John Worley, Northampton – “Hello, hello, I thought you were dead. Hmm, that’s actually the title of an ancient Hudson + Ford song. Quite why that should stick in mind I really have no idea. Reckon the older one gets, the more junk accumulates inside one’s head (just as more fanzine accumulate inside one’s room). Anyway, it’s nice to see another issue of TC out on the streets – someone obviously didn’t like it and discarded it in the gutter…”

Ah, irony, I see. The point about head-junk is true, I fear; as I run towards The Big 30 – still some years to go, I may add – my brain fills up with useless trivia to the detriment of useful things. Like my name. Still, they say short-term memory loss is the first sign of senility. Or is it long-term memory loss…?

Miles Wood, London – “Interesting to see a review of ‘The Story of Linda’. I recall going into a video shop back in Wolverhampton with a view to purchasing (or rehiring to copy), Just Jaeckin’s adaption of ‘The Story of O’. I was informed, much to my distress, that the shop no longer stocked that title, but that I might wish to try ‘The Story of Linda’. Feeling vaguely insulted – did they think I wanted to watch any old porno flick? – I politely declined the offer. Hmmm, funny how these things stick in one’s mind”.

A phrase which rings a bell; wish I could remember why… Moving on, some words about the babe above:

Rik Rawling, Morley- “You have noticed I’ve enclosed some pictures of stuff I’ve drawn in recent years…Your artwork throughout the mag seems to involve all my various obsessions – hot babes, mutants, dangerous weapons and any kind of weirdness”.

I think this is a compliment, but faced with some free artwork, I’m not going to argue. Especially since CorelDraw’s clip art libraries are a tad short of hot babes, mutants or dangerous weapons. Also out of the box marked ‘Compliments?’:

David Stark + Carl Desforges, Driffield – “We both agree that you must be a sad, depraved, perverse individual, so all we can say is keep up the good work”.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you ‘zine editors do it for the ego-boost… Now, here are three people who seem to have too much time on their hands.

Dom Morris, Lincoln – “I’ve come to believe that in the future, money as we know it will cease to be used to carry out transactions. In the place of cash, people will use the universal currency of “Pictures of Nastassja Kinski (with no clothes on)”. So, in the interests of progress, here are two PoNK notes – worth a couple of new issues, surely?”

Andy Collins, E.Sussex – “I discovered an unusual cup at a local discount warehouse (you know, where they sell all the dodgy food which is desperately trying to imitate brand names but doesn’t get much further than the colour of the wrapping), and promptly bought it. The unusual feature? A picture of a nude girlie stuck to one side. Nothing special about that, particularly, except the fact that she has got ‘painted on’ underwear. This little gimmick is apparently to “encourage your man to do the washing up” because, yes, you guessed it, when the underwear gets wet, it becomes see-through and you get 100% muff-vision. I thought about keeping my porn-mug permanently immersed in tepid water (something around 37C), but rejected this on the grounds of (a) perhaps I should use the thing for it’s proper purpose and (b) it’s more fun licking it wet in the appropriate parts. Unfortunately, she’s now peeled off, probably due to intense tongue abuse, so she’s just sitting on my desk looking sultry. I’m just glad that man is putting new technologies to good use instead of wasting them on puerile commercial gimmicks”

Andy Waller, Bromsgrove – “Probably the highlight of the week was on Friday afternoon, when I had to dress up as ‘Mr.Blobby’ for a kiddies’ party (3-4 year olds). There was an appeal on the radio for someone, so I volunteered – got paid a bit of cash and it was quite entertaining too (very surreal). The suit provided was bloody hot, and pretty uncomfortable, since I was in it for about three hours. The little kid, whose birthday it was, was an objectionable little bastard – at one point he was calling me a “twat” and chucking plastic chairs at me. Similarly, if Mr. Blobby falls over, it seems to be the in thing for all the kids to pile on top of him, unfortunately for me. I came home pretty bruised and less fond of four-year old kids than I had been a few hours before”.

Mr.Waller is now available for parties, bar mitzvahs and satanic rituals. Wonder if the parents knew they were hiring a man whose published works include, in this very ‘zine, a piece on the delights of necrophilia? Any similarity to John Wayne Gacy is, I’m sure, purely coincidental.

