Now, I know what you’re asking. Why on earth did the government waste their time talking about mutants? Is there something we don’t know? Are pubescent kids around the country suddenly developing extraordinary powers that all strangely seem to be puns on their names in some way? Sorry, that’s not the reason. Well, at least, not that I know of. No, you probably won’t be surprised to know that the official ruling was made for one clear reason; money.

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Yes, it turns out that, back in 2003, the United States Court of International Trade ruled that Marvel super heroes were not actually human. Marvel lawyers had filed the appeal because they realized they could pay less tax money to import and export action figures if that was the case. That’s because some strange legal loophole charges more taxes for “dolls” than for “toys,” and the legal definition of a “doll” is any toy that represents a human being. Thus, declare that Wolverine isn’t human and you can pay less money.

The whole story was detailed in a Fox News report by Garrett Tenney and it’s genuinely pretty fascinating. Not only is it another look into our very strange tax system, it’s also interesting to know that after years of fighting for equality, the X-Men’s true enemies keeping them separate from us humans are their own creators.

Man, no one tell Magneto.

Watch the report from Fox News below:

Leigh Van Bryan, a 26 year old bar manager, and his 24 year old buddy, Emily Bunting, didn’t have anywhere near the trip that they planned on. And it was all because of a tweet Bryan sent a few days earlier saying “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America.” This had caused them to be pegged as a potential target and get picked up by armored guards upon arrival.

Oh, those terrorists. They’re always such catty gossips.

But the Department of Homeland Security had more evidence too. They found an earlier tweet from Bunting which read “3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA pissing people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!” The Monroe bit was actually just a reference to a Family Guy joke. Unfortunately, the police apparently missed that episode. Bunting told the Daily Mail that they searched through her things for “spades and shovels” and asked her if she was going to be Bryan’s “lookout” during the excavation.

So how did their trip start? From the Daily Mail:

“Leigh said: ‘It’s just so ridiculous it’s almost funny but at the time it was really scary. The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist.

‘I kept saying to them they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me “you’ve really f***** up with that tweet boy”.

‘When I was in the van I was handcuffed and put in a cage. I had a panic attack but the worse was yet to come.

‘When we arrived at the prison I was shoved in a cell on my own but after an hour two huge Mexican men covered in tattoos came in and started asking me who I was.

‘They told me they’d been arrested for taking cocaine over the border.

‘When the food arrived on the tray they took it all and just left me with a carton of apple juice.’”

Bummer, dude.

You know, I’m trying really hard to feel bad for these kids but I really can’t. Sure, it’s kind of awful that the youth of today have to live in a constant state of fear and paranoia, trapped in a veritable police state where Big Brother can arrest you simply because he misunderstood a joke, but, lets be honest; anyone who goes around quoting Family Guy is basically a terrorist anyway.

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From CBS Sacramento:

“’They just took the toys and left,’ [store owner Kevin Couch] said. ‘They didn’t take the money or anything so I was lost. The sheriff’s department was lost. When he saw all the stuff in here and he goes “that’s all they took?” and I was like “yeah.”’

So Kevin thinks it was kids just trying to make a little mischief in forbidden territory.

‘They see the adult store here, they can’t come in here they can’t purchase this stuff so they are bored and they break in and come in and take it at night when no one is here,’ he said.

So far, there are no suspects, just a suspected age range: boys probably about 13 to 17 years old.”

Sure, teenagers may seem like the obvious choice for the culprits, but I think the Yuba County police need to think outside the box here. Isn’t it possible that they eschewed the money because they’re not your typical burglars but, rather, have a more altruistic goal in mind? I think it’s clear that we have a sex toy Robin Hood on our hands, stealing from the sex toy rich and giving to the sex toy poor.

It’s a much better theory. And it’s also the plot of the new screenplay I started writing 30 seconds ago, The Adventures of Robin Hood and his Hairy Hand. I’m thinking of still casting Russell Crowe.

