Pot Linked to Tiger Maulings. Marijuana: Harmless?

Ready yourself for the coming ONDCP TV ads warning parents that kids are 1000% more likely to be eaten by a tiger while on the pot than if not:

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Medical Examiner says a teenager who was killed by an escaped zoo tiger six months ago had marijuana and alcohol in his system.

Full story here.

$50 on Kinky Lingerie to Win!

In honor of the Kentucky Derby, Slate.com has a funny article about the naming of thoroughbred horses. All names have to be registered with the Jockey Club, the organization that officiates horse racing. The club's policy is to reject names that are "suggestive or have a vulgar or obscene meaning; names considered in poor taste." The club isn't that vigilant about the policy though. That's how, for example, a guy got the ok to name his gelding "Nutzapper":

[Horse owner Andy] Hillis explained to the registry poobahs that as a young boy in Canada, he loved to zap walnuts in boiling oil and sprinkle them on salads. Satisfied that the name had a tasty, not tasteless, origin, the Jockey Club approved Nutzapper. Hillis, unable to contain his glee, boasted about the name to a Daily Racing Form reporter. "I've never even been to Canada," he said. "I just made the whole thing up on the spot."

Hillis should have kept his nutz in his mouth. After that article ran, the club banned the name.

The Slate.com article then goes on to note some of the astounding names that horses have run under in the history of the sport:

[S]houldn't somebody have questioned the precedent-setting Nut Buster way back in 1942? Similarly, Pussy Galore probably should have raised a few eyebrows in 1965. The filly never won a race, but one assumes she was a big hit with the stallions.

You want explicit commands? How about Blow Me (1945), Get It On (both 1971 and 1986), On Your Knees (1977 and 2005), Spank It (1985), or 1963's Go Down, whose sire, of course, was Service. Like 'em young? Embarrassingly enough, Jail Bait (1947 and 1983), Barely Legal (1982 and 1989), and Date More Minors (1998) all made it into the staid registry.

If a clever play on words is your thing, Cunning Stunt (1969) is a decent one. Lagnaf (1978) is a thinly veiled acronym for "let's all get naked and … ." The names Hardawn (1937) and Wrecked Em (1983) have to be said out loud to elicit the desired potty-mouth effect.

The list goes on: Golden Shower (1955), Cherry Pop (1961 and 1978), Cum Rocket (1969), Ménage Á Trois (1974), She's Easy (1978), Adultress (1979), Strip Teaser (1980), Rhythm Method (1982), Bodacious Tatas (1985), Tit'n Your Girdle (1988), Kinky Lingerie (1991), Hard Like a Rock (1995), Sexual Harassment (1997), and X Rated Fantasy (1999).

You can use the Jockey Club's online database to search for names. Among the ones I found were: Milfer, Hotforteacher, Bondage Queen and Jiz Wiz.

Sometimes You Just Need a Gator

Drug bust in NJ nets a 3ft alligator:

Police said they confiscated weapons, a stun gun and a bulletproof vest as well as large quantities of heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, ecstasy, Oxycontin and marijuana.

New Jersey State Police also told WNBC.com's Brian Thompson that a live alligator was discovered in one of the raided homes. The alligator was taken to an animal shelter.

The alligator measured 3 feet. It is not clear if the alligator may have been kept for security, as a pet, or for some other reason.

Try this -- Because owning dangerous animals that aren't meant to be kept as pets and have huge, sharp teeth that could easily separate your head from your neck are fucking bad ass. Do you need any other reason? It's like asking, "Hey Rob, how come you don't wear condoms when fucking street walkers in West Baltimore?" Exposure to STDs is fucking bad ass. Some people own gators, lions, or Hepatitis infected ferrets. I seek my danger in the warmth of a dirty hooker's crotch.

Now if you'll excuse me I've got to step outside and smoke my asbestos filtered cigarettes. B-A-D A-S-S. Two at a time bitches.

PETA Wouldn't Like My 'Fuck a Bear Challenge'

PETA gets upset about a Bear vs Man pizza-eating challenge at a county fair.

CINCINNATI, Dec. 17 The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the city of Cincinnati to ban the display of wild animals.[...]

The request was partly inspired by the situation of Lakota, a 720-pound bear displayed at the Hamilton County Fair in August. The bear entered a pizza-eating contest against fair-goers as part of a show by World Animal Studios.

I think the 720-pound bear can hold his own in a pizza- eating contest. Full story here.

Keep Your Day Job... And Your Day Look

It looks like Hayden Panettiere can no longer pay me late night visits in my Japanese hotel room.

Hayden Panettiere's dolphin-saving mission last month has led to a warrant for her arrest in Japan, E! News reported.

The media coverage I have heard and read has been somewhat sympathetic or at worst neutral towards Hayden and her activist adventure.

Now I'm not familiar with the details of Japan's laws regarding property ownership. And the article doesn't make clear who, if anyone, owns the waters and shores on which the activism took place. But the purpose of the activism should not determine or influence whether or not a crime was committed.

But Hayden, really... keep your day job. Noble cause or not, you can't save every dolphin in the world. Plus, the full-body wetsuit and salt water-soaked hair just isn't doing it for me.

