Bested by a wad of sea snot.

No post yesterday, sorry. I was busy out looking for pieces of the UARS satellite which fell through the atmosphere and (probably) into the Pacific Ocean on Saturday morning. I say “probably” because somehow those nerds down at NASA lost track of it, and they have no idea where it went. How do you lose a six ton satellite? Especially one that may or may not have hit people…wouldn’t you want to warn people to get an umbrella? My favourite part of this story is what Neil Armstrong, most famous astronaut of all time and first man to walk on the moon, said: “[this is] lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable.” Ha! Burn! Take that, NASA nerds!

But because I was busy writing a will and renewing my space debris insurance, I have two days worth of stuff to cover, so here’s a few things to get you through your Tuesday.

(1) Spoiler alert: Mufasa dies.

The Lion King was the top grossing movie of the weekend, even though it was firsts released in 1994. Don’t we all already know what happens? Mufasa dies, Simba runs away, everyone’s “hakuna matata-ing,” there’s some hyenas, then a girl lion, then Simba is the king. I guess the big draw is that now it’s in 3D, so you really feel like you’re a part of the action when the warthog is eating bugs. The whole 3D thing is not a big draw for me, because I tend to get a little “seasick.” Although I must say that the last 3D movie that I saw was Jackass 3D and it was awesome.

(2) “Where’s the beef?” you ask? It’s in the trash.

That’s right! Along with all the other food that’s been recalled recently (including the listeria-bearing cantaloupe that has already killed numerous people across the country), we must also fear for our beef. 40,000 pounds of ground beef which was supposed to go into school lunches for children in Georgia was tainted with E. coli and has been recalled. So if you live in Georgia, you may want to pack your child’s lunch for the next couple of days. “Meatloaf Day” down at the cafeteria may become “Three-days-of-diarrhea-and-vomiting Day” if you’re not careful.

(3) Beware of jellyfish!

Diana Nyad is a lady who swims. According to Wikipedia, she has swam around Manhattan island (7:57:00), across Lake Ontario (4:22:00), the Bay of Naples (8:11:00), and several other “marathon” swims. So she decided to swim from Cuba to Florida (which is 103 miles). She’s tried twice before and never succeeded, due to adverse weather. This time she had completed 80 miles of the trip (in about 40 hours), before they had to call of the attempt because she was getting repeatedly stung by a Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia physalis), which is an extremely badass jellyfish. Nyad, who is 62 years old, says that she’s not going to try again. Something about almost being killed in the middle of the ocean by poisonous jellyfish is not her idea of “a good time.” Alas, bested by a wad of sea snot. What would Neil Armstrong say about that?

(4) There are a lot of dogs in India.

There are thousands and thousands of stray dogs in India, and officials are starting to do something about it. Apparently people are tired of being harassed and injured by roaming packs of wild dogs (sort of like they were tired of having their heads eaten by leopards). So the government of Delhi has decided to wrangle and sterilize all the wild dogs in their city. This is similar to the gatti di Roma (all the stray cats in Rome), but with fewer saucers of milk. (@gattidiroma2011: “Tourists love me! #SPQR”). (Bonus points for anyone who can tell me what “SPQR” stands for without googling it).

(5) If you must smuggle hummingbirds, perhaps don’t put them in your pants.

This photo (and a few others) were released by French customs officials are discovering that a man was trying to smuggle several hummingbirds in his pants. Do you really want several tiny birds pecking at your private areas while you try to sneak through customs? There are probably several good jokes here, involving nectar slash woodpeckers slash hummers, but I will leave those to your imagination. Best hummingbird joke wins.

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(Alternate title for this article: “Meatloaf Day”).

Keep a good heart; the worst is yet to come.

1815 Revisited.

Because I know that you have been sitting at home worrying about getting killed by flaming pieces of satellite falling from the sky onto your heads, here’s an update: apparently North America is back in play. So the chances of you getting skulled by a piece of cosmic recycling are slightly higher than yesterday! Get a helmet! This morning the nerds down at NASA said that the UARS was going to fall harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean, and we can all stop freaking out, but now this afternoon, they are telling us that the falling satellite has slowed down considerably, and so they have no idea where it’ll hit. In fact, they’re saying that it might not even fall until Saturday. Hopefully it lands after the LSU-WVU game. I’ve got $10 on the Tigers, minus six.

It’s Friday afternoon. It’s been a long week, hasn’t it? Here’s five things I think you should know about:

(1) Melissa McCarthy (left) and Jenny McCarthy (right) are cousins.

Melissa McCarthy is the very funny actress from the show “Mike & Molly” and Jenny McCarthy is an actress slash former Playmate slash MTV personality slash autism awareness advocate. Jenny also featured prominently in my puberty, for reasons that I won’t mention because my mother might be reading this. But there has apparently been a lot of speculation in Hollywood (by people who don’t have lives) as to whether or not they are related. So after Melissa won an Emmy (or whatever award she won; I can’t keep the awards straight. Emmys are for TV, right?), Jenny tweeted something about “congratulations to my cousin Melissa” blah blah blah they’re related. I don’t really care that much about this celebrity stuff; unless it involves Katy Perry.

