Tuesday: Plaugues, Promescuity, and PETA

• It’s over.  Here come the locusts:  Farmers and ranchers across the West brace for grasshopper infestation bigger than any year since 1985…millions of acres of crops and grazing land at risk, Dept. of Agriculture says.  Lice, frogs, boils, next.  Sarah Palin plague’s already out there. 
• Mexican Police Turn to Voodoo in War against Violent Cartels:  Priests smear officers with chicken blood on full moon nights to evoke spirits to help fight narco gangs.  Practice revealed when people began discovering trails of dead chickens on local beaches.  Seems to be working about as well as anything else: not at all.
• Naked Woman Tied to Tree in Tacoma Park Not a Problem:  Actual headline.  From Tacoma, Washington where police responded to nighttime 911 call about nude woman spotted tied to a tree…and found…well, “nude woman tied to a tree”…but “in consensual sex act” with 39-year-old man.  Couple simply “liked to engage in intimacy outdoors.”  No charges, yet, for… “going native.”
• And does the following have any bearing on the preceding?  British survey finds young women today are nearly three times more sexually active that those of the liberal heyday “Swinging 60’s”…with 5.65 sexual partners, on average, compared to 1.67 back when.  Exactly how many partners tie “objects of their affection” to Quaking Aspens, Eucalyptus and the like, not specified.
• Mob Museum opening in Las Vegas:  City leaders are under fire for dedicating public resources to “The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime.”  A couple of planned exhibits:  “Mob Mayhem” and “The Skim;” part of an overall thematic presentation that “celebrates organized crime” and anticipates up to 600,000 visitors a year.  “Stimulus” enough for us.  Got no problem with it at all.
• Uncle Cho died?  There’s an app for that:  Chinese officials say citizens are turning to online memorial services to save time and natural resources. Internet funerals suit China because of its “sparse land and huge population,” says Ministry of Civil Affairs.  Concept includes online gravestone, “virtual cemetery,” portrait of the deceased, photos of farewell party.  Only item not covered, actual disposition of the remains of the dearly “deleted.”
• Holy Ghost to Observe Easter in Big Sky Country:  Holy Ghost Terrill Dalton, 43, who also says he’s the Father of Jesus, has moved his 30-member church from Idaho to Montana because they were “drawn there.”   Church’s previous home was raided by the feds investigating reports of child sexual abuse and assassination threats against various government figures. Holy Ghost’s new neighbors described as “spooked.”
• Octomom, PETA, in Negotiations for ‘Overpopulation Ad': Animal rights group wants to help “Octomom” Nadya Suleman’s finances by placing billboard on her front lawn regarding dog and cat overpopulation. Suleman famously gave birth to octuplets, bringing her own litter to 14.  PETA says she’s ideal to illustrate pet production problem. 

Monday: Exploding Implants, Hooters For Kids, And Where One Man Stuck His...You Know

• Old Grey Lady’s Over-Stuffed, Kiss-My-Rear Purse:  Fat payday for NYT Chairman Arthur Sulzberger and President Janet Robinson – $13-million in bonuses in ’09 – not happy news at Times-owned Boston Globe.  Union drones there swallowed more than $10-million in cuts last year in order to save the paper.  Now, watching Sulzberger and Robinson say, “let them eat cake”…demand that they get their damn money back.  Good luck.
• Time to just pack it in?  No only does Senate Majority Leader not know what’s in healthcare reform legislation, turns out Harry Reid doesn’t even know how the heck to vote on… whatever it is.  Actually voted “no” on passing the bill. Not once.  Twice. Corrected himself. Laughed it off. Walked into a wall. Wanted:  Windbreaker.  Note pad.  Ride to dog track.
• Britain’s top intelligence agency reports female suicide bombers are being fitted by “radicalized doctors” with exploding breast implants; almost impossible to detect and sufficiently potent to bring down an airliner.  Have a nice flight.  “Are you staring at my breasts?”  “Yes.  In the name of national security.” 
• And in a not unrelated item:  Finally, a nice place to take the family Sundays after church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  “Hooters.”  A Hooters restaurant on NW Broad Street in Murfreesboro, advertises thus: “Kids eat free on Sundays.  Must be 12 years old or less.  All day American fare.”  And amen to that.
• Are we absolutely sure we want British-style healthcare?  “Patient Infertile After Doctors Remove Wrong Testicle.”  Happened at Britain’s West Suffolk Hospital. Unidentified patient should have had right testicle removed, but they got the left one instead.  Then, of course, had to go back and get the one they were supposed to remove in the first place – rendering said patient totally shooting blanks.  But, they did  a “thorough case review.”  Comforting.
• “Toilet lids don’t kill people.  They only brain them.”  Nitasha Camilla Johnson of Iowa City charged with domestic assault…after, police say, she removed the lid from a toilet tank at her sister’s home and clobbered her with it during “altercation.” Nature of “altercation” not described.  Sister will be okay.  Why toilet tank lid?  Of course.  “Because…it was there.”
• “Man Declines to Explain Why Penis is Trapped in Pipe.”  Excuse me?  Dateline, UK, naturally:  Medics and firefighters use industrial metal grinder to split pipe gripping anesthetized man’s penis.  40 year old walked into Southampton General Hospital’s Emergency department with an obvious… “emergency.”  Rescue Service reports penis was saved, if a trifle “worse for wear.”  And …. No explanation from unidentified victim.  But then, what could he say?
• Jesus again.  This time in the burned bottom of a frying pan.  Salford, England.  Toby Elles awoke, after ingesting several beers, to find room full of smoke.  Ran to the stove where he’d left pan of bacon on the heat.  Lifted bacon from cooking surface and – miracle! – there in the bottom of the pan, Jesus.  Beard, long hair, complete image.  Not quite a “burning bush,” but close.  No eBay plans, yet.

