09.15.03:::
In Charleston, S.C., in August, graduate student Mohammed Talha Shekhani, 23, was charged with assault and lewd conduct for what he told police was a sincere, though inept, strategy for meeting women. After a friend told him to just walk up to a woman and start touching her, Shekhani said he initiated four public hugging incidents (with two adults and, almost directly in front of their mothers, two teenage girls). His lawyer said Shekhani's poor judgment was caused by the stress of an academic program that will earn him both a Ph.D. and an M.D. at Medical University of South Carolina.

09.12.03:::
Man Must Share Pension with Ex-Wife's Husband

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court has told a man that the pension he used to share with his ex-wife must now be shared with her widowed husband, authorities said on Thursday.
Bernhard Wanwitz, a judge at the administrative court in the western city of Mainz, said the man withdrew an appeal to keep his entire pension when the court said the widower was entitled to a share of his late wife's divorce settlement.Under German law, when a couple divorces, the ex-spouse with the smaller pension has a right to top-up payments from the other's pension.After the woman died, her new husband inherited her pension and then exercised his right to collect the money.The retired civil servant will now have to pay around 700 euros ($785) of his pension each month to the widower. "This is the first time I can recall a case like this," said Wanwitz. 07.29.03

07.10.03:::
Black-Widow Spiders May Improve Sex Life

Chilean researchers said on Wednesday they aimed to develop a new pill to combat impotence that would have the added bonus of being a male contraceptive, based on experiments with the venom of black-widow spiders.The spider, famed for the female's tendency to eat her mate after sex, makes a poison that can produce muscular seizure, acceleration of the heart and even death.The scientists, working at University La Frontera in the southern Chilean city of Temuco, have been studying the effects of the venom's various properties for the past seven years. By isolating these elements, they could reproduce them synthetically in drugs to strengthen weak hearts and help men with erectile dysfunction.Last November, they discovered by accident that one ingredient in spider venom could not only facilitate male erection in a way similar to the popular Viagra pill, but also render sperm infertile."This new drug could help the functioning of the male erection without having to worry about the partner getting pregnant," Fernando Romero, director of the research project, told Reuters outside his lab filled with the dangerous spiders caught in southern Chile.The feared black widow has earned its place in Chilean folklore. A womanizer is said to have been "bitten by a spider."Romero said the contraceptive effects of the drug could last up to 20 minutes, depending on the dosage.Romero and his team have won funding of $970,000 from the government and the university for three years of research, which they hope will end with a drug patent. Brazilian (news - web sites) experts and Chilean pharmaceutical company Laboratorio Silesia are also involved in the project. Romero said they were aiming to eventually produce a drug that would have a similar effect as Viagra but without any potentially harmful side-effects such as an accelerated heart rate. He said they would isolate and eliminate the agents in the venom affecting the heart. Viagra works by blocking an enzyme called PDE-5 that affects blood flow to the penis.Several Chilean doctors contacted by Reuters were slightly skeptical of the project before seeing scientific results but in general welcomed the research."This is a good project with a solid scientific base. I think it is government money well spent," said Raul Vinet, a pharmacolgist from the University of Valparaiso.

06.24.03:::
Great White Shark Gatecrashes Tuna Dinner Party

A Great White Shark has gatecrashed a tuna research project in Australia, mysteriously appearing inside a fishing pen containing around 100 tuna.The 13-foot shark, weighing about 1,500 pounds, is thought to have either bitten its way into the tuna pond or leapt a 7.5 foot electrified fence while chasing a seal last Thursday.Scientists at the pen off the coast of the South Australian tuna fishing town of Port Lincoln said Tuesday the shark had swum contently around the pen, but they were not sure how the tuna felt about their uninvited guest.A head count of the tuna showed two had disappeared."When the shark swims to the surface the tuna swim to the bottom of the net and vice versa," said a spokesman for the South Australian Research Development Institute.The scientists, who are studying tuna feeding, said they eventually coaxed the Great White from the cage by using a net to funnel it out through underwater gates.

06.09.03:::
Woman Kills Man with Her High-Heeled Shoe

A stormy relationship ended up on a Brooklyn street in the early hours of Saturday when a 220 pound woman sat on her ex-boyfriend's chest and clubbed him to death with her size 12 high heeled shoe, police said.Anna Rhinehart, 40, told authorities she attacked Roosevelt Bonds, 51, in self-defense after he punched her in the mouth, knocking out her two front teeth.The passionate struggle to the death began at 3 a.m. Saturday when Bonds saw Rhinehart at a restaurant with another man, police said."There was a dispute between them and the man was struck in the head and body with a blunt instrument," police spokeswoman Det. Carolyn Chew said.Rhinehart was charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. "It was her shoe," Det. Chew said.

05.12.03:::
Official Trapped in Car After Computer Fails

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Security guards smashed their way into an official limousine with sledgehammers on Monday to rescue Thailand's finance minister after his car's computer failed.
Suchart Jaovisidha and his driver were trapped inside the BMW for more than 10 minutes before guards broke a window. All doors and windows had locked automatically when the computer crashed, and the air-conditioning stopped, officials said.'We could hardly breathe for over 10 minutes,' Suchart told reporters. 'It took my guard a long time to realize that we really wanted the window smashed so that we could crawl out. It was a harrowing experience.'

02.03.03:::
Punxsutawney Phil Forecasts More Winter

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. (Reuters) - The weather-prognosticating groundhog known as Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow during the annual Groundhog Day ceremony on Sunday, signaling six more weeks of winter in North America.
The chubby rodent, said to dine on a rich diet that includes strawberry sundaes, was hauled from his cozy burrow beneath a maple stump on Gobbler's Knob into the glare of television camera lights and cheers from hundreds of onlookers, as part of a 117-year-old ritual.The ceremony, which dates back to 1887, stems from an ancient European superstition that winter will last another six weeks if a burrowing animal like a groundhog or a hedgehog sees its shadow on Candlemas Day, which falls on Feb. 2. No shadow means an early spring.The Punxsutawney rodent has seen its shadow 41 times over the past 50 years. It last missed its shadow in 1999.Sunday's prediction followed weeks of unusually cold weather in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest during January.For the town of Punxsutawney, a rural community of 6,800 people located 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Groundhog Day is an annual tourist festival of parades, music, sleigh rides and ice carvings that can attract thousands of out-of-town visitors.Groundhog Day has gained world notoriety in recent years, thanks mainly to the 1993 Hollywood film "Groundhog Day," starring Bill Murray. Organizers have since taken to selling groundhog souvenirs on the World Wide Web.The 15-pound rodent, which is also known as a woodchuck, has made public appearances with President Ronald Reagan and TV talk show celebrity Oprah Winfrey.

01.31.03:::
Wurst-Case Scenario Causes Police Alert

BERLIN (Reuters) - A man who mistook a salami for an automatic pistol triggered a major police operation on Friday in southern Germany, involving 10 police cars and a helicopter.
The man alerted police that he had seen three men handling a gun in a car at a motorway service area. Police cars, dogs and a helicopter chased the car and held up the men, only to identify the "weapon" as a salami."Behind the dirty windows of the car, the man had mistaken the salami for a gun," a police spokesman in Traunstein said. "The men in the car had probably passed the sausage through the car."The salami was returned to its owners, he said.

01.30.03:::
Lion Rips Woman's Arm Off

MADRID (Reuters) - A lioness in a Spanish animal sanctuary ripped the right arm off a British tourist after the 54-year old woman clambered up a barrier and stuck her fingers inside the cage, local media reported."The lady climbed up the three-meter high barrier...She climbed to the top and stuck her fingers inside the enclosure. Then Martha, one of the lionesses, grabbed her fingers, tugged her in and ripped her arm off," Serafin Domenech, owner of El Arca sanctuary near Alicante in southeast Spain, told state television Wednesday.Local media said the woman, who had been at the park with a group of other British visitors, was airlifted to a hospital nearby.

01.28.03:::
Student Sprays Gas to Avoid Math Test

LISBON (Reuters) - A Portuguese school student is under police investigation for spraying toxic gas into a classroom to avoid taking a mathematics test, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday.The test was canceled and the 16-year-old's teacher and six other pupils were taken to a hospital Monday, complaining of irritation, but were discharged shortly afterwards."He didn't have much idea of the consequences. It was the first incident of its type at this school and the case is still under investigation," the spokeswoman said in Santa Maria da Feira, near Portugal's second city Oporto.The spokeswoman could not specify what gas the student sprayed. Local media said it was of a sort restricted to the security forces and whose unauthorized use can be punished by up to eight years in jail.

01.24.03:::
Police Shoot Teddy at Jehovah's Witness

HallCOPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Danish bomb squad shot to pieces a teddy bear left on the doorstep of a Jehovah's Witness hall on Thursday evening with a note saying it contained a bomb, police said.A group of Jehovah's Witnesses on their way into a meeting had found the cuddly toy with a note reading: "If you touch me I will blow up. I am a bomb."Police told the 80 Jehovah's Witnesses to leave the hall in a quiet suburb six miles northwest of Copenhagen, and closed off the surrounding area to traffic.A bomb-disposal robot then approached the bear. "The bomb unit fired two shots at the teddy bear and there was no reaction. There is nothing that indicates that there actually was a bomb," a Copenhagen police duty officer told Reuters.Police said they were trying to establish who was responsible for the hoax.

01.23.03:::
China Supermarket Sale Stampede Kills Two

BEIJING (Reuters) - Two people were trampled to death and 15 injured in a stampede by a huge crowd which stormed a newly opened supermarket in northern China offering big bargains, an official newspaper reported Thursday.
The China Daily said 50,000 people swamped the Hualian supermarket last Friday in the Inner Mongolian city of Baotou. Local police and hospital officials confirmed the incident but had no figures for casualties or crowd numbers.The deadly rush in Baotou was not an isolated case. When the Beijing-based Hualian chain opened a store in Inner Mongolia's capital of Hohhot last July, 100,000 people turned out and 20 were injured, the Shenzhen Evening News said.And the China Daily said police canceled a Lunar New Year sale last week at a department store in the northeastern city of Harbin over crowd control concerns.The Lunar New Year falls on February 1, when the Year of the Horse gives way to the Year of the Goat in the Chinese zodiac, and the government has declared a week-long holiday.Tens of millions of people are on the move to get home to celebrate with their families. Many will spend time shopping.

