News Nuggets

NATIONAL
An old woman was trapped in her closet during a hurricane for twenty hours straight before she finally broke out. Said Tom Cruise, "That's nothing. I've been trapped in a closet for over twenty years."

A tiger escaped from its zoo enclosure and mauled three teenagers in San Francisco. Police believe the teens were drunk and under the influence of alcohol, and may have been yelling and throwing rocks at the tiger, as well as dangling their legs over the edge of the wall before it attacked them. The tiger had to be euthanized, but was given a posthumous award for improving the gene pool of the human race.

The governor of New York Eliot Spitzer admitted his involvement in a high-class prostitution ring. Spitzer apologized and promised that from now on, he'll involve himself in low-class prostitution rings like everyone else.

Meanwhile, Spitzer's call girl was discovered in archival footage exposing herself for the DVD series "Girls Gone Wild." GGW has announced plans to make the footage into a special DVD, "Governors' Hookers Gone Wild." In the announcement, GGW added, "Our plan of filming every young drunk woman in America topless is finally paying off."

INTERNATIONAL
Lloyd's has insured the nose of winemaker Ilja Gort for eight million dollars. That gives Gort the most expensive boogers ever.

SCIENCE
A new Canadian robot named Dextre was installed outside the International Space Station. The robot is designed to assist astronauts in spacewalks. It also helps the astronauts improve their hockey, eh?

Facebook has added new features designed to protect users' privacy. The best way to safeguard your privacy with Facebook? Don't use Facebook.

Workers discovered the remains of a mummified dinosaur. Steven Spielberg has already bought the fossil for his next movie, "Jurassic Mummy Returns."

See you next Tuesday.

Please Kill Tim: State Merchandise

Well, I've dipped my big toe into the wonderful world of making your own T-shirts at Cafepress. I was shocked to discover a distinct lack of T-shirts for MTV's The State, so I'll be making quite a few of those. The first one is "Please Kill Tim." If you don't get it, you need to check out that sketch. Trust me...it's hilarious in context. And if you wear it, make sure you don't wear it around someone named Tim.

Amazon Women on Mars: The Human Figure From Spirit

Well, first it was a human face on Mars, and now the conspiracy nuts are at it again. It's been reported that a NASA photo from Mars seems to show a humanoid figure. Of course, NASA says it's just a rock, but this one is pretty good. To me, the saddest part of all this (besides the idea of a bunch of geeks scanning photos of rocks for hours on end, searching for human shapes) is the fact that they immediately went crazy over how it looks like a naked woman. I didn't see the breasts at first, but I'm not a geek who stares at a computer screen for hours on end...well, not anymore. Just what they need - the fantasy of naked alien women running around on Mars. If that doesn't put some gas behind the quest to go to Mars, I don't know what will.

Nice Job: O.J. Simpson Lawyer Heckler

When O.J. Simpson's lawyer held a press conference during the trial (not that trial, the non-lethal trial), an amazing thing happened. It turned out a comedian named Jake Byrd slipped into the lawyer's entourage. Not only did he get in, Byrd managed to get right next to the lawyer on-camera. And he made the most of it.

Diaper Duck

The Diaper Duck has a warning, "This product is not a toy. Do not allow children to play with it." I don't have a problem with that. But if you don't want kids to treat the Diaper Duck as a toy, why did you make it toy-shaped?!

UPDATE: I should probably clarify this...the reason I ask the question is that my son has rubber ducks, and I constantly have to take away the Diaper Duck from him, because he doesn't understand the difference and wants to play with it. They just made my life a little bit harder. Might as well have made a samurai sword with a rubber duck on the handle. Or a bottle of rat poison with the Flintstones on the label.

Newswire Update

Breaking news from the New Yuk Times: NRA Supports New Handguns For Babies

Patriotic Colors: Coloring to Support the Troops

It does get boring in a call center sometimes, so people come up with ways to amuse themselves. For a while, some people were using coloring books and crayons. What I found absolutely bizarre is that they would collect up the pages they colored and send them to the troops in Iraq. Why would the troops in Iraq want these? I imagine them opening the envelope and finding all these colored pictures and saying, "Isn't that cute? All these kids drawing us pictures." Not realizing they were colored by forty and fifty-year old men and women.

