Obama/Clinton related to other people

[photo: latimes.com]
Genealogists have figured out that Barack Obama is related to Brad Pitt, while his presidential rival Hillary Clinton is related to Pitt’s girlfriend Angelina Jolie. Obama is also related to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Clinton is related to Celine Dion and Madonna, John McCain is related to first lady Laura Bush, and so on and so forth in a similar manner of pointless, un-newsworthy distant ancestry.

Really though, it’s all fun and games until someone finds out they’re from the Carrot Top gene pool.

Man announces pregnancy

As a child, nothing thrilled me more than the possibility that the movie “Splash” was a true story: A young boy is rescued from the ocean by an adolescent mermaid. Twenty-five years later, the boy grows up to be Tom Hanks, and the mermaid, adopting the name Madison from a street sign, comes to land to look for him, despite the fact that he can’t swim and cries after getting saved by girls. Long story short, Madison uses her fishy wiles to win Hanks’ heart, a secret government organization kidnaps Madison for testing purposes, Hanks rescues her, and the pair hop into the sea to live happily ever. I clearly did not have a good grasp on the parameters of reality, and much to my disappointment, the existence of mer-people has yet to be discovered.

This, however, is quite a sufficient consolation prize:

[photo: advocate.com]
A pregnant man à la “Junior”! Thomas Beatie, an Oregon man, is expecting a baby girl. According to his essay in The Advocate, Mr. Beatie was born a woman but decided to become a transgender male and legally changed his sex to male. He had his breasts surgically removed and started bimonthly testosterone injections, but kept his vagina. Identifying as male, Mr. Beatie legally married Nancy Beatie. The pair wanted a baby but Ms. Beatie is unable to carry a child, so they decided Mr. Beatie would do it. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Quote quickie: woman sat on toilet for 2 years

“She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body.”

- Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple, regarding phobia-suffering Kansas woman and her atrophied skin, which had grown around her toilet seat

For sale: dead fish

A nice chap gave us this piece of “art” about 14 years ago. As I owned a fish-and-chip shop, I joked that it would be nice to have something like this for the store. Lo and behold, this cadaverous masterpiece arrived upon our doorstep two weeks later:

[photo: bloomberg.com]

So, if you’re in the market for dead animals suspended in formaldehyde that inspire slight nausea in your patrons, this piece is for you. Or, if you want to send someone a not-so-subtle message letting them know you hate them, this would undoubtedly make the perfect gift.

Opening bid: 100,000 pounds ($201,710 for you Yanks), as this is from the same artist responsible for such acclaimed pieces such as Away from the Flock (a dead sheep in a glass tank of formaldehyde), Mother and Child Divided (a cow and a calf sliced in half in a glass tank of formaldehyde), and The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (a tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde). (Formaldehyde gets quite pricey, you know.)

Photo quickie: fuzzy slippers

[photo: mcall.com]
William Torres of Allentown, Pennsylvania, being escorted to police station on homicide charges. Lion accomplices not talking.

Starlet foils paparazzi plans

As if having the attention span of a peanut and having to drive three hours in notorious Los Angeles traffic everyday isn’t already enough, I now have to deal with the possibility of being blinded by Lindsay Lohan’s ingenious solution to thwart photo attempts with aluminum foil:

[photo: splashnewsonline.com]

I don’t know whether to track the poor girl down and teach her a thing or two about flashes and sunlight and the lack of need for flashes in sunlight, or to just throw my hands up and get a head start on sending her anonymous blame-mail for the next 25 car pileup.

Drunkards take dolphin joyride

Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Kent, friends Michael Jukes and Daniel Buck decided to get sloshed at their local pub. The two chaps were having such a jolly old time that they kept drinking and drinking until they were too tired to walk home. Luckily, on their way they ran into Dave, the magical dolphin:

[photo: solarnavigator.net]
Dave displayed aggressive dolphin gestures to warn Michael and Daniel off, but they knew that he was just playing hard to get, so they grabbed his dorsal fin and tail and hitched a ride. The police wanted in on the action, so they came out and arrested the men, who were later charged with recklessly disturbing and interfering with an animal. With that, all the dolphins and whales and other dorsal finned-mammals breathed a big sigh of relief, and everyone lived happily ever after.

The End.

Professor aims to cancel out fractions

This is Dennis DeTurck, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

[photo: usatoday.com]
Professor DeTurck is currently trying to push fractions out of their rightful place in math education, citing them as being “as obsolete as Roman numerals are.” Not satisfied in stopping there, he is also taking on long division, the calculation of square roots, and by-hand multiplication of long numbers.

I would like to take this opportunity to officially announce that I will be fighting these propositions with my whole being. If I had to suffer through three make-up math classes and endless amounts of frustrating nights, there is no way that the brats of today are getting off this easy. Professor, BRING IT ON.

Germans offer naked plane ride

German travel agency OssiUrlaub.de is currently taking bookings for a nudist flight planned for July 5. A day trip from the eastern German town of Erfurt to the Baltic Sea resort of Usedom will set you back around $734, and possibly your attachment to possessing eyesight, as judging from this photo:

[photo: trendhunter.com]

Suddenly, that pesky elbow poking you repeatedly as you tried to sleep upright amidst the cloying stench of airline-issued rubber chicken doesn’t seem quite so horrible anymore.

Sasquatch-like image photographed on Mars

I will be the first to admit that in the past week I have:

1. eaten my weight in potato chips (Kettle Brand Krinkle Cut Salt & Fresh Ground Pepper Chips are krazy delicious, and the seething resentment you aggregate when you look at their inane spelling of the word “crinkle” totally burns through all the calories and allows you to practically inhale them);

2. browsed through multiple online collections of 2008 prom dresses, even though I am about ten years too old to attract a spritely young prom date, have consumed about 500 bags of chips too many to fit in an article of clothing intended for a high school nymphet, and am approximately two smidgens too classy to wear metallic purple tulle (bedazzled flowers, however, are another story);

3. and, forced The Boyfriend into watching an episode of MonsterQuest where a bunch of women dressed up to camp in the woods and attempted to lure Bigfoot with their feminine scents, and then excitedly emailed him this morning when I read an article that Bigfoot had, in fact, been most recently spotted on Mars, and not in the campground of some overzealous cryptozoology-flirts.

However, I can now understand why the aforementioned fearless female explorers all put on their best earrings for the occasion.

[photo: timesonline.co.uk]
Despite slightly resembling an extension of rock, or a speck of dust, or a piece of uneven ground, Sasquatch is looking quite studly lately.