Friday: Biden, Bin Laden, & Mt. Bimbo

• No wonder he said it was a “Big F—ing Deal!  Vice President “Loose Cannon” fires another round:  Joe Biden tells Maryland fundraiser that President Obama would have been “absolutely done” without healthcare reform.  Over.  As in forget about it.  Like, pack it in.  Doomed.  Frank assessment of Obama abilities certain to even further endear balmy second-in-command to Team Obama…whose members, basically, appear ready to kill themselves over crazy s.o.b.
• Bin Laden to Ink Deal with Time Life.  Will add audio message broadcast yesterday to a “Greatest Hits Treasury” of favorite threat messages…“Death to America,” “Death to Infidels,” “Death to Bush,” “Death to That Cartoon Guy” among tapes being included – along with companion CD: “I’m Mullah Omar and I’m Not Dead…But You Will Be If I Have Anything to Say About It.”  Expected release, April 19. 
• Tiger’s ‘Mt. Bimbo’ Erupts Again!  Just two to go and we will have “played eighteen”…as porn-star Devon “XXX” James oozes to the surface to claim Tiger dropped $4,000 dollars on her and a friend to join him in a pile.  That brings the reported “Tiger Total” to 16 – counting Devon as 15 and “friend” as 16 – and only two holes short of a standard PGA round.
• Iggy’s Last Plunge:  Punk-rock legend Iggy Pop, who pioneered the stage dive, says those days are over…after the audience at a recent Carnegie Hall show simply stepped aside when he launched himself and let him land on his face. And thus, an era ends.  Punk is officially over.  Iggy “Plop.”
• The SEC:  “No wonder the morons didn’t see calamity coming.”  They had their noses in their computer screens and their hands in their pockets.  Latest on the extent of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s porn-obsessed staff?  No fewer than 16 investigations underway into SEC “workers” who spent up to one-and-a-half hours per day on websites featuring “you-name-it” smut.  SEC: The “Sex, Eros and Copulation” Commission.  How reassuring.
• Is Our Children Punching the Hell out of Each Other? Teacher fired from a Houston private school for encouraging her students to punch a classmate during a field trip to Chuck E. Cheese, after the kid had socked a little girl for some reason.  Report says the teacher got her group together and told them all to “punch Devarius in the face” when they boarded their van. So they did.  Teacher’s looking for work.  Kids are surfing Nazi websites.
• Oh, enough already.  New book, Eco-Sex, explains how to make your intimate life “ecologically sustainable,” for godssake.  From wind-up and hand-cranked “toys,” to websites where battery-driven devices can be recycled, to eco-friendly lingerie made out of freakin’ bamboo.  Author says “green sex” is “having its moment.”  Somebody shoot me.  Please.

Thursday: Biden's Foot Still in Mouth, Pig Virus for Everybody, and Send All the Rich Morons to Space

