The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns

Jim sends us more great news bits. Thanks Jim.

Korinne Barnes, 29, a single mother of three running for the North Kingstown (R.I.) School Committee, was finally persuaded in September to remove her MySpace.com personal listing in which she described herself as "smart, sexy, fun" and a "voluptuous chocolate sister with a big booty." [Providence Journal, 9-21-06]

That profile is hardly offensive compared to some of the trash I've seen in MySpace.

The small, specialty restaurant Guolizhuang, in Beijing, serves mostly dishes made from various animal penises, according to a September BBC News dispatch, attracting discerning customers who come for the reputed health benefits. Sheep, horse, ox and seal are good for the circulation, said the restaurant's staff nutritionist, and donkey improves the skin. Tiger, she said, has no particular value to justify its high price, but snake ("two penises each," she said) is great for potency. [BBC News, 9-23-06]

Lol, I guess you can say that people in Beijing really like to eat cock.

Of course, we already eat chicken penis. Isn't that how McDonald's gets their nuggets?

In October, The Washington Post reported the growing movement among psychiatrists to call compulsive buying a separate, identifiable disorder and recounted this 62-year-old "shopaholic's" therapeutic conversation with herself: "I would say (to the jewelry she felt compelled to buy), 'You are so beautiful, I can't live without you, I love the way you sparkle.' The jewelry would say back, 'You need me. You look pretty when you wear me.' I would say, 'I do need you. I can't possibly think of being without you. But something has to change. I need to stop this. I can't afford a penny more.'" The patient said she eventually came to believe that her compulsion stemmed from her relationship with her mother. [Washington Post, 10-13-06]

Doesn't it sound like the psychiatrist gave her a new form of nuttiness to add to her compulsion? I mean, yes, bad to be a clinical shopaholic, but isn't it just as bad to be talking to some inanimate object like jewelry, especially when it talks back?

Duh.