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| Quote of the Week |
"We are all born naked. Everything else is drag, right? I often feel that I am a gay man trapped in this body."
—Pamela Anderson
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| The Victimization of the Body Snatchers |
A twenty-eight-year-old man accused of stealing a man's penis through sorcery was beaten to death in the West African country of Gambia this week. A police spokesman told reporters that Baba Jallow was killed by ten people in the town of Serekunda.
Reports of penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa. "Victims" usually claim that sorcerers touched them, made their genitals shrink or disappear, then tried to extort cash in the promise of a cure.
The police spokesman said many men in Serekunda were now afraid to shake hands, and he urged people not to believe reports of vanishing genitals. Meanwhile, Baba Jallow's victims claim they're too ashamed to prove their loss. Too ashamed not to have cooked up a more viable excuse for whacking the most unpopular guy in town is more like it. Grant Stoddard
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| Your Sperm Are Smoking Your Pot and Not Paying For It |
A study conducted by SUNY Buffalo has proven that the adage "like stoner, like sperm" is God's honest truth. Apparently, the sperm of marijuana smokers "burns out" (the researchers' words, not mine), thus making conception difficult. Here's how it works: to penetrate the egg, the sperm have to speed up when they near it, then hit the ovum with super-spaceship velocity. But stoned sperm speed up too early, get tired, and just kind of tap apathetically at the egg before doing whatever it is sperm do when they're done. Like die, since they're too little to order in tacos. Carrie Hill Wilner
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| Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? |
According to research published this week, rejection physically hurts it produces a reaction in the pain center of the brain. California scientists created a computer game in which test subjects were led to believe they were tossing a ball with two other players. After a while, the two computer-controlled characters started throwing the ball only to each other, excluding the test subject. Brain scans taken during the study indicated "there's something about exclusion from others that is perceived as being as harmful to our survival as something that can physically hurt us," explains one of the study's co-authors. No shit. We did quite a bit of fieldwork in this area under the guise of pimply teens with unruly hair and attitude problems. Grant Stoddard
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| Garter Mishap Incites Donnybrook |
There's some sort of Sister Cities program worldwide. As far as we can tell, this entails placing banners in airports that read: "Chicago: Sister City to Dubai," and so on. We don't know if Asbury Park, New Jersey, has gotten in on the game yet, but if it does, it should definitely hit up Kraljevo, Serbia. There are plenty of reasons for this sisterhood: poverty, post-millennial blight offset by an influx of young gay professionals, people totally losing it at weddings and breaking all kinds of shit. In Jersey, a "donnybrook" (a local reporter's word, not mine) erupted when a guest "improperly" placed the garter on the woman who caught the bouquet. The ensuing melee ended in four arrests. Meanwhile, in Serbia, where it's apparantly traditional to fire guns into the air at weddings, because . . . well, because it is, a few over-eager celebrants managed to shoot down a small plane, injuring two. That sounds vicious, but it's certainly better than waiting for the bride's trampy little cousin to finish singing "A Whole New World" so you can hit up the wine and canapes. Carrie Hill Wilner
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| Lost in Translation |
In Canada this week, French-speaking Québécois are miffed because the new Buick LaCrosse shares its name with a local slang term for masturbation. Bob Lutz, the vice chairman of GM North America, said he wasn't aware of LaCrosse's alternative meaning, although he had lived in Paris for three years. "I thought I knew every expression existing in the French language for self-gratification, including the crudest ones known to man," he said.
Did you know that several companies exist solely to research new product names and ensure that they don't have undesirable meanings elsewhere in the world? Neither did the makers of these international goods:
Alu-Fanny: French foil wrap
Atum Bom: Portuguese tuna
Arses: Spanish wine
Bull: French computer firm
Bums: Swedish cookies
Crapsy Fruit: French cereal
Cock Drops: Cypriot cocktail bitters
Fartek: Swedish baby wear
Glans: Dutch shampoo
Happy End: German toilet paper
Japp: Norwegian candy bar
Kack: Danish sweets
Krapp: Swedish toilet paper
Kum Onit: German pencil sharpeners
Mukk: Italian yogurt
Pee:Ghana cola
Plopp: Scandinavian chocolate
Pocari Sweat:Japanese sport/soft drinks
Calpis Poo:Argentine curry powder
Pschitt:French lemonade
Skinless:Japanese condoms
Sorbits:German chewing gum
Wrinkle Zero-0:Japanese condoms
Zit: German lemonade
TWR's favorite mistranslation remains:
"Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave," a direct Chinese translation of the slogan
"Pepsi Comes Alive." Grant Stoddard
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| About TWR |
The Weekend Review is Nerve's roundup of news about sex, relationships, culture and whatever else we find interesting.
