Beer Fixes Everything

This seemed like an appropriate commercial after the news story from the other day.

Mmm…Testicles

If eating testicles isn’t bad enough, these people thnk it’s a good idea to eat poisonous testicles.  Idiots.

Blowfish testicles poison 7 diners in Japan

Unlicensed chef prepared delicacy eaten by thrill-seeking gourmets

TOKYO – Blowfish testicles prepared by an unauthorized chef sickened seven diners in northern Japan and three remained hospitalized Tuesday after eating the poisonous delicacy.

The owner of the restaurant in Tsuruoka city, who is also the chef, had no license to serve blowfish and was being questioned on suspicion of professional negligence, police official Yoshihito Iwase said.

Blowfish, while extremely poisonous if not prepared properly, is considered a delicacy in Japan and is consumed by thrill-seeking gourmets.

Iwase said the seven men ordered sashimi and grilled blowfish testicles at the restaurant Monday night.

Shortly after, they developed limb paralysis and breathing trouble and started to lose consciousness — typical signs of blowfish poisoning — and were rushed to a hospital for treatment, Iwase said.

A 68-year-old diner remained hospitalized in critical condition with respiratory failure and two others, aged 55 and 69, were in serious condition, he said.

“It’s scary. If you go to a decent-looking restaurant that serves fugu, you would assume a cook has a proper fugu license,” Iwase said, using the Japanese term for blowfish.

Blowfish poison, called tetrodotoxin, is nearly 100 times more poisonous than potassium cyanide, according to the Ishikawa Health Service Association. It can cause death within an hour and a half after consumption.

Three people died and 44 others were sickened by blowfish poisoning in 2007 — most of them after catching the fish and cooking it at home — according to the Health Ministry.

Deep Thoughts Thursday #23

Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won’t bother the frog because it only has little tiny plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like ambition.

A Bit About Your Authors (And How We Came To Be)

We’ve had hundreds (if not hundreds of billions) of requests coming in over the past few months curious as to what and who we were. We’ve got such compelling information on the site that people wanted to know who to praise in their nightly prayers. So here’s a bit about us…

We were born as small black children (like Johnson, Navin R.) in remote villages around the world. Through the technology of tin-cans and really long strings we learned to communicate with each other to discuss world issues. Wars, politicians, sports, and cream-sicle flavors soon got to be tiresome for us so we decided to each start HUGE multi-million dollar corporations. The money was good, but it was kinda lame and not very challenging.

So we began laundering money through them to fund our offshore hot-air balloon company that would transport monkeys to their favorite tropical locales.

This endeavor appeared to be our first downfall. We hadn’t used the power of foresight to realize that monkey’s rarely pay up on their debts and this ultimately led us to bankrupt each and every one of us by the age of 3.

Then, in the 1840’s we became cowboys and headed out west to California for the gold rush to remake our fortune. We had a wild invention to get there which we thought would put us on top of the world, but the Porcu-shoe (half porcupine/half shoe) didn’t take off as we’d thought it would and we ended up thumbing it out there, but we made it, so that was braggable.
Yea, that’s me in the middle there – I was packing on some weight after the frost of ’68.

During our stay in California, we agreed it was a good time to start blogging, but ran into issues creating the fiber-runs, data centers, internet, and some other nominal issues which we agreed wasn’t worth looting our gold mine money for. So we figured we’d put that on the back burner (little did we know Al Gore would undermine us later in life, more on this later) until we really started wrap our heads around this “sheep-skin condom” epidemic that was sweeping the western US at the time. We saw big money there.

From this brilliant revelation we started trading all our gold for sheep intestines. I know, smart, right? Yea, that’s what we thought, but as it turns out that was a bad idea since they just invented those crappy “ice block refrigerators” that you had to get new ice for to keep anything cold. Yea, combine that, living in SoCal at the time, and the fact that we spent all our gold money on sheep intestines, and all you’re left with is nasty-rotted-out-maggot-ridden-sheep guts.

