Super soccer star David Beckham had to give up helping his six-year-old son Brooklyn — yes, Brooklyn — with his math homework because it was too difficult. “It’s totally done differently to what I was teached when I was at school,” the never-an-English major remarked. In what is surely a bad sign, Beckham was forced to get his wife Victoria, the former Posh Spice, to take over for him. This helps explain why Beckham has a tattoo on his right forearm that says, “The ball goes into the other team’s net.”

The results of an Australian research study seem to show that men can reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation. Oh come now.

A man walked into a Giant Eagle Get-Go convenience store in McKeesport, PA, and asked the clerk if she would use the microwave oven to warm up something he had wrapped in a paper towel. When a strange odor started coming from the oven, the clerk opened the door and what appeared to be a severed human penis fell out of the towel. The man ran from the store, and since he had no trouble running, police suspect the warmed up wiener wasn’t his.

(UPDATE: It turns out the “penis” was actually a prosthetic device used to cheat on drug tests and the man was warming it so urine inside — his — would pass the temperature test when his girlfriend took a drug test. Yes, his girlfriend was going to use the fake penis. It’s hard to say whether this makes the tale better or wierder.)

Actor Damon Wayans has been fighting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for 14 months trying to get a trademark on the word “Nigga” for a line of clothing and retail store. They keep rejecting it saying the term of endearment “is almost universally understood to be derogatory.” Should Wayans win, don’t be surprised to see Kike^TM banks, Yellow Fever^TM Sushi Shops, and Wetback^TMGarden Centers sprouting up quickly.

Taser International, maker of the well-known stun gun, is developing a 12-gauge shotgun shell that can hit a person 100 feet away with the force of a fast-moving baseball and deliver a 50,000-volt electrical shock to the body. Vice President Dick Cheney has offered to test it out and Harry Whittington has gone into hiding.

Since searchers haven’t been able to find the Westminster Kennel Club award-winning whippet that bolted out of its cage and ran off at Kennedy International Airport last week, the owners have taken the next logical step to try to locate the animal — they brought in 12 psychics. Not one, but 12. That’s what happens when Lassie is booked up, all the bloodhounds from the dog show already went home, and Jeane Dixon is still dead.

Mars Inc., the company that makes Milky Way, M&M’s, and Whiskas cat food, is about to launch heart healthy chocolate. Called CocoaVia, the dark chocolate is high in flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans that some people claim thins the blood and lowers blood pressure. Just to be safe, the chocolate is also enriched with vitamins and injected with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols from soy. For a minute there it was almost sounding good. In related news, Frito-Lay is releasing a new version of Cheetos they claim constitutes a daily serving of dairy product, Pringles are being marketed as a vegetable, and Campbells is launching an ad campaign insisting that eating beans by the campfire doesn’t make you gay.

If you’re found guilty of drunk driving in Taiwan you now get a choice — pay a fine or play mahjong with senior citizens. Obviously their laws are different than ours, where the second option would be challenged in court as constituting cruel and inhuman punishment.

“Pass the Rose of Muhammad pastries” just doesn’t have the same ring as “pass the Danish,” but if you cherish your beard you’d better adjust. Bakeries in Tehran have changed the name of the pastries because, well, they’re not very happy with the Danes these days and Freedom Pastries just doesn’t have the right ring. Maybe after the next election. Large dogs will henceforth be known as Great Roses of Muhammad, Hamlet will be referred to as the Melancholy Rose of Muhammad, and the singer of “Tell It To My Heart” will be known as Taylor Rose of Muhammad.

Researchers in London found that more than 70% of the men who have had penis enlargement surgery are unhappy with the results. Of course that could be because the average increase in length was only half an inch. A urologist at St Peter’s Andrology Center placed the blame on spam emails that give unrealistic and, uh, enlarged expectations. He says that instead of surgery, men who want the procedure done should be referred for psychological counseling. In other words, get both of your heads examined.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 21% of Americans think it’s likely federal agents have listened in on their phone calls. This is a surprisingly large display of paranoia, guilty conscience, or wishful thinking on the part of people who wish they were doing something exciting and interesting enough to have their phone tapped.

