A family court judge in New Zealand has had enough with parents giving their children bizarre names, and did something about it.
Just ask Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. He had her renamed. Judge Rob Murfitt made the 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name could be changed. The girl was involved in a custody battle.
“The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child’s parents have shown in choosing this name,” he wrote. “It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily.”
In his ruling, Murfitt cited a list of the unfortunate names. Registration officials blocked some names, including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit, he said. But others were allowed, including Number 16 Bus Shelter “and tragically, Violence,” he said.
New Zealand law does not allow names that would cause offense to a reasonable person, among other conditions, said Brian Clarke, the registrar general of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
Humid summers have encouraged a nudity trend that is stretching to restaurants, yoga classes and even a stand-up comedy club.
About 50 diners, whose motto is “no hot soup”, regularly attend monthly naked meals held at a handful of restaurants in the city. They are served by regular restaurant staff who, under city regulations, must be wearing clothes. “We’re just more comfortable nude,” said John Ordover, a keen urban nudist and founder of Clothing Optional Dinners.
The Phoenix Temple, a yoga centre in midtown Manhattan, has naked classes twice a week for about 10 practitioners. “I had such a transformative experience on my own when I did yoga naked rather than clothed, I wanted to share that” said Isis Phoenix, the yoga teacher. Each class starts with a disrobing ceremony. “The first 10 minutes of class - for anyone who is new, there’s always a sense of trepidation,” said Miss Phoenix. “It dissolves very quickly.”
At the People’s Improv Theatre in Chelsea, men and women comics perform each week at the Naked Comedy Showcase. “Each time I tried comedy naked, it was the best thing ever,” Andy Ofiesh, the event’s founder, told the Post. Half the auditorium is reserved for people who enjoy laughing in the nude. “We fill the space. Finding comedians is more difficult,” said Mr Ofiesh.
EAU CLAIRE, Mich. - Brian “Young Gun” Krause has out-spit his father to claim his seventh championship at the International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship. Krause’s winning spit on Saturday was 56 feet, 7 1/2 inches.
That’s 6 1/2 inches better than his father, the second-place finisher and defending champion, 54-year-old Rick “Pellet Gun” Krause of Tuba City, Ariz., who spit 56 feet, 1 inch.
Thirty-year-old Brian Krause, of Dimondale, currently holds the Guinness World Record after spitting a pit 93 feet, 6 1/2 inches in 2003. Amanda Jennings of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the first woman to place in the top three, did not qualify for championship competition but retained her title as women’s champion with a spit of 43 feet, 11 inches.
We can’t help thinking about the mullet family. The father-son bond is strong and sometimes rooted in friendly rivalry, whether centered around hair, or spitting. We’re surprised this story doesn’t come from further down south.
Thomas Beatie, who is legally male but decided to keep his female sex organs during chest reconstruction surgery and testosterone therapy, attracted worldwide attention in April after revealing his/her pregnancy.
The 34-year-old gave birth to a baby girl at a hospital in Bend, Oregon. Beatie, who sports a beard, was dubbed the ‘pregnant man’ after appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s television show to discuss his pregnancy. “I feel it’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human need. I’m a person and I have the right to have a biological child,” Beatie said.
A Beatie Baby
“To our neighbors, my wife, Nancy, and I don’t appear in the least unusual,” he wrote, explaining that his wife was unable to have a child after undergoing a hysterectomy. So he chose to become pregnant by artificial insemination, he said. “Our situation sparks legal, political, and social unknowns,” Beatie wrote, adding the couple had experienced opposition from health care professionals, friends and family.
Beatie, before the operation - when he was known as Tracey Lagondino
Take Holland - they have instituted a tobacco ban on restaurants and cafes. Big deal, you say. Everybody is doing that. Yeah, but does everybody allow you to smoke weed in those same restaurants and cafes? Well, Holland does!
Smoking tobacco in restaurants and cafes across Holland is now illegal, but customers are still allowed to light up pure cannabis cigarettes. Dutch coffee shop owners claim the law, which has effectively put a stop to smoking the milder varieties of cannabis cigarette, threatens to put hundreds of them out of business.
Mark Jacobsen, chairman of the BCD, a nationwide association of coffee shop owners, said proper implementation of it would require inspectors to check each cannabis joint for tobacco content. “It’s absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they’ll look to see if you’ve got cigarette in your marijuana.”
Research shows that the majority of coffee shop patrons prefer less-potent joints in which cannabis is mixed with tobacco, and only 18 per cent favor the pure cannabis alternative. Some cafes have said they will get round the problem by producing more pure cannabis brownies or “space cakes”, while others have built smoking chambers within their premises which are off-limits to staff. But a catering industry spokesman said 1,600 coffee shops across the country have been put up for sale because their owners were convinced their businesses were doomed.
The Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, which is responsible for enforcing the ban, said it had trained around 200 inspectors: “They can tell the difference between a mix or a pure joint from its smell and appearance.” The Dutch health minister, Ab Klink, said he hoped the law would help to rid the country of cannabis-induced idleness. “Consumers who spend the whole day hanging out in coffee shops will find other things to do,” he said.
Dutch coffee shops are licensed to sell small quantities of cannabis to adults over 18.
