A gay nightclub in West Hollywood, Calif., refuses to play host to straight women's bachelorette parties until same-sex marriage is legal nationwide.
"We love our straight girlfriends coming in to celebrate one of the happiest days of their life," David Cooley, owner of the Abbey nightclub, told NBC. "But it's also a slap in the face to my customers and my life that we can't have that same celebration."
It's a significant move for the club, which hosts dozens of bachelorette parties every weekend. The male go-go dancers are a big draw for the soon-to-be-wed ladies.
Patrons of the club expressed mixed reactions to the new rule.
Everyone should be able to get married, Roshanna Sabaratnam said. We shouldn't, as straight people, be flaunting it in front of people who can't
Tough punishment-Honour student jailed for missing class
Playing hooky is illegal in Texas, where a 17-year-old honour student who works full time and supports her siblings was recently sentenced to jail for missing class.
Last month, Judge Lanny Moriarty sentenced Diane Tran, a Grade 11 student in Houston, to 24 hours behind bars and a $100 fine.
"If you let one (truant student) run loose, what are you gonna do with the rest of 'em? Let them go too?" Moriarty told KHOU.com.
Tran told KHOU she's often late and absent because she's exhausted from working a full-time job and a part-time job ever since her parents split up "out of the blue" and both moved away, leaving her in Willis, Texas.
She also helps to pay for her older brother's university education and helps financially support her baby sister, who lives with relatives in Houston.
Tran lives with the family who owns the wedding venue where she works. Her other job is at a dry cleaner's.
"She goes from job to job, from school she stays up 'til 7 o'clock in the morning," Devin Hill, Tran's friend, co-worker and classmate, said.
What happen-Google Book full of 'porn, racism'
About half of the Google Book is "revolting medical photos, porn, racism or bad cartoons" -- and it could be yours. Two U.K. artist/geeks ran some computer code and replaced all 21,000 words in an average dictionary with the first Google image that pops up for each word.
The result is a 1,240-page tome of the best and worst of Google's image search algorithm, laid out in colourful columns, in alphabetical order -- starting with a picture of an aardvark. The thumb-indexed pages are bound in a swirl-patterned hardcover.
"If the Internet goes off, you made need this reference book Felix and I made," artist Ben West says on his website.
"It's really an unfiltered, uncritical record of the state of human culture in 2012," West told creativeapplications.com. "I would estimate about half of the book is revolting medical photos, porn, racism or bad cartoons."
West and co-artist Felix Heyes hope to print a small number of the books for sale. Anyone interested in signing up can visit their websites at bewe.me and felixheyes.com.
Wow-Scientists develop needle-less injection (video)
Scientists at MIT have developed a high-pressure "jet-injection" device that shoots medicine through the skin painlessly (or very nearly painlessly).
The device can benefit diabetics and others who have to self-inject but are squeamish and avoid doctors' orders.
"We think this kind of technology - gets around some of the phobias that people may have about needles," research team member Catherine Hogan said.
The injector, which looks like a small cylindrical gun, works by means of a powerful magnet attached to a piston that ejects the drug at very high pressure and velocity out through the nozzle -- which, the researchers said, is the size of a mosquito's proboscis. So the injection should feel like nothing more than a mosquito bite.
The MIT team's device is a breakthrough because, unlike the jet-based injectors on the market today, it can deliver a range of doses to various depths under the skin, and with more precision. Giving a baby a vaccination, for instance, requires less pressure than a shot to an adult.
What happen-Student Sex Video Broadcast at High School Graduation
This cap and gown ceremony included X-rated pomp and circumstance too.
A graduation ceremony at a high school in Denmark was reportedly interrupted when a video showing a male student’s sexual encounter with a woman was broadcast on a big screen.
The indecent broadcast in front of about 450 people happened during the showing of a film about the graduating class at Gammel Hellerup Gymnasium, The Copenhagen Post reported.
While displaying a host of student-submitted photos and video featuring images of smiling
teens, the film transitioned to what seemed like hidden camera footage of one of the graduating students having sex, according to the Copenhagen Post. The woman was not a student at the school.
Jørgen Rasmussen, the headteacher at Gammel Hellerup Gymnasium, told a local news source he did not hold the male student shown in the video responsible for the graduation day snafu.
Instead, Rasmussen blamed those who secretly recorded the sex tape and uploaded it to the graduation video.
"We've agreed not to press charges," Rasmussen told Berlingske Nyhedsbureau. "However, we have encouraged the two young people who appear in the video to proceed with the case. It is really them, and not the school, that was violated."
How-Waiter Gets $5,000 Tip on $27 Bill
What's better than a 20 percent tip? How about nearly 20,000?
A Houston waiter, who lost his car in a severe storm several weeks ago, received a $5,000 tip from a couple over the weekend. The customers, regulars at D’Amico’s Italian Market Café in Rice Village, gave the wad of cash to Greg Rubar Saturday. They told him to buy himself a new car, KHOU-TV reported.“I told them thank you when they gave it to me, I knew it was money, but I didn’t know how much,” he told the TV station. “Maybe like a half hour after they left I went in the bathroom and I opened it, and looked at it and I could tell it was $5,000 because it was still wrapped, it still had the band on it from the bank.”Rubar has worked at D’Amico for 16 years. In that time has received a number of large tips but nothing as generous as 18,518 percent.
What this tells me is that there are people out there willing to help people, he told the Houston Chronicle.Rubar said he plans to use the money to buy a car as his customers intended. The couple that tipped him wished to remain anonymous.
