Following tradition, Queen Elizabeth II has released her New Year’s Honors List. Among those honored with knighthood and other awards that allow you to put initials like MBE and CBE after your name were pianist George Shearing, writer Michael Holroyd, actress Penelope Keith, Rod Stewart, and George Bell, a Scot who retired in August after having delivered milk for 34 years in the village of Gullane. Actually he won’t be called “Sir” since he only received the MBE, but hey, it’s cooler than a gold watch.

A 21-year-old German man who wanted to visit his girlfriend found himself 8,077 miles off course when, instead of flying to Sydney, Australia, he found himself on the way to Sidney, Montana. It seems he mistyped the destination when he booked his flight online. After spending three days in the Billings, Montana, airport his parents and friends wired him the money to buy a ticket to Australia. Let’s just hope he never has to book a flight to Jupiter, Florida.

According to the New York City Health Department, the most popular dog name of 2006 was Max, followed by Lucky, Princess, Rocky, and Buddy. Not a Fifi in sight. The most popular babies names, on the other hand, were Michael, Emily, Daniel, and Ashley, even though walking around the streets you’d think they were Hey Youse, Dipwad, and Numbnuts. Again, not a Fifi in sight.

…and if a North Carolina company has its way, you can wear them all year and hang them again next Christmas without washing them. Cupron, Inc. has been selling socks impregnated with copper oxide, which they say kills bacteria and odor on contact. Jeffrey Gabbay, who owns the company, says he hasn’t washed his sports socks since 2004 and they don’t smell. They might be filthy and caked with dirt, but at least they don’t smell.

Most of us don’t like giving money for Christmas, it’s so impersonal. But in Spain it’s not such a bad present. A study published by a laboratory disclosed that 94% of the banknotes in Spain have traces of cocaine on them. Hey, it beats getting gifts in your stocking coated with coal dust.

Just barely in time for Christmas, a California doctor has recreated the cologne worn by Pope Pius IX way back in the 19th century. Why? Because stamp collecting didn’t interest him, apparently. Dr. Fred Hass says the scent, which he concocted using a recipe he found in a limited-edition 1963 cookbook, is “surprisingly fresh, with notes of citrus and violet.” No frankincense? No myrrh? He has 2,000 bottles sitting in his garage for sale — shock! incredulity! — which he’s trying to sell. Move over Beyonce, Pius is here!

A Boston doctor is on probation after performing gallbladder surgery on an 84-year-old woman last July because, well, he accidentally removed her right kidney instead of the gallbladder. Hey, they all look kind of reddish and squishy, you know. From now on he’ll be supervised during surgery, have clinical oversight of his practice, and be quizzed using flash cards before each operation.

1. A 3-month-old baby was left in a shopping cart at a Toys “R” Us store in Midland, TX on Sunday when her parents forgot her and went home. “It was a misunderstanding among family members,” a police spokesperson said. You know, sometimes it’s so hard to agree on whether you have a baby or not.

2. A woman put her 1-month-old grandson through a security X-ray machine at LAX on Saturday. “This was an innocent mistake by an obviously inexperienced traveler,” an airport security official said. The sign said all liquids have to be checked and humans are, after all, 65% water.

Military officials in Scotland say there’s a shortage of ceremonial kilts for their soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, they have just 320 kilts, or one for every 15 soldiers, meaning 5,000 Scottish soldiers are having to share their kilts. “You wear it on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll wear it on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday we wash it.” This leads to the question: What do they wear under their kilts? And if anything, do they have to share those too?

After months of deliberation, a zillion letters to the editors, and a seemingly never ending series of weekly predictions made by people previously featured on the magazine’s covers, Time announced their Person of the Year. You. As in all of us. Well, assuming you’re someone “using or creating content on the World Wide Web.” *yawn* Richard Stengel, Time’s managing editor, admitted, “If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people. But if you choose millions of people, you don’t have to justify it to anyone.” I think that’s defined as “taking the easy way out.”

Some residents of Sweden have petitioned the Surveyors Office seeking permission to change the name of their town. It seems they’re tired of hearing people poke fun at it. Sure Fjuckby is an unusual name, but heck, so is Indianapolis. Officials at the town’s sister cities of Intercourse and Blue Balls, Pennsylvania, say they have no plans to petition the Swedish government to have the names of their towns changed.

