It turns out that it is actually possible for you to die of boredom. Researchers say that people who experience ‘high levels’ of tedium are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to die from heart disease or stroke than those who are satisfied with their lives.- The plot thickens… remember how Scott Lee Cohen wanted people to talk to his ex-wife about a great a guy he is? Well his ex-girlfriend says that he is unfit for political office. Will he be able to find an “honorable” way out? What do you think his reason will be… I’m going with “in-grown toe nail”
- The unemployment rate dropped to 9.7% in January. Interestingly the economy also dumped 20,000 jobs. How is that possible you might ask? Enough people just gave up looking for work to drop it .3%. So does that actually count as good news?
- Del Phillips is one of those 9.7%. He’s been out of work for over a years. He’s gotten so desperate for work that he has taken to walking through Daley Plaza with a sandwich board. Would you got that far to get work, or would you be one of the .3% who gave up?
- Bad news for all of us, Andrew Young has handed the John Edwards sex tape over the FBI. Please TMZ, I know you want to, but for the love of all that is holy don’t publish that thing. Just don’t.
- More zero tolerance run amok: New York girl taken out of class in handcuffs for drawing on her desk.
- A kid started a Facebook group about how much his school sucks, and now he’s getting kicked out of the honors society. He says that he’s frustrated that he’s graduating from a “D school” with low academic standards, but the teachers who run the honor society decided that he should pay for that opinion.
- A school secretary decided that it was a good idea to duct tape the mouth and hands of a 6 year old student. The secretary was fired and sentenced to probation, but now the mom’s suing the school system for $500,000. Is firing the secretary enough or does the school owe them a little more since their kid was basically a hostage.
- Last week it was a 9 year old in China, now an 11 year old girl has given birth to a baby girl, this time here in the US. At least here in the States our kids wait until they hit double digits.
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Mon. Show Prep – Death By A Thousand Snores Edition
Fri. Show Prep – Uprooted Edition
More and more people are moving from places they’ve lived all their lives, and dealing with separation from their family because there just aren’t jobs where they live. Would you be willing to uproot yourself to find work? Have things gotten that bad?- Naperville has banned people from throwing candy during parades. They are worried that kids rushing for candy might get run over… I can see how that would be kind of a bummer on parade day. Wise precaution or just more Big Brother. Back in my day when we were run over by a parade float they just told us to walk it off.
- Scott Lee Cohen still says that he has no intention of dropping out of the race. He says that he wants his ex-girlfriend to talk about their little incident. What’s she going to say, “It was all in good fun”?
- Blago was re-indicted on corruption charges.
- Moment of Racial Insensitivity: In honor of Black History month, the NBC cafeteria served fried chicken, collard greens, and jalapeno cornbread.
- Proving that we still don’t quite roll over for everything China wants… yet, President Obama will meet with the Dalai Lama this month. So he’s got that going for him… which is nice.
- Obamamania is officially over. The Obama store at Union Station in Washington, DC has closed. You’d think the White House would really want those jobs to be saved or created.
- A teenager in New Zealand is auctioning off her virginity to pay for college. Books are almost as bad as tuition, she may have to sell naming rights to her first both child to pay for books. If you’re going to do something like that you could at least come up with an original idea, it seems like someone does this once a year.
- Awesome: A New York woman has been cited for using a mannequin to drive in the carpool lane.
- Health desk: A new study indicates brain activity in patients considered in a “vegetative state,” with evidence of awareness, intent, and, in one case, a wish to communicate. Terri Schiavo was unavailable for comment.
- Bad news for Miami: Experts are saying that the economic impact of the Super Bowl is overblown.
- Mullet of the day update: A 5 year old is being kept from school because he refuses to get a haircut. Party in the front, truancy in the back.
Thurs. Show Prep – Depressing Life Edition
A study claims that there’s a link between excessive Internet use and depression. Does that mean that people are depressed because they are spending so much time online, or is the excessive online time a symptom of their depressing lives?- I was probably at the tailing end of the generation that still passed actual notes. Now they are texting right in front of the teachers. Should they confiscate all phones? Maybe some sort of cell phone jammer on school property? Maybe the teachers should just have their cell numbers and send them texts that say “PAY ATTENTION!!!”
- Some people are turning to surgery to snip their dogs vocal chords to combat non-stop barking. If you’re so annoyed by the dog that you’re willing to have its vocal chords ripped out, maybe you shouldn’t have the dog.
- One new group is pushing to have the President spend more time answering face to face questions from Congress. As you may remember, John McCain made that a campaign pledge in 2008. Do you think that if they actually had to face eachother from time to time they would spend far less time accusing eachother of drowning puppies in their free time.
- Your tax dollars in action: The US Census Bureau has purchased a $2.5 million ad during the Super Bowl. Clearly our government is really taking this whole debt thing seriously.
- Senator-elect Scott Brown will be sworn in before 5pm Thursday.
- Colin Powell says that the military should repeal ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
- Jon Stewart will enter the no-spin zone tonight and tomorrow.
- New Jersey man fatally shoots his pet parrot after it interrupted his NASCAR viewing. Wait a minute this can’t be right, there was a shooting over a NASCAR race and it happened in New Jersey, not Mississippi? World’s fastest growing sport indeed.
- Nine-year-old Chinese girl gives birth. No, that’s not a typo.
- I’ll bet you thought that John Edwards couldn’t sink any lower as a human being… It turns out he actually hit his cancer-stricken wife while arguing over his infidelity.