01.22.03:::
Police Not Amused by Drunk Driver's Smiley

BESANCON, France (Reuters) - A man who erased his drunk-driving record from a police computer and replaced it with a winking "smiley face" graphic ended up with a suspended license and a fine when police failed to see the funny side.The 19-year-old computer whiz had been arrested for drunk driving and summoned to appear in court in Besancon, in eastern France, the French daily Liberation reported Tuesday. Finding an unmanned computer as he arrived at the police station for his hearing, the man decided to test the good humor of the court by sneaking into the database.He deleted his file from the computer's hard drive and inserted ";)" -- the text message shorthand for a winking smiley face -- in its place.But rather than smiling at the prank, the judge handed the man a three-month suspended prison sentence, a $425 fine and suspended his driving license for three months.

01.21.03:::
After the police chief of Portland, Ore., defied a local judge and said he would continue to examine suspicious people's garbage without search warrants (because, he contends, curbside garbage is public property), reporters from the local Willamette Week newspaper examined (under cover of night) a December day's curbside garbage thrown out by the chief, the district attorney and the mayor (who is officially the chief's boss). The newspaper published an inventory of each official's trash, finding much banality (e.g., what the mayor planned to watch on TV) but nothing illegal or improper. When told what the reporters did, the police chief got hostile, and the mayor, said the reporters, "went nuclear." [Willamette Week, 12-24-02]

01.20.03:::
Punta Gorda, Fla., inmate James "Happy" Borland, 41, suffered a near-fatal concussion in December from being roughed up by inmates Lemuel "K-Money" Ware, 32, and Corey Andrews, 32, because Borland had accused Ware of stealing his pet spider and renaming it "Pinky." According to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report, Borland had demanded his spider back, but Andrews intervened. Ware, who said he had purchased the spider fair and square, felt he had to go after Borland because Pinky (in a small box in Ware's shirt pocket) "told" him to. [Port Charlotte Sun-Herald, 12-19-02; St. Petersburg Times, 1-3-03]

01.17.03:::
Best Spills of 2002An 18-wheeler full of beer (Interstate 5 near Fort Tejon, Calif., July);1,500 gallons of Southern Comfort whiskey (warehouse in Louisville, Ky., July);20 tons of hot dogs (Interstate 70, Kansas City, Mo., August);pizza dough (leaking out of a truck's door, from rising yeast), spread over 25 miles of highway, from a Tombstone Pizza truck (near Chippewa Falls, Wis., July);270,000 eggs (Interstate 65, Crown Point, Ind., May);$1 million in cash (U.S. Highway 160, near Pagosa Springs, Colo., May);50,000 inch-long screws (causing scores of flat tires) (Interstate 65, near Lebanon Junction, Ky., December);37 voting machines (fell off of a truck and were ruined, six days before primary elections (Albuquerque, May).01.15.03

01.14.03:::
The Double StandardA federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in November that the U.S. Department of Justice has for about 20 years blatantly denied attorneys overtime pay in violation of federal law, a practice the department defended merely by arguing that it thought there ought to have been an exception in the law (which is an argument the department usually scoffs at when filing its own lawsuits against lawbreakers). Court of Claims Judge Robert H. Hodges Jr. said the department apparently years ago simply declared itself immune from overtime-pay law for attorneys and has been maintaining two sets of time sheets (one for pay, one to track work on cases).

01.09.03:::
In December, police in Urbana, Ohio, said they would soon file fraud charges against Teresa Milbrandt, 35, for tricking local people and businesses into giving her more than $10,000 on behalf of her 7-year-old daughter, who she falsely said had leukemia. Milbrandt apparently never even told her daughter why she had to have her head shaved (to simulate the effects of chemotherapy), but that touch of realism ultimately caused the scheme to collapse when someone noticed the hair had been cut and was not falling out.

01.08.03:::
His Own "Head Start" Program: A 7-year-old Minneapolis boy stole an SUV on Dec. 6 and crashed into several things, and then, after attempts by the police and his guardian to explain to him why stealing cars was wrong, he stole another one on Dec. 17 and hit another vehicle, injuring a boy riding with his mother. His two reported explanations were, respectively: "I want to be a good driver when I grow up," and "I just had to get to school and I don't know where it is." (According to a hopeful Minneapolis Star Tribune report, experts believe that kids that young who commit crimes are no more than two to three times more likely to turn into violent criminals.) [Star Tribune, 12-18-02, 12-19-02]

01.07.03:::
Candy Leads Cops to 'Dum-Dum' Robbery Suspect
LITTLE ROCK - An Arkansas man was arrested after police followed a trail of evidence from a bungled bank heist -- discarded wrappers from candy he allegedly stole and ate as he made his getaway, police said on Saturday.
"It's a classic," said Patrolman Jerry Lung of the Marked Tree police department, who arrested Michael Brown, 33. Marked Tree is a small community about 135 miles northeast of Little Rock.
Brown allegedly smashed the glass door of a bank in the community, and then looked directly at the bank's security cameras, Lung said. He also triggered an alarm.When Brown found that all the money had been stashed away because the bank was closed, he allegedly stole a clock radio and fistfuls of candy, police said.As he left the facility, he ate the candy and left a trail of wrappers that led to his home in a nearby trailer park.Brown was arraigned on Friday on robbery and other charges and remains in jail pending trial. Bail was set at $25,000."It was almost like he wanted to be caught," Lung said Saturday.The candy allegedly stolen from the bank was "Dum-Dums," the police officer said.

12.31.02:::
Citizenship for Cloned Babies??
The prospect of someone seeking a U.S. passport for a new-born clone exercised minds at the State Department, but the experts appeared at a loss on how they would handle it."In the hypothetical situation of a cloned baby, this would be a new situation. Therefore, at this time we would be unable to determine how U.S. laws regarding nationality would apply to this child," spokesman Philip Reeker told a daily briefing Monday."That's a situation that is a case of first impression," he added, using legal jargon for something unprecedented.The possibility of a passport arose because of reports that a 31-year-old American may have given birth abroad to a clone of herself and was heading "home" with her infant girl, Eve.A State Department official said issues of parentage and nationality could arise with a clone, especially if the child and the woman who gave birth were not genetically related.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said last week that implanting a cloned embryo in a woman would be illegal in the United States without its approval.Reeker said that if an American parent met certain requirements, a child born abroad would automatically become a U.S. citizen and could immediately obtain a U.S. passport. Even infants require passports to enter the United States.

01.20.02:::
LONDON (Reuters) - Frequent sex won't increase the chances of a heart attack in middle-aged men, research showed on Thursday.
Nearly 1,000 men aged 45-59 were recruited in and around the Welsh town of Caerphilly and tracked for 20 years.A quarter said they did the deed at least twice a week, whilst one in five performed less than once a month. The rest came somewhere in between.The research, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, concluded that there was no clear evidence of more frequent sex increasing the chances of a stroke.Those who had sex less than once a month were more likely to suffer sudden death from heart disease, although the likelihood decreased as the men got older.With the evidence in mind, the researchers concluded that, based on a lifetime of sex once a week (on average) for 50 years, only one in 580 men might die as a result of sexual exertions.

01.18.02:::
WALDSHUT, Germany (Reuters) - Europe's first brothel catering for women has gone bankrupt because customers refused to pay up, German police said Friday.
The brothel owner, whom police named only as Clemens K., 31, was arrested in Germany after he resorted to mugging an elderly couple with a toy gun."He told us his brothel had gone bust. If they'd operated like a normal brothel and made sure they got the money before the sex, they would have been all right," said Peter-Georg Biewald, a police spokesman in Waldshut, southwestern Germany."But they didn't ask for money until afterwards and the women only paid for what they thought the service had been worth."Clemens ran the brothel with five other male prostitutes in the village of Leibstadt in Switzerland, close to the German border."When it opened at the beginning of December, the media celebrated it as Europe's first brothel for women. But I can't imagine he had a lot of visitors," said Biewald.The brothel was called "Angels" and occupied a Swiss chalet-style house.

01.04.02:::
An elderly German man thwarted armed robbers by throwing a tin of sauerkraut at them, police said on Friday.The man, 71, was working in a grocery store stacking tins of chopped pickled cabbage, one of Germany's favorite foods, when he heard men threatening a female shop assistant."There were two of them, they were masked and one had knocked her to the floor with a pistol," said Manfred Bergener, police spokesman in Korbach, central Germany.The employee, still holding tins of sauerkraut, approached the robbers who threatened him too."So he threw a tin at the man with the gun and hit him in the head. That startled them and they ran off without taking any cash," Bergener said. The men were still at large.

01.03.02:::
McDonald's outlets in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou could face fines of $1,200-$12,000 after a Snoopy doll promotion which turned violent, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.Dwindling supplies of the hot-selling cartoon canine doll triggered a run on the U.S. fast food giant's restaurants last May, resulting in scuffles among customers and a smashed window at one location.An investigation by the city's industry and commerce administration found the chain's 34 Guangzhou outlets were not licensed to sell the toy, said Xinhua.Provincial authorities would render a final decision on the alleged violation, which under Chinese law is punishable by a fine of $1,200-$12,000, it said.McDonald's in Guangzhou could not be reached for comment.Last April, McDonald's started offering the eight-inch Snoopy dolls for 10 yuan apiece with a "value meal" in a two-days-a-week promotion.McDonald's sold 233,140 Snoopy dolls in April and May, said Xinhua, citing investigators.But the promotion soured after excited children, anxious parents and entrepreneurs keen on a quick buck thronged McDonald's outlets.Disgruntled Guangzhou residents flooded McDonald's hot-lines with complaints after queuing for hours without getting their hands on a doll, state media have said.Parents complained their children's education was on the line as disappointed students who collected anything but the full set of six dolls lacked the will to pursue their studies.

