THE PIGS ARE IN THE MUD AND THEY'RE GETTING ALL SLOPPY...

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Quite possibly the smartest dog ever.

Meet Toby, a 2-year-old golden retriever who recently saved his owner's life - by performing the Heimlich maneuver.

We have no idea how the hell a dog managed to learn the Heimlich maneuver, but this story is so ridiculously absurd and downright ludicrous that it has to be true. His owner, Debbie, began choking on a piece of fruit. She first attempted to perform the Heimlich on herself, which we imagine would be pretty hard to do. Here is what happened next, according to Debbie:

"The next think I know, Toby's up on his hind feet and he's got his front paws on my shoulders. He pushed me to the ground, and once I was on my back, he began jumping up and down on my chest."

That's pretty damn amazing.

Koko spends some quality time cuddling with her pet cat.

Koko is one of the most famous gorillas in history. Weighing in at 300 pounds and having "the strength of six men", Koko is not an aggressive beast but instead a highly intelligent and expressive person. Here is a short summary of her abilities:

• She can communicate and understand sign language (over 1,000 signs)
• She understands English (about 2,000 words)
• She has been involved in several sexual harassment scandals because of her nipple fetish
• She has pet cats
• She occasionally enjoys a refreshing unfiltered cigarette
• Her IQ has been tested at as high as 90, just below average for most humans, and far above the average for citizens of Gary, IN

In fact, Koko was involved in the "first live inter-species Internet chat" back in 1998, when a chat between Koko and AOL users using text and sign language was broadcast throughout the internets.

We managed to find a transcript of the chat between Koko and the rest of the world. Highlights from this monumental virtual discussion are below. Taking part in the talk are "HaloMyBaby" (the online public moderator), DrPPatrson (Koko's trainer) and LiveKoko (Koko):

HaloMyBaby: Is Koko aware that she's chatting with thousands of people now?

LiveKOKO: Good here.

DrPPatrsn: Koko is aware.

HaloMyBaby: I'll start taking questions from the audience now, our first question is: MInyKitty asks, Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?

LiveKOKO: Pink

DrPPatrsn: We've had earlier discussion about colors today

LiveKOKO: Listen, Koko loves eat

HaloMyBaby: Me too!

DrPPatrsn: What about a baby? She's thinking...

LiveKOKO: Unattention

DrPPatrsn: She covered her face with her hands....which means it's not happening, basically, or it hasn't happened yet.

LiveKOKO: I don't see it.

HaloMyBaby: EFRN asks, Would Koko like to have a kitten, a dog, or another Gorilla as a friend?

LiveKOKO: dog

DrPPatrsn: She actually has two dog friends right now one kitty and two gorillas.

HaloMyBaby: SBM87 asks, What are the names of your kittens? (and dogs?)

LiveKOKO: foot

DrPPatrsn: Foot isn't the name of your kitty

HaloMyBaby: Koko, what's the name of your cat?

LiveKOKO: no

DrPPatrsn: She just gave some vocalizations there... some soft puffing

HaloMyBaby: I heard that soft puffing!

DrPPatrsn: Now shaking her head no.

Question: Do you like to chat with other people?

HaloMyBaby: That was from Rulucky!

LiveKOKO: fine nipple

HaloMyBaby: Storm 1004 asks, Dear Koko...I've watched you for years now...your gentle spirit is inspiration for many... I'd like to know what you'd like for your birthday.

HaloMyBaby: What a sweet question!

LiveKOKO: Birthday. Food and smokes.

HaloMyBaby: SMOKES?

DrPPatrsn: She's reading a birthday card.

LiveKOKO: lips, apple give me

DrPPatrsn: People give her her favorite foods.

LiveKOKO: love, browse drink nipple

DrPPatrsn: Browse is like... the little foods/snacks we give them.

LiveKOKO: koko loves that nipple drink, go

As you can see, it's pretty much what you'd expect a conversation with a gorilla would be like. There weren't any deep, philosophical discussions or clever garden-path twists. The ape, quite simply, acted like an ape.

And that's just fine with us.

Australia is Very Sensible

Big waterfall.

Every year, a couple of lunatics go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Why they do this, God only knows. But they do it. It is a tradition that has been going on for over 100 years. Our favorite:

October 25, 1991

Robert Overcracker rides a jet-ski over the brink of the Horseshoe Falls to help promote awareness for the homeless. His parachute did not open, and Robert ended up promoting better parachutes. He plunged to his death and his body was never recovered. An Egyptian tourist captured this amazing image:

In the latest of a long line of ridiculous events at Niagara Falls (not to be confused with Viagra Falls), a Spanish man was rescued from the Niagara River, just a few miles from the falls, after claiming he had fallen asleep on an inflatable mattress and had no idea how he got into the river. According to him, he had been "taking a nap on an air mattress along the Niagara Parkway and woke up in the swift moving Niagara River."

