What's He Pointing At?

There is not crap on TV on Saturday nights. Well, there is crap on TV. Lots of it. But there isn't any crap worth watching (for the most part) on Saturday nights. Sometimes you can hope for a good movie, but for the most part, it's crap. And last night I ended up settling on watching Back to the Future III. Not crap by any means. I did notice something a little weird, though.

At the end, when Doc and Clara come back to 1985 with their two boys, Jules and Verne, they're talking with Marty and Jennifer. And as Doc is yammering on about how no one's future is set in stone just yet (unless you're Lindsay Lohan and in that case, you're pretty much screwed) and it is what you make it, one of the boys makes this odd hand gesture toward his penis. That's right. Toward his penis. It was sort of like a 'come hither' gesture followed by very distinctive pointing. And if you've ever seen Back to the Future III then you know that it has absolutely nothing to do with a penis whatsoever! The video of it is below. I'm open to suggestions as to what the what was going on there.

A Penis With Personality

You know what will happen when a bunch of city supervisors over at your local City Hall enact a law which completely takes away your freedom of choice under the apparent guise of them knowing better than you? That's right. People near and far are going to want to enact another one which limits your freedom to choose even more. I'm not talking things like abortion and guns here, but that's only because I'm talking about San Francisco. No, when you factor San Francisco into the mix, you have to include wacky things like Happy Meals and the male foreskin. Wait. What now?

Yeah, there's a sentence that I never thought I'd type. At least, I never thought that I'd have the opportunity to include both 'Happy Meal' and 'foreskin' in the same sentence and have them both be relevant. But thanks to San Francisco, such a sentence AND such a concept is now possible. Try not to hang yourself until you finish reading. (I know how tough that will be. I had to resist the urge to hang myself until I finished typing.)

As you may or may blissfully not be aware, last week, San Francisco passed a law that forbids fast food outlets from giving out a toy with a meal that is not deemed "healthy". Personally, I think the easiest way around that law, rather than succumb to what San Francisco thinks that you should do and/or eat, would be to sell the toy and include the meal for free. There's no law against that. Yet. But I digress. Now, there might be a measure on the ballot next year "...that would make it a “misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the…genitals” of a person under 18." So sayeth CBS San Francisco. Good Lord, people.

I'm all for the not being able to mutilate genitals. Don't get me wrong, as that sounds like a fairly reasonable provision. However, to need a separate law for it would be, you guessed it, completely ridiculous. That's because you typically don't define a medical procedure as 'mutilation'. But back to the foreskin. (Again, a sentence I never thought I'd type.) The author of this asinine bill is a one Lloyd Schofield who claims that the circumcision IS genital mutilation. Uh-huh. OK, then. What else?

He seems to be going on the belief that circumcision is a religious practice. And yes, it has been for many years and still is in some instances I would assume. But I would be surprised if the majority of circumcisions that are being performed today are being done so because of a religious belief. I would also be surprised if the majority of people thought of circumcision as a religious rite as opposed to seeing it as a medical procedure. I checked with the CDC (at their website) and they don't have any guidelines on whether or not a circumcision should be performed for health reasons. According to the CBS article "Scientists with the Centers for Disease Control are still studying whether circumcisions are healthier, and have promised recommendations to the public." Oh, good. A foreskin promise. That's something to look forward to.

Haven't we always been told (or taught) that circumcision cuts down (pun probably not intended, but completely inevitable) on diseases and is just cleaner or easier to clean? I don't know the specifics, not ever having had a foreskin, I'm just going on what I've learned in various health/anatomy classes. I'm also going to go with what was on Seinfeld when Elaine asked Jerry if he had ever seen one that wasn't circumcised. He said he hadn't and she went on to tell him that it wasn't good. "No, had no face, no personality, very dull. It was like a martian. But hey, that's me." Do you want a weenie with no personality ? I don't think you do.

