The Lo Zone

Courtney and Bill had been married for eight years when she discovered that Bill had been having an affair for a year with his secretary, Deidre. And if that weren't enough, Deidre had become pregnant with Bill's baby. And if that weren't enough, Courtney found out about the affair and the baby when the sheriff's deputy delivered paternity papers to her home. But wait, this all happened while she and Bill were in the process of adopting a baby.

Let's back up a few years. During the year of the affair, Courtney says she asked Bill many times if something was going on: "I just felt that something was different, but I had no proof. Every time I asked him, he denied it. The day before the arrival of the sheriff's deputy was the last time I asked him.

Law-abiding citizens don't usually have someone from the sheriff's department ringing their doorbell, serving them with legal papers. After the shock, Courtney read the petition. She said first she felt sadness, "then relief that I wasn't crazy. Then embarrassment when I realized the deputy was watching me read the petition and learn that my husband had been unfaithful and had a 6-month-old daughter named Alexis. Then sadness again when the deputy apologized for having brought me the news. Anger came and pitched a tent the next day."

Courtney's first pregnancy had caused complications. She and Bill had gone through fertility treatments to have another child, but treatments hadn't worked. They had decided to adopt: "We had just found out that the adoption was going through when I learned of the affair."

Courtney says she thought about leaving Bill "many, many, many times, but I took my marriage vows seriously." She agreed to stay with him, but she had conditions that he had to meet. One of them was that he be a real father to Alexis [the outside baby], "not just a check in the mail. It wasn't her fault. She was just a baby."

As soon as she learned about Alexis, Courtney insisted that she and Bill visit her often, together.

A Long Island mother was arrested at a Wal-Mart after she was spotted snorting heroin as she pushed her 3-year-old son in a shopping cart, police said yesterday.

Stacy Roe, 35, allegedly inhaled the powdered drug through a straw near the garden center of the Centereach store, police said.

Guards saw her on a surveillance camera and called cops.

Works for me!!!

This summer, be sure to pack some extra cash in your carry-on. More airlines are starting to charge for services that used to be free on many carriers.

Skybus Airlines, a new carrier based in Columbus, Ohio, that plans to take to the skies this Tuesday, promises low fares but will charge extra for everything from soft drinks ($2) to bag checking ($5 apiece for the first two bags) to early boarding privileges ($10 a person, except for those with disabilities).

Next month, Spirit Airlines, based in Fort Lauderdale, will begin charging for bag checking and onboard beverages, which had been free. It’s also moving to a single-class cabin but renaming its business class Big Front Seat and charging a premium for the larger seats.

Meanwhile, nearly every major carrier has done away with free onboard meals in coach on domestic flights, and has instead begun to charge for individual food and drink items, often at hotel minibar prices. Earlier this year, American Airlines, for example, replaced its $4 snack boxes offered on domestic flights of three hours or longer with offerings like Lay’s Stax Potato Crisps ($3), M&Ms ($3) and bottled water ($2) and now sells them on domestic flights of two hours or longer. On longer flights within the United States, American offers $5 light meals like breakfast bagel sandwiches, Italian wraps or Asian chicken salads.

...rat on the rats!!!

[...] Federal prosecutors are furious, and the Justice Department has begun urging the federal courts to make fundamental changes in public access to electronic court files by removing all plea agreements from them — whether involving cooperating witnesses or not.

" We are witnessing the rise of a new cottage industry engaged in republishing court filings about cooperators on Web sites such as www.whosarat.com for the clear purpose of witness intimidation, retaliation and harassment," a Justice Department official wrote in a December letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States, the administrative and policy-making body of the federal court system.

" The posting of sensitive witness information," the letter continued, " poses a grave risk of harm to cooperating witnesses and defendants."

In one case described in the letter, a witness in Philadelphia was moved and the F.B.I. was asked to investigate after material from whosarat.com was mailed to his neighbors and posted on utility poles and cars in the area.

The federal court in Miami has provisionally adopted the department’s recommendation to remove plea agreements from electronic files, and other courts are considering it and experimenting with alternative approaches.

For those who want to read the details on cooperating witnesses, whosarat.com charges between $7.99 for a week and $89.99 for life. The latter option comes with a free "Stop Snitching" T-shirt.

Nope.

“I was waiting for a table at Blue Ribbon,” [Jackie] said. “He walked up to me and started talking. He was instantly funny. I thought, ‘Omigod, we’re really clicking. But I’ll probably never hear from him again.’” Everyone nodded. After all, hadn’t we all been there before?

