Sometimes, the best way to remember those who've passed on to the great unknown is to look at photographs. Or write a poem. Or leave flowers at their headstone. Or shoot them out of a gun.

Holy Smoke has a very niche business. For $1,250, they'll cram the incinerated leftovers of your dead amigo into a nice load of ammo. And there's something for everyone! One pound of human ash plus your bereaved cash will yield 250 shotgun shells, 100 rifle cartridges, or 250 pistol cartridges. But wait, there's more:

(Mantle-worthy, finished, wooden handcrafted boxes with labels are available for an additional $100.00 per box for either shotshells or cartridges.)

And what will those labels say, I wonder? "My aunt is in these shotgun shells."

An account of the company's creation by one of its founders reveals that he is clearly some sort of lunatic:

My friend smiled and said "You know I've thought about this for some time and I want to be cremated. Then I want my ashes put into some turkey load shotgun shells and have someone that knows how to turkey hunt use the shotgun shells with my ashes to shoot a turkey. That way I will rest in peace knowing that the last thing that one turkey will see is me, screaming at him at about 900 feet per second."

 

Yes, this sounds normal and not at all fucking creepy and sick. If I could have my ashes inserted inside a hydrogen bomb, however, then we'd be talking.

Aside from being kind of perverse, Holy Smoke's business would be an excellent premise for some sort of revenge killing film. You murdered my dog. And now, Mr. Pooftail's ashes are about to blow your head off.

Rachel Avila, 30, of Banning, CA thought the .22-caliber North American Arms "derringer style" revolver was a cigarette lighter, police said. She pulled the trigger twice, the second time the gun fired, and the round ricocheted off the ground.

By Mark Davenport

BONNEAU, S.C. (WCSC) - A Bonneau woman wanted to make a statement, so she decorated her truck with a set of red plastic testicles. And now a jury gets to decide if she was exercising free speech or being just obscene.

Virginia Tice was given a $445 ticket July 5 that accuses her of violating the state's obscene bumper sticker law.

And other than a hefty fine, the ticket is causing a huge controversy that extends far past the Bonneau city limits.

"To me it's just a personal expression," says John Caddell. "My truck's got power."

Caddell is another proud owner of the conversation starters. He says whether it's good or bad, his pair of chrome truck ornaments is driving a heated debate.

Virginia Tice of Bonneau was given a $445 ticket for displaying big plastic testicles like these on the back of her pickup truck. (Source: Flickr)

It's a bigger issue now because of Bonneau Chief of Police Franco Fuda ticketing Tice for what he says the law defines as obscene.

"Genitalia is offensive," says Chief Fuda. "As a law enforcement officer, I'll advise that person if it warrants a citation I'll issue a citation. As a father, I wouldn't want my daughter looking at it."

The South Carolina code of laws says "a sticker, decal or emblem is indecent when it describes, in a patently offensive way... sexual acts, excretory functions or parts of the human body."

Caddell says he must interpret the law differently than Police Chief Fuda.

"My interpretation is they're talking about human body parts," says Caddell. "I don't think these are human body parts... it looks like a chrome plated door knocker."

Tice's attorney, Scott Bischoff, expects a trial next month and says his client is still angry with the incident.

"My clients conduct was not illegal," says Bischoff. "We believe it was blown way out of proportion. She is still upset about the situation because she believes she's been treated unfairly."

Bischoff says there's no date set for Tice's jury trial, the attorney filed for a continuance they are confident will be accepted to bypass the original trial date of August 3.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - A South African health official says a man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge — nearly a day after his family thought he had died.

Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said Monday that the man awoke Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family called in an undertaker who sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack.

Kupelo says the man started yelling, prompting morgue workers to run away in fear. They eventually returned and removed him from the fridge. He was then taken to a nearby hospital and later discharged by doctors who deemed him stable.

The mortuary owner says his family is very happy to have him home.

Kupelo urged South Africans to call on health officials to confirm that their relatives are really dead.

Nine percent of humans everywhere except Africa may be part Neanderthal

Many modern-day humans may be carrying around a fragment of Neanderthal DNA on one of their sex chromosomes, a new study finds. 

The research adds a piece of corroborating evidence to the theory that Neanderthals and humans interbred sometime after humans migrated out of Africa between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago. The DNA fragment, found on the human X chromosome, is present in 9 percent of humans across the world from Asia to Europe to America — except in Africa, where it does not appear.

"It's in the Middle East, it's in Europe, it's in Eurasia, it's in America, it's in Australia," study researcher Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal told LiveScience. "This one event which led to this on the human X chromosome has to occur very early after modern man left Africa."

