Between bad news, natural disasters and political stories, I have no idea why anybody would turn on the news or open a newspaper these days. When viewed through the lens of the regular media, the world is a pretty depressing and scary place these days.
As luck would have it, I haven’t been regular for years now ... wait a minute ... that didn’t come out right ... wait, neither did that ... what I mean to say is that I live a pretty irregular life and the lens I use to watch the world is a little bit more fun.
There’s always a different way to look at things, let me give you a quick look at things happening around the world as seen through my lens. A scan of recent acts of skullduggery and buffoonery from around the world shows that not everything is an evil plot to destroy the American way of life, some of it’s just plain funny.
Let me lead off with a bit of tabloid news that I noticed in the checkout line yesterday. It was a look back at the tragic divorce of Al and Tipper Gore, after over 40 years of marriage from Tipper’s point of view ... of course.
I normally don’t dabble in tabloid news because they employ humor writers that are way out of my league. Honestly, a headline reading, “Loch Ness Monster’s affair with Bigfoot produces a love child walrus that is quite frugal and speaks with an accent” is pretty funny stuff; I know my limits.
It’s always sad to see a 40-year marriage fail, but there are just too many punch lines for me to leave it alone. Seriously, Al spent so much time warning the world about global warming that he never noticed how frigid things were getting in his own house!
My own theory is that Al Gore is just too much of a soft spoken nice guy to keep a woman’s temperature rising for the long haul. This dude is so nice that even with the majority of the votes, he couldn’t manage to get into the Oval Office and be the ultimate alpha male.
When the history books say you’ve been punked by George W., it seems that even eight years as the second most powerful man in the world, a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar aren’t enough to warm your wife’s globe.
Girls like exciting bad boys, even girls named Tipper (and I would have bet against that) and no matter what Al Gore is, he will never be an exciting bad boy. There’s no confirmation that Al pays alimony in green credits. OK, I’ll stop, that’s enough picking on Mr. Gore ... for now.
From the world of science, researchers for Men’s Health magazine have determined that the PB&C (peanut butter and chocolate) milkshake from the Stone Cold Creamery is nutritionally the worst drink on the market today. I say this is clearly junk science.
Further, I suggest that Men’s Health magazine is meant for metrosexuals and waiting rooms in cardiologists’ offices where real men read it to know what to tell the doctor that they haven’t been eating.
They say that drinking one of those shakes is the equivalent of eating 68 strips of bacon; I say if a guy wants to cut down to 68 pieces of bacon or drink a milkshake, that’s his business. They say that skipping bacon and drinking a whey smoothie instead of a milkshake will make you live longer; I doubt that, I suspect life just seem longer without bacon or milkshakes.
Finally, some European research outfit suggested this week that British women look better at the beginning of the week because they take four times longer to get ready for work on Monday than they do on Friday.
Seriously, their study revealed that working women spent an average of 76 minutes to shower, groom and dress for work on Monday and by Friday these same women averaged just 19 minutes to get out the door.
This either proves that the 40 hour work week sucks the life out of us all, that all of the good men are gone by Friday or that these researchers, like the ones whining about milkshakes, are full of poop.
There’s more but I’m out of space. So go fry up some bacon, drink a milkshake and don’t listen to researchers. Al Gore listened to them and look what good it did him!
Rick Seley is an award-winning humor columnist. He may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.
