XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: April 2010

Friday, 30 April 2010

72-YEAR-OLD granny is having an incestuous affair with her own GRANDSON — and the pair are set to have a BABY -

Grey-haired Pearl Carter has allegedly began a bizarre relationship with her 26-year-old grandchild Phil Bailey.

Pearl, from Indiana, is now using her pension to pay $54,000 (£35,000) to a surrogate mother so they can have a child, say reports in New Idea magazine in New Zealand.

Pearl said: "I'm not interested in anyone else's opinion. I am in love with Phil and he's in love with me. Soon I'll be holding my son or daughter in my arms and Phil will be the proud dad."

The story has swept the internet.

But doubts have been raised by internet bloggers because of the lack of detail.

Phil is the son of Pearl's daughter Lynette Bailey — who the pensioner put up for adoption when she was just 18, the magazine reported.

When Lynette died, Phil tracked down his long lost gran — 46 years his senior — and they started their strange relationship.

Pearl told New Idea: "From the first moment that I saw him, I knew we would never have a grandmother-grandson relationship. For the first time in years I felt sexually alive."

The pair spent their first week together shopping, bowling and eating out.

Pearl said: "I called Phil into my bedroom, sat him on the bed, and then I leant over and kissed him.

"I expected rejection but instead he kissed me back."

Phil told the magazine he had the same feelings towards Pearl.

He revealed: "I wanted to kiss her there and then. My feelings were overwhelming.

"I love Pearl with all my heart. I've always been attracted to older women and I think Pearl is gorgeous. Now I'm going to be a dad and I can't wait.

"Yes, we get laughed at and bullied when we go out and kiss in public but we don't care. You can't help who you fall for."

The pair have asked 30-year-old Roxanne Campbell to carry their child.

Pearl said: "I am finally going to be a mum and not forced to give up my child. Phil's going to be a great dad. I never in a million years thought at 72 I'd be 'pregnant' and in love with my grandson.

"I make no apologies and I believe God's given me a second chance."

Pearl says the relationship is not wrong after a friend told her about Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA) syndrome, which occurs when close relatives meet as adults and find they are attracted to each other.

She said: "I could now understand my feelings and realise they weren't wrong."

Pearl was 18 when she fell pregnant with daughter Lynette. She was living with her Catholic parents in Indiana and they insisted she give the baby away.

They organised a private adoption and Pearl never saw her baby girl again.

Pearl went on to marry but she never had any more children. Instead she searched for her lost daughter until finally giving up hope 15 years ago.

Phil met Pearl for the first time in 2006 after tracking her down when Lynette died from brain cancer.

National Enquirer says PRESIDENT OBAMA has been caught in a shocking cheating scandal - remember they had Edwards 1st ... -

PRESIDENT OBAMA has been caught in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, DC Hotel with a former campaign aide, sources say.

And now, a hush-hush security video that shows everything could topple both Obama's presidency and marriage to Michelle!

A confidential investigation has learned that Obama first became close to gorgeous 35 year-oldVERA BAKER in 2004 when she worked tirelessly to get him elected to the US Senate, raising millions in campaign contributions.

While Baker has insisted in the past that "nothing happened" between them, the ENQUIRER has learned that top anti-Obama operatives are offering more than $1 million to witnesses to reveal what they know about the alleged hush-hush affair.

Among those being offered money is a limo driver who says that he took Vera to a secret hotel rendezvous where the President was staying.

On the condition of anonymity, the limo driver said he took Baker "from a friend's home in the DC area to the Hotel George where I learned later that Obama would be spending the night."

The driver recalled that he "waited in the lobby while she went to change her outfit.

"But to the best of knowledge she did not have a room at the hotel and she was not staying there so I thought that it was a bit odd."

The driver said he then picked up Obama at the airport and drove both he and Baker to various locations while he was campaigning for funds. Vera accompanied him to each meeting.

"About 10:30 PM, I drove them to the hotel and they went in together!"

"My services for the evening were done - and there was no indication she was going to leave the hotel that night."

A top DC source told The ENQUIRER exclusively that the driver's account had been independently corroborated by investigators who believe the couple spent the night together at the hotel.

The ENQUIRER has also learned that on-site hotel surveillance video camera footage could provide indisputable evidence.

