Thanking Dr. King for Star Trek

The world didn't end then either.

You read the title and figured, “Okay, this is it. The big dude has finally lost it.” Everyone knows that Dr. King had a dream and not a star ship. Well, “everyone” knows lots of crap that’s wrong. Although it is true that Dr. King did not actually have a star ship, he did have a dream that powered one. And that dream led to the unlikely event of television’s first ever interracial kiss. Think of it in the pinball reality of how the water wheel powered loom led directly to computers. Which is true. As is the title of today’s blog. You see, once upon a time in a movie lot far far away, Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnez, via their company DesiLu Studios, bought the rights to a TV show that was going to be called “Wagon Train to the Stars.” While they were trying to come up with a better name they recorded the pilot episode. It was called “The Cage” and it was rejected for being too ethereal. But, and this is where history starts to rock, there was enough good stuff there that DesiLu ordered a second pilot. That one was called “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and it aired on September 8, 1966. And thus was Star Trek born.

Star Trek featured people from several races that had never appeared on TV in strong roles before. The Chinese guy wasn’t a cook, the Russian didn’t make hats and swill vodka, the black woman wasn’t a maid and so on. But, because this was America in the early 60′s, racism was overt and cruel. And now I’m going to let Nichelle Nichols tell you why she almost quit going to work because of the diseased jerks who taunted her and how Dr. King saved Star Trek and led to her locking lips with Captain Kirk.

Nichelle Nichols’ life has moved at the kind of warp speed her “Star Trek” character Lt. Nyota Uhura took for granted.

When television writer and producer Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” science fiction series debuted on NBC in 1966, the Civil Rights Movement — under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — was in high gear, fighting the injustices of racial segregation, black economic oppression and discrimination and racial violence against African Americans.

And when Nichols landed the role of communications officer Uhura on the Starship Enterprise (see dual image below of her then and now), she had no idea that this was a breakthrough role for black women.

“It didn’t hit me at the time until somebody told me,” she told The Huffington Post. “I splashed onto the TV screen at a propitious historical moment. Black people were marching all over the South. Dr. King was leading people to freedom, and here I was, in the 23rd century, fourth in command of the Enterprise.”

Nichols vividly recalls how America reacted when her Uhura character first hit the television airwaves.

“Oh, man, there were parts of the South that wouldn’t show ‘Star Trek’ because this was an African American woman in a powerful position, and she wasn’t a maid or tap dancer.”

While shooting “Star Trek” episodes in the late 1960s, Nichols didn’t feel any discrimination on the set, but felt it in other parts of the studio, especially where she wasn’t allowed to enter the studio through a particular gate where the other actors could go through.

“That’s right. There were instances where I was turned away from entering the studio at the walk-on gate, and I had to go all the way around to the front gate, sign-in and come back. A guard on the set told me I had no right being there — that they had replaced a blue-eyed blonde with me,” she remembered.

“I went through crap, man. Racism was alive and rampant there. Some people said I wasn’t good enough, saying things like, ‘I don’t know how you got this role.’ And they kept waiting for me to complain and raise hell about it, but I decided to ignore it. I never went to Gene [Roddenberry] about it.”

She even said that the show photographer was a racist. “There are more pictures of me behind somebody where you can barely see me, but they also had to take pictures of me singularly.”

Unhappy with how things were going with the show, and feeling tugged to hit the Broadway stage in New York, Nichols told Roddenberry she was leaving “Star Trek” at the end of the first season. He asked her to think about it over the weekend, during which she attended a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fundraiser that resulted in a life-changing close encounter for her.

“When I turned around, I was looking into the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, walking toward me with a big smile on his face,” she said about the civil rights leader, who confessed to being a “Trekkie” and her biggest fan.

When Nichols informed King that she was leaving “Star Trek,” he adamantly urged her to stay. “He said, ‘Don’t you realize how important your presence, your character is? This is not a black role or a female role. You have the first nonstereotypical role on television. You have broken ground.’”

“He added, ‘Here we are marching, and there you are projecting where we’re going. You cannot leave [the show]. Don’t you understand what you mean?’ I told him that when I would go on hiatus from the show, I could come and march with him and he said, ‘No! You’re an image for us. We look on that screen and we know where we’re going.’ It was like he was saying, ‘Free at last, free at last!’”

Nichols stayed with “Star Trek,” and it’s a good thing she did — otherwise she may not have had a chance to make history again by being part of the very first televised interracial kiss, with Capt. Kirk, no less.

It happened during “Trek’s” third season in an episode called “Plato’s Stepchildren,” where Kirk and Uhura were under the telekinetic control of some aliens.

While the script called for Kirk and Uhura to kiss, there were early concerns at NBC over whether or not such a thing should be shown on television in 1968.

“It had been OK’ed, script-wise, and we went into production for that episode,” Nichols recalled. “After the first take, the director yelled ‘CUT!’ and came over, saying, ‘Bill, what are you doing? You actually kissed her!’ And Bill said, ‘Yeah, I can’t get her to let me do it any other way except that it was written in the script. So, what’s the problem?’ And the director said, ‘The South — they’ll kill us.’”

After it was decided that Nichols and Shatner would shoot the kissing scene two ways — with and without the kiss — they tried it half a dozen times, with Shatner always kissing Nichols at the end of the scene.

“Bill would say, ‘Just once more. I feel there’s an intensity that we’re not getting because (the aliens) are causing us to do it with their telekinetic powers.’”

In the end, NBC executives decided to leave it in the episode, and thus was born the famous first interracial kiss on television.

That kiss has become one of the most famous moments in television history. Even more than Uncle Milty’s early drag act. I know guys who still need to take a personal lube moment when they think about it. Star Trek truly captured the possibility of racial harmony and unity in that moment.

No, the world did not change overnight. It still hasn’t changed as much as rational people would like now. But it did change. Incrementally I admit. But suddenly people were talking about something that was, previously, relegated to tawdry barn stories or stuff the French tolerated.

It could happen here. Everyone knew that because they’d seen it on TV.

And, for one brief, shining, moment, everyone was right.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

Happy VD (Again)

Buy a ticket, win a virgin!

Originally published on February 14, 2011.

*************************************

Ah, Valentine’s Day. A day steeped in history and tradition. A day festooned with jewelry, chocolates and flowers. And don’t forget the mushy cards. A day when perfectly sane women will gush and swoon over a stuffed animal. A day forever associated with the disease of love. A day where men the world over, except in Japan – which I’ll get to in a bit, need heart medication and bourbon to squelch the feeling of doom that they’ve, somehow, screwed the pooch.

Again.

Yes, this is a glorious day in which we celebrate the Lupercalia. What? You have no clue what a Lupercalia is? Well, if you’re celebrating Valentine’s Day, then you’re celebrating the ancient Roman feast in honor of a heathen god. Well, “heathen” might be a bit harsh, let’s go with “nontraditional.” On these occasions, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the names of young women were placed in a box, from which they were drawn by men as chance directed. Truly a lottery worth winning. Buy a ticket, win a virgin!

Nevertheless, the pastors of the early Christian Church endeavoured to do away with the pagan element in these feasts by substituting the names of saints for those of maidens. Since the Lupercalia began near the middle of February, the pastors appear to have chosen Saint Valentine’s Day for the celebration of this new feast. Because nothing says “LOVE” like a dead, defiant, monk. Anyway, the custom of young men choosing maidens for valentines arose in this way.

Now you know.

Even though it’s been proven that, with the right life partner, it really doesn’t matter what you give, this is a holiday of ramped up expectations.

A day that was set aside to celebrate love and fertility has somehow become an excuse to shell out $36,000 on a Fendi 24-Carat Gold Python Bag. And you can’t forget the $60,000 Vacheron Constantin Quai de L’Ile watch that goes so nicely with it.

Personally, I think that love and fertility can be celebrated with a bottle of Ripple and a box of Trojans. But I have been accused, wrongfully I believe, of being unromantic.

We all know about the Western traditions for Valentine’s Day. At least the basics. Show up clean, bring something nice, pay for an expensive dinner, shut up and pretend you enjoy the chick flick. Get it right and get a prize. Get it wrong and it’s monkey spanking time.

Nuff said.

