Hot on the tail of Barbara Bush, who wrote a book from her dog’s point of view, and Gloria Estefan who wrote about her dog, Senator Ted Kennedy is putting the finishing touches on a children’s book about a day in the life of a senator from the point of view of his dog Splash. The 56-page picture book, My Senator and Me: A Dog’s-Eye View of Washington, D.C. is a natural. After all, a senator’s life is pretty much about barking loudly for no good reason, gobbling up everything in sight, and creating crap that everyone else has to deal with and clean up.

A survey by a psychology magazine found that Italians feel guiltier about cheating on their diet than cheating on their partners. Riza Psicosomatica magazine listed the country’s seven most guilt-inducing vices. Over-eating was number one, followed by excessive spending, neglecting friends and family, failing at work, and not looking after one’s physique. Sexual fidelity came in dead last. Apparently not looking good is worse than not feeling good.

Dans Le Noir, a restaurant that opens in London next month, has no lights. That’s because they’ll be serving dinner in the dark. Blind waiters will lead diners from a normally lit bar where they’ll pick out their dinner, into a darkened room where they won’t see what they’re eating. “A lot of people make huge mistakes in the dark,” chef Edouard de Broglie says of his similar Paris restaurant. “They confuse tuna and veal.” In other words, order cheap. But whatever you do, don’t order the Creme Brulée flambéed tableside.

The American Dialect Society chose “truthiness” as the word that best reflects 2005. In case your spellchecker chokes on the word like mine does, they define it as “the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.” Think: this blog. It won out over such other quintessentially 2005 words as podcast, whale tail, muffin top, and Cruisazy, which means to exhibit crazy behavior. And yes, that one’s named in honor of Tom the Couch Jumper.

Olympic champion skier Bode Miller told 60 Minutes that “If you ever tried to ski when you’re wasted, it’s not easy.” Big deal. I’m sure Morley Safir already knew that. When asked if that meant he’d never ski drunk again, Miller said, “No, I’m not saying that.” Good thing using a wood chipper isn’t an Olympic event.

Don’t be surprised if you get stopped by a cop in California and hear: “Let me start the meter, then touch your finger to your nose.” A court ruled yesterday that police can bill drunken drivers for the time it takes to direct traffic, get the car towed, investigate and write up reports, conduct sobriety tests, and arrest and book them. Time spent drinking coffee, eating doughnuts, complaining about people who take cheap shots at law enforcement eating habits, and griping about how they were portrayed in the movie Crash isn’t billable. Tips are appreciated.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that half of U.S. adults believe most members of Congress are corrupt. The other half were too busy writing checks to their Congressman’s PAC to answer the phone.

You can buy most anything on eBay, from unopened packs of baseball cards to a pretzel that looks like the Virgin Mary. But you couldn’t buy a two-headed albino rat snake. Until now, that is. The World Aquarium of St. Louis, MO, says they’re putting “We” up for auction. The starting price is $150,000. Plus shipping, of course. They bought him for $15,000 six years ago which means he’s been a pretty good investment. So far the auction hasn’t appeared online, but while you’re waiting you can look for food items on which the image of Jesus or Mary Virgin has appeared. Maybe even one with two faces. (UPDATE: Nutra Pharma Corp., a biotechnology company, has adopted the snake, hopefully not for drug testing.)

Nineteen-year-old Chris Garnett has legally changed his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com. He even has the legal papers and Virginia driver’s license to prove it. No word on whether the PETA employee’s friends and family will call him Ken, Tuck, Fried, Cruel, or just Goofy.

The World’s Most Expensive Coffee is Kopi Luwak, and it will run you $175 a pound. It’s expensive because it’s made from beans that have passed through the digestive system of the Indonesian palm civet, and face it, harvesting them is a shitty job. The cat-like creatures eat ripe coffee cherries, digest the outside, and leave the beans in their droppings. There’s no record of who the first person was who decided to roast, grind, and drink the brew made from Montane Rat dung before finding out that the palm civet makes the good stuff.