Naturally, we here at HPO can totally relate to this situation. Every one of us has been there before. Come on, don't you remember the first time you fell asleep next to the parkway, and awoke in middle of a half-frozen river, coming dangerously close to becoming a human Denver omelet at the bottom of the world's biggest waterfall?

Of course you do.

This Spanish guy either needs to learn how to shop for inflatable mattresses properly, or he needs to learn how to lie better. One or the other.

Dinosaurs.

A woman was apprehended by border guards at the Gaza-Egypt crossing when they noticed she looked "strangely fat." After searching the women, police discovered that she had three live crocodiles strapped to her waist.

From a border patrol spokesperson:

Even though she was veiled and covered, even with so many clothes on there was something strange. The policewoman screamed and ran out of the room, and then women began screaming and panicking when they heard. But when the hysteria died down... everybody was admiring a woman who is able to tie crocodiles to her body.

Hey, we admire her too. That ain't easy, walking around with three potentially deadly reptiles tied to your rib cage.

You see, the reason humans don't go walking around with alligators tied to themselves is because of natural instinct. Through evolution, all the people that were dumb enough to say, "Let's see what happens when I tie myself to a crocodile" killed themselves off, and the only people left were the ones who stayed as far away from crocodiles as they could.

We keep them in cages for a reason.

The biggest toad in the puddle.

Australia, we're told, has quite the cane toad problem. We don't care much for Australians, so we didn't know this before. But apparently, the poisonous toads are quite an environmental pain-in-the-ass for Australia's ecosystems, so special conservation groups are called upon to capture the toads.

After they are captured, of course, the Australians remind us why the good lord put toads on this planet in the first place: "We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process that renders the toads nontoxic... It turns out to be sensational fertilizer."

But today, the Australians captured the biggest cane toad ever found, a massive beast "the size of a small dog." According to frog experts, the juggernaut toad weighs 2 pounds and has a body "the size of a football."

But he ain't gonna be the size of a football for long. Soon, he will be joining his toad brothers in the fertilizer freezer, and not long after that he will literally be pushing up daisies for in some Australian park.

Good riddance to bad rubbish! Why can't more countries follow their lead? Maybe, sometime in the future, on one glorious morning, the rest of the world will be as logical and even-keeled as Australia.

Keep your fingers crossed, people! Someday, hopefully, the whole world will use defenseless animals to ensure that our lawncare needs are always met! Sure, our freezers will be full of dead frogs, but our grass will never be yellow again! That's a small price to pay for impeccable landscaping.

If this isn't the most sensible idea we've ever heard, we don't know what is.

On Monkeys and Morals

Our cousin the ape.

An amazingly groundbreaking experiment was performed in Florida in 1931-32, thanks to the countless hours of experimental research performed by Winthrop and Luella Kellogg. They took their newborn son, Donald, and had him live with a baby chimpanzee named Gua for 9 months. The purpose of the study is documented as follows:

Suppose an anthropoid were taken into a typical human family at the day of birth and reared as a child. Suppose he were fed upon a bottle, clothed, washed, bathed, fondled, and given a characteristically human environment; that he were spoken to like the human infant from the moment of parturition; that he had an adopted human mother and an adopted human father... The experimental situation par excellence should indeed be attained if this technique were refined one step farther by adopting such a baby ape into a human family with one child of approximately the ape's age.

Read this next bit very, very carefully: Make sure you check out the full documentation of this amazing experiment!!!

(NOTE: Not only did bold it, but we also used a triple exclamation point in the previous paragraph. We treat the triple exclamation point with great respect here at HPO, and we don't use it very often. So if you didn't click on that link yet, you are obviously an idiot, and we will do you a huge favor and give you another chance to go to visit that amazing website.)

Here is a summary of the conclusions reached by the Doctors Kellogg:

At the end of nine months the Kelloggs demonstrated that environment, particularly psychological environment, is necessary for the development of an individual's inherent abilities. Gua, treated as a human child, behaved like a human child except when the structure of her body and brain prevented her. This being shown, the experiment was discontinued.

On-believable. We are speechless. If we could shake Dr. Kellogg's hand, we would. But we can't, because he's taking a dirt nap.

Food for thought...

While more recent research shows that monkeys can be taught to do human activities, it is yet to be definitively proven if monkeys can think and feel in the same way that humans can. However, more and more conclusive evidence is emerging that narrows the already-sparse gap between us and our ape cousins.

From our friend Casey over at MonkeyDayNews:

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days...

Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment. Other primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a piece of cucumber instead of a grape.

That chimp has exactly one more black belt than we do.

Amazing. The research actually shows that certain apes and New World monkeys actually exhibit complex social behavior through structured interactions within their social circles. This has been documented and proven extensively.

Monkeys will actually starve themselves rather than get fed, if the only way to get fed is to hurt their friends. Monkeys will punish bad behavior, console their friends who are hurt, and even put themselves in harm's way to defuse potentially volatile situations such as fights within their own tribe.

Give them citizenship, and let them walk amongst us, wild and free.