So let’s take a gander at the Eastern variant. T. Ramune, an American woman who worked in Japan, wrote a wonderfully succinct blog about it all, so I’ll share that with the class.

Valentine, Valentine, Valentine’s Day in Japan!! Did you already prepare for your special loved one on Valentine’s? Valentine’s in Japan is a little bit different than in the US. It is mega marketing in Japan. On Feb 14, consumers purchase 25% of the total annual chocolate sales in Japan.

As a young lady, I used to work for a Japanese company in Tokyo and on February 14 I would carry tons of chocolate to the office, running to each floor and giving chocolate to my boss and my male co-workers. Yes, this is the day for men in Japan, not for us women. This is called “Giri Chocolate”. The word Giri means obligation in Japanese and we jokingly use this term to indicate that giving the chocolate is something that is expected.

We of course buy chocolate for our special loved one too. This will be more expensive and very special chocolate. Japanese department stores prepare two kinds of chocolate gifts; one for Giri-chocolate and another for Honmei-Chocolate (only for a serious love). Obviously, Japanese women spend more money for Honmei-chocolate. Limited chocolate from Europe by air can cost about $200 US.

Men, if you receive chocolate from Japanese woman which cost less than $3.00, I’m sorry, that is likely Giri-chocolate and she is not so serious about you, but she meant to say thank you. (However, my husband loves this chocolate, he claims Japanese chocolate is not so sweet and has a real cocoa taste.)

For school girls, this is a more serious tradition. This is the day to tell their Honmei-person (person they have a crush on) that they like them, to confess her feelings to him with Honmei-chocolate. On Feb 14, a school boy will know how popular he is in school. Some boys carry bags of chocolate back home while unfortunate school boys go home with none. This is heaven and hell for all school boys in Japan.

To balance the gift giving, another holiday called White Day is celebrated on March, 14th. On White Day, men return the favor to women who purchased chocolate on Valentine’s Day for them. Gifts from the men can be chocolate too, but sometimes lingerie may be given. In Japan, a man may even give lingerie to a female co-worker on this day. This is not really a serious invitation, it’s just for fun. On one White Day I received two gifts of lingerie from bosses of mine. The new Christian Dior slip and panties were most appreciated. I was happy to receive them but it wasn’t personal as most women in the department received similar gifts.

In Japanese culture this exchange of gifts on Valentine’s Day and White Day smoothes relationships between coworkers and friends, giving us an entertaining break from our busy and stressful jobs.

Wanna be my Honmei Homie?

I do, however, wonder if we could spruce up company morale by handing out lingerie to the female staff members here at Nude Hippo. I know it would do wonders for the men in the office.

But that does bring us, albeit clumsily, to March 14th. Not to be outdone by the Japanese White Day, which actually does sound like fun, a God fearing, red blooded, American male came up with the perfect counterpoint to Valentine’s Day. And, like its Japanese equivalent, it’s celebrated on March 14th.

Naturally, I’m talking about (name altered to be more family friendly) farm fresh meat and fellatio day. This is a much less stressful holiday for women. All they have to do is show up naked and bring beer. I’ll cook the steak.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

Happy VD Everyone!

Mom?

Sometimes at the World News Center we are tasked with impossible assignments. Like the time we tried to get Ashley Lobo to go undercover in an illegal “all nude” mud wrestling ring. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, the story was quietly shelved and numerous lawsuits were averted. Other items, like the time we tried to get Nick Rosario to recreate Evel Knieval’s legendary bus jump, were immediately killed by those stick in the muds at our insurance company. But sometimes an idea, although wildly irresponsible and dangerous, gets greenlighted and foisted you on, gentle reader. Today is one such day. Despite the fact that I am twice divorced and once had sex on top of a police car on a first date, I have been asked to write a column about love and relationships. As the very funny lady, who shared breakfast with me today, noted, “Next week they’ll get Svengoolie to talk about subtlety in humor.”

Ha freaking ha.

Of course she gets to trot off to her day gig while I’m stuck trying to make this into something useful for you. So, since I cannot serve as a shining example, allow me to serve as a warning sign.

If you decide to make a public display of your wedding proposal make sure the woman is going to say yes. Since her saying no on a Jumbotron is freaking humiliating. I’ve always wondered about the pinheads who did stuff like this. Unless they have made prior arrangements they are, when you think about it, trying to humiliate the girl into saying yes.

“You can’t say no, people are watching!!!!”

Even if you get shot down in a church the basic idea is the same. You’re an inconsiderate tool who’s trying to force his will on others.

Here’s a handy tip guys, make sure you have had at least one conversation with your intended about your intentions before you do what you’re intending. I can promise you that she will not think less of you for not making her look like a callous, vicious, slut in public. In fact, that little extra care and concern will go a long way to making her love you all the more.

And when you do get married, here’s another piece of advice, try not to end up in jail for beating on her. Not only does that make you a grade “A” jerk, it will also cause a judge to sentence you to a night at Red Lobster.

A Broward County judge has ordered a husband to take his wife out on a date and buy her flowers — a strangely gentle ruling for a domestic abuse charge.

According to an arrest affidavit cited by NBC Miami, Joseph Bray, 47, and his wife Sonja got into a fight after Bray neglected to wish her a happy birthday. Sonja told police he shoved her and grabbed her neck at their Plantation residence.

At the Tuesday hearing, Judge John Hurley asked the wife about her preferences for a night out on the town and sentenced the husband accordingly.

According to the Sun Sentinel, he ordered Bray to “flowers, birthday card, Red Lobster, bowling.”

He also requested that the Brays start seeing a marriage counselor. Read the Sun Sentinel for the judge’s comments on the light sentencing.

On the other end of the romance spectrum, last year a New York judge ordered a husband and wife to build a literal “divorce wall” in their house to stop the couple’s constant feuding.

According to NBC (Chicago), Google user Georgia Valente wrote that “of all the Red Lobsters in South Florida, the couple’s dinner destination is “quite possibly the best.”

So that’s a plus. As to the rest, you knew without even thinking that this happened in Florida.

Now, why Georgia Valente has been to every Red Lobster in South Florida is a question I never want answered.

All this being said, while the nice people at TRU TV may rail against the many Valentine’s Day traditions, such as champagne and chocolate, you and I both know that if they don’t pony up their next date will be a hand full of lube and a copy of Penthouse.

So don’t be a tool, communicate with your beloved, don’t beat on your beloved and try not to go cheap on the 14th unless it’s a mutually planned thing like grabbing a bucket of chicken and having sex all night.

You might even get by without the chicken.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

Sex, Drugs and Florida

Gosh, this is going to be fun!

I couldn’t hop on the internet this morning so I was forced to wail and gnash my tooth in anguish that the world might be doing something interesting without me. HAH! Like that could ever happen. I am the most interesting thing in my universe. Well, the second most. Florida holds the main title. No matter how odd the things in my life may be they pale in comparison to things in Florida. I recently tried to explain Florida to some of our new Asian readers. It seems I made some inroads but they still have questions. And, to be fair, they are really good questions. The most common one is “what makes them act that way?” To that I have no ready answer. It is a behavior pattern that has been generations in the making. The biggest factor might be that Florida only attracted two kinds of people for many, many years; those that were avoiding the government and those who were going to die. Not exactly the best and the brightest. Certainly not that spark you need for the next generation. Or any generation for that matter.

So, when people in Florida commit a crime they tend to do it with a different flair than you’re used to. For example, lots of women shoplift. Very few tag-team to steal thongs. That they tried on first. That they tried to hide in their purses. In front of security. Who saved everyone some time and just arrested them.

See? Different.

Or, another example, men and women argue all the time. Sometimes some men will try and hurt their women. But only in Florida do they light themselves on fire after attacking a car. You’re going to have to read the whole story.

A Wesley Chapel man was critically burned after investigators say a plan to torch his estranged wife backfired.

From her upstairs apartment, Capitola Scott could hear her neighbor, 47-year-old Gloria Davis, shrieking for help and then saw Davis being chased. Scott opened the door, yelling at her to get inside.

Police say the man chasing Davis with a jug full of gasoline was her husband of 25 years, 50-year-old Matthew Wong. The two had been separated since October.

