April 26: The Aliens Among Us Come in Many Forms

• Apologies to the Pope.  From the U.K. Where an official Foreign Office memorandum, leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, contains a number of references to the church’s child abuse scandal and suggests that the Pontiff use his visit to Britain later this year to launch a brand of “Benedict The Sixteenth” condoms.  Government apologized. Bishops Conference of England and Wales brands memo, “a joke that’s gone out of control.”  Critics note, however, conference’s criticism could characterize bishops themselves.
• Don’t Phone E.T.  Celebrated astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says yes indeed, aliens exist, and it could be deadly if we ever do succeed in making contact with them…so stop trying.  Hawking’s fears:  Extraterrestrials would simply conquer Earth, or worse, space voyagers might prove to be a race of Keith Olbermann-like creatures, or even “Karl Rove-ian.”  One of each seems quite sufficient.
• But wait… “They’re here!”  Reuters Ipsos survey discovers 1 in 5 believe aliens walk among us disguised as humans.  More men than women – 22 percent versus 17 percent – believe that extraterrestrials are indeed in our midst. Asked to identify possible aliens, respondents pointed to such suspected specimens as Nancy Pelosi, Lady Gaga, former congressman J.D. Hayworth, Keith Richards, and Fox News anchor, Neil Cavuto – pointing to Klingon-like dimensions of latter example’s head.
• Why You’re Broke:  Because your ever-vigilant economic guardians at the Securities and Exchange Commission were downloading “Shaving Ryan’s Privates,” “Breakfast on Tiffany,” “Presumed Impotent” and “Hannah and Her Blisters” rather than keeping current on Bernie Madoff’s spread sheets, or anything else in their damned job descriptions for that matter.  Brings fresh context to the familiar securities trade slang…“pump and dump.”
• Craniofacial reconstruction experts heartened by news that a team in Spain has performed the world’s first full face transplant.  Patient underwent 24-hour procedure conducted by 30 medics at Barcelona Hospital.  Hope seen for Donatella Versace, Keith Richards, Don Imus, among others.
• Toyota “emergency control” update:  After further review of Toyota control problems, experts have revised their advice on emergency steps to be taken when cars fail to respond to normal control inputs.  Rather than applying brakes, attempting to shutdown engine which frequently only causes frustration – analysts now say to steer vehicle quickly toward a “known motion arrestor.”  Examples given:  Tree, concrete bridge abutment, or building in close proximity to roadway.  Engineers assure, “car will stop.”  Then contact dealer if still able to operate a phone.
• Sports news:  Phillies fans continue to raise the bar on….something.  We report.  You decide.  21-year-old man arrested after sticking his finger down his throat, inducing regurgitation, and then urping on an off-duty police captain and his family…because a buddy got kicked out of a Phillies-Nationals game for acting like – well – a Phillies fan.  Charge – aggravated assault.  Though probably should have been, had the statute existed, “nauseated assault.”

April 23: Too Big to Carpool, Eco-Sex, and Wide-Ranging Divorces

• Too Big to Car Pool?  President, Vice President, observe Earth Day, how?  By taking a couple of separate jets 250 miles – Washington to New York – to land at separate airports and make separate appearances that were within a few miles and minutes of each other; Mr. Biden on “The View,” 11 a.m. – Mr. Obama in the Financial District, 11:55 a.m.  Inconvenient fact?  Boeing 747 burns approximately one gallon of fuel per second.  Horrors!  What would Mr. Gore say?? 
• Biggest Loser: You!  Missourian gives the rest of America a sense of what Madoff’s victims went through.  Wins $258 million PowerBall lottery. One damn ticket Which means you just lost $258-million, sucker.  How’s it feel?
• Borneo:  Project to conserve one of the oldest rain forests in the world is paying dividends through discovery of some 123 new species including a lungless frog, a frog that flies, and, “a slug that shoots love darts”… that will be identified by the formal zoological binomial nomenclature: “Jessicus Jamesus.”
• Earth Day:  Author of book, “Eco-Sex” uses observance to take readers to task for not “greening” their sex lives. Suggestions: Oysters instead of Viagra; bicycle dates; no Valentine’s cards, they generate too much waste; wear bamboo underwear, and adopt rather than procreate.  Good idea, especially if a non-procreation policy would prevent people who grow up to write idiotic books about “greening your sex life,” for godssake.
• PETA protesters demonstrate outside Queens, NY restaurant that serves…live octopuses.  Appeal to management to knock it off, on obvious grounds of animal cruelty that includes severing living animal’s tentacles at table. While you may be forgiven for wondering about it – head chef is not believed to be Michael Vick.
• Saudi Arabian Wife Granted Divorce.  And why is this news?  Wife is 11.  Husband is 80.  That’s why.  “Wife” had been trying to get shed of living fossil she got saddled with – in another of kingdom’s infamous “arranged marriages” – for over a year.  Saudi “Human Rights Commission” (not an oxymoron) promises to “monitor” such marriage arrangements in a new co-operation with international children’s rights agencies.  Progress!
• North Korea - yes, North Korea - Boasts One of World’s Longest Running TV Comedy Shows.  “It's So Funny,” has aired since the early 1970’s.  Only problem? Not funny. Principal intent, glorification of “The General” Kim Jong-Il.  Recent sample killer dialogue:  “If we soldiers see beans, we become happy.” Woman replies: “If we farm in the way the General tells us, we will become happy.”  Both laugh.  Mostly military audience doesn’t laugh.  Unless specifically “ordered” to do so.  Sort of like Conan.

