A woman who worked for the Norfolk Community Services Board, a taxpayer-funded agency in Virginia that provides mental health and substance abuse help for low-income residents, was paid $25,000 to $40,000 a year for the past 12 years even though she never went to work. She even received full benefits and periodic raises. The mayor of Norfolk is aghast, the executive director of the agency finally fired the slacker employee, and at least 4,973,178 people have applied for the now vacant position.

Forget cheese balls, meat balls, and popcorn balls, these are the real thing. This past weekend the town of Ozrem, Serbia, hosted the seventh annual World Testicle Cooking Championship, in which chefs create dishes using bull, boar, camel, ostrich and even kangaroo testicles. Euphemistically called “white kidneys” in Serbian, and “Rocky Mountain Oysters” in much of the U.S., the chefs whip up dishes like testicle pizza, testicles in bechamel sauce, and testicle moussaka. Talk about a bunch of nuts!

Gustavo Rojas, who’s running for a seat in Venezuela’s National Assembly, has come up with a unique way to raise money for his election. No, he’s not going to become CEO of eBay or HP. And no, he’s not holding a bake sale, setting up a lemonade stand, or selling Girl Scout cookies. Instead, he’s holding a raffle, with the winner receiving free breast implants. The election will be held on September 26. May the best boob(s) win!

Officials at the State Fair of Texas have chosen eight finalists in the Big Tex Choice Awards, which honor the tastiest and most creative new food offerings at the fair. And no, there’s not a shade-grown, fair trade, organic, lo-fat item in the bunch. The finalists? Beer-filled pretzel pockets, deep-fried frozen margaritas, deep fried s’mores Pop-Tarts, fried club salad, fried chocolate, fried lemonade, fried caviar with black-eyed peas, and a fried Frito pie with chili and corn chips. The judges will announce the winner on September 6th, at which time they’ll begin a regimen of deep-fried Lasix, Lipitor-filled pretzels, and fried frozen Slim-Fast.

The DEA is looking to hire translators who can interpret wiretaps in 114 different languages. Including Ebonics. And you thought the term vanished after being the butt of jokes in 1996. Maybe they should consider hiring Barbara Billingsly, who so famously translated Jive in the movie Airplane!. As she said, “Chump don’ want no help, chump don’ git no help. Jive ass dude don’ got no brains anyhow!”

When doctors in Bochum, Germany, took X-rays of a 35-year-old Polish man’s skull to check out a lump in the back of his head, they expected to find a cyst. Instead they found a .22 caliber bullet the man didn’t know was there. After thinking about it, the man vaguely recalled having received a blow to the head at a New Year’s party “in 2004 or 2005 while very drunk” but the sore head the next day hadn’t been bad enough to warrant a visit to the doctor. [Insert favorite Polish joke, “he must have been doing shots” gag, or “He needed that like a hole in the head” punchline here.]

Nevada State Assemblyman Harry Mortenson is planning to introduce a resolution in the next session that will not only make it okay to say “Ne-va-da” with a short “a”—like everyone in the state pronounces it—but also acceptable to pronounce it “Ne-VAH-da,” like everyone who’s not from the state pronounces it. This is so the Spanish pronunciation will be okay. It’s doubtful the state’s neighbor, Arizona, will follow suit. The Spanish pronunciation of that state’s name, “infierno,” will still be unacceptable.

The government of Southern Sudan has announced plans to remake its capital cities into the shapes found on their state flags, so from the air they’ll look like a giraffe, rhino, and even a pineapple. They’re talking to investors hoping to convince them to kick in the $10 billion it will cost, not a small amount when you realize the government’s 2010 budget was only $1.9 billion and more than 90 percent of Southern Sudan’s population lives on less than $1 a day. While officials think the idea shows they’re using their brains, many think it’s actually more like the other end of the animals that will be represented.

A survey by the Pew Research Center found that nearly 1 in 5 Americans (18%) still think President Obama is a Muslim, which is up from 11% in March 2009, while only one-third say he’s a Christian. Which he is. In addition, 27% think he’s white, 21% think he’s Chris Rock, 16% say he’s Satan, and 7% think he’s actually Dick Cheney, which means 23% think he’s Satan.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 30% more teenagers have some level of hearing loss compared with teens in the late ’80s and early ’90s. They say one in 20 kids between the ages of 12 and 19 has enough damage that it may affect their ability to listen and learn. The other 19 actually are ignoring you.

