Junk News Junkie

A few weeks ago, I was going to write a post based on this story. Man oh man, I had a lot to say about how vampire-obsessed teens have started a new trend: biting each other and then licking or sucking the blood.

No, seriously, I’m not kidding.

But somehow something more interesting came up so I decided to shelve the topic. Well guess what. It’s back in the news.

A young couple, Aaron Homer and Amanda Williamson, were arrested for attacking a homeless man and drinking his blood. The homeless man, Robert Maley, had been staying with the couple in exchange for being their blood bank, until they stabbed him for refusing to let them continue to suck his blood.

Whoa. Providing shelter for a homeless man so you can drink his blood? That is truly disturbing.

Now the media have been going on about how shows like Twilight and True Blood have glamourised (pardon the pun – if you’ve read the books, you’ll get it haha) vampires, making the ‘lifestyle’ seem sexy and intriguing.

I’m not sure that’s completely true. While no doubt the Twilight phenomenon has played a part in the appeal of this blood-sucking trend (especially with the young folk), but I think pop culture's fascination with vampires isn’t something new. I mean, who hasn’t watched Bram Stoker's Dracula [1897] and felt a tingle of intrigue.

In an article in Australasian Policing last year, Queensland scholar David Keyworth listed contemporary examples of ''vampire'' crimes - a Welsh teenager who murdered an elderly woman whose heart was removed, a 1989 Brisbane riverbank throat-cutting involving the drinking of blood, and a Kentucky teenage vampire clan who cut each other to drink blood. There was even an unofficial psychiatric disorder called Renfield's Syndrome involving drinking blood for sexual pleasure.

Now not only is it disgusting, but health officials are warning that this vampire-inspired biting fad could be dangerous. Licking or sucking another person’s blood exposes both parties to the dangers of blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis and HIV, as well as the risk of getting a nasty infection. Typically, 10 to 15 percent of human bites wounds become infected.

I mean, seriously, don’t these people know that’s one of the ways you can get HIV? Why would you do that to yourself?

Apparently, here’s why:

“Having that thick, warm copper-tasting blood in my mouth is the best thing I can think of!” according to a post by GothicGirl10 on a vampire-related teen website.

Good grief. Someone get this girl some help.

Now I myself have never drunk blood. I may have consumed it in medium-well steak, or by licking a cut to stop it from bleeding. But I’m pretty sure Edward and Bella would agree that that doesn’t make me a vampire. And that’s just fine by me. I'm sure immortality isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

P.S – Teenagers out there: Please don't bite each other and suck each others' blood.

P.P.S - Edward, real men don’t sparkle.

I love ridiculous crime stories. It amuses me to no end. Especially stories like this one: this guy has got to be the dumbest burglar in Britain.

Burglar Jason Williams stole his next-door neighbour's net curtains and was caught when he hung them up in his own window. Jason Williams was jailed for two years and five months after admitting his fourth burglary. Elizabeth Lowe, the defendant’s lawyer described the crime as 'not very sophisticated'.

Haha, you think?

Now this guy was hoping the Force would keep him safe. Unfortunately, not even the Force can save you from your own stupidity.

A man in a Darth Vader mask robbed a convenience store in Detroit, Michigan. However he forgot to put on the mask, which allegedly belongs to his 9-year-old son, until he was already inside the store, within range of the surveillance camera!


In another ridiculous story, Florida cops searched a 25-year-old man during a routine traffic stop and found a bag of marijuana and a bag of cocaine in his buttocks. However, (in a panic, I’m sure) the driver said only the marijuana belonged to him.

I am salivatingly curious as to how he’s going to explain the bag of cocaine, that’s apparently not his, and how it got up his bum.God, I hope they do a follow-up on this story!

Now this story, I thought was rather inspirational. Not the stealing part, but the way the shop owner handled the situation. A teenage boy was caught shoplifting in a costume shop in Virgina and, rather than pressing charges and jeopardise the teen's future, the store owner Andrew Perry decided to have the boy should learn from his mistake.

He had the teen dress in a Bert (of the ‘Bert & Ernie’ Sesame Street fame) costume and spend two six-hour days in front of the store holding a sign that read: "I got caught shoplifting at Halloween Express."

My only concern is the poor little kids who saw him and now think Bert is a shoplifter!