The point here (surprisingly enough) isn't about the penis. It isn't even about the foreskin. It's about the government trying to ooch its way into every aspect of the life of a private citizen and the decision that they should be making ON THEIR OWN. You don't need to the government to tell you what kind of food you can buy for your child. You're supposed to be responsible enough to make that decision on your own. Yes, yes. I realize that we are surrounded by morons. And I also realize that we are surrounded by morons with children. But we can't let the freedoms of the capable be taken away by the moronic. Technically, the moronic are supposed to suffer as a result of their poor choices. I realize that consequences are practically non-existent in a socialist society, but we're not totally there yet, so there's still hope.

I'm semi-interested in whether or not the author of this bill has had his snipped off. I don't know why I'm semi-interested in that, but I just am. Regardless, it doesn't mean that he gets to try to dictate (again, no pun intended, but pretty funny none the less) what others do with theirs. Why are people not up in arms about the very thought of this happening? I'm not exactly sure, but that alone frightens me more than the possible ban on circumcision does.

Another Sort Of Pop-Up

Look, all I'm saying is that if you're reading your kid a pop-up book and you happen upon an image like the one of the elephant below, maybe you just turn the page real quick and move on before your kid starts asking too many questions about the elephant's...um....trunk. Yeah. That's it. His trunk.

The Fiery Unit

Sure, you're going to be a little bit upset when you find out that your husband is having an affair. You might even contemplate some sort of revenge upon him and, perhaps, his straying unit. But if that's going to be the case, you're really going to need to think about what you're ultimately hoping to accomplish, here. Because while you might only set out to simply burn your husband's penis out of rage, should you end up burning down the entire house and killing him in the process, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Let's go to the land down under to a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia called Unley. There we'll find a one 46-year old Rajini Narayan. We'll find her to find her husband has been having an affair. According to news.com.au, for some reason, in December of 2008, Ms. Narayan's husband was lying in the couple's bed and gave Ms. Narayan "...his email password and she found emails detailing the affair." Well. That's one way to do it. Needless to say, his wife was less than thrilled.

After learning of his affair, she allegedly said to him, "You say you loved her. I'm going to burn your penis. I'm going to tell your family what you have done." Shouldn't she have just chosen one? Tell his family OR burn the penis? And did she really say it like that? I mean, that seems rather matter-of-fact. Why would she say that? It really ruins the surprise of all of the penis burning that would take place later if you're asking me.

Now, her attorney claims that "...the words were "spoken from Narayan's heart" because of a "genuine, if wildly misguided" belief she would keep her husband." Hmm. Do you really want a husband with a burned penis? I don't know that you do. I certainly don't know why you would. Granted, it would probably stop him from having affairs, but that doesn't mean that Ms. Narayan, as the one doing all of the burning, is going to be benefiting sexually from such a deed either. But Mr. Narayan apparently didn't seem to care about his wife's plans/threats, as he allegedly "...rolled away from her, turning his back on her. He said: `No you won't, you fat, dumb bitch'." And she wants this guy...why? Burn his weenie off. That's how I feel about the situation right about now.

And that's apparently how Ms. Narayan felt as well, as she doused her husband in petrol and proceeded to have herself quite the weenie roast. However, her act of revenge wasn't just limited to the man's unit. No, she managed to burn him over 75 percent of his body at the same time she burned down the family home. The crispy cheater died a few days later. Whoops.

Ms. Narayan is, of course, on trial for killing her husband. She doesn't appear to be denying that she acted the way that she did. And while one can sympathize with someone who finds out that their spouse is cheating on them, can they really sympathize to the point where they're OK with them burning them to death? Perhaps. Perhaps if, like the prosecutor says, "Ms. Narayan had told a tarot card reader, who she had visited just days before the attack on her husband, that her husband would not let her reduce her working hours because she was paying for the other woman." No pun intended here, but what a dick.

