Twenty-one clowns have banded together to put out the 2009 Naked Clown Calendar to benefit Multiple Sclerosis research. Yes, we know there are only 12 months in a year, but if you can get 15 clowns inside a small car it’s no problem fitting 21 clowns on 12 pages. Don’t get too excited, Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson, and Jenna Jamison aren’t clowns.
Doctors at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria found that listening to or singing the BeeGees’ Stayin’ Alive while giving CPR helps people perform chest compressions at the proper speed, since the ideal rate should be 100 per minute and the song is 103 beats per minute. Before discovering this ideal song they tried and rejected Oingo Boingo’s Dead Man’s Party, Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly, and anything by the Grateful Dead.
Last year Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers filed a lawsuit against God, claiming he/she/it made threats against his constituents, inspiring fear and causing “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” Yesterday Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk threw out the suit because God wasn’t properly served due to having an unlisted home address. If you can get a letter to Santa Claus addressed to the North Pole, why can’t you get one to God at: Pearly Gates, Heaven?
Madonna and Guy Ritchie have announced that, yes, they’re getting divorced. In the settlement, Madonna gets to keep her sinewy muscles and English accent, Ritchie will keep what little is left of his sanity and self-respect, and neither wants anything to do with Swept Away.
A study in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry says searching the Internet is good for your brain, exercising and improving mental functions. Meanwhile, a study published in the Archives of Neurology found that drinking alcohol shrinks the brain, more so in women than men. So remember, if you have to drink, surf the ‘net. At least you’ll come out even.
An official of the Vatican bank—officially known by the non sequitur name Institute for the Works of Religion—says its deposits are safe from the current global financial meltdown, which is welcome news to its customers, which include dioceses, Roman Catholic charities, other religious organizations, and the Vatican itself. The money’s safe because the bank doesn’t invest in derivatives, invests almost entirely in low-yield government bonds, doesn’t make loans, and has God sitting on the Board of Directors.
The National Debt Clock high above Times Square is running out of spaces. In September they got rid of the digital dollar sign so it could show the “1” in $10 trillion, but since the national debt has been growing more than $500 billion each year since 2003, they’re playing it safe and creating a new clock that can handle a quadrillion dollars of debt. Much like the average consumer. To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about getting a new country credit card.”
The other morning the front page of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister, as saying Israel might “eat” the country’s arch enemy, Iran, before it got nuclear arms. The next day the newspaper ran a correction because it turned out Kouchner, speaking in English, had dropped his “h” and actually said Israel might “hit” Iran. Kouchner apologized for the “phonetic confusion,” and promised to start working with “Ooked on Phonics.”
Charlotte Feeney of Stratford, Connecticut, sued L’Oreal, saying a box of blonde hair coloring she used dyed her hair brunette by mistake, leaving her so traumatized by the lack of attention she used to get as a blonde that she stayed home and wore hats most of the time, suffered headaches and anxiety, and wound up needing anti-depressants. The judge dismissed the suit, proving that gentleman don’t necessarily prefer blondes, but do like mental stability.
A study done in Vienna, Austria, found that people not only see faces and human characteristics in cars, they prefer them to appear dominant, masculine, and angry. This has prompted announcements of several new car models, including the Pontiac Temper, Toyota Hothead, and Ford A-Hole.
If you’re in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, don’t even think about taking your dog for a walk hoping it will attract women. It’s now illegal. In order to make sure men and women don’t get co-mingle, Saudi Arabia’s Islamic religious police have banned selling dogs and cats in Riyadh, and made it a crime to walk them in public. If you’re caught, agents of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice will take the pet and make you sign a statement promising not to do it again. You don’t want to know what happens to those who don’t heed the warning. Best stick to www.riyadh-singles.org from now on.
A Russian chef has put out what may be the first cookbook of its kind—all testicles, all the time. The recipes in Cooking with Balls use ostrich, bull, pig, turkey, and horse gonads to make such mouth-watering dishes as testicle pizza, battered testicles, and barbecued testicles with giblets. Hey, it’s never too soon to start putting your Thanksgiving menu together.
A candidate for governor of Bangkok punched and kicked a television journalist Thursday after being asked some tough questions during a live interview. “I admit I did it. I couldn’t stand it when he humiliated me on air,” Chuvit Kamolvisit said. Katie Couric and Charles Gibson had better be glad Sarah Palin can’t think of a newspaper she reads so she won’t see this story and get any ideas.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is asking Ben & Jerry’s to start using breast milk instead of cow’s milk because they say milking cows is cruel and dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, and obesity. “If Ben and Jerry’s replaced the cow’s milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers – and cows – would reap the benefits,” wrote Tracy Reiman, executive vice president of PETA. Since it takes about 1-1/2 gallons of milk to make a gallon of ice cream, and a woman produces about 750 ml of milk a day, it would take 7.65 women’s daily milk output to make a gallon of ice cream. And they think milking barns are cruel now?
Two pilots for Hawaii’s Go airlines fell asleep during a flight from Honolulu to Hilo and didn’t wake up until they’d passed the airport by 15 miles, about 44 minutes into what’s normally a 45-minute flight. Air traffic controllers told them to turn around and land, they did, and they’ve been suspended by the FAA. Hey, at least they weren’t sending text messages.
How many times have you thought, “Boy, what a waste of time and precious natural resources taking my suits to the dry cleaners. I wish there was a better way!”? Well, now you can save time, water, and the environment from icky dry cleaning chemicals by showering in your suit!
So far about 250,000 of the truly wash and wear suits have been sold in Japan and, according to Australian Wool Innovation, the marketing group that invented the suit, the chain that sells them has placed an order for 170,000 more and is looking to send them around the globe. Their short videos ranked very high now, no need in wondering how to buy YouTube views, not the case.
When the suit is dirty, all you do is hang it in a warm shower for a few minutes, then let it drip dry for a couple of hours. No ironing necessary! It gives new meaning to wearing a wet suit.
The U.S. Mint is getting ready to release four new versions of the penny next year, the first redesign it’s had in 50 years. Commemorating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, the first will be released on February 12th. Lincoln will still be on the front, but the back will have new designs depicting four phases of his life: the log cabin he was born in, splitting rails, serving in the Illinois State Capitol, and the U.S. Capitol half finished. If the economic situation doesn’t improve, a fifth penny will be released, showing how the President hopes to save the U.S. Capitol from foreclosure.
AIG ran into big financial trouble, largely because they insured and backed securities based on bad mortgage loans. So what does the U.S. government do? Give them a loan for $85 million. Are they throwing good loans after bad? Probably not. They can always repackage the loans to Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG and sell them to investors like, well, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG.
When Pope Benedict ran into Augusto Fantozzi, the bankruptcy commissioner in charge of trying to find a buyer for Italy’s failing Alitalia airline, he was asked to say a prayer for the company. The Pope said he’d been praying for the airline “for some time.” Then he got on board a plane heading to Lourdes. An Alitalia plane. The airline popes use when flying abroad. Now if he only had a vested interest in lower gas prices, stopping the Wall Street financial debacle, and how the Redskins do this year.
A Work-Life study commissioned by Sheraton found that 84% of professionals check their PDA’s just before bed and as soon as they wake up, 85% take a look in the middle of the night, and more than one-third (35% to be exact) say if they had to choose, they’d pick their PDA over their spouse. Meanwhile, a top policy adviser for John McCain held up a BlackBerry Tuesday and told reporters, “You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create,” this because the candidate had been on the Senate Commerce Committee which has some dealings with the telecommunications industry. If that’s true, it means McCain is responsible for any of the one-thirders who do decide to stick with their PDA and divorce their spouse.
