October 14, 2007
Gunman severs victim's penis
VIENNA (Reuters) - An elderly Turkish man was arrested in Austria on suspicion of shooting dead another Turk and cutting off his penis because he believed the victim was having an affair with his wife, police said Thursday.
A police statement said the 76-year-old Turk confronted the other man, 58, at a bus stop in Wimpassing near Vienna on Wednesday, shot him at close range, sliced off the man's penis with a kitchen knife and laid it beside him before fleeing.
The gunman was arrested in a nearby apartment building, offering no resistance. During questioning, he admitted the killing and said he was relieved "because he had rescued his honor," the statement said.
It said the man told police that his wife and the other man appeared to have been carrying on a relationship for 20 years and he had challenged the man about it, without result.
Posted by ronnie at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2007
Woman sets fire to ex-husband's penis
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said Wednesday.
Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was "difficult to predict."
The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat, something common in Russia where property costs are very high.
"It was monstrously painful," the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. "I was burning like a torch. I don't know what I did to deserve this."
Posted by ronnie at 01:39 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2007
British performer's penis gets stuck to hoover
EDINBURGH (AFP) - A dwarf performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.
Daniel Blackner, or "Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf", was due to perform at the Circus of Horrors at the festival known for its oddball, offbeat performances.
The main part of his act saw him appear on stage with a vacuum cleaner attached to his member through a special attachment.
The attachment broke before the performance and Blackner tried to fix it using extra-strong glue, but unfortunately only let it dry for 20 seconds instead of the 20 minutes required.
He then joined it directly to his organ. The end result? A solid attachment, laughter, mortification and ... hospitalisation.
"It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed AE with a vacuum attached to me," Blackner said.
"I just wished the ground could swallow me up. Luckily, they saw me quickly so the embarrassment was short-lived."
Posted by ronnie at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)
July 14, 2007
Architect: Building is 'very phallic'
SAN DIEGO - The developer said his design for a 40-story resident tower proposed as a gateway to downtown San Diego looks like a flower. A city consultant said it looks like a giant phallus.
"With its rounded forms and swelling of the uppermost floors...this building structure is very phallic," wrote Gwynne Pugh, a Santa Monica architect hired by the downtown redevelopment agency to review building designs.
San Diego-based Sandor Shapery's proposal for a 160-unit hotel and condominium tower was expected to go before the redevelopment agency for initial feedback this month. Instead Shapery has asked for more time to "revisit" and perhaps "tone down" the design because he does not want to offend anyone.
"If it looks like a phallic symbol, someone has a strange perception," said Shapery, who was trying to create an "organic form." "You can find sex anywhere if you want to...There's just some sick people out there."
The building's architect C.W. Kim of La Jolla said the goal was to create a unique building.
"You know, it's the mediocre buildings that anyone can do," he said. "Anyone can do a square building."
Posted by ronnie at 02:47 AM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2007
Alaskan man pleads guilty to sale of seal penises
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - An Alaska man has pleaded guilty to selling more than 100 fur seal "oosiks" -- or penises -- to a local gift shop that intended to sell the items as an aphrodisiac.
Michael Richard Zacharof, an Aleut and former tribal president from the Bering Sea village of St. Paul, pleaded guilty this week to one count of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Federal law forbids the sale of any raw marine mammal parts unless they have been crafted into pieces of Alaska Native artwork.
In Zacharof's case, the former tribal leader sold the raw seal penises to a gift shop catering to customers from Asia. The shop then sold the items for about $100 each, according to the Justice Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Steward said seal penis bones, also known as seal sticks, are believed to have properties similar to erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra.
Zacharof faces a possible one-year prison term and a $20,000 fine, the U.S. Attorney's office said.
Posted by ronnie at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2007
Duck penises show "arms race" between sexes
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several species of ducks have evolved complicated genitals in what appears to be an "arms race" between the sexes, researchers reported on Tuesday.
And females may be coming out ahead, said the team of biologists at Yale University in Connecticut and the University of Sheffield.
Their findings not only open a window into a little-studied area of biology, but could help shed light on how evolution works to help both males and females control their own breeding, the researchers said.
Patricia Brennan of both Yale and Sheffield was trying to figure out why some species of birds have penises and some do not.
"Birds are the only group where it mostly has been lost -- 97 percent of birds do not have phalluses at all," Brennan said in a telephone interview.
"So if it is such a handy tool, why don't they have them any more?" Brennan asked.
Instead, they mate using what biologists call a "cloacal kiss" -- a brief touch of the single opening that birds of both sexes have for disposing of waste and that both eggs and sperm come out of.
Brennan noted that in many species, females choose a mate after he puts on an elaborate courtship display, and breeding pairs are often monogamous.