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Commentarium (17 Comments)
On the Bryant rape case: Columnist Clarence Page was right weeks ago; Kobes' defense team will vilify Bryants accuser and employ a scorched earth strategy. Although "Forbidden fruit makes many jams", it appears that the woman's testimony to the male!? detective is full of contradictions. Unlike Mike Tyson, who went to prison for rape, Bryant will probably walk. God help the accusers family and Eagle County. Bryant could end up owning a county! Men, beware. No means no, regardless of her behavior, words or lack of clothes.
Pam Anderson: gay, my keister. After enjoying her romp on that boat on Lake Powell with Tommy Lee, the video showed many women how to really get it on outdoors on a boat, naked, as her man pumps in and out in a position that both can enjoy as they look down. My girl loves the video, and her girlfriends enjoy it with their men too.
I saw a commercial for Japp candy bars on the Clios once. The commercial was hilarious.
TWR
Re. the end of the piece: the ad campaign in the states was Coke Adds Life. And the purported Chinese mistranslation is an urban myth.
Re: previous comments. What
Bimbo: the equivalent of "Wonder Bread" in Spain...do a web search for "pan bimbo" and prepare to be scared. :)
Who managed to finally convince CHW to shut up and deliver the news? Bravo. Grant, you're still awesome.
definite improvement in the writing. much more clear and readable. good job.
My opinion on Kobe Bryant was not a "screed"--it was the tone of many sports writers who know Bryant and it is worth checking out the Newsweek cover story on Bryant. The case wont be over until after appeals to a higher court, regardless of the outcome. Many pro athletes have been catered to and handled with kid gloves since junior high, and they see themselves as above the law, above the rules the rest of us live by. Bryant is innocent until proven guilty, but I have an opinion, as does anyone else does. After all, he admitted adultery, with a consenting woman, so he says.
God, I loved the Britney Spears, Halle Berry kissing scene on SNL! More than a few men (and women) would love to see these two in a girl on girl porno. Jus don get no better than this!
Wow. really good. nice work carrie.
To LHT Re: Pam Anderson. She said she often felt like a gay *man*, idjit. Anyways, why do you care so much? Will your world come to an end (haha, come...) if it turns out Pam Anderson isn't heterosexual, or something?
There was a beer in Greece called "Fix." There's a creamy white yogurt in France called "Jockey" (I dunno, makes me think of tighty whities...). I still like Denmark's Stimurol gum, though. Their ad campaign referring to, er, shriveled parts was stellar.
Re: NVF on Kobe Bryant. I don't know much about Kobe Bryant personally and its not my intent to defend his character. I'm far more affronted by your speculation that a male detective would trivialize or sabotage a rape investigation because he is male. It's an appallingly sexist characterization. That sort of erroneous generalization about men sets up some sort perverse equivalency between a dictator like Saddam Hussien, and a genuinely decent dude like Bill Nye the Science Guy (or Nerve's own Bill Nye, Grant Stoddard). Does Grant deserve to be conflated with Saddam? No, so stop doing it. If you think that men generally see it in their interests to protect rapists, then you need to wake-up, put away the Birkenstocks, turn off the Ani DiFranco, and take a look around. You need to realize that these misguided negative attitudes towards men will only serve to further an adversarial relationship between the sexes. And you probably call yourself a feminist.
I had always heard it was "Coke Adds Life" that translated to "Coke will bring your ancestors back from the grave."
there is a company who's website is called powergenitalia.com. the italian site for the powergen company. apparently someone else wasn't doing their job.
Now you say something