Detectives say Wong had apparently planned to ambush Davis. They say he rented a car and blacked out the windows. But Davis spotted Wong and immediately began to run, screaming for help.

As he frantically chased his wife, investigators say Wong inadvertently splattered gasoline all over himself, and when he went to torch the apartment where his wife was seeking refuge, it was Wong who went up in flames.

Neighbors used fire extinguishers to put out the fire that was consuming him and some nearby bushes. A scorched patch of grass now marks the spot where he fell to the ground.

Investigators say Wong was rushed to Tampa General Hospital with life-threatening burns. They say the couple has two older children who also live in the Bay area.

The incident comes just days after a high-profile trial, during which Chris Hanney was convicted of dousing his wife, Audrey Mabrey, with gasoline.

Investigators say they’re not yet sure if the timing of the cases is a coincidence, or if this was a copycat type of attack.

Well, if it was it was a bad copy. Which is good news for the woman who, I believe, just might be justified for not wanting to hang around with this guy any more. Don’t you agree?

Let’s try another. People get pulled over all the time for driving under the influence. Only in Florida would the driver blame her inability to function on her big breasts.

A Port St. Lucie woman facing DUI charges told arresting officers her “big boobies” were to blame for her inability to perform sobriety tests, according to an arrest report.

Maureen Jane Raymond, 49, was arrested in Jensen Beach on Jan. 29 after she was stopped by cops who responded to a reckless vehicle call, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office report.

According to the report, a deputy saw Raymond driving over 50 mph in a 35 mph zone in her grey Camry and crossing over the double yellow line twice before parking in two spots at a Walgreen’s.

The deputy smelled an odor of alcohol on Raymond and noticed she had slurred speech, glassy eyes and staggered when she walked, the report said.

According to the report, Raymond started drinking out of a glass, telling the deputy it was tea. A second glass found in the car smelled like an alcoholic beverage, the deputy wrote in the report.

Raymond was asked to get out of the car for tests and she started to give her top heavy excuse.

“When I told her we were going to do some roadside tasks she told me that I needed to understand that she is big chested and if I asked her to close her eyes and balance she is not going to balance well,” the deputy wrote. “She told me ‘big breast you don’t balance well.’”

Asked if she had any injuries, Raymond replied she had big breasts and whiplash, the report said.

The report said Raymond had a hard time following directions and that when she was asked to walk a straight line, she began to dance.

“When I told her she had to keep her hands at her side she stated hell no not with these. Telling me again she can’t do it, not with her big boobies,” the deputy wrote, adding Raymond “began to take her clothes off to show me her breast and I stopped her.”

Raymond was asked to count and “she seemed to sing the numbers while counting,” the report said.

The deputy arrested Raymond for DUI, and she was taken to the station for a breath test.

But before the breath test, Raymond insisted she pray, the report said.

“She told me she was praying and that I need to relax because she is praying and God is first,” the deputy wrote.

Raymond wasn’t able to provide a valid breath sample, and was booked into jail, the report said. She was released on bond the next day.

Ah yes, the “my boobs are ginormous and God is good defense.” Lawyers all over the world are anxiously waiting to see how this one plays out.

Sadly, for the lawyers tasked with representing Stanley B. Ramos, there will be no fun in the courthouse for them. You see their client was arrested for possession of drugs and related paraphernalia and showed up for his hearing with a crack pipe. So said the nice police officers who allowed him to be sentenced first and then arrested him.

Okay, one more for the road. Lots of people take those online quizzes. Some pass, some fail. Only in Florida do they try and kill a cat for being the reason of their failure.

The beating of the girlfriend was just a bonus.

A Gainesville man went to jail on a charge of animal cruelty after admitting to police that he tried to kill his girlfriend’s cat because he said it made him fail an online test.

In addition to the animal cruelty charge, the Gainesville Police Department arrested Marvelle Stephon Rucker, 21, of 1000 SW 62nd Blvd., on charges of false imprisonment and battery.

The cat’s owner told police that she found the animal lethargic and unresponsive when she got home from work around 4:50 p.m. Sunday. She also said Rucker cornered her and poked her in the face for 10 or 15 minutes until a roommate intervened.

Officer Keith Carlisle said Rucker admitted to poking the woman in her face, but said he did not think it was a crime if he was not beating her.

In an arrest report, Carlisle wrote that, when he asked Rucker why he put a pillow over the cat, Rucker “laughed as he said he was trying to kill the cat” because the cat made him fail an online test.

Rucker was booked into the Alachua County jail.

And ladies, word is he’s single again. I’m just saying.

Anyway, as you can see, two truths are self evident; (1) people in Florida shouldn’t be allowed to breed as rapidly as they do and; (2), your world is really empty without me.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

Kids These Days

When the strippers get here we'll have family hour.

Kids all over the world get these completely wacky ideas and then bring them to the fore strictly for the wubba wubba reason that they wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba try and drive their wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba parents wubba wubba wubba wubba out of their ever wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba loving wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba wubba DUB STEP!! HELL YEAH!!!!! Sorry, I’m okay now. I just sometimes have a Skrillex moment. I’m sure everyone can wubba wubba relate.

Of course kids tehse days aren’t just rushing to dub step, they’re rushing to get here in the first place. Deepti Hajeli reports that a baby was born on a New Jersey train.

A New Jersey woman got the morning commute of her life when she gave birth to her first child on a PATH commuter train to New York.

The 31-year-old woman, Rabita Sarkar of Harrison, N.J., said she had started feeling contraction-like pains, but didn’t think they were real because her baby wasn’t due yet. She and her 30-year-old husband decided to travel into the city to have her checked out Monday.

They didn’t want to drive and decided to take the train from Harrison into the city instead, thinking they could then take a taxi to Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hospital, where her doctors are.

‘This guy had other plans’

“It’s just that this guy had other plans, and he came out earlier,” Sarkar said as she held her infant son in her arms in the hospital. The couple declined to reveal the boy’s name or due date.

It was on the train ride that Sarkar started feeling her pains come more quickly, and she told her husband to check what was happening to her. He looked and saw that his son’s head had already started to come out.

With guidance from another woman on the train, her husband, identified in published reports as Aditya Saurabh, was able to deliver the baby around 10 a.m. Fellow riders offered encouragement, and the couple said one little girl offered her jacket to keep the baby warm.

PATH officials turned the train into an express, bypassing most stops so that it would get to its final stop, 33rd Street in midtown Manhattan, as soon as possible. Emergency services personnel met the train and took the family to the hospital.

The responding police officers said it wasn’t unusual for women to give birth in facilities run by the Port Authority.

The biggest issue was the winter temperature, around 30 degrees outside, and making sure the baby was warm, Sgt. Mike Barry said.

“That’s our biggest concern,” he said. “We know that baby’s body temperature is going to drop like a rock.”

For one of the responding officers, delivering a baby in these circumstances was something familiar — because it happened to him.

Officer Atiba Joseph-Cumberbatch said his son didn’t want to wait, either, and came out early — so Dad had to deliver him.

I guess it’s reassuring to know that this happens often enough that they have a plan in place.

But what about in a couple of years when that little tyke is walking and talking all by himself? Will he want the latest Tickle Me Elmo or a race car or space ship or a Skrillex EP or something else?

A young Milwaukee boy asked Santa for the coolest toy ever, a Koehler double flush toilet.

I s**t you not.

Some kids ask for Legos, others a train. But Dustin Kruse, 4, of New Berlin, Wisc., wanted something extra special this Christmas — a toilet.

Dustin Kruse loves toilets so much that it prompted one local company to grant the child’s wish for a top-of-line, double-flusher.

“They did it right after his fourth birthday. Delivered, installed it, everything,” said Michele Kruse on Newsradio 620 WTMJ’s Wisconsin’s Morning News.

Kruse said her son is so fascinated with toilets that he wanted to ask Santa for a particular type of Kohler toilet, a dual-flush brand that allows people to either make a full or a half flush.

According to the Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee, Dustin encountered his $380 porcelain dream during a trip to the Kohler Design Center where he was able to touch the high-end model.

