You Missed It: Extra sausage edition

Slowest. Week. Ever. When you come back from vacation, the first week back seems to take a while. Then you’ve got the week after Thanksgiving, where just about the whole country is coming off of a four-day weekend. There’s no easy way to recover from a binge like that. Let’s try to cap off this marathon of a week with something smarmy and meaningless, shall we? If you were busy asking your iPhone for an abortion clinic this week, odds are you missed it.

Cain train derails
Herman Cain was once the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary race. Then people started digging into his background. However, the biggest allegation came this week, when he preempted a woman’s announcement, who herself was planning on preempting a newspaper exposé on an alleged 13-year affair. Cain said the accusations, which hadn’t been made yet, were false, and has since denied a sexual relationship or financial support for the woman. Now he’s headed home to talk with his wife about the future of the campaign. Any guesses?

NBA for the holidays
The NBA owners and players finally reached an agreement this week, ending a lockout that has already cut deep into the season. Under the new deal, the shortened season will get going later this month, but there’s a lot to do before then. Diehard NBA fans would have been overjoyed at the news, but they’re too busy watching football.

No wonder they’re so productive at work
A recent study found that 61% of unmarried Japanese men between the ages of 18 and 34 do not have a girlfriend, a new record. About 50% of unmarried Japanese women of the same age group do not have a boyfriend, also a record high. In other news, Japan sounds like my circle of friends in high school.

Bolon Yokte is on the guest list

If you were planning your New Year’s Eve party around not being accountable for anything the next day, then Mayan experts have bad news for you: the Mayan calendar does not predict the end of the world.

According to university professors and Mexican national historians, the calendar does not the indicate the end of all time, just the end of the holy 13th baktun, “baktuns” being periods of 394 years. And, yes, Bolon Yokte, a Mayan god associated with war and creation, is scheduled to return, but he turns up every 13 baktuns like Billy Crystal at the Oscars. (And, as much as we’d like it, Billy Crystal’s return does not herald the end of the Academy Awards.)

But, if you still want to party like it’s 1999 and our computers are going to kill us all … fine, go ahead. Just trust us when we say, “Wear a rubber. Just to be safe.”

Making it rain all over the highway

Just when we thought we might be out of the recession, it turns out the recession wasn’t over after all. Wasn’t that just the pits? Well, it’s always nice to see charity in any form. Especially the people of Pennsylvania.

See, when a lot of money comes blowing your way, right of nowhere, you don’t question it. After all, why not? It’s free money!

Except, maybe not so much. Maybe that magical mystery money wasn’t supposed to be found on the road. Maybe its appearance wasn’t an act of charity, but an act of whoops. Maybe that 200, 000 dollars actually belongs to other people. Maybe you should come forward and hand over any money you find to the local authorities.

Or, blow it on a realistic Yoda costume. We don’t care. We’ve got no dogs in this fight.

Spam of the dead

Paula Chase died on Oct. 1, 2009–or did she?

According to Chase’s daughter, Cassie Woods, of Stafford, Virginia, Chase keeps spamming her several times a week. We can imagine that it is quite distressing receiving e-mail from your mother years after she was supposed to have died.

So what happened? It seems rather obvious, Chase did in fact die, but she didn’t stay dead. She has since begun walking again as a zombie, and subsequently learned about some great deals on pills that are said to increase the size of a man’s genitals, even if they might not exactly have FDA approval. All zombie Chase wants to do is share these great deals, and to pass along correspondence from Nigeria that she has won their country’s lottery.