 

Mating with Neanderthals

Labuda got his first sign of the interbreeding about a decade ago when he discovered a snippet of DNA on the X chromosome found only in non-Africans and whose origin was unknown. (X chromosomes are sex chromosomes; women have two and men have one, paired with a Y chromosome.)

But until 2010 the group didn't have anything to compare the snippet with. That year, the Neanderthal genome was sequenced, and a team of researchers (not including Labuda) reported in the journal Science that between 1 and 4 percent of the genome of some modern humans hails from Neanderthals, stocky hominids who lived between 130,000 and 30,000 years ago.

That 2010 study used DNA extracted from Neanderthal bones found in Croatia. With the new availability of a partial Neanderthal gene sequence from Croatia, Labuda and his team had something to compare their mysterious X chromosome fragment with.

Neanderthal genes

"Dr. Labuda and his colleagues were the first to identify a genetic variation that was likely to have come from an archaic population," David Reich, a Harvard School of Medicine geneticist who worked on the original Neanderthal sequencing project, said in a statement. "This was done entirely without the Neanderthal genome sequence, but in light of the Neanderthal sequence, it is now clear that they were absolutely right."

The next challenge, Labuda said, is to tease out whether Neanderthal DNA made a difference to the ability of early humans to survive and thrive.

"It is interesting to know how many of these fragments there are, where they are, what they are doing," Labuda said. "Are they neutral like the one which we have found, or do they provide some functional addition and could be maybe beneficial?"

By Heather Buchman, Meteorologist

Jul 21, 2011; 6:46 AM ET

"It's like getting slapped in the face

with a wet sponge when you walk outside"

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Another sweltering heat wave is gripping a large part of the U.S., with at least 17 states hitting the 100-degree mark Tuesday and more than 40 surpassing 90°.

"When all is said and done, with the number of days of extreme heat and humidity of the current heat wave, it may be more significant and impact a larger area than the deadly 1995 heat wave of July 12-15," according to Expert Senior Meteorologist Jim Andrews.

While it's already hot on the East Coast, the worst is on its way.

Areas along the Northeast's heavily-populated Interstate 95 corridor will have highs near or higher than 100° by the end of the week as the steamy air spreads eastward from the Plains.

What is so impressive about this heat wave is the humidity that is accompanying it. Even places such as Minneapolis, Minn., have had AccuWeather.com RealFeel® temperatures rising near 120°!

Minneapolis set an all-time record Tuesday when the dew point temperature, which provides an indication of how humid the air is, reached 82°.

"It's like getting slapped in the face with a wet sponge when you walk outside," said AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Bernie Rayno. "The thing about this heat wave is you have the heat... you have the humidity... and you have no wind."

With no wind during the day and temperatures not even dropping below 80° at night in many places, there is no relief. Air conditioners are running 24 hours a day.

By the end of the week, people in New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., will face RealFeel® temperatures at or above 110°.

"Temperatures will topple 100° in the big cities," stated AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity in reference to the Northeast. "It's the hottest weather these cities have had since last July."

Factors behind the Heat Wave

The positioning of the jet stream (an area of maximum winds high above the ground) is the major player in heat waves. When there is what meteorologists call a large "ridge" in the jet stream, areas that lie under that ridge can experience heat waves.

"A ridge is essentially a big bubble of hot air," Margusity explained.

A ridge is currently located over the central U.S. and has been sending temperatures soaring above 100° from Texas to Montana and the Dakotas and into the upper 90s farther east early this week. Winds have generally been light across this region as well.

A cold front moving through the northern Plains will provide some cooling for Montana, the Dakotas and Minnesota, as well as generate stronger winds ahead of its arrival.

An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear".

Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.  

Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.

Later a police spokesman explained that the licence was issued because Mr Alm's face was fully visible in the photo.

"The photo was not approved on religious grounds. The only criterion for photos in driving licence applications is that the whole face must be visible," said Manfred Reinthaler, a police spokesman in Vienna.

He was speaking on Wednesday, after Austrian media had first reported Mr Alm's reason for wearing the pasta strainer.

After receiving his application the Austrian authorities had required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.

According to Mr Reinthaler, "the licence has been ready since October 2009 - it was not collected, that's all there is to it".

The idea came into Mr Alm's noodle three years ago as a way of making a serious, if ironic, point.

A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light-hearted, US-based faith whose members call themselves pastafarians.

The group's website states that "the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma".

In response to pressure for American schools to teach the theory known as intelligent design, which some Christians favour as an alternative to natural selection, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster wrote to the Kansas School Board asking for the pastafarian version of intelligent design to be taught to schoolchildren.