Newswire Update

Breaking news from The New Yuk Times: News Media To Replace Police Force in Major Cites

Jokebook: Future Manager

This guy walks into a bar, slumps into his seat, and orders a stiff drink. The bartender serves the drink and asks, "Why so glum?"

The guy gulps down the drink, then says, "I just lost my job."

Bartender says, "That's too bad. How come?"

The guy says, "Ah, you know how managers are. They just stand around with their hands in their pockets watching everybody else work."

The bartender says, "Sure. But why'd you get fired?"

The guy says, "Jealousy. Everybody thought I was a manager."

Flashback Friday: J.J. & Jeff

Back in the day, when everybody and their brother had a Nintendo, I had a Turbografx-16. Why did I have a Turbografx-16? Because it was supposed to be better than the Nintendo. And it was cheaper. More the latter. Unfortunately, the one thing the Turbografx-16 didn't have was good games. Perfect example: Nintendo had Super Mario Bros, the ultimate platform game. The Turbografx-16 had its answer for Super Mario Bros, and that answer was J.J. and Jeff. Which kind of explains why the Turbografx-16 no longer exists.

Whereas Mario Bros put you in the shoes of a plumber named Mario, J.J. and Jeff gave you two detectives named (wait for it) J.J. and Jeff. They were supposed to look cool, if your idea of cool is sunglasses and toothy smiles. I never really figured out what the game was about, to be honest, because I never played it past the first level. I thought the game was boring, frustrating, and odd, particularly the enemies like birds that would eject large droppings (seriously, like half its size) onto you. Turns out the Japanese version was heavy on toilet humor that was taken out in the American version. Those wacky Japanese.

Trivia:
* As I always suspected, the game is actually a Westernized version of a Japanese game, Kato-Chan and Ken-Chan. That game was based on a popular Japanese comedy show, Fun with Kato-Chan and Ken-Chan. The show had a segment where they would air funny homemade videos. That segment was the inspiration for America's Funniest Home Videos.
* Even though the game was J.J. and Jeff, you could only choose one of them to play. And there was no difference between the two characters at all, other than their appearance. The unplayed character would pop up throughout the game.
* J.J. and Jeff had a spray can they would use on enemies. In the Japanese version, Kato and Ken used their own flatulence. The original game also featured the unplayed character urinating and defecating in the background. That was also cut out. Thankfully.
* The game was recently re-released for the Wii, for some unknown reason. I guess the rights were cheap.
* The game was really hard to play, especially since the characters would build up speed and then glide to a stop, so it was hard to keep from sliding right off of platforms, etc.
* J.J. and Jeff was part of a genre of games that started with Adventure Island. Never heard of it, never played it, but apparently it was quite popular.

Links:
MobyGames goes into some of the censored bits of the game. Wikipedia, of course, weighs in on the game, but it needs to be fleshed out. I'll work on that. IGN.com has a fairly spot-on review of the game. So does CNET. Nintendo Wii Fanboy actually liked this game...no accounting for taste.

BONUS: Check out this video of the original Kato-Chan and Ken-Chan game on YouTube.

Related Posts:
Flashback Friday: The Black Hole
Flashback Friday: Platypus Man
Flashback Friday: Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Side Effects Are Mild: Drug Advertising and Me

It's allergy season and I'm considering what medications to take to relieve the misery. I consider myself a fairly independent thinker. I pride myself in trying not to be swayed by other people's opinions or peer pressure. So why have I been considering taking Zyrtec now that it's gone over-the-counter? Or trying Nasonex? Because I saw advertisements for them. My logical side is telling me to review all my options instead of just going with what I saw on TV. My emotional side is saying, "But the computer-generated bee with the voice of Antonio Banderas says Nasonex could be the drug for me!" I guess I need to follow some more advice - check with my doctor to see if it's right for me. And where did I get that advice? From a computer-generated bee with the voice of Antonio Banderas. I can't win. But at least USA Today says I'm not alone.

Newswire: Updates

Breaking news from the New Yuk Times: Celebrity Weight Loss Secrets Revealed: Plastic Surgery and Eating Disorders and Beautiful Woman Undergoes Face-Reduction Surgery

Not-So-Deep Thoughts: Cactus

You ever notice that if you type a word often enough, it starts to look weird? Like "cactus." It's got that "cac" in the beginning like someone gagging. "Cack! Cack!" And then there's "tus." Which is just weird all by itself. Put them together and it makes you wonder why someone saw those spiny things and decided to call them "cactus."