So again we were on our own, and we were sent to… [exciting music]

To be continued…

Goat Detained Over Armed Robbery

 

LAGOS (Reuters) – Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

“The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,” Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

“We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,” he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

Link-O-Rama

Mr. Fro’s top 5 links of the week.

5.  I’d like to know, if the bank error was a “gift from God” then who is the prison sentence a gift from?

4.  Check out the third review for this wonderful children’s item, that is pretty darn funny. (H/T to The Dish for the link)

3.  Andy, I have found the perfect job for you.   Applications are due in less than a month, so get that resume ready.

2.  Love this story.  I would say that my wife has the same skills, but I better bite my tongue in-case she were to read this post.

1.  The 1st Annual Buttertub Awards.  Don’t forget to submit your stories.

Ode To Science

You’d think that science would have better studies to run. Also, when they say “the average man can extend…” I really didn’t think the second half of the sentence would fit there… but I guess I’ve been wrong before…

Montana’s Legislature is really busy

This story comes from Wednesday’s (1/21/09) Helena Independent Record.  The four kids that spoke in opposition to this bill are awesome.  I’m sure the guy who wrote the song is a good dude, but the legislator that introduced this bill should be ashamed.  (The bill was officially rejected.)

State love song: Kid tested, but disapproved

By JENNIFER McKEE IR State Bureau – 01/21/2009

Jerry McGowan, a 60-year-old Boston transplant now living in Alberton, really loves Montana.

Some 12 years ago, he wrote a song about how much he loves Montana, and now he wants to give that song to the people of this state.

But he has to get past 9-year-old Thomas Ticknor first.

Ticknor, of Helena, and three of his older siblings were the only people to speak against designating McGowan’s song entitled “The Montana Song” as Montana’s official state love song.

Montana already has three official songs, the children testified before the House State Administration Committee Tuesday morning, and that seems just a little bit silly.

“It’s already excessive,” said Hannah Ticknor, 17, who added that lawmakers in 2009 have proposed no fewer than four bills to make the Legislature meet every single year, instead of every two years.

Maybe if lawmakers weren’t spending their time discussing possible state love songs, she suggested, they’d be able to get all their important work done more quickly.

McGowan, however, is undeterred. So, too, is Rep. Bill Nooney, R-Missoula, who sponsored House Bill 184, designating “The Montana Song” the state’s official love song.

As McGowan tells it, the song will make money for the state and it puts into words the powerful and complicated feelings so many Montanans feel for this place.

“If (Montana) doesn’t move you to tears, you’d better open your eyes wider,” he told the committee shortly before sitting down with his guitar and singing the song. “I seek nothing from this except to offer it to the state. This is a gift to Montana and it’s from the heart.”

McGowan met his wife, Beverly, in his native Boston. As a girl, she had traveled to Montana with her father, who was a tire salesman. She fell in love with it, McGowan said, and after they met and married, they talked often of returning.

They did in 1997, taking a week’s vacation and covering as much Montana ground as they could in seven days. Two weeks later, they sold their possessions and moved out here.

“We didn’t know where we’d live and it didn’t matter,” he told the committee.

They settled in Alberton, in far western Montana. McGowan wrote “The Montana Song” soon after.

Initially, the song didn’t mention much east of the Continental Divide. Earlier in the 2009 Legislature, he rewrote one of the verses after good-natured concern arose that the song didn’t encompass all the beauty of Montana, particularly her high, wide and handsome eastern plains.

McGowan envisions the song being used in tourism. He also told the committee he will pay the cost of producing a CD of the song, and proceeds from the sales will go back to the state’s tax coffers.

The committee didn’t make any decisions about the song.

Top 100

ESPN.com’s Keith Law added us to his blog roll.  As a thank you, and definitely if you are a baseball fan, go check out his list of top 100 MLB baseball prospects.

Deep Thoughts Thursday #22

The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.