The 22-year-old California virgin who auctioned off her virtue online for $3.8 million has yet to meet her winning bidder in the flesh - because his wife won't let him.
Natalie Dylan (not her real name) admitted the deal had fallen through.
Last week, she got a phone call from the rogue Romeo, a 38-year-old Australian real-estate businessman, who said he had to back out.
"I told him to go back into marriage therapy," sniped Dylan.
The Aussie cad then sheepishly asked for his $250,000 deposit back. Dylan said no hard feelings; it would be returned.
The Kinetic Grand Championship is a 3-day, 42-mile bicycle race over land, sand, mud and water. Many refer to the Kinetic Grand Championship as the “Triathlon of the Art World.”
The race began 40 years ago in 1969, when world-renowned sculpture artist Hobart Brown challenged Ferndale artist Jack Mays to a race down Ferndale’s Mainstreet. In their kinetic contraptions they started a 40-year Humboldt tradition that has spread to Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Baltimore, Maryland and all the way to Perth, Australia. But it all began here among the majestic redwood groves of Humboldt County.
Day 1 of the Kinetic Grand Championship starts on the Plaza in Arcata, California at the noon whistle every Memorial Day weekend. The racers take off to the Manila dunes, where they race through miles of sand to the great and inevitable “Deadman’s Drop.” Then on to Eureka’s downtown gazebo.
Day 2 starts in Eureka at the waterfront on the Humboldt Bay, where brave Kinetic Pilots race their crafts through the water (most float). Then back on land where kinetic sculptures go up Hookton Hill, a 1 mile-7% incline and decline. Day 2 ends with a private campout for racers and volunteers only.
Day 3 starts from the mouth of the Eel River, through Morgan slough and onto dry land. Racers cross the finish line on Ferndale’s historic Mainstreet, where racers park and head up to the Final Awards Dinner at Ferndale’s Fireman’s Hall.
What is a Kinetic Sculpture?
Kinetic Sculptures are all-terrain human-powered art sculptures that are engineered to race over road, water, mud and sand. Kinetic sculptures are amazing works of art; many are animated with moving parts like blinking eyes, opening mouths, heads that move side to side and up and down.
Kinetic Sculptures are usually made from what some people consider “junk”. But one man’s junk is another racer’s raw material. Each Kinetic Sculpture is a work of art and each racing team has its own theme.
The teams consist of pilots, pit crew and pee-ons. Kinetic Pilots pedal the sculpture and steer, the pit crew assists the pilots in transforming the vehicle for the various elements and fixing mechanical issues, and pee-ons, well, they do whatever is needed for the team to get glory. The teams give out “bribes” to their adoring spectators, judges and Rutabaga Royalty.
Spectators are encouraged to follow the race on their bikes (obeying all traffic laws that apply please). Seeing these marvels of art and engineering turns many people on to bike culture and reminds people how much fun riding your bike can be!
Who Wins?
Good question! Well when Hobart Brown started the Kinetic Sculpture Race 40 years ago, he lost the race he created! Now one of the most coveted awards is the “Mediocre Award.”
Other awards include “The Golden Dinosaur,” which is the first sculpture to break down after the start line, “The Golden Flipper,” for the best flip of a sculpture in sand and water, and “Poor Pitiful Me.” Racers can also “Ace” the race, which means they race the entire course for 42 miles without pushing or ''getting caught'' cheating. Each award is handmade by a local artist!
It turned out to be Pound-A-Punk day Wednesday at the Hillsboro Park Lanes Family Entertainment Center, a bowling alley in Hillsboro.
A 16-year-old would-be thief reportedly tried to swipe two purses from tables inside the bowling alley at 6360 S.E. Alexander St.
Then, at least from the teen's perspective, things went terribly awry.
The purses weren't the easy pickings he apparently thought they'd be. They belonged to two ladies from V.I.P. Summer Trio, a senior league, said Lanes owner Dean Johnson.
The women, along with other bowlers from the senior league, blocked the 16-year-old's escape through an exit on the building's west side. When he ran toward the glass doors at the building's front, league members were in hot and loud pursuit.
. . .
"A bunch of the senior ladies and senior men started hollering at him and chased him," Johnson said. "That's when Steve, my son, kind of held him down."
The center's front door is sliding glass, and Johnson said that confused the thief long enough for his 22-year-old son to come at him from behind the counter and pin the parried purse-snatcher to the floor.
