You’d think with the release of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic book yesterday, we would have had some mention of it on the site. After all, we know that every time we say Buffy the Vampire Slayer we get a lot of extra traffic to the website, and we aren’t above shameless Google-boosting. (Buffy! Buffy! Buffy!) But we couldnt find a timely hook, other than all the traditional press coverage.

Until we came across this: "The American Secret Service have launched an investigation into one of the candidates for the presidency in 2008 – after he pledged that as President, one of his first acts would be to impale President George W. Bush. The candidate in question is Jonathon ‘The Impaler’ Sharkey, and he is running as the only self-described satanic vampire candidate who has so far entered the 2008 race. Sharkey’s pledge to impale President Bush, he makes clear, will only come into effect if he is actually elected to office."

My favorite line from the piece: "But a legal expert is unsure if a case could be made against The Impaler. ‘Under the First Amendment, what it boils down to here is whether or not he’s a vampire who wants to impale the president,’ law professor Neil Richards of Washington University in St. Louis told the Chronicle. ‘I guess the question is, if he’s a vampire, why is he the one staking people? Shouldn’t he want to bite the president and feed on him?’"

And yes, it gives us an excuse to run this Alex Ross painting. Alex Ross! The Google hits just keep on coming!

It was all a misunderstanding, admitted the Billings, MT chief prosecutor.

Seems a  deputy prosecutor misinterpreted an e-mail from a colleague who used the phrase "unicorn defense" as an actual statement from Phillip C. Holliday Jr., whose truck crashed into a light pole last week.  Seems "unicorn defense" is a slang term used by prosecutors when a defendant blames some mythical person for a crime, much like "SEDI" (Someone Else Did It).

Apparently Holliday blamed a nonexistent woman for driving his truck into the pole.  I think he should have blamed the elfin thief.

The Beeb reports that a man accused of a stealing underwear at knifepoint from a lingerie shop in Belfast, Northern Ireland "believed he was a female elf at the time."  Robert Boyd is accused of having purloined two sets of bras, knickers, suspender belts and stockings from the shop on 14 December, 2005.  He had been participating in the role-playing game Shadowrun, where his character was a shaman elf named Beho "who carried a small Japanese sword as a weapon."

Boyd is accused of holding up staff at the shop disguised in a wig, hat and glasses, which acoutrements authorities do not believe were specified in the game.  He denies committing the robbery but admits to the possibility he may have confused reality and fantasy.  Ya think?

And as if that weren’t enough, a Phillip C. Holliday Jr. has told police in Billings, MT not to blame him for crashing his truck into a lightpost last week, as a unicorn was driving it.  No word on whether the unicorn was wearing a wig, hat and glasses.