Thanks to the Blue Pig for sending us that video. It seems like the song was met with mixed results. Here are some comments regarding Terrance and his dads that we managed to find on the internets:

I dare anyone to watch this without smiling and simultaneously holding back tears - Rick Sincere

This world is going insane - Lizol

when you turn 18, terrance, one of them will ask you out on a date. - pipecorp

Une belle leçon de tolérance ! Merci. - Annibor

It's really catchy. And I don't really like rap but hey, this song is so worth it - Shini-ttebayo

I wonder what bath time was like in that household - FatherofFive

God bless the Dutch, and God bless and keep Terrance and his two fathers - Raymond A

I wonder if his fathers are insane showbiz-wannabee types (like those gay guys in the HBO docu about child beauty pageants) who forced him to sing this song - Bacteriaburger

I actually got really emotional from this video, how gay am I? haha - apa86

Anything like this in America would shake the epicenter of the religious right, whose own "Jesus Camp" instructs exactly the opposite: intolerance and a virtual jihad against anyone who doesn't share their beliefs - Ellis Grey

The Deer Hunter

That's a fine looking beast...

A 20 year old man was sentenced to probation after he was found guilty of "having sexual contact with a dead deer." As disturbing as this may sound, this is not the first conviction of this type for Brian Hathaway of Duluth, MN. Quoting the article:

He was found guilty in April 2005 of felony mistreatment of an animal after he killed a horse with the intention of having sex with it. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail and two years of extended supervision on that charge as well as six years of probation for taking and driving a vehicle without the owner's consent.

That is some sick, twisted shit. The judge said it best: "This type of behavior is disturbing. It's disturbing to the public. It's disturbing to the court." Of course, when we read this story, one thing came to mind: "Raving psycho! Butchered 400 chickens and screwed a beagle. I'm taking him back to Nevada where he's wanted for banging horses!"

Now, we here at HPO strongly believe that Minnesotans are kind-hearted, God-fearing people, who live happily with their purple football team and their funny accents. We happen to be big fans of Minnesota, and every time we travel to their great Northern state, we are treated with dignity and respect. Sadly, every once in a while, the peace is shattered by perverts who wanna rape deer or turn fish houses into Hawaiian salt factories.

At this time, we'd like to introduce you to the fine Bolivian tradition known as tinku. Tinku is an ancient ritual still practiced today in the hills of Bolivia, and this is how it was described in The New York Times:

Tinku, in Bolivia's high plains, pits two tribes in Sacaca each February in day-long drinking and all-out fist-fighting. Despite the bloodshed, Tinku survives, helped by President Evo Morales' support for indigenous cultures. The mayor of Sacaca called Tinku "a sublime, beautiful act," in a February New York Times dispatch.

That's right, an all-day, alcohol-fueled bloodbath that is open to all ages. Women and children are invited! Bring Grandma and Grandpa out for an traditional day of sunshine, fresh air, and skull fractures!

From the tinku article in wikipedia:

The tinkus can become very violent, and people do get injured and even die. But, the deaths can be seen as good omens for good harvests. Because of the violence, police attend tinkus in some places to prevent bloodshed. In other places, tinkus are banned by the government or church because they had become too violent in the past.

Grandes cojones.

Evo Morales, being the traditionalist that he is, fully supports these tinkus. And why wouldn't he? After all, they use traditional Inca weapons, such as slingshots, clubs, whips, and "sometimes horses." Being patriotic is a good thing...

Anyways, for those of you that are interested, Photo-Mundo has a pretty extensive photo gallery of what goes down at your standard tinku. We highly recommend checking it out.

Man vs Wild

Enjoy him while he's cute, cuz pretty soon he'll be big enough to bite your head off.

The incredibly cute polar bear cub pictured above is named Knut, and he has caused quite a commotion over at the Berlin Zoo in Germany. Knut, along with his twin brother, was abandoned by their mother shortly after their birth at the zoo. In nature, polar bear mothers often abandon their cubs for any number of reasons, and these cubs are usually left to die. It is a natural part of the polar bear reproduction process.

A zoo worker, however, felt badly for Knut and has taken over where the mother left off. He is bottle-feeding the cub, and raising him on his own. This compassionate human gave the poor little abandoned bear another chance. He saw Knut's brother die, and didn't want to see the same thing happen again.

But now, animal experts are saying that a human raising a polar bear is animal cruelty. They say that this exposes the bear to cruel and unusual practices, and that is not only unnatural, but unethical as well. Some quotes from these experts:

"Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws" - animal rights activist Frank Albrecht

"The killing of an animal has nothing to do with animal protection" - Wolfgang Apel, head of animal rights organization

"They cannot domesticate a wild animal" - Ruediger Schmiedel, head of Foundation for Bears

"The zoo must kill the bear" - Frank Albrecht

In order to dig deeper into this story, we decided to visit the Berlin zoo's webpage. So, we confessed our sins, we said goodbye to our families, we mustered up all the courage we had, and we did the unthinkable: We actually visited a German website.

