Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

I am so sorry.


BUT why would they get back in the water if they KNEW there were 'gators ?? We have them here in LA -- they are fast and they are predators; why take that risk ?

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[Victorious]

Jolie, He was a 12 yr old boy...sometimes they do stupid stuff to try to prove themselves... It's very sad! My son, myself and everyone in our small county just can't believe it.

Picture of Bryan

[Jolie Rouge]

Jolie, He was a 12 yr old boy...sometimes they do stupid stuff to try to prove themselves... It's very sad!

I agree with you 100% I just know those things scare the fire outa me and I can not imagine why they would get back in the water ... Did they think they were "playing" Crocodile Hunter ? It is just so tragic.

[Victorious]

I know the boys had seen the gators all day long.. I don't think he though that it would come up to him.... Another thing people do not know is that Bryan was in ESE classes. He was a little bit slower than the average 5th grader...


I personally would never swim in a lake in FL. for this reason.

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LONDON (Reuters) - One called her boss a "b!t@ch from hell" while another admitted "lying through his teeth" at interview.
Both the British job candidates were -- not surprisingly -- turned down after prospective employers discovered their candid comments on a public Web site.

The London recruitment firm which revealed the cases warned on Friday that employers were increasingly scouring the Internet to check what candidates are really like behind the rosy image they seek to project in CVs and interviews.

"One media sales executive aged 24 had a job offer withdrawn after a quick check on www.friendsreunited.co.uk revealed that the applicant only planned to stay in London for a few months before embarking on a world tour," London's Media Contacts said.

As well as missing out on the jobs they were aiming for, the frankness of some also cost them their current employment.

"Another candidate, an account manager, 26, for a well-known PR agency was forced to resign when she described her boss as a "***** from Hell" and her employer as "a bunch of cowboys," Media Contacts said.

In a third case, a senior sales executive seeking a move also ended up getting fired after boasting to the Friends Reunited site, set up to keep old school pals in touch, that he lied at interview and his CV was "a masterpiece of fiction."

"People should think carefully what they say about employers -- past and present -- and what they say about themselves in any public domain," Media Contacts' recruitment consultant Gordon Cherrington said. "Having fun...is a good thing, though negativity in any form, rarely reflects well on the writer."

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MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police seized more than 25 tonnes of hashish on Thursday in a refrigerated truck carrying frozen squid in the southern port of Algeciras, the second-biggest haul of its kind, officials said.
The drug had been sent from Morocco stashed inside the truck, the Civil Guard said in a statement.

The driver was arrested and held for questioning. In a separate incident, customs officers in the British colony of Gibraltar seized over half a ton of cocaine with a street value of 90 million pounds ($150 million). Three people, including a British woman, were being questioned.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Despite the bone through his nose, his shaved head and pierced face, the 25-year-old pacing a seedy stretch of New York sidewalk admitted he was terrified of what he was about to do.

But after a few minutes, a couple cigarettes and several deep breaths, he sat in the basement of a storefront tattoo parlor, closed his eyes and let a friend split his tongue down the middle with a scalpel.

The latest trend among teens and 20-somethings who indulge in so-called extreme body modification, forking one's tongue like a serpent's "is an art form," said T.J. McGillis, who offers the service for a $250 charge.

"Everybody wants to get it done. It could be the next mainstream thing aside from piercing," he said.

That may be an exaggeration. The number of people with split tongues is estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 people by the editor of a Web-based magazine devoted to body modification, but the trend is attracting enough attention that a few U.S. state legislatures have moved to ban the procedure.


Ian, the young man with the bone through his nose who did not want to reveal his last name, opted for tongue splitting after earlier adventures left him with huge rings in his ears, silver barbells piercing his face, myriad tattoos and who-knows-what-else under his baggy shirt and pants.

"I like the way it looks," he said, listing his reasons. "Two, I think it will be more fun during oral sex and the girls will get a kick out of it. Three, everyone and their mother has their tongue pierced and four, I'm an idiot."

FRESHLY CUT MEAT

The process is nothing short of gory. In Ian's case, his tongue was clamped in place, numbed and slit 2 inches up the middle, looking uncomfortably like a piece of raw liver freshly cut by a butcher.

Other methods entail tying increasingly tighter pieces of thread through a pierced hole or cutting with a laser.

Blood gushed out of Ian's mouth and over the silver barbell in his lip for a few minutes, then abated with several doses of mouthwash.

"Go home and pull it apart," McGillis ordered him, suggesting a regimen of separating the two halves each morning and night to prevent reattachment.

After splitting his tongue, Emrys Yetz, 20, said it wasn't long before he could move each half independently and do party tricks like picking up pens and pencils.

