Stranger than fiction

While your Politically Active friends harp on each other about the election and your grandmother tuts about the declining economy and your parents refuse to give you money to go to the movies anymore because college costs are spiking, the following absurd things are meant to cheer you up.

BE GLAD YOUR GRANDMOTHER ISN'T SUE JOHANSON…
…because, if she was, all of your teachers, friends, and bullies would know that her sex life is far more titillating than yours. After all, according to a Washington Post article, she is pushing for her ninth season on Canadian television and her third season on the Oxygen network in the United States. It's no wonder why she's so popular—who wouldn't want to get all of their sex advice from a 73-year-old woman!

CANDIDATES' WIVES APPROACHED CATFIGHT…
…well, maybe not, but it came awful close this week when Teresa Heinz Kerry insulted First Lady Laura Bush by saying that the latter had never had a "real job.” She apologized later, according to a CNN article, saying she had forgotten that First Lady Bush had served as a librarian, teacher and full-time mother. Her apology came soon enough to beat Laura's inevitable comeback that even if she had never had a "real job,” at least her economic well-being had never depended on the ketchup market.

A HUMBLE JOHNNY DEPP…
…according to an ABC news article, said this week at the red-carpet premiere of his new Peter Pan film that he did not consider himself a heartthrob. Perhaps he became temporarily deaf and therefore did not hear the primal shrieks of his wild screaming lady fans as he strolled down the scarlet rug with his girlfriend, French singer and actress Vanessa Paradis. This kind of ignorance happens when polls of how many Johnny Depp posters are pinned over teenage girls' beds aren't taken. Alas…

MARTHA CONTINUES TO BREAK THE LAW…
…in the minimum security West Virginia prison that she attends, aptly nicknamed "Camp Cupcake.” According to reporting done by CNN, her most recent legal offenses are of the culinary type. Apparently, according to a fellow inmate, Miss Stewart moseyed about the 105-acre facility quaintly picking crabapples with which to brew illegal jellied products. The domestic diva was not disciplined for her illicit "jail-jam" endeavors.

MEANWHILE, IN PRESTONPANS, SCOTLAND,…
…villagers are planning to gather on Sunday to publicly announce judicial pardons for a number of Scots executed in the 16th and 17th centuries for witchcraft. CNN reports that upwards of several thousand women, children and their cats primarily from the Prestoungrange and Dolphinstoun judicial districts were executed on "flimsy evidence…such as owning a black cat or brewing homemade remedies." Only 81 of 3500 are being pardoned, however. The rest were apparently convicted on solid evidence. (Zipping around town in a cloak on a broomstick with a grocery list naming "wing of bat," "eye of toad," and "tongue of dog" was probably grounds enough for guilt.) The baron courts, however, are generously endowing pardons to all the victimized kitties.

So unless you're Sue Johanson's grandson or the great-great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great-granddaughter of a cauldron-stewing Scottish witch or perhaps a crabapple in Martha Stewarts jelly, I am glad to have brought you good tidings.