Oddities and Humor

Seeing that I do not even own a cell phone, I'm probably bias here.

I think this whole scenario that you mention here is ludricrious! What's the matter with folks today? Are their phone calls and text messages that important, and just can't wait until later?

The world's gone mad.

Some people are more attached to cellphones and other electric gadgets than to people it seems.

Yes, indeed!

I should add to what I said above, and that is that it seems to be a sin to only do one thing at a time these days.

The buzz word, "multi-tasking", seems to be the order of the day. I really hate that mentality.

For those that need step by step instructions, it may even be vital!

Also, Viagara commercials warn about erections lasting more than 4 hours. If that happens, I would text all my friends to brag about it!

......this story inspires all kinds of jokes

A four hour erection certainly leaves plenty of time for texting.

SEOUL, South Korea " A South Korean woman who earned a driver's license after 960 tries is ready to buy a car and get behind the wheel.

Yonhap news agency reported Thursday that 69-year-old Cha Sa-soon passed the driving part of the test last month on her 10th try. South Korea requires a written test first, and Cha took it nearly daily since April 2005 before passing last year.

Yonhap quoted her as saying she wanted to buy a small secondhand car to visit her son and daughter and for her business selling vegetables.

Why did a man marry his cat?

The cat was apparently dying. The German postman is reported to have unofficially married his cat after the animal fell ill and vets told him it might not live much longer. (This from BBC news site)

Yeah, I caught this on the radio yesterday. Funny as heck!

She must have been very determined!

Fortunately, an ocean keeps her off of our streets.

Miami, FL, United States (AHN) - A Transportation Security Agency employee at Miami International Airport has been arrested for attacking a co-worker who teased him about the size of his genitals after he walked through a body scanner.


Rolando Negrin, 44, was charged with aggravated battery after he used a police baton to beat Hugh Osorno on Tuesday. According to a police complaint, Negrin was upset following a training with whole body scanners with other co-workers.

"The x-ray revealed [he] has a small penis and co-workers made fun of him on a daily basis," the complaint read.

The beating happened in the employee parking lot. Negrin allegedly struck his co-worker repeatedly and then forced him to kneel down and apologize. Osorno suffered cuts and bruises on his arms and back. He was treated by the airport fire rescue.

CBS4 reported that a TSA spokesman issued a statement Thursday that Negrin will be suspended and an investigation on the incident launched.

New York Yankees pitcher Phil Hughes retaliates by punching out Red Sox

What was billed as the Muslim world's first nudist hotel has been forced to close, just six days after it opened.

It was shut after a local authority inspection which found that one of the balconies did not conform to the architect's drawings.

The first 12 sparsely-clad guests at the 64-room resort in Datca on the Turkish Riviera have had to be moved to more conventional accommodation.

The hotel owner said he hoped to modify the balcony and re-open by Wednesday.

Entrepreneur Ahmed Kosar, a 15-year veteran of the Turkish tourism industry, told the BBC that he was always looking for new niches to exploit in the $20bn (£13.6bn) business, and that a number of European clients at his other hotels had expressed an interest in nudism.

The resort was constructed in a quiet spot on the Datca peninsula, east of the popular resort of Marmaris.

It offers guests the opportunity to bare all around the pool, or to take a special shuttle bus to a private beach where nudity is tolerated.

Mr Kosar said he was campaigning to re-open the hotel, and argued that many other hotels in the area have been allowed to continue operating despite not getting some of the many different licences required in Turkey.

It took him two years to build, and he said there were no objections from the local inhabitants, provided the naked tourists confined themselves to the grounds of the resort and the private beach.

The hotel is only open to foreigners - Turks are not allowed to stay - and the staff, nearly all male, keep their clothes on.

Mr Kosar would not be drawn on the subject of whether officials from the governing AK Party were behind the closure - the party is frequently accused of quietly implementing a conservative Muslim agenda in many parts of Turkey.

But he said that if his project continued to be blocked, he would consider moving it to another country like Croatia or northern Cyprus

JARRATT, Va. " Kendall Gibson would seem to be one of Virginia's most dangerous prisoners.

For more than 10 years he has lived in segregation at the Greensville Correctional Center, spending at least 23 hours every day in a cell the size of a gas station bathroom. In a temporary home for the worst of the worst " inmates too violent or disruptive to live among the rest of society's outcasts " he has been a permanent fixture.