See for yourself: Before / After

ALF Message Board Makes TtP Look Upstanding and Not-Too-Dispecable

You might have already caught this one, it goes back to June of this year. Cancer stricken boy makes his last wish to go bear hunting. Some nice folks like the Safari Club International and a local outfitter in British Columbia make it happen. From the Prince George Citizen:

The 10-year-old boy died Thursday while flying back to his home in Kennesaw, Ga., less than two days after his father Bruce shot the bear while on a hunting trip in Prince George. The plane was 40 minutes away from Atlanta when the terminally-ill Jonathan succumbed to liver cancer, a disease he had battled for three years.

Sad ending, but the story and the boy serve a positive purpose.

Halligan and the Pichettes, who are also SCI members, want to provide a hunting trip every year for somebody they meet through the SCI Safari Wish Program. Halligan said it will now be called the Jonathan Kerr Memorial Safari Wish Program.

He'll arrange to send to the Pichettes a .306 calibre rifle designed with smaller kids in mind, to be left for future Safari Wish Program hunters who come to Prince George. The gun will have a muzzle break and be equipped with low-recoil ammunition to help lessen the impact of firing a shot.

The Delta Airlines flight crew who attended to Jonathan at the time of his death planned to attend his funeral in Kennesaw and promised Halligan they would try to arrange for free flights for the children and their families. Halligan also met a conservation officer in Prince George who is seeking permission from his office to have the necessary licenses and tags donated. Halligan would like SCI to make the trip happen three or four times a year

Whole story here. Unfortunately, I probably wouldn't post this story if it ended there. Enter the Animal Liberation Front and their army of angry message board posters. animalover had this to say:

I can only hope the boy's death was a painful one. If you think about it though, this story has a somewhat happy ending. A young boy dying; therefore he can not grow up, spawn some other mutant losers and teach them how to hunt. I wonder how satan is treating him???

KRITER offered his two cents:

Im with animalover.Im sory the cancer didnt eat up the littl sumbitch for he kilt the bear.If the boys wish was to kill a man and his wish was granted.Folks be raising hell and wanting that boy strung up and his Daddy to, for teaching him to do it.I wish the same for killing the bear.Got no kind of respect no kind of way for people wanting to kill or abuse critters anykind away even a befor I die wish.Hope cancer gos after all of them.If the average Jo Blow dont understand nothing posted on here the hell with him too.

So these are the people who go live with bears and produce 2 hours of Herzog magic on my television screen. Great to know. I'm looking forward to a sequel starring any one of these d-bags.

POWcat?

Call me sentimental (I do live in San Francisco, after all) but I can't seem to get enough of stories about dogs being lost states away from their owners, only to return months later, a bit bony but bursting with love. I think its pretty sweet when hippos become friends with koalas and shit like that. And it makes me feel a little better about existing in such a crappy world when cats figure out how to dial 911 to save their heart-attack suffering owners. In our post-LOLcat age, anthropomorphizing the shit out of everything just seems to feel right, you know?

But even if you hate this stuff, and all of your emotions are repressed under a sports-team jersey, a six pack of cheap beer, and a vernacular that includes the word "gay"as an insult, this New York Times story about cats in Iraq might make you well up on your lunch break.

Excerpt:

"The bloodiest suicide bombings, even miles away, have the sound and feel of the apocalypse, causing humans to freeze, no matter how often they experience it. Cats need to hear it only once. As they skitter to the safety of trees and bushes, they enter the blast and the tremor on the hard drive of their brains. On the next occasion, come the blast, they barely stir."

And yes. I am completely serious.

Why Suzy Shuster Should Have Her Vagina Slashed

Over at The Huffington Post, Suzy Shuster has a long but interesting post in support of legislation in California that would require pet owners to spray or neuter their cats and dogs or face fines. She even gets a few zings in at people like me.

There are people who feel neutering a male dog is akin to defacing it, and some male owners just seem to have some strange and pathetic testicular infatuation with their dog's manhood -- or as I like to call it, Ball Infatuation. To those I say, "Gentlemen, measure your own worth by your own, well, you know, not your dog's."

I've blogged before about the hypocrisy in the animal rights movement and its relations to the socialist thinking that dominates it (i.e., it's wrong for humans to hurt animals for our own benefit, but OK to hurt them if it's "for their own good", with their own good being decided by humans - white, liberal, over-educated humans at that). I won't belabor this point. I'm sure you want me to shut up already and get back to linking to pictures of women with nice racks. For the record, I don't think animals have any rights. So neuter your dogs if you want. And pit them against each other in a dog fight if you like. Just don't say there's a difference between the two. And oh yeah, pictures of Ice-T's wife's gigantic breasts here.

Animal Cruelty Laws: A Cover for Drug Investigations

Which will net him the most years...Guns, drugs or dead pit bulls?

Police in Phoenix, Arizona, searching the home of rapper DMX during an investigation into claims of animal cruelty found about half a pound of suspected illegal drugs.

[...]

The search was prompted by reports that pit bulls kept by the rapper, whose real name is Earl Simmons, at the home were not being given enough food or water.

