NEWS FROM THE FUTURE THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN

BREAKING! ANNA NICOLE SMITH AUTOPSY: "SMITH DIED OF NATURAL CAUSES"

ALSO: HOWARD K. STERN TO GIVE SMITH FORTUNE TO CHARITY

UPDATE 9:23 AM - THE ONION WEIGHS IN:

Anna Nicole Smith Finally Reaches Target Weight

NASSAU, BAHAMAS—Some weight-loss experts do not find Smith's achievement inspirational, claiming that such drastic dieting can lead to a dangerous loss of muscle mass.

Free at last!

It's due time for a quick post, and why shouldn't be a lazy one from CNN?

Seems that Disney, despite the bitching and moaning Walt would have probably put up were he not cryogenically frozen, finally got with the times and is about to release a movie featuring a... black princess. Props to Disney for arriving forty years late to the civil rights party.

CNN asked its readers to weigh in on the news, and pretty much everything John and Jane Doe has to say about it is positive. Me, though, I don't think it's enough.

This won't really be over until a black Disney princess coaches a team to the Super Bowl.

My bad

Been a little while since a post - just imagine I'm the little boy and the basketball is daily tasks to be completed at work. I shall return. As God is my witness, I shall return. Or never go hungry again. I always fell asleep by that point in the movie.

Got to keep on keepin' on.

WARNING: don't read this if you're a total dork

SPOILER ALERT: If you're a comic book nerd and you don't want to know that a certain Marvel comic book hero is killed in an upcoming issue (Captain America) then don't read this post.

CAPTAIN AMERICA SHOT!

GEEKS EVERYWHERE DESPAIR!

Really, I'm not sure this is that big a deal. Yes, Captain America began fighting crime when we needed it most (1941) and in the recent years of superhero wars (apparently there's been an on-going war between superheros that agree to disclose their identities and others that don't following a mishap that causes a 9/11-scale disaster, which reportedly is actually an interesting commentary on the Patriot Act - but I don't know any of this firsthand because I haven't read a comic since I bought my last piece of Bazooka Joe in 1993 - except for this one) was an outspoken critic of what he perceived was in infringement of civil liberties. In a comic shipped yesterday, he gets shot by a sniper on his way to court.

Instead of delving into the representative politics and history of Captain America, because I know absolutely nothing about it, I will instead simply direct you to the comments section of the New York Times, where already nearly 100 posts are up, discussing what Captain America means to America, and what symbolism people are taking from his assassination in terms of the US's reputation abroad and recent infringements on the Bill of Rights.

The thing that gets me is that I know some of the people that are getting really worked up over this were very possibly unaware that the reason flags were recently flown at half-mast was because Gerald Ford died.

The bitch is back

WARNING: THIS POST HAS SWEARS AND ANN COULTER

I'm pretty sure you've heard about Ann's latest little nugget wherein she declined to address the campaign of John Edwards because, in her words, "it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot'".

That's right. That is what she said.

I have previously heard an argument that Ann Coulter is a Stephen Colbert-esqe pundit for the right; she doesn't really believe what she says, but she kicks up as much shit as she possibly can. This gem of a quote proves to me that either this is, in fact, true, or she is the most unapologetic ignorant bitch to walk this earth since... I don't know, maybe the queen from Snow White?

How bad is this situation? I'd expect the same amount of shock and anger if, say, Larry King called Ann a 'cunt'. Which frankly, I'd pay money to see, and unlike Ann's comments on Edwards, Larry could make a pretty good case.

'Moose' trumps 'helicopter'

This is probably the most bizarre (and not seriously depressing) thing I've read about since the possible blood link between Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond came out late last week.

Apparently if a moose is thirsty, even if you've shot it with a tranquilizer dart, you shouldn't get in its way. From CNN:

"The moose would start to move, and then the helicopter would back off and try to keep the moose out in the open," Larsen said.

But instead of moving toward open space, the moose charged the helicopter.

