Quick quiz: These lavatories, with mannequins in sexy outfits, are…

a) in the Playboy Mansion
b) at the Emperor’s Club escort service
c) in the lobby of the Victoria’s Secret home office
d) at a regular shopping mall in Portugal

The answer is d. I missed it, too. Of course, the real question about these things is, what do you do when your five-year-old child needs to go? “Joey, Daddy doesn’t know why those silly ladies are dressed like that. Listen, can you just hold it in, and we’ll be home in a few hours?”

Public lavatories decorated with mannequins at Sao Joao da Madeira shopping centre in northern Portugal in a March 13, 2008 picture. REUTERS/Jose Manuel Ribeiro

More stuff from Oddly Enough

Welcome to today’s episode of “Fun With Statistics.” A widely-reported story tells us that two out of three Australian travelers are members of the Mile High Club, or would like to be members.

Pretty amazing, huh? Oh, wait. Doesn’t that cross the line between reality and fantasy, by lumping people who would like to have sex in a plane, together with those who actually have had it? If that’s how we’re going to play, prepare to be dazzled by my blog’s exclusive survey results:

• 72 percent of women have been the Queen of England, or would like to be.
• 62 percent of us have run a really bad driver off the road, or else said at some point, “Why, I ought to run that jerk off the road!”
• 84 percent of all Americans have walked on the moon, or enjoyed a Dilly Bar.

Hey, this is fun! And that Zogby polling guy makes it sound so darned complicated…

Journalist inspects double bed first class suite during media tour of the Airbus A380 superjumbo, in 2007 file photo. REUTERS/ Vivek Prakash

More stuff from the Oddly Enough Blog

This dude wrote a book about picking up women. He says he was named “world’s greatest pickup artist” for three years. I never won that title, and didn’t even know there was a contest. But the thing is, this expert’s advice just sounds funny.

Take rule number one: When you walk into a room look like you are having fun and don’t look around for attractive women. Now, if you see a guy walk in by himself looking like he’s “having fun,” you’re probably going to wonder what he’s on, and why he isn’t looking for attractive women like the other guys are, right?

Rule number two: Have a simple question to ask people, like who sings a certain song, so you can move around the room easily. This cracks me up. When women learn this guy is asking who sang Funkytown, over and over, they’re gonna think he has attention deficit disorder, which may not make him a chick-magnet.

The expert says even if a guy is really obese, he should just spray on a tan and put on jewelry, and he’ll get women. Right. They’ll be, like, “Who’s that rotund guy with jaundice, and why is his man-jewelry so oily-looking?” Here’s our story, by Belinda Goldsmith:

photo REUTERS/handout

More stories from the Oddly Enough Blog

Readers, who do you think get more sex?  Chiseled, muscular guys, or wimps? Go ahead, take your time and think about it carefully. Wow, you got it right on the first guess?  Me, too. 

Researchers at UCLA actually did a study on this, and came to the mind-boggling conclusion that women are “predisposed to prefer muscularity in men. I hope they didn’t spend more than $10 on the study, because that would have bought them a seat at Oceans Thirteen and answered all their questions.

But what I found most fascinating is that a noticeable number of stories about the study used the same phrase, which probably means it was in the press release. They referred to the muscular men’s “less-chiseled peers,” which has to be the euphemism of the month. As a spokesman for LCPs, thank you, UCLA! Here’s the story:

More Oddly Enough Blog

Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic flexes his muscles for photographers after wining the decathlon at the European athletics championships in Gothenburg (Goteborg) August 11, 2006.      REUTERS/Phil Noble

The writer George Orwell would have enjoyed this one. He understood the awesome power of words. It turns out Britain is thinking of removing the term “prostitute” from criminal statutes because - I’m not making this up - it carries too much stigma.

Aiming to find new words for the world’s oldest profession, a new bill refers simply to persons who sell sex persistently, which is defined as twice or more in three months. “It’s been around since 1824, so it was a bit outdated. It just wasn’t really helpful to label people,” a Justice Ministry spokeswoman said.