I'm not so sure why Ms. Narayan couldn't just up and leave. There's no way in hell I'm staying with some guy who tells me that my paycheck is helping pay for some other woman that he's having an affair with. Yeah, I know that burning his penis off sounds really great and all. But the thing about fire is that it's pretty hard to contain to just one bodily organ, especially when the whole body is doused in fuel. I can't imagine that she won't be found guilty. Then again, I couldn't imagine that Lorena Bobbitt was going to get off either. Stay tuned!

Wash Your Willie!

We don't hear a lot about how all of that stimulus money is being spent, do we? We don't even hear whether it worked or not. Some folks say it did, some folks say it didn't. Since I guess that opinion depends on how your current situation is, it's really hard to say. But if I had to guess, I would say that the stimulus money hasn't done all that it could have done because it has been spent on dumbass things that have absolutely nothing to do with stimulating the economy over here. Hmm. Perhaps 'dumbass' is a bit harsh. I don't know. You tell me. Is it 'dumbass' to spend almost a million dollars "...on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex." Wait. What was the question?

The question was just what you read that it was. According to something called CNS News, "The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009" on just such a study. The care and feeding of one's grundle in Africa. Paid for with stimulus funds that were paid for by your tax dollars. Why is this an important study? Well, from what I can tell, it's not. It's not even close to being an important study. It's certainly far from being worth almost a million bucks of dough that was supposed to be injected into the American economy, that is pretty clear to me.

But I could be wrong. Let's go over some specifics. First of all, this is a multi-tiered study and it's only the penis washing part that received stimulus money. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd type.) Second, they decided upon the genitalia cleansing goal because they "...have been unsuccessful in convincing most adult African men to undergo circumcision" so they're going to attempt "...to determine whether researchers can develop an after-sex genitalia-washing regimen that they can then convince uncircumcised African men to follow."

Now, one of the first things that I thought (that was printable) when I heard this was, "Why does anyone give a fat rat's ass whether or not African men can keep their unit clean after all of the sex?" That question is a little hard to answer, as it wasn't made real clear (shocking, I know). The closest that I could find to an answer was in the part of this grant that said: "If we find that men are able to practice consistent washing practices after sex, we will plan to test whether this might protect men from becoming HIV infected in a later study." Wait. What?

Um, don't we know how HIV is spread? Does bathing one's grundle prevent HIV? I'm not so sure that it does. I'm pretty sure that it won't. It sounds kind of like a fairly simple solution to not get HIV. Just wash off the ol' unit after the inadvisable coitus that you just engaged in and go about your way! That's not what we've been taught. Is it? I don't think that it is. But maybe they know something I don't. I, personally, don't own a penis, so I don't know how this might possibly translate into the real world. Do you have a penis? Do you wash it? Do you have HIV? I guess if you answered yes to the first two questions and no to the third, then I can deduce that the practice does work? Good Lord, I hope that's not the conclusion that I come to.

You know what part of this makes me think that this is just a complete waste of time? All of it, that is correct. But do you want to know specifically which part? It's where they explain "If most of the men in the study wash their genitals after sex, are willing to do so after the study ends, and report that their partners accept the regimen, the researchers will develop another study to see if the “penile cleansing procedure” actually works to prevent HIV infections." These are the kind of folks who just do not see the benefit in washing the wang after doing the ol' horizontal watusi. These are the kind of folks whose partners might be unaccepting of a dried-off dingus. What possible benefit were they offering these folks to participate in this study?

What is the water situation over there, anyway? I'm guessing that indoor plumbing is out for most of the folks that would be involved in this sort of practice, yes? How feasible is this anyway? I'm guessing not very. How feasible is it that the stimulus money that was spent on penis polishing practices did not stimulate the US economy? Again, I'm guessing not very. And how feasible is it that this could be justified by the weasel that got the money for this study? Judging from the fact that he did not answer the question (posed by CNS News), "The Census Bureau says the median household income in the United States is $52,000. How would you explain to the average American mom and dad -- who make $52,000 per year -- that taxing them to pay for this grant was justified?” I'm going to stick with my answer of 'not very'.

Too bad they couldn't have used this money to teach some of the People of Wal-Mart how to wash themselves. Or, at the very least, dress themselves. Now that would have been justifiable!