"It's done to better yourself," he said, opening his mouth to wiggle each half like a snail waving its antennae.

Yetz argues tongue splitting is no different than a far more socially acceptable face lift or breast enhancement. The only downside, he said, is eating ice cream, since it's harder to make a scoop of your tongue when it's split in two.

NOT ALL FUN AND GAMES...

Not surprisingly, doctors say there are more downsides to tongue-splitting than dripping ice cream.

"There's the potential for life-threatening hemorrhage and the potential for life-threatening infection," said Dr. Lee Pollan, an oral surgeon based in Rochester, New York.

If that's not enough, he added, tongue-splitting can damage speech and taste and cause permanent numbness.

And reattaching a split tongue can be a complex process of reconstructive surgery and skin grafts, he added.

Dire warnings notwithstanding, tongue splitting is kids being kids, said psychology professor Stephen Franzoi at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who specializes in issues of physical attractiveness and body esteem.

It's a form of self-expression, alienation, rejecting mainstream culture and asserting independence, he said.

Comparing tongue splitters to young people wearing long hair and ragged jeans in the 1960s, he said: "This is the same psychological process, albeit more extreme.

"We encourage kids to be independent and express themselves and find their own personal identity," he said. "Every generation has a different way to find themselves in our culture. Some of them are more extreme than others."

After splitting his tongue, Ian made plans to pierce each tip, even as one waiting friend dampened his hope that the girls would love it.

"I think it's gross. It creeps me out," said hairdresser Jill Johnson. "I've dated guys with tattoos all over. I've seen it all, but that's too much for me. Imagine when you're 60 years old and you have your tongue like that."

But for believers in modification, a split tongue is merely a start. Split penises, sliced lengthwise in half, are not unheard of among aficionados.

[janelle]

I like the way it looks," he said, listing his reasons. "Two, I think it will be more fun during oral sex and the girls will get a kick out of it. Three, everyone and their mother has their tongue pierced and four, I'm an idiot."

I can't imagine being able to do it with a split tongue. Too funny to imagine him trying.
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But for believers in modification, a split tongue is merely a start. Split penises, sliced lengthwise in half, are not unheard of among aficionados.
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Are these people Michael Jackson wanna bes? Having a crucified nose and now a crucified penis. Maybe Jackson has one of those as well with the way he talks. Oh my.

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BURLINGTON, Iowa (AP) - A man riding a three-wheeled motorcycle was struck by a deer when the animal jumped over the vehicle.

Robert Shane Tomason, 34, of Burlington, was treated at a local hospital for injuries he received in Thursday's collision. He has been released.

Tomason was knocked off the bike by the collision. A passenger traveling with Tomason in the trike managed to stop the motorcycle.

[Jolie Rouge]

Gatecrasher Arrested at Prince William Party

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...5.htm&sc=reodd

LONDON (Reuters) - Police have arrested a man who gatecrashed Prince William's 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle on Saturday night.

They said a "thorough review" into how the man got past security at the midsummer fancy dress party was under way. "We consider any breach of security to be a serious matter," a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said on Sunday. She added that the man had not been armed and that nobody was injured during the incident.


The News of the World newspaper reported on Sunday that the man stumbled onto the stage and grabbed the microphone as Prince William was making a speech.


Security guards dragged the man away as be began shouting, the paper added.


Police say they arrested the man at around 11:20 p.m. (2220 GMT). He is being held at a Thames Valley police station, to the west of London.


Prince William had invited more than 300 family and friends to the "Out of Africa" party, including his father Prince Charles and grandmother Queen Elizabeth.



06/22/03 04:04

[Jolie Rouge]

F ! The Nation's Worst Readers Are In...

...Washington, D.C.

Public school children in the nation's capital read so poorly that a nationwide test has shown they are only slightly better readers than non-English-speaking children in the territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa, reports The Washington Times of "The Nation's Report Card: Reading 2000," a study issued on Thursday by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Students across the country were tested in fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. The report showed that fully 69 percent of D.C. public school fourth graders and more than half of its eighth graders had a "below basic" reading ability, which means they could not demonstrate an understanding of what they read.

Only 10 percent of the students were graded "at or above proficient" reading ability. Other areas of the country that ranked at the bottom of this list were Mississippi and California. The highest-ranking states that got an A+ in reading were Montana, Nebraska, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Maine, Minnesota, and Virginia tied for fifth place.

Nationwide, the reading achievement of fourth graders improved significantly since 1998 with the percentage of students reaching the "basic" level jumping from 60 percent to 64 percent; however, the average performance of eighth graders remained flat, while achievement among high school seniors declined at all levels. The takeaway? The little kids are smarter than the big kids.