Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
The Onion
Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:08 EDT
© The Onion
Some of the factors contributing to culture's dizzying collapse.
Washington - An international panel of leading anthropologists, cultural critics, biologists, and social theorists announced this week that Western civilization will reach its lowest conceivable point at 3:32 p.m. Friday.
"From the prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings to the stirring symphonies of Mozart to today's hot-dog eating competitions and action films with comical gerbils, culture has descended into a festering pool of mass ignorance," said Yale sociologist Paul Riordan, who has spent his career analyzing western civilization's fall into the depths of depravity. "If our calculations are correct, this complete erosion of all that is enlightened and unique will reach absolute rock bottom on the afternoon of Sept. 25, 2009."
Added Riordan, "It is scientifically impossible for civilization to sink any lower than it will this Friday."
Mike Adams
Natural News
Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:00 EDT
I admit, the thought of being injected with a chemical cocktail made by a pharmaceutical company and approved by the FDA with virtually no safety testing is somewhat tempting. Who wouldn't want the thrill and rush of being part of a grand pharmaceutical experiment, anyway?
On second thought, it may not be such a bright idea after all. Unless, of course, you enjoy the idea of falling into a long-term coma, being permanently paralyzed or suffering random neurological damage.
That's why there are ten things I'd rather do than get a swine flu vaccine shot:
Neil Maidment
Reuters
Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:09 EDT
© Unknown
London subway map
London - The River Thames is to be reinstated on London's iconic tube map after a new design which left it out was greeted by a wave of outrage.
Designers had airbrushed out the blue ribbon representing the river in an attempt to de-clutter the map, first produced by draftsman Harry Beck in 1933.
But Transport for London (TfL), which operates the capital's transport networks, had reckoned without Londoners' deep affection for their local waterway.
As news of the revamp leaked out, it was inundated with complaints, both from the general public and from Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
"Can't believe that the Thames disappeared off the tube map whilst I was out the country! It will be reinstated," Johnson said on an official Mayor of London Twitter feed after returning from New York on Wednesday.
The Press Association
Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:32 EDT
A tortoise with a taste for life in the fast lane was rescued from a busy motorway after dodging up to six lanes of traffic against the odds. The tortoise was plucked from the M23 slip road at junction seven of the M25 by site engineer John Formby of Worthing, West Sussex.
After taking it to the vet, Mr Formby was surprised to discover the animal was micro-chipped in America and thousands of miles from his original home.
He said: "As I got to the top of the slip road I noticed something in the road. At first I thought it was debris, but as I was getting nearer I saw a head and realised it was in fact a tortoise. My initial reaction was 'What the hell is a tortoise doing on a motorway?'
Kerry Wills
New York Daily News
Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:21 EDT
© Reuters
Defendant Laguerre Payen raises his hand to be sworn in as seen in this sketch of his arraignment in White Plains, New York.
It's the fried-chicken defense.
A lawyer for one of four men accused of plotting to bomb Bronx synagogues complained on Thursday that
a government informant plied the suspects with food.
"You can't watch the tapes that you don't see eating going on," said Marilyn Reader, lawyer for accused would-be terrorist Laguerre Payen.
"The [confidential informant] is paying for all these meals."
At a pretrial hearing in White Plains Federal Court, Reader charged that the informant had a charge account at a Crown Chicken on Broadway and let Payen eat for free.
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Leibowitz said he would investigate whether the informant offered inducements - of the chicken variety or otherwise - to the suspects.
United Press International
Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:08 EDT
Hobart, Australia - A long-haired cat named Clyde was returned to his family Wednesday in Tasmania after turning up at the other end of Australia three years after he went missing.
Television cameras recorded the reunion between the Himalyan and Katrina Phillips in the Derwent Valley near Hobart, The Tasmania Mercury reported. Phillips said she was excited, but Clyde appeared to be taking everything in stride.
"He was so relaxed it was like he never left home," Phillips, 19, said.
Donna Weber, a veterinarian in Cloncurry in the Queensland Outback more than 2,000 miles north of Hobart, identified Clyde from a microchip in his ear earlier this week, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. The cat wandered into the grounds of the Cloncurry Hospital a few months ago, and staffers there had been taking care of him.
Reuters
Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:37 EDT
Authorities in the western German city of Gelsenkirchen accidentally advertised porn among the services on offer for residents on its website.
"It was a mistake," said a spokesman for the city authorities Tuesday. "There was never any intention of the city providing pornography as a service."
Agence France-Presse
Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:46 EDT
© Agence France-Presse
Wook Kundor, 107, sits outside her house in Malaysia's northern Kuala Terengganu state on September 13, 2009. Wook says she is ready to marry for the 23rd time because she fears her current drug addict husband Muhammad, 37, who is undergoing voluntary drug rehabilitation treatment in the capital Kuala Lumpur, will leave her once the programme ends
A 107-year-old Malaysian woman says she is ready to marry for the 23rd time because she fears her current drug addict husband might leave her for a younger woman, a report said Monday.
Wook Kundor made headlines four years ago when she married Muhammad Noor Che Musa, a man 70 years her junior in northern Terengganu state, with pictures of the couple's wedding splashed across regional newspapers.
But Wook is now looking for new love as she fears that Muhammad, 37, who is undergoing voluntary drug rehabilitation treatment in the capital Kuala Lumpur, will leave her once the programme ends, she told the
Star newspaper.
"Lately, there is this kind of insecurity in me," the paper quoted her as saying, showing a photograph of the smiling, wrinkled-faced centenarian wearing a Muslim headscarf.
Ryan Smith
CBS News
Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:27 EDT
© KIRO Seattle
Cops love her.
At least her friends think so. They told her to paint "ATTN: Police Please Do Not Pull Me Over Just Because I'm Pretty" on the rear windshield of her car because the bubbly blonde was constantly being pulled over.
Dasha, a Washington state resident who wasn't willing to give her last name, claims to
have been stopped by police for speeding 30 times in the cities of Bellevue, Kirkland and Seattle, and
only received two citations - both of which were dismissed.
Good luck? Maybe good looks is more like it.
Joyce Chen
The News Tribune
Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:18 EDT
Puyallup, Washington - A 911 dispatcher gave birth on Friday, Sept. 11, at 9:11 p.m.
TaMara Sheppard of Tacoma started labor around noon and arrived at Puyallup's Good Samaritan Hospital at 7:30 p.m. before delivering baby Nina Morgan.
Sheppard had been scheduled for induced labor on Monday, but Nina Morgan decided to make an early grand entrance.
"The last time I looked at the clock (in the delivery room), the little hand was on nine and the big one was on eleven," Sheppard said. Then the doctor told her to push.
Recovering in the hospital on Saturday, Sheppard took the prodigious timing in stride. "It never even crossed my mind until my husband said, 'you're a 911 dispatcher, you had a baby on 9/11 at 9:11.'"
She cheekily added: "We were hoping she was 9 pounds, 11 ounces, on top of that."
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