That's Not What It Is

Over there at Live Science, we learn that there was a little bit of excavating going on the other day in Sweden. I don't usually think of Sweden as a place that needs to be excavated, but I guess it does. Anyway, all of their excavating "...turned up an object that bears the unmistakable look of a penis carved out of antler bone." Of course. No, wait. What now?

Sometimes, I think of scientists as just like you and I (we would be the non-scientists). But when I read that sentence and learn that there IS an unmistakable look to an antler bone carved like a schlong that I realize that scientists see things in a whole different way than you and I. What was that? Oh, the bone? Heh-heh. (Pun totally intended.) Sure. Behold!

Well, they have a point. That's definitely penile look, I'll give them that. And according to a one Gšran Gruber (you pronounce that any way you want to), a archaeologist of the National Heritage Board in Sweden, "Your mind and my mind wanders away to make this interpretation about what it looks like – for you and me, it signals this erected-penis-like shape...But if that's the way the Stone Age people thought about it, I can't say." Oh, please.

Look, if there's one thing that has been an unfortunate constant through time and all eternity, it has been the penis. We all know what it looks like and we all laugh when we see it. (Seriously, I do not know how you guys walk around with those things down there.) And I'm sure the Stone Age people did the same thing. Either way, that's not a very scientific way of explaining this thing. Anyone could do that. ("Uh, it kind of looks like this, but I dunno.")

Contributing to quotes without a lot of scientific mojo to them would be a one Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist, who says that "Without doubt anyone alive at the time of its making would have seen the penile similarities just as easily as we do today." You don't say. So, people thousands of years ago would have recognized a penis if they saw one? Really? Fascinating. Or not.

They don't know whether it was a dildo or not. It doesn't take a scientist with a fancy Swedish name to figure that out. That Gruber guy said, "Perhaps instead of, or in addition to, its sexual purpose, the object may have been used as a tool, such as to chip flakes of flint". What? I understand the part about "instead of", but I became a bit confused with the infusion of "in addition to". Are they saying that ancient dildos also doubled as some sort of a chisel? That doesn't seem like a very good idea at all. (First of all, you really need to hold that chisel steady to get the most effective cut. It can't be slipping and sliding all over the place, you know.)

They also don't know what it was for even if it was a dildo, as the article states, "It's not immediately clear whether the tool would have been one most likely to be used by men or women or both." Now, when they say "tool", are they referring to a tool like a hammer or are they referring to a tool like something that gets the job done? Hard to say. Not sure I want to know, either. Wait a minute. It says that the thing "...is about 4 inches (10.5 cm) long and 0.8 inches (2 cm) in diameter." Four inches long? Not even an inch in diameter? It's not a dildo. Trust me. It's not a dildo.

Men Love Their Penis

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Men are awfully fond of their penises. I mean that collectively, not like any one guy has plural penises (penii?). I hope.

The clip below is from a newscast out of New Orleans. It's hard to tell exactly what the topic was, but I'm guessing it had something to do with with women receiving some form of enjoyable sexual fulfillment. Regardless, the male newscaster couldn't help but take this opportunity to be extremely proud that some woman out there received some pleasure in some form from some other man's penis. Penis.

Penis.

P.S. Yeah, it was a really slow news day. But you can always find a story about a penis! At least it's good for something!

You People Fell For That?

Sometimes there are scams that I am just amazed that some people are able to pull off. And it's not because the person or the people pulling the scam are stupid. It's because the people getting scammed are actually going along with it and letting it happen! We're not talking about some complicated scheme that anyone would have fallen for or that no one could have done anything to stop it from happening. No, we're talking about a scam that is so perplexing to me, I can't believe that ONE person fell for it, let alone THIRTY.

Here's the scoop: According to an article by the wiry folks over there at Wired, over in Wisconsin an 18-year old male "...was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for an extortion scheme". OK, what kind of extortion scheme. Oh, you know. The kind "...that had him tricking male classmates into sending them nude photos of themselves". You may be asking yourself, "That's a scheme?" Well, it is when he was "...then blackmailing them with exposure if they didn’t have sex with him." Oh, yeah. That's a scheme all right! Wait. What?