(2) Mount Tambora is going to erupt, and it’s going to get messy.

Mount Tambora is in Indonesia, and it has started to belch puffs of smoke and ash, and people (specifically Indonesians) are starting to get genuinely worried. You see, when Mount Tambora last erupted, in 1815, it was the largest and most destructive volcanic eruption in human history. And it killed more than 71,000 people. And if it decides to go all “1815 Revisited,” it’s not just the Indonesians who should be worried: in 1816 there was no summer in North America or Europe because of “volcanic weather.” No summer! So people who live near Mount Tambora are wisely taking shelter far far away, and hopefully there will be a summer in 2012. As long as we don’t all get killed by falling space junk first.

(3) If you live in Australia, you have more gender choices than the rest of us.

Our old friends the Australians are back at it. They have decided that when applying for an Australian passport, when it comes to gender, you may either select M (for male), F (for female), or X (for “other”). I don’t even know what to say about this. I’ll quite comfortable to just stick with “M.”

(4) If you have plans to make a pornographic movie involving a firetruck this weekend, make sure you first consult with the fire marshal.

What you’re looking at is an adult film actress named Charley Chase and LAFD engine #263. Apparently engine #263 recently appeared in an adult film (starring the aforementioned Charley Chase). Two problems quickly emerged: (1) the city of Los Angeles doesn’t want their firetrucks co-starring in pornographic movies, and (2) some of the gentlemen in the film were actual on-duty LAFD firefighters, who engaged in “lewd acts” with the film’s star. Amazingly, this is the second time that the city has had to investigate a public department for making pornographic films while on the clock! You can imagine that there’s a really good joke here about getting a government job from Charley Chase, if you catch my drift, but (as I said before) my mother might be reading this.

(5) Just because nobody knows who/what you are, doesn’t mean you’re not cute.

At this point I would usually say, “this happy little fellow is a blahblah (Blahblah blahblah),” but this mysterious raccoon-like chap, who was anonymously donated to a zoo in China, is a totally unknown creature. Chinese scientists (who, let’s be honest, have disappointed us before) have no idea what type of thing he is. I think it’s a potto (Perodicticus potto) with a funky patterned coat. Either way, cute.

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(Alternate title for this article: “The Ballad of Charley Chase and the LAFD.”)

Keep a good heart; the worst is yet to come.

Squids have different priorities.

Today we don’t have time for dilly dallying. I have a list of five things that I think you should know. And some of them you should know before tomorrow. Because tomorrow you may be killed by a falling piece of satellite.

(1) If you are stressed out about being killed by falling space debris, you can relax. Sort of.

The UARS, which we have talked about before, is falling to earth, and now NASA knows when it’s going to hit: tomorrow afternoon. The nerds down at NASA are able to tell us when it’s going to fall, but not yet where it’s going to fall, only that it will “leave a debris trail 500 miles long.” Latest reports indicate that it’s not going to hit North America, though, so I am canceling my space debris insurance. In fact, NASA says there’s only a 1 in 3200 chance that someone gets killed by falling pieces of satellite. Multiply that by 6,775,235,700 people in the world (according to Wikipedia), and that means that the chances of you (that’s right, I’m looking at you) being killed by a piece of the UARS is 1 in 21,680,754,200,000, or about the same as the odds as winning the lottery on the same day that you are struck by lightning and attacked by a polar bear (Ursus maritimus).

(2) Dolphins are total assholes.

A harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) recently washed ashore in San Francisco (home of the world’s only Franciscan manzanita), and biologists now believe that he was the victim of “porpicide.” It was murdered by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Yes, that’s what I said: a bunch of dolphin bullies murdered a harbor porpoise. So much for dolphins being the friendly happy clowns of the sea. Think twice before going to SeaWorld.

(3) R.E.M. broke up.

At first I was like, “Oh no! R.E.M. broke up!” and then I was like, “Oh wait. R.E.M. kinda sucks.” So if you go out drinking tonight, ask your bartender for a “Losing My Religion” (1 oz peach schnapps, 1 oz lemon pucker, 1 oz coconut rum, 3 oz Sprite). (I don’t think that’s a real drink; I just made it up). (And it sounds terrible).

(4) Squids aren’t gay, they’re just not that picky.

Researchers observed several years of mating behavior of a certain species of deep water squid (Octopoteuthis deletron), and noticed that males are equally likely to mate with males as females. Suddenly everyone was talking about how squids were bisexual. But if you read to the bottom of your squid fact sheet, you will see that squids don’t “mate” per se. Males of the species stab a “sperm pack” into any random part of the female’s body, and her internal systems are designed to move the sperm to the necessary location. So imagine that a bunch of people are in a bar, and all the guys have darts. And if a dude can hit a girl with his dart, he wins a prize (in this case, he gets her pregnant; squids have slightly different priorities than we do). Now imagine that no one knows the difference between males and females, so the guys are just tossing sperm darts willy nilly around the bar. That’s what the squid dating scene is like. So they’re not bisexual, they just don’t know the difference between males and females, and couldn’t be bothered to stick around to find out.