• Biden doesn’t disappoint…again: Wacky, “uncle-with-lampshade-on-head,” U.S. Veep-guy distinguishes self at historic healthcare bill signing by turning to President and declaring “This is a big f--king deal!” as he welcomes Mr. Obama to lectern.  “Testing, testing…is this thing on?”  Yes, Mr. Vice President.  It most certainly was…“on.”  Just check YouTube. 
• Nancy Pelosi gets quick experience in revamped health care system.  Needs medical attention, furious fanning after near fatal “giddiness attack” aggravated by extreme case of the “vapors” when President labeled her, “one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had!”  Briefly caused Pelosi to scream, “Oh God! Oh God! as eyes crossed, limbs spasmed and body convulsed.  Expected to be fine…till immigration bill comes up.   
• Govt. recommends doctors suspend using Rotarix, a rotavirus vaccine, because it’s got pig virus in it.  Product’s from GlaxoSmithKline which emphasizes that pig virus is not known to cause illness in humans.  So relax.  Only some 30-million kids have gotten the stuff.  Feds, too, say it ought’a be okay, far as they know.  What’s to worry?
• "Who designed these things, Akio Toyoda?"  Study finds that new generation airbags – computerized, so-called “smart bags” introduced in ‘04 – have an unfortunate characteristic: Turning you into pizza.  A 21% higher death risk – especially if you’re properly belted in – than if you were smacked across the puss by a pre-2004 bag.  
  So buckle up?  You lose.  Okay, don’t buckle up?  You lose.  Great…
• And speaking of Toyota… Investigators find a “Smoking Gas Pedal.”  An undisclosed Toyota repair document from August 2002 – eight years ago – that showed the company’s cars had a “sudden acceleration” glitch and that electronics were at the bottom of it.  Service bulletin went out to all dealers and was hidden – not only by Toyota but also by your friendly, ever-vigilant U.S. Government.   And they want to run healthcare??
• "80,000 people who tick you off." The 80,000 who have already bought a $200,000 ticket for a ride on zillionaire Richard Branson’s spaceship that passed some test yesterday.  You’re living in a Maytag carton and these people have all just dropped the price of a condo on the nauseating self-indulgency of playing Buzz Lightyear for five suborbital minutes.  80,000 x $200,000?  That’s $16-billion bucks.  Somebody needs a beatin’.
• "So, a bank robber walks into a bar flashing his buttocks..." No joke.  Fugitive Elbert Thompson, age 20, is in a Pennsylvania jail after walking out of a Pittsburgh hospital and into a bar…precisely as described.  Got him in a routine traffic stop; took him to the hospital when he complained he felt ill.  Tried to flee but was relatively easy to pick out of bar crowd:  Not many there barefooted, wearing a hospital gown, with an I-V needle in their arm.

Tuesday's "News": Spray-Painted Chickens and A Gential Jamboree

• “Couch potatoes, unite!”  Study at Minneapolis Heart Institute finds group of elite marathoners had less body fat, better cholesterol and blood rates than non-runners being tested for cardiac ailments. But, paradoxically, the runners had more calcified plaque in their coronary arteries…a significant heart risk indicator.  Researchers had no idea why, or what it might mean.  Helpful. 
• “Missing element from Obamacare could have vastly broadened support.”  Dutch nurses launch campaign against demands for “sex services” by patients who say it should be part of standard care. Young heath care provider complained a patient asked her to provide “services” as part of his home care.  Some nurses actually complied, but complainant declined and howled.  Ruined everything for patient who’d been looking so much better.
• “I see live people.”   Attention Social Security Department:  Doris Temple lives.  85-year-old Walnut Creek Californian declared “deceased” by federal government.  Checking her pulse, and suspecting an error, she demurred…spent weeks trying to be “born again” while losing all sorts of benefits and health insurance. Finally won, but complains battle for life…damn near killed her.
• Forget the cherry blossoms, time for a “genital jamboree.”  Komaki, Japan welcomes in spring with annual penis and vagina festival…folk rite going back some 1.500 years and held to ensure a good harvest – or whatever.  Vendors sell penis and vagina-shaped candies, wood penis sculptures and vagina-shaped ashtrays…as faithful bow to enormous phallus fashioned from cypress tree trunk.  Bumper cucumber crop reported last year.
• Musselshell County, Montana: Politics. Sheriff candidate John White uniquely qualified: Served time for bank robbery, so knows the “inside story” of criminal justice system.  Sheriff candidate John White uniquely unqualified:  Prohibited from carrying a gun.
• Officials at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are trying to determine who’s spray-painting chickens and turning them loose in campus buildings.  Pink one in a student center.  Purple one on a racquetball court.  Yellow one in campus maintenance facility.  Nine, of varying hues, recovered since the weekend.  No suspects as yet, though campus authorities say they wouldn’t be surprised to discover…it’s George Bush’s fault.
• “On second thought, maybe just a sandwich.”  Police say 55-year-old Polk County Florida woman locked herself in a bedroom in February to pray and fast.  Brought water and prayer requests with her and hung out “do not disturb” sign.  After 26 days, family members forced the door…found that she’d gone to be with Jesus.  Reportedly had fasted successfully before, once for 40 days.  Apparently, should’ve let that one make her point.
• Sucker Bet:  Two men who robbed a store in Dalian, China got into an argument over whether there’d been security cameras monitoring the store’s interior.  Made a wager and went back to the store to see who was right.  Winner, the guy who’d said there were security cameras.  Trial pending.