The ongoing quality issues that have plagued Chinese imports and spurred waves of recalls took a turn for the absurd recently, when doctors in Australia discovered that “Aqua Dots”, a brand of water-fusing bead toys, creates a chemical related to GHB, a banned “date rape drug,” when eaten by children. Apparently doctors thought that a kid had been roofied by his parents, before discovering that “an obscure industrial chemical used to prevent water-soluble glues from becoming sticky before they are needed” actually turned into GHB when ingested, which resulted in parents finding children with coma and seizure-like symptoms and vomiting beads.  Now, we all know that kids have the inalienable right to put anything they want in their mouths without ever running any risk of consequences, and we also know without a doubt that GHB is bad. So what do we do about this grave risk to our precious little future Americans? Several local fraternities have offered to buy up remaining stocks of the GHB-producing beads for “proper disposal.”

The Man Issue will be on the stands Monday Nov. 5, but you can check it out right now in pdf form. Inside we rip apart the AK47, do a lot of journalistic finger pointing and aide the good fight against the emasculation of men at the University. If you don’t like it, come tell us to our face.

Contest: The first person to name the lovely couple on page 16 gets a free sudsy tee or tank. (OC staffers cannot win.)

I think we all knew that this story would come back (the comments are a fun read), but who could have guessed it would have been so gleefully, spectacularly embarassing for everyone involved? That’s right folks, everyone’s favorite former Con Court justice Jerome Roberts promised that he would pay back the $375 he collected in stipends while he was not a student, but he has yet to send a solitary ducat back to the ASUO. According to the Emerald, Roberts was supposed to pay back $50 a month until the sum was redeemed. Let’s see now, the story came to light in May, so you have payments for June through October missing, that’s $250 the ASUO should have back in it’s gullible little mitts by now, instead of a big, fat bupkis. Oh well, it’s not that much money… hell, why doesn’t the Exec just have him work it off over at the Con Court? After all, it’s not like the court could become any more of a joke than it already is…

***UPDATE***

Awesome raging against the unfairness of making Roberts pay the money back here (scroll down), from everyone’s favorite Senator. Of course enforcing rules is the product of “personal bias” Nate… it has nothing to do with the responsibilities of fair play in government. Hell, why don’t you just go straight for your favorite chestnut and call the whole Senate racist again? Damn, just when you think a situation can’t become any more embarassing…

Happy Columbus Day! And to our friends at the Longhouse, Happy Indigenous Solidarity Day! The Ol’ Dirty had an article focusing on today’s event put on by the Native American Student Union and the MCC. For some reason Chuck Hunt is speaking at it.

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Despite our best efforts of being drunk every night and procrastinating our assignments, the OC staff presents its annual Back To The Booze issue under two weeks of the release of the Summer Issue. For those that think this is a sign of more responsibility and less boozing from this year’s staff, we assure you this is not the case. Enjoy.

And it’s already been sent to the printers, so you find any errors, we don’t care. Cheers.

Hey there. Just sittin around. It’s early. Not really doing much. Wondering how the day will…what the hell, the ASUO drafted a diversity plan? This can’t be any good. Let’s see, mission statement. Contact with diverse member of the community, sounds good to me. Encourage groups to participate in activities about diversity, not sure why that needs to be said, but ok. “Create ways for students to engage one another on issues of diversity.” Nice. Oh please let there me something about a central place for students to meet and chat like a bar or a pub or a tavern or a brothel.

Ooo, ten points to follow, maybe the bar is in there.

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If you are bored, and I mean really bored, check out the “true” makings of America at this link. Who would have guessed that there are over 20 complete zodiacs in Washington D.C.?

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If you picked up the Register Guard today, you probably noticed the headline “Council high on downtown ideas“. Somebody down at the RG must have been having a chuckle, or else they’ve never been downtown.

But I can see why they must have thought the city council was high. The story is about the multitude of proposals being considered by the council for developing downtown Eugene. Here’s the lead:

Condos. A four-screen movie theater. Restaurants. A grocery store. Even a 24-hour newsstand.

