FIGHTING INTOLERANCE
The Turkish military’s legendary homophobia (rare among NATO countries) comprises both zero-tolerance for homosexuality by service personnel and the requirement of rigorous proof by anyone applying for exemption from service by claiming to be gay. (Homosexuality is the only disqualifier from compulsory service for able-bodied men.) In personal experiences recounted for Foreign Policy magazine in December, some gay men seeking exemptions were ordered to verify their claims by producing witnesses to their homosexual acts, or by photographing themselves fully engaged—and to be persuasive to authorities, the conscript had to be depicted in the “receiving” position in sexual intercourse.
WHIZ SHOW
The SEGA video company’s Japan division began test-marketing its new Toylets game in January, designed for men’s urinals. With sensors in the basin and a video screen at eye level, men score points based on the strength and accuracy of their streams. Among the suite of games: sumo wrestling (squirt the opponent out of the circle), graffiti-erasure (strong streams wipe out more graffiti) and skirt-raising (the stronger the stream, the higher a woman’s skirt is “blown” upward).
TROUBLE BREWING
In a December incident near Orlando, a former Ku Klux Klan “Cyclops,” George Hixon, 73, and his son, Troy, 45, and Troy’s girlfriend fought, resulting in Troy allegedly firing gunshots toward the woman’s feet and the subsequent arrests of the two men. According to Osceola County deputies, the altercation was precipitated by the girlfriend’s unhappiness that she got the “cheap beer” while the men kept the “good beer” (Budweiser) for themselves.
THIS JUST IN: GERMANS ARE EVIL
Automaker BMW of Germany announced testing in December of a new technology (“flash projection”) in which an ultra-bright light sears the company logo into a viewer’s vision, where it lingers even if the viewer subsequently closes his eyelids tightly.
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