In a rare show of solidarity, radical Hindus and Muslims in India protested love and affection by burning Valentine’s Day cards, saying the occasion “spreads immorality among the youth.” They also object to apple pie, cute little puppy dogs, long walks on the beach, and dinners by candlelight, though dinner by the light of burning Valentine’s cards is fine.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes the news that a person reading an email only has a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of it. In other words, you might as well flip a coin to decide if the recipient of your email gets your drift. As if that’s not bad enough, people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone 90% of the time. So be careful what you write in an email. Use plenty of *LOL*, *wink*, *jk*, and emoticons like (:}). And no, I’m not *jk*.

Vice President Dick Cheney, who is next in line to have his finger on “The Trigger” should anything happen to President Bush, accidentally shot a man he was quail hunting with over the weekend. Apparently Harry Whittington’s blaze orange outfit made him look a lot like a quail, so the Vice President peppered him in the face, neck, and chest with buckshot. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot

Jane Marshall of Draycott, England, says she has a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate that’s 104 years old. The last time she tasted it was 53 years ago. Yes, when it was 51 years old. According to Cadbury, “If stored correctly chocolate generally has a shelf life of 12 months,” so Jane shouldn’t even think about eating chocolate that old. After all, it’s not like it’s a Twinkie, you know.

Skiing is done on snow. Snow falls from the sky. But if any comes down during the freestyle competition at the Turin Olympic Games organizers say they’ll remove it. See, they don’t like real snow. They spent good time and money creating the aerial and mogul courses using fake snow from 20 snow cannons and, according to Andrea Gamba, the Games’ freestyle skiing coordinator, if the real stuff should fall from the sky they’ll remove it. Do not — repeat, do not — mistake the Olympics for Reality TV.

An Italian priest who runs the religious music label Edizioni Musicali Terzo Millennio says Michael Jackson might sing on a CD of songs with lyrics taken from prayers written by Pope John Paul II. Songs Jackson may sing on include “I Want You Back (in Church)”, “Stop, You Got Enough”, and “To Make My Father Superior Proud.”

A worn-out Russian space suit stuffed with a radio, transmitter, sensors to monitor temperature and battery power, and old clothes to hold it all in place was thrown out of the International Space Station and into orbit around the Earth. Seriously. SuitSat-1 is transmitting a signal to ham radio operators around the world — all 24 of them that refuse to believe this is the 21st century. Next up for the recycling program is to find a use for the empty Tang jars, space-age materials developed by NASA for the space program that didn’t work, and full body waste bags.

I don’t know what’s up at the University of Cardiff (Wales), but they’re working hard to formulate everything. First they mathematically calculated that January 23 is the most depressing day of the year. (If you want to work this out at home, it’s: Weather plus debt to monthly salary ratio times days since Christmas and broken New Year’s resolutions, all divided by low motivation and the need to make changes.) Then they created a formula, just in time for Valentine’s Day, that lets you calculate your sexiest time of the day: AL / T + 10 x AG / SF x G = TOTAL / 60. It takes into account your gender, the amount of alcohol consumed in a week, the number of sex sessions, and the preferred time of day for sex, though it seems the last factor is your answer without even having to remember how your calculator works. For online help in figuring this out, check the Mates condom web site or contact your high school math teacher.

Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow aren’t a couple anymore. Their announcement said, “We both have a deep love and respect for each other, and we ask that everyone respect our privacy during this very difficult time.” When Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson called it quits their statement said, “This is the mutual decision of two people with an enormous amount of respect and admiration for each other. We hope that you respect our privacy during this difficult time.” As they say, a publicity agent’s boilerplate statement is the sincerest form of flattery.