ohio is accused of having sex with his picnic table.

The investigation began when a tipster gave police three DVDs showing Arthur Price having sexual intercourse with a metal round table on his deck.

The incidents occurred between January and March 2008.

Police say the DVDs show Price involved in a sex act in his bedroom. He walks out to his deck, tilts the table on its side and has sex with it.

Police say Price lives near an elementary school.

Price admitted that he had sex with the picnic table when police questioned him.

He confirmed to police the incidents caught on the DVDs and said he had also had sex with the table inside the home.

Price faces four counts of public indecency. He is free on a $20,000 bond.

Oh, and that Jesus sock I mentioned: it’s for sale.

On eBay, of course…

Have you read about the smoking tortoise?

It’s a brilliant little story:

 A TORTOISE that smokes and appears to be addicted to nicotine has been discovered in China’s northeastern province of Jilin. The animal is the pet of a man, identified by his surname Yun, who is himself a smoker, Xinhua news agency said today, quoting a local newspaper.One day, Mr Yun teased the tortoise by putting a cigarette butt into its mouth, and to his surprise it started to smoke it, according to the news agency. From then on, he shared his cigarettes with his pet, Xinhua said. “It seems to have become addicted,” Mr Yun was quoted as saying. “Whenever I smoke in front of it, it will stick its head out of the water and fidget about until I give it the stub.”Mr Yun proved his claim by putting a cigarette in the tortoise’s mouth in front the paper’s reporter and his neighbours, Xinhua quoted the newspaper as saying. To everyone’s surprise, the tortoise finished it in less than four minutes, the news agency said. 

… so I’m starting a tortoise farm and I’m gonna get rich selling smoked – or smoking – tortoise.

I swore I wouldn’t write another damn word about the bloody woman – but she’s making it too hard.

Like a vampire drawn to old Enoch’s rivers of blood - like a tongue to a bad tooth… like a movie critic to a Lindsay Lohan train wreck of a performance, I can’t escape this particular Heartbreak Hotel:

PARIS HILTON has a tough life doesn’t she? The socialite recently spoke out against critics who claim she does nothing for a living. Of course, Paris does plenty of freelance work to keep her head above water.

Hilton flew in to Turkey to be on the jury for their national beauty pageant - helping to choose the stunner who will represent their country in the Miss World contest.Asked what she’d be looking for in the prospective winner, Paris said:

“This is my first time judging anything like this.I’m going to look at how the girls carry themselves, what they look like, the way they dress and what they say.”

But, never one to let someone else steal the limelight, Paris made sure she was the centre of attention by arriving in a dress that was slashed up to the waist, and before joining in with a sexy belly dancer on stage.

Ever the shrinking violet Paris also told reporters she was happy to be seen as a role model for young girls. She said:

“I work very hard and I’ve built this empire on my own. I think this is an inspiration for a lot of girls out there.”

Right.

Seriously though, can no-one rid us of this troublesome broad?

You’ve heard about office affairs, of course.

Well, the following story is taking the old office affair to quite improbable ‘make-over’ heights…

If life on Earth was not strange enough, nature occasionally throws a very unusual creation into the genetic mix. Although it is extremely rare, animals occasionally succeed in producing offspring with mates from closely related species.

Scientists believe some actively try to mate outside their own species to increase the diversity of their wild populations. But most hybrids are born in captivity - which may suggest sexual frustration and proximity are stronger factors.

Kekaimalu the ‘wolphin’ was the result of the union of a bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale, which is actually a member of the dolphin family. The two parent animals mated while working together at Sea Life Park in Hawaii and Kekaimalu was born in 1985.

Yes, the old sexual frustration and work floor proximity make, if you’ll pardon the pun, for strange bedfellows.

it must be John McCain’s worst nightmare: that sometime, somewhere on the campaign trail Hillary and Obama get snowed in together, in some boring motel, trapped for days and days, with nothing to do than watch old M*A*S*H & Gilligan’s Island repeats…

… only to sheepishly present the result to the waiting world press some time later - the ultimate killer candidate: Obillary Hillama.

What do you mean, distasteful? Wait till you hear my story about George Bush and his beloved Barney, beached on some uninhabited tropical island… Barush Burney for president, anyone?