April 22: Meaty Iranian Generals, Sassy New Currency, and Gay Softball Rules

• Boeing Dreamliner Clears Another Hurdle.  787 Dreamliner gets closer to becoming part of the nation’s commercial aircraft fleet.  Company says it has finalized the plane’s “aerodynamic configuration” and that FAA personnel will now participate in test flights…as it appears 787’s “wing attach point” issue is resolved and wings likely will remain attached to fuselage during flight.  Always an enviable “aerodynamic configuration.” Wings…
• Iran Launches Gulf War Games.  Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has opened three-day drill in Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. Brigadier General Hossein Salami says operation is not intended as a threat to “friendly” countries and … hold it: General “Salami”??  The guy’s name is “Salami”??  Who’s his adjutant, General “Olive Loaf”??  CIA now trying to determine whether wacky regime is trying to build a bomb or a hoagie.
• Pope Addresses Sex Abuse Issue.  Pope Benedict XVI says he will “take action,” as he put it, on church’s sex abuse problems. Analysts hope use of the term “action” was not employed in a “wagering context,” and that Vatican is not about to exacerbate cover-up scandal by also taking bets on it.  Developing… 
• Former Little League Coach Groove’s One with Larry King’s Wife.  Ethics-challenged Hector Penate, 31, former baseball coach for Mr. And Mrs. King’s sons, says not only did he go deep with King’s wife, he did so on aging talker’s home field – right in the couple’s own sack.  How could he do such a thing? Simple. Bed was unoccupied. 
• Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke unveil new $100 bill. Design enhances security by making note more difficult to counterfeit. Denomination’s most noticeable new feature, engraving of Benjamin Franklin shows founding father sticking out his tongue and thumbing his nose – to reflect most American’s chances of ever actually having one.
• Both sides of the Plate, a no-no. Three Seattle bisexual men are suing a national gay-athletic organization charging they were discriminated against when they were barred from Gay Softball World Series.  Plaintiffs say North American Gay Amateur Alliance in essence deemed them “insufficiently gay” to participate.  A charge that they threw to first like girls, not considered a factor.  The men are asking for $75,000 each for “emotional distress” …and just being really upset.
• Environmentalist Group Endorses Volcanoes. Air Quality Network says Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano produced less actual “greenhouse gas” during Europe’s travel shutdown than grounded aircraft would have generated had they been operating.  Spokesman expresses hope volcanoes will occur in many more European countries to further reduce greenhouse gas hazard.  Says nothing, however, about “gasbag hazard” emanating from group’s sophomoric, unproven conclusions.  

