...wherein I discuss amusing things that I've seen, read or heard in the last week (or so).
THIS WEEK IN PHALUSES: There was enough genital mutilation in the news this past week to give the makers of the Saw franchise material for another gross of sequels (pun intended). A performer at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Daniel Blackner, was hospitalized after accidentally gluing his penis to a vacuum attachment. This unnatural coupling is, as reported by the Associated Foreign Press, the "main part of [Blackner's] act." I can understand this. You always want to leave your audience with a spectacle. Gallagher splatters crowds of white-trash with watermelon detritus, why can't this guy (who performs under the name "Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf") violate household appliances?
Apparently, Captain Dan (who's military record is currently being researched) broke the "special attachment" for the vacuum moments before the, ahem, climax of his performance, and he quickly glued it back together using a powerful industrial epoxy. Problem is, like many adhesives of this nature, it requires a fair amount of time to set fully, in this case twenty minutes. Blackner waited a mere 20 seconds before inserting his own "Demon Dwarf" into the apparatus. Now, I can't even fix the soles of my crusty old Vans without gluing at least two of my fingers together. The thought of getting that damnable stuff near my most delicate of regions is nigh-incomprehensible. "It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed AE with a vacuum attached to me," Blackner told the AFP. Coming from a guy who hooks vacuums to his junk (in public, no less!) for a living, one can only imagine what such a level of embarrassment would do one of us.
In other wince-inducing news this week, a Russian woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis. The couple had been divorced for three years, but continued to live together due to the high real estate costs in Moscow. "I was burning like a torch. I don't know what I did to deserve this," the ex-husband told the Tvoi Den newspaper. According to Reuters, at the time of the incident, the victim (whose name was not released to the media) was watching TV and drinking vodka while in the nude, which may have been the problem. If I came home from work to find my roommate bare-ass naked, sprawled out on the couch (which, I might add, we both have to sit on) slamming shots of Orloff and watching Judge Alex, I might be tempted to set fire to his moose-knuckle too. And he's not even my ex! (Well, there was this one time, during a thunderstorm, I got scared, and he and I, well... never mind.) As for the possibility of a full recovery, a spokeswoman for the Moscow police said it was "difficult to predict." I have a prediction: No way in hell. Fire is a powerful elemental force, and flesh is comparatively weak and malleable. The odds of his critter being anything but crispy after this are virtually nil.
That's it for now. Remember, caves are nature's holes.