Correct. Meet 18-year old (and old enough to know better) Anthony Stancl. Behold!

Yeah, that seems about right. Anyway, Mr. Stancl apparently "...posed as a girl on Facebook and tricked more than 30 male classmates into sending him photos of themselves." Now, you know that these photos that were sent weren't just any photos. No, they were the photos of the nude variety.

Let's just stop right here for a moment, shall we? What is it with younger people taking pictures of themselves naked? Or just taking pictures of their genitals? And then sending said pictures to other human beings. How does that work? Do you take a picture of your penis and send it out to all of your friends with the caption "Here's what my wiener looks like on Tuesday."? I don't understand the motivation behind these actions. And when you're sending said genitalia photography over the Internet are you thinking, "Oh, it'll be fine. Things only stick around on the Internet for like a week or so. It'll be gone soon." Or are you just planning to never have any sort of a job where you work with the public or what? Why are you sending pictures of your reproductive organs to other people? Why?

Since those questions, among others, cannot be answered right now, let's continue with how this scam worked. So Mr. Stancl found 30 guys who were really proud of their manhood and they snapped a couple of Glamour Shots (maybe with the penis by a lake or with the penis in the middle of a meadow) and sent them to Mr. Stancl, but who they thought was "Kayla". Huh. OK. Then what?

Well, as Mr. Stancl began receiving photos of male genitalia, he needed to keep them organized so he organized them within 40 folders on his computer and named each folder "after a victim whose photos were in the folder. In one case, police found 24 pictures of a single victim." 24?!?! Really? One for every hour of the day? (Here's my penis at noon! Here's my penis during rush hour!) Seems odd.

And it was odd. But to me, it wasn't as odd as the fact that seven of the victims claimed that Mr. Stancl "...threatened to post their nude pictures on the internet or send them to their friends unless they engaged in sexual activity with a male friend of “hers.” When the victims met with the male friend, who was Stancl, the perpetrator performed oral sex on the victims and took a photo of the activity with his cellphone." Wait. What now?

HE performed oral sex on THEM?! Huh. I would have thought he would have wanted it the other way around. He did all of the performing, eh? Strange. But what's stranger is that those folks thought that was a good idea.

I don't get that line of thinking at all. I guess because the victims were still in high school that they went along with this little plan. I mean, seriously. What went through their heads? "I'm not gay or anything, but this guy is going to post a picture of my penis online unless I let him get me off in an oral manner. Um, OK." NO! That's not right! That's not logical! But that's what happened.

The whole thing came unraveled when Mr. Stancl, still posing as "Kayla" ended up actually having sex with one of the male victims and then instructing the victim to send him a nude picture of his brother. That's when the victim went running to his parents and told them about this crazy, Facebook penis picture scheme.

Mr. Stancl has now been sentenced to 15 years in jail. Since he seems to enjoy performing fellatio, I'm sure that over the next 15 years, he'll be able to find plenty of willing participants to let him do his thing to them. Plenty of them. So let this be a lesson to you, kids! If someone wants a picture of your penis, just say no. Because really, no one wants to see that. No one. I promise. That's why y'all wear pants.

Almost As Big As What?

To all of the guys out there, look, we all know that you're very fond of your own penis. I mean, you guys really love that thing. Don't get me wrong, as women, we're fond of our body parts as well, but we don't have nearly the same relationships with, say, our breasts. We definitely don't have the same relationship with our hoo-ha as y'all have with your penis. That is a fact. But some of you guys really have to understand that even though you are immensely fascinated with your penis and even though you really love your penis, the rest of the world doesn't want to hear about your penis, much less your exaggerated penis. Oh, and by the way...we most certainly don't want to hear about it during the nightly weather forecast. Especially if you're the one doing the weather. Wait. What now?