“He flushed it,” Michele Kruse told the Journal Sentinel, “and he’s like, ‘Mom wouldn’t that be great if I could have this? Could you imagine all of the things I could do?’ And then he’s looking up in the air and he’s thinking. He’s like, ‘I am asking Santa Claus for this.’”

Dustin’s mom said she didn’t want to flush away her son’s hopes, so she wrote to Kohler, explaining her son’s interest — and Kohler obliged.

Michele Kruse called her son’s fascination a mere interest and far from an obsession.

As she put it: “It’s fun.”

Fun? Really? Milwaukee must have fallen further away from civilization than I feared.

But he question you’re all asking is this; “what kind of teenager blossoms from a toilet loving toddler?”

The kind that goes next door and kills their neighbor and then writes what a cool thing murder is.

A Missouri teenager who admitted stabbing, strangling and slitting the throat of a young neighbor girl wrote in her journal on the night of the killing that it was an “ahmazing” and “pretty enjoyable” experience — then headed off to church with a laugh.

The words written by Alyssa Bustamante were read aloud in court Monday as part of a sentencing hearing to determine whether she should get life in prison or something less for the October 2009 murder of her neighbor, 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten, in a small town west of Jefferson City.

Bustamante, 18, sat silently — occasionally glancing at those testifying about her, often looking down or to the side — as law enforcement officers, attorneys and forensics experts read aloud her inner most thoughts that she had recorded as a 15-year-old high school sophomore.

\The most poignant part of Monday’s testimony came when a handwriting expert described how he was able to see through the blue ink that Bustamante had used in an attempt to cover up her original journal entry on the night of Elizabeth’s murder. He then read the entry aloud in court:

“I just f—— killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the “ohmygawd I can’t do this” feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now…lol.”

The journal entry was presented to the judge not long after Elizabeth’s mother and other relatives pleaded with Cole County Circuit Judge Pat Joyce to impose the maximum sentence. Bustamante pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed criminal action last month and faces at most a sentence of life in prison with a chance for parole. The least she could get is 10 years.

Elizabeth’s mother, Patty Preiss, described her daughter as “happy, little girl,” when she left her home about 5 p.m. after begging to go play with Bustamante’s younger sister. Preiss said she told Elizabeth to be back for dinner at 6 p.m. but never saw her again.

“So much has been lost at the hands of this evil monster,” Preiss tearfully said, with Bustamante sitting several feet away. “Elizabeth was given a death sentence and we were given a life sentence.”

With Bustamante looking at her, Preiss said: “I hate her, I hate everything about her.” The judge cut off her testimony when she described Bustamante as “not even human.”

FBI agents seized the journal from Bustamante’s bedroom during a search of her family’s home the day after Elizabeth went missing as hundreds of volunteers scoured the rural area around St. Martin’s.

Bustamante suggested to FBI and the Missouri State Highway Patrol officials that the girl had probably been kidnapped and that whoever had done so deserved to be convicted.

At one point, law enforcement officers discovered a hole in the ground in the shape of a shallow grave near Bustamante’s home. They testified that Bustamante acknowledged digging it but said she just liked to dig holes. It was only later that Elizabeth’s body was found concealed under leaves in another grave in the woods behind the Bustamante home.

At a hearing in 2009, Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. David Rice testified that the teenager told him “she wanted to know what it felt like” to kill someone.

Defense attorneys Monday highlighted Bustamante’s troubled childhood as part of their argument about why she should receive leniency. They referred to numerous references in her journal in the two months before the murder, describing her suicidal feelings and the urge to hurt herself and others.

At one point Bustamante had written that she intended to burn down a house and kill all the occupants, but she never followed through with that. On Oct. 14, one week before Elizabeth’s slaying, Bustamante had written that she was unable to use her cell phone because the charger had died, which meant she couldn’t talk to anyone about the depression and rage she was feeling.

“If I don’t talk about it, I bottle it up, and when I explode someone’s going to die,” she wrote in a journal that was read to the court by her defense attorney, Charlie Moreland.

Yeah, that was a bit of a dark turn. Even so, if your kid develops an unhealthy toilet fetish, you might want to keep this in mind.

Down the road a bit in Madison a man didn’t read his lottery numbers correctly and almost threw away a ticket worth $14.3 million. But he didn’t and now he can get a kidney and so on. It’s one of those tear jerking stories I avoid like the plague.

But I figured you might need a pick me up after the young lady above.

Of course when I need a pick me up or a good laugh I just aim my mouse south of the Mason Dixon line and see what pops up. Police in Savannah Georgia had just the thing for me today.

Authorities say a Georgia man is recovering after accidentally shooting himself in the leg at a Savannah gun show.

Police say 26-year-old Charles Lake was leaving the gun show at the Savannah Civic Center around 5:10 p.m. Sunday when he discharged a round into his leg while re-loading his pistol.

Savannah-Chatham police spokesman Julian Miller says Lake bought the pistol at the gun show on Saturday and had returned Sunday to purchase another gun. Police say he was re-loading the pistol in the parking lot because loaded guns weren’t allowed inside the gun show.

The Savannah Morning News reports Lake was taken to Memorial University Medical Center with an injury not considered life-threatening. No other injuries were reported.

Savannah-Chatham police are investigating the incident.

Wait, really? He was in the parking lot of a gun show and didn’t feel safe until he loaded his gun? So he had to fumble around with a weapon in said parking lot instead of just going home and being able to reload the gun safely? And if he was so worried why didn’t he leave one gun locked and loaded in the car?

I’m sure the Savannah police all had a good laugh after they stopped the bleeding.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

Family Values

And who knew she was that nimble?

If you Google the word “porn” you’ll be amazed, or appalled – depending on your mood, by the number of non-pornographic images that will pop up. In fact, some are disturbingly wholesome. Porn has become so ingrained in our society that if you actually want to see porn you have to limit your search to your particular area of interest. Midget porn, 3D hentai porn, granny porn, what have you. Just searching for regular porn won’t get that boat floating any more. Several of the women here at Nude Hippo talk openly about porn when, a few years back, even the mention of the word would get my face slapped. Or get me fired. Or both. In fact, attempts to ban porn, like the recent one in West Chicago over the Family Videos store that has a back room dedicated to adult entertainment, come off as quint or, at best, naive. While offended parents claim to have to deal with questions like “Mommy, what’s an “Anal Invader? Is that a new Transformer?” people who live in the real world want to know why parents were letting their kids wander in a room that is clearly marked and has a private door. Because people who live in the real world know that porn’s here to stay.

I’ve already written about how much of our western civilization wouldn’t exist were it not for porn. So let’s hop off the high hobby horse of moral superiority and admit that we need porn to survive. Now that we agree on that, let’s talk about something else; truth in advertising when it comes to porn. I want my porn to feature willing participants not Serbian sex slaves. It turns out that I’m not alone. Erika Christakis, a public health advocate and Harvard College administrator, has joined me on the bandwagon for free market porn.

We have fair trade coffee and humanely raised pork. So why can’t we create a market for ethically sourced pornography? A couple of decades ago, people didn’t give much thought to their food’s provenance. We didn’t care about carbon footprints or the working conditions of the poor Africans who sold us our coffee beans. Slowly, however, consumption habits began to shift under the weight of scientific evidence and cultural change. We’re becoming a little more selective in our consumer choices.

Yet not with that multi-billion dollar white elephant: pornography. We hear rumblings here and there about the sexual trafficking of women and children, and it’s always a relief when a criminal ring is busted for what’s euphemistically called “abuse.” It’s reassuring to know that whatever was going on in the far reaches of a few sick minds has little to do with our own primitive — but relatively harmless — impulses.

But do porn consumers ever think about where their porn is sourced? What a downer! No one wants to hear about drug-addicted runaways or Albanian teenage sex slaves. Nobody wants to imagine STD infections on movie sets or the life circumstances that would impel a woman to engage in physically punishing sexual acts on camera. (And just Google the word “bukkake” if you want a quick education in the mainstreaming of fringe sex acts.)

Part of the problem is our reluctance to acknowledge the pornification of contemporary life. If we can relegate porn to the margins of our cultural conversation, we can pretend it only touches a small minority of adult men, rather than the vast majority of Americans, many even in their first or second decade of life.

