Yeah, Right, Whatever: Stuff Not Making the Headlines

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Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Stuff Not Making the Headlines

Everyone knows that Dan's done, 42 is having surgery tomorrow, Lebanon is still trying to figure out that whole "kick 'em out and make your own government" thingie, and the insurgents in Iraq are still evil. But there are some other news items that somehow slipped under the radar.

Giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, the star residents of the National Zoo, are gaining a little more privacy this year as they approach their oh-so-brief mating season. Unlike past years when visitors could be on hand when they mated, the zoo is closing the panda exhibit on Thursday for a few days. Making panda babies is a tricky business with no room for error. Females are in heat for all of a day or two a year. (Which part is weirder- that the females are only in heat for a day or two a year -BC, SHUT UP!- or that visitors were allowed to watch? Talk about a bunch of voyeurs!)
Chris LeDoux, a former world champion bareback rider who parlayed songs about the rodeo life into a successful country music career, died Wednesday from complications of liver cancer. He was 56. (Let's all raise a glass and toast LeDoux. If you don't know who he was... I can't explain it. He's a legend.)
Bruce Willis has revealed he threatens to kill his teenage daughter's boyfriends... The Die Hard actor has confessed he interrogates boys who want to date 16-year-old Rumer.... He said he quizzes them until they sweat and shake - and then jokes he will murder them if they upset her. (uh... did he take lessons from my dad???)
Russian police stopped women drivers to hand out flowers instead of speeding tickets to mark International Women's Day.... Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said his men had been ordered to be "totally gallant towards women" to mark the occasion. (They would have been sued by some idiotic feminist group if they had tried that over here. Aaaahhhhh... gallant men... )
An aeroplane was forced to circle for more than half an hour after an air traffic controller dozed off.... The pilot of the cargo plane said he attempted a number of times to contact the controller for permission to land - but got no answer.... He was forced to circle around Nice Airport in France until the sleepy controller was woken up by security officials more than 30 minutes later. (Hmmm... French... go figure!)
A knife-wielding robber picked the wrong target in Japan when he burst into a police dormitory.... The 26-year-old demanded cash but instead found himself surrounded by police officers, reports Mainichi Shimbun. (That is... just... bwahahahahahahaha)
One person is dead and three are gravely ill after a tequila-drinking competition in Santo Domingo.The winner of the contest died. Ricardo Ivan Garcia drank more than 50 shots of tequila Sunday night at Santo Domingo's Blanc, Dance and Lounge discotheque to win the prize of $330 -- 10,000 pesos -- at a Mexican night celebration. A prosecutor said the man died of apparent heart failure brought on by alcohol poisoning. Three other contestants remain in serious condition in a hospital. (Darwin strikes again... hmmm... does Tequila work the same as chlorine- cleaning out the gene pool and all that?)
www.TalkToAliens.com, the world's first "Intergalactic Communication System" has announced that it is fully operational, and is transmitting phone calls from the public into deep space. The system is online 24 hours a day.... To use the system's "Intergalactic Transmitter", a person simply dials a phone number (1-900-226-0300) and talks. The phone call is routed into a transmitter and the person's voice is beamed live into space via a 10.5-foot parabolic dish antenna. (Does Vincent Cerf know about this? Maybe they could work together...)
THE melting of sea ice at the North Pole may be the result of a centuries-old natural cycle and not an indicator of man-made global warming, Scottish scientists have found. (I thought we knew this already. I guess it just takes a while for some people to catch on.)
Syria has published an updated version of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an anti-Semitic story that claims Jews run the world by proxy, adding to it Islamic extremist ideology and dedicating the work to Palestinian suicide bombers, WorldNetDaily has learned. (Puleeze tell me that Syria is on the squish list. Or, if not that, then at least the "scare the bejebus out of them" list.)