Manscaping continues to spread around the world and it seems the Germans have fully embraced beauty regimes. Women of Deutschland, not so much. An online survey revealed that German men spend an average of 30 minutes daily caring for their skin and body (not including shaving and bathing), while women only dedicated about 26 minutes per day. Ich liebe metrosexuals!
(Photo Credit: Eva Serrabassa/iStockphoto)

Imagine an innocent cut on the knee leading to the nightmare of seemingly growing roots, and there you have the dilemma that faced Dede, an Indonesian fisherman, until University of Maryland’s Dr. Anthony Gasparri picked up the case. A case of HPV, which generally causes small warts on its sufferers, combined with a rare genetic condition unable to hinder the wart growth led to root-like lesions blossoming from the man’s hands and feet. Fired from his job and abandoned by his wife, Dede was left to depend on his extended family and a gig with the local freak show to support his two children. Synthetic vitamin A and surgery should allow him to lead a normal life, but bureaucratic obstacles necessitate him staying in Indonesia for the time being.

A gift-bearing crowd of 150,000 descended on the small town of Keshobpur, Bangladesh to lay eyes on Kiron, the boy born with two heads on Monday. Worries about the safety of the baby and his 22-year-old mother prompted doctors to transfer the pair to a larger city with a more substantial police force who are posted around clock. The child appears to have one set of everything with one obvious exception, but doctors have not yet determined whether any internal organs have also been duplicated. So far, he’s a healthy little guy otherwise.

Ok, so two Karl Lagerfeld posts in two days might seem a bit excessive, but the kooky fashion icon provided so many comical quotes in a recent interview with the Times’ Sunday magazine that it would be a crime not to post. The oft-smug designer sat down to express his dislike of intellectuals–”I don’t like their (intellectuals) company. I’m the most superficial man on Earth”– and his “abstract” view of death– “Everything changes, except death. Billions have died before us, so it can’t be that bad.” Lagerfeld also revealed a secret about his footwear, revealing he buys shoes a size too small because he “likes the way it feels.” Ok, one last quote for your giggling pleasure: “I have no problem with journalists. Only if they are really stupid, or if they’ve got bad breath, or if they smell.”

So, who do you call when the fire station is on fire? In one small Arkansas town, they had to come up with an quick answer on Saturday when firefighters arrived at the station to answer a call and found they had a little problem. Calling the electric company to shut off the power was a bit frustrating according to the town’s fire marshal: “We told them the fire department has a fire. SWEPCO said ‘Yeah, the fire department has a fire.’ The dispatcher told them, ‘No it’s the fire station on fire!’” The blaze, started by a lightening strike, was caught in time to prevent any major damage, and the call they were supposed to answer turned out to only be a tree branch that had fallen on a power line.

If things that go bump in the night have you clinging to your childhood teddy bear, consider swapping out that raggedy old stuffed animal for a fluffy companion of the chicer variety. German toy-maker Steiff will create a sunglass-sporting teddy bear modeled after famous fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and set to be sold at Neiman Marcus stores in September. Don’t expect a line Lagerfeld Madame Alexander dolls any time soon though, as the fashion icon commented, “Nothing scares me more than people with some doll collection. Frightening. Maybe I had one (a teddy bear); I don’t remember. I never played with anything like toys. I wanted to be grown-up.”

One-upping Addison’s posting of the panty on Grey’s Anatomy, an Australian woman is putting her pain up for auction on eBay. The first item on the block is a picture of the offending undies (since secondhand drawers aren’t sellable on the site) she found on the floor of she and her husband’s bedroom. A misdirected text message of suggestive content prompted her to race home to one very evasive hubby and the offending garment. Next up on the block will be his Harley. Said one eBay spokesperson of the incident, “This is obviously very therapeutic for this woman and it must be a great channel for her views on cheating and the sanctity of marriage.”

Physicians Formula doesn’t view the Olympics’ third place finishers as losers, just maybe a little pale. The cosmetics company plans to send all of the Games’ bronze medal winners a lifetime supply of bronzers in honor of their achievements in Beijing. Luckily U.S. gymnast Alicia Sacramone, who got bumped from a bronze following questionable judging on the vault, already seems to have the tan thing down.