"I'm not a gynecologist, but I'll take a look inside" is the tasteful and classy message Chadwin Reynolds left on his Facebook page, for all his ‘friends’ to see.

Unfortunately, Mr. Reynolds, here pictured in an even more tasteful and classy Hustler tshirt, is a teacher at a public school in the Bronx and according to a New York Post report, the teacher went above and beyond his duty as educator, ‘friending’ half-dozen female students and writing creepy comments like, "This is sexy," under some of their Facebook photos. He also tried to get one of the girls to go out with him by scoring her number off of Facebook and sending her flowers, candy, and a teddy bear. He was fired earlier this year.

In another inappropriate case, this time Manhattan substitute Stephen D'Andrilli, ‘friended’ a handful of young women in his school, telling one student that her "boyfriend [did not] deserve a beautiful girl" like her.

He also sent another girl a message telling her she was pretty and had tried to visit her during one of her Saturday classes. Creepy!

And it’s not just the male teachers. Queens teacher Laurie Hirsch was reported to have had sex at least ten times with an 18-year-old former student in her apartment. And as proof (Why do you need to prove it? Was it a bet Mrs. Robinson?) she posted a photo of herself kissing him on Facebook.

This makes the Warwick State High School teachers’ raunchy Facebook photos look tame in comparison.

Hasn’t this happened way too many times already? Isn’t it time for a guideline that addresses teacher-student communication on Facebook? If you’re interested in more, CNN has a great discussion on what is deemed acceptable teacher-student contact on social networking sites:

During the Easter long weekend, some friends and I decided to head off to Byron Bay for a fun road trip. Half way through, we got caught in a MASSIVE traffic jam that left us miserable, hungry, and desperate for the loo.

We inched along the highway for over 2 hours, craning our necks out the windows, trying to figure out what caused the back-up. We watched the car's fuel gauge tick perilously close to ‘Empty’.

If I thought that was a bad traffic jam, it's nothing compared to congestion in China.

According to China's Global Times, a traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway – a 62-mile road that goes through the central business district in Beijing – lasted more than eleven days.

That's right. Imagine being stuck in a traffic jam for eleven days. I think I’d go insane.

According to a Financial Times report, Beijing’s traffic management bureau said the monster traffic jam, which is often replicated on a smaller scale throughout the country, is expected to last for nearly a month.

Such circumstances call for creativity. To curb boredom, drivers and passengers of the (mostly) coal-carrying trucks, are killing time playing cards. Locals are hawking food — at ridiculously inflated prices, Reuters reports

The Wall Street Journal reported some of the worst commutes are in Beijing and Moscow, where drivers reported 2½-hour delays, on average. The Beijing Transportation Research Center reported that average driving speeds in the capital could drop below 15 km per hour if residents keep buying at current rates of 2,000 new cars a day. At that pace, Beijing will have seven million vehicles by 2015.

Yep, you read that headline correctly. This December (just in time for holiday shopping!), the 16-year-old pop sensation will be launching a line of shades exclusively at Walmart, designed in collaboration with well-regarded polish brand Nicole for OPI.

Because nothing screams "object of pre-teen adoration" like nail polish
Photo: Rob Loud/Getty Images; Courtesy of Nicole

Oh, and it gets better: The line will play off his numerous hits, (before writing this post, I wasn’t aware he had ‘numerous’ hits) as the line is to be titled the “One Less Lonely Girl” collection (named after the song of the same name, aww). The shade pictured here is called "Step 2 the Beat of My Heart," and has chunky heart-shaped glitter, if you happen to be into chunky heart-shaped glitter which, I’m sure, is his entire target market.

Is this crazy, or is it just me? A teenage boy has launched a collection of nail polishes, solely to take financial advantage of his fan base, which has a voracious appetite for anything baring his face or name. I have an 11-year-old cousin who will probably be pining for this, and guess who will probably cave and buy it for her? Yep, that’s right: Me.