Several of the senior bowlers dog-piled the teen and held him until police arrived.
AN Egyptian cut off his penis today in protest at his parents' choice of bride, a police official said.
The 25-year-old labourer from the village of Sheikh Eissa in southern Egypt was taken to hospital in stable condition, the official said, adding that the man had also mutilated his testicles.
"He was in love with a woman but his parents rejected her and told him to marry another woman he didn't want. He took a knife and cut off his penis in his room.''
Doctors were unable to reattach the severed member, the official said.
New software has enabled researchers to recreate a long forgotten musical instrument called the Lituus.
The 2.4m (8ft) long trumpet-like instrument was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago.
Bach's motet (a choral musical composition) "O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht" was one of the last pieces of music written for the Lituus.
Now, for the first time, this 18th Century composition has been played as it should have been heard.
Researchers from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the University of Edinburgh collaborated on the study.
Performed by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB) the Lituus produced a piercing trumpet-like sound interleaving with the vocals.
Until now, no one had a clear idea of what this instrument looked or sounded like.
But researchers at Edinburgh University developed a system that enabled them to design the Lituus from the best guesses of its shape and range of notes.
The result was a 2.4m (8ft) -long thin straight horn, with a flared bell at the end.
It is an unwieldy instrument with a limited tonal range that is hard to play. But played well, it gives Johann Sebastian Bach's motet a haunting feel that couldn't be reproduced by modern instruments.
A suspect tried to evade police by wrapping himself in a carpet.
Miroslaw Dabrowski, 32, rolled up in a rug and propped himself against a wall on the balcony as police searched his aunt's home in Warsaw.
He was only found after two hours when a detective went out to the balcony to smoke a cigarette and the officer noticed it was shivering.
Bonhams & Butterfields is delighted to offer for sale by auction nothing less than one of the most charismatic Grand Prix racing cars ever built – the 1939 Auto Union ‘D-Type’ with rear-mounted 3-liter twin-stage supercharged V12-cylinder engine. The annual collector’s motorcar car auction is set for August 14, 2009 in Carmel, CA.
This legendary racing car - absolutely confirmed today as chassis number ‘19’ - was driven to placing finishes in the 1939 Grand Prix racing season. Handled by Auto Union factory team drivers Rudolf Hasse and Hans Stuck, this pioneering rear-engined Grand Prix projectile finished fifth in the German EifelRennen event on the North Circuit of the Nurburgring, and sixth in the Grand Prix de l’Automobile Club de France around the super fast public road course at Reims-Gueux.
. . .
During the 1939 racing season, Auto Union deployed 11 ‘D-Type’ chassis in the six significant Grand Prix Formula events contested. In addition to Nuvolari’s second place in the EifelRennen, Hasse finished second in the Belgian GP, before his team-mates H.P. ‘Happy’ Muller and ‘Schorsch’ Meier brought the team a wonderful 1-2 success in the French race at Reims-Gueux.
It was there that chassis ‘19’ raced for the last time, driven by Hans Stuck, the veteran Austrian star. In his hands, this ‘D-Type’ Auto Union completed the works team’s day by finishing sixth.
Today, Auto Union ‘D-Type’ chassis ‘19’ is the only proven surviving Grand Prix car of its type with contemporary 1939 racing history. It is one of the classic car world’s most charismatic machines, and is exquisitely well-restored to running order. In a world hungry for genuine intrinsic value, it has much to commend it.
Post-war Myth and Mystery
For nearly half a century the survival in Communist Russia of ex-works German ‘Silver Arrow’ Grand Prix cars from the 1930s seemed little more than unproven myth. The search for any such cars from Mercedes-Benz or – much more so – Auto Union - was regarded as historic motor sport’s quest for the Holy Grail. While several 1930s Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix cars survived at the Stuttgart factory and in private Western hands, the only known Auto Union was a sectioned 1936 V16 model exhibited in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
It was known that the surviving Auto Union team cars had been expropriated by Soviet forces in the Autumn of 1945. In fact, no fewer than 13 Auto Union cars were transported by train from the company’s devastated factories in Zwickau and Chemnitz, Lower Saxony, in what was to become Communist East Germany.
They were delivered to the Soviet Union’s NAMI motor industry research institute in Moscow, where early in 1946 a working group of engineers was established to investigate these dazzlingly high-tech German designs. Four Auto Unions - one with wheel-enveloping streamlined bodywork – were dismantled and effectively destroyed during the NAMI group’s inspection and analysis.
