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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Igor Volodin believes vodka is no more harmful than chocolate. He is proud to be the first Russian to produce the spirit in a special women’s version, designed to be sipped with salad after a workout in the gym.

Touted as a glamour product for upwardly mobile women in booming Russia, Damskaya or “Ladies” vodka worries doctors, who fear a fresh wave of female alcoholics in a country already suffering one of the world’s worst drink problems.

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NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. - A central Kentucky judge had a suspicious mind when an Elvis Presley impersonator showed up for court apparently drunk and sporting sunglasses and a rhinestone-studded shirt with a scarf draped around his neck.

County Attorney Brian Goettl said that as a result, the judge had David Blaisdell, 64, tested for intoxication and sentenced him to three days in jail for contempt of court when it was determined that the man’s blood-alcohol level was nearly twice that at which a person in Kentucky is considered legally drunk.

Blaisdell, who was in court for a pretrial conference on misdemeanor charges of stalking and violating a protective order, told the judge he had had a few drinks the night before, Goettl said.

Now everyone will be going, “awww … God rest his soul” - typical. In Boston, I used to work at a place where I transcribed news programs. You read that right. Every night I was not only force fed news, I had to spit it back out. I had to transcribe Dapper O’Neil’s words many, many times. From today’s Boston Globe obit:

Flamboyantly conservative, Mr. O’Neil was defined more by the enemies he made than his political views. At various times, he railed against feminists, gays, and immigrants. He made a career out of his opposition to school desegregation, affirmative action, and other government initiatives he considered social engineering.

He was the only one of 13 city councilors to vote against a local ban on assault weapons and the city’s human rights ordinance, which prohibited discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

In the process, Mr. O’Neil seemed to delight in his ability to enrage liberals, who considered him insensitive at best and a bigot at worst. But his stands on issues served to solidify his conservative political base.

In the 1970s, he lambasted “hippies” from a bullhorn on the back of a pickup truck circling Boston Common. In 1990, after viewing nude photographs at the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, he said, “This country’s going down the drain. And while there’s guys like me in it, I’ll put a stop to some of this.”

During the 1992 Dorchester Day Parade, he was captured on a home video exclaiming, “I thought I was in Saigon for Chrissakes,” while he passed through a Southeast Asian part of the city.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — A Scottsdale man inadvertently shot himself in the buttocks Thursday morning. Scottsdale police Sgt. Mark Clark said Daniel Leatherman, 26, heard a disturbance outside his apartment and saw a man he knew fighting with a cab driver. Leatherman told police that the man, Cody Nunn, 25, had assaulted him in the past, so he grabbed his gun and went outside. Leatherman told police that he accidentally dropped the gun while hiding it behind his back and shot himself in the derriere. Nunn and Leatherman’s friends took him to a local hospital. When police arrived, Clark said Nunn was drunk and disruptive. He was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct. Leatherman was released from the hospital later Thursday. There were no phone listings for Leatherman or Nunn*.

*Well of course not! Can you imagine the calls they got when they were listed?

Bush says he wouldn’t be President if he hadn’t stopped drinking whiskey:

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, President Bush spoke more candidly than ever before about his past alcohol addiction.

“I doubt I’d be standing here if I hadn’t quit drinking whiskey, and beer and wine and all that,” the president disclosed Tuesday to ABC News’ Martha Raddatz during an exclusive tour of the White House residence.

The president told ABC News he quit drinking over 20 years ago — cold turkey.

“I had too much to drink one night, and the next day I didn’t have any,” Bush said. “The next day I decided to quit and I haven’t had a drink since 1986.”

If ever this nation needed a drink somewhere, it was in Bush’s hand each day since 1986.

His cumulative hangovers would be nuthin’ compared to the hangover this dry drunk has given this country and the world from his 5 year binge of incompetent, authoritarian, civil rights shredding and war-mongering.

I blame the whiskey. Where were you, whiskey, when we needed you?

“They took the bar, the whole fucking bar.”

In what can only be described as a crime against nature, hundreds of bottles of Jack Daniels — some of it a century old — might be poured down the drain.

Channel 4 News in Nashville has the story:

Here’s a sobering thought: Hundreds of bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, some of it almost 100 years old, may be unceremoniously poured down a drain because authorities suspect it was being sold by someone without a license.

Officials seized 2,400 bottles late last month during warehouse raids in Nashville and Lynchburg, the southern Tennessee town where the whiskey is distilled.

“Punish the person, not the whiskey,” said an outraged Kyle MacDonald, 28, a Jack Daniel’s drinker from British Columbia who promotes the whiskey on his blog. “Jack never did anything wrong, and the whiskey itself is innocent.”

