Lincoln is the place to live

Move... middle... young man, apparently Lincoln, Nebraska is the city with the highest well-being index in America. According to Gallup poll, which factors in life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors, work environment, and access to basic necessities, you'd better become a Cornhusker fan.

Now Nebraska has never struck me as a destination, and I think Casey would agree with me. Looking at photos of downtown Lincoln, it looks like a wonderful Spokane clone (and slightly bigger, so maybe Spokane is a Lincoln-clone) and its next to... absolutely nothing! (It is the great plains, after all.)

Here are the highest well-being cities in America... 
Lincoln, NE | 72.8
Boulder, CO | 72.7
Burlington-South Burlington, VT | 72.4
Provo-Orem, UT | 71.7
Fort Collins-Loveland, CO | 71.6
Barnstable Town, MA | 71.5
Honolulu, HI | 71.5
Ann Arbor, MI | 71.4
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD | 71.3
San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA | 71.2

Notice that no city from Washington made the list, but that's alright, we're full of angst and make a lot of alternative rock music.

(Get Your Cornhuskers Beer Glasses For "Well-Being" Here.)

Groundhog getting sued

Punxsutawney Phil makes he prediction everyday for the weird American Holiday "Groundhog Day." However he was a bit wrong this year and failed to predict a massive snowstorm that crippled the region. Naturally some people aren't happy about his failed forecast.

Phil did not see his shadow February 2, signaling spring's imminent arrival. Six days later, Winter Storm Nemo dumped 30 inches of snow on New England.

 Six weeks later, temperatures across the Northern U.S. remain frigid. Birds chirping? Flowers blooming? No sign of those anywhere. As a result, (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek Butler County, Oh., prosecutors are demanding justice, claiming Phil deliberately misled the American people. 

They say such a felony should be punished by death. Butler County's chief prosecutor filed an official brief about this, lambasting the rodent for actions "against the peace and dignity of the state of Ohio." 

"Punxsutawney Phil did purposely, and with prior calculation and design, cause the people to believe that spring would come early," wrote Mike Gmoser.

I wonder if the Easter Bunny is liable is somebody gets sick from eating all their candy?

(To get the Bill Murray Classic, click here.)

Man tries to wear spaghetti strainer in driver's license photo

There are some pretty weird religions out there and the most bizarre is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. One follower caused quite the commotion when he wanted to wear a spaghetti strainer for his driver's license photo. The New Jersey DMV he was at refused and called the cops when he protested.

 25-year-old Aaron Williams, a practitioner of the mostly satirical anti-creationism "religion" of Pastafarianism, says he was told that motor vehicle policy prohibited the wearing of head coverings in license photos excepting those worn for religious reasons.

 "I take it as seriously as anybody else when it comes to religious beliefs," he later told NJ.com. Speaking with GallowayPatch, Williams added: "As a Pastafarian, I believe the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. The strainer is a showing of my devoutness to the religion."

Ummm... okay?

(You can buy the gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster here.)

I guess he was shy?

If you want to become a flasher but don't think your body stacks up, maybe try an association for the blind event first.

 NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP — A man exposed himself to a woman inside the Bucks County Association for the Blind. Newtown Township police said the incident occurred about 2 p.m. Friday inside the bookstore at the offices at 400 Freedom Drive.

And no it wasn't Casey.

It's like Civil War reenactors but way cooler

Rome is a pretty cool place. They have the Vatican where Tom Hanks hangs out. It was the city where the Roman Empire was ran (I mean can Seattle say they ran nearly all the entire known world with their grunge music?) and Hillary Duff even made a movie there. The other thing that makes it cool? When people protest there, apparently they dress like centurions. Yep, Roman Centurions. Bad ass.

The policemen arrived at the ancient amphitheatre to enforce an eviction notice to the men, who normally ask tourists for money in exchange for a photograph with them.

Italy's culture ministry said the men had no permits and often harassed and stalked tourists in addition for asking for exorbitant amounts of money.

Clashes with police broke out when city police arrived to remove two centurions who had occupied part of an arcade.

Some 25 centurions tried to stop the police, but during the scuffles, one of the protesters fell to his feet and was slightly injured.

Some onlookers joined in the protest in support of the centurions, saying: "Leave them alone. We are all centurions".

Italy sounds like every the worst place ever or the best. I can't decide yet.

Pic-nic pants!

Are you ever walking around wishing you could have a picnic? Your dreams have been answered with the picnic pants!

Pants with a built-in picnic table. Designed in Italy, so they must be fashionable.

I already bought a pair for Casey, who has always wanted to have a picnic whenever he wanted.

Get Naked!

What do you do when you get caught smoking? Strip. 

A woman caught smoking in a nonsmoking area of Denver International Airport on Tuesday responded by putting out her cigarette and taking off her clothes.