Two sister cars were delivered to Moscow’s ZIS production car factory for parallel examination and research. One, a V16-cylinder, was subsequently scrapped. The other - which was a hill-climb car comprising a 16-cylinder-type chassis powered by the later V12 engine - escaped destruction, eventually passing into a museum in Riga, Latvia, and subsequently to Audi.
Four other Auto Unions - three 1938-39 V12 Grand Prix cars, plus one streamliner - went to the GAS factory in Gorky (now renamed Nizhniy Novgorod) where some components were cannibalized for use in GAS, Moskvich and ZIL-based competition cars. When one staffer required a trailer, a stripped Grand Prix chassis frame was cut in half to suit . . . !
Generally, the Soviet technicians were unable to run the cars, with the exception of one V12 ‘D-Type’ at Gorky, whose tanks were found to contain the correct sophisticated German fuel mix. This car was started successfully and tested at high speed, only for driver Leonid Sokolov to find his path obstructed by encroaching roadside crowds. He lost control under braking, and crashed into them, killing as many as 18.
Around 1950, two surviving open-wheel GP Auto Unions and one 16-cylinder streamliner were assigned to engineer Vladimir Nikitin in Kharkov, Ukraine. He cannibalized the streamliner to build his ‘Kharkov’ racing car, powered by a 4-cylinder Podeba street engine. A fellow Ukrainian engineer, Eduard Lorent, also benefited from Auto Union study in building his small- capacity ‘Kharkov L1’ and ‘L2’ racing cars.
One complete open-wheeler chassis, the trailer-frame and their major mechanical components survived surplus to Nikitin and Lorent’s requirements, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian-born American Paul Karassik – a Florida-based antique car enthusiast – spent much time in Russia hunting down the truth of the Auto Union legend. Karassik accumulated an incredible treasure-trove of pre-war Grand Prix car components, including Auto Union serial ‘19’s complete, unspoiled chassis and the late-model V12-cylinder engine which powers it today. Mr Karassik entrusted restoration of this car to the renowned British ‘Silver Arrow’ specialists, Crosthwaite & Gardiner in Buxted, England, and they rebuilt it in as-original two-stage supercharged form.
Seventy years later, Auto Union ‘D-Type’ chassis ‘19’ will star in the Bonhams & Butterfields sale at Quail Lodge in California on August 14, when it is expected to realize in excess of $8-million.
A bank robber's cunning plan to disguise his identity by coating his face with plaster sadly turned out not to be the criminal masterstroke he was hoping for.
Robert Coulson Lavery, 56, of York County, Pennsylvania, was convicted last Wednesday for robbing the New Cumberland Federal Credit Union in Fairview Township on November 2006.
He got away with $7,910, partly due to his wonderful idea of impersonating a wall by smearing drywall all over his face.
Regrettably for his burgeoning felonious career, however, while his identity was impossible to discern through the thick layers of building material, the distinctive NASCAR plate on the front of the getaway car was a little bit of a giveaway.
The police were able to trace the car to his getaway driver, 53-year-old Robert Steven Miller, after a tip-off about the plate. Miller then sang like a canary, and would ultimately plead guilty to robbery and theft.
Lavery was arrested at Miller's house, where authorities found some suggestive evidence – like $3,775 in cash, and large amounts of plasterboard compound smeared over clothing and the passenger seat of the car.
The Canadian family of a dead Saskatoon man who was passionate about golf say they've found more than 40,000 golf balls he hoarded at his home over decades.
Barry Grosse, 64, was struck by a car and killed last September while riding his bicycle, and nephew Phil Grosse is cleaning out his uncle's home, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix said Friday.
Grosse said his uncle, who was a retired school principal, became passionate about golf in early childhood and spent countless hours playing and collecting golf balls from various courses.
"I don't know how many of them he tripped over in the bush, I don't know how many he actually dug for in the bush, I don't know how many balls he fished out of a pond," the younger Grosse said. "All I know is he's got about 40,000 golf balls."
The nephew works as marketing and communications coordinator for the Saskatchewan Golf Association, and about 32,000 of the balls are being donated for use in its youth program, the report said.
The other 8,000 will remain in the family for sentimental reasons, Grosse said.