Mike Landers, Colne – “Currently having a musical crisis. Perhaps you could explain this for me. There is a song on MTV getting heavy airplay called “Open Sesame” by a Swedish Muslim rapper called Leila K. It has everything I usually hate in music: unintelligible lyrics à la “Informer” which when deciphered mean very little, twenty zillion BPM (if a human being could play the drums as fast, he’d probably explode as in ‘Spinal Tap’), unoriginal video featuring bimbos gyrating and…I like it. In fact, I would go out and buy it if I could. If this carries on, I shall have to resign my membership of the Metallica fan club – and if you follow the stereotype through, the local Satanic cult too”.

Hang on… Unintelligible lyrics? Unoriginal video featuring bimbos gyrating? Sounds pretty much like heavy metal to me! No, a wide taste in music is a good thing – broadens the mind, encourages tolerance, and extends the number of babes with whom you can claim to have something in common…

Peter Payne, Japan – “I was told by my landlady the other day that, because I was teaching children in my apartment, I was in violation of our lease agreement. She’s kind of being underhanded, taking advantage of the fact that I’d never read our lease contract since it was in Japanese. Her real reason appears to be that she’s getting married and needs the space for her new husband; I am just a poor, stupid foreigner…Oh well – just as in America there are good people and bad people. In Japan you have to have 4-5 times your first month’s rent up front for deposit, “right money” i.e. pay the money to have the right to live there, and “thank you” money, thanking whoever is allowing you to live there. This amounts to $1200 or so, which you generally don’t get back…”

That explains it! The landlord at 7 Tummons Gardens is Japanese, that’s why he kept our 900 quid deposit. Hmm, never met any black, sax-playing Japanese people before.

A distinct shortage of sufficiently off-the-wall letters this time – are you lot growing cagey, wary of my steely wit? This is a rhetorical question. To bring this up to a nice, even number, we bring you the page opposite. I have been reliably informed that if you stare at it hard enough, you will experience wondrous visions. Or something. Me, all I got was a headache, despite close scrutiny under the influence of everything from Guinness to kebab. All descriptions of what you can see in the picture are very welcome…

We interrupt your regular viewing for a TC Public Service Announcement

1) WHAT IS A JAKE? (AND WHERE CAN I GET SOME?)

Jake is defined as part of Operation Mindfuck. Basically, it involves a lot of people collaborating to send a lot of weird stuff to some bureaucrat/official somewhere, asking for some information/help, preferably in an obscure or unusual way.T he letters are timed to arrive on the same day, and to make the bureaucrat/official/etc. think that either he is the target of a global conspiracy of lunatics or the general public are much more imaginative than he has previously

2) WHAT IS THIS SPAM JAKE?

The plan: on twenty-third of May, 1994 (Spam Jake Day), a lot of mail will arrive at the headquarters of Hormel Foods, the manufacturer of Spam, from all over the world. This will be from various Discordian, SubGenius and other weird religious groups: and from anyone else who can be convinced to join in. Each letter will claim that the sender’s own group is the original Church of Spam, and request official endorsement from Hormel Foods as such.

3) HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?

If you wish to be involved in this global mindfuck, all you have to do is write such a letter, in the name of your religion/conspiracy (if you don’t have one, found one), adding any embellishments you may wish to add and send it to:

• Hormel Foods Corporate Offices
  1 Hormel Drive
  Austin,
  MN 55912
  U.S.A.

Send the letter before Spam Jake Day, if possible timing it so that it arrives on Spam Jake Day. The rest is up to you.

4) WHAT WILL THIS ACHIEVE?

With luck, somebody at Hormel will find their desk inundated with curious missives from all sorts of strange groups from all over the world asking for official sanction for some esoteric activity involving Spam, or, in the parlance, “weird shit”. Unable to dismiss this as a small, localised prank they will be very much puzzled by this and possibly shall attain illumination from the shock. Candidates for official approval may receive interesting replies; furthermore, the media may pick up on this, distorting it and adding further chaos to the equation. In any case, the ripples of this should be felt far and wide, if enough people get involved.

A brief comment from TC… This did not originate from IC but is reprinted in abridged/amended form as a service to interested individuals. The origin of the Jake is deep within Me Internet computer network but for the non-networked amongst you, this is presented so that you too can he part of the worldwide personhood of the Church of Spam (whoever vans That coveted name…). Global confusion or bust.

by Peter “money is still my God” Payne
with additional thoughts by Peter “Studio Hell City” Evans

First, a self-introduction: My name is Peter Payne. I live at Maebashi, Japan. I am 24 years old. My hobby is to study kanji, play with Macintosh computers, and listen to the music.

