Nobel Peace Prize winner, Oscar Award winner and former vice president Al Gore announced today that the climate change crisis requires more ambitious measures than humans alone can muster.  The text of Mr. Gore's remarks appears below:

"Today we expand our climate change crusade to include the after life.  I call on Satan to convert Hell to eco-friendly damnation practices.  With all the fire, brimstone and sulphur emissions, Hell is a far larger polluter than any surface polluter, even the oil company.  All of Hell's greenhouse gases and other pollutants make their way up through the earth's crust and escape through volcano craters.  There is no reason that Hell should have the world's largest carbon footprint, because there are so many ways to torment souls for eternity without such needless pollution.  I implore Satan to appoint a team of demons to develop green, sustainable torture techniques (perhaps he could send observers to Guantanamo for helpful hints).  Hell can and must become an earth-friendly land of eternal torture or earth will become as hot as Hell is today."

Satan did not immediately return repeated phone call  seeking his comments on Mr. Gore's speech.  However, a demon familiar with Satan's initial reaction to Mr. Gore's speech stated, upon condition of anonymity that the Prince of Lies considered Mr. Gore's comments particularly incendiary in light of the recycling program Satan recently implemented.  To with, souls must now reduce their torture carbon footprint to zero by generating carbon credits as they are prodded organically grown pointed bamboo sticks.

Charlton Heston’s family issued a statement today announcing the Hollywood legend’s death from advanced Alzheimer’s Disease.  Right before he died he reportedly mumbled some nonsense about a planet where apes evolved from men that puzzled the family members gathered by his bedside.

Later at the funeral home, an unnamed mortician finally removed Heston’s gun from his cold, dead hand.

Funeral plans will be announced in the coming days.

In the days following the release of the controversial Mitchell Report, a second steroid scandal erupted tainting one of the most important competitions of all time.  New evidence strongly suggests that one of  the participants in the fabled race between the tortoise and the hare used performance enhancing drugs.

The tortoise has long thought to have pulled out his unlikely victory over the hare by his "slow and steady" approach to the race, but new evidence suggests that he was actually blood doping, taking designer steroids and tortoise growth hormone.  The tortoise's trainer has testified before a grand jury investigating steroid use in interspecies sports competitions that he injected the tortoise under the shell numerous with numerous performance enhancing drugs in the months before the race.  Prosecutors also showed the grand jury how radically the tortoise's shell grew during this six month period.

The tortoise has vigorously denied that he took performance enhancing substances.  He insists that his unexpected success merely reflects his hard training and slow and steady strategy.  Although he acknowledges that he received numerous injections from his training, he claims the trainer told him they were vitamin shots and other legal substances.

The hare has announced that although he has always vaguely suspected that he was cheated, now with overwhelming evidence of foul play, he has demanded to be declared the winner of the race by disqualification.  Further, he wants a large asterisk carved into the back of the tortoise's shell to demonstrate that his performance was tainted.

Spouse abusers around the world are mourning the passing of Ike Turner today.  Mr. Turner served as an inspiration millions of people who violently abuse their mates, and he will be sorely missed by them.  For many in the general public, Mr. Turner was the face and ambassador of spousal abuse as described in disturbing detail in ex-wife Tina Turner's autobiography.

To mark Mr. Turner's passing, today abusers are wearing black "wife-beater" undershirts.  As a further tribute to Mr. Turner, all pimp hands will be only half-raised for the next week.

Mr. Turner's family has requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to charities that promote domestic violence.

As the sex scandal that has rocked the prestigious wizard academy continues to unfold, Dumbledore, its beleaguered headmaster, announced today that he has decided to cancel the school's quiddich team's remaining season while the school investigates the allegations of rape leveled against three team members earlier this week. New details have also emerged about the alleged rape in question.

Apparently, the accuser is a muggle who went to the house where six of the team members live off-campus to perform a strip tease routine during a team party. According to the alleged victim, three of the teammates forced her into the upstairs bathroom after joking about penetrating her with the handle of a flying broom.

Inside the bathroom, she claims, one of the young wizards rendered her helpless by casting a date rape spell on her with the incantation "carnus violatum." The three then took turns having sex with her. The alleged victim was later found in a convenience store parking in a disheveled, disoriented state. When she claimed she'd been raped the police put her on one of their squad brooms and flew her to a nearby hospital where she was treated and released.

The three accused wizards are free on bail but have had their wands confiscated by the authorities. Prosecutor Michael Nifong will be handling the case in spite of allegations that he conjured up evidence previously in a similar case.

