The seven billion huddled residents of this shimmering, twinkling, spinning orb undoubtedly performed millions of kind acts and noble deeds over the past week. The hungry were fed, the naked were clothed, and numberless innocently squeaking kittens were rescued from trees.

But unless the benefactor is a politician or an entertainer, such uplifting tales of selfless largesse rarely make headlines. People would rather read about what’s rotten. Left unattended and undisciplined, most souls fly straight toward the gutter. The media industry’s motto is “If it bleeds, it leads”—and if it doesn’t, nobody reads.

The following ten stories all made the news over the past week. As if stabbing the life from our lungs with an icepick, they all punctured holes through our faith in humanity.

FOUR OBESE TWENTY-SOMETHING NEBRASKANS CHARGED WITH FORCING TWO BOYS TO SLEEP IN WIRE DOG CAGES
Police in North Platte, NE, arrested a quartet of inexcusably corpulent young adults after a neighbor complained to authorities of squalid conditions at their trailer home. Upon investigating, a police lieutenant said he found “trash, dirty clothing, food, and animal feces and urine” throughout the rickety abode. He also found two boys, 3 and 5, sleeping on a ratty mattress inside “a 30-by-42-inch wire dog kennel” that had been wired shut to prevent their escape. The boys’ mother,  Ashly Clark, tried explaining it was the only way to keep her sallow young pups from crawling out the trailer window at night. At least the boys showed the good judgment to repeatedly attempt escaping their domicile.

ZIMBABWE MAN CLAIMS PROSTITUTE TRANSFORMED INTO A DONKEY OVERNIGHT
At 4 AM last Sunday morning when police in Zimbabwe chanced upon 28-year-old Sunday Moyo “performing a sex act on a donkey” he’d tied by the neck to a tree in his yard, he claimed that what appeared to the naked eye to have been born a donkey was, verily, a human prostitute he’d hired for $20 at a club the night before. At some point during their wanton marathon of uninhibited consortium, the woman willfully transmogrified into a domestic ass—or at least that’s how Mr. Moyo recalls it. On Monday, Sunday told a judge, “I only came to know that I was being intimate with a donkey when I got arrested.” He also says he suspects he made the same transformation himself. “I think I am also a donkey. I do not know what happened when I left the bar, but I am seriously in love with (the) donkey,” he told the judge. Moyo’s alibi was not accepted at face value, and the court ordered a psychiatric examination for him.

MAN FIREBOMBS GEORGIA TACO BELL FOR NOT PUTTING ENOUGH MEAT IN HIS CHALUPAS
Early Sunday morning after purchasing a pair of extra-large chalupas from a Taco Bell in Albany, GA, a man described in a police report as having “a voice tone that made [the restaurant’s female manager] believe that he was of the Caucasian descent” phoned to complain that his chalupas had contained an unforgivably meager measure of meat. After the manager explained that the restaurant was closing and they would therefore be unable to make restitution, the irate patron reportedly told her, “You must be one of them niggers up there. That’s all right, I’ll just come and redecorate the place.” His redecoration consisted of lobbing a “melting plastic bottle with a liquid substance” redolent of gasoline at the drive-thru window, causing a small fire. The meat-hungry firebomber’s identity is still unknown.

JUDGE DENIED PENSION AFTER USING PENIS PUMP WHILE ON THE BENCH
The Oklahoma Supreme Court denied former Sooner State judge Donald Thompson his retirement benefits due to his 2006 felony conviction for repeatedly using a penis pump on his naughty bits while hearing testimony in open court. Thompson will continue receiving a pension for his 1974-80 tour of duty as a state legislator, during which, to our knowledge, he never once got caught using a penis pump.