But really. My name is Peter, and I’m from a very warm, balmy place called San Diego, California. Which makes me American, although my father is from Shipston-on-War (like, that sounds so British). He emigrated to the States in the 50s, so I’m officially Anglo-American. Some things I’ve learned since coming to Japan to “teach” “English” at an “English school” are: Australians will get offended if you say you can’t tell their accents apart from New Zealanders, Canadians will go agro if you ask them what state they’re from, and people from England–well, let’s just say that they certainly aren’t in favour of anyone with an accent like mine having anything to do with teaching. But since I’m really half British (though, as one friend put it, “my mouth is American”), you have to read this article.

I’ll admit it: I’ve wanted to write this kind of article ever since a friend of mine named Adam denounced Japanese women in Parachute Limit #1 (a ‘zine we publish in San Diego). But to write it before now would have been a fool’s errand, for the simple reason that I lacked qualification big-time. Before actually coming to Japan to live, I’d had almost as many stereotyped images of Japanese people as most of you reading these words, despite having studied the language for four years. Now that I’ve been through the fire, though, I think I can say that I’m ready to present the fairer sex of this country to you in the usual unbiased, laconic style which TC readers have become accustomed to.

Japanese Girls Next Door At first I was going to write an article about the Japan’s most beautiful women, her National Faces, when a friend of mine reminded me that the Seiko Matsudas and Rie Miyazawas are not actually representative of the women here–they’re exceptions. So I decided to expand my topic to include very day girls you’ll meet in the street, or at least, in English conversation classrooms

As a basic rule, Japanese women generally follow the same personality-dulling life-cycle as men. Cute innocence as children gives way to mediocrity in junior-high school as the assembly line-style Japanese education kicks in and fulfils the Japanese proverb ‘deru kui wa utareru’, “the standing nail is driven” (i.e., the nail which sticks out gets smashed down to be like all the others). As a result, the Japanese high school student’s idea of rebellion is wearing a hair ribbon or getting a perm in defiance of school rules. The pressures of studying to get into a good high school or college are generally less for girls than for boys, since, well, they’re girls, and they’re just going to get married and give up their careers anyway–but it is there for those with the drive to yearn for more than marriage and children.

Despite the racist view that Americans and Europeans (and sometimes me) like to take of Japanese people — that they are the human equivalents of worker ants — Japanese are quite individual. They have different interests, personalities, likes and dislikes. On the other hand, Japanese girls and women do tend to come in several different “flavours” or personality types, which I will now attempt to outline for you.

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America Kabure: From ‘kabureru’, “to be influenced,” America Kabure-types are the ones influenced by US/European society so much that they actually wish they were from the land of baseball made in America, cheap stuff made in China and Apple computers made in Ireland. They dress like Americans, listen to Guns ‘n’ Roses, and frequently know more about 60’s pop culture than I do (which admittedly isn’t hard). They are also generally in the market for a gaijin boyfriend, if they don’t have one already, and of all Japanese girls are the most likely to go to bed with you just because you’re American [or British, hopefully – Ed.]. (See also Yellow Cab.)

Burriko: From ‘buru’, “to be false” and ‘ko’, “child,” burriko girls are overly-cute. A great deal of Japanese pop culture relies on the well-developed sense of kawaii (cute) in the Japanese, and these girls are the natural results. Burriko types make a conscious effort to act “cute”; they pout and make cute drawings on their desks and shriek “kawaii!” as a kind of sacrifice to the gods of girlish virginity.

[Commonly, an Office Lady who can be discussing astrophysics with you until the boss comes in, then it’s: “You want a paper clip? Oh, I’m so happy. Would you like a small one? A big one? What colour would you like? Here, have two paper clips! What about three paper clips?…”]

The Dud: Japanese girls who have no strong feelings one way or another about anything, aspire only to be thought of as “average Japanese girls” and who basically have no deep emotions, I call “duds.” They are, sadly, one of the more common personality types.

Ei-kaiwa no Himé: This means “English conversation princess,” and yes, it’s a word I coined. These girls, usually OLs (“office lady”) but occasionally girls in college, pay $20 and up per hour to study English conversation once a week at one of the many money-grubbing Ei-kaiwa schools in Japan. Sometimes it’s a sort of fashion statement–“Did I mention that I’m studying English conversation at Nani Nani English School on Thursday nights?”–but occasionally they have a genuine interest. (See also America Kabure.)

