NORTH PORT, Fla. - A teenager died Saturday night after
being impaled by the blade of a sword that separated from
the handle. Jonathan Sullivan, 17, was killed when his
friend swung the sword and the blade came off and struck him
in the chest. Sullivan collapsed in the kitchen of the North
Port home after the blade stabbed his chest, and was taken
by helicopter to a St. Petersburg hospital. He was later
pronounced dead. The 18-year-old male who allegedly swung
the sword was not identified by police. "It appears to be
accidental, although this is an ongoing investigation," said
Capt. Robert Estrada. "There are no charges at this time."

This is a sad, sad story, and I really shouldn't mock it...but
you know I will. I mean, come on. 17 and 18, and they didn't
know any better than to not swing real swords in the general
direction of another human being? I'm guessing the surviving 18
year old has as many girlfriends as I have ovaries. Idiots.
Hello, Darwin Awards? I think I've got one for ya.
----------
BOSTON - Gregg Miller has designed some new balls for dogs,
but these won't be used while playing fetch. Miller has just
received an Ig Nobel Prize for his invention - prosthetic
testicles for neutered dogs. It all started 10 years ago with
an experiment on an unwitting Rottweiler named Max, and has
turned into a booming mail-order business. Miller has sold
over 150,000 of his 'Neuticles,' which come in different sizes,
shapes, weights and degrees of firmness. According to the
Neuticles website, the silicone implants allow a pet "to
retain his natural look" and "self esteem." Miller is very
honored to be given the Ig Nobel Prize, which rewards the
humorous, creative and odd side of science.

I don't know what an "lg Nobel Prize" is, but I'm pretty sure
someone did more rewarding work than designing fake balls for
neutered dogs. I'm sure of it. I bet if I search the web, I'll
find someone who made a cure for doggy syphilis or 3-leggedness
or pissing on hydrants, all of which are more deserving of this
so-called Nobel Prize than the guy who made Fake Fido Gonads. Are
you telling me that neutered dogs are walking around saying "Damn,
I wish I had my nuts so I can lick 'em"? Please.
-----------
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A Cambodian couple bit off more they
could chew when they attacked their 12-year-old child early
Thursday morning. Chheng Chhorn and Srun Yoeung bit off
their daughter's thumb nails and a small chunk of her nose
to drink her blood. Neighbors arrived and rescued the girl
after hearing her screams. The girl was treated in a hospital
in Kampong Cham, about 50 miles east of Phom Penh, and then
placed in the custody of other villagers. Relatives took her
parents to a black magic healer to try and chase away the
evil spirit that was believed to possess them. "We, the
police, just have no idea what offense to charge them with,"

I have no words. I....I really have no words. 
-----------
NORTH WALES - A youth at the Welsh Mountain Zoo stole a
white rabbit and threw it into the alligator pool in an act
that is being described as "senseless barbarity." The youth,
who is being sought by police, took a rabbit from the
children's farm and brought it to the alligator exhibit.
"He grabbed the rabbit and took it a distance of 20-30 yards
to the alligator beach and threw it into the pool," zoo
director Chris Jackson said. Witnesses were horrified to see
the poor animal still alive in the alligator's jaws before
it was killed. Staff detained one youth and handed him over
to police, but two more got away.

Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't we go pick this kid up from
school in a stretch limosine, give him an XBox 360 to play during
the ride, feed him all the pizza and spray cheese he can fit into
his overfed mouth, and then throw him into a cannibal camp (the
fact that there are no cannibals where there are limosines is utterly
immaterial. Roll with me here). We'll see how he likes it. I'm thinking
he'll give that a negative review. Now, I won't pretend that I didn't
feed Alka-Seltzer to frogs and seagulls back in South Carolina. I was
young! For those of you sensitive to animals, I won't bother to tell
you what happens when they eat Alka-Seltzer. Those of you who do want
to know, email me. But damn. This is totally different. It is.

