Noah Counte

• The world speed knitting championships are being held in Minneapolis this year, and the Scottish defending champion is refining her skills in preparation. here's a pic of the champion with her game face on (and a story about the hallowed tradition).
  
  
• The rise in the price of postage stamps is keeping pace with the rise in the cost of gasoline. On the other hand, it's inversely proportional to the cost of housing. Going up! Again.
  
  
• You don't have to wait for the county fair to have your own deep fried candy bar. Feel free to substitute at will. Tell your cholesterol I said "your're welcome."
  
  
• Karen's badger (NSFW or kids) makes this spinning weiner seem appropriate today.
  
  
• New Hampshire OKs hemp farming. Feds on the lookout for farmers with the munchies.
  
  
• Leona Helmsley is poised to make a lot more people happy in death than she did in life. Her estate donated a bundle to a charitable trust.
  
  
• Your sponge has more crap on it than does your toilet. Learn to clean your sponge.
  
  
• This Mizzunk is the shizzle, yo!
  

• Dolly Parton named her breasts. She's 62 years old, and now it's news?
  
  
• I've known a dominatrix or two, and the lawyer in me always asks if they aren't worried about legal action for physical harm inflicted to clients. They've always answered "no, the clients would be too embarrassed to press charges." That's one hell of an insurance policy, and the mindset speaks volumes about what I think is the trouble with intense B&D/S&M: the people who engage in it are not always (OK, in my experience, not often) in a position to make reasoned judgments about what they are doing or why they are doing it. That causing permanent damage to another human would be treated cavalierly solely because that human couldn't sue you is abhorent. Man suffers brain damage at New York sex club.
  
  
• On the day before Pancake Day, Fargo officially takes the (pan)cake.
  
  
• Dear Asian Gentleman, you could have saved yourself much heartache and strife by recylcling your used goods at Noah's Solid Waste Reclamation Facility, instead of illegally dumping it. Yours, The Management.
  
  
• New Zealand is giving American hilljacks a run for their money. "Honey, Jerry Springer's on the phone!" Can't we all just get along?
  
  
• There aren't enough people falling for West African email scams, so they've changed tactics. All your cash are belong to us!"
  

I don't know why this story caught my eye. The sheer lunacy of the whole thing, perhaps. Stick with me...

A guy gets arrested and jailed for making bomb threats. A 20 year old woman jailer decides the inmate is just her type (maybe he's upwardly mobile?), and enters his cell to give him a New Years Eve gift. The gift included lots of kissing, and progressed to oral sex. Understandably, the inmate/mad bomber is all for this little holiday exchange of goodwill.

As you might guess (and as an employee of the community corrections department should know), they actually videotape the comings and goings within the jail. Needless to say, there is evidence of the festivities captured for posterity. And her bosses are angry with her.

So what happens? Jailer gets fired? That might be a reasonable and appropriate response, but it's much worse than that for the amorous young woman. She's been charged with rape (and sodomy, and some other stuff). Seems an inmate is a ward of the state, and therefore cannot give consent in Oklahoma. That makes her act the same as sex with a minor. Except this minor was almost twice her age. Wouldn't surprise me if that was the case in most states.

I don't have a problem with making jail guards pay for the sexual exploitation of inmates (I don't mean charge them up front for the pleasure, I mean punish them afterwards as a deterent). The division of power makes it wholey unjust for guards to have relations with inmates. Still, this case doesn't seem like the type of event that should land a young woman, even one with both bad taste and bad judgment, in jail for 10 years.

Mugshot goodness and charging papers.

One of the beauties of the internet is that it's full of crap you wouldn't read anywhere else. Today I meandered past the following websites and news stories. They don't tie together well, so I haven't really tried.

• Turns out that Australians are a randy bunch who like to travel. Half of them want to join the mile high club, and 12% say they already belong. I've never been on a flight where sneaking two people into a bathroom would have been any less conspicuous than flying naked with celery sticking out of your bum - well, not since all the airlines partnered up and started overbooking every flight. Read about the Aussie National Fantasy.
  
  
• The best Red Light District in the world is finally getting a cleaned-up. It happened to New York City's 42nd & Broadway in the 90s, it happened to Hamburg's Reeperbahn in the late 80s. Amsterdam is late to the party. I visited all three in their heyday and, although there was an initial thrill of seedy taboo, the experiences had a common theme: boredom. Something is sad and depressing about all that sex involving so many solitary people all at once. Say good-bye to Amsterdam's Red Light Distict. Say good-bye to Amsterdam's hash bars, while you are at it. At least they still have Oranjeboom on tap (even though it's not brewed in town).
  
  
• Haggis: a Scottish export whose time has come! Rumor has it that Scotland is goign to petition the US to permit them to export their national dish (and delicacy) to lovers of the offal. By "rumor," I mean BBC news story.
  
  
• Liv Tyler is lovely. She was a lovely child, and she's a lovely woman. I don't know her (so I have no idea whether she's a decent person), but she serves to remind us that the beauty of women is in their womanhood - that their bodies are uniquely designed, both internally and externally, to suppost the life of another being. That was inartfully said, but I am just glad to see a young woman who is comfortable not being 110 pounds. Yea, Liv Tyler. Google '"Liv Tyler" Hawaii', if you are interested. Old folks are hot, too! It's a Sun story, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. Put a smile on my face, though. Remember when thinking about old naked people was gross? The closer I get, the more attractive it seems.
  
  
• We Americans eat a lot. I'm guilty. This might put me off my feed, though: Supersized Meals. I already don't eat most of that stuff, but goodness! I am ready for a good fast, now!
  
  
• Speaking of eating, in Mexico, they eat jumiles. They are stinkbugs that taste like cinnamon. Or iodine, which they are full of. Cinnamon and iodine are almost the same, after all. They are eaten alive, or cooked (in whih case they aer often still eaten alive, because they live for weeks after being beheaded and cooked. Not what I'm after when I hanker for Mexican food. Sorry!
  

Where are you wandering in the ether?