"If the county thinks they can shut down groups of 10 or 15 Christians meeting in a home, what about people who meet regularly at home for poker night? What about people who meet for Tupperware parties? What about people who are meeting to watch baseball games on a regular basis and support the Chargers?"
According to the Press Association, "the Stinking Bishop made by Charles Martell of Martell and Son in Gloucestershire blew the judges away and was described as smelling like a rugby club changing room."
Blowing away which judges? Well, apparently a set of professional judges, including a perfumier, who you would expect to know his odours, and a journalist, who presumably had a nose for a good story.
They were joined, it says, by a set of junior judges from Wells Cathedral School. Only the most sensitive noses were picked, it claims (or perhaps it was because they are eager choristers that put up their hands to volunteer first for everything, and didn't realise that this time it would involve subjecting themselves to an awful, dreadful stench. That'll teach 'em).
They all came together, smelled the cheese, and decided that though they "were all fantastically smelly", the Stinking Bishop was stinkiest. Proving, say the people who ran the competition that 'Britain equals anyone - and especially France - in the making of speciality cheeses'.
Does it really? Or does it simply mean that we can produce something that smells worse than a rugby club changing room and be PROUD about it?
Stinking Bishop was first produced in 1972 by Charles Martin on Laurel Farm, in Dymock, Gloucestershire in the South West of England.
Orignally there were only 68 Gloucestershire heifers that produced the milk required to make the cheese, but the breed has had a revival in order to sustain the demand of Stinking Bishop. Sometimes the milk from Friesian cattle is combined and pasteurised with that of the Gloucestershire breed.
Mr Martin didn't set out to make cheese, it came about as a sideline as he was conserving and breeding the Gloucestershire cows. Now Stinking Bishop is a gourmet cheese stocked in specialist shops around the globe, and the Gloucestershire cattle breed is in it's hundreds. Both have thrived since the small beginning of the 70's.
Only 20 tonnes of Stinking Bishop is produced each year.
The Making, Smell and Taste
Stinking Bishop is a soft cheese and it's pungent aroma has been described as smelling of death, of damp laundry left in a washing machine for days, and unwashed socks. After those descriptions, it's a wonder that anyone dare temp to taste it at all. My personal description of the smell is that it's like a gym bag full of unwashed sweaty sports clothes. To say that this cheese is an acquired taste is somewhat of an understatement.
The smell is due to the cheese being washed during ripening with perry. Perry is an alcoholic drink much like cider, but instead of being made from apples, it's made from pears. In this instance the Stinking Bishop pear variety is used, and thus where the cheese gets it name from. The pear is said to get it's name from Mr Bishop who created the variety and who had an ugly temperament.
As well as being a cheese maker, Mr Martin, the maker of Stinking Bishop also grows his own pears.
The cheese is washed with the perry every four weeks while it matures.
When fully matured after 4 months, the cheese is smooth, soft and creamy. The distinctive taste is that of nuts and fruit, with a bitter aftertaste. You can taste the smell, if that makes any sense. It's a very strong flavour that keeps the tastebuds working long after the cheese is swallowed.
When eating Stinking Bishop, it is an absolute must that it has been out of the fridge for at least an hour. To get the full taste sensation of this cheese, it must be as gooey and stinky as possible. For some, the cleaning of teeth will be a must after the first try!
A man arrested in Colorado on suspicion of slashing the tyres of around 50 vehicles told police that he blamed his vandalism spree on his relationship with his mother, the fact that he got braces when he was younger, and radiation.
The 31-year-old man, identified by police as Alexander Kabelis, was arrested after he was spotted crouching behind a police car in Boulder, Colorado. The vehicle had one of its tyres slashed. The man was followed from the scene by a police officer, and arrested.
According to police, he admitted to slashing the tyres of 46 different vehicles in the past month, including nine police vehicles.
Upon being apprehended, the man gave police a lengthy list of reasons for his crimes. Firstly he said that he was 'frustrated' about his relationship with his mother, according to police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley.
He then added that he was angry about losing his license a few years ago, and complained that he had recently been 'buzzed' by a police car. After that, he suggested that the fact he had got braces in the 1990s might be to blame.
Finally, he posited that radiation from Colorado's disused Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant might be behind the tyre slashing.
Perceptions of racism -- from being treated with suspicion in a store to unfairness in employment or housing -- can heighten stress levels and affect health, research has shown. A new study from Boston University links these smoldering signs of racism to weight gain in black women, suggesting a possible explanation for the their higher obesity rates compared to white women.