12.24.01:::
An Irish Protestant minister who does not believe in Christmas or that Jesus was the Son of God has been suspended from his post for three months to "reflect on his statements."Andrew Furlong, Dean of Clonmacnoise and Rector of Trim in County Meath, startled worshippers in his quiet Irish midlands parish when his unconventional views on traditional Christian teachings were aired in articles published on his Web site."I don't believe the traditional understanding of Christmas, that God took human form and was born as a babe in Bethlehem," he told Reuters on Monday.Furlong, 54, who was ordained in the Anglican Church of Ireland in the early 1970s, said he has held his unorthodox beliefs for more than 30 years but had not shared them previously with his parishioners."With the deepest respect for others and their beliefs, to my mind Jesus, and John the Baptist also, were mistaken and misguided 'end time' prophets," he wrote in one article."Jesus was neither a mediator nor a savior, neither superhuman nor divine. We need to leave him to his place in history and move on."Furlong believes a modern church needs to allow a diverse spread of views and allow members to challenge traditional teachings."Over the years the church has changed its view on many things -- slavery, divorce, birth control, the Latin mass," he said.But his views have gone down badly with the Bishop of Meath and Kildare, Richard Clarke, who has ordered the priest to take a three-month leave of absence to "facilitate a period of quiet reflection during which he may reflect on his statements.""My position is pretty uncertain. I am suspended and I may find at the end of the three months I will not have my license renewed," said Furlong, who for the time being continues to live in the rectory in Trim, around 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Dublin, and draw his salary from the Church of Ireland.

09.06.01:::
Istanbul's leading circumciser, Kemal Ozkan (106,000 lifetime procedures), predicted in August that because of the economic downturn, he will perform only half of the 3,000 he performed last year. Depleted government budgets force Turk boys in poverty to wait until military service to get cut, according to an Associated Press dispatch, and business is off by half at the famous Circumcision Palace (the place where well-off parents can have their sons snipped upstairs and then fete them at elaborate parties downstairs). In the traditional Turkish coming-of-age ceremony, boys parade beforehand through the streets dressed like royalty in white suits with capes, holding gold-trimmed scepters.

08.26.01:::
Curt Storey, 62, who lives near Pittsburgh, Pa., filed a wrongful-discharge lawsuit in August against Burns International Security Services, claiming he was fired from his job because he refused supervisors' demands that he cleanse his lunchbox and pickup truck of Confederate flag decals, orders that he calls illegal national-origin discrimination. Storey claims he is a "Confederate Southern American," even though he is a lifelong Pennsylvanian and even though courts have not recognized CSA as a protected class under anti-discrimination law.

08.16.01:::
A bomb 100X more powerful than that which hit Hiroshima was lost at sea in 1958, 6 miles from Tybee Island, which is at the mouth of the Savannah River at the Ga.-S.C. line. The Pentagon looked for it for a few days, then abandoned the search, saying that it was not armed, anyway, and thus not dangerous. On the other hand, the report also said that it was best not to look for it anymore, in that it was too dangerous to try to pick it up. Since then, several munitions people have said that bombs in that circumstance were usually armed.

07.30.01:::
Bernhard Goetz, who became part hero and villain in 1984 when he shot his way out of a perceived subway attack by black teen-agers in New York City, announced recently that he is running for mayor of the city on a limited-program platform: hire Mayor Giuliani (who legally cannot run again) to actually run the city; install vegetarianism in municipal facilities; feed the poor generously but only with deliberately mediocre food (so they won't get used to it); permit city workers to take productive naps on the job; and promote the gentle squirrel as our most precious pet.

07.18.01:::
Ms. Vermont Elaine Beverly, 47, is likely the only imprisoned murderer in the United States who earns a full salary and benefits as an ordinary state employee, according to a June Associated Press dispatch. Because Beverly (who has served 10 years of a 15-year sentence) scored high on a state test and because the Alabama Vocational Rehabilitation Office is required to hire high-scorers, she spends days on the job and returns to her Birmingham cell at night. Much of her salary is remitted to the state, but she retains full health insurance and retirement benefits.

07.16.01:::
According to the annual report on estimated accidents in the home, from Britain's Department of Trade and Industry and detailed in a June issue of New Scientist, three dozen people were sent to the hospital for injuries associated with teapot covers; about 165 for injuries from placemats, about 330 from toilet-paper holders, and about 13,000 from vegetables. However, sponge-related accidents fell from 996 the previous year to 787, and only 329 injuries from meat cleavers were reported.

07.12.01:::
According to police in Wethersfield, Conn., Richard Levitt, 42, secretly videotaped himself having sex with a girlfriend and decided to post the video on the Internet, which caused problems when the girlfriend found out, and more problems when a second Levitt girlfriend found out, and even more problems when Mrs. Levitt found out. (The girlfriends met and together confronted Levitt and his wife at home at 2 a.m. on March 25.) Levitt was arrested for disseminating voyeuristic materials.

07.11.01:::
A 73-year-old woman rescued her Scottish terrier from the jaws of a pit bull by biting the pit bull on the neck until it released her dog (Tallahassee, Fla.).

07.10.01:::
Two men were arrested for selling marijuana from a neighborhood ice-cream truck, after drawing the attention of police because the only customers in line were adults (Brooklyn, N.Y.).

07.09.01:::
Recent Too-Cute Diagnoses: "Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome" (a strong urge to stay out late, followed by an inability to wake up on time, according to Dr. Michael Thorpy, a sleep-disorders specialist interviewed for an April New York Observer report) and "Pseudologia Fantastica" (a condition doctors offered up to a judicial disciplinary commission in May as a medical explanation for why Los Angeles Judge Patrick Couwenberg had padded his resume with tall tales).

07.04.01:::
rank T. Singer, 38, pleaded guilty in May to manslaughter in the death of a 36-year-old man in Stroudsburg, Pa., that resulted from consensual bondage play between the two men in a motel room last year. The younger man, wearing a sauna suit, was found duct-taped and handcuffed to a chair and apparently choked to death after, according to news reports, being force-fed 2 1/2 pounds of peanut butter.

07.03.01:::
In March, the Yakima Indian Nation performed two rain ceremonies (ancient rituals involving fruits and berries) in the Washington mountains to bring an end to the drought plaguing the Northwest and then sent the bill for expenses ($32,000) to the region's electricity provider, Bonneville Power Administration, pointing out the (slight) increase in rainfall afterward. Nonetheless, Bonneville declined to pay.

07.02.01:::
Golfers cannot play on courses in Germany without a license, which applicants must earn by passing a written test and a skills test in putting, chipping and driving, according to a June dispatch in The Wall Street Journal. Golf association officials defend the requirement for keeping away slow-playing novices, but they estimate it might take about $800 or more for lessons and classes just to get the certificate.

07.01.01:::
In recent New York City art auctions, according to a May report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tom Friedman's "Untitled" (a Styrofoam cup of evaporated-coffee stains, pinned to a piece of wood along with a ladybug) went for $30,000 at Phillips Auctioneers; Robert Gober's "Broom Sink" (a fancifully constructed wash basin) earned nearly $500,000; and Jeff Koons' life-sized ceramic "Michael Jackson and Bubbles" (the chimp) sold for $5.6 million.

06.29.01:::
High school senior Trevor Loflin scored a perfect 1600 on his SATs this year despite the potential handicap of having lived the previous three years with his mother and sisters in the back of their Chevrolet Suburban, the result of the mother's having lost her job as a physician in Fresno, Calif. Mother Cynthia Hamilton decided to home-school her kids and, in view of housing prices in California, found the family got along just fine without a house (though they recently moved into a one-bedroom apartment). Since the family turned to religion to get them through their ordeal, Trevor told the Los Angeles Times he would probably enroll in Bob Jones University in the fall.

06.28.01:::
In March in Huntsville, Ala., John and Ruby Barnes were hospitalized with severe burns after trying to heat cans of aerosol paint on their stove to make the paint come out easier.

06.27.01:::
According to documents released upon the settlement of a lawsuit in Kapolei, Hawaii, in February (involving sexual harassment claims against managers at a Safeway store), in one incident in the mid-1990s, a male employee who was spying on a female customer through a restroom peephole was injured when the woman realized she was being watched and shoved a toilet plunger handle through the hole, into his eye socket. (In the lawsuit, Safeway agreed to pay $250,000 to a former employee who had made numerous allegations about same managers' behavior.)

06.26.01:::
Swedish scientists from the National Board of Fisheries reported in March that, after observing 117 pairs of trout engaged in sex (quivering violently with their mouths open, followed by the supposed simultaneous release of egg and sperm), they found that males always released their sperm at the end but that, half the time, the females cheated, withholding their eggs. The researchers speculated that the female was "faking an orgasm" as a mating strategy to preserve the eggs in case she ran into a more-desirable male.

06.25.01:::
The Bethesda Center for Reproductive Health and Fertility in Cincinnati announced in March that the previously glum conception prospects of a couple were suddenly improved because the father's limited sperm cells had been safely stored in a hamster egg until they could be implanted to his wife's egg. Normally, sperm cells lose potency when not used immediately, and in the case of a man who produced fewer than 200 (instead of the millions most men produce), the attrition rate would have almost guaranteed failure. In May, the child was born.

06.24.01:::
Lawyers Living the American Dream: A consumer who was oppressively required to buy a full season of NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV satellite service (instead of being offered a cheaper weekly rate) gets back $9 to $21, according to a class-action settlement announced in May, but the lawyers would receive $3.7 million. And a consumer who was oppressively charged daily late fees by Blockbuster Video (without realizing how much they could amount to) gets back a few discount coupons, according to a class-action settlement announced in June, but the lawyers would get $9.25 million.

06.23.01:::
A 36-year-old man who fell asleep in a garbage bin was automatically loaded onto a truck and compacted before being rescued and treated for multiple fractures.

