Well, everyone knows "aglet," because it's always first on these lists. But some of them are pretty good.

RayF set this, though I was just checking it out, having seen it at the Corner. I also was reading this list of unusual animal mating habits:

10. RED-SIDED GARTER SNAKES

These snakes are small and poisonous, and live in Canada and the Northwestern United States. Their highly unusual mating takes place during an enormous orgy. Twenty-five thousand snakes slither together in a large den, eager to copulate. In that pile, one female may have as many as 100 males vying for her. These `nesting balls' grow as large as two feet high. Now and then a female is crushed under the heavy mound - and the males are so randy that they continue to copulate, becoming the only necrophiliac snakes!

Bill Maher just emailed to write, "That's pretty much the way it is at the Playboy Club."

Some other good lists, including this list of unusal disasters. This town couldn't catch a break:

1. ST PIERRE SNAKE INVASION

Volcanic activity on the 'bald mountain' towering over St Pierre, Martinique, was usually so inconsequential that no one took seriously the fresh steaming ventholes and earth tremors during April, 1902. By early May, however, ash began to rain down continuously, and the nauseating stench of sulphur filled the air. Their homes on the mountainside made uninhabitable, more than 100 fer-de-lance snakes slithered down and invaded the mulatto quarter of St Pierre. The 6-ft long serpents killed 50 people and innumerable animals before they were finally destroyed by the town's giant street cats. But the annihilation had only begun. On May 5, a landslide of boiling mud spilled into the sea, followed by a tsunami that killed hundreds and, three days later, May 8, Mt Pelee finally exploded, sending a murderous avalanche of white-hot lava straight toward the town. Within three minutes St Pierre was completely obliterated. Of its 30,000 population, there were only two survivors.

What the hell kind of "giant street cats" did the town have capable of killing thousands of 6 foot snakes?

Wasn't that the start of their problems right there? That they shared living space with inner-city saber-toothed tigers?

Weirdness Abounds... Kind of funny, for geeks.

Thanks to Asher for that.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (19)
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Actually they claim that the "phytoestrogen" in soy is less potent than true estrogen, and furthermore, you'd have to consume a hell of a lot of it to suffer any estrogenizing effects.

But why take unnecessary risks? That's the policy I apply to musical theater and personal grooming; now it's my policy towards soy as well.

Soy

Maybe it'll make you gay. Maybe it won't. But face it, chances are if you're drinking soy milk and eating tofu, you're gay anyway, so what's it really matter?

Posted by: Ace at 12:18 PM | Comments (33)
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Can you do a menage on your wedding night?:

Pat O'Brien just proposed to his designer girlfriend Betsy Stephens. We hear the "Insider" host got down on one knee at the Bel Air Hotel and presented Stephens with a 6-carat ring. The couple are planning a New York wedding. It'll be the second marriage for both. …

I, Pat O'Brien, take thee, Betsy,
as my lawfully wedded wife;
to have and to hold;
to just go craaaaazy on you;
to love and to cherish;
to get some hookers and some coke;
to honor and obey;
we can have any of these whores;
I don't know why I'm acting like this;
I'm so into you, let's do it,
let's have some sex.

Thanks to AtS.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (29)
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Can you do a menage on your wedding night?:

Pat O'Brien just proposed to his designer girlfriend Betsy Stephens. We hear the "Insider" host got down on one knee at the Bel Air Hotel and presented Stephens with a 6-carat ring. The couple are planning a New York wedding. It'll be the second marriage for both. Â…

I, Pat O'Brien, take thee, Betsy,
as my lawfully wedded wife;
to have and to hold;
to just go craaaaazy on you;
to love and to cherish;
to get some hookers and some coke;
to honor and obey;
we can have any of these whores;
I don't know why I'm acting like this;
I'm so into you, let's do it,
let's have some sex.

Thanks to AtS.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (30)
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Blame Bush for not catching the first one.

Three prostitutes dead, two missing, with fears of "the worst." Five prostitutes.

English police said Wednesday they continue to "fear the worst" about two missing prostitutes from a town where three other sex workers have been killed, one of them strangled, by an apparent serial killer.

The naked corpses of two women found at the side of a busy road on Tuesday were thought to be those of Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls, two prostitutes who were recently reported missing, according to Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull.

...

Their being left close to the side of the road — instead of in a more secluded area — prompted British media to ask officials whether the killer may be growing hasty in the disposal of victims' bodies.

Gull told Sky News that it could just as well mean the killer — or killers — deliberately dropped the body in a location where it would be more easily found.

"I can't anticipate what's going on inside his head, but clearly he's a dangerous man and we need to find him as quickly as we can," Gull said.

...

Authorities have pleaded with sex workers "to get off the streets as soon as possible," as the story grips the nation and evokes fears of a contemporary serial killer in the land of "Jack the Ripper".

Gull?

Like, William Gull?

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (33)
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How many times can the guy die?