An exception is ducks -- especially mallards. Although mallards pair off to mate, females are often raped by stray males.
Yet studies show that these rapes do not pay off for the males. "Even in a species where 40 percent of the copulations are forced copulations, the ducklings still are mostly sired by the mates," Brennan said.
"That implies the females may have some kind of mechanism that allows them to keep control of the paternity."
So Brennan's team looked at a lot of duck bottoms.
What they found surprised them -- corkscrew-shaped oviducts, with plenty of potential dead-ends.
"Interestingly, the male phallus is also a spiral, but it twists in the opposite, counterclockwise, direction," said Yale ornithologist Richard Prum in a statement.
"So, the twists in the oviduct appear designed to exclude the opposing twists of the male phallus. It's an exquisite anti-lock-and-key system."
Brennan believes females evolved convoluted oviducts to foil the male rapists.
"You can envision an evolutionary scenario that, as the male phallus increases in size, the female creates more barriers. You get this evolutionary arms race," Brennan said.
Only if the female is relaxed and cooperative can the male's sperm get anywhere near the unfertilised eggs, the researchers suggest.
"What I think is really cool is this does speak a lot about the ability of the female to have these cryptic mechanisms of choice," Brennan said.
And it may mean something for people. "We can expect that these types of antagonistic traits are probably widespread and are likely part of the reproductive interactions of all sorts of animals, including humans," Brennan said.
Posted by ronnie at 07:23 AM | Comments (0)
January 31, 2007
Outcry prompts spa to tear down phallic fence
BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai spa has agreed to re-model its penis-shaped fence into lotus flowers after it offended neighbours, a government official said on Monday.
The Sappaya Spa, located near the entrance of a small village and near a beach on the southern tourist island of Phuket, upset locals this month when builders erected the 18 Hindu Shiva Lingas around the property.
"People can't stand them so they called us for help," Thawichart Intararit, chief of Phuket's culture office, told Reuters.
After weeks of negotiations, the spa owner, a staunch Hindu follower, bowed to the outcry over the sculptures, which he thought would bring him good luck in business.
"He promised to have workers use cement to re-shape them into lotus flowers from Monday," Thawichart said.
Shiva Linga is the holy symbol of Lord Shiva, which religious scholars have given various interpretations of, including the symbol of copulation.
Most of Thailand's 64 million people are Buddhists, many of whom also worship Hindu gods and practise Hindu rituals.
Posted by ronnie at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2007
Iguana's stubborn erection to get the chop
ANTWERP, Belgium (Reuters) - Mozart, an iguana with an erection that has lasted for over a week, will have his penis amputated in the next couple of days.
Veterinarians at Antwerp's Aquatopia had sought to treat the animal's problem, but decided removal was the only solution because of the risk of infection. The good news for Mozart and his mates is that male iguanas have two penises.
Mozart, sitting on the shoulders of his keeper as camera crews focussed on his red, swollen erection, seemed unperturbed by the news.
"It doesn't bother him. He doesn't know what amputation means," said vet Luc Lambrecht, adding that Mozart's sexual activity should be undimmed by the operation.
"I don't think so. That's all in his head."
Posted by ronnie at 06:11 PM | Comments (0)
January 01, 2007
Woman charged with malicious castration
LILLINGTON, N.C. - A woman attacked a man in his genitals during a Christmas party, injuring him badly enough that he needed 50 stitches, authorities said Friday. Rebecca Arnold Dawson, 34, was charged with malicious castration in a fight early Tuesday at a party hosted by the 38-year-old man's girlfriend, police said.
All three were heavily intoxicated, police Chief Frank Powers said.
Dawson is accused of grabbing the man's genitals. Police said a weapon was not used. He declined to elaborate.
"I believe he needed more than 50 stitches to repair the damage, but he is back home at this point," police Cpl. Brad Stevens said. "All we can tell you is that the injury was done with her hands."
Dawson does not have a listed phone number.
State law describes malicious castration as cutting off, maiming or disfiguring a person's genitals with the intent to hurt or render the victim impotent.
Dawson, who was released Wednesday on $50,000 bond, also was charged with offenses including assault causing serious bodily injury.
The castration arrest was the first of its kind in Lillington, a town of about 3,000 roughly 30 miles south of Raleigh, Powers said.
Posted by ronnie at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2006
Thieves give figurine the unkindest cut
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Masked thieves armed with a chisel stole the penis of a wooden Maori figurine, or tiki, at the entrance of a public library in northern New Zealand, police said.
Security cameras captured pictures of three masked men using the chisel to remove the tiki's penis early on Sunday morning. The figurine is one of two indigenous Maori designs that stand on "pou" or posts astride the entrance to the library in Whangarei.
Carver Kerry Strongman said the theft had damaged the "mana" or pride of the city.