He is there, he says, not for his crimes but for a crime he will not commit " a crime against God.

The only thing imposing about Gibson is his long black dreadlocks, resting on the front of his shoulders so they won't drag the ground as he shuffles along in his orange jumpsuit.

It is his hair " winding locks he considers a measure of his Rastafarian faith " that makes him a threat, according to Virginia Department of Corrections Operating Procedure No. 864.1.

The rule took effect on Dec. 15, 1999. Inmates had two choices: cut their hair no longer than their collars and shave their beards, or be placed in administrative segregation.

In the beginning, Gibson was among as many as 40 inmates who opted for confinement over cutting. By 2003, when a handful of the inmates filed a federal lawsuit against the department over their detention, 23 remained in segregation.

The lawsuit failed. Some cracked under the pressure of constant isolation with no visits from loved ones, educational or religious programs or commissary. Some went home.

Today, it's difficult to tell exactly how many remain in isolation. The Department of Corrections won't volunteer the information, but has confirmed 10 names given to The Associated Press by a group of Rastafarian inmates.

Not everyone can handle it, Gibson says. For those weak in mind or spirit, the walls can easily close in on them.

"People always ask how I can smile in a place so negative," he says. The Rastafarian God, Jah, "is my answer. Without Jah in my life I wouldn't be able to handle it."

___

Like most of the Rastafarians in segregation, Gibson didn't become a believer until after he entered prison. He was 18 and had a long time to do, sentenced to 47 years on robbery, abduction and gun charges.

Gibson had always loved the "peaceful vibes of Rastafari livity," but like many he knew the movement by the hair, the music and the ganja. In prison, he met others who taught him the spiritual aspects. He took on the name Ras-Talawa Tafari, a strong leader who inspires awe.

Rastafari draws from the Bible, mixing in African and Caribbean cultural influences. It is considered by many more of a way of life or movement than a religion. They preach unity with god, nature and each other, but are loosely organized and followers are free to worship with other congregations.

Rastafarians regard Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, who was known as Ras Tafari before he rose to power in 1930, as the second coming of Christ. They believe Jah inhabits them so there it no real need for a church. They smoke marijuana as a sacrament and adhere to a vegetarian diet.

While some view growing their hair as optional, most Rastafarians see it as demanded by the Nazarite Vow in the Bible (Numbers 6:5), "There shall no razor come upon his head."

Gibson never entertained the thought of cutting his hair when the policy was announced or during the 10 long years since. "Jah didn't lead I to feel that this plight was burden enough to bow," he says.

A person must be willing to stand up and fight for a worthy cause, he says, echoing Rastafarian messenger Bob Marley's rhythmic chant "Get up. Stand up. Stand up for your rights."

Gibson longs to hear such reggae music. A clear analog radio that picks up about nine stations is his only luxury in his small cell, but the island music doesn't get much air time in these parts.

His days are long but compact. Five days a week, he is led in restraints to an outside cage that resembles a dog kennel for an hour of recreation. Otherwise, he only leaves his 8-by-10 cell for three, 20-minute showers each week.

His cinderblock walls are off-white or gray, depending on the way the light hits them. The cell is freshly painted, drowning out the smell of his Dove soap resting on his one-piece sink-toilet unit.

If he stands on top of his mounted stainless steel bed Gibson can peak out the window, where he can see inmates in the general population recreation yard in the distance. He prefers to stare into the woods just beyond the razor-wife fence. On occasion he spies a deer grazing in the field.

The segregation unit has 16 cells, and although the inmates can't see each other they often talk. Gibson is amazed at what he calls their pure confusion and senseless babbling " obsession with the lives of movie stars and rappers and sports figures.

And then there are the other Rastafarians. "These people may have my physical body confined, but I refuse to surrender my mind and spirit," says Allen McRae, also known as Ras-Solomon Tafari, who is serving 20 years for cocaine possession.

Elton Williams, who is behind bars for armed robbery, gets the question all the time from inmates pulling stints in segregation. Wouldn't it be easier just to cut his hair?

His answer: "My very soul depends on the decisions I make."

Williams, 31, likens it to a Christian who is told that, for security reasons, he must denounce Christ. Williams is set to leave prison in December; he could cut his hair until then, he says, but what would happen to his soul?