Hush.
-------------
Arkansas woman Michelle Duggar gave birth this week to a
baby girl. This wouldn't be a big deal except that the baby
is the 16th child for Michelle and her husband Jim Bob.
That's right. Johannah Faith Duggar has 10 brothers and five
sisters. "The entire family is excited to welcome another
child into their lives," Duggar said. "Everyone is healthy
and happy and doing wonderful." The other children range from
17-year-old Joshua to Jackson, who was born last year. All
have names beginning with J. The Discovery Channel has done
two TV specials on the family. The first, "14 Children and
Pregnant Again," was made a couple of kids ago and is getting
a reprise in honor of the new arrival. "Raising Your 16
Children" is underway is scheduled to air in March.

Thank God for the Discovery Channel. Otherwise the welfare
system would buckle under the weight of feeding SIXTEEN children.
Holy shit. I've got two, and that's plenty. I would be mixing arsenic
into my Tang at ten.
EDIT: I totally overlooked the fact that (a) they're from Arkansas,
which explains a lot; (b) all the kids have names that start with a
J, which is just bizarre; and (c) the husband's name is JIM BOB.
Jim Bob Duggar. There's the name of a Ph.D. candidate. Have you
ever noticed that there are no doctors, lawyers, physicists, college
professors, rocket scientists, or advertising executives named Jim Bob?
I can see the mullet now, waving in the breeze like a wounded animal
clinging to the antenna of a moving car. "Bob" is not an award-winning
middle name. The only  person who has really made it work for him
is Billy Bob Thorton, and although he's a great actor, he's not exactly
a shining example of good citizenship.
-------------
OVIEDO, Fla. - A fight broke out between two neighbors over
the color one man painted his house. Sam Awhal painted his
home tan with black trim, which happened to be the same
colors as Michael Dudley's house. The sheriff's report said
Dudley was upset over this, went over to talk to Awhal, and
then hit him. The man who was painting Awhal's house tried
to break up the fight. "He got very upset ... literally
attacked ... 'cause of black paint," said painter Steve
Yaworski. Dudley was charged, but was released from jail

They should both be beaten for painting their houses tan with
black trim. I think Mr. Dudley has a small, minor anger management
issue. Just a guess.
-------------
NORTON SHORES, Mich. - A Michigan man was arrested for shoe
theft after he allegedly trespassed at a school and athletic
shoes were found in his car that were way too big for him.
Police in Norton Shores believe that Roger Weil wanted the
shoes for "sexual gratification," the Muskegon Chronicle
reported. Jose Gutierrez, a security guard at Mona Shores
High School, found Weil in a hallway this week. Gutierrez
thought he looked like a man caught by a security camera in
November on the day a pair of shoes and $20 disappeared
from the school. Gutierrez called police and with the
responding officer escorted Weil to his car, where they
found a pair of size 14 shoes. Weil has a long history of
arrests and convictions for larceny, including previous
thefts of shoes from schools.

Um. What's more disturbing - the fact that he gets off on shoes,
or that he gets off on MALE shoes? Jose. Let's ratchet this fetish
back a little, huh? I bet the guys in the pen will let you smell
shoes. Male shoes. Probably your own. While you're bending over.
I suggest you get real good at either running or calling men "honey".

Peace.

All DD News & Commentary stories are courtesy of Bizarre News. Holla.

I saw a white woman named Keisha today at Wal-Mart. I have now officially seen everything. That is all. Peace.