Straining credulity

In the same spirit, Mr Alm's pastafarian-style application for a driving licence was a response to the Austrian recognition of confessional headgear in official photographs.

The licence took three years to come through and, according to Mr Alm, he was asked to submit to a medical interview to check on his mental fitness to drive but - straining credulity - his efforts have finally paid off.

It is the police who issue driving licences in Austria, and they have duly issued a laminated card showing Mr Alm in his unorthodox item of religious headgear.

When asked for his reaction to Mr Reinthaler's comments, Mr Alm told the broadcaster ORF: "I didn't know I was guilty of not collecting it. That doesn't alter the fact that it still took nearly a year [to be issued]".

The next step, Mr Alm told the Austrian news agency APA, is to apply to the Austrian authorities for pastafarianism to become an officially recognised faith.

Found dead handcuffed to water bed; death likely accidental, coroner says

CLEVELAND — An exotic-animal owner who made headlines last summer when one of his bears mauled a woman to death has died after apparently choking on a sex toy, authorities said.

Sam Mazzola, 49, was found dead in his Columbia Station home on Sunday, face down on a water bed. He was bound to the bed with handcuffs, chains and padlocks, Lorain County Chief Deputy Coroner Dr. Frank Miller told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Sam Mazzola

Mazzola had a sex toy in his throat, which apparently obstructed his breathing, Miller said. He was also wearing a leather mask with the eyes and mouth zipped shut and a two-piece metal sphere covering his head, the coroner told The Morning Journal.

"He had done this by request according to the story we were given,” Miller told The Morning Journal. “There was an assistant, but that is under investigation.”

It appeared Mazzola died from an "accident during sexual role play," Miller told the Plain Dealer.

"No Sam, I don't think we should kiss while I have this on."

An autopsy determined the preliminary cause of death was asphyxia due to airway obstruction by foreign body. Suicide and homicide have been ruled out. "The manner of death is pending further investigation and will be released when the case is finalized,” the coroner’s office said in a press release.

Sheriff’s detective Mike Lopez told The Morning Journal that a teenage co-worker found Mazzola’s body.

He said someone else was at the home and helped Mazzola with the bondage but had left before he died.

“It was an unattended death,” Miller told the Journal.

No one has been charged in the death, which Lopez said was not suspicious.

Mazzola has been in the news in the past because of his ownership and exhibitions of wild animals, which he kept man on his property southwest of Cleveland.

In August, one of his black bears fatally mauled Brent Kandra , 24, of Elyria, after Kandra opened the bear’s enclosure for a routine feeding.

Kandra's death was ruled a workplace accident. The bear was euthanized.

© 2011 msnbc.com

Police: Wife attacked husband after drugging, tying him to bed

JULY 12--In the year’s most horrifying police press release, cops in Garden Grove, California describe how a woman last night allegedly cut off her husband’s penis.

According to investigators, Catherine Kieu Becker, 48, “used an unknown type poison and/or drug in the male’s food to make him sleepy. She tied him to the bed and as he woke the female cut off his penis" with a 10-inch kitchen knife. Becker, pictured in the mug shot at right, then allegedly “tossed the penis…in the garbage disposal and turned the disposal to the ‘on’ position.”

The 51-year-old victim, who is in the midst of a divorce from Becker, told detectives that he “believed something was wrong with his food.” After lying down and falling asleep, cops reported that the man awoke to his wife “tugging his clothes off. The suspect grabbed the victim’s penis and cut it off.” 

Becker, who called 911, reportedly told officers that her husband “deserved it.” The man was transported to a local hospital where he underwent emergency surgery and is in serious condition.

In mid-May, citing “irreconcilable differences,” Becker’s husband filed a petition seeking to end the childless couple’s 16-month marriage, according to Orange County Superior Court records. The man, who reported separating from his wife on April 1, filed for divorce without the aid of an attorney. His only listed assets were a Garden Grove condominium that is underwater by $34,000, and a Toyota Prius whose debt outstrips its market value by $3000.

Arrested for aggravated mayhem, false imprisonment, assault with a deadly weapon, and other counts, Becker was booked into the Orange County jail, where she is being held in lieu of $1 million bail.

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First lady Michelle Obama, 2011. (WhiteHouse.gov)

First lady Michelle Obama, 2020?????.  Too many shakes and fries.

Updated: Monday, 11 Jul 2011, 4:05 PM EDT
Published : Monday, 11 Jul 2011, 4:01 PM EDT

By NewsCore