When British Cricket star Graeme Swann was pulled over by police in the early morning hours and arrested for drunk driving, he told police he was on the way to the supermarket to buy a screwdriver. No, not one with vodka, one that would help him rescue his cat which was under the floorboards of his house. He called his dog to bail him out but it was too busy eating his homework.

The orangutans in the Ouwehands Dierenpark Rhenen zoo in the Netherlands didn’t have tall enough trees in their enclosure to be able to swing around the tops as they do in the wild, so they forgot how. Now that they have a new enclosure with seven 32-foot high trees, the zoo has hired Olympic gymnast Olympian Epke Zonderland to show the orangutans how to swing from tree to tree. And do a pirouette on the pommel horse and dismount from the rings. If it goes as planned they’re going to send him to Newcastle with some coal and to Antarctica to sell refrigerators to the penguins.

In 2005, Radha Kant Bajpai of India set a Guinness World Record for having the world’s longest ear hair—13.2 centimeters, which is just over 5 inches long. And yes, the long hair’s in each ear so he can still maintain his balance when walking. In 2007, Anthony Victor, who’s also from India, stole the record by growing his ear hair to 18.1 cm (7 inches). Radha didn’t let any moss grow under him, though he did let the ear hair keep growing. He just reclaimed the title for having hairs sprouting from his ears that measure 28 cm, which is 11 inches. I guess in India they don’t know the proverb, “Your ear hair should never be longer than your, uh….shoe size.”

The Osaka restaurant in Davenport, Iowa, was slapped with a $335 fine yesterday by a health inspector. It turns out he saw a video of chef Christopher Turla kissing two small toads, then licking them and stuffing them in his mouth. That’s a no-no because toads can carry diseases and the chef had the toads in his mouth and then back in his hands. Turla and the restaurant owner say he was joking around, though he might have been hoping to turn them into princes so he could get an endorsement from Prince Spaghetti or learn how to make an authentic version of Veal Prince Orloff.

Using computer time donated by Google, a team of researchers has figured out that no matter which of the 43 quintillion configurations a Rubik’s Cube can be put in, it can be returned to its original state in just 20 moves. They also discovered that after being put in its smashed up state by being thrown at a wall in frustration, it’s irreparable.

When Ron Sveden of Brewster, Massachusetts, went to the hospital because his left lung collapsed after having been ill for several months, he expected the doctors would find a tumor. Instead X-rays showed a small pea plant. “I was told I had a pea seed in my lung that had split and had sprouted,” the new spokesperson for Birds Eye said. It was almost as shocking as years before when he thought his wife was pregnant but it turned out a watermelon seed had actually sprouted in her stomach.

There’s a new dating website so proud virgins can meet up. It sounds like they’re inviting trouble, not to mention working hard to lose members. The online store sells Vcards, which are credit card sized reminders that “represent the value of your purity.” Since the cards are only $3.50 it makes you wonder just how valuable they think virginity really is. And since in their words, “you are a virgin only once,” there are no refunds. Perhaps what they really need to sell is Gcards to “represent the value of good grammar,” since the website’s name is YouAndMeArePure.com.

Mark Hurd, the CEO of  Hewlett-Packard Co., has resigned because he allegedly falsified documents to conceal a relationship with a former contractor and help her get paid for work she didn’t do, clearing the path for him to run for the United States Senate.

The Chief Operating Officer of BP says that someday the company might again drill in the same undersea reservoir they just capped. “There’s lots of oil and gas here,” Doug Suttles said. Nearly $4 billion worth to be exact. And besides, it’s a big gulf. There’s plenty of room for more oil in it.

Even though his toe was badly infected, Jerry Douthett of Rockford, MI, refused to see a doctor about it. A couple of weekends ago he had “five or six” beers followed by a huge margarita. Followed by a nap. “I woke up and the dog was laying alongside my foot,” he said. “Then I looked and blood was everywhere.” The dog had eaten his infected toe and, according to Douthett, saved his life by oral amputation. Now Mighty Dog is considering putting out Big Toe in Gravy dog food. Why not, it’s all natural.