Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe The Supreme Court struck down sodomy statutes in Texas, setting off orgiastic rites of sodomite celebration throughout the land of Sam Houston, the Alamo, cattle and oil. Because of the 6-3 ruling, it's now illegal to pick 'em off with a rifle. * Advertisement Poland Spring water is actually tap water that comes from places surrounded by asphalt parking lots, according to a class-action lawsuit filed against Nestle, owner of the brand, in Connecticut. Among other things, the suit points out that the actual Poland Spring in the woods of Maine hasn't flowed since 1967, and that the big Nestle plant 30 miles away from Poland Spring ozonates and filters the water just like a city water system, so that it's not spring water at all. Nestle's defense will be that the word "Poland" in the name indicates that the product is spring water from a Polish point of view. Advertisement * Aaron Barschak dressed up in an Osama Bin Laden costume, scaled a wall at Windsor Castle, talked his way past security guards, and crashed Prince William's 21st birthday party. When Scotland Yard was asked to defend the "appalling" breach of security, they said they knew they'd seen the face before, but they couldn't quite place it. * The war in Iraq spilled over into Syria, as Task Force 20 gunships blew away a convoy of Iraqis AFTER it had crossed over the Syrian border. The Pentagon couldn't say who was killed, how many were killed, who was traveling in the convoy, why it was targeted, why Syrian border guards were shot, or anything else about the raid, indicating it was just for practice. * Ivo Karlovic, a totally unknown 6-foot-10 Croatian with a speech impediment, beat defending champion Lleyton Hewitt in four sets in the opening match of the first day at Wimbledon. Hewitt is only the second defending champion in the history of Wimbledon to lose his opening-day match, and Karlovic is the first Croatian giant to win the first Grand Slam match of his career by defeating a defending Grand Slam champion without using his tippy-toes. Advertisement * Greece and Turkey are up in arms over the European Union's attempts to ban the sale of animal intestines, brains, livers and organs, threatening sandwiches like the "kokoresti," which consists of greasy fried lamb intestines stuffed into a toasty pita. Fortunately the Brain-Tissue-in-a-Bladder Burger is not affected, since it is baked and sold only in Cyprus. * The Langenort, a Dutch tugboat with a mobile abortion clinic aboard, docked at Wladyslawowo, Poland, causing panic and outrage among the Catholic hierarchy as women lined up to be carried into international waters, examined by doctors, and possibly given the RU-486 abortion-inducing drug. Abortion is illegal in Poland, as is French-kissing before marriage. * Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah called for automatically destroying the computers of people who download copyrighted materials from the Internet without paying for them. A day later a British company called Milonic Solutions confirmed that Hatch's own computers were using an unlicensed copy of a JavaScript menu owned by Milonic. Ready. Aim. Hack Hatch. * American women have three to 10 times greater amounts of a chemical flame retardant in their breasts than women in Europe and Japan. In a study by the Hazardous Materials Lab of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, researchers found PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, are found in San Francisco at levels higher than anywhere else in the world. They come from flame retardants used in polyurethane foam, textiles and plastic electronic casings, but no one knows how they get into the body. They can interfere with the thyroid gland and delay neurological development. The only beneficial side effect of the PBDE concentration is that it makes it virtually impossible for your breasts to burst into flame. Advertisement * A new date-rape drug harvested from the borrachero tree of Ecuador has been used on hundreds of victims in Colombia, who voluntarily turn over their bank accounts and belongings, then can't recall later what happened. Colorless, odorless and tasteless, the drug makes victims so docile that they often help their captors to empty their accounts or rape them. Called scopolamine, the drug blocks the formation of memories, unlike traditional date-rape drugs, which store the memories in a place that can be accessed by hypnosis. The most unusual case so far involves three women who rubbed scopolamine on their breasts, then encouraged men to lick them, after which the men were held captive for days while their bank accounts were slowly drained at ATMs. The men were reluctant to go to police at first, presumably because they didn't want to answer the question, "The last thing you remember is WHAT?" * Prison guard Don Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, has eaten 19,000 Big Macs since 1972 and recorded every one of them in his journal. There was one around 1984 that had no special sauce. * Khurshid Bibi of Ghaziabad, Pakistan, is pregnant at the age of 79, according to doctors who treated her in Multan. Her 85-year-old husband is already getting endorsement offers. Advertisement * The janitor at the public library in Boulder, Colorado, mistook an art exhibit for trash and threw it away. The exhibit, called "My Favorite Place to Walk in Boulder, or, Found Trash Objects," was, in fact, random litter from the city. "It doesn't matter whether the items were lost or thrown away," explained University of Colorado art professor George Rivera, whose students assembled the exhibit. "The point is that no one picked them up to put them in the trash." In that case, the mistake by the janitor invalidates the original artistic justification for the exhibit, but it can be simply remedied by retitling it "My Favorite Place to Dumpster-Dive in Boulder." * Former porn star Sandra Margot is auctioning off the use of her womb on eBay for $500,000 plus medical costs. Better known as "Tiffany Millions," the star of such classics as "The Adventures of Mr. Tootsie Pole," Margot says the high price of her surrogate motherhood is due to her blue eyes, her blonde hair, her good looks, and her high IQ. She also says her husband is turned on by the idea of sex with a pregnant woman. So obviously it's not a full-season rental of Margot's body. It's a time-share. Advertisement * According to a poll by iMatchup.com, 21 percent of Americans love sex on the first date, but 39 percent refuse to have first-date sex regardless of how much they like the date. The other 40 percent are presumably just plain ugly. * A Salt Lake City funeral director with the redneck Egyptian name of Corky Ra is selling mummification as a burial alternative. More than 1,400 people have already signed over their life insurance polices to Ra, so that instead of decomposing in a grave, their bodies will be preserved forever. His "Permanent Body Preservation System" costs $74,000, but includes no guarantee that 5,000 years from now you won't be unearthed and displayed in a traveling exhibit called "Mysteries of the Yuppies." * Scenes from our secure republic: · Celebrity chef Alton Brown was forced to surrender a 10-inch Caphelon omelet skillet to federal security officials at the Allentown, Pennsylvania, airport, even though he had carried the skillet onto dozens of planes as he traveled around the country giving cooking demonstrations. The screener refused to give in, fixing Brown with a glinty eye and preparing to tussle if necessary, following closely the Celebrity Chef Hijacking Scenario they taught him in federal Deputy Dawg school. Advertisement * Scenes from domestic life: · Lawrence Schaub needed a little extra cash, so he put his 10-month-old daughter Savannah up for sale. He even made a promotional film called "The Most Beautiful Baby in the World" and then closed a deal to sell her for $60,000 -- to an undercover cop. A Michigan appeals court eventually dismissed child abandonment charges against him, because the 1858 precedent in the case allowed punishment only for children subjected to a "hazard of personal injury." Hey, it wasn't like he was letting her go cheap. * Joe Bob Briggs writes several columns for UPI. Contact him at [email protected] or through his Web site, joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.
