For those that worry they might eat their Christmas dinner alone this year, they now have reason to fear no more. Courtesy of a Dutch art company, a new DVD will allow a lonesome dinner to become one full of holiday fun and good cheer with dinner companions eating, drinking, and engaging in conversation. The DVD will feature actors reading out different scripts in other for people to pick out which type of people they would want best.

Beginning next year, Japanese spouses will have their love vows stored in space after buying platinum wedding rings. The move is an initiative of the Japanese arm of Platinum Guild International (PGI), a body that advocates the use of precious metal jewels, in its campaign to promote platinum wedding rings. Reuters quotes a Japanese PGI official saying, "People do not link platinum with wedding rings the way they used to. " The switch in customs is the new trend with Japanese couples, many of whom prefer simple weddings. In the past, platinum was the metal of choice among Japanese couples.

A hotel is banning its employees from uttering the word "football" so those sick to death of World Cup mania can have some peace. Any guest who overhears a member of the staff say the word gets a free glass of champagne. "The bookings are starting to stream in," says Mike Bevans, manager of the Linthwaite House Hotel in London's Lake District, one of England's most popular tourist destinations.

Three eighth-grade students have been expelled from their middle school for showing students a pornographic DVD in the classroom when their teacher wasn't watching. The Bay Minette Middle School students put the DVD into the player while their teacher was busy grading papers and working on a computer, said the assistant superintendent for Baldwin County Schools, Terry Knight.

Three men are under arrest in North Carolina on charges that they performed illegal castrations in what investigators call a sadomasochistic "dungeon. " They say at least six men traveled from across the U. S. and South America to voluntarily take part in the mutilations. Investigators who searched the home say they found DVD recordings of the castrations.