Watch the news report from CBS Sacramento below:

However, I probably would have changed my mind if I had had the experience of Sofia, a tiny New Zealand girl who had got in a fairly unsettling stare down with a giant lion at the zoo.

Seriously, this video is crazy. That lion really, really, really wants to eat that girl. It just goes to prove that most animals aren’t just cute pets here to entertain us.

It also proves that little Sofia clearly has much more trust in one piece of glass than I ever would. Sheesh!

Watch the clip from YouTube below:

(h/t Ryan Williams)

Unfortunately, a Denver woman apparently needs to work a little harder on controlling her urges…

The woman, Carmen Tisch, was arrested on December 29th after she wandered into the brand new Clyfford Still Museum and attacked one of Still’s iconic works. Tisch set her sights on Still’s “1957-J-No. 2,” a work that is worth $30 million. She punched it, scratched it, and then decided it was time to really go after it; She let down her pants and began trying to pee on it. Fortunately she was stopped before she could actually really urinate on the work of art. However, the damage done was still estimated to cost about $10,000.

How foolish. We all know better than to pee on a $30 million abstract-expressionist painting. As much as we want to, the rest of us are smart enough to save that stuff for the neo-romanticism museums. Am I right? Idealize this natural work, you neo-romantic losers!

Watch a news report on Tisch from Colorado’s KUSA below:

(h/t Drudge Report)

God, can you imagine if this guy was watching the game at home with his whole family for Christmas. “Hey, Thomas. Isn’t that that nice Christina girl you used to run with?” “Uh, yes, Grandpa…”

To make matters worse for the cheater, the clip has been getting heavy play all throughout the country during today’s slow news, post-Christmas newscasts. His public shaming has become second only to a man seemingly developing the ability to fly in terms of replayed football highlights.

Let this be a lesson to everyone out there; Don’t cheat. And, if you do, don’t get caught until after the big game.

Below, watch the original clip from NBC’s broadcast of the game. Under that, I’ve included a clip from local WJMN in Michigan to demonstrate just how much legs this thing appears to have.

With that in mind, I bring you this story of a California teenager who tried to sneak into his house through his chimney and had to get rescued by the local fire department.

From CBS San Francisco:

“Stockton firefighters had to remove part of the chimney at a home Thursday in order to free a teenage boy who was stuck inside.

The rescue happened at 520 Baker Street. According to firefighters, the teen’s family first said he became stuck while trying to sneak inside after curfew, but later said the boy was only cleaning the chimney.

The fireplace is in the teen’s room.”

Reading that, many would think the parents changed their story so as to protect their son (and sorry for writing this up on a national site, guys), but I believe they were merely trying to hide the fact that their child was engaging in a dangerous new teen trend that I just this moment made up. Following planking, owling, and Tebowing, we now have…Clausing; the act of emulating Santa Claus.

You all think your Christmas celebrations are nothing but fun and games (and occasionally a remembrance of that Jesus guy), but how fun will things be when kids across the nation are getting trapped in chimneys? Or throwing out their backs carrying heavy toy sacks? Or getting rabies from strange reindeer?

Clearly the safest solution is stop having our kids celebrate Christmas altogether. Unfortunately, this will be an unpopular choice for most Christians (who, besides, have already learned over the years that abstinence-only education of any kind rarely works). So, I propose an alternative method. This year, to stop your kids from doing any Clausing or hanging out with any Clausing friends, sit them down and have them watch the holiday classic Gremlins. Not only is it a wonderful movie, this scene will hopefully teach them to never Claus again.

Watch the report of the teen’s rescue from ABC News below:

You know when you park in a parking lot and you swing open a car door and almost hit a really, really nice car and you think to yourself, “Man, I really do not want to hurt that car”? Ok, now imagine a giant, multi-car pile up involving nothing but that kind of car. That’s what happened in Japan.