Anyone hoping for a Nordic sperm donor may have to hop a plane to Mexico thanks to a US embargo on European tissues, including sperm. As one frustrated recipient noted, “I wanted a baby that looked like me and wanted to share my heritage with my baby. Now I have a beautiful Viking baby, which is what I wanted. I was hoping to give her a full sibling.” Although American labs are claim the possibility mad cow could be transmitted through sperm are nil, the government has no plans on lifting the ban that’s been in place since 2005 to prevent the spread of the destructive brain disease. So much for perpetuating the next Aryan generation…Any Danish bars in the neighborhood?

Got your attention? That’s the point of a ring tone, but India is hoping the newly-available download will also give the condom a positive image boost. In a country where discussions of HIV are on the down low, Yvonne MacPherson of the BBC group thinks it might do the trick: “A ring tone is a very public thing,” she said. “It’s a way to show you are a condom user and you don’t have any issues with it.” Or, it shows you’re creepy, creepy, creepy!

The grammar police are out in force and no one is safe… including historic monuments and national parks. Sickened by the blatant disregard for grammar across the nation, Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson struck out on a cross-country mission to correct the grammar of American signs. Their career in vandalism came to an end, though, when authorities discovered they had taken markers and Wite-Out to handwritten signs in the Grand Canyon village penned by architect, Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter via the website for the Typo Eradication Advancement League, or TEAL. Deck and Herson made a comma and apostrophe correction, but left one misspelling: “I was reluctant to disfigure the sign any further. … Still, I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight.” Time to click over to Match.com, guys.

Ladies, you may want to rethink keeping the ring once the relationship’s over after reading this one. A New York man put a hit out on his wife after a disagreement over his suspicions of her infidelity led to a domestic violence call. Enraged over her supposed disloyalty after he had given her a wedding ring worth $27,000 and dropped $38K on the wedding itself, Rockefeller Auguste hired a hit man to take her out…and cut off the hand with the ring as proof the deed had been done with the samurai sword he provided. Luckily, he approached an undercover cop to do the job (police had been tipped off about the plot), and is now in custody. His wife is in hiding, all limbs in place.

Jeni and Kitzen Branting will soon be taking their vows at the tribal plankhouse of the Coquille tribe, the first known example of a tribe explicitly sanctioning same-sex unions. Ken Tanner, chief of the Coquille, commented that, “For our tribe, we want people to walk in the shoes of other people and learn to respect differences. Through that, we think we build a stronger community.” The tribe’s sovereignty makes it a political entity separate from the state of Oregon where civil unions — not marriages — are allowed, but as Robert Miller of the Lewis & Clark College School of Law remarked, the federal government could be an issue: “It can do anything good or anything bad to the tribes and the Indian people as citizen Indians.” Tribal bells will still be ringing for the couple, though, and that’s good enough for them.

What in the name of plastic footwear is going on France?! Gold Digger obtained some exclusive shots from the upcoming issue of French Vogue that feature the normal model pouting and completely impractical wardrobe, but the choice in footwear has raised eyebrows and perplexed fashion purists. Brazilian model Raquel Zimmermann dons bright orange Crocs for one particularly gloomy shot. Yes, Crocs, as in the plastic clogs causing more cringing from coast-to-coast that pajama pants in public. Maybe some greater message exists within the image (her threads do scream prison-chic), but for now feel free to throw virtual eggs at the French Vogue folks.

In an age where the “time-out” reigns supreme, it’s hard to believe that a number of states still ask students to bend over for chewing gum. Yet, nineteen still have laws on the books allowing a good spanking for sass and other infractions. Even more disturbing to Human Rights Watch, which has launched a campaign against the practice, is the punishment’s disproportionate use on minority and disabled students. The group may be out of sync with the south, though; when a recent story ran in a local Georgia paper about the school board’s decision to keep the paddle in teachers’ hands, the overwhelming feedback was 95% for the punishment.