Strongman said he would begin work immediately on a carving that would restore the tiki to its original state.
Police said they were at a loss to explain the theft, particularly as a nearby statue of Tangaroa, the Maori god of the sea, was better endowed.
Posted by ronnie at 02:02 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2006
First penis transplant reversed after two weeks
LONDON (Reuters) - Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife.
Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in China performed the complex 15-hour surgery on a 44-year old man whose penis had been damaged in a traumatic accident.
The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead man, was successful but Hu and his team removed it two weeks later.
"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Hu said in a report published online by the peer reviewed journal European Urology, without elaborating.
"This is the first reported case of penile transplantation in a human," Hu added.
Both the man and his wife had requested the surgery. He had been unable to have intercourse or urinate properly since the accident that occurred 8 months before the surgery was performed.
Ten days after the operation, which had been approved by the hospital's medical ethical committee, the recipient had been able to urinate.
There had been no signs of the 10-centimetre (4-inch) organ being rejected by the recipient's body. But Hu said more cases and longer observation are needed to determine whether sexual sensation and function can be restored.
"The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife's psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis" Hu added.
In a commentary in the journal, Yoram Vardi, of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, said the successful surgery represents an additional step in contemporary medicine.
But he added that careful patient selection is required as well as thorough informed consent of the patient and his family.
"Satisfactory consideration of these issues must be taken into account so that this approach can be considered a serious therapeutic option in the future," Vardi added.
Posted by ronnie at 07:27 AM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2006
Woman pleads guilty in fake penis case
MCKEESPORT, Pa. - A woman pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in connection with a bizarre incident in February that resulted in a fake penis being microwaved at a convenience store.
Leslye Creighton, 41, of Wilkinsburg, entered the plea Wednesday, and authorities dropped the same charge against Vincent Bostic, 31, of Pittsburgh, who has agreed to help pay $425 to replace the store's microwave, police and the couple's defense attorney said.
Police in McKeesport, about 10 miles east of Pittsburgh, said the Feb. 23 incident began when Bostic filled a fake penis with his urine that they said Creighton planned to use to pass a drug test to get a job.
The two stopped at a GetGo! convenience store and, after wrapping the device in a paper towel, asked a store clerk to heat it up in a microwave, police said. Authorities said they believe Creighton wanted the device heated so the urine inside would be at body temperature during the drug test.
The clerk, however, believing the lifelike device to be a severed penis, called police.
Defense attorney William Difenderfer said Creighton faces a maximum punishment of $300 and 90 days in jail when she is sentenced Nov. 15 by McKeesport District Judge Doug Reed. Difenderfer called it "a humorous, but weird, case."
Posted by ronnie at 07:12 AM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2006
'Pricasso's' penile paint brush a masterstroke at Sydney Sexpo
SYDNEY (AFP) - The 10th anniversary Sydney Sexpo opened with what has to be a world first -- an on-the-spot portrait by a "penile artist" of a "genital origamist".
Artist Tim Patch, who prefers to be known as Pricasso, uses his penis as a brush to execute surprisingly good portraits in acrylic paint.
His subject, Justin Morley who goes by the professional name Alan Length, uses his penis as a puppet, creating everything from hamburgers and windsurfers to the Loch Ness Monster and the Eiffel Tower.
They were the starring acts as the four-day Sydney Sexpo got underway at the former site of the agricultural Royal Easter Show, with a record crowd of more than 55,000 expected to tour the vast halls.
Stands offer an extensive range of sex toys, specialist lingerie, aphrodisiacs, breast and penis enlargement, and bad puns.
Morley, 33, has been in the business for some time, having achieved international renown alongside his brother when they toured the United States in 2001 with their "Puppetry of the Penis" show.
Pricasso, however, is a neophyte in the world of penile art, having taken it up on a dare from a woman friend at a party last New Years' Eve.
A father of four who studied furniture design when he failed to get into a fine arts course and then spent most of his life as a builder, he now paints portraits for about 300 dollars (200 US dollars), with a Sexpo special price of just 75 dollars.
He is a modest, almost shy man, whose efforts to embrace a showbiz persona extend to saying he believes he is the world's only penile artist, but if not, he's "certainly the greatest".
"I still do a bit of building to subsidise my meager income as a struggling artist," he told AFP, adding that his eldest son thought he had a "fantastic job".
Pricasso's budding showmanship also extends to his outfit, all in silver -- a top hat, a long "flasher-type" coat with trouser legs which start at the ankles and end at the knees, and nothing else.
"I was embarrassed to start with," he said before stripping off the coat to paint Alan Length, fully dressed in cape and bare legs. "It sounds really weird but if you see it being done it doesn't look too bad."
