Top Ten List…

Independent Political Parties We'd Like To See

10. The Crack Party… We're split down the middle.
9. The Party Party… We just run for the fun of it.
8. The Gay/NRA Party… We're here, we're queer. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?
7. The Pity Party… C'mon, we never win anything. Vote for us once, will ya?
6. The Private Party… No comment.
5. The Cocktail Party… Cock and Tail - does it get any better than this?
4. The Search Party… Looking for members.
3. The Keg Party… Dude, we could so totally run the country.
2. Non-partisan party… We believe in what you believe in.
And the #1 independent political party we'd like to see:
1. The Beaver Party… Oh, forget it – we've already got Bush.

KARLOVAC, Croatia– Residents of a small Croatian town called police after waking up to find a 17-foot snow sculpture of a penis in the main square.
Police in the town of Karlovac who responded to the call saw the funny side and decided to let the ice weenie melt naturally.
Student Nenad Rizvic, 21, admitted to building the 'statue' with a group of friends. "We just wanted to make a slightly different kind of snowman," he said.

TAIWAN– Scientists in Taiwan are claiming success in breeding three pigs that glow in the dark.
Researchers at The National Taiwan University's Department of Animal Science and Technology hope the fluorescent green pigs will boost the country's stem-cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease, the BBC reported.
According to the scientists, the pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.
Others scientists have bred partially fluorescent pigs before, but these pigs are the only ones that are green all the way through -- even their internal organs are green.
The scientists will use the transgenic pigs to study human disease. Because the pig's genetic material is green, it will be easy to spot. For instance, if some of the pig's stem cells are injected into another animal, scientists can track the cells without the need for a biopsy or invasive test, the BBC said.

Firemen Torch Fire Station

TOKYO, Japan– Firemen in a small Japanese town have badly embarrassed themselves.
A party marking the end of a fire awareness promotional event ended in a blaze that caused extensive damage to their two-story wooden fire station in Shimohetsugi, southern Japan
No one was injured in the fire, which is thought to have been started either by a gas canister used for the firemen's barbecue or by a kerosene heater.
"It's very embarrassing that this should happen to people whose job it is to go and put out fires," a fire department spokesman told Reuters.

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind.– An 11-year-old boy is very lucky after a pickup truck ran over his head Jan. 8.
Cameron Schuette, a 5th-grader and his 13-year-old brother Tyler were helping their grandfather chop and load wood. The boys were sitting on the tailgate of their grandfather's truck when he began backing down his gravel driveway and Cameron either fell or jumped off.
The boy’s grandfather, Ron Shurley, told the Michigan City News Dispatch he thought he had run over a piece of wood until he got out of the truck and saw Cameron lying face down in the gravel. The boy then stood up and ran into the house.
"He didn't look too worse for wear," Shurley said. "He was just saying he had a headache."
The boy said he could hear his bones crack when the truck ran over his head.
Shurley drove Cameron to the hospital. The boy was transferred to another hospital, where tests revealed he suffered a slight hairline skull fracture. He also had scrapes on his neck and face, a black eye and a laceration on his ear canal.
He was held at the hospital for observation and released Jan. 10, with not much more than a stiff neck and a headache.
"Maybe he has an exceptionally hard head," Shurley said.

CINCINNATI, Ohio– The body of a woman who didn't want to be buried was found mummified in a chair in front of her television 2 1/2 years after her death.
Hamilton County Coroner O'Dell Owens told the AP that Johannas Pope, 61 at the time of her death, had told her live-in caregiver that she didn't want to be buried because she planned on returning after she died.
Pope died in August 2003. Her body was found Jan. 2 in the upstairs of her home. Some family members were living downstairs, authorities said.
An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify. The machine apparently stopped working about a month ago, and the body began to smell.
Owens said it could take weeks to determine Pope's cause of death because little organ tissue was available for testing.

Really Disgusting

JAKARTA, Indonesia– In the aftermath of a Dec. 31 news report that alleged some soup vendors were using rats to make meatballs for their broth, dozens of soup vendors rallied in protest outside an Indonesian TV station.
The protesters gathered at the station Jan 11 complained that the report was hurting their business.
Trans TV allowed five of the protesters into the building to hear their complaints - but told them it stood by the report.
"We said it was true and backed up by our findings in the field," Trans spokesman Ichwan Murni told the AP. "We have a duty to inform our viewers about the facts."
The report featured a taped confession of a man admitting using rat meat to make the balls, known here as bakso.
The food scare is the latest in a series that have hurt sales at restaurants and small-scale vendors nationwide. Last week, local media reported that dangerous amounts of formaldehyde were being used to preserve fish, noodles and bean curd.

LONDON, England– A university student who called a mounted policeman's horse "gay" will not be prosecuted, due to lack of evidence, reported BBC News.
Though the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case, the Thames Valley police are adamant about taking Sam Brown, 21, to court for making "homophobic comments."
According to BBC, Brown, a student at Oxford University, had said to an officer, "Excuse me, do you realize your horse is gay?"
After Brown refused to pay an £80 fine for the remark, police took the case to court.
Brown had been arrested under section 5 of the Public Order Act, which prohibits the making of homophobic remarks.

SYDNEY, Australia– A 30-year-old Australian woman was charged with unlawful wounding after her 35-year-old partner was stabbed with a pair of scissors in the back, shoulder and thigh at Northam, about 100 km (62 miles) east of Perth in Western Australia.
According to police, the woman repeatedly stabbed her partner because he played an Elvis Presley song, “Burning Love,” over and over again.
The man’s injuries were described as “non-life threatening.
The 1972 song was Elvis’ 40th and last top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.