Proper tire inflation, obeying the speed limit, and taking public transportation are fairly common conservation methods, but on one Oregon highway, some drivers seem to be adopting more unorthodox methods. A short stretch of Interstate 84 has seen a dramatic redecorating of the berm with bottles of piss. The Department of Transportation speculates that truckers have been avoiding stopping at rest and truck stops in favor of a more portable form of relief. The upside for those folks wary of speeding trucks is that they’re slowing down; small relief for drivers of convertibles, though.
(Photo Credit: Paul Marcus /iStockphoto)

Automated calls usually get hung up on before the robot voice can pitch you a pyramid scheme or reason why you should vote for the local comptroller, but when that Stephen Hawking-like voice warns you may have an STD or HIV, you may linger on the line. At least 10 people in northern Indiana have received automated phone calls warning them they may have contracted a venereal disease. The calls purportedly come from the St. Joseph County Health Department, but agency officials say they would never deliver personal medical information through an automated system. The seemingly random calls rung up people 11 to 70 years old, creating a bit of confusion and at least a little concern.
(Photo Credit: Stephanie Horrocks/iStockphoto)

Folks with a hectic schedule and a desire to remain youthfully taut or completely expressionless, listen up because a new service called Smile Reminder sends text message reminders when the time rolls around for a Botox touch-up. The service also allows plastic surgeons to send holiday hellos and Happy Birthday wishes to patients, but aren’t both of those greetings just reminders that time keeps ticking and your face keeps falling? OMG ur old! LOL.

When Darwin boarded the Beagle for the Galapagos, did it ever cross his mind that a beagle might eventually be the beneficiary of his selection theory in the brain department? A controversial new study released in a meeting of the Canine Science Forum in Budapest suggests that after eons of human companionship, dogs may have acquired the ability to determine right from wrong along with other cognitive abilities. Commonplace behaviors such as barking and play fighting, which are not nearly as common in the wild, appear to be adaptations to the company they keep. Scientists have also run experiments used with toddlers regarding learning and recognition with some success. Good to know we’re having a positive impact on at least one species.

Sure, Forrest Gump got a packed house for his ping-pong match, but for the ladies of table tennis, it’s time for a makeover. “We are trying to push the players to use skirts and also nicer shirts, not the shirts that are made for men, but ones with more curves,” noted the VP for the International Table Tennis Federation. Citing tennis players’ combos of sport and style and, let’s face it, incredible amounts of attention paid to the leggy beach volleyball gals, the federation is trying to avoid this year’s half empty stands for future events. If high school women’s sports teams wore Catholic school girl skirts, maybe we wouldn’t need that pesky Title IX law.

As the old song goes, “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife,” and John Moloney, mayor of Mt Isa in the wilds of Australia is taking applications. The remote town is the American Old West revisited, populated by cowboys and miners, but not a whole lot of fillies; about 1 in five inhabitants are women. “Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face,” and Moloney believes that’s due to the favorable odds. Domestic violence worker, Shirley Slann — and much of the town — disagrees: “It paints the women here as second rate and suggests the men will settle for anything. I think it’s quite disgusting.” Here’s to diversifying the gene pool.

Loved The Da Vinci Code? Ever though you were an actual heir to the Knights Templar? If so you could get $150B richer. Yeah, billion. The supposed heirs of the Knights Templar are suing the Pope for property seized by the church many moons ago. Old Pope Ben may need to ditch the Prada kicks for a comfy, cheaper pair of Hush Puppies.

A light penne and a bottle of your best for the little guy. Diners at a seaside restaurant in Italy were taken aback when an army of wee turtles charged their feet. Conservationist Antonio Colucci explained, “They saw the artificial lights and took the wrong route…The diners were at first quite curious and then someone alerted the coastal authorities.” The misguided reptiles were gathered up and released safely into the sea near Calabria in southern Italy near where they had hatched.

The sound of a credit card machine ringing up a pricey purchase of the hippest handbag can easily drown out the rumblings of a hungry tummy. Well, maybe not, but for a surprisingly high number of UK women, fashion comes before food. A recent survey revealed that 49 percent of Brits spend more moola each month on their appearance than on food and 32 percent admitted that if money became tight, they would still pick purchasing the latest fashion “must-have” over filling their bellies.

Adults really do ruin all the fun. Two 17-year-olds in Germany were busted for creating the world’s fastest office chair. Witnesses claim to have spotted the go-kart-like vehicle cruising several streets in Gross-Zimmern outfitted with a metal frame, lawnmower engine and brakes. The teens are being investigated for driving without a license and violations of insurance regulations among other charges. And we used to rollerskate holding onto a rope tied to a car…how times have changed.