The accident occurred on the Chugoku Expressway in the southern part of the country. Somehow the situation seems to only have involved fans of expensive, foreign power cars who all got in an accident at the same time. It’s amazing to think how that could have happened. Maybe a man who was confident in his penis size drove by on the other side of the highway and all these drivers got distracted due to their intense jealousy. Who knows?

Fortunately, no one was hurt seriously. From the Telegraph:

“Miraculously, none of drivers – the majority of whom are reported to be foreign car enthusiasts – were seriously hurt in the wreckage but the bill is still bound to be painful nonetheless.

Such was the severity of the damage, several of the luxury cars have been written off, leaving their owners with the nightmare scenario of seeing their prized possessions turned into expensive scrap metal.

The total damage bill is expected to hit several million pounds. A new Ferrari 355 retails for several hundred thousand pounds.”

Ouch. Just to help out, let me remind people that a million pounds equals about 1.5 million dollars.

The Telegraph article also includes some Japanese television footage of the aftermath. I warn you, if you have any car fans or, uh, money fans in the family, I’d get them out of the room before you hit play. There’s no telling how the below video will affect them.

(h/t Drudge)

As it turns out, the is accused of harassing another male student. How? By allegedly punching him in the crotch during a fight. Apparently, the school has to rule anything of that kind as a “sexual assault” and report it.

From The Boston Globe:

“Matthew Wilder, spokesman for the Boston public schools, declined to comment on the incident or why it has been classified as a possible case of sexual harassment. He said officials do not discuss confidential student information.

‘Any kind of inappropriate touching would fall under that category,’ Wilder said.

…

Wilder declined to comment on any possible calls to the state, but said generally they are legally obligated to report incidents of sexual misconduct to the agency.

‘We’re mandatory reporters as a school employee,’ he said. ‘We have to report any type of accusation of sexual assault or sexual harassment that is reported to a school employee.’”

The Globe article spends a lot of time discussing the particulars of the fight, but they only get the side of one of the boy’s mothers so who knows what really happened. I mean, my mother probably still believes my fifth grade story that someone else’s lit cigarette got picked up by the wind and blown into my mouth. The interesting thing here is the seeming arbitrariness of the school’s response.

Recently we’ve seen what happens when schools don’t report incidents that may be of a sexual nature and, obviously letting something like that go on is infinitely worse than a kid getting a silly, overly severe write up. However, it seems that there should be some kind of middle ground between never saying anything and treating every incident ever that involves a kid’s trouser area as a serious crime.

(photo via The Boston Globe)

Fortunately, thanks to a Florida mall Santa, the most magical time of the year is upon us.

Yeah, a Santa in the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens attempted to do an exciting show for the children by rappelling from the ceiling down into the food court. Unfortunately, his fake beard got caught in the rope, forcing the elves to try and distract the kids as he flailed about helplessly.

The whole thing is pretty humorous, especially when you have color commentary from a giggling Megyn Kelly. However, the funniest moment of the day belongs to Shepard Smith. When Kelly tossed his way, Smith dryly intoned that “That’s what he gets for impersonating Santa Claus.” Yeah, for shame, mall volunteer!

Watch the clip from Fox News below:

Unfortunately, one of the napkins slipped off and the police are now looking for the two men, one of whom looked straight into the camera.

From CBS 2 in Los Angeles:

“The photographed suspect is described as a black male, 5’7″, medium build with black hair and mustache. He is seen wearing all-black clothing including gloves and a Dickies baseball cap.

The second suspect is described as a black male, also 5’7″, medium build, all-black clothing and gloves.

Anyone with information about this burglary or the identity of the suspects is asked to call Detective Chris Cooper at (714) 765-1185.”

Ah, foiled by a napkin! That’s the worst. In fact, after this mishap, I wouldn’t be surprised if the criminals vow to never use napkins again. Of course, that could possibly just speed up their eventual capture. Police can just look for the two guys with filthy hands.

