It Just Keeps Getting Stranger...

506 is a lot of pushups!

Every now and then, I get overcome (well, maybe "dumbfounded" is a better term for it) by the information that I find in the news of the world. Reading six newspapers every day keeps me well-informed, but it also exposes me to head-scratching accounts of just how unbelievable the world has become.
Before I begin to sound like one of those people who constantly refer to the past as being better than anything today's numbskulls can come up with e.g. "back in MY day...," let me remind you that the past has given us countless dumb things: numerous wars over real or perceived slights, All-Star Wrestling and Gorgeous George, Tiny Tim (the singer, not the literary character), Pop Rocks, Beta recording, 8-track tapes,Baby Einstein, and the Corvair, among literally zillions of other things. Compare any of them to an iPad, and there's little doubt that today is better. However, that's not to say people have gotten brighter. To wit:

A Griffon Vulture with a GPS collar was recently "captured" in Saudi Arabia, and the government immediately claimed it to be a spy, and part of a Zionist plot...this despite the fact that researchers at Tel Aviv University claimed to be tracking migration habits. No word at this time on the fate of the bird...it was not allowed to speak with a lawyer or the consulate.

In the same vein, politicos in Egypt claimed that Mossad (Israeli secret police) was responsible for the series of shark attacks of the Egyptian coast. Didn't we see something like that in one of the Bond films? Thus, it IS possible.

Having covered every last bit of minutiae concerning the BCS title game, the Los Angeles Times produces a three-page article weighing in on the heady subject of college mascots...emphasizing the number of pushups the Oregon mascot does at each game. No real news in California? Education? Taxes? Gay rights? Mudslides? (real mud and water, not the drink)

Some author whose name I've conveniently blotted out of my memory revised Twain's classic Huck Finn and removed several hundred uses of the "n" word. He said it was so that the book would not be banned in schools by the politically-correct police...but I suspect it was simply an effort to make money on his part. Any parent or school who cannot take the time to explain the history behind such a book cares not a whit for education or literature. Twain is decidedly rolling over and over and over.

]Birds falling from the sky all over! In the U.S. fireworks were blamed...in Sweden, authorities say the birds were merely run over...but in Romania, researchers actually found something plausible: acute alcohol poisoning! It appears the birds there had consumed mass quantities of waste products of the wine-making process and simply died as a result.
"fireworks," indeed!

Today, a noted politician referred to the backlash from the Arizona shootings by using a term that was used for centuries as a way to persecute Jews, depriving them of everything they owned. While the term "blood libel" has been generally (though incorrectly) used to denote a person getting blamed for something he/she did not do, the lack of foresight into the derivation of the term belies an ignorance that is incomprehensible.

And, in the most incredible example of the bizarre world in which we live: "It's A Shore Thing" by Snooki was published this week.

Sigh.