Waiter, there's a rubber in my soup!
I swear to y'all, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. A California woman named Laila Sultan was having clam chowder at McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant when she bit into something rubbery. "Of course," her dining companion said. "You're chewing on a clam." But when Sultan spit the object out, it turned out to be an unwrapped, rolled-up condom. She spent the next 15 minutes vomiting in the restroom, and is now undergoing psychiatric treatment as well as suing the restaurant for negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Perhaps it was meant to be a special treat, like the fortune in a fortune cookie? Or maybe the chef just has a really unique way of stirring the soup...

Meanwhile, these diners aren't complaining...
Over in Seattle, a restaurant called Bonzai offers 'naked sushi' every Saturday night this fall. A chef prepares salmon, ahi tuna, eel, and California rolls, and arrays the tidbits on the torso of one of seven 'sushi models', bare except for a layer of plastic wrap and some strategically distributed flower petals. For the price of a drink and a $5 cover charge, patrons (both male and female, by the way) can then line up, and enjoy the food and the view. The restaurant's promoter calls this "performance art", but a local group of female activists (headed, interestingly, by one Cherry Cayabyab) calls it "the exploitation of women and the prostitution of sushi".

One of the sushi models called the activist group's protests "ridiculous", saying she found the experience relaxing, sensual, meditative, and not oppressive at all. The sushi, it must be assumed, declined to comment.