Tokyo Stylin’ Chicks: For whatever reason, girls in Tokyo are about nine times as pretty as girls in Gunma-ken, where I live. It happens every time I take the train to Ueno. By the time you reach Omiya, a city in-between where I live and Tokyo, you start to notice that there are beautiful women all around you. Coming back, you notice that the knee-high spike boots, the black leather and fake fur, the miniskirts and garters and peter pans and the ¥20,000 perms have somehow disappeared by the time you get to Omiya, and only the babushka-clad dogs from Gunma remain. (This is formally called the Wall of Omiya Effect.)

[Hmm, have to agree with the man. Still he missed out on the Roppongi Clones and the babes in the mega-trendy nightclubs: “That’s not a miniskirt, that’s a belt”. Yes, you really can see their knickers. Buh!]

High Miss: One interesting form of rebellion in this society are the small percentage of women who, for whatever reason, remain single past the age of 30 in defiance of the Japanese custom of teiki reiki, which dictates that the time for marriage is between 19 and 25. these women are called high miss or old miss, Japanese-English versions of what was once called an old maid in the West.

Yanki: Probably some kind of corruption on the word “yankee,” yanki refers to a more blatant class of Japanese rebel. Yanki are young Japanese male and female wanna-be toughs who attempt to dye their hair blonde (it invariably comes out orange) and act like they think Japanese society doesn’t want them to act (although, in reality, they are just catching a counter-current in Japanese culture and thus are conforming as strongly as they would be otherwise). The preferred clothing label for yanki girls is a Japanese maker called Miki House, for some reason. A more hard-core subset of yanki are the boso-zoku, the uniform-wearing loud-car-and-motorcycle-racing thugs introduced to Americans through the animated movie Akira.

While there are the occasional ties to the Japanese mafia and drugs, boso-zoku generally are content to roam Japanese festivals in their best military-style uniforms and driving round making noise with their modified vehicles to get their kicks. Despite the obvious drawbacks to people who like sleeping at night, I find myself respecting yanki-ism because they are the true “randoms” of Japan. When I see a well-fed, well-educated Japanese guy with a T-shirt bearing Malcolm X’s image and the words “ghetto culture,” I really have to shake my head. At least these ruffians are ruffians who have carved a cultural niche without carbon-copying the pop-culture of the West.

Yamato Nadeshiko: An old word which describes the “classic” Japanese woman, quiet and subservient to males, these women are thankfully rare. I say thankfully because nothing could be more boring than a woman who will tie her man’s shoes for him. Many a navy serviceman has bought home a Japanese wife thinking that she would wait on him hand and foot, only to find that he had married a stereotype. The opposite of Yamato Nadeshiko is Kakah-denka, women who are mentally stronger than their husbands, and have basically castrated them into submission. I have seen many more examples of the latter than the former, usually among American/Japanese marriages, and thus am a little wary of marrying into this culture.

Yellow Cab: An ugly word, Yellow Cab refers to Japanese girls, usually living outside of Japan, who are, well, easy to ride. Ridiculous as it may sound, it’s a pressing problem. I’ve seen the pattern more than once in the States: Japanese girl gets hung up on America, and goes there to live her obsession in much the same way as my being in Japan. Unfortunately, said girl doesn’t have that many friends, because she doesn’t know anyone in that city, or doesn’t speak English, or is a twit and shunned by Japanese companions. What does she do? She learns that by sleeping with anyone who’ll spend time with her, she can have what she thinks is missing. Despite danger from a host of you-know-whats, it indicates a general moral breakdown and is a sad phenomenon.

[Commonly used for space-case Office Ladies on pathetically short holidays with the mission objective of collecting a full spectrum of STDs in as short a period as possible. He’s right, it is an ugly word]

And now…Peter Presents: Best of Three Pretty Girls

I’ve talked about every day Japanese girls you can meet on the street; now I’ll present the three girls who are, IMHO, the most beautiful girls Japan has to offer.

Rie Miyazawa: A corporate entity that wants to succeed in this country needs three things: a nifty corporate slogan with matching corny slogan (something like ‘kimi no yume e’, “to your dream”), a head office in Tokyo with twice as many employees as really necessary, and a visible spokesperson–usually a beautiful model–which it can associate itself with. These girls aren’t just idols; they drive Japan’s domestic advertising machine.

Half-Dutch and half-Japanese, Rie Miyazawa certainly qualifies for the beautiful part. Far and away Japan’s Most Popular Face, she advertises “Super Cup” cup ramen, Edwin Jeans, Daihatsu’s “Opti” car, Panasonic’s “Selfie” stereo line and (with Arnold Schwarzenegger, known as “Schwa-chan” here) Aidamin ‘V’ vitamin drink. In November of 1991, Rie shocked Japan by releasing a collection of nude photos entitled Santa Fe (yes, I own a copy). She recently became engaged to be married to popular sumo wrestler Takahanada, only to be rendered “up in the air” by a challenge from the Sumo Association about Rie’s role as the wife of a major sumo wrestler and problems with Rie’s mother, the original Dragon Lady. If the Kennedys are America’s “royal family”, then Rie and Takahanada will certainly fill the same role in Japan if they get married.