06.22.01:::
A Maryland man punched and kicked Cookie Monster at a crowded Sesame Street theme park outside Philadelphia, after the character declined to pose for a photo with his 3-year-old daughter.

06.22.01:::
In January, Ms. Sierra Kirkpatrick, 15, married Mr. Sauren Crow, 48, of Taos, N.M., after Sierra's mother vouched for her at a Las Vegas wedding (which is required for a minor to marry in Nevada). Sierra's father (the mother's ex-husband) went nuts when he found out, but the mother and others say the couple is well-suited for each other, in that both are artsy types, dress in "Goth" attire, and actually resemble each other, with their all-black clothes and long black hair.

06.21.01:::
As always, many people (375) died from accidents and fights during Thailand's New Year festival in April. And as always, there were several deaths on New Year's Eve in Japan from eating the traditional mochi rice cakes, which are so sticky that about a dozen people choke to death on them every Dec. 31 (eight last New Year's). And as always, many (this year 35) hajj-pilgrimage Muslims at the annual stone-the-devil ritual in Mina, Saudi Arabia, in March were crushed to death by the sheer numbers of those worshipping.

06.20.01:::
Beverly Hills, Calif., security consultant Paxton Quigley introduced SuperBra recently, a $30 garment that doubles as a holster for a gun the size of a snub-nosed .38 revolver; said Quigley: "If a woman is attacked, the purse is the first thing taken from her (so) a good place to conceal a weapon is in the chest area." And in March, the British firm Gossard introduced the $40 Ultrabra Airotic that inflates (via accompanying pump) up to two cup sizes for the woman who, according to a spokesperson, doesn't want "huge breasts through the day but (does) want to have them in the evening."

06.19.01:::
Among the holdover Democratic projects recently canceled by the Bush administration was an $860,000 program to teach public housing tenants to reduce stress and improve their self-esteem by the use of colors, meditation, aromatherapy and "applied kinesiology" (in which a practitioner feels a person's glands to determine, for therapy purposes, which of 14 personality types that person is). The career Housing and Urban Development official who had approved the program is a priest of the International Metaphysical Ministry, and the program's chief trainer said she was "shocked" that something so successful was being terminated.

06.18.01:::
A February report in the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle described a local patient's remarkable recovery from botulism paralysis at Park Ridge Hospital. The woman recently recalled that, after the toxin struck her in June 2000, she lay in her hospital bed, able to hear everything around her but unable to communicate in any way with anyone, and that someone had erroneously said she was a big fan of singer Celine Dion. After that, the hospital staff, in an effort to aid the woman's recovery, played the singer's music in her room around the clock for weeks. When the paralysis left the woman, one of the first joys she experienced, she said, was stopping the music because she actually never cared for Dion.

06.15.01:::
At least 1,400 college students are majoring in "golf" at eight universities, with more schools about to start programs, according to a March Wall Street Journal report. One school just completed a $1.1 million student "learning laboratory" (that is, a model golf clubhouse), part of what is necessary to meet the demand for pros as new or expanded U.S. courses open at the rate of about one a day. Curricula include business classes, turf science, and many, many rounds of golf.

06.14.01:::
Treva Throneberry, 31, who for four recent years was Brianna Stewart (Evergreen High, Vancouver, Wash., Class of '00, GPA 2.83), notable for getting a D in drama class despite her successful ruse and for getting a 45-year-old man jailed for having sex with an underage girl (which, in reality, she was not).

06.13.01:::
A 46-year-old toll-booth operator slipped and was accidentally dragged to his death by an 18-wheeler when he reached out of the booth to grab snow on the moving truck to arm himself for a snowball fight with another toll-booth operator.

06.12.01:::
In Charleston, W.Va., in April, James Dale Duncan, 38, was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison for having sex with his daughter beginning when she was 13, for the purpose, according to him, of preventing her from ruining her life by getting pregnant with her boyfriend. Duncan insisted he acted only "from a parent's point of view and not a pervert's," and his sister agreed, telling the judge, "He didn't do this for pleasure." Unremorseful, Duncan said, after sentencing, "I'm going to jail knowing she won't end up pregnant."

06.11.01:::
The human-egg-donor business is flourishing in America, with brokers offering tall, athletic, brainy blondes as much as $80,000 for a multiple-egg harvest (though the average woman gets $5,000 or less), according to a May Los Angeles Times report. Several Ivy League women told the Times they pay off a semester's bills in a single doctor's visit to have eggs extracted by syringe (after a several-week hormone regimen). Said a bioethicist, "There is not much difference between those [egg brokers'] ads and what goes on with prize breeding of animals."

06.08.01:::
Tye Thomas, 22, resigned as mayor of Gun Barrel City, Texas, a week after he telephoned police to insist that they come arrest him because he was intoxicated in public.

06.04.01:::
According to a petition filed in Common Pleas Court in Dayton, Ohio, in May, Boomer, a golden retriever, is the plaintiff suing the Invisible Fence Co. because the electrical charge to his collar, triggered when he attempts to leave his guardians' yard, was too strong and, according to an Associated Press dispatch, caused him severe emotional distress, for which he asks $25,000. Boomer's guardians, Andrew and Alyce Pacher, who purchased the "invisible fence" and permitted the electrical charge, were not sued.

06.03.01:::
The Mexican government announced that beginning June 15, it would distribute "survival" kits to its citizens crossing the border illegally into California and Arizona because they face such a rugged journey. Included in the kits are bandages, aspirin, drugs for snake and scorpion bites, dry meat, granola, 25 condoms (or birth-control pills), and anti-diarrhea medicine. Said a Mexican official, "Those who've gone to the U.S. have told us (what) they need."

05.31.01:::
In March, a California consumer group, analyzing information supplied to the Federal Trade Commission by auto manufacturers, reported that the companies buy back about 100,000 of their cars every year (95 percent with one or more safety defects) under federal "lemon" laws, but then resell all but a few thousand of them after supposedly "repairing" them, even though they could not successfully repair them when the original consumers owned the cars. According to Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, most of the repurchased cars are sold at auction in the states in which it is the easiest to hide the fact that the car was a "lemon law buyback."

05.30.01:::
A Vancouver, British Columbia, apartment complex was evacuated and condemned in April after a dentist died inhaling toxic vapors while engaging in his at-home hobby of fooling around with his large collection of mercury.

05.27.01:::
Brandon Clifford, 27, pled guilty in May in Bucks County, Pa., to attempting via the Internet to lure an underage girl for sex, but apparently Clifford's perversion of choice is merely to experience pain by having someone kick him in the testicles. This fetish, named (according to the prosecutor) "Asian Ball Busting," would also have been practiced by the girl's smashing Clifford's scrotum violently with her hand from underneath. After his arrest in January, Clifford was fired from his job as an inspector with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

05.25.01:::
At the County Commission meeting in Wichita, Kan., Commissioner Ben Sciortino objected to the procurement of Scott paper towels at $8.06 per thousand when another brand was available at $3.67. However, commissioners Betsy Gwin and Tim Norton, who have perhaps seen too many TV commercials, knew immediately what to do: They sloshed down some water on the commissioners' table and tested the absorbency of each towel, with the Scott towel reportedly picking up at least twice as much water. Commissioner Sciortino quickly withdrew his objection.

05.24.01:::
In Montreal, pro boxer Davey Hilton, 37, was convicted of sexually assaulting two girls (age 12 at the time), after having a judge reject his claim that the girls were lying. Hilton said that since 1983, he has suffered from a "wandering testicle," which tends to migrate into his abdomen when he has an erection, which he routinely contains by fastening a rubber band around his scrotum every time he is preparing to have sex (including masturbation); since neither girl ever mentioned the rubber band, he said, they must be lying about the encounters. However, Hilton has repeatedly claimed a foggy memory about the past, confessing that he spent much of that time period intoxicated.

05.22.01:::
West Hempstead, N.Y., high school guidance counselor David D'Amato, 39, was convicted in April of e-mail-disabling mischief against three universities, crimes motivated by revenge when certain male students at those schools tried to break off their association with D'Amato. Their relationships consisted of D'Amato's paying them each hundreds of dollars over the years for their making videotapes of themselves being tied up and tickled, for D'Amato's viewing pleasure. D'Amato, who was known as "territickle" in his online community, was not charged with sex crimes because the boys were at all times clothed and their activity limited to tickling.

05.21.01:::
A 54-year-old forgery suspect was released from jail after his wife presented a certificate showing that she had posted bail; however, the certificate turned out to be a forgery (Edwardsville, Ill.).

05.20.01:::
Dr. Craig DuMond was dismissed from practice at a Saranac Lake, N.Y., medical facility after mistakenly operating on the wrong knee of his patient. Five years earlier, Dr. DuMond had operated on another patient's wrong hip, and as a result, the medical center at that time initiated a safety procedure requiring the staff to write "yes" on the correct body part for surgery. Since Dr. DuMond operated this time on a part that did not contain the word "yes," the medical center has concluded that the previous rule was inadequate and now requires the staff additionally to write "no" on the body parts that will not be operated on.

05.18.01:::
In April, the Washington (D.C.) Humane Society pled guilty to a charge of illegally euthanizing three mockingbirds in violation of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the prosecutor said the society actually illegally euthanized more than 800 protected birds during the previous four years. In the latest incident, the society (which claimed it never realized it needed a permit to treat protected birds) was trying to eliminate a threat of mockingbirds dive-bombing pedestrians near the State Department headquarters.

05.17.01:::
Police in West Vancouver, British Columbia, said in April that they had stopped a three-year petty-crime spree in a neighborhood of upscale homes when they arrested multimillionaire Eugene Mah, 64, and his son, Avery, 32. According to police, the two are responsible for stealing hundreds of minor and even tacky items, such as garbage cans, marginal lawn decorations, and even government recycling boxes, and keeping them at their own posh home. Mah's Vancouver real estate holdings are reported at about $13 million (U.S.), but among the items he allegedly stole were one family's doormat and, subsequently, each of the 14 doormats the family purchased as replacements.

