Daily Rotten Archives February 11, 2003 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 Kill your ferret or lose your connecting flight Wire Services | Submitted by: Mikey Wells The laws of unintended consequences kick in once again: "An airline passenger who was told he couldn't take his ferret on an airplane is accused of beating the animal to death in an airport restroom... Flight attendants realized he had the animal and told him he could not take it on his next flight." Read article... Michael Jackson without plastic surgery ABC News | Submitted by: Dirty Sammy "Using a photograph from Michael Jackson's youth, computer experts produced an artificially "aged" image showing what he might have looked like at the age of 44... "The one thing you can't do with Michael is a beauty shot, because that shot simply just doesn't exist anymore. I don't think you can put Michael Jackson's face on the full-page of a magazine... I think the flaws in his face become a little too evident, a little too frightening. It becomes like a medical study." He looks very... black. Read article... Swath of Destruction San Francisco Chronicle | Submitted by: anonymous "They got high and played video games during the day. Their favorite was one called "Grand Theft Auto III," in which players win points for committing violent crimes. When darkness fell, they did it for real on the streets of Oakland. Robbing dozens and killing five people in the largest single crime wave last year as Oakland reeled from its highest homicide toll since 1997." Read article... Award for school fall: $840K Sydney Morning Herald | Submitted by: The Good Doctor "Was he a spoilt, anti-social, drug-taking teenager who couldn't hold down a job and failed to achieve his potential, or is he really brain damaged after a fall from a school balcony 11 years ago? Eugene Olive was nine in September 1991 when, as a year 4 student at Warilla North Public School, south of Wollongong, he was ordered to the school "hat room" by his teacher after misbehaving. Instead, unseen, he went out to a nearby balcony and began swinging on it before falling three metres to concrete, fracturing his skull." Read article... Rikishi-stone cops Daily Yomiuri | Submitted by: muzzlethwaite "Sumo wrestlers from Isenoumi Stable in Edogawa Ward, Tokyo, will start patrolling a residential area around their stable every night from Wednesday to promote safety in the area as well as to attract more attention to the national sport... The idea was first raised by stable-master Isenoumi, former sekiwake Fujinokawa, who said, "I want my young and massive sumo wrestlers to play a role in preventing crimes in the area." Also: sexy. Read article... Shooting domestic buffalo a new sports trend CNN | Submitted by: D.Rango The market for bison is in the tanks, so what's an enterprising rancher do do? Let bloodthirsty bastards "hunt" domestic buffalo. (If this is such a good idea, why not let hunters shoot cows?) "It's really the nostalgia of going in and shooting a buffalo, that's about what it amounts to," said one hunter. Ah, the good old days of slaughtering an animal to near extinction. Read article... Police stole shuttle debris WDIV-TV 4 Detroit | Submitted by: stereocrumb.... "U.S. Attorney Michael Orwig said Hagan is accused of taking a piece of tile and other debris while helping with recovery efforts in the Nacogdoches, Texas, area. Hagan was spotted over the weekend with significant amounts of shuttle debris in his patrol car, sources said." Read article... and This article... Real reason for the Douglas/Zeta-Jones lawsuit Guardian | Submitted by: Ann Onymous "Under cross-examination by James Price QC, counsel for Hello! magazine, Zeta-Jones said the "cheap and tacky" unauthorised pictures made it appear as if the guests were "doused in bad disco lighting". The picture which most offended her showed the groom spoon-feeding her at the reception: it ended up in the Sun, under the heading Catherine Eater Jones... Fixing Mr Price with a cold stare, she said: "It's offensive because I didn't think I would want the world to see that at my wedding day all I did was eat." Read article... Irony not dead yet in America Guardian | Submitted by: Ann Onymous "On a cold night in Times Square, the Missile Dick Chicks, a political satire on the chart-topping, all-American Dixie Chicks, who sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl last month, are well into their routine. Three women, each with a red, white and blue wig and model missiles strapped to their waists like vibrators, are singing, to the tune of the Supreme's Stop in the Name of Love: "Shop, in the name of war/ You need a whole lot more/ Don't think it over." Read article... Godfather to Godmother Sunday Mail | Submitted by: bolose "A gangster nicknamed The Godmother escaped a jail sentence last week after telling a sheriff he is having a sex change... William Wotherspoon, who once walked free on a murder charge, said he now wants to be known as Lisa- Anne Docherty... He wore make-up and earrings and was accompanied by his partner, Lisa Barraclough, who is heavily pregnant." Read article... Famous hacker gets hacked AZ Central | Submitted by: JON BLAST "The world's best-known computer hacker suffered the indignity of having someone break into his new security consulting company's Web site. But Kevin Mitnick shrugged it off as "quite amusing," not serious enough for him to call the FBI... Mitnick, whose federal probation on hacking charges ended a few weeks ago, acknowledged that this weekend's electronic break-in at Defensive Thinking Inc. of Los Angeles was actually the second time in weeks that hackers found a way into the computer running the firm's Web site." Read article... Man with bubonic plague leaves hospital CNN | Submitted by: SassyPants "A New Mexico man who had one of the first cases of bubonic plague in New York in more than a century, was released from hospital Monday after three months of treatment officials said. Lawyer John Tull, 53, and his wife Lucinda Marker, 47, a financial planner, were admitted to Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan on November 5 after becoming ill with fevers and body aches on a visit to the city." Read article... Discarded PC had AIDS victim names CNN | Submitted by: SassyPants "A state computer put up for sale as surplus contained confidential files naming thousands of people with AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, the state auditor said. "This is significant data. It's a lot of information with lots of names and things like (the numbers of) sexual partners of those who are diagnosed with AIDS," Auditor Ed Hatchett said. "It's a terrible security breach." Read article... Who Funds YOUR Alternative Media Source? Questions Questions | Submitted by: ChaosRing "The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW, Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation... Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers." Read article... Gay London boxer the "Pink Pounder" Sapa-AFP | Submitted by: UncleGum "Boxers usually like to carry fearsome nicknames — "Iron" Mike Tyson, Tommy "Hitman" Hearns — but Charles Jones will step into the ring next week as "The Pink Pounder"... The 43-year-old London architect is being billed as boxing's first openly gay fighter although he claims he is not alone." Read article... Eenie meeny miney moo, we're gonna sue KFOR-TV 4 Oklahoma City | Submitted by: Tank's Grrl Two black sisters are suing Southwestern Airlines for the use of a "racist" rhyme they say was directed towards them specifically. A flight attendant used a variation of "eenie meeny miney moe" as a humorous attempt to get passengers to take their seats. The flight attendant claims to have never heard the old version of the rhyme, which now substitutes the word "tiger" for "nigger". Read article... Enraged residents make local pimp their bitch Express India | Submitted by: orpyak "Emboldened by Sunday’s arrest of five call girls from a hotel on the outskirts of the city, residents of Tandalja on Monday beat up a pimp and handed over two call girls, who were at the pimp’s house, to the police. All the seven girls, aged between 18 and 25 years, have been sent to the Nari Suraksha Gruh in Nizampura." Read article... The Valentine Jihad tv7-4.com | Submitted by: UncleGum "A Pittsburgh man was worried that a valentine he'd bought his young daughter contained a veiled terrorist message. Among several other items, the card had the word "Jihad" written on it, with the message "It's Time to Be Mine"... The publisher says the reference to Jihad came from a child's name, and any association with terrorism was unintended." Read article...