(5) Katy Perry’s going to be on the cover of InStyle magazine.

It turns out that she’s not just popular in Australia.

Go! Go to Facebook! Go now!

(Alternate title for this article: “Ask your bartender for a ‘Losing My Religion’.”)

Keep a good heart; the worst is yet to come.

Think before you jog.

I have never been hit by a car. I have been hit by a hockey puck (community league peewee hockey), I have been hit by a girl (Leah Foley, for reasons that I don’t remember; I probably deserved it), I have been hit with a frying pan (in the backroom of a Denny’s that I worked in throughout high school), I have been hit by the sudden realization that I’m not as physically fit as I used to be (which happened this morning while I was trying to bend over to put on my socks), but I have never been hit by a car. The same cannot be said for Reese Witherspoon. As of this morning, she has been hit by a car.

Miss Witherspoon was apparently out jogging in her neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, when an 84 year old motorist missed a stop sign and hit Witherspoon in a crosswalk. You will be relieved to know that she is fine, recovering at home, and showing no signs of ill effect (other than possibly considering another “Legally Blonde” movie). There are many lessons to be learned from this cautionary tale. First of all, why are we letting 84 year olds drive? That person’s great granddaughter couldn’t drive them down to the Cracker Barrel for the Senior’s Discount breakfast? But most importantly: why are we still letting people jog? Don’t people realize that jogging leads to sweatiness and expensive sneakers and eventual automobile-related death? If Reese Witherspoon had just been trying on dresses and signing autographs and having photos taken with tiny dogs (that’s how I assume famous people spend their days) rather than engaging in the criminally dangerous activity of jogging, none of this would have happened. Remember, my friends, think before you jog.

Another thing you may want to think before doing is going outside. Or at the very least, if you go outside, you may want to take an umbrella. I say this because, as we all know, things in space are trying to kill us. And this time I’m not just talking about the sun’s invisible death rays. I am talking about a seven ton satellite that is going to fall on our heads. And no one is quite sure when.

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) has been up in space for the last six years, and those nerds down at NASA expect it to reenter our atmosphere and crash into earth “sometime in late September or early October.” Most of it is expected to burn up in the ozone (or whatever), but NASA assures us that not all of it will burn up, and it could spread a debris trail 500 miles long. 500 miles! “I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more, just to be man who got crushed by seven tons of space debris.” So hopefully the nerds down at NASA will give us a “head’s up” when the time is right so that we can all hide in our fallout shelters and look at pictures of Katy Perry’s butt.

And speaking of butts, I really try to avoid NSFW topics (like the recent halt in all production of California porno movies; you know that I was dying to make jokes about that), but with this one I can’t resist. The Hungarian government has got it figured out. They want you to take the national census, and they know how to get you to do it: naked Hungarian ladies.

The Hungarian government has released a borderline inappropriate Youtube advertisement to entice people to participate in the census. The census taker goes to the door, a mostly naked woman answers, they have a conversation in Hungarian, and then it’s over. You can watch it here. I don’t speak that much Hungarian, but I’m assuming that the dialogue goes like this:

Census taker: “Would you like to participate in the census?”
Woman: “Yes. And then we will have strange Hungarian intercourse!”
Census taker: “Excellent!”
Woman: “Strange Hungarian intercourse for everyone who participates in the census!”
Census taker: “Long live Hungary!”

But again, I don’t speak that much Hungarian, so I’m just guessing. I have got to be honest, though, I don’t know if this makes me want to take a Hungarian census or just go around knocking on random Hungarian doors and seeing what sort of naked people answer. This could be an interesting social experiment. But either way, if you live in Hungary, participate in the census.

There is also good news in the world that doesn’t involve naked Hungarian ladies. The U.S. government is stepping in to save the Franciscan manzanita. And not a moment too soon.

The Franciscan manzanita (Arctostaphylos hookeri franciscana) is an endangered shrub that only grows in the areas surrounding San Francisco. Actually, to be more specific, it used to grow in the areas surrounding San Francisco, but went extinct in 1947. Or so we thought, until a keen-eyed found one last lonely Franciscan manzanita growing on a traffic median in 2009. Local officials dug it up and moved it to a secret location (really), and asked the federal government to help them protect the manzanita from poachers. That’s right! Plant poachers! (@LegalizeIt6969: “Just got my hands on some wicked manzanita. I’m going to grow this shit in my backyard, next to the Japanese maple. #thuglife”). So if you’re in the San Francisco area and you see some kids on a playground late at night all huddled in the corner with their backs turned, call the cops: they’re either smoking weed or growing manzanita. The bastards!

On Monday we’re going to give away an original T. rex or cartoon, signed and unique, randomly to one of our Facebook followers. So follow Kids of the Recession on Facebook.

(Alternate title for this article: “Naked Hungarian ladies.”)

Keep a good heart; the worst is yet to come.