Watch a news report from LA’s KTLA below:

(h/t HuffPo)

In Delaware’s Sussex County, a local Nazi couple (oh, every town’s got one!) has successfully adopted a highway on behalf of their Nazi group. They’ve been petitioning the Delaware Department of Transportation to join the Adopt-a-Highway program since the summer and, after being turned down a couple times, part of Cedar Grove Road has now been Nazified. It’s only a two mile stretch but, who knows? If there’s one thing Nazis are known for, it’s expansion.

The reason the group was turned down on previous attempts was apparently the name they wanted to put on the signs commemorating the “adoption.” At first, the gentleman, Edward McBride III, used the name “National Socialist Freedom Movement Nazi Party.” Shockingly, this was rejected. McBride, apparently completely unable to guess which part of that people might object to, then applied again with the name “NSFM88 Nazi Party.” This was rejected as well. I guess the problem wasn’t the length.

Finally, success! From The News Journal:

“McBride, 24, turned to his wife, Katelyn McManus, to submit an application under her name — with their same Lewes address — for the road to be adopted by the ‘Freedom Party.’

DelDOT accepted McManus’ application to join the program and two signs recently went up along Cedar Grove Road between Ward Road and Plantation Road.

‘Sure enough, the application was approved without a single problem,’ McBride said.”

Really, if you get beyond all the tricky Nazi stuff, this is a lovely story about a husband and wife working together to achieve their dreams. That’s kind of romantic, right?

Ok, maybe not. But, if you think Delaware Nazis are bad, you better just hope the road doesn’t go north. Then you might get stuck dealing with those damn skinheads from Maine.

(h/t USA Today via Reddit)

Earlier this week, Cameron was dining with Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson when a mouse was spotted scurrying across the floor. Larry was nowhere in sight, and so the Prime Minister did the only thing he could: throw a fork at the blasted thing. Cameron missed, and Smith wondered why Larry wasn’t there to take care of the pest.

Larry has been living in the Prime Minister’s residence for several months now, and according to anonymous insiders, Larry has been “more interested in sleeping on the job than putting the frighteners on inner-city rodents.” In fact, the BBC reports that Larry “spends more of his time asleep or with a lady friend, Maisie, than he does hunting rodents.”

So, naturally, there have been questions as to whether Larry should officially step down from his post and hand the torch over to a younger, more charismatic feline. The Prime Minister’s spokesman only had this to say on the issue:

“Larry brings a lot of pleasure to a lot of people.”

10 Downing Street has a long history of employing cats as Chief Mousers to the Cabinet Office, including Humphrey, who served three separate Prime Ministers during his time in office, from Margaret Thatcher to the first few months of Tony Blair‘s reign.

h/t The Australian

C. Stephen Eckel is running for reelection in Monroe County, and when news broke of these nude photos he took of himself that were available on his own website, they were immediately taken down, but Eckel had nothing but good things to say about his… junk shots.

“I invite people to look at it and judge for themselves… This is art. This is my art. This is my work and as a professor of photography that’s what they want to see if they’re evaluating me for a position.”

One voter in his district said he wasn’t bothered by Eckel’s past hobbies, so long as he wasn’t sending those kind of pictures to children or anything like that. The ABC affiliate reporting on this story admits they got a tip from a source within the state Republican party, but denied it was an elected official or Eckel’s challenger in next week’s election.

According to WHAM, Eckel has previously taught as a college professor, most recently teaching photography to students at Genesee Community College.

Eckel took the pictures down not because he was ashamed of them, but because he thought “they would distract from… the campaign” and he hopes the voters in his district judge him on more than just some photos he took over a decade ago for “art.”

Watch the video below, courtesy of WHAM:

(h/t Gawker)

Two separate petitions were created on the site dealing with the “alien problem”: “Immediately disclose the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings” and “formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race – Disclosure.” Both petitions combined have over 17,000 signatures, falling short of the administrations 25,000 signature threshold but still apparently relevant enough to warrant an official response. (Relevant.)

