My Ding-a-Ling

There's fishing -- which is dangling a string on the end of a rod in the hope of getting marine animals to take some bait. And then there's "phishing" -- sending out spam e-mails with the goal of hooking unwitting strangers into buying Viagra and other products they may or may not need.

But what a 21-year-old man from the German man state of Thuringia did was something of a bizarre combination of the two. He sent a text message featuring a photograph of his penis to a random woman.

The picture was accompanied by a message reading: "I don't care who you are, but would you be interested in exchanging erotic photos?"

The recipient was, in fact, not interested in swapping sexual snapshots. She went to the police, who quickly located the testicular texter via the phone number on the woman's display.

At his trial the man claimed he had been making a "joke" -- not the term most men would use to describe that particular portion of their anatomy.

The court, though, found the man guilty of distributing pornographic material, slapping him on the, uh, wrist with one year of probation. He was also fined 150 euros ($220) -- the size of the fine presumably reflecting the size of the crime.

Still, it wasn't as if the court was not amused.

"We all had a bit of laugh when we saw the thing," the presiding judge told Reuters news agency.

The perpetrator said he was full of regret, although it was initially unclear whether he meant having sent the picture of his private parts -- or having his manhood mocked in a court of law.