Archive for the 'Gross' Category
You gotta love people from Texas! After living there for a few years, I totally can believe this story.
SANTO, Texas – A rattlesnake rancher who calls himself Bayou Bob found a new way to make money: Stick a rattler inside a bottle of vodka and market the concoction as an “ancient Asian elixir.” But Bayou Bob Popplewell’s bright idea appears to have landed him on the wrong side of the law, because he has no liquor license.
Popplewell, who has raised rattlesnakes and turtles at Bayou Bob’s Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch for more than two decades, surrendered to authorities Monday. He spent about 10 minutes in jail after the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission obtained arrest warrants on misdemeanor charges of selling alcohol without a license and possessing alcohol with intent to sell.
If convicted, he faces up to a year in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Popplewell said he will fight the charges. His intent, he said, is not to sell an alcoholic beverage but a healing tonic. He said he has customers of Asian descent who believe the concoction has medicinal properties.
“It’s almost a spiritual thing,” said Popplewell, 63.
But alcohol commission agent Scott Jones pointed out that investigators confiscated 429 bottles of snake vodka and one bottle of snake tequila. At $23 a bottle, that’s almost $10,000 worth of reptilian booze.
Even if Popplewell intended his drink be used as a healing tonic — an assertion the alcohol commission disputes — his use of vodka requires a state permit, authorities said.
“It’s sold for beverage purposes, and he knows what he’s doing,” commission Sgt. Charlie Cloud said.
Popplewell said he uses the cheapest vodka he can find as a preservative for the snakes. The end result is a super sweet mixed drink that Popplewell compared to cough syrup.
“I’ve honestly never seen a person drink it,” he said.
An Asian studies lecturer at the University of Texas said there is some merit to Popplewell’s claim that snake vodka could be seen as a tonic.
There’s a street nicknamed “Snake Alley” in Taipei, Taiwan, where street vendors put the gall bladder of a freshly killed snake into a glass of strong liquor. The drink, sold to the highest bidder, is supposed to improve eyesight and sexual performance, said lecturer Camilla Hsieh.
“It’s like the ancient version of Viagra,” Hsieh said.
Santo is located 60 miles west of Fort Worth.
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Information from Fort Worth Star-Telegram, http://www.star-telegram.com
Those must have been some bug underwear. from AP.
LONDON – From baggy knickers to the ultimate hotpants: Jenny Marsey’s miraculous underwear saved the day by doubling as an emergency fire blanket when her kitchen caught alight.
Son John Marsey and his cousin Darren Lines were frying bread in her kitchen Sunday when fire broke out and Lines grabbed the nearest thing from a pile of washing to put it out — his aunt’s billowing, extra-large, powder blue underwear.
He doused it with water, tossed it over the fire and put out the flames, said a spokesman for the local Cleveland Fire Brigade, speaking anonymously in line with department policy.
Lines’ swift thinking saved the kitchen of the home at Hartlepool, northeast England, but left Marsey’s underwear slightly scorched.
“It could have been a lot worse,” said Marsey. “My family could have been in hospital but the knickers saved the day. I’m just grateful to the boys.”
The fire brigade spokesman said that the general principle — using a large, wet cloth to cover a grease fire — was a sound one. As for using underwear: “Clearly it depends on what size you are,” he said, “but I don’t want to go there.”
A Chinese city is offering to buy dead flies from residents to promote public hygiene.
Officials in the Xigong district of Luoyang city are offering the equivalent of 3p for each dead fly, reports Henan Business News.
“We think giving people money will be more effective than fining them to keep the city clean,” says Hu Guisheng, administrative director of Xigong district.
Hu says that in only one day, his office has collected more than 2,000 dead flies in six communities, and paid out more than £65.
The hagfish is a bottom feeder so repulsive it had a cameo on TV’s “Fear Factor.” It slimes its enemies, has rows of teeth on its tongue, and feeds on the innards of rotting fish by penetrating any orifice. But cooked and served on a plate, it is considered an aphrodisiac in South Korea.
And the overseas appetite for the hagfish – also known as the slime eel – is creating a business opportunity for struggling West Coast fishermen confronted with tough restrictions on the catching of salmon and other fish.
California’s annual catch jumped from practically nothing to 150,000 pounds over the past four years. Oregon and Washington state last year reported around 1 million pounds of hagfish caught.
A US teenager has been arrested after he was caught on video having sex with a horse in a barn.
The owners of the barn in Corvallis, Oregon, had installed the video surveillance camera after previous assaults on the horse, reports the Corvallis Gazette-Times.
They were shocked to see footage of the teen sexually assaulting the mare when they checked the video in February.
Deputy Clay Stephens, who viewed the video, said the youth seemed very practiced, not hurried but not wasting any time. He seemed to be following a “very concise, deliberate, well-thought-out plan”.
Part of a 19th century bomb has been found inside a whale.
The fragment is part of a time delay bomb that was introduced in 1879 and manufactured until 1885, reports the BBC.
It suggests the bowhead whale may have swum its first strokes not long after the American Civil War.
Scientists say it is rare to find a whale over 100 years old but believe some may reach 200.
The bowhead whale was killed by indigenous hunters off Alaska as part of their subsistence quota.