The White House responds to the petitions as diplomatically as possible:

Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.

The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.

RELATED: Julian Assange Promises Unpublished Cables Contain “References To UFOs”

The response is attributed to Phil Larson, a member of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy who “works on space policy and communications.” He does not completely dismiss the notion of aliens existing on this plane of reality, citing the work being done by SETI and the Mars Science Laboratory, but insists that as of this moment we have no real evidence to support the idea of extraterrestrial existence beyond our planet.

One does wonder why the White House felt it necessary to respond to this petition, but then again, those are the pitfalls of a completely open government initiative.

The parents of the two apparently separated when the boy was two and the girl was a few months old. Years later, in 2007, the two siblings met at university and, unfortunately for everyone involved, fell in love. Recently, the man proposed to the woman he didn’t know was his sister and the two families met up this past weekend to arrange a lobola payment (basically the opposite of a dowery). It wasn’t until the father and mother met face to face that the truth was revealed.

From The Sowetan:

“[The bride] said her mother never mentioned that she had a brother somewhere.

‘So you can imagine how shocked we were when they broke the news. We are going to have a child together. We do not know what we will tell him when he grows up,’ she said.

[The groom] said he decided to pay lobola because his partner was carrying his child.

The lovebirds said they planned to separate and were discussing a way forward with their separated parents.

‘We can’t think straight at the moment and will just take everything one step at a time,’ he said.”

To make matters worse, the bride is eight months pregnant! Yikes.

I guess the moral of the story is that, no matter how unpleasant it may seem, you should spend a little time with your significant other’s parents before you actually pop the question.

(h/t The Daily Mail)

From Ohio’s WJW-TV:

“According to Dianne Carlisle, there is some afterlife hanky-panky going on inside her Euclid home. ‘It look like, like ghosts having sex in my living room! They are having sex, you can see the lady’s high heeled shoes!’

Dianne swears it’s true and she has pictures of the dirty deed, if you believe. The photos were snapped by her granddaughter, Kimora, 4, while she was playing with Dianne’s cell phone in the living room. According to Dianne, an apparition is visible showing some ghostly relations.

‘I never seen anything like this,” said Dianne. “I mean, ghosts still have feelings? [They're] having sex?’”

Carlisle brings up a good point. One of my main problems with supernatural lore featuring ghosts is that I find the whole thing so depressing. I can’t think of anything more awful than the idea that, after you die, you have to spend the rest of eternity sitting in an attic somewhere creaking floorboards to scare children at a sleep over. How boring! However, if you the afterlife actually entails getting down in strange Ohio houses? That’s an existence I can support. Although I would like to get some information on ghost sex safety first. Planned Parenthood? A little help?

Really though, this just seems like the perfect house to set the pilot episode of my proposed ghost chasing show starring Bob Beckel and Andrea Tantaros! Someone at Fox really needs to get on that.

Watch the clip from WJW-TV below:

(h/t Reddit)

Imagine you’re Alex Torres, a California man. You want to get the attention of Howard Stern, but how? Lets see…you’re a porn star as well as a skydiving instructor, you own a camera, and your friendly with the skydiving school’s pretty receptionist. Is there any possible way to use all those elements together. Hmmm…

In case you haven’t guessed (What? Do you not read headlines?), Torres and the receptionist headed up in a plane, videotaped themselves having sex, and then continued the proceedings right out into the sky. The video was then posted on Torres’ private blog and was soon getting passed around by the students at the local high school. This caught the attention of the local police department. However, and this is the best part, after they investigated and confirmed that the pilot of the plane wasn’t distracted and everyone was of legal age, they found they could file no criminal charges. Apparently, no one was looking up at the right time so there have been no public nudity complaints.

