The Reluctant Whore

Week #44 In Review

This piece was presented on D List Radio for the week dated November 4, 2006

You’d be forgiven if you failed to notice the public humiliation of hatefully homophobic Executive Evangelist Rev. Ted Haggard this week. After all – how many more sex scandals involving hypocritical religious freaks that smoke crystal meth and fuck male hookers while calling for the death of gay civil rights are we expected to have to hear about before the information just becomes one big blur of sameness? Consequently I’m barely going to mention it.

However, this week WAS peppered with a series of high quality celebrity scandal stories that you’d have been a FOOL to miss.

Following on from the story last week about the man who put his elbow through a 100 million dollar Picasso – expensive paintings were in focus yet again when media giant David Geffen sold a Jackson Pollock painting to a mysterious Mexican for 140 million dollars making it the most money paid for a painting EVER.

Speaking of the most of something ever done EVER – Brad Pitt this week proved just how famous he is by being surprised that he was on the front cover of Vanity Fair in boxer shorts and Anna Nicole Smith remained eternally unsettled this week as she convalesced in hospital after contracting pneumonia while holidaying in the tropical Bahamas - as you do – and the toxicology reports for her son Daniel were released showing that he had a whole pharmacy of psychotropic medication in his bloodstream when he died. But when you think about it, his mother was a woman who reacted to her son’s death by marrying her lawyer and she managed to catch pneumonia in the Bahamas. Maybe it wasn’t entirely his fault that he needed help coping.

Still – these were the stories you heard about – more or less – at least, you just did then and so here now are some of the less talked about storied of THIS the 44th week of 2006

Mildly psychotic holiday adventurists were no doubt thrilled this week when it was revealed that Tora Bora, the original hideout of Osama bin Laden – the very place where he more than likely plotted the September 11 attacks – is to be turned into a 7 million dollar tourist resort. Apart from the sheer unadulterated horror of this idea and the fact that two journalists have been killed there THIS MONTH alone - the developers were quoted this week as saying that apart from ANYTHING else they wanted potential customers to know that their resort will be absolutely safe.

Speaking of places that are absolutely safe but not really, drivers in Western Germany the night before Halloween were accidentally showered with 4 tonnes of severed pig heads that fell out of the back of a truck near a turn off to the city of Herne. It took cleaners one and a half hours to pile all those pig heads back onto the truck.

But the zany news in Germany doesn’t end there – in fact it just pours out of Germany like it’s free on tap this week – who would have thought?!. Check this out: a German court of law ruled that a witch who sold a love potion that never worked was required to refund her customer over 800 US dollars while on the other side of town in an attempt to get rowdy customers in line a German brothel this week hired a 70 year old woman to be a bouncer. They refer to her a Mumsy – which no doubt taps into a horrifying level of maternal based guilt and is therefore successful. When you can’t physically beat them in line, leave it to the Germans to use psychological warfare when it comes to sex.

In news about jobs for odd or unique women, a dead woman was this week elected to the rural school board in Alaska. The actual vote tally was a tie so, in accordance with state law there was a coin toss which the living candidate lost leaving the position to be filled by the dead woman or someone completely different. Thank GOD for bureaucracy.

All the way at the other end of the globe in Tasmania, a prize heifer named Theresa was busy wandering around with a new lease on life after her previously broken leg was this week fitted with a fake one – thus allowing her to escape having it amputated. And while on the topic of attaching previously unconnected things together, a new type of self stirring mug – that is a mug with a small motor in the bottom went on sale this week meaning that all those days of exhaustion associated with the clearly unnecessary manual stirring of tea are finally over.

In Romania a man was left at the last minute by his fiancé but rather than have a nervous breakdown, cry or write a screenplay about the experience he simply put the call out for anyone who fit the dress to come and marry him. Within hours of the announcement Florin Mazilu, from Malu Mare - you know, in southeastern Romania - located a new bride who fit the dress, announced he was in love and promptly married her.

An English man this week, announced that he had lost 101 kg by sticking to a diet of only boullion cubes in water, bread and vegetables and a prisoner in Austria managed to pack himself inside a crate and mail himself out of the prison to freedom. Sounds like a pretty basic idea – so basic and obvious that he couldn’t possibly get away with it. Think again, the guy is still at large.

It was not a case of getting away with anything this week for corrections officer and former body builder Al Argibay, who was evicted from the Duchess County Planet Fitness Gym by POLICE for grunting too loudly. Apparently, NO GRUNTING was on the list of rules the gym put up which included no du rags and no bandanas.

In charming animal news, hospital staff on the Isle of Skye this week were astounded when two otters appeared at the front door of the emergency room at Broadford Hospital. One of the otters appeared uninjured and had assisted his injured mate to the emergency room by crossing a motherfucking parking lot full of cars. They were apparently very very shy and when the staff came out to see what was going on they ran away.

And finally, to follow up on a story from a early September involving a black swan that fell in love with a paddle boat in Germany, the romance between the boat and the swan has continued and it was announced this week that the two would be moved into the local Zoo for the winter. I just hope they feel absolutely safe. I know I do.