Maybe it’s just too embarrassing to admit the extent of our obsession, but people of all stripes really like watching sex acts. For example, surveys of Evangelical Christians report porn viewing rates similar to the general population. Utah leads the nation in per capita subscriptions to online porn. Technology has produced the ideal Petri dish for the biggest sexual market in human history, providing easy access, affordability, and anonymity in one appealing package.

Calls to regulate the content of pornography, like Tipper Gore’s ratings system for music lyrics, are missing the point. One person’s degradation may be another person’s kink, and we don’t need more Rick Santorums policing our fantasies. Moreover, sanitized desire, like a lot of so-called “feminist porn,” can be a buzz-kill.

But shouldn’t consumers have some context to evaluate what they are viewing? Shampoo bottles and Tuna cans assure us that animals were unharmed. Shouldn’t we know if porn actors are subject to out-of-control STD rates, or are forced to do things against their will? At a minimum, a Porn housekeeping seal of approval would tell us by, and for whom, the porn was made. It might make you think twice before downloading that random YouPorn video or chatting with a “horny Russian slut” at LiveJasmin.

There probably are attractive, uninhibited people who are excited by the rewards of porn careers — people who are untroubled by the ethics or lifestyle limitations of making a living as sex workers, or who at the least may consider it the best of their uninspiring options. But there are probably relatively few of these people, and consumers should know who they are so they can make informed choices.

Making such informed choices would have a few collateral benefits. If we knew for sure that porn production was free of coercion and desperation, for example, we might find there are fewer women willing to be gagged, choked, and “triple penetrated” on camera.

Fair Trade porn might also finally allow us to call a moratorium on assertions that women aren’t aroused by visual imagery or don’t sometimes fantasize about anonymous, unemotional sex. And market forces could eventually affect the aesthetic standard of pornography, which might, in turn, shift the skewed gender balance of viewership. If you think this is a fairytale, recall that a generation ago, no one talked about animal abuse or the case against corporal punishment. Cultural norms do change.

Pornography is a fact of life, and parental controls and moralizing spoilsports won’t make a dent in its exponential growth. But the bar needs raising. The sustainable food movement hasn’t eliminated factory farms or our inexhaustible craving for junk food. But it provides an alternative model of consumption that we can aspire to. Organic and fair trade practices are leading us, gradually but inevitably, to a better relationship with food. Maybe Fair Trade porn could reconnect us to a better relationship with the human body.

What? Oh, okay, here’s a link, without pictures, to bukkake.

I can’t believe you didn’t know that.

My friend, Vicky Vette is a MILF specialist. So, if you want to spank to a MILF you know is not being coerced, there you go. All of the other women on her site are also there willingly. In fact, here at World News Center, all of the porn stars we know are honored participants in a legendary profession.

I hope we can say the same for you.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

HOORAY! More Stuff That Will Kill You!

Yep, one night with her would probably be my last night on earth.

There are lots of fun things that can kill you. Hang gliding in a tornado, for example. But non-Floridians know that hang gliding in a tornado is stupid, so we don’t do it. Floridians are spared the decision by not having any tornadoes in their state. However, they compensate for that lack by surfing in hurricanes, which is equally stupid and lethal. Running face first into jet engines, jumping out of a car doing over twenty miles per hour, leaping off a ten story building without a parachute, eating Tony Lossanno’s cooking, juggling nitroglycerin, flipping off a biker gang, checking the fuel level with a match, performing ballet in a mine field, tickling a wild tiger, rappelling without a rope and similar items are all obvious things to avoid. In fact I bet you can go through a whole day without even considering one of them. But some things are just there and can kill you just as readily.

For example; you take the family to England to see the sights, laugh at their idea of cooking and get your picture taken with the guards at Buckingham Palace. What’s probably not on your “to do” list is being eaten alive by wild ravens.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

More ‘Weird Science News’ today. Seems that the burgeoning raven population in the UK – where ravens were once very rare and are still a protected species – has recently taken to forming large gangs and killing farm livestock in Scotland, Wales and some parts of England.

Now, ravens are the smartest of birds. According to scientific researchers, they’re right up there with dogs and primates on the intelligence scale, and like some parrots can even learn to speak human languages. Just ask Edgar Allen Poe! And while ravens are carrion-eaters mostly, they are known to be birds of prey that will attack rabbits and other small critters. Their beaks are sharp and sickle-shaped, their talons are muscular. They get to be about two feet long, and are extraordinary aerial acrobats. They are also the primary bad guys in Daphne du Mourier’s classic horror novel The Birds, as made into the film classic of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock. There have been some B-movie reprises too, though they shall remain nameless (so as not to reveal my personal addiction to B-grade horror movies).

We get raven gangs here in the southern Appalachians. During one memorable grandchild birthday party they descended to steal as many of a scattered bag of lemon drops as they possibly could, then became furious when those hard candies stuck their beaks together with a mass of yellow goo. We laughed and laughed, they didn’t think it was the least bit funny. Probably a good thing they didn’t decide to attack, now that I know they’re killers!

Check out the story from Britain’s Daily Mail about these killer raven gangs. Seems farmers are losing their newborn lambs as fast as they’re born, and now the ravens have started going after calves and even full-grown sheep!

While I suspect recent UK policies to immediately cremate dead livestock (imposed due to fears of Mad Cow and such) has led to some hungry ravens doing whatever they have to do to survive without ready carrion, I hope they don’t decide to decimate raven populations again. These really are spectacular birds.

Meat is meat people, just ask Sweeney Todd, and ravens are less discerning eaters than he ever was.

Here are some more fun ways for you to die, and other disturbing facts about your mortality, courtesy of One Big Health Nut.

1. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it is been decapitated.

2. The acid in your stomach is so strong it can dissolve razorblades. See, we do all have super powers.

3. The incidents of immune system diseases have increased over 200% in the last five years. Things that make you go hmmmmm!

4. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do. Who knew there would be an advantage?

5. Feet have 500,000 sweat glands that are capable of producing more than a pint of sweat a day. You would think there would be a lot more shelves of foot deodorant.

6. The brain itself cannot feel pain.

7. The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.

8. Your skin is home to about 32 million bacteria. Is your skin crawling?

9. Everyone has a unique tongue print. That would make for an interesting investigative tool.

10. Close to fifty percent of the bacteria in the mouth lives on the surface of your tongue.

11. Carbon monoxide can kill a person in less than 15 minutes

12. Being lactose intolerant can cause chronic flatulence. One more important question to learn the answer to on the first date!

13. Human hair is virtually indestructible, unable to be destroyed by many acids, corrosive chemicals, and unaffected by cold and water. It even decays at an extremely slow rate. But like all superpowers it has one weakness, flammability

14. A person will die from a complete lack of sleep in 10 days.

15. A moderate sunburn damages the blood vessels extensively, taking four to fifteen months for them to repair. Who says suntans are for sissies?

16. You’ve probably heard more than once older person reference a ‘senior moment’ when he/she has forgotten something. There is truth to that. Once a human reaches the age of 35, he/she will start losing approximately 7,000 brain cells a day which will never be replaced. Gives new meaning to over the hill, doesn’t it?

So, now that yuo know all that you need to to know this. You are more likely to die if you live in a red state. Well, to be more accurate, you are more likely to die younger if you live in a red state. We’re all going to die at some point.

Science News Reviews has the 411.

For those of us who tend to be fascinated by charts, graphs, figures, maps and gnarly scenes of death and destruction, there’s a new county-by-county “Death Map” produced by researchers at the University of South Carolina at Columbia we can now peruse for the gnarly truth about who dies where the most.

Using statistics going all the way back to 1970, Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of USC created the map to enable emergency management planners to examine various natural hazard risks to populations all over the country. These are deaths by floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, extreme temperatures and other natural (but violent) causes.

The full publication from the International Journal of Health Geographics is available as a pdf at Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States. But here’s a sneak preview … what’s your county’s ‘death-by-natural-hazard’ risk look like?

Basically it comes down to this; move to Texas or Arizona and die early and, probably, painfully.

Also, for reasons that elude me, this applies to Buffalo New York. Must be the Buffalo Wings.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

Other People’s Hobbies

Planking is for amateurs. This is what we do here at World News Center.

