The day was long coming, but it's still okay for bloggers to feel a little bit proud this morning: The "Top Stories" on Google News on this busy Monday morning lead with a blog recap of "The Walking Dead." Stick that in your nuclear missiles, North Korean guy!
If you needed some "hard news," the next top story of the moment is "On Easter Sunday, Google Honors Cesar Chavez, Not Jesus."
Michelle Shocked had a following in the 1990s for her leftist lo-fi folk music, but now she's an old bigoted religious fanatic. This is fairly well known—she's basically Victoria Jackson—but booking agencies were still putting her in clubs until Sunday night in San Francisco, when she went into an anti-gay rant at Yoshi's Supper Club.
"When they stop Prop. 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization, and Jesus will come back," Shocked told the crowd at Yoshi's in San Francisco, before many of them reportedly walked out. "You are going to leave here and tell people, 'Michelle Shocked [...]
Oh hey! The Idiocracy has happened! We found the proof in this (NSFW) video from Spike TV's new "TV show" that actually exists. It is about straight guys eating things that have been in their butts and laughing at each other, and it is a TV show, on the actual TV, it seems.
"She knows how difficult it is to quit, even though—beginning at age 25—she had a sore throat that never went away. She says she quit when pregnant with her daughter, now 32, but then relapsed. She even smoked during her radiation treatments for oral cancer in 2001. It was only after the surgery to remove her voice box that she finally quit, cold turkey." —The new reason to avoid television is the new CDC campaign featuring ex-smokers who have lost various parts of their bodies to their habit, from legs to larynx. If you've already managed to quit, go ahead and give yourself a high five and hope that's [...]
There's a new pope! UPDATE: IT IS … uh, it's in Latin. Francesco something? JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO. The world will not end after all, unless this latest Last Pope is the real Last Pope. There was white smoke, some inexplicable cheering, and then it was all over.
So … he's one of the oldest (the oldest?) cardinal there. He is an ultra-conservative Argentinian. And, after walking out and looking confused, as old men often do, said some terrifying thing about how he will bring about the End of the World. What's the translation here? No, he's from the end of the world. He's a time traveler. He came here [...]
"Written in the Coptic language, the ancient text tells of Pontius Pilate, the judge who authorized Jesus' crucifixion, having dinner with Jesus before his crucifixion and offering to sacrifice his own son in the place of Jesus. It also explains why Judas used a kiss, specifically, to betray Jesus—because Jesus had the ability to change shape, according to the text—and it puts the day of the arrest of Jesus on Tuesday evening rather than Thursday evening, something that contravenes the Easter timeline." —The shape-shifting Jesus and Pilate offering up his son for substitute crucifixion, that we can handle. But Jesus arrested on Tuesday evening instead of Thursday evening?
Did you want to pick up something with "stopping power" in a 9mm Glock? Get an Arizona state ID and you're gold—no background check, no recording of the sale, nothing. This Mike Bloomberg-sponsored investigation into "casual gun sellers" at trade shows in Arizona is actually really amazing—particularly when the gun sellers nod and smile while being notified the undercover buyer couldn't pass a background check. (Mike Bloomberg! Every time you want to start a mayoral recall campaign, he does something awesome.)