He's right on both counts. With show organisers, journalists and scantily-clad women milling around at the media preview, his naked brushwork, using a palette on a low stand and holding the canvas in his hand, soon seems weird but not too bad.
So what did the trail-blazing penile puppeteer Alan Length think of his portrait by the newcomer to the artistic potential of the penis?
"Not bad, considering he did it in 10 minutes," he said.
Morley, makes a living from penis puppetry offering performances at women's "hen's nights" and at sports club fundraisers.
What does his girlfriend think of his job? "When I leave she says 'Good luck with the show, don't let them touch'."
And do the women try to touch? "No, it doesn't turn them on, they just can't believe the shapes I can make."
As for the tools of their trade, the men say they have no problems dipping them in paint -- "acrylic comes off with water" -- or bending them into odd contortions -- "the doctor says I'm fine".
And neither is a braggart. Pricasso says he is proof there is no need to be well-endowed and admits that "probably most men could do an abstract", while Alan Length's publicity material warns that "shows might be slightly shorter in winter."
Posted by ronnie at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2006
Scientists Create Artificial Penis
TUESDAY, May 23 (HealthDay News) -- Success with randy, replicating rabbits suggests that an "artificial penis" made from a patient's own penile cells might someday help men challenged by tough-to-treat impotence.
In the study, adult male rabbits with severely damaged penises received a graft of specially engineered penile tissue. The animals then re-grew full penises that functioned normally -- even to the point of successfully impregnating females.
"This is very exciting -- the researchers have been working on this for a long time in a variety of different organs. It's not yet clinically available, but if it works and proves safe and effective, it would be a tremendous advance," said Dr. Ira Sharlip, a spokesman for the American Urological Association and a clinical professor of urology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Sharlip was not involved in the study, which was led by Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. His team reported its findings Tuesday at the American Urological Association annual meeting, in Atlanta.
Drugs like Cialis, Levitra and Viagra have revolutionized the treatment of impotence for millions of men over the past decade. However, some forms of erectile dysfunction remain very difficult to treat.
A condition called "corporal fibrosis" -- where the tubes of penile "spongy tissue" that maintain erection are gradually replaced by inactive, fibrous scar tissue -- remains largely untreatable. The disorder occurs when the penis' sensitive spongy-tissue cells don't get the oxygen they need to survive, usually because of a chronic reduction in blood flow.
"It's relatively common in men with diabetes and various forms of vascular disease, or men who've previously had infections -- usually infections of a penile prosthesis," Sharlip said. "There are men who have such severe fibrosis that nothing can be done to restore their natural erection function, other than to implant a surgical prosthesis," he added.
However, advances in biotechnology have spurred research into replacing dead tissues with new, living tissues grown in a laboratory using the patient's own cells. According to Sharlip, Atala has long been a pioneer in this field, working not just with penile tissues but with tissues from other organs.
In their latest study, the Wake Forest researchers first used standard biopsy techniques to harvest smooth-muscle and blood-vessel cells from the penises of healthy adult male rabbits. In the lab, the researchers used these cells to "seed" a special nutrient-rich collagen matrix. Over time, the cells multiplied within this framework to grow into new penile tissue.
Next, the team surgically removed all of the natural spongy tissue from the penises of the donor rabbits. They then grafted in the engineered tissue.
Atala's group tracked the rabbits' penile growth and function over the next one, three and six months.
The researchers found that the new penises were similar in structure to natural rabbit penises. The "artificial penis" also achieved and maintained erectile pressures equal to those of normal rabbit penises.
Next came the real test, as the rabbits that had received the new penises were presented with sexually mature females.
Things proceeded just as nature intended, the researchers said.
"Mating activity in the animals with the engineered [penis] resumed by 1 month after implantation," they reported. "Presence of sperm was confirmed in the vaginal vault of the female partners, and all females conceived and delivered healthy pups."
Sharlip cautioned this is a preliminary study involving animals. But he said that "rabbit tissue is fairly similar to human tissue. If it can be done in rabbits, it probably can be done in humans."
Doctors who treated men with corporal fibrosis in this way would still face another hurdle, however: Treating the underlying cause of the fibrosis itself.
"There's the question of how you restore that needed blood supply," Sharlip said. "You may be able to restore the natural spongy tissue of these erection chambers, but in a patient with severe corporal fibrosis you also have to get the blood supply to come back into the new, restored tissue." Without that steady source of oxygen, any implant might meet the same fate as the tissue it had replaced, he said.
Still, the advance does mark one of the few breakthroughs against the disorder in years, Sharlip said. And he added that success in tissue engineering has implications "not only for the treatment of erectile dysfunction but in the world of medicine in general."
"If we could re-grow and replace worn-out tissue [in other body parts], that would have tremendous implications," Sharlip said.
Posted by ronnie at 03:25 AM | Comments (0)