NBC San Diego is reporting that Torres has been fired from the skydiving school but that they haven’t decided whether or not to punish the receptionist. I vote no. You rarely find coworkers that helpful and supportive.

Watch a video report on the story from KGET:

(h/t HuffPo)

The Associated Press is reporting that a Toronto emergency medical crew was called to the scene of an accident and quickly faced what appeared to be the worst accident they had ever seen. Presumably there was blood ever, skin hanging from people’s faces, limbs severed or removed. It must have been horrible! However, the paramedics quickly realized that all the gore was fake. They’d been called to the set of the new Resident Evil movie and all the victims were actors playing zombies.

Apparently a platform that a number of extras had been standing on had broken causing a number of actors to fall. 16 were injured although none of the injuries were life-threatening. That’s not what it looked like though.

From the Associated Press:

Toronto emergency medical spokesman Peter Macintyre said the victims’ costumes made it difficult at first for crews to assess the severity of their injuries.

Paramedics responded to the call from Cinespace Film Studios around 8 a.m. to find what appeared – thanks to Hollywood special effects makeup – to be people who had suffered some untold catastrophe.

‘I could see the look on the first paramedic, saying ‘Oh my God,” Toronto emergency medical services Commander David Ralph said with a laugh.”

Oh man. I’ve had no desire to see a Resident Evil movie since the first one (I’m sorry. Once you fire George A. Romero from a zombie series, I’m out), but, if they put video of the paramedics reaction on the DVD special features, I’ll buy it in a second.

Until then, I can only assume the situation went something like this.

SkyNews reports:

Water hazards are a challenge for anyone who plays golf, but on the 14th tee at the Carbrook Golf Club in Brisbane there is another reason to be concerned.

Half a dozen man-eating bullsharks live in the lake in the centre of the course where their fins poking through the water have become a regular sight.

The sharks got onto the Queensland golf course when it flooded some years ago after a river broke its banks.

Watch video of the sharks below: (H/T Breitbart.tv)

This real-life Bizarro Superman has been getting plastic surgery since 1995 to look more like the Man of Steel.

1995? Did anyone really like Lois and Clark that much?

A news report from ABS-CBN News details the amazing transformation. It also includes an interview with a doctor saying that Chavez likely suffers from body dysmorphic disorder. But, hey, at least he’s going for his dreams, right?

Anyway, the video is pretty ridiculous. The best part may be when it zooms in on every “surgically enhanced” part of his body step by step (chin, nose, cheeks) before pausing on his crotch just long enough for the viewer to think “Waaaaaaait.” They then quickly zoom in on his thigh.

Oooooooh, his thigh. Gotcha.

Watch the video from ABS-CBN below:

(h/t i09)

Here’s what he told California’s KFSN:

“Cuckovich says the policy has nothing to do with religion, but says the phrase is just a outdated practice and disrupts class time.

‘When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body,’ Cuckovich said. ‘So they were saying, ‘god bless you’ for getting rid of evil spirits. But today, I said what you’re doing doesn’t really make any sense anymore.’”

Cuckovich even went so far as to take points off kids’ grades when they said it. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t sit well with the students and their parents and Cuckovich has been forced to lift the policy.

I’m kind of torn on this. It seems pretty ridiculous to hurt a kid’s grade just because he’s subscribing to society’s set manners, however, this guy does teach high school health. As long as the kids aren’t literally drunk driving through the classroom while having unprotected sex on their desk, it’s kind of hard to find anything else to penalize them for.

Seriously though, this guy’s gonna be in big trouble when they get to the end of the school year and find out that everyone’s noses are now chock full of evil spirits.

Watch the report from KFSN below:

That’s why the video of city councilmen in Los Angeles looking for a “Mike Hunt” is still worthy of posting.

At a recent meeting, someone signed up to speak under that name. Shockingly, when Councilman Dennis Zine called for Mr. Hunt, no one appeared.

