‘Penis snatcher' strikes fear with handshake

From the Daily Mail From: Daily Mail March 16, 2013 10:12

REPORTS of genital theft are a relatively common occurrence across West and Central Africa, scholars say.


Academics observing reports of penis snatching on the continent have previously deemed it an urban phenomenon - a manifestation of the anxieties that arise when a village becomes a city and rural people find themselves living among crowds of unfamiliar people.

So a U.S. anthropologist was 'intrigued' when she arrived in the tiny hamlet of Tiringoulou in the Central African Republic, to find two villagers claiming to have been the victims of genital theft.

Previous instances have been reported in crowded centres like Lagos, Nigeria, or Douala, in Cameroon.

Louisa Lombard, a postdoctoral fellow in geography at the University of California, Berkeley, said villagers in Tiringoulou told her of a traveller, upon arriving on a Sudanese merchant truck, removed two men's penises with a handshake.

The academic was told the stranger had targeted a tea seller in the market and a second man, she wrote in a report on alternet.org.

'After handing over his money, he [the stranger] clasped the vendor’s hand. The tea seller felt an electric tingling course through his body and immediately sensed that his penis had shrunk to a size smaller than that of a baby’s. His yells quickly drew a crowd.

'Somehow in the fray a second man fell victim as well,' she wrote.

Several eyewitnesses assured her the 'appendages did indeed shrink dramatically'.

com.au/news/penis-snatchers-strike-fear-with-handshake/story-e6frf7jo-1226598738984

When you're a lion eating girl is just a whim away, a whim away, a whim away.

Must have been good sex to not notice that a fucking lion is about to pounce.

A woman was attacked and killed by a lion while having sex with her boyfriend in Zimbabwe.

According to My Zimbabwe, the woman, identified as Sharia Mawera, was in a secluded spot in the bush near the northern town of Kariba when the lion pounced.

It is believed her boyfriend managed to escape, fleeing when the lion lunged forward.

"Unfortunately the woman was mauled to death by the lion, but her boyfriend managed to escape naked," a source told the news website.

The source said the man was a fisherman and his girlfriend worked at the local market.

The man, who was suffering shock, told police he and his girlfriend were enjoying some romantic time when the lion came from behind and roared.

After the man escaped and raised the alarm, rangers began a hunt for the animal, which is believed responsible for the disappearance of a local man over the weekend.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/south-africa/130306/woman-mauled-death-lion-while-having-sex-zimbabwe

Adolf Hitler v Frankenstein! Odd names run for election in India

Meghalaya state's fascination with interesting names is clear with one look at the ballot for state elections

guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 February 2013 12.01 GMT

Adolf Hitler is running for election in India. So is Frankenstein.

The tiny north-east Indian state of Meghalaya has a fascination with interesting, and controversial, names and the ballot for state elections on Saturday provides proof.

Among the 345 contestants running for state assembly are Frankenstein Momin, Billykid Sangma, Field Marshal Mawphniang, and Romeo Rani. Some, such as Kenedy Marak, Kennedy Cornelius Khyriem and Jhim Carter Sangma, are clearly hoping for the electoral success of their namesake US presidents.

Then there is Hitler.

This 54-year-old father of three has won three elections to the state assembly with little controversy despite his name.

His father had worked with the British army, but apparently developed enough of a fascination with Britain's arch-enemy to name his son Adolf Hitler – though he also gave him the middle name Lu.

"I am aware at one point of time Adolf Hitler was the most hated person on Earth for the genocide of the Jews. But my father added 'Lu' in between, naming me Adolf Lu Hitler, and that's why I am different," said Hitler, who hails from the small village of Mansingre, 120 miles west of Gauhati, the capital of neighbouring Assam state.

Hitler said his name has not stopped him from travelling the world, including trips to the US, and to Germany.

"I've never had problems obtaining a visa but I was asked many times during immigration as to why I should have such a name. I told the immigration staff I possibly didn't have a role in my naming," he said.

India played little role in the second world war, and many Indians view Hitler not as the personification of evil but as a figure of fascination.

Hitler's book Mein Kampf is prominently displayed at many Indian bookstores. The owner of a menswear shop named his store Hitler, then expressed confusion last year after Israel complained.

Musfika Haq, a teacher in Meghalaya's capital, Shillong, said such names are common in the state.

"Parents obviously get fascinated by names of well known or great leaders, but must be unaware that some of them, like Hitler, had been highly controversial," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/22/adolf-hitler-frankenstein-india-elections

Welcome to Spanker Knob: world's rudest place names mapped

DateFebruary 19, 2013 - 5:01PM

Most of us have heard of Titicaca, the high-altitude lake that straddles Peru and Bolivia, and the prominent Breton port of Brest.

But how many people knew about the Philippine town of Anus, the Cambridgeshire hamlet called Six Mile Bottom, or the Indonesian settlement of Semen?

Now, thanks to the meticulous research of Londoner Gary Gale – a "geo-technologist and self professed geek with a life" – all the world's most amusingly puerile place names can be found on one giggle-inducing website.


One of the Australian highlights is Victoria's Spanker Knob.

Mr Gale's creation – "Vaguely Rude Place Names of the World" – contains hundreds of ludicrously immature road, town and village names, all plotted on an eye-catching map.

Victoria is the star performer in Australia, with the state featuring such pearlers as Tittybong, Bumbang and Spanker Knob.

Britain's funniest include Pratt's Bottom in Orpington, Andrews Knob in Cheshire, Wetwang in Yorkshire and Ringrash Road in Northern Ireland.

