In Iraq, the Sunni-dominated Islamic Army announced that it would no longer threaten the “project of Jihad” by continuing to fight Al Qaeda. A security assessment found that just one third of Baghdad’s neighborhoods were under U.S. control, police recruits shot a “suspicious woman,” a Catholic priest was kidnapped along with five boys, and 27 corpses, each shot in the head and showing signs of torture, were recovered. Proposed “War Czar” Lieutenant General Douglas Lute described the results of the U.S. troop surge as “uneven.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said people stood a greater chance of being hit by lightning than dying at the hands of a terrorist, and that anyone worried about it should “get a life.”
A “clearly deranged” German man attempted to board the Popemobile in the Vatican and was beaten by the Vigilanza, the pontiff’s security force. Government doctors announced that the machine controlling Dick Cheney’s heart was old and should be replaced. China was in the grip of “Web 2.0 madness,” the U.S. military was developing lethal water guns to combat scuba-equipped terrorists, and three adulterers were executed by firing squad in Khyber, Pakistan.
Hillary Clinton thanked God for helping her endure the sexual indiscretions of her husband. The Republican presidential candidates met in New Hampshire to engage in “verbal combat” over immigration, and Eric Alterman, author of the “Altercation” blog, was arrested after an altercation with police at the Democratic debate. Two John McCain campaign officials were fired for refusing to “rape and pillage” church directories for potential donors.
John Edwards said it was fine if Rudolph Giuliani chose a campaign platform of ”four more years of what [the current] president has done.” “He will never be elected,” Edwards added. “But he is allowed to do that.” Violence erupted in the Alabama state senate when a Democrat called Republican Charles Bishop a son of a bitch. “I responded to his comment with my right hand,” said Bishop. “Fleeting expletives” were ruled legal by a U.S. court.
Three Finnish fishermen were abducted by the Iranian government, U.S. efforts to recapture a shipping vessel taken by pirates off the Horn of Africa failed, and Spanish naval authorities threatened to board two boats they believe hold stolen treasure. Global warming was linked to an upsurge of cat sex.
NFL running back Clinton Portis explained why he ridiculed laws against dog fighting. “I’m not even a pets man,” Portis explained. “I’ve got a fish—that’s the easiest thing to keep up. I’ve never been into dogs, never dealt with dogs, don’t like playing with dogs. But at the same time,” he added, “there’s a lot of people who are crazy over pets.”
Students at Harvard University were scalping tickets to their own graduation, high school officials in Galesburg, Ohio, withheld the diplomas of five seniors after their friends and families cheered too loudly at the commencement, and three students were arrested in Aurora, Illinois, following a cafeteria food fight. “Milk cartons, full pop bottles, and blue slushies were flying around,” said one student. “Kids literally bought the food to throw it and, to me, that’s a little expensive.” The Spanish people resisted a government proposal to add lyrics to the national anthem. “It’s fine to identify a country with music,” said one Madrileno. “But a country with words, no, I don’t like it.”
In China, a spike in the price of pork tenderloin and bacon caused people to begin eating more fish, and it was reported that Xiang Xiang, a five-year-old panda bred in captivity and released into the wild, was found dead in February. Wild pandas are suspected. Forest guards in western India were using cell phone ring tones of cows mooing, goats bleating, and roosters crowing to lure hungry leopards away from human encampments.
In Selmer, Tennessee, a preacher’s wife was sentenced to three years in prison for murdering her husband, whom she said forced her to perform “unnatural” sex acts with a black wig and platform shoes on, and in Bautzen, Germany, three teenagers were found not guilty of impairing the sex drive of an ostrich. Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds banned the word “cock” from its website. “Tit” and “swallow,” however, were still permitted. Scientists successfully produced talking construction paper, trained dogs to track polar bear feces, and made stem cells out of adult mice.
Cultural taboos against the public discussion of menopause were in decline among the American middle class, and in England, gingerists, or people with a bias against red hair, were subjecting the auburn-headed to slurs like “you ginger bastard” or “you right ginger whinger.” The Internet’s storehouse of wisdom, information, and pornographic images was determined to weigh 0.2 millionths of an ounce.
—Theodore Ross
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