At a press conference this morning, President Barack Obama released a detailed Hawaii birth certificate saying, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness” and telling Republicans that it’s time to move on to bigger issues. Donald Trump quickly agreed, demanding that the President produce a lease agreement for the White House proving that he and his family are residing there legally.
President Barack Obama held a town hall meeting at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, today. During his appearance he was Liked 345,926 times, poked 5,234,987 times, invited to play Farmville 8,978,253 times, and had three good ideas stolen by Mark Zuckerberg.
According to a segment on 60 Minutes, Greg Mortenson’s book Three Cups of Tea is one cup short of reality. After exposing one questionable aspect after another, the show featured John Krakauer, author of Into the Wild and In Thin Air, saying that Mortenson’s book “is a beautiful story, and it’s a lie.” Mortenson refused to comment, but in his defense author James Frey said, “Three cups, two cups, a million little pieces of cups. Come on, it’s not like numbers and math are an accurate science or anything.” Jayson Blair added, “Hey, he’s just putting the fiction back in non-fiction. What’s so wrong with that?”
The United States Postal Service released a forever stamp in December with the Statue of Liberty on it. Unfortunately it’s not the real Statue of Liberty. The design is actually based on the statue that stands outside the New York-New York casino in Las Vegas, not the one in the Hudson River. In further checking, it turns out the Washington Monument stamp was actually based on a photograph of Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington, the Lincoln Memorial stamp features a Lincoln Town Car by mistake, and the American flag looks suspiciously like Fannie Flagg.
The Phallological Museum in Husavik, Iceland, has a—shall we say, huge—collection of phalluses from whales, seals, bears and other mammals, including a 67-inch sperm whale penis and lampshades made from bull testicles. But what they were sorely lacking was a human penis. Until now, that is. Last week they received a donation from Pall Arason, a former tourism worker who died recently at age 95, and immediately put his donation on display. I know there’s a limerick here somewhere. How about: “There once was a man from Husavik, who claimed that he had a superb….”
Now that they’ve scrapped the five-color terror alert system, the Department of Homeland Security has had to put together a plan outlining how they’ll let us know about terror alerts from now on. According to draft documents, these alerts may be sent out using Facebook and Twitter “when appropriate,” but only after federal, state and local government leaders have been notified. By, uh, text message? Remember, be safe. Don’t drive and check your terror alerts!
Female workers are refusing to sit in a receptionist’s chair at the Best Western Moore Place Hotel in Milton Keys, UK, calling it the “fertility chair” because seven women have become pregnant after sitting in it. It began as a joke but, according to General manager Giles Shaw, “Now it’s just so surreal because it’s happening every time.” As Dr. Hippocrates (Eugene Schoenfeld) wrote in a column years ago when asked if you can get STDs from a toilet seat, “It depends on what you do on the toilet seat.”
Thirteen states now have so-called “bring your gun to work” laws that bar employers from telling workers they can’t have guns in their cars or in some states, in the building. This has led to some new special days at work, including “Have Your Daughter Bring Your Gun to Work Day,” “Bring Your Daughter’s Gun to Work Day,” and “Go Ahead, Tell Me I’m Fired Day.”
A spokesman for Uganda’s president, Tamale Mirundi, said yesterday that if Moammar Gadhafi leaves Libya he’s welcome to live in Uganda. It’s part of their Reciprocal Dictator Exchange Program that began when Idi Amin fled to Libya in 1979. “We have soft spots for asylum seekers,” Mirundi said. Not to mention for those who belong in one.
We’re still awaiting word from the Guinness Book of Records as to whether President Barack Obama will officially be named “Nobel Peace Prize winner who has launched the most Cruise missiles.” Hey, what do you expect from an oxymoronically named prize created by a guy who manufactured cannons and invented dynamite?
When Daniel DeVirgilio of Beavercreek, Ohio, tried to pay his Time Warner cable bill he was notified that his credit card was rejected for insufficient funds because his bill was $16,409,107, all except $80 being charges for having watched the Sweet Sixteen NCAA basketball games. “Had I known this I would have bought Showtime,” DeVirgilio remarked, thinking the customer service rep said he owed $16.4 billion, not million.