"Investigators are attempting to obtain a tape from the hotel (that) shows Vera and Barack together," the DC insider confided.

"If the tape surfaces, it will explode the scandal."

Man has a pretty good excuse for why he crashed his car into a utility pole - Vomiting dog throwing up all over him -

WINONA, Minn. (AP) -- A man has a pretty good excuse for why he crashed his car into a utility pole in Winona: his dog puked on him. The Winona Daily News reported police found the car unattended last Thursday morning against an Xcel Energy pole. Witnesses told officers they saw a man leaving the area and walking a beagle.

The 18-year-old, who does not have insurance or a Minnesota driver's license, called police about four hours later to confess.

The man told police he was driving when his dog started "throwing up all over him." Deputy Police Chief Tom Williams said the story checked out - police found vomit in the car.

The pole had only minor damage. The man was cited for driving without insurance or a license.

---

Information from: Winona Daily News,http://www.winonadailynews.com

Most expensive water fountain in the world (Dubai) - Wow this is amazing -

Thursday, 29 April 2010

Raccoons as being the size of German Shepherds Invade Chicago - damage done by raccoons can cost a few thousand dollars -

“He looked like an orangutan swinging-swinging around. It was scary, very scary,” said Chicago resident Wilma Ward about her recent run-in with a raccoon. Ward, who lives in Chicago several miles away from the nearest forest, found herself face to snout with a raccoon she described as being almost her height. She was forced to barricade herself in an upstairs bathroom until morning, and when she emerged she discovered the raccoon had bent steel window-bars to get into her kitchen. Others in the neighborhood have described these raccoons as being the size of German Shepherds.

While Wilma’s story is extreme, it is becoming more common, as the ring-tailed rascals are increasingly taking up residence in the concrete jungle. It isn’t hard for them to find a place to stay, either, since over 75,000 homes have been foreclosed on in the last year. Most people don’t properly board up their homes when the bank kicks them to the curb, which gives raccoons easy access to a habitat fit for a human.

Raccoon infestations aren’t a bother to former homeowners, but rather to the people still living in the neighborhood. No raccoon in Illinois has ever tested positive for rabies, according to Dr. Donna Alexander of the Cook County Animal Rabies Control, but that’s not the only concern. She fears that many urbanites, who have never seen a wild animal except for maybe a squirrel or rat, might mistake the raccoons for a furry play-thing. “The most important thing is that it is not a pet, it is a wild animal,” she explains.

Local government officials are trying to prevent further problems by educating the urban communities about the proper way to deal with raccoons. They explain that raccoons are just looking for something to eat and a place to stay, so if trash cans are properly sealed and foreclosed homes are effectively boarded up, they will search for shelter somewhere else.

Something else communities are beginning to notice is property damage. Most of it goes unnoticed for months or even years, as these homes go uninhabited for extended periods of time, but James McClelland of Mack Industries, who purchases foreclosed homes and fixes them up for future sale, says the cost can be sky high…or at least ceiling high. It is common, he explains, for raccoons to fall through roofs and ceilings, which are expensive to repair. Often, when they fall into a home from above, it is impossible for them to get out, so they try as hard as they can to scratch and bite their way out-attempts which are often in vain, and often leave serious damage. McClelland says the damage done by raccoons can cost anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

New meaning to Franks Hot sauce "I put that shit on everything" - Surgeons extricate hot-sauce bottle from state inmate -

An inmate in a state prison was hospitalized and needed emergency surgery to remove a hot-sauce bottle he apparently had used as a sex device.

Taxpayers will end up paying the prisoner's medical bills, expected to run into the thousands of dollars.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction won't release the name of the inmate, citing federal regulations regarding the privacy of medical records.

However, a report by the State Highway Patrol, which initially investigated the incident as a rape case, said an inmate at the Noble Correctional Facility in Caldwell was taken to Marietta General Hospital on Sunday evening after saying he had been sexually assaulted in the shower by another prisoner.

The injured inmate later acknowledged that he had not been assaulted, but on his own had inserted the hot-sauce bottle anally, sources said.

"At this point, we don't believe there was a perpetrator involved in the incident," said prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn.

However, sources said, surgery was required to remove the bottle. The inmate was hospitalized and was treated in the intensive-care unit.