The Eugene City Council on Wednesday liked all of those ideas and more for revitalizing two blocks in the heart of downtown.

A 24-hour newsstand? God, they must have been baked. “Imagine, like, a newsstand … a newsstand that you can go to anytime, and the guy there will tell you what the news is, like, right at that moment. Whoa.” However, these were just a few of the 123 recomendations submitted by the West Broadway Advisory Committee, all of which sound totally awsome when you’re stoned. (more…)

Yes, we know that all the jumps go to the wrong page, but it was an executive decision to leave it as is. Enjoy.

 UPDATE: The new and improved summer issue is posted. You will be able to tell it’s the new one from the great new table of contents - now it zig-zags! Also, we fixed the jumps, most spelling errors, although we left a few in honor of the Bad Spelling artical in Best of, and after much thought even fixed Tim’s name.  Cheers.

As if the UO Athletic Department wasn’t already having PR issues, now their public face has been suspended for next weeks home game against Fresno State for delivering this brutal smackdown to the Houston Cougar. No word yet on why the Duck decided to run wild on the Cougar, nor why he felt compelled to savagely teabag his hapless victim as he lay quivering on the turf of Autzen Stadium. Needless to say, this comes as a blow to the ASUO’s much-vaunted (by them) “Classy Fan Initiative.”

Watch the Ducks teabag the Michigan Wolverines today at 12:30 on ABC.

Edit: If you missed this, it was quite the teabagging. Go Ducks!

In case you didn’t know, Leonardo DiCaprio has a new ecological documentary coming our titled the “11th Hour”. It is supposedly bad. Supremely bad. How bad? Well, when the co-founder of Greenpeace is calling your film a fraud you know that you’ve got a problem on your hands.

As a lifelong environmentalist, I say trees can solve many of the world’s sustainability challenges. Forestry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries that provide us with energy and materials. Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, DiCaprio and Berman ought to promote the growth of more trees and the use of more wood. …

DiCaprio’s movie, The 11th Hour, is another example of anti-forestry scare tactics, this time said to be ‘brilliant and terrifying’ by James Christopher of the London Times.

…everyone else and their little brother is weighing in on the Phil Knight donation and Academics vs. Athletics generally, over at the Register-Guard blog. Everyones favorite nutty professor even stops by to raise the level of discourse by claiming that Frohnmayer supports drunk driving and therefore only pretends to dislike Fanconi Anemia.

Now where were we? Oh yeah… why doesn’t Phil Knight just give every professor at the UO half a mil each? Wouldn’t that be better?

So, we’ve been getting lots of late night, pro-DPS advocacy in our comments sections lately, as has the ODE. Interestingly enough, all of these comments have come from UO computers too, leading one to believe that perhaps DPS staff have been a little, erm, distracted from their duties of late. We had no idea how bad things had become though. A new blog, This Turkey Is Done has appeared, as a countdown to the departure of the unloved current interim director of DPS, Richard Turkiewicz. It features such stunning critiques as photo comparisons to an actual turkey, and excessive use of the nickname “Dick.”

The best part? An admonition to

“be sure to leave comments here from your home computer on your own time.”

What a bunch of pros!

Shame on you for clicking on this link.

This story comes from the Honolulu Star Bulletin. Besides regulating wardrobe malfunctions, the FCC also licenses broadcast stations and distributes the four-letter call names for stations. For example, the CBS affiliate in Eugene is called KVAL, and the ABC affiliate is KEZI.

Now, the FCC has decided to give a yet-to-air station in Maui the surname KUNT. That’s right. That one word you aren’t supposed to use…ever. The FCC has now decided that it is no longer indecent, going so far as to name one of their stations the dirtiest of dirties. To make matters worse, the FCC has also named a station in Arizona KWTF. Like, “KWTF man? I can’t believe you named a station KUNT.”

I would also like to state that this the first time I have ever come close to writing the “C word” on any public form. The internet is awesome.