We just recently found out that we’re renting a house to a registered sex offender. Damian’s White Wife (DWW) did an internet search for registered sex offenders in our area, and his name popped up. He served his time; he’s a nice guy, but damn – he was convicted of sexual assault on a 16 year old boy! Not that a 16 year old girl would’ve been more palatable, but it would at least fall within the realm of “ok, maybe I can see that happening”. He’s married, with 2 kids and one on the way, and he’s younger than me. I don’t know what any of that has to do with the story, but I felt the need to tell you anyways. We contacted a lawyer to check our liability if he were to, say, have some sort of a relapse and start throwing Michael Jackson parties at our domicile, and they assured us that we wouldn’t be liable. We don’t have any real legal recourse; they pay their rent (mostly) on time, and have been fairly stellar tenants (unlike others we’ve had). Actually, we’ve got a minute – allow me to pontificate on some previous tenants we’ve had. When we moved from South Carolina to Texas, we did it under duress. We didn’t want to move – we were pretty happy right where we were. But my job was a very good one; in fact, it’s the same job I just got laid off from. Due to that, we felt like perhaps a move was the right thing for us. My company had a very nice relocation package, including packing, shipping and storage service, free apartments for 4-6 weeks, free rental car, free car shipping, home purchase assistance…I mean, nice stuff. But none of those were the real prize. The true incentive was money. My company assured us that I would receive a bonus equal to 50% of my annual salary, broken into payments. We’d get 15% immediately, 15% after 9 months on site, and 20% after 2 years. I was making pretty decent coin by then, so we were talking about a significant amount of dinero. It was hard to turn it down, and as much as we wanted to stay in SC, we knew it was the best move for my career, which hadn’t really taken off at that point. So we moved, with the idea being that after two years, we would grab the 20% final installment of the bonus and leave Texas in a wake of road dust and chicken-fried chicken. Hence we didn’t sell our house in SC – we’d be right back in two years, right? We’ll just rent it. It turns out that DWW’s cousin and her family needed a place to stay, so we thought that was just perfect. Then we moved. The first thing that happened was that they jumped the lease. Even though they were family, we had a written and signed lease with them, all formal and business-like. They were supposed to move in approximately 1 month after we left, because we had to leave our animals there initially, and we wanted them to wait until I made the drive back to SC to retrieve them. They moved in 4 days after DWW and my son got on the airplane. We were kinda perturbed about it, but it wasn’t a big deal. They diligently paid rent every month for about 6 months. Then the money stopped coming. Oh, it started with late payments, then bounced checks, and then…nothing. We called and asked, and the cousin would cry and give us a sob story about this or that. And it being family, we stupidly swallowed it. While we weren’t rich, we had money in the bank, so we figured that we could handle things in the short term, so long as rent started up again soon. They lived in the house for another year and a half after that, and we got a total of maybe $200 for rent in that time. Why didn’t you kick them out, you ask? Because it was family, and they had a baby girl. We were such suckers, I swear. They pretty much ruined us financially, while they went on to file for bankruptcy and bought a new van and a new house. To this day, they won’t even so much as acknowledge that they screwed us out of roughly $14,000. And we think it’s too late to sue them for it, not to mention that it would rip the family apart, and the prospect of actually getting money from them is about as likely as getting the periodic table out of Jessica Simpson. I saw them at Thanksgiving, all laughing and smiling and shit, while we had to borrow money to get to SC in the first place. It was all I could do to not say anything to them (no one wants a scene at Thanksgiving). There are things I want to do to them that I can’t even mention here, ‘cause if I did, the police would slap the term “premeditated” on my charge. And no one wants that. So, these tenants aren’t anywhere close to those in terms of paying us. They just have a known, registered sex offender there. Which is worse? Peace.

Thanks to Laurie for hipping me to this site. The Sexy Name Decoder Now I'm gonna have some fun with it.
Beguiling, eh? I like carnal, though. And all this for "Black Man". Sweet. "Kindly Delivering Arousing Massage" should be followed by "When His Hands Don't Hurt From Playing Bass". Yeah, right. How about a couple from The Monster Name Decoder, just for kicks? Drifter-abducting? Maiden-injuring? Damn. Xcorcist? C'mon, they couldn't find ONE word that starts with X? No "xenophobe", "xylophone", or "Xevious"? Xevious kicked ass, for those of you old enough to remember that game. It was no Zaxxon, but it still turned my knobs. Try it for yourself. Let us know what it says. DO EEEEEEEEEEEET! Peace.

