The Arlington Parks Department described the crime in clinical terms. Vandals had come in the night and defaced a piece of playground equipment at Allen Saxe Park, causing $5,000 in damage. But the detached language masked some strong emotions. This wasn't just any old jungle gym. This was Nessie, which the park department describes as its "beloved dragon," even though she's clearly a mythological Scottish cryptid. They'd found her body on the morning of June 13, tortured and brutally decapitated.

"They used some sort of mechanical tool," park department supervisor Scott DeGrant told WFAA, scarcely able to disguise his fury. "And it's our theory that a teenager or some child or someone has it in their basement or bedroom or closet as a souvenir."

The city is now issuing a plea for any information on the whereabouts of Nessie's head so they can track down the perpetrator and deliver a serving of cold, hard Arlington Parks Department justice.

On the right, Priapus, a Greek god of fertility. On the left, Dallas Anti-Aging Institute CEO Zach Tallon.

Juan Ponce de Leon got some bad information. The Fountain of Youth isn't in Florida, as the 16th-century Spanish conquistador eventually figured out. It's actually a thousand miles to the west in an otherwise unremarkable Preston Center storefront, conveniently sandwiched between the Park Cities and Preston Hollow.

That's where the Dallas Anti-Aging Institute has been operating for the past couple of years. It inherited the space from the Pain Control Institute after its owner, a 53-year-old named Zach Tallon, discovered "bioidentical hormone therapy," a vaguely described but apparently miraculous set of treatments that helped him lose weight, gain muscle, and boost his flagging libido.

We won't dwell on puzzling out how the treatment is supposed to work. Instead, we'll turn our attention to what the clinic is describing as a "medical breakthrough." It's called the Priapus Shot®, and it supposedly makes your dick bigger. The clinic dispatched a press release about it on Friday.

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Texas Eagle Forum

Cathie Adams

Cathie Adams, the president of the Texas Eagle Forum who briefly chaired the state's Republican Party, made her thesis clear early in a recent presentation to the Far North Dallas Tea Party with a quote from author Paul Sperry.

America is fighting a perfect enemy, one protected by religious freedoms and racial sensitivities. And we have a less than perfect understanding of what motivates the enemy, and how it is aided and abetted by a religious support network that exploits American culture and tax laws and is patiently infiltrating the American system to overturn it from within.

The quote's a reference to Muslims, of course, and Adams used it as part of her lecture to underline just how sneaky and evil they are.

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Glenn Beck's wild-eyed, usually paranoid rants are such a common occurrence, Right Wing Watch has an entire category devoted to chronicling his crazy. Most of them are rather uninspired and give the impression that Beck is merely going through the motions in order to fulfill the persona he's built. But every so often, his ramblings reach such glorious levels of absurdity that we can't help but take notice.

That was the case when Beck announced plans for a $2 billion libertarian commune and with his Man-in-the-Moon-narrated Fourth of July spectacular.

Beck's been releasing details about the latter project over the past several months. The celebration could not be contained on one day, so it will take place over the entire Fourth of July weekend. It's happening for whatever reason in Salt Lake City. And, Beck announced yesterday, it's going to permanently mold the minds of America's children.

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It was only a matter of time, really before this happened. Put giant B's and G's around the city as part of the official "Big Things Happen Here" marketing campaign, and someone will eventually think "You know what? A penis is shaped kinda like an 'I.'" Then, it's only a matter of finding a penis costume and deciding where to insert oneself. The Granada, which is doing a caption contest for the shot above above, is a solid choice, though probably not quite as good as the Dallas Theological Seminary. It is also missing an erect "I."

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Oh, JCPenney. The Plano-based department store chain just cannot seem to stop stepping in it, in the weirdest ways possible. Last year, there was Gay Dad-Gate, in which the company pissed off homophobes everywhere by featuring a photo of two gay fathers in its catalog, just after it had the temerity to name Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson.

All that took a backseat, though, to the company's financial woes under the reign of CEO Ron Johnson, who finally stepped down in April after managing to drop the company's stock price by more than 50 percent.

We hadn't heard much from JCPenney for the last couple months, as new CEO Mike Ullman (who was also the old CEO, before Johnson) tries frantically to un-sink the ship over there. But now the company's back in the news for the Michael Graves-designed tea kettle you see above, which, in addition to being stainless steel, sort of looks like Hitler, doesn't it?

See also:
- One Million Moms Doesn't Like JC Penney's Two Gay Dads At All
- Does Anyone Have a Notion of What JC Penney Even Is Now?

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In the 72 hours since he announced that he was crowd-sourcing designs for the Mavericks' new uniforms, Mark Cuban has been swamped with quality submissions.

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Mark Cuban Wants You to Design the Mavericks' New Uniforms. For Free.

Take this suggestion posted to Cuban's blog:

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First, a bit of background. There's a giant banana-shaped car making its way across the country right now. It's official name is the Big Banana Car, and it's the brainchild of a Brit named Steve Braithwaite who, along with his brother, is "making a documentary film about building a huge banana car and then driving it around the world." Their stated mission is to build awareness of deep vein thrombosis, which killed their mother.

The Braithwaites had the misfortune of arriving in Dallas on Wednesday, just as last night's deadly storms were beginning to roll through. Bad timing, to be sure, but they covered the car -- which somehow manages to seat four -- in their trusty silver tarp and rode out the storm.

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Nearly a Dozen Tornadoes Swept Through North Texas Last Night

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This is a weird one. The story comes to us via Reddit (of course), where a resident of an apartment complex near State and Thomas streets in Uptown writes that he's distressed by the appearance of a strange chalk marking on his door.

"I noticed today that my door had a small chalk-like marking, like a vertical line just on the top part of the frame," he writes. "My neighbor had a similar one. Now, I'm not local (Spanish, if you must know) and burglars are known to leave certain marks on the door to let other burglars know what's inside (they got one for 'old people,' other for "nothing to steal here", another one for 'beware of alarms,' etc). They get the information by pretending to be door-to-door salesmen."

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Joel Osteen, getting ready to double-team Dallas.

MegaFest, Bishop T.D. Jakes' massive annual gathering of evangelical Christians, is a pretty big deal, a $10 million production that draws 100,000 incredibly well-behaved visitors. The Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau was so stoked when Jakes decided to move the festival to Dallas, it chipped in a half-million dollars.

But it wasn't clear exactly how big a deal MegaFest 2013 would be until Jakes and Joel Osteen announced in a recent video that the Houston megapastor will be lending his silver tongue and waxen Ken-doll good looks to the conference.

It's clear from their banter that both Jakes and Osteen are very excited about the chance to collaborate. The key exchange goes like this:

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