Lots of people have hobbies. Some play guitar, some knit, others learn a new language or try their hands at culinary concoctions. You may have noticed that I like to write. Not only here but I actually write fiction that three people have read. Not all at once, I’m not that famous, but they’re still out there. Very “out there” if they’ve read my stuff. That being said, I have a buddy who collects dragon figurines. In all other aspects of life he is a perfectly normal man. A wonderful father to his three children and doting husband to his glorious wife. He is active in his church and has been loyal to the company he works for over the last few decades. Until he sees a dragon figurine. Then he becomes a squealing little girl who must, MUST I TELL YOU – RIGHT FREAKING NOW, purchase said figurine. You would see more self control, and hear less squealing, at an all girl-school concert featuring Justin Bieber. When he was young his friends and family thought it was cute and harmless. They even encouraged it since, after all, he wasn’t out drinking or whoring with me. But now that the collection actually has its own storage facility as well as an entire wall in the basement, people are growing concerned. His children are at that age where they are looking at colleges and they want to know that dad didn’t flush their futures away on a bunch of figurines. I’m sure that everything is fine, he’s a pretty responsible guy when push comes to shove. But when you see 23 variations on the Luck Dragon from the Never Ending Story all in one display case, it’s easy to share their concerns.

Still, his fascination with dragons makes more sense to me than the group of North Koreans who spent years learning the accordion so they could do a rousing rendition of A-Ha’s 80′s hit, Take on Me. Allegedly they are celebrating multiculturalism. More proof that North Koreans haven’t got a clue what the world is like outside of Pyongyang.

Of course, if you’re looking for clueless you need not travel all the way to Asia. The Komen Foundation, famous for its Planned Parenthood flap, is now selling handguns.

It’s okay, they’re pink.

Yesterday, the Susan B. Komen Foundation made national headlines with its controversial decision to pull funding for Planned Parenthood. And now, the foundation has just announced it is reversing its decision and will continue to fund breast cancer screenings with the group.

To a lot of people this back and forth seems a little random and strange. But there’s a clear paper trail you can follow of the increasing political pressures on Komen and the rightward shift the organization has been taking.

Another, lesser-known aspect of Komen’s outreach to the political right can be found here, in their promotion of a pink handgun to promote breast cancer awareness month.

Komen’s pink pistol is not to be confused with the organization the Pink Pistols, a gay-rights organization that supports Second Amendment rights.

Komen has partnered up with Discount Gun Sales to offer a pink version of its P-22 pistol. An undisclosed portion of each sales will go toward the Seattle branch of Komen. The pistol retails for $429.99.

The “Hope Edition” pistol is promoted as having “an exclusive DuraCoat Pink slide in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Utilizing the same reliable controls and firing mechanism that has made the Walther P-22 America’s top selling handgun, the Hope Edition will be a limited production pistol offered exclusively through Discount Gun Sales.”

Yes, nothing says “We care about your health” like a 22 caliber pink pocket protector. Obviously, the Komen Foundation is insane.

Not as insane as the people who like pterodactyl porn, but they’re running neck and neck these days.

Then again, are they any nuttier than John C. Hughes? He wrote up his “bucket list” and then started checking them off one by one. Drink tequila in a biker bar? Check. Get into a high speed chase with cops?

Believe it or not, check.

We all have our dreams.

John C. Hughes of Butte, Mont., said he started a car chase with police because he “just always wanted to do that,” according to a police report obtained by the Montana Standard.

Hughes, 55, led police on a chase at speeds of more than 100 mph before police used “stop sticks” to deflate his tires and arrest the speed demon. He now faces a misdemeanor count of reckless driving while eluding police.

Police said Hughes was not intoxicated and they found no evidence of drugs or alcohol in the car, according to the Standard.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of anything like that,” Sheriff John Walsh told the Standard.

Hughes should perhaps consider himself lucky. Just this Wednesday, a man in Salinas, Ca., crashed his car in a high-speed chase with police, causing his car to roll over multiple times, according to The Californian.

Then again, Hughes didn’t make out nearly as well as a British man who sued police after they pursued him for 17 minutes for not wearing his seat belt. The man later settled with police for the equivalent of about $31,000, the BBC reported Thursday.

Mr. Hughes needs a hobby.

Maybe he can take up eel porn. That sounds safer.

It also sounds more rational than anything you’ll hear from Jemima Packington who predicts the future through the clever use of asparagus.

Meet Jemima Packington, a woman who divines the future using asparagus. The world’s only “Asparamancer” (as she calls herself), she casts the spears in the air and reads the shapes they form when they land. She been reading asparagus since she was a little girl and claims to have been making accurate predictions about such things as the royal family and politics. “It might sound silly to some people but my readings are very accurate. I have been doing readings using asparagus since I was eight years old. My great aunt read tea leaves and I have inherited her gift,” Jemima says. Sure, why not? If you can do it with tea leaves, you can do it with vegetables. I want to believe in her powers, really I do, but she predicts that Europe will not have a hard time with frost and snow, just a windy time. Last time I checked, Europe was going through a deep freeze. Alas, the asparagus spears have failed her this time. But fret not, the Asparamancer will have a chance to redeem herself when she appears at the British Asparagus Festival in April, where she’s bound to predict that all attendees will have strange smelling pee.

HEY LOOK! ARMPIT PORN!!!

Yeah, we’re moving on.

This just in, the people whose hobby is to know stuff like this just ranked Miami as the worst city in America. Miami won hands down thanks to its lovely mix of high crime, rampant poverty and the happy bonus of widespread political corruption.

Miami is also rumored to be the international capital of clown porn.

And if that’s the kind of stuff that revs your motor then you’re going to love our next story about Trent Arsenault, the verified virgin who’s fathered 14 kids.

Trent Arsenault may be the most controversial father in America right now. Not only has he fathered 14 kids, but he’s also a 36-year-old virgin.

By day, Arsenault is a Silicon Valley computer security specialist, but on the side he is perhaps the world’s first “donorsexual,” a term he coined to describe his passion of supplying sperm to childless couples free-of-charge.

Arsenault claims he’s never had a sex partner and feels it’s his duty to the couples who use his sperm not to deplete the supply.

“I’ve committed 100 percent of my sexual energy for producing sperm for childless couples to have babies. So I don’t have other activity outside of that,” Arsenault told Anderson Cooper in January.

Arsenault doesn’t charge for his baby batter, but his unconventional methods have spurred the Food and Drug Administration to issue a cease-and-desist order, the San Jose Mercury News reported. The FDA alleges that Arsenault did not take the legally required precautions to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

Although Arsenault has attracted sympathy from various people who believe the FDA’s allegations set a dangerous precedent, other activities of his have aroused controversy, such as the 100-plus videos he has posted online showing him masturbating with unusual aids such as a water polo ball and frozen packs of organic blueberries.

He likes to put what where? I told you there should be a procreation license. No one listens to me.

Of course he’s got nothing on Masanobu from Japan. He holds the world’s record for masturbating for 9 hours straight. He has a girlfriend but she doesn’t have sex with him. I can see why. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing and 9 hours of the non-stop mattress mambo seems to fit that description.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

It’s a Big Sexy Post Today!

And yet this entire post will be safe for work. Go figure.

Every Friday I not only have to come up with something for you to read I also have to come up with stuff to talk about on WBIG with Ryan Gatenby. While I usually just talk about what I’ve written on Friday that is not always the case. Sometimes my Friday topic is too esoteric or would require too long to explain to the listeners. Since we live in a finite universe and Ryan needs to make a living and play some of those ads from our glorious sponsors, I can’t just ramble all day. Other times are like today. While the topics at hand are great fun for everyone to read about the nice people at FOX! would completely lose their freaking minds if I opened up with sex and politics as my lead story.

I guess it would be okay if someone caught President Obama with a mistress, but the whole Pimpin’ for Paul movement is off the table.

Prostitutes working at a Nevada brothel said they are planning to show their support for Republican presidential contender Ron Paul during the Nevada caucuses.

