Author: Joey deVilla

I dropped by Trader Joe’s this afternoon to pick up some cookie butter for friends and family back in Canada and discovered that they carry frozen poutine now. I’ll file a report once I’ve tasted it.

The large outdoor sculpture pictured above is located in Tübingen, Genmany (30 km south of Stuttgart) and named Chachan-Pi. The name means “making love”, and yes, the sculpture is a giant marble vagina.

I suspect that there are thousands of people, who upon encountering Chachan-Pi, have told a friend “Photograph me whilst I strike some comical pose beside this Brobdingnagian baby-cannon!”…or words to that effect. I also suspect that they’ve all ended with a photo and no other incident.

One American student travelling abroad wasn’t so lucky. Somehow, in positioning himself for a high-larious pose, he got stuck:

But hey, the guy wanted his friend to take a funny picture, so he did just that. And, as any good citizen with a funny picture is morally compelled to do, he posted it on the internet. “Hey bro, I need the Reddit points!”

This will likely just reinforce the stereotype of the dorky Asian guy. Thanks, dude. Thanks for nothing.

For reasons that have not yet been made clear, reports say that it took 22 firefighters to free the stuck student. It’s almost as if they were trying to create a brand new metaphor about how little we men understand women:

The rescue was a success, and being guys in rubber raincoats who just had a close encounter with a vagina, they had to brag a little. They claimed that they freed the student “by hand and without the application of tools”. I say this with all seriousness and only a little jest: a little lube might’ve helped.

And finally, as the cliche cherry on the stereotype sundae that is this story, the mayor of Tübingen came across as the sort of stoic Teutonic psychoanalyst you’d expect as part of an ensemble cast in a black comedy with his statement on the incident. He said that he couldn’t figure out how the student got stuck in the first place, “even when considering the most extreme adolescent fantasies. To reward such a masterly achievement with the use of 22 firefighters almost pains my soul.”

Sigmund Freud would’ve had a field day with this.

I may have to get one of these for my beloved Rhonda the Honda.

If you’re not a native German speaker, you’ll probably have difficulty pronouncing the word eichhörnchen (click on the word to hear different German speakers pronounce it).

Click on the photo to get to the pronunciation guide for eichörnchen.

You may be surprised to find out that Germans have just as much trouble pronouncing the English equivalent, squirrel. Here’s a video of some young, pretty good-looking Germans who look as they’ve been challenged by a visiting American exchange student to pronounce the word:

The video above is a copy of one shot last year and posted on Facebook. It stars Taylor Blake Martin, age 22 and from Alabama (that should be your first warning that something’s amiss), and Seth Andrew Stephenson, age 22, of Rockledge, Florida (and therein lies your second warning).

In the video, which was shot in Brevard County, Martin and Stephenson lured an adult and youngling manatee close to a dock with water from a hose — they love fresh water and find the cool stuff from hoses to be a treat — and once within range, Martin jumped on them.

When commenters called out Martin and Stephenson on their mistreatment of a gentle animal on the endangered species list, Martin replied with this comment, in the process creating the sobriquet by which he’ll be known for a long time:

hahaha … in my debue [sic] as tayla the manatee slaya … ready to cannonball on every manatee living yewwww.

The incident would’ve like gone unpunished had these two cases of apparent arrested development not posted their mindless manatee molestation movie online. However, they did, and when officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service saw the video, they sought to bring the overgrown Beavis and Butt-Head to trial, which took place on Wednesday.

(Should he later on decide to become part of a trap act, he should go by  “Tayla the Manatee Slaya”. It’s got that perfect mix of exaggerated menace and clear lameness that a rapper who’s not from “the streets” needs in a stage name.)

If you ever go to trial, especially as a defendant, your lawyer will typically advise you to dress up. Here’s how Tayla the Manatee Slaya dressed for court:

“I’m not Dirk Diggler, but I might be his stunt double.”
Click the photo to see it at full size.

If his slacks look familiar, it’s because you saw the film Boogie Nights:

Between the very clear video evidence against them and Diggler’s — oops, I mean Martin’s — attire:

• Martin was fined $3,000 and sentenced to 175 hours of community services and 2 years of probation.
• Presumably because he only recorded the event and didn’t actually sport-hump the manatees, Stephenson was fined a smaller amount — $2,000 — but is under the same probation and must perform the same community service as Martin.

Both must also post an apology and statement of remorse on Facebook. I get the feeling we’re going to see more court-ordered Facebook posts in the future.

These guys got lucky — had the manatees been injured or killed, they could’ve been sentenced to up to a year in prison.

Recommended reading

Whether you’re going to court for manatee-jumping or for other reasons — perhaps you’re a plaintiff, a witness, or a juror, you might want to consult these guides on appropriate attire and avoid Martin’s mistakes:

• Real Men Real Style’s article, How to Dress for the Courtroom – The Importance of Proper Clothing When Meeting a Judge or Lawyer. This one’s a good guide for men.
• The Minick Law law firm’s article, Courtroom Etiquette: How to Dress for Court. Like the previous article, this one also advises you not to wear flip-flops to court.
• Avvo’s What Should I Wear to Court? Yet another article advising you not to wear flip-flops to court. Seriously, people, what is wrong with you?
• Daniel Clement’s How to Dress for Court. This one’s aimed at people going to divorce court, and includes the sage advice to not bring your new boyfriend or girlfriend.
• WikiHow’s How to Plan Your Wardrobe for Court.

We can’t all take off enough time to hit the gym hard enough to develop the physique he sported for 300, and yes, it’s better to have had a Spartan six-pack (recorded on photos and film, too!) and lost it than never to have had one at all. Still, I found this caption on Gerard Butler’s photo amusing.

Here’s a quick video about the workouts they had to do:

Feel free to spread it far and wide.

For those of you outside Ontario, the central plank of Tim Hudak’s campaign to become premier of the province was his “Million Jobs” campaign promise, which promised the creation of a million jobs in Ontario over 8 years, and hinged upon the elimination 100,000 government positions. The promise is said to be based on faulty math, and — surprise, surprise — is based on the ideas of a Tea Party, Koch Brothers-funded economist.

Credit for the joke has to go to Corina.