Christopher Lee McCuin apparently has Hannibal Lecter’s tastes. Earlier this week the 25-year-old man from Tyler, Texas was arraigned on capital murder charges involving the death — and suspected consumption — of his girlfriend, Jana Shearer. He left the body for his mother to find in her garage.

But that’s not all he left at Mommy’s house:

Sheriff J. B. Smith said investigators found Ms. Shearer’s body with chunks of flesh cut out, one ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a plate of human flesh with a fork on the kitchen table in his mother’s brick home….

As if those facts weren’t drawing enough attention, PETA (the animal-rights activist group) wants to make sure McCuin never gets to indulge his apparent taste for flesh again. They’ve petitioned the jail demanding a vegetarian diet for McCuin, saying that it’s up to the Sheriff to keep McCuin from “contributing to any more suffering and death.” Moreover, PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich warned, the consumption of meat might make McCuin commit further violence.

To his credit, the Sheriff’s response to PETA at least appeared to take them seriously. He cited the Texas Commission on Jail Standards which has strict guidelines for the care and feeding of prisoners, even cannibals. Absent a medical reason, he explained, prison officials may not intentionally alter a prisoner’s meal.

But it wasn’t easy, Sheriff J.B. Smith said. “I kind’ve said ‘pfft’ in a very nice way.”

Very professional. I, personally, would’ve used a different four-letter word than pfft.

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I’m not much of a Stephen King fan, but I recall reading VH’s copy of The Dark Half and being horrified by the premise: fetus in fetu or, in layman’s terms, an unborn twin growing within the host twin which contains organ systems, and sometimes even entire limbs or more.

The developmental abnormality is said to occur in 1 out of every 500,000 births. In cases where the parasitic twin is less developed — like when Aunt Voula in My Big Fat Greek Wedding talks of the tumor removed from her spine that turned out to have “teeth, and a spinal column” — they’re known as teratoma (which translates aptly as “monstrous tumor”).

So what do you call it when a 1-year-old girl has two deceased triplets — one complete except for limbs and the other with only a hairy head and part of its digestive system — removed from her abdomen?

I just call that gross.

A town mayor resigned from the office he’s held for 6 years now because he just remembered that he was abducted by Satanists and brainwashed, oh, 30 years ago or so.

No, I’m not making it up.

Centerton, Arkansas mayor Don Williams says his real name is Don LaRose, and at some point in the mid-70s he was a preacher in Indiana. He also happened to have a wife and two kids at the time. But, see, after the Satanists kidnapped him, he wound up changing his name and moving to Centerton.

He’s just now remembering thanks to the help of “multiple shock therapy treatments”, an injection of truth serum, and the support of his current wife.

Please feel free to write your own punchline to this story, folks. I seem to be a bit too flabbergasted to make one up myself.

At 102 years old, Nora Hardwick proves that you really are only as old as you feel… no matter how the rest of you looks. This great-great-grandma just posed nude for a calendar to help raise money for the Ancaster Athletic football team in Ancaster, Lincolnshire.

But don’t worry: she didn’t let it all completely hang out.

“They draped a bit of pink cloth around my shoulders, but at my age I just don’t have the model body to be taking it all off,” she told The Telegraph, a U.K. newspaper. “It was all very tastefully done. You couldn’t see any of the bits or anything.”

Apparently Mrs. Hardwick’s children — who range from 62 to 80 years old — applaud their Mum’s decision. Know what? I do too. As far as I’m concerned, having lived past 100 years old entitles Mrs. Hardwick to do just about anything she wants!

As a lover of history and cultural geography, I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded person. The kind who tries, if not embracing other viewpoints, then at least making room in my own perspective for them.

Then there are times when, despite my best efforts, I just can’t help thinking that some cultures are so radically different from my own that I’ll never in a thousand years be able to comprehend them.

Take, for instance, the traditional Hindu marriage ceremony of P. Selvakumar and his new bride. That’s her in the picture. As you may have noticed, she’s a bitch… and I mean that in the literal sense. That’s right: he married a dog.

It seems that 15 years ago or so, Selvakumar stoned two dogs to death then hung them in the tree. Now, on the advice of an astrologer, he’s atoning for his crime by wedding a stray dog selected for him by his family.

After the wedding, the happy couple shared a meal. Sort of. Selvakumar joined his family for a feast. The dog ate a bun.

Unfortunately, there’s no indication where the happy couple is registered, so I guess I won’t be sending them matching water bowls.

Being adopted, I’ve never really understood the fascination with genealogy that so many people seem to have. There are more than enough nuts in my adoptive family to convince me that it sprang from a wacky root, and I suspect that if I were to look into my own bloodline I’d lose the consolation of telling myself that I share no blood relation to the crazies.

Lynne Cheney might be regretting her fascination with such research these days, too, now that she’s discovered that Vice President Dick Cheney is related to Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama - charismatic anti-war son of a black Kenyan goatherd and white Kansan mother - and Mr. Cheney - immensely powerful and very white Bush administration hawk - are eighth cousins, Mrs. Cheney said.

The Vice-President’s wife said the two men shared an ancestor, a 17th century immigrant from France named Mareen Duvall.