05.14.01:::
ACK!! I was given this "motivational tool" called a sport brain... and it has done the unthinkable... I've been MOTIVATED TO WALK!!! Ok kids, this is an evil ploy by the government to get our fat lazy asses off the couch... JUST SAY NO!
Now, back to the couch and bon bons for me!03.15.01

02.05.01:::
Demotivation has struck the owners. We haven't felt like updating the site. Deal with it.

I mean really. Did you want us to update it? Did you want us to actually show some motivation? Does anyone even care?!?

01.04.01:::
Two members of a gang of Brazilian car thieves may have drank vials of HIV-infected blood -- thinking it was a yogurt drink -- found in a stolen car, officials said on Wednesday.Over the New Year's weekend, six armed bandits overpowered a worker at a medical laboratory in the remote western state of Rondonia, and stole his car while he was on the way to the airport to ship blood samples to a distant laboratory, a spokesman for Rondonia's security secretariat told Reuters."The blood samples came from AIDS patients and were being shipped for further tests," the spokesman said.HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.The thieves sped out of town, but made a brief stop at a bar on their way. After a few stiff drinks, two members of the gang uncovered the vials and gulped them down, mistaking them for drinkable yogurt, the spokesman added.The two suspects apparently exposed themselves to the deadly, incurable disease."I don't know how it happened, but the culprits told reporters here that they were drunk and confused and didn't know what they were doing," the spokesman said. The spokesman noted that the suspects had not told police about drinking the blood.Police caught four of the alleged robbers some 50 miles (80 km) down the road after the car broke down.

01.03.01:::
A woman kidnapped a two-year-old girl in the southern Kazakh city of Chimkent on New Year's Eve in an effort to force the girl's mother to repay a $14 debt, city police said Wednesday.
She grabbed the child while her parents were out of their apartment and took her 30 km (20 miles) away, but police found her without difficulty and returned her to her parents.

01.02.01:::
A wild elephant pulled a man down from a tree, trampled him to death and for two weeks has refused to part with the corpse, police in northeast India say.
The man climbed the tree to escape a herd of wild elephants rampaging through his village about 80 miles from Guwahati, the largest city in Assam.One elephant grabbed him, pulled him to the ground and broke his legs."The elephant must have got even more irritated as the villagers were trying to free the man," a forest ranger said Sunday. "It trampled him to death and took the body along with him."That was two weeks ago and it has been carrying the body around ever since, police said.

12.31.00:::
Just call it cham-PAIN instead of champagne this New Year's Eve.
Two party-pooping California researchers have found that the familiar tingle on the tongue caused by the fizzy drink revelers love to guzzle as they toast the New Year is no pleasure at all. In fact, it is downright painful.
"The tingle you get from a chili pepper is working on the pain system," Michael O'Mahony, a food scientist at the University of California, Davis, who co-led the study, said on Friday. "But it also turns out that the fizz or the carbonation you get from a fizzy drink works on the same system.""The pain is giving you the message, watch out for this stuff, be careful,". "We are interested in the mechanisms of how pain and irritation work in the mouth."The two researchers compared the effects of capsaicin, which gives chilies their burn, with nicotine on nerve activity in rats. When dripped onto the tongue, both the capsaicin and nicotine caused a firing of trigeminal nerves, the first pain relay on the way to the brain.But if the capsaicin was stopped for a few minutes, the nerves became desensitized and the response decreased --- which is like eating a spicy meal and finding the food less hot the more you eat."If you walk into a smoky room, you immediately have an irritating sensation in the eyes, but you quickly become desensitized," added Earl Carstens, who co-led the study.But for carbonated drinks, like soda, sparkling wine and, of course, champagne, blame the bubbles. The fizz in those drinks are made of carbon dioxide, which produces the carbonic acid that hurts the tongue, the researchers said.The researchers say the same principal applies to any drink that gets its fizz from carbon dioxide. "If you stick your tongue in carbonated water for a few seconds, that gets painful," Carstens said.One way to avoid the pain, however, was to drink Guinness beer instead. That liquid gets its frothy fizz from nitrogen which produces a different, smoother feel in the mouth, the researchers said.Have a Sad and Lonely New Years!! :)

12.29.00:::
A man fell to his death when he steered a powerful speedboat over a 165-foot dam wall, a South African newspaper reported Thursday.Andre Beukes, a 27-year-old policeman, had taken the boat for a spin on the Loskop Dam Tuesday leaving his wife and their baby on the shore, the Citizen newspaper said."People saw him going over. There were quite a lot of people in quite a state," said a manager of the Loskop Dam Aventura Resort.The boat was smashed to pieces and Beukes died of his multiple injuries at the base of the dam wall, police said.12.28.00

12.27.00:::
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a self-confessed computer dunce, will help conduct a class on a favorite, if unlikely, subject: information technology (IT).
The prime minister will not attend the classes in person, but an animated image of Mori will assist an owl instructing visitors to the government's INPAKU Internet exposition on such basics as Japan's IT-related laws.The online class, entitled "Study with the prime minister! An easy IT class," will be on offer in the expo's virtual pavilion, a spokesman for the prime minister said in a statement on Thursday.The expo, due to start on December 31, is a government project intended to promote Japan's so-called IT revolution, one of Mori's core policy initiatives.Television commercials publicizing the event show the prime minister playing with a personal computer while drinking a cup of Japanese tea.Never mind that Mori, by his own admission, never even touched a computer before he became prime minister in April.

12.26.00:::
German students who moonlight as Santa Clauses during the Christmas season said on Saturday they are growing tired of parents who push them to scold their children for misbehavior.
"Parents are increasingly demanding that we bring the stick and scold their kids rather than deliver the goodies," said Joerg Rupert Schoepfel, who runs a rent-a-Santa service that sends hundreds of students dressed in white beards and red outfits to thousands of Berlin homes each year.
"Christmas is supposed to be a fun time and we want to distribute joy and happiness," Schoepfel told Bild newspaper. "There's nothing wrong with a well-intentioned warning. But parents should educate their children themselves."He said many parents want him and his hundreds of part-time Santas to tell their children to work harder in school, stop fighting with their brothers and sisters, clean up their rooms and stop sucking their thumbs or pacifiers."I'm tired of having to take their pacifiers with me," he said. "I've got at least 50 already. And when kids wet their beds, it's not a problem I should have to deal with. "When the poor little kids can't remember the poem they are forced to memorize, I like to say: 'OK, let's see if Daddy can recite that'." That often ends the visit, he said.

12.21.00:::
Flight Attendants Allowed to Slap Sex PestsSwissair flight attendants will be allowed to slap sex pests and can retaliate against other unruly passengers by tying them up in their seats."We do not recommend it, but we accept it if our staff reacts when assaulted and will defend our staff in court," Swissair spokesman Erwin Schaerer said on Thursday.From Jan. 1, Swissair planes will be equipped with a kind of plastic handcuffs that can be used on unruly passengers.The number of instances of aggressive or unruly travelers rose to 502 cases in 1999 from 286 cases in 1996 while the total number of Swissair passengers rose to 14 million from 9 million.The spokesman said that about one-third of these incidents were related to alcohol consumption and another third to the ban on smoking on board. Sexual assaults and cases of "air rage" that force jets to make unscheduled stops were very rare.

12.18.00:::
Demotivated Souls - We Need ThemAre you devoted to demotivate.com? Think we are funny? Like what you see? Would you like to make our day and also get your name on here all at the same time?Here's what we need. If you can manage to get our website as Link of the Day on a website that gets traffic (i.e. dont submit something saying 'It's on my site! I get 5 hits a day!') then we will look it over and if in fact its a decent site we will write a news article about you or something funny and put your name on demotivate.com with a link to your page if you have one.Give it your best and we will try to share the wealth!

12.15.00:::
Washing your hair, working late, flooded kitchen -- all these excuses may be a thing of the past if a lie-detecting telephone on sale in Turkey takes off.
"This is a phone that enables you to tell if someone is telling the truth or not on the other end of the line," said Tulay Ispirli, manager of a shop called Vakkorama in the western city of Izmir which is selling the phones for $159 each.
The phone has an electronic device which notes changes in frequency that the ear cannot discern.
A red flight flashes if the person is lying, a yellow light means you should take their words with a pinch or salt, and a green light means you can believe what you hear.Ispirli said there had been a lot of interest in the lie-detector phone, though at first customers were doubtful about the phone's abilities. "But once they try it they enjoy it," she told Reuters Television.12.14.00

12.13.00:::
Angered by his country's soccer loss in the Asian Cup games, Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, imprisoned the team's three most disappointing players and had them whipped on the soles of their feet (Baghdad, Iraq).

12.12.00:::
The New England Journal of Medicine reported in October on apparently the first-ever transfer of a food-poisoning virus during a football game. Florida State beat Duke, 62-13, in the 1998 game, but 43 nauseous Duke players and assistants got some measure of revenge by inadvertently making 11 FSU players violently ill during and after the game by passing the virus via their unwashed hands and the fresh vomit on their own uniforms. The cause was contaminated turkey sandwiches.

12.11.00:::
South Koreans have been running insurance scams by chopping off their own feet and finger for payoffs of $40,000 and $7,500, respectively. During a two-week period in August 2000, three more scams were reported: Huang Chun-ming, 35, hacked off his wrist after purchasing additional insurance (Taichung, Taiwan); Chen Shih-hung, 37, chopped off his finger to make his claim (Chiching, Taiwan); and a 28-year-old man was charged with collecting $15,000 in an insurance payout in Dusseldorf, Germany, after he castrated himself and blamed it on a gang's attack.

