Newscan: June 25, 2009

There’s a period in summer that journalists used to call “silly season,” when housewives meet up with aliens, cafeteria workers enshrine a pizza that looks like Jesus and two-headed dogs become wealthy daytraders.

Not much point in silly season news when the real news is so much weirder. Consider the following:

• The governor of South Carolina vanishes, just drops completely out of sight and nobody, not even his staff, knows where he is. Just as they’re about to call out the dogs, he checks in: Seems he’s been hiking the Appalachian Trail wilderness. Except that he was really in Argentina, saying goodbye to his girlfriend. Sorta. (Those of us in the know have the REAL story: He was abducted by aliens.)
• Woman helps spring a tier three sex offender (i.e., he’s considered at such a high risk for recidivism that he must check in with authorities regularly for the rest of his life) from a halfway house. His previous convictions include sexual battery with 10 and 11-year olds. She helps him hit the road…with her four year old daughter.
• Steve Job’s “hormone imbalance” apparently unbalanced his liver, because he shot to the top of a liver transplant waiting list and got re-livered a few weeks back. Apple’s board of directors seem to think this isn’t much more serious than a hangnail, because they forgot to mention it to stockholders. Ooops.
• In related news, Apple finally allows a porn app to be added to its iPhone app store. How long will it stay there? All I can say is “don’t blink.” Apple’s app store minders are notoriously publicity-shy about such things. (To be fair, doesn’t look like porn to me; more like pinups. And that doesn’t mean you can’t add porn to your iPhone–there’s a huge underground market in such things and it’s got a web browser, for heavens sake–just that the Apple store won’t carry it.)
• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has announced that, beginning this year, the nominations for Best Picture Oscar will include “more populist pictures.” Does this mean that, at long last, the X-Men films stand a chance?
• The Supreme Court agrees that it’s a really bad idea for schools to strip-search a 13-year old girl suspected of having ibuprofen tablets. I just can’t help but think that this is the legal equivalent of raising Noah Webster from the dead to spellcheck your email. Even better, the Supreme Ones blast school officials as “unreasonable” but refuse to allow them to be sued. THAT makes a bunch of sense.
• Poll shows that nobody much likes Senator Arlen Specter. Gee. I coulda told them that years ago, after that kinda embarrassing performance with Anita Hill.
• A Kentucky pastor has asked his parishioners to bring their weapons to church to give thanks for the right to bear arms. Or arm bears, which can sometimes be the same thing. Kinda reminds me of the time I heard Jerry Falwell thank the Lord for the Stealth Bomber.

Gosh. With all that going on, does an honest space alien stand a chance?

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