According to Mrs. Cheney, Mr. Obama - Hillary Clinton’s leading rival for the Democratic nomination - is a descendant of Mr. Duvall. The French Huguenot’s son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland in the late 1650s from England.

I don’t see any family reunions in the works, do you?

If you’ve ever been a “regular” at a bar or other gathering place, you know that sooner or later all of the other bored people around you are going to entertain themselves by opining and speculating on your life since they don’t particularly like their own. Most people just ignore such gossip, find themselves a new watering hole or take up a hobby, like boating, to help them unwind.

I’m guessing one Czechoslovakian couple wishes they’d done that, too:

A Czech couple who decided to take a DNA test to squash persistent pub gossip and prove that their 10-month-old baby was their own got a nasty surprise.

The couple, from the southeastern town of Trebic, had some doubts about the child as her hair was blonde and they both had dark hair. Fellow drinkers’ suspicions got on their nerves.

But the test showed neither of the parents had the same DNA as the baby, Czech news agency CTK reported Wednesday, suggesting a mix-up at the hospital.

Authorities were looking into the case.

If their legal system’s anything like ours, the lawsuit against that hospital’s going to pay for them to start their own bar.

But that doesn’t get their biological baby back, does it?

What would you do if you were in their place: raise the child you’ve thought of as your own for 10 months, or try to find the one that’s actually yours?

Medical marijuana users in California will now have to satisfy their munchies in a lawful fashion like the rest of us now that the Feds have shut down Tainted, Inc.

The company, which sold “enhanced” products like pot-laced candies and BBQ sauces, was the subject of a DEA raid yesterday. Agents found 460 marijuana plants and various products scheduled for shipping to California and Seattle; Vancouver, British Columbia; and Amsterdam.

Although California state law authorizes marijuana use for medical purposes, Federal law does not.

This isn’t the first California-based “enhanced” candy company shut down by the DEA. Earlier this year the owners of “Beyond Bomb” — an Oakland-based company that produced candies such as “Stoney Rancher” and “Rasta Reese’s” — pleaded guilty to marijuana charges in federal court.

A Belgium resident, tired of the bickering between Flemish and Walloon politicians, decided it was time for the whole country to go… to the highest bidder on eBay. The listing read, “For Sale: Belgium, a Kingdom in three parts … free premium: the king and his court (costs not included).”

Of course, the winning bidder would also have to take on the country’s $300 billion national debt, but they’d save a fortune with free delivery.

Officials at eBay pulled the auction after someone actually bid $14 million.

Happy birthday wishes to Winnie Langley on her 100th birthday… and her 170,000th cigarette.

Ms. Langley began smoking just days after WWI broke out in June 1914. She was seven — that’s right, 7 — years old at the time. Since then, she’s smoked five cigarettes a day, a habit she says many people took up around that time to help them calm their nerves.

Smoking wasn’t considered a nasty habit back then as it is these days. “There were not all the the health warnings like there are today when I started. It was the done thing.”

Langley has outlived her husband, Robert, as well as her son, Donald, who passed away two years ago at age 72.

She has no intention of quitting, either.

As to why she’s never suffered any of the health problems attributed to a long-time smoking habit, Langley says the answer is simple: she’s never inhaled.

Today is National Relaxation Day. I’d celebrate by remaining in my PJs all day, but I did that on Monday. Skipping chores and oversleeping’s out, too: that was me yesterday.

Since our local weatherman is predicting this to be the hottest day of the summer thus far — over 101 F, they say — it’s just too hot to do much in the way of celebrating National Relaxation Day.

A nap? Sure, I’d love one but it’s our first week back-to-homeschool so chances are I won’t get that chance. Yoga? A long, solo walk this evening? A little time puttering around in the garden? Nah, that all sounds like work to me and that, really, is the antithesis of relaxation.

But wait, isn’t it also National Failures Day? See, now, that’s something I can celebrate: my failure to do anything to mark National Relaxation Day. Or does such a celebration mean actually having succeeded at failing and, therefore, having violated the spirit of National Failure Day?

Oh, the mind. It reels.

Maybe I ought to head back to bed.

The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming! This time, they’re known as Brood XIII.

It sounds like a bad horror movie. But it’s actually the name of the billions of cicadas expected to emerge this month in parts of the Midwest after spending 17 years underground.

The red-eyed, shrimp-sized, flying insects don’t bite or sting. But they are known for mating calls that produce a din that can overpower ringing telephones, lawn mowers and power tools.

What a gross bug. I hates them, even if they’re supposedly delicious cooked in a quiche. Luckily, my state’s not due for their 17-year crop until 2015… by which time I plan to move to a state that’s just been through their periodic swarm. Kim, who lives in Illinois, isn’t going to be so lucky, though.

Well, perhaps that should be in the past tense:

Pre-Islamic Middle Eastern regions were home to mysterious snake cults, according to two papers published in this month’s Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy journal.

From at least 1250 B.C. until around 550 A.D., residents of what is now the Persian Gulf worshipped snakes in elaborate temple complexes that appear to have been built for this purpose, the studies reveal. [...]

Most of the snakes were depicted with triangular heads and scales, which Benoist said suggests “a viper species, which is striking, as they are venomous and therefore dangerous.”

Indeed.