Sigh. Since we as humans are such frail things, purely ephemeral in the grand scheme of things, let us all marvel at the majesty at something that is truly immortal. One day, we will all be naught but dust, however, Mike Hunt will live on.

Watch the clip below:

(h/t The LAist via Gawker)

In Brazil, a young woman was called in to identify the body of her mother. When they brought the body out, Rosangela Celestrino got wonderful good news; her mother was actually still alive! The bad news? This means she was stuck in a refrigerated morgue drawer for two hours.

This actually happened last Friday in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro. Celestrino says she “went to kiss my mom, and she was breathing. I began to scream, ‘My mom is alive!’ and everyone looked at me like I was crazy.” Yikes! Disturbing day for everyone. Including the doctors.

From ABC News:

“At 7:20 p.m. last Friday, a nurse at the hospital called the on-call doctor when she saw that Celestrino de Assis was not showing any signs of life. The doctor ran some tests, pronounced her dead and had her taken to the morgue. At 10 p.m., when her daughter found her alive, Celestrino de Assis was returned to the intensive care unit.

‘She made some sort of movement and was immediately taken to the ICU, intubated again and put on a respirator,’ hospital director Manoel Moreira Filho told O Globo.”

Unsurprisingly, the doctor and nurse who mistakenly decided the 60 year old woman was dead are now out of a job.

Hey, there are worse ways for stories like this to end.

(h/t Reddit, photo via O Globo)

Yeah, consider this a post for the cat people out there.

Below you can watch the news report from WPRI in Providence in which the owners say they are incredibly sorry and are stunned this occurred. There’s also a quote from someone in the shop who said it was incredibly scary because they had nothing to defend themselves with. And, to prove his point, below the report is the full raw video which shows a man attempt to fend off the dog with a hair drier.

Hey, points for being resourceful.

(h/t Boing Boing)

Anyway, a Massachusetts woman was hospitalized after accidentally walking right into a train because she was distracted by lighting her cigarette. Remember, kids, smoking is bad for your health.

From CBS Boston:

“MBTA police say Sandra Gawlik, who works across the street at the Center Cafe, was trying to light her cigarette on the platform.

Apparently Gawlik was so focused on trying to get her cigarette lit, she was unaware how close she had wandered to the tracks.

Gawlik walked right into the side of an approaching train and was knocked to the ground.”

Jeez. This reminds me of an opening scene from one of the trickier Six Feet Under episodes. You know, where you know something bad is going to happen to one of the people on screen so the show keeps playing with your expectations and you’re all, “Oh, she’s got a cigarette! She’s totally gonna get lung cancer! Oh, wait. No. Train.”

Either that or the bus scene from Final Destination.

Ok, no, it probably wasn’t anything like that bus scene. I just really like linking to it.

Anyway, you can watch a news report on the story from NECN below:

The body thing’s pretty bad but I can totally understand stealing a hearse. I mean, this lady was probably just upset Chrysler stopped making PT Cruisers. Where else is she supposed to get cars that look like that?

From the Associated Press:

“Police tell media outlets the hearse’s driver left the vehicle’s door ajar and the engine running outside a local funeral Tuesday while he went to unlock the door to the building.

Angela Dehart of Beaver is accused of taking the hearse and driving it home. Police found the hearse and the body a couple hours later.”

Wait a second. This is the second story in a week about someone going on joy rides with a corpse in the car. Clearly there’s a trend here!

Forget planking or horsemaning or cone-ing or whatever other nonsense fads the media wants you to believe in. The really cool kids are Bernie-ing!

Or Weekending.

I don’t know, I’m still working on the name. Whatever the case, driving around with a dead body is clearly becoming 2011′s biggest status symbol. Either that or everyone really, really wants to use the car pool lane.

Here’s a video report on the situation from West Virginia’s WVVA:

Apparently, if the wacky adventures of Weekend at Bernie’s were to actually take place, the family of the deceased would find the situation slightly less than hilarious.