12.08.00:::
High School senior John E. Smith Jr. was suspended for a revenge-based prank in which he brought a cake to school and announced that it was his birthday and that he wanted to share it with administrators. As the six staff members who accepted his generosity found out with their first bites, the secret ingredient in the cake was clumps of hair from different areas of Smith's body.Happy Birthday! :)

12.07.00:::
Question: Would you rather drink a cup of pus, or a 1" thick scab sandwich?The residents of Wertz Avenue in Charleston, W.Va., were just about at the breaking point because of chronic blocked-sewer problems. Not only do the city's storm drains regularly get clogged, sending raw sewage into the street, but recent sewer line backups have spilled waste from Gunnoe's Whole Hog Sausage slaughtering and processing plant, in the form of waves of blood and meat chunks oozing down the street.

12.06.00:::
German authorities chopped down dozens of russet-colored larch trees that had been planted to form a giant swastika in a forest of evergreen pines.
The larches were planted in 1938 by a devoted Hitler follower and their message only becomes visible -- from the air -- when the leaves turn yellow in Autumn.
Spurred by a wave of public protest after a Reuters aerial photograph of the 200-by-200-foot swastika was published in local newspapers, state forestry officials moved in with chain saws early Monday to obliterate the Nazi symbol.But a dispute over land ownership on part of the property meant that only about half of the swastika could be cut down."The explosive nature of this Nazi pattern in the trees had to be defused," said Jens-Uwe Schade, spokesman for the Brandenburg environment ministry. "We have now cut down 25 trees and that will hopefully eliminate the problem."Nazi symbols are outlawed in Germany and the photograph of the swastika on state-owned land caused a storm of protest.

12.05.00:::
Cavalcade of HypocrisyIn October, Matthew J. Glavin, president of the conservative legal foundation leading the fight to disbar President Clinton for lying about his sexual affairs, was charged with public indecency, allegedly caught trolling for anonymous male sex partners in a suburban Atlanta park. And John Paulk, whose personal "religion cures homosexuality" experience landed him on the cover of Newsweek in 1998, was demoted as an executive with the Christian group Focus on the Family after he was caught in October reveling in a Washington, D.C., gay bar. And Mike Trout, another Focus on the Family official, resigned in October after confessing to an extramarital affair.

12.04.00:::
Christmas shoppers visiting London's Oxford Street, home to Selfridges and other famous stores, could find themselves fined for dawdling, if plans for new pedestrian fast lanes are approved.
Traders at the famous street, one of Britain's busiest shopping areas that is usually jammed with pedestrians, are calling for the pavement to be divided into two lanes, one with a minimum walking speed of three miles per hour to keep the crowds moving.The campaign by traders, called Operation Tugboat, aims to reduce aggressive behavior or 'pavement rage' among pedestrians on the packed street.Marshals would patrol the street, empowered to fine slow walkers straying into the fast lane 10 pounds ($14.34), Harrison said.

12.02.00:::
Dem dere candadian folk are... err.. dumb:It began when one of the men brought a military-style bullet-proof vest back to their Swan River, Manitoba, home. He then asked his room-mate to shoot him in the chest with a 22 caliber rifle.That done, and pleased with the lack of damage, he asked his friend to shoot him in the back with a 12 gauge shotgun.This time, the duo decided to stuff a phone book inside the vest for a bit of insurance.The phone book absorbed much of the blow, but the target still suffered cracked ribs and bruising.

12.01.00:::
A Canadian letter carrier faces suspension after he kicked an aggressive poodle while trying to deliver mail to the dog owner's house.Beware of the Poodle!

11.30.00:::
Today being the anniversary of WTO, protesters are gathering on the streets of Seattle again to thrash the place...err.. protest. It is now becoming a yearly tradition, Nov 30th - Trash Seattle Day! Everyone pitch in to help!! Trash your own towns, trash your car, trash your neighbors, that is if they aren't already trash. Who cares about the earth?? We are all going to die anyway!! Lets make sure NO ONE is EVER happy again!!!! KILL THE PLANET and GIVE UP!!

11.29.00:::
Need a Christmas present for that money-bags billionaire relative or friend and don't quite know what to do? Check out Robb Report's annual list of presents.How about a $30 million 165-foot super yacht with a gymnasium and marble-floored lobby? Too showy? Then what about a 485 horsepower V12 Ferrari 550 Barchetta Pininfarina limited edition convertible? It can be yours for $258,000.For those wishing to keep price tags to five digits, a man and woman's wardrobe of cashmere and wool from Italian manufacturer Loro Piana for $55,000, or a $39,400 two-person ski vacation in the French Alps. And for those who want to indulge a fantasy or simply steal a glance into the world of wretched excess, you can buy a copy of the magazine for just $9.99.11.28.00

11.26.00:::
HO HO HOwoke up this morning with a scary feeling,realized it was november 26th, christmas oh my god its nearing, what am I to do I said, then I covered up my head, prayed for sleep for two more months,
until this holy mess is over.
wasn't that lucky, turned on the tv, playstation 2 on the news,biggest selling gift this year, whats a tired jew to do?so tv off, tried to escape, called my friend from burlington,said to meet at tully's for a mocha and a donut.
merry xmas, merry xmas, but I think I'll miss this one this year.merry xmas, merry xmas, but I think I'll miss this one this year.
got up quick, ran to the mall, before my pain got any worse,what a stupid thing to do, I'm a sitting duck in santas zoo,suddenly I couldn't walk, I could breath, I couldn't move,children running everywhere screaming tis the season!
More hell to come...
(Credits: Save Ferris - Christmas Wrapping with a little editing)

11.24.00:::
You know a town has gone out of control when the MAYOR can't even live there!!Life is getting a little too rich in Silicon Valley's self-proclaimed "City of Good Living", where real estate is so expensive that even the mayor is being forced to quit and leave town.San Carlos Mayor Dave Buckmaster said on Monday he and his wife, an elementary school teacher, were moving to Sacramento because they could not afford to keep living in a town where the median home price is now $780,000.Hope everyone had a lonely and depressing Turkey Day! Don't worry, next year will be MUCH worse. :)

11.23.00:::
And how would you like your testicles?Tavern Serves Up Turkey Testicles HUNTLEY, Ill. (Reuters) - A delicacy unlikely to grace Thanksgiving tables -- turkey testicles -- were gobbled up by the dozen at an Illinois tavern on Wednesday as part of the pub's pre-holiday tradition. Patrons of the Parkside Pub in Huntley feasted on more than 800 pounds of the nuggets that had been deep fried in a secret batter created by proprietor Mark McDonald, who began serving testicles the day before Thanksgiving nearly two decades ago."They taste something like a mushroom," bartender Martha Kagel said amid the noontime hubbub. "I've had a couple already. They're good."Hoping to satisfy an expected crowd of 3,000, McDonald purchased more around 30,000 of the high-fat testicles from an Iowa turkey farm, which normally removes them from inside the birds for export.Mmm Mmm Good!

11.22.00:::
Happy Holidays! (unless you're a Holocaust Survivor!)A German state office has asked a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor to give back 93,000 German marks ($41,190) in compensation she received because she did not properly declare past income.A concentration camp survivor mentally disabled by the experience, Lea Stern has received a pension supplement from Germany for decades.

11.21.00:::
Ok, now this is some demotivation at its finest hour. The judge fell asleep?!?Thomas Moringiello appealed his 18-month jail sentence claiming the trial was prejudiced when Judge Richard Hamilton fell asleep through parts of the testimony.
Britain's Court of Appeal rejected his claim stating that: "It does not follow that a judge is asleep that prejudice has been caused at all."

11.20.00:::
What I find more disturbing then the fact I haven't written the news in over 2 months is this survey I found.Colombians see themselves as the world's happiest people, an internet survey of more than 400,000 people around the globe showed on Friday.The Colombians scored highest, with 73 percent of people questioned giving a positive response compared with a global average of 35 percent.BUT! The good news is that Brazilians were among the most miserable. CONGRATS!! Keep up the great work kids!09.14.00

09.10.00:::
Thanks to all of the demotivating support for the site, we've been added to the Compuserve network. Our goal of demotivating the world is right on track, keep up the great slacking guys... because we all know... giving up IS the only option.in the news:Brain Injury Gives Hand a Mind of Its OwnA rare, poorly understood and often misdiagnosed brain injury is causing sufferers to lose control of a hand so it behaves as if it has a mind of its own, an Italian scientist said Thursday.

Because they cannot control what one hand will do, the two hands often end up fighting with each other much like Sellers' Dr Strangelove character.

One patient he treated arrived with the anarchic hand tied behind her back because she was afraid of what it would do.

Another patient had difficulty eating a fish meal because the anarchic hand kept putting leftover fish bones back into her mouth.

09.07.00:::
New banner added: w00!In the news: A human head found inside a giant cod probably belonged to a man missing from a trawler which later caught the huge fish.

08.26.00:::
We've added 50 new demotivational quotes to the site. I'm trying to go through and catch up and read all the ones you guys sent in. There are so many good ones it takes time.Check out the demotivations and send a few to friends!In the news:Authorities captured Hipolito Rojas Lopez, "for his probable responsibility in the commission of crimes of offence against national symbols and property damage," the Attorney General's office said in a news release.Rojas cut the cable holding the national flag aloft in Mexico City's Plaza of the Constitution, causing it to fall on Thursday morning, the office said.Meanwhile, in recent weeks, months and years countless public officials under investigation for corruption, embezzlement and even assassination, have slipped through law enforcement's hands.Among the big-name fugitives are former Quintana Roo Gov. Mario Villanueva, said by authorities to have turned the state into a major landing post for Colombian cocaine; former Tourism Minister Oscar Espinosa, facing an arrest warrant on charges he embezzled $45 million in state funds; and Guadalupe Buendia, the so-called She-Wolf of Chimalhuacan, who disappeared last week after her supporters opened fire on political opponents in a bloodbath that left 10 dead.Rojas' crime was being investigated and the case expected to be dispensed with quickly, the Attorney General said.I'm proud to say Mexican Authorities use Demotivate.com. :)

07.31.00:::
Added a new banner last week, removed some old, stale ones. Have any suggestions for a banner ad? Drop us a line! :)
We normally aren't the type to hype up a site, (since we are way too demotivated), but, in this case it is necessary.
www.romp.com

Check out the Metallica stuff, very funny!
In the news: How about this for demotivating, a private testing company has mistakenly flunked nearly 8,000 Minnesota high school students who took the state's basic math skills test this year.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune said the affected students included 336 seniors who may have been barred from graduating because of their scores.
Oops! :)

07.28.00:::
Ok, so I've had a mocha, and now I am SO demotivated that I can't think of a real news message to put here. And, don't even think that I've actually done some work on this site. Because, well... I haven't.
Advice: Drink Mocha - Do Nothing! :D

07.26.00:::
Tori celebrates her birthday by not waking up, moving, or attempting any motivational attempt at life. I'm so proud of her. She is a true believer of demotivate.com and really puts effort into it. *grin* Want to wish her happy birthday? tori@demotivate.com

07.25.00:::
Just when you thought the ebay craze had hit an all time low comes... www.bidorbuy.co.za. They will be offering a breast reduction operation on Monday, laser skin resurfacing on Tuesday, fat removal on Wednesday, facial hair removal on Thursday and eyelid surgery on Friday. Starting bid is only $0.14!