Then there was Ivan Sparks, a 59-year-old Rastafarian elder who refused to cut his hair and was sent into segregation at Buckingham Correctional Center.

He never left it " except to die at Virginian Commonwealth University Medical Center last fall, of prostate cancer.

___

The way Department of Corrections officials see it, the inmates could come out of segregation any time they wish.

They made a choice to go to segregation instead of cutting their hair, spokesman Larry Traylor says. Should they decide to comply with the grooming policy, they could return to general population.

"Rules must be in place in order to have a secure, safe environment for everyone," Traylor said. "An inmate that will not follow the rules jeopardizes normal prison operations and is potentially a danger to other inmates and staff."

Virginia is among only about a dozen states, mostly in the South, that limit the length of inmates' hair and beards, according to the American Correctional Chaplains Association. A handful of those allow religious accommodations for Rastafarians, Muslims, Sikhs, native Americans and others whose religious beliefs prohibit shaving or cutting their hair.

There is no hair policy for federal prisoners.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that constitutional protections, like the right to practice religion, do not end at the prison gates. Congress has said institutions can restrict religious liberties only for compelling reasons, like security, but the policies must be the least restrictive means to accomplish that.

Still, inmates have rarely been successful in challenging prison grooming policies.

A native American inmate spent a year in his cell and lost other privileges before a federal appeals court ruled in 2005 that the California prison system's ban on long hair violated his religious freedom.

In a 2002 case, a group of Rastafarian and Muslim federal inmates who were housed in Virginia prisons challenged the grooming policy and a federal court ordered the Bureau of Prisons to transfer them to other facilities that did not have such policies. The court also required the federal prison system to evaluate inmates' religious beliefs and refrain from sending them to Virginia or other states with burdensome grooming policies.

But in the case filed by the Virginia state prisoners, a federal appeals court ruled in 2008 that the Department of Corrections' argument that inmates could hide weapons and other contraband in long hair or easily change their appearance upon escape was compelling enough reason to require trimmed hair.

As a young man, practically a boy, I was fascinated by Brigette.

A Russian MP has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate claims by a regional president that he has met aliens on board a spaceship.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the southern region of Kalmykia, made his claim in a television interview.

MP Andre Lebedev is not just asking whether Mr Ilyumzhinov is fit to govern.

He is also concerned that, if he was abducted, he may have revealed details about his job and state secrets.

The MP has written a letter to Mr Medvedev raising a list of his concerns.

In his letter he says that - assuming the whole thing was not just a bad joke - it was an historic event and should have been reported to the Kremlin.

He also asks if there are official guidelines for what government officials should do if contacted by aliens, especially if those officials have access to state secrets.

Mr Ilyumzhinov said in an interview on primetime television that he had been taken on board an alien spaceship which had come to planet Earth to take samples - and claims to have several witnesses.

He has been president of Kalmykia, a small Buddhist region of Russia which lies on the shores of the Caspian Sea, for 17 years.

The millionaire former businessman has a reputation as an eccentric character.

As president of the World Chess Federation, he has spent tens of millions of dollars turning the impoverished republic into a mecca for chess players - building an entire village to host international tournaments.

I hope, as a wise man you are know, you are revulsed by such a despicable, nazi-like person..

When she was popular, I didn't know anything about her in a personal way. I can hold on to memories without endorsing whatever it is she stands for these days.

She was pretty fair in those days, Ed, but old age is a wreckage, most of the time..

I don't follow her exploits since she retired from films.

AUSTIN, TX -- Country music great Willie Nelson is being honored in Austin with plans for a guitar-in-hand bronze statue and a street named in his honor.



The city council on May 27 is scheduled to vote on dubbing a stretch of 2nd Street "Willie Nelson Boulevard."

A smaller version of a planned Nelson statue was unveiled Thursday.

The larger version is scheduled to be placed next year near the entrance the new studio of the famed public broadcasting music program Austin City Limits. Nelson was featured in the 1974 pilot episode.

The nonprofit group Capital Area Statues Inc. commissioned the Nelson sculpture by Philadelphia artist Clete Shields, as part of a continuing salute to Texas history and culture.

The 77-year-old Nelson is from Abbott, located 25 miles north of Waco.