Andrea Weckerle

It’s the end of the week. I think we’ve all earned a good chuckle. 

Community standards of good taste vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and what’s considered acceptable by one person may be offensive to another. The intention behind an act is often as important as the act itself, as shown by these examples.

According to MSNBC, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge found that a Germantown, Maryland man did not commit the illegal act of indecent exposure when he mooned a neighbor and her 8-year-old daughter during an argument last Summer. This was good news for the defendant, who otherwise faced imprisonment for up to three years and a fine of $1,000. 

"If exposure of half of the buttock constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty," Judge John W. Debelius III said after the bench trial, reversing the ruling of a District Court judge

The defendant’s attorneys had appealed the initial verdict by arguing that indecent exposure, defined in Maryland as the willful public display of a person’s private parts, doesn’t include "a person’s buttocks."

One of the defendant’s attorneys said the ruling should "bring comfort to all beachgoers and plumbers" in Maryland.

Contrast that with the 27th Annual Mooning of Amtrak event scheduled for July 8, 2006 in Laguna Niguel, California. Yes, you read that corrrectly …. twenty-seven years of annual train mooning.

According to the site, "reporters & photographers from the newspapers and Videographers for TV are expected." Here’s a link to pictures from past years. I wonder if any bloggers will show up. 

Visit the site to get answers to such burning questions as whether you have to participate or can just watch, whether you can bring your pets, whether overweight people can join in (yes, of course; read the very funny answer) and whether participants can decorate their rears.