Expecting to see pictures of half-naked David Hasselhoff and people crapping all over each other, we were incredibly relieved to see a somewhat normal website, with plenty of pictures of the cute little bear, playing with soccer balls and drinking out of bottles.

Now, we understand that the bear is fuzzy and playful and does cute little human things with its paws, but someday this little white furball is gonna grow up into a 350-pound killing machine that won't hesitate to bite your head off, and then tear what's left of your carcass into a million pieces.

These things grow up, and they get hungry. Really, really hungry.

This cute little bear isn't gonna be soft and cuddly all his life. Polar bears in captivity live for about 25 years, and as soon as this bear whacks somebody with that massive paw of his, or gets old enough to bite a chunk out of someone's leg, this wacky little experiment is gonna look like a huge failure.

Is it sad to kill a little baby polar bear? Sure it is. But maybe it's nature's way of handling these kind of situations. Whoever is up there, calling the shots, whether it's God or Allah or Barbara Streisand, maybe they do these things for a reason.

He's not just gay... He's powerful gay.

Texas wants you to believe in its cowboy, longhorn, yee-haw, hootin' and a-hollerin' outlaw image. They want you to know that they have the biggest trucks, the tastiest cows, and the most ultra-conservative morals. And damned if anybody's gonna take that away from them. A ding dang doo.

But what they don't want you to know is that the biggest gay church in the world is in Texas. That's right, people: The Cathedral of Hope. Dallas, Texas.

After reading that article, though, one quote stands out: "Over 90 percent of the Cathedral's 3,500 members are gay, lesbian, or transgender."

"Over 90 percent"?!? That's it?!

What about the other 10 percent? What the hell are they doing there? Taking notes? Are they friends with some of the transformers in the congregation, and they just tagged along to the big gay church?

Fuck knows.

But that's kinda strange... You know, if you're a normal heterosexual person.

What The Hell Is Wrong With Japan?

Who likes the Hong Kong Fooey?

If you own a zoo, and you're worried that your staff might not know what to do if an animal escapes, a good idea would be to have an animal escape drill, where a mock animal escape is staged, and zoo workers "capture" the "escaped animal." Seems pretty reasonable.

But, when they staged their drill at the Tokyo zoo, during normal zoo hours, the Japanese zoo workers managed to find a way to make the mock escape unreasonable, and they ended up scaring the living bejesus out of a bunch of little kids. Here is a four-photo summary of the escape drill:

Zoo worker in unnecessarily-scary monkey suit pretends to be an escaped orangutan:

Zoo workers pull up in a van and shoot the escaped orangutan with a tranquilizer shotgun:

Guy in monkey suit stages an overly-elaborate death scene, falling to his knees at the end:

Japanese children, thinking they just witnessed the monkey getting killed, are scarred for life:
What is the thought process here? Did they not know that children were gonna be present? Did they not think this would make the children cry? Why couldn't they have waited until the zoo closed? Don't they realize that this is the kind of traumatic childhood experience that turns normal Japanese brains into serial-killer Japanese brains?

Now, the only question is: "Is the horse drunk too?"

Joseph Brill of Albuquerque, NM, was arrested for drunk driving on Thursday. Officers arrested him after he pulled his pickup truck into his driveway, opened the door, and "instead of getting out, he fell out." Right in front of deputies, face down on the driveway. They also found an open beer in his car that was "at least half-empty."

This was Mr. Brill's 28th drunk driving arrest.

We hope she needs a gum job, cuz we'd love to take a look under her hood.

Larry Woodie is a mechanic, and he recently hired a kid from the local high school to work as an assistant in his body shop. Together, the two of them run the shop, which is located out in Oregon. This would, of course, be completely normal and unremarkable, if it wasn't for the fact that Larry is blind and his assistant is deaf.

When asked how they managed to get anything at all done under such circumstances, Mr. Woodie downplayed their disabilities. "This is no different than any other body shop in this state," said Mr. Woodie. "Except that everything takes twice as long, we hardly ever manage to show up to work on time, and we usually end up putting the wrong oil in your car since we can't communicate with each other at all."

Amy Winehouse Drinks Responsibly

Winehouse: "Rehab is for wimps."

Amy Winehouse, the "famous singer", is quite a piece of work. To best describe her, one would have to come up with a long list of all the senseless things that she has done in her short life. Since we have neither the patience nor the intent to do so, we will describe her in one sentence: She likes the sauce. In fact, she loves the sauce. This woman makes Dean Martin look reasonably under control, and even Boris Yeltsin would probably pale in comparison.

Let's look at some evidence, shall we?

Thanks to our friends over at TSG, we have obtained a copy of Winehouses's tour rider, which specifies exactly what she needs in her dressing room before all her shows. At the top of the list are 2 bottles of red wine, a case of beer, 40 Marlborough [sic] lights, a bottle of champagne, and a "large bottle of vodka."