Next they will have heart transplants that you can bid on for a low introductory price of JUST $19.95. And, if you bid in the next 5 seconds, they'll also throw in a free lung! What a bargin!

07.24.00:::
Back from a weekend in Seattle. Was quite fun. My girlfriend and I went down and met Mary True. She's pretty cool. Took saturday to browse the town and then hit EMP (Experience Music Project) We did a thing where you can pretend to be a rockstar. She sure can scream 'Wild Thang'! *grin*In other news, a man in Argentina drowns in a toilet. Sources say he had swallowed his 14k gold tongue ring and was 'watching for it' each day.. he fell in, hit his head, and was out cold.

07.03.00:::
Have a great 4th of July! Blow up lots of stuff! Fire Fire! in the news: A new fashion craze is threatening air safety in Norway -- teenagers are stealing seatbelts to keep up their baggy trousers.

06.28.00:::
in the news: Who needs a wife when you can get a prostitute! She cooks, she cleans, she will even suck your... This is exactly what the men are doing in Romania!

"We had to invent something because people don't have money and clients are rare. After solving the (sexual) problem, the girls clean and cook, for free. All on the house!"

06.23.00:::
working on a new demotivated poll.... should be up this weekend kiddies...in the news: A Cambodian man who was denied his lover's hand in marriage eventually won it after backing up his proposal with an AK-47 assault rifle and a bucket of gasoline. After his lover's family refused his marriage request, 35-year-old Hout Sitha reacted by taking his would-be bride Nha Thavy and her entire family as hostages, the Koh Santepheap newspaper reported Friday. kids these days! :)06.15.00

06.14.00:::
We've had lots of mocha, danced a jig in the rain and done jack-shit on the website! True demotivation baby....

in the news: A former exotic dancer won $30,000 in a jury verdict on Monday after she sued her Park Avenue plastic surgeon for using breast implants to enhance her buttocks. Oops!

06.13.00:::
Ok, this site has hit an all time low. The demot-cam has some how become one of the most popular pages of the site. Do you REALLY enjoy watching the grass grow, or the spam can, or the cat licking the camera? Hey, at least its better then going to work! So... Right on! Keep up the Slackin Work!

06.12.00:::
Began writing news... gave up.

06.11.00:::
BEWARE!!! A Canadian farm woman is still shaking after a crazed beaver attacked her two giant Newfoundland dogs named Bonnie and Billy, pinning them against a fence and savaging them. When asked how she felt about the incident she replied, "I've lost all respect for beavers. I never would have imagined this from a beaver,".

Beware the Beavers.

06.10.00:::
updates: new banner added to the site and maybe some more stuff if I get motivated...err.. what am I saying??? NOTHING MORE TODAY!!!

news: A Kenyan woman who caught her grandson eating her fish doused the boy in gasoline, set him on fire and then chopped off his fingers. Way too much work for us here... We would let the kid have the fish then eat the boy. Two for the price of one!

06.08.00:::
For a limited time we are selling all shirts previously at $14.99 now just $12.99. Give your dad the gift of demotivation this fathers day... maybe he is just on your case a little too much... tell him to just 'Give Up' :)

05.31.00:::
Not only did we get the Give Up store finished, we have also designed a new shirt just for you. From our 7 deadly sins series comes the first sinful t-shirt. Sloth. A new design will be featured each month, so keep your eyes peeled.

05.28.00:::
For your reading pleasure I wanted to share some 'dumb laws' that I found online. These are supposidly laws that are still around and exist, but I sincerely doubt they are enforced in this day and age... Let me first start with dumb laws from... CANADA *snicker*

(Canada)
*Every fifth song on Canadian radio must be by a Canadian born citizen.
*You may not pay for a fifty-cent item with only pennies.
*Citizens may not publicly remove bandages.
*If you are released from prison, it is required that you are given a handgun with bullets and a horse, so you can ride out of town.
*It is illegal to kill a sasquatch
*Driving on the roads is not allowed

(Washington State, USA)
*A law to reduce crime states: "It is mandatory for a motorist with criminal intentions to stop at the city limits and telephone the chief of police as he is entering the town."
*People may not buy a mattress on Sunday
*When two trains come to a crossing, neither shall go until the other has passed.
*Men who deflower virgins, regardless of age or marital status, may face up to five years in jail
*Women who sit on men's laps on buses or trains without placing a pillow between them face an automatic six-month jail term.
*You may not ride an ugly horse.

Any my personal favorite from Virginia.. *grin*
*It is illegal for a woman to drive a car up Main Street unless her husband is walking in front of the car waving a red flag.

05.25.00:::
Special thanks go out to the Langa list for our moment of glory. Food for thought. Would people be interested in Demotivate.com hats, shirts, postcards and other merchandise? We are thinking of possibly going that route soon and would like some feedback. If you are interested in this please give us an email at fail@demotivate.com

In other news...

Scientists have found that extreme consumption of Bawls cola has adverse effects on your sex life. You will act and speak like 'Smoove B' and women will flock to be with you.

Kentucky residents need not drink nor try Bawls. It wont work. Don't bother. Give up now. This site's for you.

05.23.00:::
Updated news: Germany attacks and destroys the British Navy.05.23.00

05.18.00:::
On March 15th, in New Jersey, four six year old boys were suspended from school for pointing fingers at each other while they were playing "cops and robbers." It's part of a new zero-tolerance policy schools have started that firmly states that teachers never remove their heads from their asses.

Last year, in Virginia, a boy was permanently expelled for drawing a picture of a gun. Teachers luckily got to him before he was able to color it, or even worse, draw pictures of deadlier objects such as a grenade or Lex Luthor.

Let me tell you how much safer I feel knowing a gun-obsessed kid isn't going to get an education even if he wants one. I'm sure our chances of survival went way up now that he's at home watching Gi Joe and Jerry Springer.

05.16.00:::
Bwahahaha. I just feel like laughing. And damnit, we need some news on the site so here I go..

The asian spanking monkey was seen running down Times Square yesterday afternoon in a fit of rage. It would randomly hop on your back, spank your ass, and yelp out 'who's yer monkey' as you ran for your life down the street. Quite a sight to see!

05.08.00:::
Thank god for Mary True. At least she can keep her portion of the site updated. If you haven't checked out her column click on the demotivated columnist link on the button bar and check her out. She's great.

As for other things... We are working on a new look for demotivate. Something new and fresh to bring some new life to it. In the works would be a flash and non flash site.

We are still open to suggestions and ideas from anyone who would like to give their $00.02 about anything at all about the site.

Anyways... back to the slave pit trying to make your demotivation all that much better.

04.12.00:::
Ok, we've finally shown our true nature these past few days. Way too demotivated to even update our own site! Don't worry, we are back, and ready to demotivate each and everyone of you!

Now for the news: If you are actually motivated enough to run everyday, you should know this before entering a competition... Every competitor planning to build a last-minute lovemaking session into their training program will run faster than those who don't. So get scrumping!

04.05.00:::
Skippy the wonder hamster is out to get you.

In other news ... ... .. hey lets go ride bikes!

04.03.00:::
Hope everyone played a lot of demotivating pranks this April fools day.

Apparently a company in Amsterdam played the best April fools day prank this year. "Investors scrambled to buy shares in fictitious firm F/Rite Air (pronounced "Fried Air"), sending more than $6.5 million in orders to an investment Web site before discovering it was an April Fools prank." Hey, if they are willing to spend $6.5 million on "Fried Air" which has to be bad for their health, I have some bottled air to sell them!

03.30.00:::
By the end of the day there will be a new banner added to the site. I haven't made it yet, so it will be a suprise!

News for people in California: Does your vehicle take off at all hours of the night? For a midnight stroll or maybe a Sunday drive. Well, you should warn your vehicle of a state law in California stating, "No vehicle without a driver may exceed 60 miles per hour".

03.29.00:::
We have updated absolutely nothing!! True demotivation.

Now for the news: A Japanese condom maker has started producing novelty chocolates using the same molds as it uses to make the condoms. Now, our question is... what if they slip up? Will the Japanese have chocolate flavored condoms or condoms that melt in your mouth and in your... I think you get the point. :)

03.28.00:::
Undertakers Move Online to cut coffin costs:
Germany's undertakers plan to liven up their business by launching an e-commerce Web site to cut the costs of death. Talk about demotivated. Now you can be lazy in memory of your departerd loved ones and save money! Buying the stiff's coffins online just got easier with the big 2. 'Lazy' and 'Saving Money'.

Birth Control for Cockroaches:
Now in development is a new type of birth-control spray that prevents Cockroaches from having thousands of eggs. What does this mean? Something all new.. not just the big 2 this time.. the big 3! S.S.S (Spray, Sit, Sloth) Life just keeps getting better...

03.27.00:::
This is for all the college students out there: Not sure what to pick for your major, or your current one is just way too motivated? Why not try one of the newest majors added to the Penn State line up! Turfgrass science! Yes, my friends, instead of sitting inside listening to boring lectures, you could be sitting outside on a golf course and earning college credits!

