Calvary Nudist Baptist Church

"Do not disrobe in the parking lot; use the foyer. You may carry a small bag into the church or use the clothing check system near the restrooms."

Noodle-Man Steve

People with nothing to do will do anything. "You want your water to be good and hot for the noodles . . . to cook."

The Shape of Things to Come?

Marginal Revolution observes:

The Environmental Security Hypothesis says that in tough times men will prefer women who are good at production, generally older, taller, heavier, less curvaceous women with less body fat. In good times, they will prefer women who are good at reproduction, generally younger, shorter, lighter, more curvaceous women.

Of course, it just may be that beauty is in the eye of the optimist.

h/t to R2D2.

Orgasms for Obama

This is a joke, right? I know it's in San Francisco, but it has to be a joke:

You will be guided into using breath, sound, and movement to access your erotic energy, raise its vibration, and circulate it throughout your entire body, culminating in a simultaneous group energetic breath orgasm(!). (This is a clothes-on workshop). ;-)

Supply Your Own Punch Line

WNBC in New York reports:

VERMONT -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman.

"PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says.

PETA officials say a move to human breast milk would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health.

"The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn't make sense," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Everyone knows that 'the breast is best,' so Ben & Jerry's could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk."

We wonder if adoption of such a plan would spur the creation of a more anatomically correct cherry to use atop sundaes.

[UPDATE (3:45 p.m.): Suggested new Ben & Jerry's flavors include Jenny Garcia, Peanut Butter C-cup, and the observation that Chunky Monkey could be retained.]

Religion News

"It wasn't the first time I performed the ritual, but it was the first time I put a sword through my foot," she said.

We certainly hope so. More HERE.

Al Gore: The Gift That Keeps on Talking

As Professor Reynolds observes: "Al Gore is looking (and sounding) more and more like a Baptist televangelist all the time." Of course, one distinction is that at least some televangelists actually believe something, while al Gore worships only, well, al Gore. But he does it with such passion, fervor, and righteousness that it's hard not to be impressed.

MMMMmmmmm . . . . . Barbeque Sauce!

The Appleton, Wisconsin Post-Crescent reports:

An Appleton couple was awakened in the wee hours of the morning Wednesday to the sound of a burglar whistling in their basement.

Then events really got strange: The man was discovered wearing the couple's clothes and covered with barbecue sauce.

The homeowner grabbed an unloaded shotgun, confronted the intruder and ordered him upstairs, where he held him at gunpoint until police arrived, according to the criminal complaint.

Aaron M. Maurice, 35, 300 E. Fremont St., was wearing the woman's jacket and the man's hat and explained "he was in the military and that someone had tipped off the FBI that (he) was providing secrets to the terrorists."

He told the police that the barbecue sauce, taken from the couple's refrigerator, was "an urban disguise, if you will."

WTF?

Eh?

The Kickboxer

Actually, he's the Box Kicker. Some NSFW language.

OOPS!

Remember this story, from last week's Time magazine, "Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High":

As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.

The story created a blogstorm of comment, and we confess to having been tempted to join in. But there was something about the story, despite its source in the increasingly irrelevant legacy media, that sounded fishy.

Turns out we were right. The Associated Press now reports:

GLOUCESTER, Mass. -- The Gloucester, Mass. principal who claimed that some of the 17 pregnant girls in his school had made a pact to become pregnant will not attend a meeting of city leaders on the subject.

Mayor Carolyn Kirk did not say why Principal Joseph Sullivan would not be at the meeting she called for Monday with other school, health and city leaders.

Kirk said she and the superintendent have been in close touch with the principal. She reiterated they had no independent information to back up his assertion that some of the 17 girls who became pregnant this year had planned to become pregnant and raise their babies together.

Sullivan has not returned calls for comment since a Time magazine article last week.

The moral of the story? Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

¿Está quemando Portland?

Two Places

In the first place: We are filled with awe.

In the second place: The guy (and you know it was a guy) who is responsible does not date a whole lot. Let's just leave it at that, eh?

Today in Total Bullshit

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said that the worst of the credit crunch may have passed.

Give Peas a Chance

G&S Reads McSweeney's

Classes My Top-Tier Law School Should Have Offered as Warnings About the Profession.

by E. Noakes

Cutting and Pasting Legal Lingo
Explaining Business Associations to the People Who Are Running Them
4 A.M. Word Processing and the Law
Ethics of Conspicuous Consumption
Forwarding E-mails: Theory and Practice: Seminar
Arbitrary-Deadline Negotiation Strategies
Crying Quietly: Clinic
Jeans-Friday Advocacy Workshop
Cutting and Pasting II: Plural to Singular

h/t: KW.

Final Answer

Number One Son (the Hired Hand) has bitten the bullet and decided to attend law school at the University of Pennsylvania. In doing so, he rejects the blandishments of Boalt Hall at the University of California. He thus follows in the footsteps of his father who was once faced with a similar decision: study law at the State University, or get a job.

Congratulations.

Time to Panic

Dave Johnston reports:

As word of food riots and worldwide shortage spread to the Indianapolis area this week, local residents began flocking to nearby grocery stores to stock up on supplies ahead what many believe could be a prolonged period of strife and suffering.

[snip]

Republican nominee John McCain last week stated that he would suspend the federal sales tax on rice if elected. However, a campaign spokesman later had to back off this promise as they discovered that rice and similar grocery items are already exempt from sales tax.

All the local grocery stores we visited today appeared to have plenty of rice on their shelves, but most shoppers we spoke to were simply not willing to take any risk.

“It’s alarming. What if they do start rationing? First it’s rice, then it’ll be sugar, and eventually we wake up one morning and there’s no such thing as Cool Ranch Doritos. What then? I’m not waiting for it to get that bad,” offered Fowler as he headed to the checkout lanes.

Racially Divisive

According to Howard Dean and the DNC, this is a "racially divisive" political advertisement:

Surely Howie means to say that Reverend Wright's hate speech is racist and divisive, right? Because suggesting that the advertisement is somehow illegitimate would be interference in the free speech of the ad's sponsors, right? There's nothing misleading, let alone untrue, in the ad, so that can't be a problem, right?

We thought so.

Pass/Fail

But it's worth the trouble, no?