CNN reports that as of Wednesday, the U.S. government had an operating cash balance of $73.8 billion. Meanwhile, as of the end of June, Apple had $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand. Hey Messrs. Boehner and Reid, maybe Steve Jobs will loan you some money to tide us over until you iron out an agreement. Heck, maybe Apple should just buy the government. To paraphrase Herbert Hoover, maybe every American can have “a chicken in every pot and an iPad in every garage?”

Zakee Kaleem Abdullah of Texarkana, Texas, has been charged with pretending to be a lawyer. At a pretrial hearing on Monday, Abdullah represented himself. “Oh, the music goes ’round and ’round, whoa-whoa-whoa…”

McDonald’s, hoping to fend off those who say their unhealthy food is unhealthy, has announced that beginning next year Happy Meals will come with a half-order of apples and a half-order of fries. Unless you request all fries. Or all apples, which in some states is considered child abuse. Not to worry, just tell the kids those weird sliced things are raw Hot Apple Pie and they might eat it. Well, if there’s room after they finish that extra super-size order of fries you got them.

In a speech on Thursday, Moammar Gadhafi told the Libyan people exactly when he’d open talks with rebels who are trying to end his rule. “There will be no talks between me and them until Judgment Day,” he said. He had originally hoped to begin the talks on May 21st and is waiting for Harold Camping to give him a new date.

Heidi Lynn Knowles of Vancouver, Washington, was arrested after walking up to a woman in a Taco Bell, putting her 3-day old son in the woman’s hands, and offering to sell the tot for $500. The woman called 911, Knowles was arrested on outstanding warrants for jumping bail, possession of drug paraphernalia and theft, and she may face charges of attempting to sell an infant. Incredible. I mean, do you know how many Beefy Five-Layer Burritos you can get for that kind of money? (In case you don’t, the answer is 500.)

Reader’s Digest, which at one time printed 18 million copies of the magazines a month and was in every bathroom and doctor’s waiting room in the country, is up for sale. The publishers hope to get as much as $1 billion for the company. The full, non-condensed, version of the story is here.

A state minister in charge of consumer affairs and food-safety in Japan was unconcerned when he learned that meat from six cows which had been contaminated by radioactive cesium made it to market and was probably eaten. “If we were to eat the meat everyday, then it would probably be dangerous,” Goshi  Hosono said. “But if it is consumed only in small portions, I don’t think it would have any long-lasting effects on the human body.” He added that it was a good thing the meat hadn’t made its way to the United States where there’s no such thing as a small portion.

A few years ago a particle astrophysicist named Craig Hogan found that at very magnified levels the universe was kind of pixelated, leaving him to conjecture that the universe might be a hologram and, to paraphrase Shakespeare, all the world’s a huge cosmic Imax stage. Well, you can rest easy. Wired reports that scientists using a super powerful European Space Agency telescope haven’t been able to detect any quantum fuzziness, indicating that, “It’s very likely that we are not holograms.” This doesn’t, however, mean that scientists have ruled out the possibility though that we’re actually Photoshopped.

Scientists at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, report having discovered the loudest animal on earth relative to its body size. The male water boatman, or Micronecta scholtzi, is a 1/16th inch-long insect that makes a noise measuring 99.2 decibels, which is about as loud as a lawnmower. Even more surprising is that the boatman makes the sound by rubbing its penis against its abdomen while underwater in an attempt to attract mates. The second loudest animal on earth relative to its body size is the female water boatman, which hits 97.4 dBs while shouting, “Shut up already! I told you I have a headache!”

Maria Shriver has filed for divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger citing “irreconcilable differences” because California law doesn’t recognize “being a scumbag” as legal grounds.