This worries me. If we’re going to knock out words for being old, there go Shakespeare, the King James Version of the Bible, and, well, a few other noted works. Readers, please use Post a Comment to propose other trendy new names for old crimes.

More Oddly Enough Blog

A prostitute wears a creation of the Daspu Spring/Summer 2007-2008 collection show in Rio de Janeiro May 22, 2007. Daspu is a fashion house founded and run by prostitutes whose designs have become the talk of Brazil’s fashion industry. REUTERS/Bruno Domingos

The Odd Blog Quote of the Month has been chosen, but first, a little background.

On Saturday, sex workers in Amsterdam offered a free look at the city’s famed red-light district. Wide-eyed gawkers got to pose for pictures and snoop behind the scenes. Organizers planned the event to help combat what they considered “bad publicity.”

So anyway, an erotic dancer named Love, shown here, was on hand at the Banana Bar to pose for photographs in a fluorescent negligee, and here’s what she said about the event: It is especially interesting for women. If they learn what we do here they will realize it is not a big deal if their husbands or boyfriends want to come here.

If that’s true, then those Dutch wives must be very, very unusual. Readers should feel free to agree or disagree via Post a Comment. Alexandra Hudson reports:

Oddly Enough Blog

Visitor poses in a prostitute’s window during open day in Amsterdam’s red light district March 31 2007. REUTERS/Toussaint Kluiters

Don’t tell anyone the big secret, but I guess the folks who publish Harlequin romances can’t just rely on breathtaking plot twists, multi-layered characters and gripping prose to sell enough of their books. That’s where guys with no shirts come in.

This weekend, Harlequin representatives went looking for “regular” dudes they might want to use as models for their book covers, checking out about 200 men at a Toronto casting house.

A Harlequin spokeswoman said they were looking for “that iconic look that women go for - sexy, sensitive, beautiful and fit.” D’oh! Have I been stupid, or what? I thought they just wanted a good sense of humor. Jonathan Spicer reports:

Oddly Enough Blog

A man poses during a casting call for Harlequin romance novels in Toronto on March 24, 2007. REUTERS/Mark Blinch

Say, what kind of school is this, anyway? It turns out four Albanian teachers have been censured for drunken and lewd behavior in a remote village school after they had sex behind a classroom blackboard. Incensed parents locked the schoolhouse to stop the drinking and sex.

“Would you call someone a teacher who drinks raki at ten in the morning and gets drunk and chases the schoolgirls?” asked the irate father of one of the students.

It seems raki is a potent regional drink, kind of like ouzo or sambuca. Ten in the morning? That might be their problem, right there. Here’s the story:

Oddly Enough Blog

Yellow capped new bottles of Turkish liquor “Yeni Raki” remain packed at a alcohol sales spot in Istanbul in a 2005 file photo. REUTERS/Fatih Saribas

If you have an upcoming appointment to see the Israeli ambassador in El Salvador, you might want to reconfirm it. It turns out he has been recalled to Israel, after being found naked, drunk, bound and gagged, with sex toys lying nearby in the yard of his official residence, according to Israeli media reports.

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said his behavior was “unbecoming of a diplomat.

Actually, not to put too fine a point on it, but that sounds kind of unbecoming of just about any human being, really. “Look, honey, our crazy neighbor is tied up naked in the yard again! Oh, wait, he’s not an ambassador anymore, so I guess it’s perfectly okay!”

Oddly Enough Blog

It turns out a 107-year-old guy in Hong Kong has attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence, according to a newspaper report. Chan Chi was quoted as saying he gave up sex when he was 30.

Now, this isn’t going where you think it is. No cheap comments like without sex maybe it just seems like he’s 107 years old, or like if that’s what you have to do to live that long, maybe it’s not worth it.

No, here’s what I find seriously amazing about Chan Chi’s story. It seems that while he was able to give up sex nearly 80 years ago, he still hasn’t managed to give up cigarettes. That’s on his to-do list. It kind of makes you think. Here’s the story:

Oddly Enough Blog

Cigarette butts fill an ashtray in a Hong Kong file photo. REUTERS/Paul Yeung