Yuka Watanabe: Having just turned 21, the lovely Yuka Watanabe is far and away my favourite “Beppin Gal.” Beppin, with it’s spin-offs, Beppin School and Dela (Deluxe) Beppin), is a medium to high-end Japanese adult magazine which we got to see a great deal of thanks to all the Japanese smut we sold to anime fans [it’s a fair cop – Ed.] at Anime Expo ’92.

Yuka-chan (birthday 23/12/72, sign Capricorn) is 80 centimetres bust, 56 waist and 80 hip, and she’s 159 cm tall. Her blood type is B, and her first nude photo collection came out April 11, 1991. She collects fashion accessories and “tereka” (telephone cards–the Japanese do love to truncate words). You can write her at the Beppin Shinjuku-ku Aisumi-machi 13-10 Akebono-bashi K-1 Building 2F Eichi Shuppan-nai Yoko Family Club-kei 160. Damn that’s a hell of an address.

“Thanks to all my readers for staying with me for so long,” Ms. Watanabe said at Beppin’s 8th anniversary party. She then plugged her next photo book, entitled “Magic of Love.” “Please look at my body now that I’ve become an adult.”

Ai Ijima: Finally we get to A/V queen turned talento, the undisputed T-back queen of Japan, Ai Ijima. (English check: “A/V” refers to the adult video industry, and “T-back” refers to these sort of G-string-type panties which leave little to the imagination but can still be shown on TV). Ai’s current photo book is entitled “Ai My Me.” (“Ai” means love, thus this means “Love My Me.”)

She appears every once in a while in porno mags such as Beppin, Scholar, and The Best and stars on an entertainment-for-men TV show called Gilgamesh Night on TV Tokyo (channel 12) on Sunday mornings at 1:15 to 2:15, if you get Japanese TV for some reason. (This is the show which pits five scantily-clad girls against each other to see who could be first to melt penis-shaped blocks of ice with diamond rings encased inside using only their mouths.) According to “Gal’s Library,” the A/V “news and etc. source” section in Beppin, Ai recently donated her panties to charity, which were sold for ¥60,000. You will probably now be going, “How much money is ¥60,000?”…

(For copies of Parachute Limit, send 50¢ or something useless but interesting to Parachute Limit, c/o Max Callahan, 4122 Mt. Alifan #E San Diego 92111 USA.)

At first glance, ‘Man-zoku’ is just the same as any other Japanese girlie mag – a mix of glossy and not-so-glossy pictures of babes in a state of near-undress. And like many of it’s kind, there is a fondness for using Japlish; normally, these are intriguing but near-unintelligible phrases such as ‘Exciting Magazine Attack on Gals!’, but in ‘Man-zoku’ (translatable as ‘Man Tribe’, I believe), the reader eventually notices a pattern:

• “I’m waiting for Exective [sic] companion”
• “Yoshiwara V.I.P. Room”
• “First Lady King Owner’s Club”

If you haven’t worked it out, I’ll be blunt. ‘Man-zoku’ is a 160+ page catalogue of prostitutes. Name, age, height, measurements, specialities, telephone numbers and prices are all there, and that’s just the bits I can decipher. Even blood-type is listed; in Japan, this has significance in perhaps a similar way that star-signs have here, supposedly influencing personality, etc.

When this realisation hit me, I was awe-struck. It is at once such a simple idea, and yet so beautifully fresh (bit like the Walkman, really). It waltzes merrily around the major problem people have with prostitution, namely the low-life scum associated with red-light areas (kerb-crawlers, drug-pushers, judges, MPs, etc.). Instead, simply flick through the selection, select the girl of your dreams, and dial her up, easy as ordering a pizza. If this method of getting sex took off here, half the wine bars in London would probably close.

Further research (god, I love this job!) revealed some interesting trends. Well, actually it revealed no trends at all, but Steve and I had a whale of a time, one dull Sunday afternoon, typing in Japan-easy girls’ stats into a computer spreadsheet. We plotted graphs, drew charts and tried to correlate age with bust size, price with blood type, or height to hips/waist ratio, but about all it proved is that we probably need to get out more often. Though we did discover the ‘158 Factor’; theory suggests height should follow a bell-shape curve, so why did so many say they were 158 cm tall? 17% did, but I only found a single maverick listed as 157 cm. All explanations on a postcard, please.