Anyone interested in seeing some of the pictures I took while in Italy can check 'em out on Photobucket. I'm not great, but I ain't too shabby. Click here and be amazed All right, I promise my next post won't be about Italy. I'm done with Italy. Italy is a red Kool-Aid stain on the carpet of my memory. I'm sure I can find another topic of discussion, like the registered sex offenders I know and bad-ass best man speeches. By the way, someone PLEASE click on a sponsor link above. I'm unemployed and in need of income. HOOK ME UP! EDIT: And buy something. Buy something. From Wal-Mart. You know you can use something from Wal-Mart. Or iTunes. Go 'head. Also, today is my birthday. Show me love. Peace.

Here’s part 3 of the tale of my last day in Italy. ---------- I emerged from the metro at the station appropriately named “Duomo” into the cold night. When I reached the surface, the first thing I saw was a huge inflatable building inside which a man was shouting very loudly in Italian into a megaphone. Ignoring him and the gathering crowd, I went around the left side of the building, and gasped in amazement. Il Duomo was ginormous. Hugantic. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen in my life. There is nothing, nothing at all like it in America. It was the kind of structure that makes you shut the hell up and just be in awe of it, unencumbered by the vapid and transitory thoughts that invade your mind and dominate your daily life. Seeing Il Duomo for the first time had the effect of utterly clearing my mind, even if for only a few moments, and forcing me to recognize something greater than myself. The only bad thing about the cathedral was that the façade was nearly completely covered for restoration. When you’ve got a building that’s over 700 years old, restoration is a non-stop activity. Despite the fact that much of the front of the building was obscured by a shell, the spires were still clearly visible, including the golden Madonna atop the highest tower, and the sides and back were untouched. It was a magnificent sight. However, not visible among the beautiful features of Il Duomo was Paolo. It was past 6pm, and he was nowhere to be found. Fortunately I had his cell number, so I ambled over to the bank of payphones to the right of the church. I had no idea how many Euros to put in the phone, so I just grabbed coins and stuffed ‘em in. I dialed the given number, and…nothing. I got a female voice in Italian saying something I couldn’t understand, but the connotation was clear: I had the wrong number. So I dialed again. Same result. Shit. I called the States and left a message for DWW, just to let her know I had gotten the money, and wandered around. I studied the doors of Duomo, stared at people gathering around the church, and basically just tried to stay warm while I considered my next move. I looked at the number again, and realized that Paolo had thoughtfully included the country code in his phone number, which I had dumbly dialed also. I went back to the phones, tried the number without the country code, and bingo – he answered. He told me he was on his way and to hang loose. I found a shopping complex inside an ancient arch and set about spending some of my new-found Euros. After that, I went inside Il Duomo. I won’t go into specifics about the wonders I saw there – that would be an entire post all to itself. I was spellbound, though. The whole time I kept saying to myself “Don’t desecrate anything. Don’t desecrate anything.” After I came out, I found Paolo out front, and he proceeded to show me Milan. The most interesting thing I saw was inside the giant archway, where the shopping mall was. On the floor of the ancient building was a section of tile depicting a bull. It looked a lot like this. In fact, it looked EXACTLY like this: This bull was significant because, according to Paolo, people come from all over to see this tile in order to spin around 3 times on its balls for luck. Given my day, I spun around 6 times on the bull's nuts, figuring more was better. After walking the city and buying Paolo dinner, it was 11pm, and I decided it was time to head toward the airport, where my hotel was for the evening. The airport was about 35 kilometers north of the city, but I knew that there was a bus that went there from Central. See, by then, I was an Italian public transportation expert. But Paolo insisted on driving me there, which I greatly appreciated. We walked to his apartment, got in his car, and drive north, chattering the whole time about politics and Jessica Alba's performance in "Fantastic Four". We got to the airport, and encountered a problem. You see, the