Thaaaaaat's right, Amy. Give them fans what they want. You take every last drop of creativity that you can suck out of those bottles, and spew it back out at the people that buy your records, you degenerate.

Amy on the right has just entered showbusiness... Amy on the left has just horsepounded a bottle of Christian Brothers brandy.

Just look at the difference in the two pictures above! On the right is Amy three years ago, on the left is Amy last week. This is raging alcoholism, ladies and gentlemen, of the most helpless and depraved kind. If the fashion statement she is making is supposed to say "homeless vampire prostitute," then we hear her, loud and clear. A pale, skinny, tatooed, washed-up bullseye.

Before you accuse us of unjustly bashing this poor young girl, this wide-eyed victim of showbusiness, this innocent little flower trying to survive in the cruel jungle of the music industry, picture this:

You bought a ticket to one of her shows, expecting the woman on the right to come out on stage and lullaby you with beautiful melodies about blue skies and long, hot summer nights. Instead, something that looks like a Vietnamese hooker's nightmare stumbles out on stage, looking like she spent the night sleeping on the floor of a currency exchange, and doesn't even make it through the opening chorus without running off stage to vomit, and then cancels the concert.

Today in Politics

This one came down to the wire...

In a highly-anticipated matchup that did not disappoint, Iranian riot police withstood a late rally and "crushed" a teachers' pay protest, resulting in the incarceration of several hundred university-educated scholars.

The riot police came into this showdown as the odds-on favorite, but the underdog elementary school teachers did not go down without a fight. Although the demonstration began peacefully, the riot police began beating the living bejesus out of some of the teachers after the protest became too heated. For a few magical minutes, it looked like the teachers would be able to pull off the huge upset, but in the end, the brute force of the riot police was too much, and organizers of the teacher protest ended up in notorious Evin prison, which is considered by experts to be the second-worst place in the world to be (Gary, Indiana being the first).

Dr. Ahmadinejad is definitely not insane.

So, based on what has transpired over the past several years, let us give you a summary of the President of Iran's political agenda:

• He wants to "wipe Israel off the map" because of "the Zionist Regime's human responsibility for the oppressed people of Palestine"
• He also, coincidentally, wants to enrich uranium for "peaceful purposes"
• He wants to create a women-only island
• He kills gay people
• He throws teachers and students in jail
• He has sexual intercourse with sheep

We remind you at this time that all of the above are true. Except for the sheep... That hasn't yet been confirmed. But all the rest of them are true.

Esperanza de Bolivia...

Speaking of politicians who are definitely not insane, Evo Morales (pictured above wearing a funny hat and necklace made out of cocaine leaves) is in the news again. This time, he is campaigning for international courts to force The Coca-Cola Company to change its name. The problem, according to Morales, is that the coca leaf (which is commonly used in Bolivia) has been villainized by the rest of the world, and corporations should be forced to "refrain from using the name of the sacred leaf in their products."

Since the secret formula for Coca-Cola is top-secret, nobody knows for sure whether coca is used as an ingredient of Coke. But rumors abound that The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta had warehouses of it.

However, we think it is difficult for Bolivia to bring The Coca-Cola Company to its knees: Bolivia's GDP is $25.684 billion, and The Coca-Cola Company makes about $24.088 billion a year. Add to that the value of the Coca-Cola name, and the fact that Coke has been selling for over 100 years, and you have a pretty big mountain to move. Good luck, Evo.

God, Please Don't Ever Let This Happen To Us

Right in the baby-makers.

A few days ago, 25-year-old Spanish matador Fernando Cruz was mauled by the bull he was fighting. The more we read this, the more painful it really seems. This bull got him as bad as you could possibly get somebody. We really doubt that it is possible to get mauled worse than this:

"Fernando Cruz is suffering from two horn wounds of 25 centimetres in length each. One involves the fibres of the abductor muscle and dissects the femoral artery, the other involves the scrotal area and eviscerates both testicles," said a spokesman from the Casa de Salud hospital in Valencia.

Eviscerates both testicles, you say? Just to be safe, we looked up 'eviscerate' in the dictionary. Ok, it means what we thought it meant. Ouch. Our "scrotal area" hurts just from reading that.

At first we were stunned at the severity of the injury, and we wondered how Fernando would cope with not being able to conceive children without his gonads. But then, we looked at his bullfighting outfit (those socks are definitely pink) and this picture of a man with his hands down Fernando's pants, and then we began to think that maybe sex with a woman wasn't very high on his list in the first place.

Giselle could suck-start a leaf-blower.

Brazil is well-known for 2 things: Soccer players that look like horses and beautiful, beautiful women. In our opinion, it's hard to get a more perfect female form than Giselle Bundchen or Ana Barros or Adriana Lima. But apparently these living goddesses, these modern-day Aphrodites, won't even talk to you unless you own a manpurse (aka European Carry-all).