The girls at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, near Carson City, said they plan to caucus for Paul during Saturday’s event and they have a donation box for the libertarian Texas congressman in the parlor of the brothel, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Cami Parker, 25, who works at the brothel, said she is “pimpin’ for Paul” because of his positions on individual liberties and states’ rights. She said 10 percent of her weekly earnings go toward the Paul campaign.

This will be the only time I can use the phrase “tits for tithes” in this blog. I hope you enjoyed it. Also there is no truth to the rumor that the ancient brothel token, which was recently found, was actually an artifact from Ron Paul’s first campaign.

Moving on. Match.com, that wonderfully anti-homosexual dating service, surveyed its members by political beliefs and found out that the majority of Republicans think their sex lives are great but they aren’t having any actual sex.

Dallas-based dating Web site Match.com said its second annual comprehensive study on singles found differences along political lines.

The Web site said the online survey of 5,541 single adults in the United States, conducted by research firm MarketTools, found conservative Republican respondents were the most likely to be very satisfied with their sexual activities, with 40 percent answering the question affirmatively, but they were also the least likely to have had sex in the past 12 months.

Match.com said Democratic respondents were the most likely to consider a sense of humor, similar lifestyle, sense of independence and a feeling of equality when searching for a partner, while Republicans were more likely to seek a similar background, same political beliefs and a desire to marry.

The survey also suggests 87 percent of single men and 91 percent of single women believe there are “no acceptable excuses” for adultery on the part of a political candidate.

You can add my number to the majority mentioned in the last sentence. As to the rest, it looks about right. My Republican friends are not big fans of that whole diversity thing. Dating outside their circle would never occur to them.

So, you’re a young Republican who’s not getting any, although you seem happy about it, so what do you do for fun? Well, if you live in Seattle you go to the library and watch porn.

A Seattle library is making news after refusing to remove a man who was watching pornographic videos on a library computer.

“We’re a library, so we facilitate access to constitutionally protected information. We don’t tell people what they can view and check out,” Seattle Public Library spokeswoman Andra Addison told Seattle PI. “Filters compromise freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. We’re not in the business of censoring information.”

Seattle PI reports that when library patron Julie Howe saw the man, she asked him to move to another computer. He refused. When Howe asked the librarian to intervene, she also refused.

“She could see the screen from the information desk where we were standing and was sympathetic, but said that the library doesn’t censor content,” Howe wrote in an email published Tuesday on the neighborhood blog, Lake City Live.

“And they can’t be in the business of monitoring what their patrons are doing at any given computer.”

However, in 2010 the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that libraries can do exactly that. The ruling came after the ACLU sued a rural library district that had attempted to filter porn from its computers.

“A public library has traditionally and historically enjoyed broad discretion to select materials to add to its collection of printed materials for its patrons’ use,” the court wrote in its decision. “We conclude that the same discretion must be afforded a public library to choose what materials from millions of Internet sites it will add to its collection and make available to its patrons.”

Howe says she respects, understands and agrees with the freedom of speech laws that protect the man’s right to view pornography, but nonetheless wishes there was a compromise for the library’s other patrons.

“I have had extensive conversations with the library about this incident, as well as with the police and local representatives,” wrote Howe. “The man’s right to access constitutionally protected information is fully protected (which I’m not in argument with), but our right not to be inadvertent viewers is not.”

Other library patrons have complained about similar incidents, including those involving young children who were exposed to pornographic images being viewed by other patrons.

The dilemma was summed up by another library patron, Jessica Christensen, who told Seattle PI, “What I find ironic is that you can’t talk too loudly at the Seattle Public Libraries or you’ll be asked to keep it down so as not to distract the other patrons. You know, the patrons viewing pornography.”

I’m not sure what the fuss is about. You can watch porn at any library. The only limitation I’ve ever seen enacted was asking someone to turn it off because there were children in the room. Personally I’ve never had the need to go to the library to spank my crank. Of course, I’m a Democrat, so I know real women.

That being said, there is a simple solution. Move the computers to a walled in area. People already have to sign in and out to use them so I doubt that anyone’s going to be able to pick one up and walkout the door with it.

Now, if I’ve got your curiosity up, you can click here to find out ten things you didn’t know about sex. The article is long, but I’ll share the headlines with you.

• Genetics Can Affect When a Person Will Lose His or Her Virginity
• The Clitoris is Mostly an Internal Organ
• Sperm is Surprisingly Nutritious
• Sex Can Help You Stay Healthy
• Having Sex Can Make Women Look More Attractive
• If You Are Sexually Active, You’ll Probably Get an STD
• Birth Control Affects Women’s Taste in Men
• Diet Can Affect the Flavor of Semen
• Female Sexuality is Still Largely a Mystery
• Women’s Sex Organs Are Now Being Studied More Often

You know what? With a little bit of work I could make those titles into a great country song.

“My darling thinks my laugh’s delicious
Wait till she learns my sperm’s nutritious …”

All I need is a slide guitar.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

And Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

Of course it's loaded you big silly. Why else would I pose with a semi-automatic Hello Kitty rifle?

I had a very strange dream last night. Ashley Lobo, Ann Sheehan and Gina Ferraro were auditioning for parts in a new Spielberg epic. They had gone through round after round and were now seated in front of the great man himself. He finally revealed the story line to the eager lasses and explained that there was a scene – which was terribly important to the plot, Oscar worthy for the actresses and crucial to the film in general – that would require all three of them to be nude in the same bathtub with a single loufa, a gallon of body wash and a rifle. Of course it would be tastefully done. He’s Spielberg, not Larry Flint, after all. They discussed it amongst themselves and then proudly announced that, since I got tatted, they would do it for the World News Center. I could barely hold back a tear. Then the scene shifted and I was on stage in a karaoke bar, singing a Neil Diamond song and people were firing beer bottles at me from table-side cannons.

Like I said, it was a very strange dream.

But not as strange as real life. MSNBC’s World News Desk is reporting that a cannibal wants to marry a vampire, after they get out of the mental institutions they are in for killing people.

Two infamous Swedish murderers, the “Skara Cannibal” and the “Vampire Woman,” hope to get married, according to Expressen, a Swedish newspaper.

The couple met at their high-security psychiatric ward in eastern Sweden, the paper said, and flirted over Internet chat rooms.

”We got together on November 13th. ‘Do you want to be my girlfriend?’ he asked on MSN. Then we decided to get engaged, which we did on December 9th,” Michelle Gustafsson, aka the “Vampire Woman,” told Expressen.

Gustafsson was convicted in 2010 of the stabbing death of a father of four in Stockholm, the paper said. She wrote chilling lyrics on her blog about killing people and posted pictures of herself dressed as a vampire with bloody lips.

Isakin Jonsson, known as the ”Skara Cannibal,” was convicted in March 2011 of killing of his girlfriend, Helle Christensen, a mother of five, Expressen said. After stabbing her to death and cutting off body parts, he ate some of them.

“I love Michelle. I have never met anyone like her. I would like to lead a non-criminal life,” Jonsson told Expressen.

It is unclear if the couple will be released anytime soon. According to the prison hospital, some inmates have been there for 20 years.

Even so, the couple hopes to live together at some point.

“We want to get to live together, keep dogs and spend time on our hobbies, piercing and tattoos,” Gustafsson told Expressen.

In case you wondered why 90% of black metal bands are Swedish, I bet you figured it out now.

What an odd little country.

In other “bad idea” news, police in Greensboro North Carolina report that getting drunk and naked and firing a gun at cops is a very bad idea.

A naked North Carolina man was arrested on Tuesday after a 15-hour standoff with cops that included an exchange of gunfire, tear gas volleys and a communications robot.

The incident began when a neighbor called the cops on Jimmy Albert Burleson, 41, who allegedly sat “naked on his [Greensboro] porch with a gun while calling out to God,” Police Chief Ken Miller told WGHP-TV.

When the responding officer showed up at about 5 a.m., he got quite a surprise when Burleson allegedly started shooting an automatic weapon at him — possibly an AK-47, the station reported.

“I heard shots,” Neighbor Danielle Hatfield told the News & Record. ‘Then it went bam, bam, bam. Then I heard about three or four more. I just kind of looked at [my husband], and said ‘Are they gunshots?’”

