Tennis' Serena Williams headlines Tampax ads

USA Today

Procter & Gamble is featuring tennis star Serena Williams in a lighthearted ad campaign for its Tampax brand that begins just weeks after her U.S. Open outburst.

The Cincinnati-based consumer-products maker announced Monday that Williams will take on Tampax's "Mother Nature" character in print advertising in October magazines. P&G officials say Williams represents the energy, independence and strength of women they want to celebrate.

The campaign was in the works before Williams' tirade this month against a lineswoman at the U.S. Open, which brought a $10,000 fine for unsportsmanlike conduct

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A toilet in the shape of Madonna's bra

Sydney Morning Herald

The Kiwi capital is set to build a toilet block the shape of Madonna's infamous pointy bra to jazz up its waterfront.

The designer unisex dunnies, costing $NZ400,000 ($A324,096) are supposed to resemble a crayfish but the Wellington public say it looks more like a pair of pointy breasts or fallopian tubes.

"Oh my God. It looks like something Madonna would have worn in the past ... It is just ugly," one local told the Dominion Post newspaper when shown the designs.

A poll found most Wellingtonians actually preferred bog-standard toilets and didn't support the fancy loos at all.

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Kelloggs cleared of Crunchy Nut complaint

Mad.Co.Uk

Complaints that Kelloggs exaggerated the size of the cereal in a TV campaign for Crunchy Nut Clusters have been dismissed by advertising watchdogs.

The campaign, created by JWT London, showed people eating Crunchy Nut Clusters in a variety of situations, for instance at a barbecue where they were arranged on the grill as kebabs and being eaten out of a bowl as though they were popcorn.

The Advertising Standards Authority received two complaints that the ad was misleading for exaggerating the size of the cereal.

Kelloggs responded that the clusters appearing in the ad were all from genuine packets of the cereal and that as a result of the manufacturing process the size of clusters varied from 10 mm to 30 mm in diameter. The company estimated that the clusters seen in the ad were no larger than 30mm.

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Skydiver Falls 2,000 Feet Onto Aircraft Hangar Roof

Fox News

A skydiver has survived a 2,000 foot fall onto the roof of an aircraft hangar after his parachute failed.

Paul Lewis, who is in his forties, was airlifted to hospital with head and neck injuries. Last night he was in a stable condition and, according to friends, in “good spirits”.

Lewis, a skydive cameraman with 20 years’ experience, was filming a parachutist making her first jump from 10,000 feet, near Whitchurch in Shropshire, at 3 p.m. on Friday. At 3,000 feet his main parachute failed and he tried to release his reserve.

The reserve parachute opened, but a malfunction caused it to spiral rapidly to the ground. He fell 2,000 feet with the canopy partially open before landing on the steel roof of an aircraft hangar.

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Record-breaking cupcake jolts Dream Cruise

Detroit News

Woodward Dream Cruise attendees' attention was ripped away from the seemingly endless parade of classic cars on Saturday afternoon thanks to Ryan Abood and his giant cupcake.

Abood, owner of GourmetGiftBaskets.com, decided four weeks ago to make a bit of sweet history that would get him recognized by Guinness World Records. He and a team of 30 succeeded in creating a 4-foot-tall cupcake that was 10 feet wide and weighed 1,224 pounds.

Accomplishing such a feat also had a philanthropic purpose. Proceeds generated from selling pieces of the monstrous cupcake and 5,000 smaller cupcakes benefited the Susan G. Komen Passionately Pink for the Cure, Abood said.

What a drives a man to create a gargantuan cupcake filled with 2 million calories?

"I was sitting at my desk and I heard about what was then the world's largest cupcake and it weighed 151 pounds," said Abood, 30, of Manchester, N.H. "I felt that a world record should be breathtaking, awe-inspiring, have a wow factor. And 151 pounds didn't do it."

So the yummy gauntlet was before Abood and he decided to best the world record. In the heat of making this decision, Abood said a friend from Michigan suggested he come to the state during the Dream Cruise.

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The feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann keeps viewers tuning in

Chicago Tribune

Two weeks of vitriolic exchanges between cable news hosts Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann have amped up viewership for Fox News as efforts by corporate executives to strike a détente fell apart.

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who face off in the 5 p.m. PDT time slot, have been attacking each other's networks ever since news broke earlier this month that executives had sought to tamp down the personal attacks by the two men, whose sparring has long been a staple of the cable news wars.

