Jockstrip: The world as we know it.

Aussie parents not dead, just on getaway

MELBOURNE, March 11 (UPI) -- An Australian couple's children called police when their parents seemed to have disappeared but it turned out they were just out having a good time.

One of Roy and Heather Ostell's daughters had gone to the couple's Melbourne-area home Sunday and found the front door unlocked, a full cup of tea by the kitchen sink, some items in disarray, the family dog wandering the neighborhood and their 33-year-old Volkswagen missing.

Fearing the worst, they called the police, who began searching for evidence of homicide, The Sydney Morning Herald reported Tuesday.

With the daughters frantic and investigators swarming the property, who should tool up the driveway in the missing orange Kombi but the Ostells.

"Where have you been?" asked an angry-but-relieved Angela Ostell.

The 63-year-old father and 58-year-old mother could only reply that they had gone on weekend getaway and neglected to tell their adult children.

"It was a spur-of-the-moment thing," Heather Ostell said, laughing nervously. "We did let a couple of people know we were going, and we've come home to this."

Official: Repaint 'hideous' parking garage

DUBLIN, Calif., March 10 (UPI) -- An Alameda County, Calif., official has demanded Bay Area Rapid Transit repaint a "hideous" new parking garage before the structure can be opened.

Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, who sits on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, demanded officials give the garage, which he has branded "the tower of torture," a $500,000 paint job before its grand opening, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.

Haggerty threatened to veto the transport organization's $30 plan for new trains unless the paint job goes forward on the gray slab structure.

"Now they have this monster of a parking garage sitting there in what is truly the gateway to Dublin ... and it's a disaster," Haggerty said. "If they were an influential community like Walnut Creek, they would have no problem having brick" on the facade.

BART spokesman Linton Johnson conceded that the building may not be the prettiest structure around, but "it's not like county officials weren't part of the planning committee from day one."

Institute offers March Madness vasectomies

EUGENE, Ore., March 10 (UPI) -- A Eugene, Ore., radio station and the Oregon Urology Institute are encouraging men to have vasectomies in time for the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament.

The institute's radio advertisements encourage men to "lower your seed for the tournament," and KSCR, a local sports talk station, sweetened the deal by promising pizza delivery and frozen peas to ease the pain of any man who undergoes the procedure the day before a game, The (Portland) Oregonian reported Monday.

The center's ad campaign suggests having the birth-control surgery the day before a game all but guarantees that clients' wives will allow them to spend the day lounging in front of the TV.

Wedding bells ring for no-show couples

KALISPELL, Mont., March 10 (UPI) -- Two Montanans repeatedly take marriage vows without the benefit of divorce, but they aren't polygamists; they are proxies for absent brides and grooms.

Montana is the only state that allows a double-proxy wedding, meaning both sides can be no-shows. Kalispell, Mont., began taking advantage of this quirk about five years ago, when a native son serving in Iraq wanted to marry his pregnant girlfriend, The New York Times reported.

Some research by lawyer Dean Knapton and -- viola! -- Friday afternoon nuptials were born.

The law had been on Montana's books for several decades, perhaps to accommodate soldiers during World War II, some theorize.

The cost to the real, albeit absent, bride and groom: $900, of which $50 apiece goes to the proxies, $100 to the judge, $150 to the lawyer-witness; $53 for court fees; $14 for two certified copies of the marriage certificate. The rest goes to a Pennsylvania couple who run a business facilitating proxy marriages.