Forget March Madness, if you have April Angst over Prince William and Kate Middleton’s upcoming wedding, there are a slew of smartphone apps custom-made for you, from one that counts down the days to several that keep you updated with every bit of minutiae they can find. There’s even one that wakes you to an alarm of God Save the Queen while displaying a William and Kate fact for you. Coming soon, an app to remind you that Kate’s name isn’t Diana, another to help you catalog and keep track of the commemorative thimbles, toothbrushes and Silly Bandz you bought, and one that tracks her car at all times and alerts you if she rides through any tunnels in Paris.
In an interview with MTV to promote his new book, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, Sammy Hagar revealed that a dream he talks about in the book in which aliens—ones from outer space, not the run-of-the-mill illegal kind—tapped into his mind, actually happened. “It was a download situation,” he explained. “Or, they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment.” The aliens left when they discovered he wasn’t David Lee Roth and haven’t been heard from since.
As if the change to Daylight Savings Time this past weekend wasn’t enough to throw off your body rhythm, a geophysicist at NASA reports that thanks to last week’s earthquake in Japan the day is now a little shorter. Richard Gross says the shift in the Earth’s mass caused the planet’s rotation to speed up by 1.6 microseconds, making for a slightly shorter day. Had I known, I would have only set the clock forward 59 minutes and 59.9999984 seconds.
According to Forbes magazine’s 2011 list of the world’s wealthiest people, that elite group is almost $1 trillion richer than they were last year. Which of course means the rest of us are $1 trillion poorer. This comes to $144.82 per man, woman, and child on earth, including those who don’t have it, meaning they’re now in debt. Or deeper in debt. [Cue up intro to “What a Wonderful World” ]
Finally, the London ice cream store The Icecreamists can sell their new flavor, Baby Gaga, again. Two weeks after having been told to stop selling the ice cream made from women’s breast milk, the store and confection have been given a clean bill of health by the Westminster Council, so once again you can pay $22 for a scoop of the vanilla and lemon zest-flavored treat. Right, like you need to spice up the flavor. Now all they need to do is get things settled with Lady Gaga, who is threatening to sue, saying it cashes in on her good name and she still needs to fill this week’s publicity quotient.
A poll taken by the U.S. Department of Transportation and Consumer Reports found that 63% percent of those under 30 said they drive while talking on a cell phone. The other 37% were too busy texting to answer the phone and take the survey.
And now, from those wonderful people who brought you Jerry Springer: The Opera, comes a new production that must have Puccini spinning in his drug-free, no plastic-surgery grave. The Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden is now showing Anna Nicole, an opera filled with sex, boobs, drugs, boobs, and yes, a pole dance. The rest of this year’s season at the Royal Opera House includes Cha-Cha-Charlie, a Bob Fosse inspired musical about the life of Charles Manson, Ka-Boom!, a romantic comedy about Ted Kaczynski, and a re-staging of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest starring Charlie Sheen and Crispin Glover.
The mayor of Budapest says Elvis Presley will be declared an honorary citizen of the city and have a landmark named after him because the singer supported Hungary’s anti-Soviet revolution of October 1956 by singing the gospel standard Peace in Valley during his last appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” In addition, Mayor Istvan Tarlos points out Elvis’ recording of Viva Budapest, the fact that Hound Dog was really about the strays that roam the city, and that Love Me Tender speaks to Hungarians pounding veal to tenderize it for Bécsi szelet, their version of Wiener schnitzel.
Panasonic has released a new camera in Japan, the LUMIX FX77, that has a “beauty retouch” function. It not only whitens your teeth, makes your skin more translucent, removes dark circles from under your eyes, makes your face look smaller, and magnifies the size of your eyes, it will add blusher, lipstick and even eye shadow. Hopefully when it’s released in the U.S. they’ll offer “Next Morning” glasses you can wear that will remove the retouching and show you what he or she really looks like before it’s too late.