Walburn said the state won't know the total cost until all medical bills are submitted.

State officials frequently point out that the state is required by law to provide medical care for prisoners - even those who harm themselves. The state is self-insured and pays its own bills.

WaWA - What? - Obama To Wall Street: "I Do Think At A Certain Point You've Made Enough Money" -

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

HaHA - Who is she Fooling? - Cover girl Nancy Pelosi looking rather ... airy in D.C. glossy - and WHY? -

If Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears get flak for airbrushing their photos, why not the speaker of the House?

If you haven't managed to score a copy of the May/June 2010 edition of Capitol File magazine (typically flanked on every table or bathroom at any D.C. social function) you'll notice the cover girl Nancy Pelosi looking particularly young.

Celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Ayman Hakki of Luxxery Medical Boutique in Waldorf, Md., said although he believes Pelosi has had work done (specifically Botox of the frown lines, fat injections, a mini face-lift), the image is not the product of additional plastic surgery.

“There is airbrushing around her eyes, her upper lid has been airbrushed to make it look like there is less fat on the inside,” Hakki told Yeas & Nays. “And there is airbrushing on the line of her jaw.”

He also noted her neck has been blended, and the lines on her face are very subtle.

Pelosi did not give the mag an exclusive photo op. The photos were purchased from Vintage Books and Anchor Books of Random House. Pelosi’s camp said the picture has not been airbrushed, and Capitol File did not respond for comment.

Reason number two not to go to Iran or Iraq - did anyone else notice ALL the cops torture involves SODOMY? -

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has disputed reports that accuse Iraq of torturing and abusing people in a secret prison.

"There are no secret prisons in Iraq at all,"Al-Maliki said in a Monday interview with state-run Al-Iraqiya TV.

Allegations of torture and abuse at the prison, named Muthanna, were first reported by The Los Angeles Times April 19. Amnesty International has urged Iraqi officials to investigate the claims.

Human Rights Watch released a report on the issue Tuesday, saying the detainees are routinely beaten, shocked and sodomized by their interrogators.

Al-Maliki continued to deny that there was a secret prison and called the reports "a smear campaign in which embassies and media organizations took part and it was perpetuated by Iraqi politicians because it serves their interests to say that there are secret prisons."

The prime minister said the Muthanna facility was not secret, it was publicly known and had seven judges working there.

He said there are a small number of cases of abuse in jails but he said that happens in all parts of the world. Al-Maliki said he knows that some members of parliament visited the facility and directed the inmates to make false accusations about torture and give themselves scars. The report by Human Rights Watch was based on interviews conducted with 42 prisoners who had been held at a secret facility in west Baghdad's old Muthanna airport since late 2009. The men were among 300 detainees who were transferred in recent weeks to another detention center after the existence of the Muthanna prison was revealed, Human Rights Watch said. Detainees interviewed by the human rights group this week said that while at the facility, they were handcuffed, blindfolded and hung upside down using two bars, one placed behind their calves and the other against their shins. They said they were then kicked and beaten with heavy cables by their interrogators, who also are said to have placed plastic bags over detainees' heads to cut off their air supply. Detainees also described multiple incidents of alleged sexual abuse, the group said.

Women with suntans are violating Islamic law and will be arrested in Iran - reason number one not to go to Iran -

Women with suntans are violating Islamic law and will be arrested in Iran, the capital city's police chief was reported by The Daily Telegraph as saying Wednesday.

"The public expects us to act firmly and swiftly if we see any social misbehavior by women, and men, who defy our Islamic values," Brigadier Hossien Sajedinia said.

"In some areas of north Tehran we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins," he continued. "We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them."

The warning follows recent comments made by a hard-line Iranian cleric, who claimed women dressed in revealing clothing were disturbing young men and causing earthquakes.

A preacher has also told the residents of Iran's capital Tehran to leave the city.

"Go on the streets and repent for your sins. A holy torment is upon us. Leave town," said Ayatollah Aziz Khoshvaqt during a recent sermon in northern Tehran.

Boy Scouts of America announced it will offer two awards – a pin and a belt loop – for spending hours playing video games -

Cub Scouts: The term conjures images of kids doing stuff outside – hiking amid nature, tying knots or identifying which leaf will leave you scratching if used for the wrong purpose.

