Don’t read this

Um …

An Australian woman accused of setting her husband’s genitals on fire because she thought he was having an affair has been charged with murder ….

…. Prosecutor Lucy Boord said Narayan told neighbors she was a “jealous wife” but she hadn’t meant to kill him when she doused the sleeping man’s genitals with an alcohol-based solvent and then set him on fire.

Boord quoted Narayan allegedly saying: “I just wanted to burn his penis so it belongs to me and no one else. … I didn’t mean this to happen.”

The husband jumped out of bed and knocked over the bottle of alcohol, causing the fire to spread and resulting in 1 million Australian dollars ($711,000) of damage to their town house and an adjacent property, the Adelaide Advertiser reported.

… yeah.

(AP via AZ Central)

An open letter to Mr. Tim Rutten

Mr. Rutten:

Your June 18, 2008 opinion column, published by the Los Angeles Times, is untenable. Your attempt to reduce Bush administration collusion to license the torture of terrorism suspects to mere politics is a disservice to the people of the United States of America, and an insult to our neighbors around the world.

While indeed these are difficult times marked by sharp political disagreements, the pretense that bad-faith legal advice customized to warrant blatant disregard for the law, the United States Constitution, and the international agreements to which our nation has signed its commitment and prestige is mere political maneuvering does not simply verge on the outrageous, but rather punches through that border and demands a wholesale transcension of the very concept of rule of law.

Hordes of evil dwarves?

God, I wish I was high.

I mean … there are so many things wrong with what comes next:

“Dwarves zipped in suitcases steal from Swedes“, by Lucy Cockcroft

Let me state clearly that I did not make that up.

Criminal gangs are using dwarves in a ruse to steal from the luggage holds of long-distance coaches, by hiding them inside suitcases, according to police.

The bizarre crime is on the rise in Sweden and officers say thieves have got away with thousands of pounds in cash, jewellery and other valuables in recent months.

Gangs are said to sneak the dwarves into the luggage hold, hidden inside baggage.

Then, once the journey has begun, the stowaways are free to rifle through the bags of other passengers without fear of being apprehended.

Before the coach arrives at its destination the dwarves take their loot back into their suitcase, zip themselves inside and wait to be collected by their partners in crime.

And I learned something from this article, too. I mean, there is a theoretical purpose to political correctness, but sometimes it’s just a bit too much. Like the police spokesman in Stockholm, who said, “We are looking at our records to identify criminals of limited stature.”

Well, that does better than “vertically challenged”. Although I don’t see what would be so impolite about actually saying that they are looking through their records to identify “criminals who would fit in a suitcase”.

I won’t even start on Mulch Diggums and Mini-Me.