And that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

But now, according to Scientific American, Brazilian women may not actually be the brown-skinned bell-cows we once thought they were. A survey shows that a surprising number of Brazilian females are overweight, and that an even higher amount of men are raging drunks:

Brazilian men fare much worse in the poll. Between 45 percent and 52 percent of men in major cities are overweight and as many as one-third drink alcohol excessively, the study found. The heaviest male drinkers are in the northeastern city of Salvador, where 33 percent consume more than five alcoholic beverages per day. In Rio de Janeiro, one in four men regularly drinks too much.

Don't fuck with the wrong midgets.

In Malaysia, police have arrested a group of thieves that were all "vertically challenged." The so-called "Midget Gang" had committed 14 break-ins, according to the article. We don't know what they were stealing, and we can't really find out, because every time we type "Midget Gang" into google it brings up some pretty un-savory results.

Definitely not what we were looking for.

You fellas have a lot of growing up to do, I'll tell you that. Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Can you believe these characters? Way out of line. Way out of line. Have a good mind to go to the warden about this. You know what hurts the most is the... the lack of respect. You know? That's what hurts the most. Except for the... Except for the other thing. That hurts the most. But the lack of respect hurts the second most.

Quit Bothering Those Fucking People

We have a Fucking problem.

Germans Not Amused

London: (AFP) British tourists have left the residents of one charming Austrian village effing and blinding by constantly stealing the signs for their oddly named village.

While British residents are finding it hilarious, residents of Fucking are failing to see the funny side.

Only one kind of criminal ever stalks the sleepy 32-house village near Salzburg on the German border - cheeky British tourists armed with a sense of humour and a screwdriver.

But the authorities are hitting back and with the signs now set in concrete, police chief Kommandant Schmidtberger is on the look-out.

"We will not stand for the Fucking signs being removed," the officer said.

"It may be very amusing for you British, but Fucking is simply Fucking to us. What is this big Fucking joke? It is puerile."

Local tourist guide Andreas Rehmueller said it was only the British that had a fixation with Fucking.

"The Germans all want to see the Mozart house in Salzburg," he explained. "Every American seems to care only about The Sound of Music (the 1965 film shot around Salzburg). The occasional Japanese wants to see Hitler's birthplace in Braunau.

"But for the British, it's all about Fucking."

Guesthouse manager Augustina Lindlbauer described the village's breathtaking lakes, forests, and vistas. "Yet there is still this obsession with Fucking," she said.

"Just this morning I had to tell and English lady who stopped by that there were no more Fucking postcards."

In case you're wondering, this is all true. Fucking actually exists. You can find it on the map. It's not too far from Tittmoning, Austria.

Thank god for plastic hips!

The list of things that old people shouldn't be doing is a long and tedious one. On that list, you'll find activities like skydiving, monkey knife-fighting, kickboxing, water-skiing, motorcycle racing, or anything that involves staying up after 4 pm.

Also, under no circumstances should you ever, ever, let an old person on your roof. Never. Avoid it at all costs.

Because they'll just end up gluing themselves to the roof.

No mas, Evo.

Our favorite lunatic South American politician, Evo Morales, is back in the news. And this time, it has nothing to do with his corny sweater, his awful haircut, or the fact that he sleeps on his sister's couch.

Evo's latest brilliant idea involves changing Bolivia's constitution so that the Bolivian flag could be redesigned with coca leaves on it. Bolivia's government claims that "the laurel and olive branches are European symbols" for peace, and they don't want European peace symbols in Bolivia.

They want their traditional Bolivian symbols, like the llama, the condor, and the coca leaf.

HAIRCUT!!!

It's allliiiiiiiiiive!!!!!

Thanks to our friends over at The Smoking Gun, we are treated to the above mug shot of Anna Clifford, a 25-year-old Tennessee woman who was arrested for drunk driving the other night.

All we have to say is... wow. That's a pretty sassy 'do. Aren't there laws against this sort of thing?

According to the police report, she has to drive with the sunroof open.

They shouldn't let her within 300 yards of a school with that thing. Some little child could see her and have nightmares for the rest of his life - Picture that haircut climbing in through our window at night. Even BOB from Twin Peaks would be scared of this lady.

The thing is this... We need help with our bracket.

One of our favorite days of the year is the Thursday before St. Patrick's day: The weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer, the grass is getting greener, and the Big Dance is about set to commence. We can always use a little help with our brackets, and this year, we know where to turn: An old-world monkey.

Meet Ana, a 14-year old baboon who not only paints, but predicts the outcome of big-time sporting events. Last year, she called UCLA making the Final Four. This year, Ana predicted that a certain team from a certain midwestern town would win the Super Bowl - she was wrong, but at least she let her Chicago favoritism determine her pick.

In addition to successfully prognosticating sporting events, Ana is an accomplished painter (like our canine friend Tillie). She began painting by coating her hands in mustard, and wiping them off on the canvas. Now, she has moved up to non-toxic paints. She has been decribed as a "baboon version of Jasper Johns, minus the raging kleptomania." As Ana is easily distracted by other apes, the zoo staff have to clear out her pen before she can peacefully begin creating art.