April 21: Eyjafjallajokull, Cat Mallet Deaths, and Drunk Driving Coincidences

• World Health Organization says ash cloud poses no “ground-level” health risk outside areas immediately adjacent to Iceland’s unpronounceable volcano. That is unless you happen to be Tom Brokaw…trying to say the name of the thing at any level. In which case Eyjafjallajokull could prove to be fatal indeed.
• Too Fat to Fight.   Group of retired military officers says America’s school-lunch programs are a “national security threat.”  Study finds high-calorie school menus are turning out young people who can’t meet the military’s physical fitness standards, putting recruitment in jeopardy. Concerned generals say military may have to adjust battlefield strategy…no longer dropping soldiers behind enemy lines but rather on them.
• South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports North Korea is preparing to carry out its third underground nuclear test in May or June.  In an overture to Pyongyang, U.S. may offer to assist the regime’s nuclear development program by exploding an above-ground device 233 miles southwest of previous test site…which would locate detonation point approximately beneath that stupid balcony where “Dear Leader” watches all of his anesthetized, goose-stepping drones march by…give or take a few feet.
• California man arrested on arson charges after burning his mobile home right down to the frame while cleaning a bong with rubbing alcohol. Police say Andrew Garcia attempted to “clean up” a spill of the cleaning agent, by lighting it on fire.  Yes Andy, “This is Your Brain on Drugs.”
• Florida…again:  Freak parade winds through Panama City, FL, where 52-year-old Margaret Fowler is under arrest for allegedly beating a neighbor’s cat to death with a rubber mallet. Motivation a mystery, but booked on a “felony animal cruelty” charge. Oh yes. It’s “Doctor” Fowler.  She’s a veterinarian. Just not a very good one.
• Montgomery County, Maryland Judge Edwin Collier let Rene Fernandez off the hook back in ’98 when Fernandez was in Collier’s courtroom on a drunk driving charge; second in three months.  Crossed paths again, though, literally – when, according to police, Fernandez severely injured the judge and his wife in a car crash…drunk again.  Justice delayed…is still “justice.”
• And in a not unrelated item:  News from Gilford, N.H. that Richard Sminard has lost his job with the state.  In fact, fired by Governor John Lynch this week after Mr. Sminard got stopped for speeding and “driving erratically,” and wound up getting charged with driving while intoxicated. So, why the ax?  Mr. Sminard was New Hampshire’s State Liquor Commissioner, that’s why.  Emphasis…“was.”

Tuesday, April 20: Good Luck Fliers, To Vitamin or Not to Vitamin, and Thongs as Pranks

• Duck and Cover!  United Kingdom lifting “volcano ash flight ban” today!  Scheduled flights being reclassified as “gliders.”  Passenger boarding passes being stamped with question mark and phrase, “good luck,” in space designated – “Destination.”
• Earthquakes, volcanoes, explained:  Senior Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, says irreverent Muslim women who don’t wear “floor-to-ceiling” Burqa or Niqab garments are causing Earth’s spate of violent seismic activity.  You may now slap your forehead and say, “But of course!”
• Vitamin Supplements:  Take ‘em and die.  Don’t take ‘em and die.  “Why consumers freak.”  Study done in Puerto Rico at the American Association for Cancer Research found that multivitamin supplements have a protective effect against breast cancer.  But a large Swedish study in the American Journal of Nutrition found that taking multivitamin supplements may increase the risk of breast cancer.  Your strategy?  Take a daily multivitamin, but then stick a finger down your throat and gag the damn thing up.
• Priorities…India mobile phones exceed India toilets:  Mobile phone subscribers in India, 564 million. Toilets in India, 366 million.  Government advises those who have toilets but no mobile phone and wish to communicate, to flush in Morse code.
• GM gets religion.  In first event of its kind, Detroit Baptist church teams up with General Motors to offer congregants a chance to test drive a dozen GM models after Sunday services.  Enquiring minds want to know, since U.S. government now owns General Motors – does promotion represent a violation of separation of church and state?  We report.  You decide.
• "I am not an animal!" 19-year-old Michigan State University student is under arrest for pilfering 79 pairs of women’s thong underwear from dryers in dorm basement laundry facilities over a period of several months.  All thongs. Nothing else. Suspect reportedly told police that the whole matter was just a prank, and that he’s not, you know, a sex addict or anything.  Indeed, analysts theorize it may simply be “a comfort thing; and they make him feel pretty.”
• Unconscionable ass places wine order.  Unidentified diner, said to be “Russian Tycoon,” drops $75,000 on exclusive gold-dipped jug of Dom Perignon at London’s Westbury Hotel bar. Sources say toasts did not extend to victims of earthquake in Haiti; famines in Darfur, Ethiopia, Somalia. 
• Excuse me?  Study set up and funded by University of East Anglia determines University of East Anglia’s climate unit did not purposely orchestrate “climate-gate research fraud.”  Hence, future East Anglia climate data should not be doubted – insists eminent University of East Anglia scientific panel investigating eminent University of East Anglia scientists.  Jeezis.