It's just like what it sounds like. Our story takes place over yonder in Boston. According to the Boston Herald online, Channel 7's chief meteorologist Pete Bouchard was doing the weather on Monday evening and was giving the amounts of snow in the area. Then, for no apparent reason other than, as I have theoretically summarized above, his love for his own penis, he make a comparison between the snow levels and, um, well...himself.

He said, "In Princeton, we picked up 9 inches of snow, Billerica had 7. The biggest amount that I could find … almost as big as me...about nine 9 inches.” Egads, sir. Egads indeed.

Granted, this is just my interpretation of what occurred. Well, not just my interpretation. The majority of the Internet weighed in on the quip as well and they came to a similar conclusion. And when I say "similar" I mean "exactly". But oddly enough, that wasn't the conclusion that everyone in the station came to, including the weatherman himself. Allegedly.

The article over there at the Boston Herald states that "Channel 7 General Manager Chris Wayland explained today there was a technical difficulty with his monitor. "When he was looking at his monitor, he was cut in half and he thought that’s what was happening over the air. To imply that’s what his comment was, what people are suggesting, is ridiculous. He would never do that." Huh?

How is saying that the snowfall is almost as big as he is supposed to indicate that he saw himself on the monitor and was cut in half? I'm not thinking that it implies that at all, really. Oh, wait. Let me guess. It was an eighteen inch monitor, was it? And because he was "cut in half" (if that's what we're calling it these days) that would make him nine inches and would make the snowfall "almost as big as him", would it? I don't know if I'm buying that. Any other explanations?

Sort of, but it's kind of the opposite of what that guy said. According to The Boston Globe's website, another one of Channel 7's meteorologists, a one Dylan Dreyer, was on 101.7 WZLX’s morning show, something called “Karlson & McKenzie’’ and she (Ms. Dreyer) said that the studio had been set up for another weather guy who is much shorter than Bouchard. So "When Bouchard stepped up to the weather map, he thought he looked too big on the screen" and that the " “almost as big as me’’ joke was a hint to producers to change the specs."

Well, now wait a minute. Was he too big on the screen or was he cut in half on the screen? Which one was it? Hard to say. I was almost giving her a little bit of credibility and considered changing my stance on believing that he was totally comparing himself to the snowfall (an odd comparison at best, but if it happened, it happened), but then she threw in “He’s so clueless that he didn’t even realize the way it came across until he got in trouble for it.” Oh, come on!

He didn't realize it? He did this little shifty eye movement thing and while that's probably not the universal symbol for "guess how big my penis is" (at least, it's not as far as I've heard, but then again, I don't go to the meetings), it's also a little weird if you're just going for a little "fix the monitor there, bro", you know what I mean? Sure you do. Unless you're as clueless as a meteorologist, apparently. (By the way, I'd really like to believe Ms. Dreyer on this one because she's fairly hot, but I just can't. Hot she is, but believable? Not so much.)

If you're asking a one Chris Wayland (who, according to the Boston Globe, is a spokesman for WHDH, whereas the Boston Herald has him down as general manager) who happened, he'll tell you that "Bouchard was simply concerned about what he saw in his own monitor. “He thought everyone could see that he looked 9 inches tall." Everyone...who? Is he aware that there are more than just the folks in the studio who are watching him point to those little dots on the board and talk about the amount of snowfall that there was? Is he aware that other people that are watching on their TVs at home do not think that he is actually inside of that little box? That doesn't really make any sense. Besides, it's funnier the other way.

Mr. Wayland added "We think the way it's being portrayed in the public is totally ridiculous." You think how it's being portrayed in public is totally ridiculous? Dude, the guy said it in public! AND it was totally ridiculous. And as part of the public, I'm just going to call a spade and spade and say that it was ridiculous and context be damned!

The video is below. It's hard to say how long it's going to be available, as it has been removed from the Internet at various junctures due to copyright claims by WHDH, so watch it while you can. If it's not there, check over at Breitbart.tv; that's where I found it.

Boston.com