Kevin writes to note that Canada's leftist media is all put out that Pinochet died without ever receiving "justice." He wonders if the world press will be equally dismayed should Castro make it into the Reaver's cold embrace without going through the gallows.

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 AM | Comments (59)
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Now that's doubling down in Iraq.

Bryan Preston, meanwhile, exposes how AP and Reuters "report" from tyrannies like Iran.

It starts with tiny little compromises, like calling ex-Klansman David Duke an "academic" and generally giving Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial conference an indulgent, nay, sympathetic spin.

Posted by: Ace at 09:04 AM | Comments (5)
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He returns to the Central Power Battery from whence he sprang:

Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, has died. He was 91.

Nodell died at a nursing home in Muskego, Wis., on Saturday of natural causes, his son Spencer Nodell told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He previously lived in West Palm Beach.

Nodell was looking for a new idea for a comic book in 1940 when he was waiting for a New York subway and saw a train operator waving a lantern displaying a green light, said Maggie Thompson, senior editor of Comics Buyer's Guide.

Nodell imagined a young engineer, Alan Scott, a train crash survivor who discovers in the debris an ancient lantern forged from a green meteor. Scott constructs a ring from the lamp that gives him super powers, and becomes a crime fighter.

He brought his drawings and story lines to All-American Publications, which later became a part of National Periodical Publications, the company that was to become DC Comics, Thompson said.

The first Green Lantern appearance came in July 1940, an eight-page story in a comic book also featuring other characters. The character then got his own series, and Nodell drew it until 1947 under the name Mart Dellon.

After its cancellation in 1949, the series was reborn in 1959 with a revised story line, and it has been revived several times.

What can I say? I'm a fan. GL doesn't get the props he deserves. Green Lantern II -- the one most know, Hal Jordan -- was one of the few Republican/conservative characters in the comics. We found that out when he started palling around with that subersive gaylord the Green Arrow.

Thanks to Riehl World.

No Googling: Anyone remember the old rhyme from the old GL? I think he used to say it when he juiced up from the lantern.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 AM | Comments (29)
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Doubling down in Iraq, as AllahPundit puts it. A plan to increase force levels and go after Moqtada al-Sadr.

Good.

Win, lose, or draw -- we either need to get serious about winning this thing or get serious about leaving this thing.

Allah's post also notes that Saudi Arabia plans to help the Sunnis re-take the country as soon as we bug out. Good -- we can use that, too. Let the Shi'ites know it's time to stop playing footsies with Al-Sadr and Iran. There's only one country that can actually help them keep their own country.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 AM | Comments (116)
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Par for the course.

It sure would be nice to hear less from CAIR and more from Muslims like this:

[The Flyin' Imams] rushed toward the media never looking back. They have taken their story of victimization to every soft media they could find. They then stoked the same tired Muslim flames of victimization through their own political pulpits in mosques around the Valley.

Organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and the Muslim American Society also immediately jumped on board, even before the imams' flight reached Phoenix the next day, and began whipping up the drums of victimization. Their handlers flew in from across the country staging rallies and pray-ins so they could teach the American people about this supposed tragedy of injustice.

As a devout Muslim, I have watched this painfully protracted saga unravel, fearing what comes next. The media, especially print media, have bent over backward to hear minorities' fears. Yet public opinion has not seemed to budge in favor of the imams. The lesson here lies in why. It has to do with credibility.

We are all creatures of passion. This fiasco has stirred the passionate cry of victimization from the Muslim activist community and imam community. But where were the news conferences, the rallies to protest the endless litany of atrocities performed by people who act supposedly in my religion's name? Where are the denunciations, not against terrorism in the abstract, but clear denunciations of al-Qaida or Hamas, of Wahhabism or militant Islamism, of Darfurian genocide or misogyny and honor killings, to name a few? There is no cry, there is no rage. At best, there is the most tepid of disclaimers. In short, there is no passion. But for victimization, always.

Only when Americans see that animating passion will they believe that we Muslims are totally against the fascists that have hijacked our religion. There is only so much bandwidth in the American culture to focus upon Islam and Muslims. If we fill it with our shouts of victimization, then the real problems from within and outside our faith community will never be heard.

...

Whether we acknowledge it or not, a radical subset of our faith community is seeking to destroy the basis for this liberty.

Either we predominantly direct our passions against these radicals or Americans will not count us as allies in this consuming struggle.

CAIR knows its beans, I'll give it that. It claims to be in the business of fighting
"Islamaphobia," but it's cleverly creating more Islamophobia with every press release.

One airline official who asked to remain anonymous called the CAIR threats about ethnic profiling “much ado about a practice that does not exist in any major airline.”

“You do wonder what the ultimate aim is here; to eliminate a discriminatory practice that does not exist, or is there some other agenda afoot,” the official said.

They are simply the political wing of Al Qaeda, and I can't wait until they're official declared a terrorist organization.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (7)
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