Mark "Chopper" Read

The Week’s Most Quirky, Jerky, and Twerky Headlines

CONGRESS: LESS POPULAR THAN HEMORRHOIDS
It has been two weeks since the inaction of an obstinately squabbling Congress led to the current partial government shutdown. This is to be expected, as 60% of the “authentic psychics” at Hollywood Psychics, who specialize in “astrology, horoscopes, numerology, tarot cards, clairvoyant readings, and many other psychic disciplines,” predicted the shutdown would last at least two weeks. Although psychic Serena alleges that “President Obama’s astro chart is getting seriously beat up,” nearly two-thirds of the psychics predicted that Congress will eventually raise the debt ceiling.

A recent Public Policy Polling survey claims that Congress is less popular with the American public than witches, jury duty, and hemorrhoids. Congress still fared better in the poll than Anthony Weiner, Vladimir Putin, Charles Manson, Honey Boo Boo, and the tongue-wagging professional slut known as Miley Cyrus.

MILEY CYRUS ACCUSED OF BIAS AGAINST MIDGETS AND JEWS
Speaking of Ms. Cyrus, one of her “back-up dancing bears” during her lurid performance at the VMAs in August is a “little person””€”technically a dwarf, but the word “midget” is funnier”€”who now claims to have been psychologically scarred by the experience. Little Hollis Jane writes the following in her little blog:

I was a bear in Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance and it was my first time doing anything like that…anything where I was being used because of my height, not because of my talent….I was being stared and laughed at for all of the wrong reasons. I was being looked at as a prop…as something less than human….For the first time I felt truly ashamed of being a little person….It felt like society still saw us as a joke, despite the fact there is literally nothing different about me other than the fact I am small.

Perhaps it never occurred to Ms. Jane that her height is, in fact, the sum total of her “talent.”

Looking up rather than down, Ms. Cyrus took a brief and much-needed respite from twerking to imply that old Jewish men run the music industry:

It’s always weird when things are targeted for young people, yet they’re driven by people that are like 40 years too old. It can’t be like this 70-year-old Jewish man that doesn’t leave his desk all day, telling me what the clubs want to hear.

CATHOLIC TYPO, FRENCH EXORCISM, REJECTED EUCHARIST HAMBURGER DONATION, AND THE TEXAS TATTOOED-JESUS BILLBOARD
Vatican authorities have egg on their faces after releasing a commemorative papal medal that misspells the name of Jesus. Instead of “IESVS””€”which is the proper Latin rendering”€”the coins referred to Christianity’s top gun as “LESVS.” The medals were quickly recalled.

Four alleged Seventh Day Adventists “of French Caribbean origin” were found guilty of kidnapping in Paris for their involvement in a weeklong 2011 attempted exorcism in which a Cameroonian teen was bound to a mattress, beaten, and fed only water and salad oil. The court was not impressed by the defendants’ claim that the teen had consented to the exorcism.

A Chicago burger joint attracted unfavorable attention two weeks ago by featuring a designer hamburger complete with an unconsecrated Eucharist. In an apparent ploy to counteract the negative hype, the restaurant’s owners attempted to donate $1,500 to Catholic Charities of Chicago, which demurred and issued a stern statement that they would not accept one drop of blood money squeezed from “a burger that disrespects…the faith of all Christians.”

A Texas billboard featuring the Prince of Peace wearing tattoos with words such as “Outcast,” “Jealous,” and “Addicted” stirred up some tumbleweeds of outrage in the West Lubbock area until curators of the website jesustattoo.org explained that their intention was not to defame Christ, but rather to depict how he takes our sins upon himself in the metaphorical form of tattoos…or something.

MURDER AND MICROBES IN THE NFL
The Philadelphia Eagles squared off with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday despite the fact that three of the Bucs’ members had been diagnosed with the often-fatal MRSA bacterium. According to an unnamed source reported by USA Today, “there was believed to be more than one type of infectious disease present in the Bucs’ locker room,” although the disease, too, remains unnamed.

Minnesota Vikings star Adrian Peterson also played on Sunday despite the fact that his two-year-old son died on Friday from injuries sustained as a result of an alleged beating at the hands of the child’s mother’s boyfriend, who, despite the fact that the toddler is only two, is a different person from Peterson entirely.

RACE: THE $10,000 N-WORD
A report alleges that police dogs at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department have been biting blacks and Latinos in increasing numbers since 2004. In the first six months of 2013, there was not a single Caucasian victim bitten by these vicious and often quite vindictive law-enforcement canines. (Rumor has it that in the 1980s, LAPD officers often referred to black youths as “dog biscuits.”) The new report recalls a 2004 case in western Pennsylvania where a police dog named Dolpho was accused of discriminating against black children.