“He called at something like 8 the next morning,” Jackie said. “‘Want to go out to lunch?’ he asked. He asks you to lunch at Bilboquet the next day.”

“Then while you think he’s still funny and clever, he asks you to go away with him for the weekend,” said Jackie.

[...]

Ramona sighed. “[...] I had just broken up with someone and I was pretty upset. He was always there.”

A pattern emerged. “He’s rebound man,” Sarah said, definitively. “It’s like, ‘Excuse me, are you broken? Let’s get intimate.’”

“He’s the emotional Mayflower,” said Chloe. “He gets women from point A to point B. You arrive at Plymouth Rock feeling enormously better.”

His ability to empathize was a strong point. The phrase, “He’s just like a girl,” came up over and over again. “He reads more fashion magazines than most women,” said Sapphire, “and he’s much more willing to fight your battles than he is his own.”

“He’s extremely confident,” Chloe continued.

[...]

And then there’s the sex. “He’s awesome in bed,” said Sarah.

That same guy/girl who was an absolute asshole to you (and a few other people)...

...can ultimately become a good husband/wife and a good dad/mom to someone...

Your background it ain't squeaky clean, shit
Sometimes we all got to swim upstream
You ain't no saint, we all are sinners
But you put your good foot down and make your soul a winner

...ever become someone else's Mr. (or Ms.) Wonderfully Right?*

A gang stripped a South African man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

"The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut," SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.

The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.

Dear Cheryl: 10 years ago I was in a long-term relationship.

I was desperately in love with Christopher and thought he felt the same. We talked many times about marriage.

After dating for five years, he abruptly dumped me. I was flabbergasted and vowed that if I ever felt strongly enough about a man to want to marry him, he had four years in which to propose. If not, I would break off the relationship.

For a long time, I dated many men who were fun but not marriage material, so I didn't have to worry about this. However, I'm now dating Bryce, whom I really love. But I'm scared.

We've been together for 3-1/2 half years and are having the same type of marriage conversations that I had with Christopher.

Bryce says he loves me and wants a future with me, but it never goes beyond talk. He doesn't know about my four-year rule.

Do I warn him now about what will happen in six months or just enjoy the relationship until then and then explain why I'm breaking up?

I detest ultimatums, and both options sound like one, but I'm in my early 30s and not getting any younger.

I love Bryce very much and the thought of breaking up tears me apart, but I feel quite strongly about the decision I made so long ago.

-- I've Got a 48-Months-and-You're-Out Rule

(...then again, he is black, so perhaps it should have been expected...)

[...]

Dr. Brennan was oblivious to bird phalluses until 1999. While working in a Costa Rican forest, she observed a pair of birds called tinamous mating. “They became unattached, and I saw this huge thing hanging off of him,” she said. “I could not believe it. It became one of those questions I wrote down: why do these males have this huge phallus?”

A bird phallus is similar — but not identical — to a mammalian penis. Most of the time it remains invisible, curled up inside a bird’s body. During mating, however, it fills with lymphatic fluid and expands into a long, corkscrew shape. The bird’s sperm travels on the outside of the phallus, along a spiral-shaped groove, into the female bird.

To learn about this peculiar organ, Dr. Brennan decided she would have to make careful dissections of male tinamous. In 2005 she traveled to the University of Sheffield to learn the art of bird dissection from Tim Birkhead, an evolutionary biologist. Dr. Birkhead had her practice on some male ducks from a local farm.

Gazing at the enormous organs, she asked herself a question that apparently no one had asked before.

“So what does the female look like?” she said. “Obviously you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.”

The lower oviduct (the equivalent of the vagina in birds) is typically a simple tube. But when Dr. Brennan dissected some female ducks, she discovered they had a radically different anatomy. “There were all these weird structures, these pockets and spirals,” she said.

Somehow, generations of biologists had never noticed this anatomy before. Pondering it, Dr. Brennan came to doubt the conventional explanation for how duck phalluses evolved.

In some species of ducks, a female bonds for a season with a male. But she is also harassed by other males that force her to mate. “It’s nasty business. Females are often killed or injured,” Dr. Brennan said.

Species with more forced mating tend to have longer phalluses. That link led some scientists to argue that the duck phallus was the result of males’ competing with one another to fertilize eggs.

“Basically, you get a bigger phallus to put your sperm in farther than the other males,” Dr. Brennan said.

...every dude still just wants to be able to say he's top dog.