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Warning: Offensive
material ahead

We're going to have to start putting a warning label at the top of this column: Venture No Further Lest Ye Be Offended.

A reader complained that an item here was offensive. But it wasn't the one about doctors taking 50 maggots out of a guy's ear. It was the bit about how shortly after rubber was patented, the first nerd was shot in the head with a rubber band. Huh? Not only was that item not offensive, the punchline wasn't even funny, and I wrote it. A reminder: AloHa Friday! is where people come to read weird, gross and offensive things that can find no other home in the newspaper.

Some readers do understand. Michael D. figured out how maggots came to be in the India man's ear. "One fly pointed to another and said, 'Hey, Fly, your man is open.' "

The easily offended should turn back now. Here comes the strange and disturbing news ...

Men erect snow oddity

LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) » Two men pleaded not guilty to promoting obscenity after building a phallus in their front yard.

The attorney for Brandon Arp, 20, and Aric Davenport, 19, the duo who built the snow rendition of a part of the male anatomy, said it is not clear why the sculpture was considered by authorities to be obscene.

The snow phallus was destroyed by unknown art critics.

(Perhaps this was just the first stage of construction of the world's first anatomically-correct snow man.)

Cops keep an ear out

JOHANNESBURG (BBC) » A severed ear is the key piece of evidence in a recent robbery.

The robber smashed the victim's car window and attempted to steal his cell phone. But the victim fought the man, sending him fleeing without his ear or the cell phone.

"Perhaps the public can help by looking around for someone with one ear," a South African police spokesman said.

(This is the kind of anatomical profiling that hurts police enforcement everywhere.)

New cereal: Snakies!

SHROPSHIRE, England (AP) » A five-year-old boy found a live two-foot snake in his box of cereal, police say.

The boy's mother said the boy is in shock and not eating.

(His brother, however, bought more boxes of the cereal, hoping to get the whole reptile set.)

Honolulu Lite on Sunday

Sunday's Honolulu Lite can be summed up by this haiku:

Stairway to Heaven?
What Haiku Stairs really needs:
An escalator

Quote Me On This
"Canada could have enjoyed English government, French culture and American know-how. Instead it ended up with English know-how, French government and American culture." -- John Robert Colombo