Well, times have changed. In a move that may horrify old-school former Scouts, the Boy Scouts of America has announced it will offer two awards – a pin and a belt loop – to boys who spend hours playing video games.

Yes, that’s right. Just picture a group of 8- to 10-year-olds huddled around not a campfire but a TV, that glowing box of complacency.

Apparently these new awards are geared toward making Scouts understand which games are appropriate for their age group, not just rewarding them for sitting around on their butts playing video games. Scouts also can work towards their pin by playing a video game that "helps you in your schoolwork."

But you still have to wonder if this isn’t a misguided attempt by the Cub Scouts to stay relevant by pandering to boys’ interests. Seems to me the Scouts should be getting kids outside and teaching them practical skills beyond the bubble of their everyday lives instead of how to read the back of a video game box.

It reminds me of some “Star Trek” episode where a civilization has become so reliant on technology that they have no practical know-how and can’t fix it when it breaks - picture Picard MacGyvering a computer with a paper clip so the planet doesn’t explode.

Those of you who were in the Scouts, what’s your take on this? Should today’s Cub Scouts be rewarded for playing video games? What badge or award were you most proud of earning?

WestJet employees mock traveller after losing her cat - Ludwig is missing at Pearson International Airport - since Monday! -

Julie Mannell snuggles with her cat Ludwig. The cat went missing at Pearson airport after its cage was dropped.

Julie Mannell's beloved cat Ludwig is missing at Pearson International Airport after his cage was knocked to the ground and opened while being loaded onto a conveyor belt.

To add insult to injury, WestJet baggage handlers mocked Ms. Mannell as she searched for him.

“I heard this meowing sound and I got all excited because I thought I’d found him," she told theToronto Star. "But it was just the WestJet baggage guys making sounds to mock me, making fun of me. Another guy said he could find Ludwig if he could just bring in a big dog. He thought that was quite funny.”

The insensitivity shown to this woman is unconscionable.

Ludwig is a living, breathing, sentient being who is, no doubt, absolutely terrified, not to mention hungry and dehydrated, somewhere in the bowels of Terminal 3.

To make matters worse, it was never Ms. Mannell's intention to place Ludwig in the baggage compartment in the first place. But WestJet officials in Montreal would not allow Ludwig to travel in the cabin with his owner because his carrier was not soft sided. Odd, considering that hard-sided carry-on luggage is permitted.

After paying an extra $50 for Ludwig's trip in the baggage compartment, Ms. Mannell believed her cat would be handled with care and arrive in Toronto safely.

And now she waits.

Toronto Animal Control has set humane traps at the airport, in hopes of luring Ludwig out, and WestJet has put up posters of the black-and-white feline. But poor Ludwig has been missing since Monday night and has yet to reappear.

Sunday, 25 April 2010

Seattle cartoonist launches "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" - do your part to water down # targets & protect 1st amendment -

After Comedy Central cut a portion of a South Park episode following a death threat from a radical Muslim group, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris wanted to counter the fear. She has declared May 20th "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

Norris told KIRO Radio's Dave Ross that cartoonists are meant to challenge the lines of political correctness. "That's a cartoonist's job, to be non-PC."

Listen to Molly Norris on Dave Ross

Producers of South Park said Thursday that Comedy Central removed a speech about intimidation and fear from their show after a radical Muslim group warned that they could be killed for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

The group said it wasn't threatening South Park producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but it included a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004, and said the producers could meet the same fate. The website posted the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and the California production studio where South Park is made.

"As a cartoonist I just felt so much passion about what had happened I wanted to kind of counter Comedy Central's message they sent about feeling afraid," Norris said.

Norris has asked other artists to submit drawings of any religious figure to be posted as part of Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor (CACAH) on May 20th.

On her website Norris explains this is not meant to disrespect any religion, but rather meant to protect people's right to express themselves.

Saturday, 24 April 2010

Stephen Hawking: Aliens exist but don't talk to them - it's too dangerous - might simply raid Earth for its resources -

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming.

John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: “He wanted to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that’s a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved.”

Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon.

So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances.

Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds.

Hawking’s belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look.

Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

Stephen Hawking's Universe begins on the Discovery Channel on Sunday May 9 at 9pm