Friday Grab Bag: BritNews RoundUp

It's been a while since we've had a sex-with-inanimate-object story (to recap: bicycle, fence, Victoria Beckham) so I'm pleased that the Sun was on top of this: A Polish worker at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital was discovered in a compromising position with a Henry hoover. In-vacuum delicto, you might say. According to the Sun, "The shameless builder later told bosses he was vacuuming his underwear – 'a common practice in Poland.'"

Remind me never to loan my beloved Henry vacuum to a Pole.

Talk About Shrinkage: Naked Antics 1
A priest in Scotland is upset that an adventure tourism company filmed three men surfing in the nude on his remote island. The island, Barra, is reachable only via a beach airstrip usable at low tide. Some passengers had just arrived when the nekkid surfers (hanging 11?) strolled by.

"Many people were there and they were outraged," said the Very Rev Angus John Provost MacQueen. "Would you like people going stark naked running down your runway?" I think the only possible answer to that is, no.

Going Commando: Naked Antics 2
Eight British commandos training in the Arctic were sent home from Norway after allegedly stripping and urinating on one another in a nightclub. According to the Independent: "The soldiers were arrested in the town of Harstad ... after removing their clothing, making lewd comments to women in the Sfinx Bar, and urinating on each other."

I wonder if that's part of their training, like being able to rappel down a sheer cliff face or kill a man with a spoon.

What Before Wicket? Naked Antics 3
Continuing our theme: A man who ran naked onto a cricket pitch in Australia got more than he bargained for when he was flattened by one of the players at bat. The cricketer, Andrew Symonds, may face disciplinary action since players are told not to interfere with spectators--nude or otherwise. To save you having to Google "naked," "Symonds" and "cricket," here's the link from YouTube.

WWW.Whoops...
Mildenhall.com was a tourism site for the English town of Mildenhall. Mildenhall happens to be home to an American Air Force base. That explains why Gary Sinnott, the man behind mildenhall.com, kept getting e-mails intended for www.mildenhall.af.mil. That wasn't such a problem when the messages were harmless stuff: stupid viral jokes, spam. But when they included plans of a presidential visit, the Air Force took notice.

You have to wonder about the safety of our country if our military can't tell the difference between .com and .mil.

Gargoyle of the Week

I know it's not a real gargoyle. It's not even a grotesque. But I like this terra cotta dragon atop a house Lonsdale Road in Summertown. It looks like a protective force, guarding the house and all its occupants.

Have a great weekend and may the force be with you.