The story goes like this. Two men, Robert Young and Mark Rubinson, allegedly came home to find Young’s roommate, Jeffrey Jarrett, had passed away (cause of death still being investigated). Instead of calling 911, the men apparently loaded Jarrett into their car and started hitting up bars. And, while they didn’t pop sunglasses on him and engage in goofy hijinks, they did take $400 out of his account for drink money. Eventually they brought him home before heading back out. Fortunately they were nice enough to wave down a police office on the way and inform him of their deceased pal.

Jarrett’s family? Not thrilled.

From CBS4 in Denver:

“’Taking a deceased person in a car, I mean, it just seems totally wrong,’ said Jarrett’s family member.

Rubinson and Young face charges of abusing a corpse, identity theft and criminal impersonation. A relative said Young was living with Jarrett and came home on Aug. 27 to find him dead, but didn’t call for help.

‘I’m horrified, I’m absolutely, I can’t even put in to words, I can’t imagine anybody thinking that maybe their friend is in trouble and not calling 911,’ said Jarrett’s family member.”

Jeez. It’s days like this that make me worry that starting my own brothel won’t help me get into Princeton.

Watch CBS4′s report below:

(h/t Reddit)

In Kentucky, nine Amish men have been arrested for refusing to pay the fines after they broke traffic laws by not affixing bright orange traffic triangles to their vehicles.

From Kentucky’s WLKY:

“The men, who belong to the strict Old Order Swartzentruber Amish sect, object to the triangles because the bright color violates their modesty code. They said paying the fines would amount to complying with a law they believe violates their religious strictures.

Graves County District Judge Deborah Hawkins Crooks sentenced the nine Monday to three to 10 days in jail for refusing to pay the fines.”

They do have a point. Whenever I’m feeling prideful, there’s nothing I like more than to show off my bright orange traffic triangles. “Check it out ladies! I have a slow moving vehicle. Want a piece?”

Anyway, The Smoking Gun found a mugshot of eight of the men and it looks pretty much exactly like you’d expect.

So what do you guys think? Is this religious persecution or stubborn people refusing to abide by laws set up for their safety?

Mediaite tried to reach the Amish men for comment but, for some reason, we couldn’t find them in the phone book.

Really, it doesn’t get much better than that does it? It’s much funnier than the original headline from the Tampa Bay Fox 13 story they’re citing: “Police: Man says he was bitten by vampire.” That’s probably because the story itself isn’t really all that funny.

From Fox 13:

“The attack sent 69-year-old Milton Ellis to the hospital and put the accused vampire, 22-year-old Josephine Rebecca Smith, in jail.

…

‘After he fell asleep on the ground, he claims that she attacked him, started yelling that she was a vampire, that she was going to eat him and started biting him by his face and body,’ [St. Petersburg Police Department's Mike] Puetz said.

Somehow he made his way back to the Shell station in his wheelchair with blood still oozing from bite marks on his neck.

Ellis called police and told them that the woman who attacked him referred to herself as a vampire.

Police said Smith doesn’t remember anything.

They found her on the porch at Hooters half naked and covered in Ellis’ blood. Police say she had not been assaulted in any way.

‘It seems more like a psychotic reaction or a maybe a drug-induced psychological reaction,’ said Dr. Laura Umfer.”

Yeah. A woman having a horrible reaction either due to drugs or serious mental issues and then violently assaulting a helpless guy in a wheelchair isn’t exactly laugh out loud hilarious. Oh well. We’ll always have that headline, right? We can forget the unpleasant details of the actual story and just remember the thrill we got reading that beautiful sentence from the wordsmiths at the Post, a simple sentence that promised us vampires, old people, and maybe girls in tiny orange shorts. To quote the old Hooters slogan, the headline is delightfully tacky, yet very much refined.

Watch a news report on the story from Fox 13 below: