Just when you thought literature awards were too pretencious for words, comes the naming of the winner of the annual "Bad sex in literature"award. Unlike some bad writting awards, where people purposefully pen purple prose, this takes unintentionally bad works and gives them their do.

Though I don't dare repeat the winning passage, excerpts can be found in the above articles, and a discussion of previous year's winners can be found here, with such romantic phrases as "Liz squeaked like wet rubber" and "Their jaws ground in feverish mutual mastication."

The Lucknow Zoo, in northern India, has decided to use an old human method of keeping the spirits up and the body warm during winter, by providing shots of brandy to the 35 primates of the zoo each day of the next few months of winter.

The brandy will be mixed with warm water, and dosed out based on the size, age and weight of each primate. The primates have had treats of alchohol before, but not every day. The other zoo animals, however, will have to survive on fat building, heat burning high protein and calorie diets instead of spirits this winter.

I apologize for the brief interruption of service, yesterday. Those responsible have been sacked. Well, not really, since I can't sack myself, but it sounds cool.

From alt.fan.furry, The Furry Critic writes: "Well, here 'tiz! After innumerable fits, false starts, hardware problems, software woes, and one partial nervous breakdown, My new site The Furry Critic is officially up and running! I invite everone to stop by and take a look!"

This story at Ananova tells of a reindeer, who had been part of a Christmas display, who escaped and was shot by a local hunter. Looks like Donner won't be playing anymore reindeer games.