Around 8:45 a.m., after being asked to extinguish her cigarette, the woman stripped naked in the B Concourse, TMZ reported.

"The woman told officers that she'd had no sleep the night before," Raquel Lopez, spokesperson for the Denver Police Department, told msnbc.com. The woman was taken in for a medical evaluation. "No one was arrested, no one was hurt and no report was filed," Lopez said.

Police and paramedics responded and "the woman was ultimately transported to a local hospital," said Laura Coale, Denver International's director of media relations.

I'm glad paramedics and police were brought in. When there's a naked woman in the airport, you have to bring in as many response team people as possible to see it.

Weird News Story: French president doesn't like cheese

The French are a proud nation that have surrendered in almost every single major war since 1900. They won't stand for their president not eating cheese. I wish I was kidding but this is an actual story.

It’s a matter of (spurious) debate if France’s president is a “surrender monkey,” but one thing seems clear: He is no longer cheese-eating. Nicolas Sarkozy decided to stop savoring "le fromage" after meals, the AFP reported in an article on the kitchens at the presidential Elysee Palace.

His chef said Sarkozy was trying to eat healthily, preferring "light, balanced meals and poultry to red meat," AFP added.

The term “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” was first used on "The Simpsons" and was popularized by National Review journalist Jonah Goldberg, who claimed he had made it “an accepted term in official diplomatic channels around the globe.”

 What would the American equivalent be? If our President didn't eat McDonalds and was healthy? Oh wait we have that in Obama. I guess we're wishing for the days of Dick Cheney and his 80 heart attacks. Or maybe a better comparison would be if our president said he didn't like freedom. Instead of freedom, the French like their cheese.

 The variety and flavor of cheeses to be found across France is a matter of national and regional pride, a subject that can fire considerable passion.

As the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper noted, Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French forces during the Second World War and later president, once declared, “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?”

It remains to be seen if a non-cheese-eating leader is acceptable to the French electorate, who will decide whether Sarkozy remains in the Elysee in presidential elections in just three weeks’ time.

 I'm glad that a person's diet is determining global politics.

Man in banana costume arrested

Today off the Seattle Times blotter:

Clallam County sheriff's deputies on Tuesday arrested a man dressed in a child's banana costume after he allegedly exposed himself to a woman at a Port Angeles restaurant.

Pieper said Kohnert didn't offer much of an explanation for the yellow banana costume. "All we know is he was drinking earlier in the day, but he didn't really have a reason for the costume," Pieper told the Daily News.

All I can say is. What. The. Heck? Maybe the guy just thought it was peanut butter jelly time.

Man gets pierced by steel rod, survives

This... is what I would classify as a "bad day."

This is from the Austria Times (I found it from the Tosh.O website).

Carpenter Lu Jiang, 43, is recovering after surviving this incredible accident where his body was pierced from top to bottom by a solid steel rod. He told docs he had been working on the second floor of a new building at Sichuan in South East China when he had slipped and fallen onto the steel bar protruding from a concrete slab. It had pierced his body just below the waist and came out on the other side of his body by his neck.

He said: "I hit the ground pretty hard but my first thought was 'God I am still alive'. I could see my hands and my feet and nothing seemed to be broken but then I found I couldn't move and I thought my back was broken. It was then that I felt a steel rod coming out of my back - and then realised it had gone in through the bottom of my body. "

I was terrified - everyone was looking at me and some had covered their faces in horror - I was pinned like that for more than an hour until emergency services could cut me free."

Lu is the luckiest son of a gun on earth or unluckiest... I really can't decide. And now, I'm going to go vomit.

3D movie to be made about Michael Jackson's final days

Are they hoping to attract more kids to this movie or something. Apparently even after his death, circumstances around Michael Jackson continue to be weird.

Michael Jackson will appear in cinemas in 3D this autumn after Sony Pictures was given permission by a judge in Los Angeles to make a film from the footage of the singer rehearsing for his planned This Is It concert series at the O2 in London.

The $60 million movie, which is expected to be directed by Kenny Ortega, will be released in cinemas on October 30 in the United States. It is not clear when it will be released in Britain.

“[The film] will show Michael as one of the greatest entertainers in the world and one of the industry’s most creative minds,” said Ortega, the director of High School Musical, who was Jackson’s “creative partner” on the scheduled O2 concerts.

Are they hoping to get more definition out of his nose or something? Mark this down as something I will for sure not be watching when it is released.

Apparently Facebook thinks I like skanky Christians

Imagine you're on Facebook. Now take a look to the right of this post. Is there something wrong with that ad?

I'm going to venture a guess that Facebook is feeling the pinch of the economy and is now filling lost ad revenue with advertising from busty Christians with apparently more than God on the mind.

Now I wonder if I put my religion to Muslim if I would find equally flirty females... only this time with their faces covered. Ah the Internet, being offensive since some guy figured out how to put chicken porn online.