"As the animal got closer and closer to going down, an animal sort of loses its thinking -- its ability to rationalize what's in its best interest," Larsen said.

Sounds like me after the fifth Red Bull vodka when I'm near a dance floor.

Also like what happens to me on the dance floor after five Red Bull vodkas, the moose was maimed and had to be euthanized.

Not the actual moose, but you get the idea.

Happy Monday

I'm not sure why, but this clip makes me laugh out loud more than anything else I've seen on Family Guy in a long time. Perhaps because this was one of the worst movie trailers I have seen since the trailer for White Noise, and that in the TV spots, Kathy Bates says, "what we have here is a Failure to Launch". Ugg. Cheers, "Family Guy" writing staff. You got me on this one.

That is all.

AP: Not reporting Paris Hilton news also news

Please excuse me while I softly cry in my cubicle. The AP released a 1,000 word story today, courtesy here of the Keanu Reeves-es of crack investigative journalism, explaining that for a week, they decided not to report anything Paris-related. In their own words:

It was only meant to be a weeklong ban -- not the boldest of journalistic initiatives, and one, we realized, that might seem hypocritical once it ended. And it wasn't based on a view of what the public should be focusing on -- the war in Iraq, for example, or the upcoming election of the next leader of the free world, as opposed to the doings of a partygoing celebrity heiress/reality TV star most famous for a grainy sex video.

No, editors just wanted to see what would happen if we didn't cover this media phenomenon, this creature of the Internet gossip age, for a full week. After that, we'd take it day by day. Would anyone care? Would anyone notice? And would that tell us something interesting?

It turned out that people noticed plenty -- but not in the way that might have been expected. None of the thousands of media outlets that depend on AP called in asking for a Paris Hilton story. No one felt a newsworthy event had been ignored. (To be fair, nothing too out-of-the-ordinary happened in the Hilton universe.)

Yeah, too bad nothing really exciting happened for the AP to jump all over, like recently when they reported that she was bored at a debutante ball.

When this is a headline story, is it really any wonder that kids these days don't know the multiplication tables and that "Deal or No Deal" is a top-rated television show?

I'm not sure why, but something tells me I'll be cursing a lot on my commute home tonight.

Edwards' campaign headquarters vandalized! Online!

I guess this counts as news, in the same sense that a headline such as "New study shows Americans are lard-asses" or "Officials: Stonewall Jackson still dead" counts as news. Reported by GamePolitics.com, of which I was previously completely unaware until the story was linked here from the Huffington Post, apparently

Shortly before midnight (CST) on Monday, February 26, a group of republican Second Life users, some sporting “Bush ‘08″ tags, vandalized the John Edwards Second Life HQ. They plastered the area with Marxist/Lenninist posters and slogans, a feces spewing obscenity, and a photoshopped picture of John in blackface, all the while harassing visitors with right-wing nonsense and obscenity-laden abuse of Democrats in general and John in particular.

Second Life is basically, so far as I understand it, a large online multiplayer game that's like World of Warcraft, only (in the nomenclature of our times) more gay because there are no axes. What I find even more inexplicable than the fact that the Edwards camp felt it necessary to make a digital avatar of Edwards' campaign headquarters is that some political operatives thought that by smearing digital feces on a digital building that is only seen by other no-life nerds (I guess in all fairness there are a few million, but a lot of those are Chinese digital-farmer-slaves who turn around and sell imaginary shit for real money), they could make a resounding statement of opinion that would damage Edwards' real-life presidential campaign. Except, of course, no one is casting ballots in Second Life (I hope), and that by demonstrating support for the opposing party by digital vandalism in a VIDEO GAME, that kind of makes the cause seem a little silly.

There is an exception, of course: until recently, you could go to Google, type in 'miserable failure', hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky', and laugh (also, 'waffles' yielded other-side-of-the-aisle results). Yes, I'm stilted, but it's hard to deny that's clever. Poop - especially digital poop - not so much.

Unless it's in "Caddyshack".