A dozen pit bulls were seized, the bodies of three dogs were dug up in the garden and a variety of assault-style weapons were taken from the home, Arpaio said.

Full article here.

I Want to Spend Hours Locked in a Room with Amy Winehouse, Call Girls and Drugs

I'm a few days late to this, but I've been busy all weekend trying to find my own Amy Winehouse in various methadone clinics, heroin shacks and zoos. All I have to show for the weekend is a few scratches, a missing testicle and what seems to be a nasty infection from what may or may not have been a rabid raccoon. All in all a pretty good weekend for Rob.

Amy denied Blake was the cause of the argument, 24 hours earlier after which the 23-year-old singer, who has spent most of the summer in and out of rehab for crack and heroin addiction, was seen with bandages covering her arm, blood-spattered shoes and a gashed knee.

And in a series of texts between the Rehab singer and celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, she defended her husband who she claimed "saved my life".

Amy told Perez: "Blake is the best man in the world. We would never ever harm each other... I was cutting myself after he found me in our room about to do drugs with a call girl and rightly said I wasn't good enough for him. I lost it and he saved my life."

Full article here. Via the Superficial.

At Least This Animal Rights Wacko is Behind Bars

Not since Ronald Reagan sold American hostages to the Contras in exchange for a copy of Voodoo Economics for Dummies, which he in turn gave to George H.W. Bush, and that Bush didn't read but instead exchanged for arms with Iran while on an absinthe bender in Paris has something so outrageous as this happened.

Embattled NFL quarterback Michael Vick, facing federal charges related to his alleged participation in dogfighting, has been hit with a "$63,000,000,000 billion dollar" lawsuit filed by a South Carolina inmate who alleges the Atlanta Falcons star stole his pit bulls and sold them on eBay to buy "missiles from Iran," FOX News has learned.

[Ellipsis]

The complaint also alleges that Vick would need those missiles because he pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in February of this year.

Sadly, Jonathan Lee Riches's claims against Vick are actually less ridiculous than those the governent has made against him. More here. Suit here.

Nobody Likes Obese German Bear

Knut, the German polar bear who was beloved as a fluffy cub, is all grown up. And fat. And ignored, reports Der Spiegel.

Knut, the world's most famous polar bear, is off the scales after eating too many snacks and has been put on a diet. The Berlin Zoo said Knut's handlers have been told to stop feeding him extra rations of croissant, fish and meat.

Former polar bear superstar Knut, whose celebrity has waned since he stopped being a cute cub, has been put on a diet because he is getting too fat, the Berlin Zoo announced on Tuesday.

Which reminds me -- didn't DC have a cute little bear of its own? I wonder if he's still around, or if he and his posse skipped town.

Feds Dog Ron Mexico

If the allegations made in today's indictment against Michael Vick are true, he's a despicable person and a pretty bad QB, rather than just the latter.

That said, I can't make a libertarian argument that Vick did anything illegal here. If someone can, I'd love to hear it.

Update: The indictment of P-Funk, Ookie, et al.

What is the Law Enforcement Advice When Attacked by a Rabid Bobcat?

Luckily for this guy he didn't stop to think about it.

WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. (AP) - Dale Rippy says he was acting on instinct when a rabid 25-pound bobcat attacked him on his porch in this central Florida suburb.

Rippy, 62, endured the bobcat's slashes and bites until it clawed into a position where he could grab it by the throat.

Then he strangled it.

One more reason to stay the fuck away from Florida. Seriously, do you really want to live in a place where a bobcat will attack you on your porch? I'd rather take a stray bullet to the head then have to worry about fending off cats while sipping lemonade on my porch. And since when is a porch in Florida not screened off? Pools, porches, everything down there has that hideous mosquito nets surrounding them. Always thought I'd rather deal with the bugs, rather than staring through mesh.

Full article here.

A Difficult Defense of Dog Fighting

Dog fighting is one of the more insipid practices I'd be willing to consider defending from a libertarian perspective. Truth is, I tend to prefer dogs to people. That said, I think madcap Redskins running back Clinton Portis may have gotten it right when he said this of Michael Vick's apparent dog-fighting fetish:

"I don't know if he was fighting dogs or not," Portis said. "But it's his property; it's his dogs. If that's what he wants to do, do it."

Portis said dog fighting is a "prevalent" part of life.

Portis, a native of Laurel, Mississippi, added: "I know a lot of back roads that got a dog fight if you want to go see it. But they're not bothering those people because those people are not big names. I'm sure there's some police got some dogs that are fighting them, some judges got dogs and everything else."

How do you argue with Portis, especially from a libertarian perspective? It's tough, if not impossible. Even some Deadspin commenters have picked up on Portis as a libertarian spokesperson on the issue.

I tend to think that people who abuse or kill animals purely for the sake of doing so are wrong in the head. I also abhor anti-human extremists like Tom Lantos, who use people like Vick to grandstand against this sort of practice.

In the end, if animals are property -- and they are -- then their owners should be fit to do with them as they please. As uncomfortable as that sometimes makes me feel.