Her work will be displayed and sold at Zoobilee 2007, but since the dinner costs $75, we will not be attending. Proceeds from sales of her paintings will go to help the renovation of the zoo's "Monkey Island" habitat.

Sucks To Be You

Your firearms are useless against them.

If you're a Buddhist monk, your life probably isn't all that bad. You get your head shaved, and you get your orange robe. You get your bowl, which you use for eating and panhandling. You eat your portion of white rice every morning, and the rest of your time you spend relaxing in some shady pine grove, reading some holy Buddhist texts, or unwinding by playing a game of elephant polo with your fellow monks.

It doesn't matter which.

They suffer not, for they lack all human desire. This makes them stand-up guys in our book.

Which makes this news story all that much more funny:

Ants Test Nonviolence of Buddhist Monks

(03-11) 22:13 PDT KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) --

Buddhist monks, who are bound by faith to nonviolence, are grappling with how to rid a temple of a severe ant infestation without killing the insects.

Stinging red ants have plagued the Hong Hock See Temple in northern Penang state for a year, causing one worshipper to be bitten so badly last month that he had to receive hospital treatment, said Elma Lin, a temple volunteer worker.

A temple disciple tried using a vacuum cleaner to gather up the ants before freeing them in a nearby forest, but the method failed to purge the insects, Lin said.

"We haven't found a solution so far," Lin said. "Nothing has worked."

The temple's chief monk, Boon Keng, was quoted by The Star newspaper as saying that the monks had to "respect other living things" in the temple.

"When an ant drops on you, you must not flick it away or blow on it," he told the newspaper. "If you do, it will bite to hold on. You just have to shake it off."

The newspaper published a photograph of Boon Keng standing beside a sign at the temple that read: "Beware poisonous ants. Do not sit under the tree."

The decades-old temple has more than 10 monks living there and hundreds of devotees, Lin said.

Watch out, cuz he bites.

If you looked up "situational comedy" in the dictionary, the definition would include a picture of a Buddhist monk covered with fire ants, wearing them like a leotard, with this look of pained frustration on his face, unable to kill the ants because of Sila. We understand that monks are not allowed to be violent. But when a fire ant, like the one pictured above, clamps its jaws into your skin, it takes a helluva lot of gumption to sit there and take it.

Would these monks really be that violent if they killed a couple ants? Would Buddha look at them any differently if they did? Would he stop showering them with his eternal wisdom and enlightenment, and instead shower them with laser beams that he shoots out of his nostrils?

Hey, it could be a lot worse. They could be dealing with cow ants, which are quite possibly the most dangerous animal known to man. Much worse than fire ants. We have been bitten by fire ants before, and it certainly wasn't pleasant. But when you get bitten by a cow ant, your ankle swells up to the size of a honeydew melon.

They have been known to kill kittens, turtles, and even newborn calves.

Beware of the awesome killing power of the cow ant!

Another Empty Bottle

This doesn't look too peaceful, does it?

One thing we have never understood is why organizations such as the United Nations always send in "Peacekeeping Forces" to help restore "peace" to certain war-stricken areas. The blue-helmeted troops are often seen standing around holding machine guns and looking nervous.

Why do they look nervous, you ask?

Because they know that they are about to get shot, that's why.

The latest "peacekeeping" mission is underway, trying to bring "peace" in the eternal clusterfuck known as Somalia, where Uganda has sent a thousand troops as a precursor to a larger African Union force who will attempt to clean up the rebel movement in Moqdishu.

The logic here, of course, is that if you have a place where there is no law and people run around shooting and raping and looting and killing, then a thousand guys with bigger guns and funny blue hats will solve the problem.

This "peacekeeping" mission has pissed off Eritrea in a major way, and Asmara is now telling Africa to "put a leash on that puppy" before full scale war breaks out.

This ain't gonna be pretty.

Your table for one is ready, Mr. Von Douche.

To avoid sounding repetitive, we will only say this one thing about douchebags today: We found a pretty solid website, hotchickswithdouchebags.com. Check it out if you get a chance, there's some good laughs to be had.

Our personal favorite? Old Number 7.

We feel sorry for this dog.

That fine-looking dog shown above is Jasper, one of "Britain's richest hounds." He lives a life of luxury due to a quarter-million dollar trust fund that he inherited.

A dog... with a trust fund.

Anyways, the reason we feel sorry for Jasper is that his owner, Sir Benjamin Slade, is one of the gayest people on the planet. And Mr. Slade is forcing Jasper, who he claims is "gay", to jump through hoops at gay and lesbian weddings across the country.

Slade explains:

Jasper is always the host with the most when we hold weddings here. But the thing most country homes want most is gay weddings because same-sex customers generally have more money to spend.

Jasper will give us the edge in attracting weddings. For one thing, he is gay himself. He is the perfect best man. He likes cleaning up leftover food, and he will not make any embarrassing speeches. I should add that he has been castrated.

Maybe he would be better off being a bridesmaid, actually.

