If you’re like me, you’ve been consumed by the news recently, and especially politics. It’s become something of an out-of-control sporting event, and I think we’re all kind of feeling it as the mid-term elections approach. Combine politics with Iraq, House E-mail scandals, North Koreans with nuclear weapons, and that mile-wide chunk of rock hurtling toward Topeka (OK, I made that last one up), and you’ve got a good case of information overload.
Or, maybe you’re just overloading on the wrong information. Either way, you need a break. We all need a break, and to get away from the hard news. So I’m here to help you purge. To serve as a kind of mental Liquid Plumber for cleansing the mind. You have to get out all that gunk and sticky stuff crammed up there, and the only way to combat serious news is with the exact opposite — ridiculous, outlandish and totally absurd news.
Are you up for my simple program? It’ll help! Nothing makes you put it all in perspective better than the grand realization that while the world is full of madness, at least you never crashed your car because the electronic navigation system told you to.
Feel better already?
This is actually true. Reuters reported that in Germany a motorist was following directions from the global positioning satellite system in the car when it demanded, “Turn right now!” So the driver did … even though there wasn’t a street to turn onto. The car crashed into a “small toilet hut,” which makes you wonder if the navigation system was nearsighted, or just had a terrific sense of humor.
Navigation systems, in case you don’t know, are those devices people have in their cars to add just one more ridiculous distraction alongside cell phones, Taco Bell in the lap and kids in the back screaming, “When the hell are we going to get there?”
I guess to make it worse, in Germany these devices yell at you and call you names if you miss a turn. “Fraulein, you idiot! You missed ze off ramp and almost hit a cow. Scoot over, I’m going to drive.”
Never buy disrespectful equipment for your car. You could end up in a port-o-let.
To continue with the international theme (what could help us forget our own problems more than laughing at foreigners?) Reuters also reported that every year there are about a dozen Japanese tourists who visit Paris and subsequently need psychological counseling because they find it terribly unfriendly and not up to expectations. I would hate to think what Japanese tourists would think if they ever visited Tijuana.
The story actually said this: “Already this year, Japan’s embassy in Paris has had to repatriate at least four visitors — including two women who believed their hotel room was being bugged and there was a plot against them.”
Were they expecting Disney World? Little funny men in berets and painted faces? Cats that meowed, “Le-purr. Le-purr”? I don’t know what they were expecting. How could you be intimidated by the French? And to need counseling afterward? I think the Japanese need to get off the island and look around more.
The Associated Press brought us this story that will really have you scratching your head or ducking the next time an airplane flies overhead: An older couple in California say a chunk of blue ice, likely from an aircraft’s toilet, fell through their roof and smashed a bed in their house.
Some theories are that a plane was leaking, uh, toilet juices and that it froze in mid-air before falling to the ground. No doubt one of the three worst ways to die would be by falling blue toilet ice. It comes a close third to being run over by someone who is following errant directions from their car navigation system and a deranged Japanese tourist who is still smarting from how someone in a French pastry called him a crumpet.
So feel better, feel cleansed, and remember, there are so many other wonderful things to think (and worry) about besides politics and North Koreans with nukes.