However, some more general points should be mentioned. Firstly, the price is quoted for a time: Y8,500 for 30 minutes is common. To save you the bother, that’s about fifty quid. This may seem expensive – OK, it is expensive – but bear in mind that in Tokyo, getting into a night-club could easily cost you 30 pounds, and that’s without drinks and no definite shag. However, you can shop around: prices range from 5,000/70 minutes to 12,000 for half an hour. Some babe in a very nice jacket was offered at forty thousand, but that did get you two hours. You presumably do not get a refund if you call any time outs.

“What do you get for your money?”, you may be asking. To which I would reply, “How the hell should I know?”. But luckily, we have this (suspiciously eye-witness) account from Nick Bornhoff’s “Pink Samurai”:

“Shirahama makes sure that the guest gets every yen’s worth, beckoning to him to join her over on the psychiatrist’s couch. Intermittently resorting to amazingly skilled oral and manual sexual techniques for the best part of an hour, Shirahama will coax renewed vigour and repeated encores from even the most flagging and recalcitrant member…If a job is worth doing to the Japanese, it’s worth doing properly”

None of which does anything to dissuade me that the Japanese have come up with another worthy export. Another point is that the photos accompanying the texts have the definite ring of truth. The thought of faking something up probably wouldn’t even occur. Compare this with here, where the three certainties in life are “death”, “taxes” and “the girls in adverts for 0898 numbers are not the ones on the other end of the line”.

Thirdly, it may be a racist, stereotyped cliché to say they all look the same, but it is also accurate – at least for the admittedly non-random sample in Man-zoku’s pages. Now, I’m a great fan of “elfin beauty”, but there’s only so much elf a man can handle, and even I got to the stage where the sudden appearance of a few blond-haired, siliconed, Western hookers was sufficient to evoke a pang of nostalgia. Incidentally, they weren’t notably differently priced from the local product.

But the cream on top of this particular pint of Gold Top is a sheet in the middle of the magazine, which perhaps sums up the entire difference in cultures more than anything else. No matter what, even if Man-zoku began to publish a London edition, I can never see English prostitutes accepting money-off coupons…

Keeping abreast of safe sex

Santa Cruz, California – A group of university students has found a unique way to raise money for a safe sex instruction guide: topless carwashes. About a dozen women, most of them students at the University of California in Santa Cruz, hope to repeat later this summer the topless carwash they held last weekend to raise funds for a calendar that will include instructions on safe sex for lesbians and bisexual women. “It would be nice to have one before the end of the summer before it gets too cold to stand outside topless,” said Wendy van Thiel. The women charged a mininum of $5 for the wash.

‘Lowly worm’ puppets for fingers, not tongues

Washington – A federal agency announced Monday the Taco Bell fast-food chain voluntarily agreed to recall 500,000 finger puppets named “Lowly Worm” and “Huckle Cat” because three kids put them on their tongues where they got stuck. The Consumer Product Safety Commission also said another 80,000 free giveaways by the taco chain, “Rocky & Bullwinkle” inflatable balls, were being voluntarily recalled because several youngsters complained they got dizzy blowing them up. Those returning them will get a free taco, the agency said. It failed to explain how the three children got the finger puppets off their tongues.

Girls risk AIDS in gang initiation rite

San Antonio, Texas – Five teenage girls have told planned parenthood counsellors here they deliberately had sex with an HIV-infected gang member as part of a potentially deadly gang initiation rite. Planned parenthood spokeswoman Jo Ann King-Sinnett said the girls, aged 14 and 15, reported their activities to planned parenthood counsellors earlier this year. King-Sinnett said the girls boasted they risked HIV infection to prove their toughness and win acceptance in a Hispanic gang on the city’s west side.

Clinton’s tongue tied

Cleveland, Ohio – U.S. President Bill Clinton may have declared sweeping change but it sounds as though he has picked up right where former President George Bush left off — fracturing the English language. during a speech in Cleveland, Clinton became just as tongue-tied as his predecessor. “We’ve got a lot of complicated problems,” said Clinton, “and I know, I knew when I got there it wasn’t going to happen overnight. I’ve been criticised for doing more than one thing at once. I’ve always felt — can you do one thing at once? Can you do — wouldn’t it be nice if all you had to do was go to work and not take care of your family?