Thanks Penn State for adding a major to fit our viewers needs! We solute you!

03.25.00:::
We've noticed over the past few months, that not as many people come to the site on fridays. Have you been so demotivated during the week that you just can't even bear coming to the site on Friday? If so, we understand and keep up the good work!

In other news: The Great Twinkies Squeeze of 2000 is coming to an end!! Soon you'll have Twinkies coming out the wazoo. :)

03.24.00:::
New banner ad added to the page.

In the news: A Brazilian beer maker won a court case against his former boss Brahma brewer, arguing that years of "tasting" up to 3.2 gallons a day had turned him into an alcoholic. He was awarded 30,000 and 2,600 (his monthly wage) a month for the rest of his life. This man is truely demotivated, not only did he get to drink beer all day for a job, but now he doesn't even have to work! Way to go!

03.23.00:::
Solved... our evil little columnit Mary True was on the case and was able to help let me know where all these altavista links were coming from... 1,200 hits a day and staying steady...

In other news: London postal workers are now being trained to fend off dog attacks. One postal worker fought back by karate kicking a dog nearly 12 feet through the air... but dont think for one second the dogs aren't planning something big as well... muwahaha.. (we'll get back to you on that)

03.22.00:::
Ok, we are completely confused. Somewhere on Live.Altavista.com they linked to us, but we have tried and tried to find it. If you are someone who found us from Altavista, it would be very appreciated if you could email us (fail@demotivate.com)and tell us the page they linked to us from. Boggled minds would like to know....In other news, a man tries to smuggle a snake in his underwear in a french airport. Maybe he thought HIS trouser snake was lonely. Texas once again proves their 'smarts' with new and improved Dental Floss Safe Cell bars in their jails. An inmate recently used the teeth cleaning material to saw his way through to a rival gang members cell and kill him.

03.21.00:::
Thanks to everyone that has written a letter to our columnist, with advice like "fishheads fishheads..." you'll soon be truely demotivated!

Now for the news: Major scandal hits Canada. Cheap and illegal U.S. bingo cards have allegedly infiltrated Canadian bingo halls. The Canadian economy quickly took a sharp dive since this information surfaced. Will Canada ever be the same? We think not.

03.20.00:::
Yahoo has come to the conclusion that we are:
1. Humorous (bhahah)
2. From the UK.

Let our content advisors comment on this: We've paid Yahoo a lot of money to tell the world that we are in no way humorous. This damaging rumor must stop now. And as for being located in the UK, sorry, try again.

Now for the news: Mexican high school students are using the cat anesthetic ketamine as their preferred recreational drug. Most of these students have also been found wearing collars, meowing and scratching their nails on the walls. (What do they put in the water down there??)

03.18.00:::
Bored? Send a failure to someone. With over 300 demotivational phrases at your fingertips you are bound to find just the right one for all your friends and co-workers. Give it a shot and see how they re-act! *grin*

03.16.00:::
I would like to extend a deserved thank you to coolstop.com for their site of the day award they graciously gave us as well as Badgers Picks.

03.16.00:::
Not worth it... my demotivation is far too low today... hope you can live with the major loss of not having any news... I know this will break your spirits and cause riots all over, but I think I can hear Kentucky cheering with the lack of my usual insult towards them today. *grin* Damn, what started out as a demotivated news piece has now turned into one of my longer ones... just goes to show, if you start to do something, you might get carried away and keep going... its best to not start. Look at all this energy and effort I just wasted. I could have utilized it staring at the wall, or maybe the carpet counting the fibers. Nah, that would be way too motivated. Time to sit in the corner and close my eyes and look at my eyelids. .. ..... ... are you reading this? Have we really failed? Are you motivated enough to read this whole thing? Arg! :) Go! GET! and enjoy the rest of the site :)

03.15.00:::
We are proud to announce our new demotivated columnist is now at your service. Do your worst. :) In other news a Kentucky man was squashed to death when a female cow sat on his face.

03.12.00:::
In the works: Currently we are coming up with some new ideas for the website. To give you a little sneak peak of whats to come expect to see a new demotivate.com columnist joining the ranks of demotivate.com. With these new talents we plan to group as many people together, demotivate them, and take over the world by brute force! Ok so maybe not that drastic. The person we have selected to be the columnist will be there to answer your demotivated inquiries and will be an entirely new section on the website. Remember, this is all in the works but we are still looking for any other ideas people may have. Feel free to email us @ fail@demotivate.com with any ides you may have and thank you all for coming and enjoying the site.

03.10.00:::
A big thanks to projectcool.com for their 'Today's Sighting' award. It's very appreciated. I'd write them a thank you, but that would require effort and motivation.

03.08.00:::
Slackers... thats what we are. Delay on new news? It's the editors from Kentucky I tell you. I believe they are at it again with their children and were too busy to do the news. Riots break out at local KFC. Spork declared superior to all other eating utensils. Life is good. Have a laugh, tell a Canadian their beer sucks. :)

02.28.00:::
We at demotivate would like to personally thank each and every person so far who has come to demotivate.com, but we are too damn lazy, and far too demotivated. 414557 hits and 31000 individual people later we are happy to say we haven't made a single cent off the website. Don't get us wrong, we are thinking of ways that we MIGHT do something, but in the meantime (which could be forever, we are pretty demotivated) enjoy the site for free... here are some useless stats for your viewing pleasure..

General Hits: 414557
Page View Hits: 177000 pages loaded
Sessions: 31000 people
Total time in seconds people have spent on demotivate.com: 602157202.27.00

02.26.00:::
One thing is for sure, www.demotivate.com users are so demotivated they spend all their time looking at the banners, the art, the quiz, the motivated anonymous, and the demotivations, but we still need your input. You, the user is what makes this site live. We need your demotivations, your comments, your suggestions. Is there something demotivated that you would like to see come to life? Send us an email and let us know. If you are someone who has sent a demotivation in but can't find it, keep looking. There are around 300 demotivations in the database now. Either that or it may not have passed the tough standards of the editors in Kentucky. Anyways, thanks so far on what has been a great time building this site and feel free to email and say hi, or TRY to demotivate us @ demotivate.com.

02.22.00:::
Feeling down, depressed, demotivated, or maybe just really tired? Drill a Hole Into Your Head. Wild crack rock seen chasing presidential canidate George W Bush.

02.21.00:::
Do the world some good, demotivate someone today. Make it your goal. If you dont achieve it, we'll understand.. maybe you ended up demotivating yourself..

02.20.00:::
talk about being demotivated. try getting a cold. nothing matters except the couch and a tv. news and changes to the site lacked the past few days due to illness, hope to be back on track next week.

02.17.00:::
new demotivations added. received an email asking if we'd like to support the fight against depression. we laughed.

02.14.00:::
it's finally here, motivated anonymous. there are way too many people suffering from motivation in this world. reach out and help them. only you have the power to heal. oogle toy explodes and burns down an apartment building in south Philadelphia.

02.13.00:::
Ever feel like just sitting down in a dark corner and pulling the trigger on that gun? Yes? Makes my job easier giving advice. Now I can tell your spouse they have someone they can relate to.

02.12.00:::
Britney Spears found on playboy cover. Kentucky woman stabs man to death with asparagus stick. Spam container found to have higher IQ than some AOL users.

02.10.00:::
new site of the week added. canadian beer found to be tainted with cow urine.

02.09.00:::
over 20 new phrases added. thanks for all the new sick phrases. 15 "car" pile up at disneyland due to someone waxing the go-kart track. shark eyeballs can bounce higher then a bouncy ball.

02.08.00:::
took weekend off to fly cross country. mass bitching that page was not updated. new artwork in works. noticed we've been compared to despair inc. we are nothing like them, we're way too demotivated to even ask for your money. noticed aol users couldn't use demotivations, fixed it, even though they dont need help in that department.

02.04.00:::
10 demotivational commandments added to art. stupidamouse stock skyrockets, tech support rejoices. my colon hurts.

02.03.00:::
www.bluesnews.com gives us link of the day. Britney Spears poses for playboy. www.pathologicalliar.com claims to have gone live. we don't believe them.

02.02.00:::
demotivations added. thanks to everyone who has submitted lines. barbara streisand caught in new york buying pot. she claims she doesn't inhale.

02.01.00:::
quiz added. note: don't complain about where your neighbor is piling his shoveled snow, you may end up murdered. some people eat bugs. eww.

01.31.00:::
i've updated absolutely nothing. black ice takes out 50 motorists in georgia. merry christmas.

01.28.00:::
link of the week added. some furby's at local toy stores around the northwestern region of washington are suddenly exploding when touched, canada is to blame. smile, you're on candid camera.

01.27.00:::
seven deadly sins, created and added. cats rally an antihuman demonstration in florence, alabama stating they've been repressed. finger nail biting is good for loose bowels.

01.26.00:::
2 new banners added. georgia legislator's give up on the fight on crime and have now directed all of their attention to eliminating the kudzu plant. toilet paper found lethal when inhaled.

01.25.00:::
added new demotivations. pez found to be the cure to cancer. computer keyboard kills 2 when placed in a pool by the recently deceased.

01.24.00:::
www.userfriendly.org gives us link of the day. code fixed so netscape users can view site. mary jenkin's kindergarden class creates an atom bomb in their sandbox.

01.21.00:::
new banner ads added. flix toy story2 alien gumball machines actually dispense ecstacy. kids rejoice. grocery stores have a run on orange juice.

01.20.00:::
new pages added. residents of kentucky are banned from procreating. wild dandelions kill 4.

01.19.00:::
shortened intro flash animation, it bugged the shit out of me. kids light firecrackers in the mouths of their friends to see the pretty lights. "happy camper" drug is found laced with lsd.

01.17.00:::
banner ads added. rush on pharmacies cross country for the drug ritalin. kids realize that santa clause is actually a crack selling pimp in Los Angeles.

12.21.99:::
site launched. mass protesting. canned meat declared inedible.