Out of masks and scared of SARS? Try a bra.

Men in China are getting a taste of underwire, no doubt. Granted, SARS itself isn't funny, but the idea of all these people running around with a C-cup on their faces is just hillarious. And it's a much better story than yesterday's weird news with a guy committing suicide by running into the local grocery and throwing himself on a meat saw (that was in Africa) and another man in Germany running around town with a wild-eyed look and a decapitated head swinging in his hands. Give me people with bras on their faces over that any day. :) On a happier note, a woman with two uteri gave birth to fraternal twins, one from each uterus. That sounds like fodder for the tabloids. Hmmm...I've heard of bicornate uteri but never two separate ones. I wonder how everything links up--one cervix or two. etc. Periods must be a bitch for this poor woman, because that's twice the lining.

One last bit of news that made it into the weird...West Hollywood, California, has become the first city in the nation to ban cat declawing. This controversial process severs part of each toe and tendons in the cat's feet. On the one hand, I believe that declawing cats is generally wrong. My own cats have all their claws and are subject to frequent trimmings. Of course, I do have a rather beaten-down couch as a result. I have one friend, Zabet, who agonised over whether to get a cat who was living in her mother's house and was still basically feral declawed. It took them three days and many endured and pretty deep cuts to finally get Aggie to the vet. She decided declawing was the only way they could safely prevent injury to the cat or themselves should an emergency arise. I agree. Later they got a kitten who was much more acclimated to human contact and especially good about having her feet touched (being a six-toed cat, she'd been handled since she was tiny), so they use nail caps on her. But I would call Aggie's a medically necessary declawing. How odd that in West Hollywood that would mean in order to do it they'd have had to travel out of the city to another vet for that. It's a little like forcing someone to go to another city for an abortion, but on two sides of the political spectrum. I find most people, when they realise just what's involved with a declawing, are less likely to do it. Maybe education and informed choices, rather than blanket legislation, is the answer.