. . .
At the end of the trial, all the women had gained weight. But the women who said they felt higher levels of racism gained more weight and had bigger waist-size increases compared to the women who felt the least racism. That held true after accounting for factors such as education, geographic region, and beginning body mass index.
"Racism is real and it has real effects," Cozier said in an interview. "It can result in real changes in the body."
Right now we're going through the process of the state appeal because the judge is question made an erroneous ruling (he ruled that he did not have jurisdiction over the children when the LAW and the DISTRICT COURT and the NINTH CIRCUIT told him he did). We're currently $25K behind on the legal bills and I don't start work again until the end of June (and even then it's temporary). This wouldn't normally be a problem except that my lawyer's clients (most of them small businesses) have defaulted due to the economy and he's in extremely dire straits. He's already sold off everything he can and he still can't meet his mortgage.
So we're pretty much screwed. So screwed that I'm selling every firearm I have except for my primary carry piece.
I've been trying to sell our cookbook for precisely this reason. We need 160 preorders just to start the print run, and we only have 60-something at this moment (and cash received for only 50). Once we make that number every copy we sell will be at a profit. If I don't make that number by the end of this week I will have to return the money for the preorders.
Around midnight Sunday, the boy lifted the garage door at an empty home on the 3400 block of Blueblossom Drive in southeast Medford with a jack from a car and crept under the door, [police spokesperson] Budreau said. The jack failed, dropping the door onto the boy and pinning him underneath.
Around 3 a.m. Monday, the boy's mother noticed the teen wasn't in his bed. She searched the house, then stepped outside, where she could see his legs protruding from the garage in the neighbor's driveway, Budreau said.
She couldn't free him, so she called 9-1-1 for help. Firefighters ultimately had to break into the house to get to the garage door opener and unpin the boy. He was treated and released at a local hospital, them cited on a charge of trespassing.
For 65 years, Alfred Mann didn't talk much about his war-time experiences.
Not that he didn't want to.
He had just given up trying thanks to a combination of old war injuries that made it difficult to speak clearly.
But now the 87-year-old veteran is relishing a new lease of life - after finding a half-inch piece of shrapnel on his pillow one morning.
The metal shard is thought to have suddenly dislodged from his jaw and fallen from his mouth while he slept.
Mr Mann had no idea he had been carrying the shrapnel or that it was behind his speech problems.
He has also had great trouble eating for many years.
'It's fantastic,' he said yesterday. 'I can move my mouth properly and I have been able to eat steak and lamb cutlets which I couldn't eat before.'
Mr Mann served as a nurse with the Royal Army Medical Corps and was injured in 1944 at the battle of Monte Cassino.
It left shrapnel embedded in his leg, shoulder and hands, although surgeons never spotted the piece in his jaw.
. . .
He told how his mouth had begun to swell up a few weeks before he discovered the shrapnel. 'I went to the doctor and I was referred on to the dentist who said I had an ulcer,' he said. 'Then I woke up one morning and felt something move in my mouth. I discovered a piece of shrapnel lying there.'
His wife Constance, also 87, said she had noticed a real difference in her husband.
'It's strange, he has never talked about the war this much before,' she said. 'I never knew half the stories he has told me in the last couple of weeks. It took him all these years. He seems happier - but the food bills are more expensive.'
In the end, the constant jokes were just too much to take for the long-suffering residents of Butt Hole Road.
Groups of youths used to visit the street and bare their backsides for photographs while many delivery firms simply refused to believe it existed.
And coachloads of amused American tourists frequently turned up to view the sign after it appeared in a US book.
And so despairing households in the suburban street in Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, decided that the road's name simply had to change.
. . .
But an internet petition has already been started to change the road's name back again.
Butt Hole Road is believed to have been named after a communal water butt that was originally in the area.
The road has been renamed Archers Way to refer to a medieval castle that is just half a mile away.
The iconic building - famed throughout the world for its graceful white 'sails' - has been transformed into a canvas for a kaleidoscopic array of images.
Called 77 Million Paintings, the installation is the work of artist and music producer Brian Eno and features 300 of his drawings.
He told the BBC he wanted people to 'surrender to another kind of world,' as they watched the transformations.
Here's a two-minute drill in soak-the-rich economics:
Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."
One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.