Bill Meinel was named World Champion Liar for the second year in a row. Honestly. The honor was bestowed on him by the Burlington (Wisconsin) Liars Club after he beat out almost 400 other entries. Okay, maybe it was only 350. His lie was more like a one-liner, so maybe his title is a lie too. Apparently politicians, CEOs, and Jayson Blair weren’t eligible, otherwise Meinel wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Everyone dreams of starting a family business and passing it on to future generations. Of course that business isn’t usually bank robbery. When police arrested Tricia Owens of Edison, OH for robbing the First Federal Bank in Mount Gilead, she turned in her brother Rodney — for having robbed the same bank in 2001. She claims to have been inspired by him. It must be true what they say: The family that commits crimes together does time together.

Most people looking for a house check out the number of rooms, the layout, the condition, the location location location, and whether the house number is good feng shui. Okay, “most” may be overstating the case, but in Hayward, CA it’s causing a problem. County house numbers are assigned according to how far they are from downtown Oakland, so many people’s addresses in Hayward have 5 digits which, along with living at the end of a cul-de-sac and having a door that opens onto a staircase, is bad feng shui. And we all know how painful that can be. City Council is offering waivers to developers who want short numbers, there’s been a run on mirrors, red ribbons and crystals to hang in blighted houses, and you can be grateful you don’t own the last house on the block and live at 66,666 Main Street.

When I drove across the country in 1997 I stopped in Bongo Java, a coffee shop in Nashville, to see the Nun Bun, a cinnamon bun that looks like Mother Teresa. And yes, it really does. Well, on Christmas morning someone broke into the coffee shop and stole the Holy Cruller. Nothing else, just the Nun Bun. It was shellacked, so they couldn’t eat it. If you spot it, don’t bite, don’t dunk, and above all, don’t unroll it — grab it and send it back where it belongs.

The San Francisco Zoo gave its resident animals their Christmas presents on Thursday and Jahari, a very lucky lion, got “meat bones lovingly swathed in tiger bedding soaked in eau de tiger urine.” Yum! Remember, it’s not too late to change your Christmas dinner menu.

A woman in New Mexico claims David Letterman has been using “code words, gestures and eye expressions” on his show to let her know that he wants her to move East, marry him, and be trained to be his co-host. Last week she asked for a temporary restraining order to make him quit bugging her. She asked that he be forced to stay at least 3 yards away from her and not “think of me, and release me from his mental harassment and hammering.” Instead of suggesting she wear her aluminum foil helmet 24-hours a day instead of just during waking hours, the judge granted her the restraining order. Hopefully Letterman won’t have too much difficulty complying.

Years ago in Philadelphia I saw a T-shirt that read: “Good art doesn’t match your sofa.” To this day I regret not having bought it. Now it turns out that the same concept is a valid reason to drop your pet off on the side of the road. When Britain’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals investigated 530 complaints of animals being abandoned, some of the reasons given included: “My cat doesn’t match my new carpet” and “My dog doesn’t match the new sofa.” I wonder if anyone thought of buying a new carpet and sofa?

A survey of English children under 10 years old found that God is the World’s Most Famous Person. Jesus came in third after soccer player Wayne Rooney. The Beatles, who once said they were more popular than Jesus, apparently lied. Or have just fallen out of favor. The rest of the list:

4. David Beckham
5. The Queen
6. Harry Potter
7. Beyonce
8. Father Christmas
9. Robbie Williams
10. Simon Cowell

Last January Arthur King-Robinson — not to be confused with King Arthur Robinson — bet $882 that he’d be dead by the first week of December. He was 91 and, had he died, the 6-to-1 odds would have netted his wife $5292, enough to pay off the inheritance tax bill after his death. He lived. They lose — now if he dies his wife may not be able to keep their house because she won’t have enough money to pay the taxes. Living is easy, dying can be tough.

According to a computer algorithm developed by researchers at the Universities of Amsterdam and Illinois that assesses people’s mood by examining facial features, the Mona Lisa was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful, and 2% angry. DaVinci, on the other hand, would be 100% happy knowing so many people are spending so much time worrying about it. Though of course he’d say it in code.