The renewed feud appears to have benefited O'Reilly, whose show "The O'Reilly Factor" averaged nearly 3.5 million viewers between Aug. 3 and 13, the nine days following the news of the supposed truce. That's 7% higher than his average viewership so far this year and 12% more than his average this quarter, which began June 29. He also recorded more than a million viewers in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic twice last week, his largest showings among that age group this year.

Read more about Hatfield & McCoy.

Fan mad about Archie engaging Veronica sells comic

iWon

When comic book store owner Dave Luebke heard that after 67 years, the carrot-topped everyman of the comic world, Archie, was proposing to va-va-voomy rich girl Veronica instead of girl-next-door Betty, he decided to protest by selling his copy of the series' rare first issue.

Luebke's Archie Comics No. 1 sold for $38,837 when Dallas' Heritage Auction Galleries offered it Friday. Heritage spokesman Noah Fleisher said the buyer was a longtime Archie reader and collector from Virginia who did not want to be identified.

"Betty is it. Not Veronica," said Luebke, whose Richmond, Va., store has more than 1 million comics in stock. "This is serious."

And, he said, 99 percent of his customers agree that perky, blond Betty is the clear choice over shiny dark-haired Veronica in the seemingly never-ending love triangle.

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Judge Reportedly Questioned Whether Woman Was Raped Because She Was "On Top"

Houston Press

Newly elected judge Kevin Fine isn't your typical jurist -- he's been frank and outspoken about his missteps in life, which include a cocaine addiction.

Now he finds himself dealing with another alleged misstep -- accusations that he told a rape victim in his court that he didn't believe she was raped because she was "on top" during the act.

There are no transcripts yet to the July 31 hearing, which came after the defendant was convicted and before he was sentenced. Transcripts are being prepared for appeals. But observers in the courtroom have spread word of the alleged comment, and it will likely come up in the appellate process.

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via Fark.com

I wonder if this judge has made the "short list" for the next Supreme Court vacancy?

Baby Want Ba-Ba?

App.com

Janet Schulte believed the man when he told her by phone that his 40-something, disabled brother needed a caregiver who could bottle-feed him and change his diapers.

What the Melbourne woman can't believe is that he committed no crime, now that she said she has found out the situation was a charade: that the man and his brother were same person.

And that he didn't have the disabilities he claimed to have.

"I feel violated," Schulte said, sharing her story because she said the man has deceived other women and will try again. "I feel disgusted."

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Hat Tip: Daily Rotten

Buckle Up For Safety

iWon

Authorities said a purse snatching suspect being chased by police near Detroit got his right leg tangled in his car's seat belt when he tried to bail out and ended up being dragged several hundred feet. Police told the Detroit Free Press and The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens that 45-year-old man Lawrence Neal of Detroit was dragged Thursday night and broke his leg before the car stopped on a front lawn.

During the chase, police said Neal used turn signals. And Detective Lt. Leo Borowsky said he was "captured by his own seat belt."

Neal was being held at the Macomb County Jail. He was charged with unarmed robbery, fleeing and eluding and resisting and obstructing police.

Police said he requested a court-appointed attorney.

Reality show aims to convert atheists

York Daily Record

Apparently believing that religious competition in the Middle East is not exciting enough already, the television station Kanal T in Istanbul, Turkey, is preparing a reality game show for September release in which 10 certified atheists try to resist conversion by a priest, a rabbi, a Muslim imam and a Buddhist monk. The exact rules have not been disclosed, but the "winning" convert will receive an expense-paid trip to the holy land of the most persuasive religion (the Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca or Tibet). According to a July Reuters report, Turkey's Islamic Religious Affairs Directorate, not surprisingly, had vowed never to co-operate.

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Modern Toilet Diner

New York Post:

"No one complains about the toilet humor at this diner.

All 100 seats in the crowded Modern Toilet diner are made from toilet bowls, not chairs. Sink faucets and gender-coded 'WC' signs appear throughout the three-story facility in Taipai, one of 12 in a chain of Taiwaneateries with a toilet theme.

Customers eat from mini-plastic toilet bowls, and wipe their hands and mouths using toilet rolls hung above their tables, which are glass-topped jumbo bathtubs."

Panty phone fetish sends Briton to prison

kansascity.com :

"The underwear-obsessed telephone stalker’s undoing proved to be the opening of a gym opposite the apartment that the 40-year-old shared with his mother.

Detectives caught Paul Kavanagh on film, leaning over the balcony of the West London apartment, just as he was peppering the gym’s female receptionists with calls.

Jailed for 2 1/2 years this month, Kavanagh admitted making some 15,000 such harassing calls to women, asking them questions about their underwear. He posed as a clothing researcher and claimed to be gathering marketing data for a retailer."