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?

Last week an Air Force facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, tested a system that would be used to communicate with first responders nationwide in the event of a homeland security threat. Hundreds of garage doors in the area stopped working. It turns out they’re broadcasting at a radio frequency of 390 megahertz which — whoops! — also happens to be the frequency that controls about 50 million garage door openers. And has since the early 1980s. Which can be discovered as easily as reading the first sentence of the garage door opener entry in Wikipedia.

First a mother in Ohio was arrested on suspicion of microwaving her newborn daughter in an oven. Then a Georgia man was arrested after allegedly mistaking his estranged wife for a turkey and trying to force her into an oven on Thanksgiving. In front of their five children, no less. A quick lesson, folks: that’s food, these are humans. In spite of the old Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man,” we do not cook people. Class dismissed.

In order to retaliate for North Korea’s refusing to stop their nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration is turning to trade sanctions, banning the sale of iPods, Segways, Rolex watches, and Jet Skis there. This in a nation where the average annual income is $580. That’ll teach Kim Jong Il to mess with us.

The World Chess Federation has decided to administer drug tests to players at the Asian Games this week to check for doping, this in spite of the sport’s top official saying “I would not know which drug could possibly help a chess player to improve his game.” They’re doing it because they hope to one day have the game become an Olympic sport, and if you want to play with the big boys you have to act like one. High School chess club presidents across the country are applauding the move, hoping it will clear up the acne on their backs.

The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer recently ran editorials apologizing for their part in supporting a white supremacist campaign in North Carolina that erupted into race riots in 1898. So far no one who was alive then has publicly accepted the apology.

Forget going postal, that’s so ’90s. And road rage? Très passé. The current rage, so to speak, is going cubicle. That’s right, MSNBC reports that desk rage is the up and coming thing. Symptoms include screaming, cursing, trashing office equipment, and assaulting coworkers. It could take a year or so until it becomes a word in the dictionary and a bona fide psychiatric disorder in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), so try to stay calm until it does.

The head of the panda unit at Chiang Mai, Thailand’s zoo figured out something to do with the 55 pounds of dung the zoo’s two pandas crank out every day — they turn it into paper, then use it to make notebooks, fans, bookmarks, and key chains, selling them in the gift shop. They’ve sold $8,200 worth of Poopy Panda Paper ^TM so far but are having a hard time cracking markets outside the zoo’s gift shop. Maybe the world just isn’t ready for paper key chains.

So many turkeys, so little time. First, George Bush followed tradition and pardoned two turkeys so they could be flown to Disneyland to be grand marshals in a parade. At least he’s manged to save two lives. Then British historian and killjoy Godfrey Hodgson claims the Pilgrims — who he reminds us didn’t call themselves Pilgrims — didn’t eat turkey on that first Thanksgiving. Thanks god they had KFC. Making up for the Pilgrims’ menu loss, Patrick Bertoletti won the annual turkey-eating contest at Artie’s Deli by eating 4.8 pounds of turkey in 12 minutes. Wow, pigs eating turkeys. Who woulda thunk it? And next week the Pope is going to Turkey but will be eating crow over his not-so-complimentary Muslim comments a while back. Gobble Freakin’ Gobble, everyone.

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