Over in the US, there's Hooker in Oklahoma, Climax in Colorado, and Mianus in Connecticut – which featured in one particularly adolescent sketch in Jackass: the Movie.

And then there's the Albanian village of Crap, the Algerian settlement of Tit, and countless more examples too rude to repeat.

"I've had a lifelong love affair with maps since discovering the Harry Beck map of the London Underground on the back of the London A-Z street atlas at an early age," says Mr Gale, on his website. His love affair with infantile comedy is self evident, and is bound to help thousands of like-minded souls stave off boredom during their working day.

- The Telegraph, London


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/welcome-to-spanker-knob-worlds-rudest-place-names-mapped-20130218-2emtc.html#ixzz2LLNNOBDd

Farting on planes: let 'em rip, study says

DateFebruary 15, 2013 - 10:27AM

Farting, cutting the cheese, letting her rip, breaking wind - whatever you call it, experts say it's better out than in even on a plane.

Pilots, especially, have been urged to let flatulence out for safety's sake, but passengers risk being ignored by cabin crews if they do.

A team of Danish and British gastroenterologists produced a paper on flatulence on planes after one of them, Jacob Rosenberg, was inspired on a flight between Copenhagen and Tokyo.

The problem is that farting is an invariable consequence of digestion and people do it about 10 times a day.

But people may fart more on flights because of changes in the volume of intestinal gasses as cabin pressure alters.

Hans Christian Pommergaard, Jakob Burcharth, Anders Fischer, William Thomas and Professor Rosenberg have told the New Zealand Medical Journal the holding back option may seem "alluring" but there are drawbacks.

Stress, discomfort, pain, bloating, dyspepsia and other symptoms could ensue, while not discounting the chance that all the effort may be sabotaged by turbulence in any case.

"There is actually only one reasonable solution ... just let it go," the medicos say.

However, the odour - and women's farts smell worse than men's - may impair cabin service and thus the quality of life aboard the aircraft.

They warn of consequences in the cockpit.

"If the pilot restrains a fart, all the drawbacks previously mentioned, including diminished concentration, may affect his abilities to control the airplane," the researchers say.

"If he lets go of the fart his co-pilot may be affected by its odour, which again reduces safety on board the flight."

The specialists did not recommend setting farts alight, either on land or in a plane, despite its proven ability to reduce odour.

They reluctantly dismissed the notion of rubber pants with an attached air container for collecting gas as "somewhat extreme".

But they reckon putting active charcoal in passenger seats is a winner of an idea that could be backed up with special undies.

"The future frequent flyer may develop the ability to "sneak a fart" by wearing charcoal-lined underwear thus experiencing a comfortable flight in harmony with fellow passengers," they conclude.

Pre-flight passenger methane breath tests and reducing fibre in airline food options were also considered.

AAP



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/farting-on-planes-let-em-rip-study-says-20130215-2egvi.html#ixzz2Kx81F7Iv

Killer Vaginas
DateFebruary 8, 2013
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Women using poison to murder their husbands is nothing new, going as far back as Claudius' poisoning, which implicated his wife Agrippina. ''Arsenic Annie'' Nannie Doss saw off four husbands, as well as most of her family, over four decades (she confessed to the murders in 1954).

And now a Brazilian woman may soon be added to this pantheon of gloom. Although this alleged attempted homicide was unsuccessful, the method will certainly go down in history.

She allegedly put poison in her vagina, and invited her husband to perform oral sex on her. The man became suspicious while down south, surprised by an ''unusual smell''. He took her to hospital, where the poison was found.

There is something particularly intriguing about using a method of murder that involves pleasure. It's also completely stupid, as vaginas are absorbent and the woman would have probably killed herself in the process. But no matter, a lethal love tunnel adds to the fascinating mythology of sex and death in the lady garden.

Paranoid fantasies about women's bits are nothing new. Vaginas seem dark and mysterious, and produce strange liquids. Its secretions form the basis of the belief that women are unclean, indeed ritually so. As the South Park character Mr Mackey said: ''I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.'' And yet pleasure - and most importantly life - also emanate from it.

This is ''dark power''-inspired folklore. It was believed at various points in history that menstrual blood was semen ''gone bad'', that women took men's life-force through their vaginas, that the female orgasm should be prescribed for anxiety disorders, and that some vaginas came laced with teeth that could castrate a man.

Indeed, the myth of the vagina dentata - meaning toothed vagina - can be found in many cultures, from Greek mythology to the Chaco and Guiana tribes of South America.

Its message can be subtly different, depending on where it originated: it either says that penetrative sex is dangerous, that women are evil temptresses bent on male castration, or that men should not rape women, or suffer the consequences.

This latter threat was realised with the invention of Rape-aXe, an anti-rape female condom invented in South Africa in 2005. The Rape-aXe is a latex sheath embedded with sharp, inward-facing barbs that would dig into the attacker's penis, causing excruciating pain.

Of course the threat of castration, whether real or imagined, should not be the motivation for men not to rape.

The mythology surrounding vaginas harm women more than help them. Many women would not actually want to put someone off oral sex with the possibility that it may be a poisoned furry chalice (women are also not more likely to be a poisoner than men: the overwhelming number of convicted poisoners are men).

As long as women are made to feel powerless, those powerful myths will be embraced to protect ourselves by turning us into witches, poisoners or sirens. But these myths only perpetuate fear, distrust and disgust of female genitalia. There are other ways to bite back.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/killer-vaginas-20130208-2e2td.html