Did you also know that Justin Bieber will be releasing his biopic; a 3D movie that will be titled Never Say Never (also from one of his songs, jeez). This 16-year-old has a biopic. I’ll just let the ridiculousness of that statement sink in for a little bit before we move on. And while you're doing that, here, feast your eyes on this:

If you have the 'Fever' (apparently the cool kids no longer call it Bieber Fever), than check out this simple and inexpensive way to get a Justin Bieber costume for Halloween. Apparently all you need is:

• 60s pop icon wig
  
• Ski vest
• Dog tag necklace
• Voice-changing microphone, to recreate Bieber's pre-pubescent-sounding voice

Right. Do 11-year-olds really find it hot that the dude is making nail polish for them? Or is it us? Maybe we're just really old and don't know what's hip in teen love these days. Something tells me it’s the latter, especially after reading a comment posted about this:

I find it completely shocking that nearly 20% of Americans believe that President Obama is Muslim. Where are 60 million people getting this crazy idea?

A national survey by the Pew Research Center found that nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) say Obama is a Muslim. Only 34 percent of those polled correctly identified the president as a Christian, half down from when he took office.

There's a note in the results of the survey saying that the interviews for the poll were conducted before Obama's comments about the proposed ground zero mosque. Just imagine what the polls will show after Americans watch his semi-defense of the mosque!

So what's fueling the constant drumbeat of Muslim rumours?

See, I think it's because people can't seem to move past his Muslim middle name. I mean, seriously, so what. it's not like he had a say in choosing his name, right?

See, his daddy Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was brought up a Muslim in Kenya, even though Obama's momma (sorry, I couldn't help myself), Stanley Ann Dunham, was raised as a Christian in the United States. The couple met as students at university and apparently neither were very religious at the time of their son's birth. Back in 2008, Obama told an audience that his father's religion didn't influence him much as his parents divorced when he was only 2 years old. "My father was basically agnostic, as far as I can tell, and I didn't know him."

Fair enough.

After divorcing his father when Obama was 2 years old, Dunham then married Lolo Soetoro, a self-identified Muslim from Indonesia. For a brief time as a child, Barack Obama went under the name Barry Soetoro.

At the age of 6, Obama, his mother and Lolo Soetoro moved to Indonesia. For two of the four years that the family lived in Jakarta, Obama attended a Catholic elementary school. But it was the two years he spent at Muslim school that seems to be the one that most people are harping on.

The rumours got so strong that at one point, the White House was forced to put out a statement affirming Obama's Christian faith.

But still there's been no shortage of people who have explicitly embraced the falsehood. I mean, I have to quote some of them here, because some of the things they suggest are wonderfully preposterous.

Laura Ingraham, a Fox News contributor filling in for Bill O'Reilly's radio show, the O'Reilly Factor, said it "seemed a bit odd" that Obama went to the gym on Christmas Day.

I love how while she's 'reporting' this, the giant cross on her necklace glints in the studio lights. Marvelous!

Another completely laughable suggestion was by Cathie Adams, former chair of Republican Party of Texas when she tweeted a video link suggesting Obama is a Muslim plant installed by the Saudi royal family.

Man, people LOVE their conspiracy theories, don't they?

If you ever find yourself in need of a financial advisor in California, may I suggest you steer clear of Michael Kevin Lallana? Or, at the very least, you should bring your own water to any meetings you have with him.

Mr. Lallana was arrested yesterday for allegedly ejaculating into his female co-worker's water bottle in their office on two separate occasions.

I know, right. Gross.

The first time he did it, on 14 January, the co-worker drank it, “felt sick” and poured it out. The second time her water tasted strange to her, she sent for lab testing. The results: semen.

Apparently Lallana volunteered a DNA sample when asked to do so (oh wow, how upstanding of him!) and doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out: it was a positive match.

Lallana, a husband and father, is currently jail time and mandatory sex offender registration if he is convicted.

I almost hope he's innocent though, just for the story of how someone obtained his semen and put it in that coworker's water bottle. I wonder if there’ll come a time when we’ll have to carry those little semen-detecting lights, like forensic investigators in a CSI episode. Also, the mystery of how the victim detected the semen in her water (and felt sick) has not yet been addressed.

I do have to point out that some of the comments in this online story were simply inspired:

Another interesting comment:

On a separate but totally related note, across the pond, a new book 'MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949' by Professor Keith Jeffery has reveals that a member of MI6, the British spy agency, discovered that semen makes excellent invisible ink.

The discovery that that "semen would not react to iodine vapour” was made during WWI and often deployed in the field.

And the name of the man who discovered this?

Mansfield Cumming.