hotel was called Airport Hotel Malpensa. Malpensa is the name of the airport, so we figured if we just drove up there, we'd eventually run across the hotel. We were sadly mistaken. After driving around for 15 minutes, we pulled into the airport itself, and I hopped out to ask a group of cabbies for directions. Now, the fact that I got out is important, because as you recall, I don't speak Italian. But by then I was swelling with confidence in my communication skills, which were indeed mad skills by then, so I bundled up and trotted over like I knew Italian or something. I asked, and a cabbie started giving me directions - in English! This conversation took place: Me: "Buena sera. Dove Airport Hotel Malpensa, per favore?" (Good evening. Where Airport Hotel Malpensa, please?) Cabbie 1: "Is close. Very close. You go out of airport. You go go go. Road ends, you go. Then go right, then go right. Then left. You there. Hotel." Cabbie 2 (to Cabbie 1, while furiously swinging his hand in a circle): "L'icindsia dkndlkio e sshsilvi waidkjsdfnei? Nsiewi cnejnc fava!!" Cabbie 1 (to Cabbie 2): "No, no, fhfiitio fknvfowe dgfnle!" Me: "Uh, what did he just say?" Cabbie 1: "No important. No worry. You go. You ok? You know?" Me: "Si. Grazie. Buena sera!" I hopped back into the car, and relayed the directions to Paolo, who looked at me with a "I knew I should've gotten out" look on his face. By now it was close to 1am, and we were both exhausted. We followed the cabbie's directions, which led us to a problem. He was dead-on accurate with the stuff about the road ending and whatnot, but the "turn right" led us to a roundabout. And anyone who has ever been in a roundabout will tell you that ALL the turns are right turns. For sure, that's what Cabbie 2 was telling Cabbie 1 to tell us. We picked one at random, and drove down it. We were wrong. It was foggy, it was dark, and there were no signs or cars. It sucked. We turned around and went back to the roundabout, and took another road. That road led us to yet another roundabout. Now we just looked at each other. I told Paolo to take me back to the airport, and I'd sleep in the terminal. I had to be there at 5am anyway, but he utterly refused, I think mostly out of male pride. We picked a road at random, and we saw a sign for "Motel Hotel Airport". By then, as tired as we were, we weren't choosy - maybe this was the right place. I went in, and sure enough, they had a reservation for me. I said my goodbyes to Paolo, and settled into my room. It was 2am. I had to be at the airport by 5am. The shuttle left at 4:30am. I got like a half-hour of sleep, and paid a freakin' king's ransom for the hotel room. Ugh. I had no trouble with getting to the airport, or with my flight to Paris. In fact, they put me in business class, which pleased me to no end. Business class is delightful. Wide seats, nice headrests, sexual favors from the flight attendants...awesome. I changed planes in Paris, and that's when trouble started. I've heard many things about how rude the French can be, but I never really generalized it to all French. I've since changed my opinion. French people are the rudest, crassest, loudest, and most unpleasant group of people I've ever been around, and I've been to Ku Klux Klan parades. There must've been about 60 French people on that flight from Paris to Dallas, and none of them would take their seat. Seriously, they wouldn't sit the fuck down. One couple kept getting up every 20 minutes to grope each other in the aisle. Ridiculous. The flight attendants got on the P.A. multiple times, in English and French, and finally the damn captain had to get on it to tell those frogs to sit. The FAs couldn't even push the drink and food carts down the aisles, and when they'd ask people to sit, the people would look at them, sniff, and wave them off. They were loud, yelling across rows of seats to each other, taking off their shoes, going 5 and 6 at a time to the toilet. And this was an 11 hour flight. I was sitting at the very back of the plane, and witnessed all this nonsense. At one point, about 6 hours in, one of the American FAs was walking down the aisle toward me, and when we made eye contact, he said "We're having QUITE the party, aren't we?" as he jerked his head toward Claude and Pierre having a loud French conversation across 3 rows of seats. I got no sleep on that flight. None. Thank God for my mp3 player. When we landed, I nearly pulled a Pope and kissed the American soil. Nothing makes you appreciate your country like being away from it. America has it problems, but I wouldn't trade it for anything, except maybe bacon. But that's a given. Peace.