Wed. Show Prep – Colorful Metaphor Edition
Sarah Palin is taking aim at the Obama administration. She’s calling for our old friend Rahm Emanuel to resign after he said the strategy of the Senate dems is “f—ing retarded” Obviously everyone knows that Emanuel curses like a sailor, but Palin thought that one was especially insensitive, for obvious reasons. On a side note Palin seriously has to hire a web consultant. Posting on Facebook just doesn’t seem proper for a former Governor & VP candidate. Am I being nit-picky?- Four Wisconsin women have avoided jail time for Krazy Gluing a man’s junk to his stomach. All they had to do was apologize to the judge. It seems to me they should have apologized to their victim. Once again our justice system has failed.
- My college degree may not be worth the paper its printed on. A new study suggests that a college degree will earn a person $279,893 extra over their lifetime. That’s quite a bit less than the $800,000 that most colleges claim that you’ll earn once you pick up your sheep skin. So is it worth it? Depending on what school you go to, that might be about what you pay in tuition for 4-5 years. (A UAH degree is probably worth even less now that there is no space program for all of the engineers to work in)
- Money Magazine has published their list of America’s biggest ripoffs. Some notables include text messages, college text books and movie popcorn.
- At least 65,000 flights over the last six years shouldn’t have flown because improper repairs made them unsafe. So you have to get a full body cavity search to get on the airplane, and then it turns out the airplane itself may fall apart before a terrorist could even do anything.
- According to TMZ, Conan O’Brien is paying his Tonight Show crew who did not receive severance from NBC out of his own pocket. I wonder if Jay Leno would do something like that or if he would just buy another car.
- Hillary Clinton may want to take her reset button to Asia. A sexually ambiguous Chinese diplomat (see pic) says that relations between China and the country they own have deteriorated under President Obama.
- Daily Kos has released a poll that says a majority of Republicans think that Obama is a socialist, wants the terrorists to win, and wasn’t born in the US. Really? Daily Kos released a poll that makes Republicans look like a bunch of morons. You can’t see me right now, but I’m making my shocked face.
- Speaking of morons, it’s been a while since we’ve heard from Harry Reid. He says that the GOP is a threat to national security.
- Health desk: A study indicates that as you get older, you need less sleep.
Mon. Show Prep – Big Words Edition
- Talking down to us… President Obama’s State of the Union Address had the 4th lowest reading level since FDR. Text of Obama’s Address has a readability score for an average 8th grader – two grades lower than George W. Bush’s Addresses and the historical average for modern presidents.
- Scott Brown wouldn’t rule out the idea of running for President in 2012. So, Republicans who railed against President Obama’s lack of experience, would you vote for Scott Brown if he ran in 2012?
- End of the World Update: Fresh off of President Obama’s dismantling of their manned spaceflight program, NASA is launching a mission to unravel the Sun’s threat to planet Earth. They are trying to understand things like massive solar storms like the one in 1859 that knocked out all telegraph systems in the entire Northern Hemisphere… if it happened now, all electronic devices in the effected hemisphere would be damaged beyond repair.
- The Justice Department says that it is considering an antitrust investigation of the BCS. Really? There’s actually nothing else for the Justice Department to do? If this is what they are spending their time on, maybe they should think about trimming their budget a bit.
- The TSA is investigating who used a white board at one of their locations in Florida to draw up a derogatory ‘Jeopardy’ board with racial and gay slurs. How stupid would you have to be to do something like that? The TSA is so worried about what people think of them that you’re absolutely going to get fired.
- The gay dating site ad for the Super Bowl got rejected by CBS. If you’re the person running that site you have to be pretty happy with the way things turned out… the site got all of the PR they wanted, and they actually won’t be spending the money to actually air it after all.
- Interesting: A study says that cell phone bans don’t reduce accident rates.
- Awesome: Actor Rip Torn Arrested for Allegedly Breaking Into Bank. If you can dodge a security camera, you can dodge a ball.
- Health desk: One study says that people in their 40s and 50s are in the most content period of their lives. So apparently the mid-life crisis is a myth, and adults just really like to have an excuse to buy a sports car.
Fri. Show Prep – Robotic Rodent Edition
PETA is once again targeting one of our most cherished traditions here in America. They say Groundhog Day is cruel and Punxsutawney Phil should be replaced by a robot groundhog. PETA’s full of it. a) Punxsutawney Phil is treated so well that he’s the envy of all groundhogs. b) It is a scientific fact that robot groundhog shadows are not accurate at predicting the length of winter.- Just because the Tim Tebow pro-life ad hasn’t gotten enough attention, now CBS is considering running an ad for a gay dating site during the Super Bowl. This is a major paradigm shift folks, no nobody is actually going to want to watch the commercials anymore.
- This might hurt Drew Peterson a little bit: A co-worker testified has that Drew Peterson offered him $25,000 to kill his third wife. If memory serves, the 4th wife is the one that’s currently missing, right?
- Chicago’s hostage crisis is finally over. Monique Davis says she’ll give back the $25,000 statue that mysteriously disappeared from Chicago State University and ended up in her office.
- Some of the people who looked like they were falling asleep while President Obama was going on an on for 69 minutes may have actually been looking at their BlackBerrys. The thumbs of Congress were busy Twittering through the entire speech.
- Ford made a $2.7 billion profit in 2009. Ford in case you don’t remember was the one auto company that didn’t take any bailout money.
- Jay Leno says that we should actually feel sorry for him. Apparently he never wanted to leave the Tonight Show to begin with.
- Health desk: A new study suggests that running barefoot can actually be better for your feet than running with shoes. No, I’m not going to run the Chicago marathon barefoot.
About Me
Keith Conrad
Radio producer, internet enthusiast, all around nice guy. Keith can talk your ear off on everything from NASA's latest plans to what the Cubs need to do to win the World Series.