Supposedly Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, once said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Oh, how wrong he was. Now you can find out for yourself with Google’s new patent search engine that sifts through over 7 million patents because, well, who has the time to do it yourself anymore? Now you can discover that there’s a patent for Cheesecake on a Stick (not to be confused with Cheesecake in a Cone), a toe puppet, a braille slot machine, and yes, 683 patents on pocket protectors. Figures.

Don’t tell the kids, but the Redhots And Fries food stand in Glenview, Illinois, is selling reindeer hot dogs. They’ll set you back eight bucks, but that includes grilled onions and mustard, which apparently is the way they’re eaten in Alaska. No need to fret if you won’t be in the Chicago area this holiday season, you can order reindeer hot dogs and sausage online from Indian Valley Meats. Would you like fries with that reindeer?

Jim Rutz, chairman of Megashift Ministries and founder-chairman of Open Church Ministries, said in a story on WorldNetDaily that eating soy “is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality.” Oh yeah, and early menstruation, though that’s only in women. Unless a guy really eats way too much soy. Luckily he says soy sauce, miso, and tempeh are okay and manly because they’re fermented. But tofu is a no-no. In response, two billion Asians are expected to push for the legalization of same sex marriages.

There’s no question — well, not to anyone other than our Commander in Chief — that the planet is warming up quickly. Luckily scientists at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco presented a paper that offers a solution. It turns out that a small-scale nuclear conflict between two countries would lead to a marked cooldown of the planet. And in case that wasn’t quite enough to counteract our planetary greenhouse gas abuse, the smoke and dust from an atomic war between two superpowers would blot out the sun, sending the Earth into a deep freeze. Or bringing us back to normal. See, it’s not as bleak as you thought.

Wanting to name things after yourself is normal. Unfortunately few of us get the opportunity. Well, other than naming private body parts after ourselves. The leader of Turkmenistan, however, has plenty of opportunity, seeing as how he’s a dictator. He decreed that everyone in the country is to call him Turkmenbashi (Leader of All the Turkmen), had his face put on the country’s paper money, named a Caspian Sea port city after himself, declared that the month of January is to be called Turkmenbashi, and now has opened an amusement park in the capital named “The World of Turkmenbashi Tales.” Hey, naming a theme park after yourself worked out okay for that Disney guy.

Looking to deck the halls with something other than boughs of holly? It’s time to forget Hallmark ornaments and pick up a few Pornaments. Whether you want bondage teddy bears, horny snowmen (and snowwomen), or kind of anatomically correct ginger guys and gals, it beats another snowflake or Christmas pickle. Right, a Christmas pickle. *wink*wink* After all, anything that can start a protest movement in Florida can’t be all bad, can it?

Iran’s Foreign Ministry is hosting an international conference on the Holocaust next week. More than 60 scholars from 30 countries are expected to attend the meeting where they’ll discuss such issues as the nature of anti-Semitism, Jews and Islam, and whether the gas chambers were real. Other seminars will focus on whether the sun will rise on Wednesday, if Santa Claus actually delivers Christmas presents, and “The Tooth Fairy—The Easter Bunny in Disguise?”

Yahoo released their list of the Top Searches of 2006. Assuming nothing radical happens in the next three weeks to change it, like the second coming of what’s-his-name (“gotta look that up”), Tom admitting that Xenu is Suri’s real father, or Dick Cheney’s daughter getting pregnant, the top search terms of the past year were: Britney Spears, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), Shakira, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, American Idol, Beyonce Knowles, Chris Brown, Pamela Anderson, and Lindsay Lohan. Shockingly, world peace, string theory *not* cat’s cradle, and “where are my car keys?” were nowhere to be seen.

A survey done for Grazia magazine asked what people thought made up the “ultimate” man and woman. Men, it turns out, want a curvy brunette with long, wavy hair who has a friendly smile and likes to cook. Women, on the other hand, look for a man who can make her laugh, will “automatically” pay for a meal, doesn’t have children from a previous marriage, and doesn’t mind that they’re a bit too curvy, are brunette underneath the blonde hair color, and only cook if the man won’t automatically pay for a meal out. So who needs match.com?