The officer took cover and returned fire using a shotgun and a handgun until Burleson retreated back inside and barricaded himself in, the paper reported. Neither the officer or Burleson were injured in the melee, but it was only the beginning.

Dozens of cops descended on the home, shooting tear gas inside and even deploying a robot with audio and video capabilities that would help officers talk to man down. The news outlets reported that the robot broke down — but an officer using a second robot was able to coax Burleson out of the house long enough to subdue him at about 8 p.m.

Burleson was arrested on charges of attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon on an officer. Cops will stay with him at the hospital until he finishes a thorough mental health evaluation.

Since no one was hurt we can file that under funny as heck.

Speaking of funny as heck, cops in Massachusetts are reporting that the local FBI wasn’t content to knock in the wrong door, they took a chainsaw to it and terrified a 3 year old girl.

A Massachusetts woman says the FBI used a chain saw blade to cut through her door and held her at gunpoint for at least 30 minutes before agents realized they were conducting a raid at the wrong home.

Judy Sanchez, of Fitchburg, says she awoke to heavy footsteps in the stairwell on Jan. 26 and walked into her kitchen in time to see a blade chop through her door.

“I took two steps, face the second door, and I heard the click of a gun, and saying, ‘FBI, get down,’ so I laid down on my living room floor,” Sanchez told WHDH.com. “I was screaming, ‘You have the wrong apartment, you have the wrong apartment,’ over fifty times. And then I seen the big blade coming down my door.”

She says she was held face-down on the floor at gunpoint while her 3-year-old daughter Ji’anni cried in another room.
It turns out agents were after the other tenant on the floor of the multi-unit building who was suspected of dealing drugs. The raid was called Operation Red Wolf, a two-year investigation into drugs and weapons, WHDH.com reported.

Sanchez says she and her daughter now have trouble sleeping. The mom told WHDH she now sleeps with a baseball bat next to her bed.

The FBI has apologized and is paying for the damage.

Oh, hey, our bad. Want a cookie or something?

What’s really scary about this is that these nimrods had two years to get the address right and still screwed it up.

In another investigation that took slightly less time, as in about two seconds, Associated Press is reporting that cops tasered a guy for walking his dog.

A man walking his dogs in a federal park was hit with a stun gun and arrested by a park ranger who accused him of not putting a leash on the animals and giving a false name, astonishing passers-by who say the reaction was excessive.

The ranger deployed the Taser stun gun on Gary Hesterberg on Sunday after he ignored the ranger’s orders and tried to walk away, the National Park Service said. Hesterberg was allegedly walking his dogs without leashes in violation of the rules of Rancho Corral de Tierra, which was incorporated into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in December.

“It appears the incident began as one of several educational contacts that day about the NPS rules on dog-walking,” said Howard Levitt, the recreation area’scommunications director. “But this one developed into a more serious law enforcement situation when the person being contacted provided false information.”

Hesterberg allegedly refused to provide the ranger with printed identification, and she realized he had told her a false name when she called dispatchers to verify, Levitt said. While she was on the telephone, “the man failed to heed repeated orders to remain at the scene” and the ranger used her Taser, he said.

The encounter is being reviewed just like any other use of force by a law enforcement officer, Levitt said. The ranger, whom he would not identify, remains on the job, he said.

“Any law enforcement officer has a variety of means by which to insure compliance in a law enforcement situation, so the standard is they exercise reasonable judgment to ensure compliance in any situation they find themselves in,” Levitt said.

A witness, Michelle Babcock, told the San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/y9rHph) the ranger never gave Hesterberg an explanation as to why he was being detained and then hit him with the stun gun in the back.

This is “being looked into” by the people who hired this idiot in the first place. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, if you want the stunningly wrong at too many levels to count, you have to go to Florida where a man adopted his girlfriend to avoid paying debts on a lawsuit and … well … so he could have sex with his 42 year old daughter.

A wealthy Florida man has adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend as a daughter in a move critics say will protect the man’s assets during an upcoming lawsuit surrounding a deadly car accident.

Polo Club Palm Beach founder John Goodman, 48, adopted his longtime partner Heather Laruso Hutchins in October, The Palm Beach Post reports.

The strategy could shore up Goodman’s wealth as he confronts a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the parents of Scott Patrick Wilson, The Associated Press says. Wilson was killed in 2010 when Goodman allegedly ran a stop sign. The trial begins March 27.

Goodman had previously set up a trust for his two minor children. If Wilson’s parents win their civil suit, they cannot receive any compensation from the trust, The Post reports.

Hutchins, as Goodman’s third legal child, is now entitled to a third of the money in the trust. However, another court could later rule that Hutchins isn’t entitled to a share of the trust, Fox News reports.

A lawyer for the Wilson family claims it’s a ploy for Goodman to keep money for himself. But Dan Bachi, Goodman’s lawyer, told The Palm Beach Post, the adoption is to guarantee his children’s future and denied that it was spurred by the lawsuit.

Florida attorney Charlotte Danciu said in an interview with TV station WPEC that Goodman is abusing the state’s adoption law, which is designed to create parent-child relationships.

Even Circuit Court Judge Glenn Kelley, who approved Goodman’s adoption application in Miami-Dade County, described the request as “border[ing] on the surreal,” and said it put the court in a “legal twilight zone.”

Sobriety tests revealed that Goodman was driving with a blood-alcohol level two times above the legal limit on the night Wilson died. Besides the civil case, he faces a March trial for vehicular homicide, DUI manslaughter, and leaving the scene of a crime. Those charges carry a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.

For those of you who are new to this blog allow me to point something out; Dan Bachi lied. Not just a little lie, we’re talking one of those “No I won’t do that in your mouth” kind of lies.

Okay, so we need a happy story. The Spanish village of Sodeto played the state lottery and won a portion of $950,000,000.00.

So what could go wrong? One guy didn’t chip in for the ticket so he got nothing.

Back in December, the tiny Spanish village of Sodeto collectively won a major stake in the annual $950 million Spanish national lottery. Today, the village of farmers and construction workers is enjoying a minimum payout of $130,000 per resident.

And yet for all of the new wealth making its way around Sodeto, one villager came away empty-handed. Costis Mitsotakis, a Greek filmmaker who moved to the village for a woman, is the only resident of Sodeto who did not purchase a ticket. Mitsotakis says he is no longer with the woman and now lives in a barn he is restoring just outside the village:

Mr. Mitsotakis said it would have been nice to win. But he has benefited nonetheless. He had been trying to sell some land without much success. The day after the lottery a neighbor called to say he would buy it. The next day another neighbor called. But Mr. Mitsotakis refused to get into a bidding war. “This is a small village,” he said. “You don’t want bad feelings.”

Spain’s national lottery, known as “El Gordo” (the fat one), was first established in 1812 and operates somewhat differently than most American lotteries. For example, this year there were 1,800 first-prize winning tickets, each with the same winning number of 58268. Each winning ticket was awarded a cash-prize equaling $520,000. But since each ticket costs $26, Spain allows them to be divided into as many as six “participations.”

As for the other residents, they’ve found that with the newfound wealth comes distractions and fortune seekers. The village has reportedly been bombarded with sales representatives of all forms, each trying to cash in on the nearly $150 million infusion of wealth. More from the New York Times:

On a recent morning, the vendors just kept showing up: bankers in suits offering high interest rates, car salesmen talking up BMWs and furniture dealers going door to door.

Like many other local farmers, José Manuel Penella Cambra, who had recently invested in more efficient irrigation techniques, worried about how he would meet his payments. But his wife bought two tickets, worth $260,000, and his son found two more she had bought earlier and had forgotten about, bringing the total to $520,000.

“I kept saying: look for some more, look for some more,” he joked in the village cafe, a shabby establishment with a few Formica tables and a ripped black leatherette sofa.

Of course, in a town where everyone is rich, who serves the wealthy? As Mayor Rosa Pons notes, “Some of the ladies talked about going to the hairdresser. But the hairdresser won, too. And she said, ‘I’m not working today.’ So that ended that.”

Oh well, it seems like everyone there gets along – maybe not as well as Ashley, Ann and Gina in a tub – so I’m sure all will be well.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go take a cold shower now.

Well, fair is fair, watch the video and you’ll need one too. Especially if you like tennis.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!