Indeed, Mr. MacDonald, the whiskey is innocent.

The whiskey never hurt anyone.

In fact, it may be argued that the whiskey has life-sustaining powers more powerful than any herb, vitamin or elixir.

Issues of health aside, the disposing of century-old Jack Daniels that never hurt anyone and exists only to bring a little light into our otherwise bleak lives is a sin. I liken it to burning perfectly good weed, just because someone was selling it illegally.

Think of the good work that could be done with the whiskey. Think of the money that could be raised by auctioning it off. Think of the spirits that could be lifted simply by letting bloggers in L.A. drink it.

I’ve got a friend with Kansas City connections. And every time he returns from the Midwest, he brings me a bottle of Jack, from a vintage not available easily in Los Angeles. How I look forward to that first, smooth sip … it’s mother’s milk.

Tonight, I’ll go home and pour myself a few fingers of the amber liquid. And I’ll lift the glass to my lips and drink, slowly to savor the smooth taste. And as I roll my friend Jack around my mouth before swallowing, I’ll say a little prayer for innocent whiskey wasted.

Father of the Week:

Michigan boy, 13, charged with drunken driving
Police say dad, too drunk to drive, gave keys of truck to his son

CLIO, Michigan - A police officer checking on a truck that got stuck in the mud at a city park was startled to find a 13-year-old boy behind the wheel. The boy’s father, who was sitting in the passenger seat, told police he had had too much to drink and let his son drive. The boy had been drinking, too, police said. “(The boy) even said he didn’t want to drive because he was too drunk,” McLellan told The Flint Journal for a story published Thursday.

President of the Week:

Mugabe paid witch doctor in
‘gas from rocks’ scam

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — President Robert Mugabe has said ministers at a Cabinet meeting he agreed to pay two head of cattle and three buffaloes to a woman who claimed she could produce gasoline out of rocks, the official media reported Friday. Mugabe later ordered the woman’s arrest on fraud charges.

The Herald newspaper, a government mouthpiece, reported the woman claiming to be a tribal healer, known in the West as a witch doctor, also took large sums of money, a car and a piece of land from the nation’s highest ranking politicians, promising in return to use spells to produce diesel fuel from rocks in the bush outside the provincial town of Chinhoyi, 70 miles northwest of Harare.

Instead of invoking spirits, the woman bought diesel and piped it into the rocks, the newspaper reported.

Well, it’s really the same as this, isn’t it?

Governor of the Week:

Ga. Governor Prays for Rain at Capitol
ATLANTA - Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue stepped up to a podium outside the state Capitol on Tuesday and led a solemn crowd of several hundred people in a prayer for rain on his drought-stricken state.

“We’ve come together here simply for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm,” Perdue said after a choir provided a hymn.

Perdue also let us know just why Georgia is having this problem: it’s the damned shellfish. That’s right:

Gov. Sonny Perdue says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been allowing Georgia’s water to flow to endangered mussels and other species in Florida and thereby preventing state residents from sprinkling their yards and hosing down their cars.

“I’m telling you, when it comes to choosing between mussels and drinking water for children, I’m about fed up with this mess,” Perdue said after declaring an emergency this month as Atlanta’s main source of water dropped to what the state said was a 90-day supply.

Bitchfight of the Week, cont’d:

In his final assessment, Fabio told OK! “You have to be a low-class, scumbag to start calling a woman a name. If you’re a man, you should never. You should be a gentleman. These women were with me and as a man I defend them. He [Clooney] was lucky he ran out of the restaurant. He’s not even half a man.”

Cult of the Week:

And if a Doomsday cult threatens suicide, doesn’t everyone win?

Of course we did, goddammit!

From the NYT:

“Even growing up around it, little shards of the language stayed alive in our mouths and came out as slang,” he said, spouting a string of words that sounded straight out of a James Cagney movie.

“Snazzy” comes from “snasach,” which means polished, glossy or elegant.*

The word “scram” comes from “scaraim,” meaning “I get away.” The word “swell” comes from “sóúil,” meaning luxurious, rich and prosperous, and “sucker” comes from “sách úr,” or, loosely, fat cat.

There is “Say uncle!” (“anacal” means mercy), “razzmatazz,” and “malarkey,” and even expressions like “gee whiz” and “holy cow” and “holy mackerel” are Anglicized versions of Irish expressions, he said. So are “doozy,” “hokum,” “humdinger,” “jerk,” “punk,” “swanky,” “grifter,” “bailiwick,” “sap,” “mug,” “wallop,” “helter-skelter,” “shack,” “shanty,” “slob,” “slacker” and “knack.”

*ahem.