blow-drying...you know...your butt!

It’s one thing if a car company produces autos with gas tanks that explode, or a pharmaceutical firm sells medication with grotesque side effects, but this time, big business has gone too far.

In Japan, two prominent makers of fancy toilets that have seat-warming and blow-drying functions for, you know, your butt, have admitted they are aware of a number of cases in which their toilets began smoking, or even caught fire.

Sure, if you’re into adolescent physical humor then seeing this could be kind of funny, but if it happened to you, not so much…. And you would kind of rely on the manufacturers to warn you, because other people aren’t going to admit it.

Naked folks and windmills: what could go wrong?

You remember Spencer Tunick, the photographer who made the incredible scientific discovery that if you ask one person to take her clothes off she probably won’t do it, but if you ask thousands to strip, all of them will.

So now his job is to go around the world taking pictures of lots of buck naked people in all kinds of exotic settings, and then we in the media always give him all kinds of free publicity.

Well anyway, this time even I am surprised by his success, considering he wanted people to pose in their birthday suits right next to a windmill with a gigantic rotating blade. I hope he has a lot of insurance.

A brief glimpse: the drastic elastic outfit

This man is trying a new strategy for getting through airport security quickly. ”There is no way they can slow me down,” he explains. ”There’s nothing else they can ask me to take off.”

Of course, the joke is on him. Little does he know that airport security is profiling guys wearing tighty-whities this month, and he should have chosen boxers.

A daiquiri a day keeps the doctor away?

It turns out that a fruity cocktail is not only fun to drink, but may even count as health food, since adding the type of alcohol found in rum, tequila, etc. boosts the antioxidant nutrients in strawberries, blackberries and other colored fruit.

According to our story, scientists “stumbled upon their finding unexpectedly.” Presumably stumbled is the operative word here, since you can buy a lot of tequila on a typical research grant. So there’s your good news, which could only be better if they’re willing to classify martini olives as colored fruit.

No thanks, I’d rather just put up with evil

This week’s “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” award goes to some teachers in India, who it turns out were sprinkling cow urine on low-caste students to drive away evil.

And it gets worse. They did this urine sprinkling while the students were taking a test, wetting their faces and their answer sheets. It made it kind of difficult to concentrate on the questions, and probably a little tough to grade the yellow answer sheets, as well. Perhaps not surprisingly, parents complained and the teachers were arrested

Hmm…I dunno…the tassles are a bit tacky

a: “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

b: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

c: “Hi, I’m Johnny Cash!”

a little excessive?

A “scissors” dancer hammers a nail into fellow dancer’s tongue during the national scissors dance competition in Peru, April 22, 2007. During the Peruvian Scissors Dance (Danza de las Tijeras), dancers compete by dancing as well as by taking part in trials such as glass-eating, walking on fire or sticking wires into their body to show spiritual superiority.

Man arrested for naked Hitler birthday event

A Canadian man has been arrested after he was found walking around naked with a swastika taped to his body to mark Adolf Hitler's birthday, police said on Friday. Police in Nanaimo, British Columbia, on Canada's Pacific coast, said they were called to the scene by concerned residents, and the man told them he was "honoring Hitler's birthday." He was detained and will undergo a psychiatric assessment.

Bar lets diners tipple from IV tubes

A Taipei restaurant-bar is letting visitors order "medicine" from a menu and dripping it into their glasses from a transparent ceiling-suspended vat, becoming the latest oddball themed restaurant in Taiwan's capital. As many as 10 visitors can sit around each bed at the D.S. Music Restaurant, a hospital-themed eatery, and watch showgirls dance on weekend nights or chat up "nurses" whose rabbit-ears complement their starched white uniforms. Years ago, a Taipei bistro tried a Holocaust theme, but eventually removed items and photos reminiscent of Nazi Germany brutality under pressure from Jewish groups.

Teachers "purify" students with cow urine

Indian teachers sprinkled cow urine on low-caste students to purify them and drive away evil, reports said on Saturday, in a country where millions of people remain oppressed at the bottom of the ancient Hindu caste system.

Upper-caste headteacher Sharad Kaithade ordered the ritual after taking over from a lower-caste predecessor at a school in a remote village in the western state of Maharashtra earlier this month, the Times of India reported. He told an upper-caste colleague to spray cow urine in a cleansing ceremony as the students were taking an examination, wetting their faces and their answer sheets.

The newspaper said the two teachers were arrested after angry parents complained to police. They have been released on bail.