THE MAGPIE:BEN AND Jerry, those right-on! US ice-cream makers, have renamed their Chubby Hubby ice cream Hubby Hubby for the month of September . . . in celebration of the legalisation of gay marriage in the company's home state of Vermont.
“At the core of Ben Jerry’s values, we believe that social justice can and should be something that every human being is entitled to,” said Walt Freese, CEO of Ben Jerry’s.
The now gay-friendly ice-cream contains chocolate-covered peanut butter-filled pretzel nuggets.
“It’s not polite to talk with your mouth full,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, the gay rights group in partnership with BJ, “but the most important thing that all us ice-cream lovers can do to support the freedom to marry is speak with the people we know about why marriage matters and the need to end marriage discrimination in every state.”
It’s not the first time the BJ have commemorated an event with an ice-cream flavour – earlier this year they marked Barack Obama’s election as president by renaming one of their nutty ice-cream flavours “Yes Pecan”.
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JAPAN, a place far, far away where, until this week, the same political party had been in power since, oh about 1832 (sounds like FFland, no?) has just become interesting. Apart that is from the old crowd being replaced by a new crowd. Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of the new PM, Yukio Hatoyama, claims to have had, (well how can one put it?), an extraterrestrial experience.
“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” she wrote last year. “It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.” She also believes that Tom Cruise was Japanese in a previous life.
Ah so...
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ELSEWHERE, a drunk German pilot had to be guided to land by a rescue helicopter after he radioed the control tower to ask where it was “hiding”.
“Come on, I know you’re down there,” the pilot radioed the control tower. “Where the bloody hell have you hidden yourself?”
The 65-year-old amateur flier had allegedly drank beer and wine before taking to the skies. Once airborne, he apparently served himself some cocktails.
Two hours later he was so inebriated that he was unable to read the instruments telling him where the airfield was. Control tower staff say he also sang a few songs, cracked a mother-in-law joke and told them to “pull their fingers out as I’ve got a party to go to”. A rescue helicopter was scrambled and gave instructions for the pilot to follow it to the airfield where, somewhat improbably, it made a safe landing.
The man was unsteady on his feet and smelt of alcohol as he wobbled from the cockpit to his parked car. He was stopped on the way home, breathalysed and found to be nearly four times over the legal limit for driving. Now he has lost his driving licence – and his pilot’s licence.
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TWO FEUDING mayors of neighbouring suburbs in Paris have each declared the same street one-way - in opposite directions. Patrick Balkany, the mayor of Levallois-Perret, made the D909 one-way to cut the commuter traffic flowing through his district. But Gilles Catoire, the mayor of neighbouring Clichy-la-Garenne, complained this increased congestion in his area. So he declared his section of the road one-way, but in the opposite direction.
With contradictory road-signs in place, police had to be called in to sort out the resulting commuter chaos, road rage and gridlock.