Notes from the News

Just some odds and ends today:

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela and renowned Extremely Crazy Person, wants to help his good buddy Moammar Gaddafi broker a peace treaty with the democratic protesters in Libya.  (Mo named a soccer stadium in Benghazi after Hugo - that's how tight they are.)  There's got to be a good analogy about Charlie Sheen offering addiction counseling to porn stars in here somewhere.  It'll come to me.

Germany's Defense Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, has resigned after being stripped of his Ph.D. amidst accusations that his doctoral thesis was substantially plagiarized.  Guttenberg has admitted only that his thesis contained "mistakes."  Dude.  Lesson #1 of cheating:  Copy from people who know the answers.  Say what you want about America's education system, but apparently our stoners are smarter than Germany's government officials.

From Time comes this headline:  "Navy to Release Lewd Video Probe Findings."  In related news, we have a winner in the "Google Search String Most Likely to be Blocked at the Public Library" contest.

About 52,000 Mazda6 sedans are being recalled because of spiders in the fuel system.  A company spokesperson says the automaker doesn't know why the yellow sac spider has taken up residence in this particular model, adding, "Maybe they just like cars that go 'Zoom-Zoom.'"  I say it has something to do with Mazda's little-publicized promotion, "Take a Test Drive and a Tab of This Brown Acid."

(Here's a gratuitous photo of the little critter)


Not actual size, brown-acid takers.

 Connecticut-based toymaker Herobuilders is releasing action figures of three popular commercial pitchmen:  Mayhem (Allstate), The Most Interesting Man in the World (Dos Equis), and the Old Spice Guy.  The Old Spice Guy comes fully equipped:  he has a handful of diamonds and a penis.  You read that right.  The Old Spice Guy is anatomically correct.  The dolls all talk, spouting lines from their famous commercials, but forget that shit.  The Old Spice Guy has a penis.  Which makes him The Most Interesting Action Figure in the World.

And finally...CNN reports this news item from Egypt:  "Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik submitted his resignation and the Egyptian military has appointed Essam Sharaf to the post, the military's Facebook page said Thursday."  Wait, the Egyptian military has a Facebook page?  Why, yes it does.  And it's got 709,000 friends.  (Not Charlie Sheen Twitter numbers, but not bad.)  The page includes updates on the new government, calls for unity, and 18,704 requests to return a lost cow to its farm.  Hey, they're new to this democracy thing - cut them some slack for still thinking Farmville is cool.