Whatever you say, you weirdo. Forcing your pets to be gay is kind of creepy. The dog has been castrated, so there's no way he can be sure of the dog's sexual orientation. Besides, we have all seen heterosexual dogs do some pretty perverted shit. Does that mean they're gay? Hardly.

Beijing to cabbies: Take a shower, please!

Beijing's hopes for an olympic bid are in danger due to the awful, awful smells of the taxicabs in the city. Since many cabbies live far outside of town, they often eat, sleep, and smoke in their cabs. As a result, the smell is unbearable, at best.

Experts claim that one-third of the 70,000 taxis in the city are "smelly", and one minister said that "sometimes I could smell an unbearable stink once I got into a cab but was afraid of being so rude as to get out immediately. I had to roll down the windows, regardless of how cold it was outside."

A friend of this website once said that the worst experience of his life was eight hours aboard an Air India flight. He described the smell as "rotten chicken tandoori mixed with soiled britches."

We wonder if these Chinese taxicabs are worse.

Lost in Translation

Japanese people love them some whales.

English has been called by some as "the language of the world", and rightly so, as just about one in every ten people on this planet knows how to speak it. As one might naturally expect, because of the great geographical distances involved, English is spoken with many dialects, accents, and regional slang. With many other languages, it's the same story.

But now, according to research done by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, whales from around the world have different accents, too. After their "scientists" stuck some kind of radio receiver onto the side of many, many whales, they discovered that whales from different parts of the world actually use different calls. Which probably means that these whales are able to tell where they are, and whether other whales are from that part of the ocean.

The scientists used acoustic recordings to delineate nine population regions worldwide. They found the whales weren't evenly distributed, though: Populations using a "Type 1" call, for example, live within a narrow band of ocean hugging the North American coast, while whales that use a "Type 4" call are spread over a large swath of the Northern Pacific Ocean.

When we read that, we were stunned.

This whale's accent was described by scientists as "a mix between Sean Connery and Nelson Mandela."

A friend of this website, let's call him "Bry S.", has a favorite saying. Wait, "Bry S." is too obvious. Let's call him "B. Stroch." Anyways, one of his favorite questions to ask ladies is "Have you ever seen a humpback whale?"

But now, they tell us that every whale's click-and-whistle call says as much about the whale's home waters as it does about its mood. This could have drastic implications for the world of whale behavioralism. Well, we were wondering what these whales actually said to each other when they met up, assuming they could tell that their accents were not the same:

Out of town whale (Queen-of-England accent): Excuse me chap, which way to the North Pole? I 'm afraid I'm dreadfully lost, and these currents are bloody confusing. Could you help me out, mate?

Local whale (Burt-Reynolds-in-"Deliverance" accent): Dang, man. You ain't from these parts, is ya? Juss what you lookin fo' round here boy? You got some splainin' to do. A ding dang doo!

But, before the out-of-town whale can explain, the Burt Reynolds whale proceeds to beat him like a rented mule.

We've all heard of horse whisperers, now maybe somebody should try to start a career as a whale whisperer.

(Editor's note: The amount of "legitimate" material out there on horse psychology is somewhat disturbing.

Stay away from large, extremely pissed-off cats.

This next story is from Missouri:

Missouri Man Shares Golf Cart with Bobcat

Rabbits don't always bring good luck. Ask Missouri water plant worker, Mitch Walter.

He was at work, inspecting treatment plant property in a golf cart, when a rabbit leaped onto the passenger seat. Hot in pursuit, a 25-pound bobcat. The rabbit leaped to freedom, leaving Walter riding along with the bobcat.

Walter got some scratches on his neck as he shoved the bobcat out. And then he had to go get a painful round of rabies shots, but figures it could have been worse.

Read the external here.

The bonobo is the most closely related animal to humans.

This next story is not the hard to understand when you realize just how similar these animals are to us. Diane Bell of the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote a pretty good article about it. Here is her lead:

In an incident that is both heart-stopping and heartwarming, a pregnant bonobo at the San Diego Zoo bit off the tip of her keeper's index finger Tuesday. But another bonobo rescued the severed tip from her habitat mate and returned it to keepers so it could be re-attached.

The 60-pound pregnant bonobo, also known as a pygmy chimp, was being trained behind the scenes by verbal cues and hand signals to open her mouth for health checkups.

"I guess my fingers got too close to her mouth," said Mike Bates, the injured senior keeper of the bonobos, a veteran of more than 22 years with the zoo.

The rest of the story can be read over at their website.

Like us, these bonobos exhibit intricate social interaction behavior patterns.

Like us, they have a sense of their own identity.

Like us, they have happy days, sad days, boring days, sick days.

Like us, sexual intercourse plays a major role in their lives.

Unlike us, however, their sexual intercourse is usually done in a tree, with a family member, and involves a surprising amount of poo-throwing.

The only time human sexual behavior looks like this is in Gary, Indiana. And in the mountains of West Virginia.