General Mills issued a press release this morning before the stock markets opened announcing the termination of its long-time spokesperson for its Green Giant brand of canned vegetables, the Jolly Green Giant. The Jolly Green Giant has been embattled in recent weeks as feminist groups have steadily increased the pressure on General Mills to terminate the Giant for his insensitive and politically incorrect laugh. Megan Flynn, a spokesperson for the National Organization for Women, stated, "Calling it your laugh does not make it alright to bellow 'Ho! Ho! Ho!' over and over again. Using the term to sell canned vegetables is a reprehensible, chauvinistic practice that has to end if gender equality is to be achieved in our society."

The press release quotes, Heywood Jablomi, the company's Chief Communications Officer, as follows, "General Mills is committed to a zero tolerance policy on bigoted, insensitive speech on a company-wide basis. Our once beloved spokesperson, the Jolly Green Giant, has crossed that line for too long. Although the Giant has apologized--and even though we are confident of his sincerity--we, as an organization, have decided it is best for all concerned if we sever our relationship with the Giant effective immediately. That said, we wish the Giant well in all his future endeavors. Sprout will be our interim spokesperson until we can find a permanent replacement for the Giant."

As Mr. Jablomi noted, the Giant has apologized for what he characterized as his "unfortunate laugh" and has claimed that he only wanted to demonstrate the pleasure he takes in his work. His laugh, he says, was never meant to "imply that women who buy our canned green beans and corn niblets were sexually promiscuous , and I give everyone who has been offended by my commercials my sincere apologies."

When asked whether she was satisfied with the apology, Ms. Flynn responded, "Too little, too late. Perhaps if he apologized when this issue first came up, we might have been satisfied; however, the Giant did not offer his apology until supermarkets were removing Green Giant items from their shelves in response to the growing public outcry over this issue that he spoke up."

This is a major victory for feminist groups who were recently reeling from the news that disgraced shock jock Don Imus was returning to the radio wave after feminist pressure lead to his ouster last spring for insensitive comments about a women's college basketball team. "This is a major victory for us, and we'd like to keep pressuring public figures who make insensitive comments. Our next target who happens to have a very similarly insensitive laugh is Santa Claus whose 'Ho! Ho! Ho!" laugh is particularly disturbing because of his overwhelming popularity with children. He represents a particular challenge for our organization because he is self-employed. We can't pressure his employer to terminate him, so we've really thought 'outside the box' on this project. We've decided that we are going to pressure the Keebler Elves to hire away all of Santa's toy making elves to expand their cookie making operations. Without sufficient elves to operate his toy shop, we feel confident that Mr. Claus be forced to apologize for his insensitive laugh and promise to express jolly-ness in a more politically correct manner."

Mr. Claus did not immediately return telephone calls seeking his comments.

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I wrote a version of this a few months ago but it was too long after the Imus scandal to be relevant, but now that he has returned to work, I thought it would be topical. A New York Times article stating that an Australian group is campaigning to get Santa's laugh changed to "Ha! Ha! Ha!"--I'm not making this up--convinced me to dust it off. I didn't know terms like "Ho" were a big problem Down Under. Aussie thugs? Anyway, I chuckle to myself about the idea that networks would have to re-dub all those old clay-mation Christmas specials with Ha! Ha! Ha! Good times all around. Here is a link to the New York Times piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/nyregion/25towns.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

So I was at my favorite bar the other day and my friends Duffy, Walsh and I were discussing the old days when Saturday Night Live was funny.  I brought up the Nic Cage skit where Nic and his pregnant wife are trying to decide on a name for the little boy in her belly.  Everytime the wife suggests a name Nic shoots it down saying that kids will make fun of him over his name.  He even shoots down Mike and other common names.   The wife asks him repeatedly if he was teased as a little kid and Nic vehemently denies it.  Finally, Rob Schneider comes to the door as a Fedex guy and announces that he has a package for Asswipe Johnson and Nic yells that his name is pronounced "Azzweepay."

The bartender comes over and tells the following story:

Her mother is an intake nurse at a clinic in New Jersey.  Patients sign in and she calls their name in order.  She then asks them about their medical histories, etc.

One day she reads down the list and thinks that one of her coworkers is playing a prank on her. She can't believe the name is real.  She counts the people in the waiting room and sure enough, the number of names match the number of people so the name couldn't be extra.

Cautiously she says, "Shithead?"  No one responds.

A little louder she repeats "Shithead."

After she repeats it a third time, a you woman come up to her scowling and tells her that the name is pronounced "Shi-THEED."

Who would name their kid that?

Speaking for men everywhere who love boobs, I must protest the gross neglect the breast implant industry has committed. All you do is crank out bags filled with saline or silicone in various sizes and distribute them to women who want to improve their racks.

Where is the innovative spark? Where is the spirit of relentless improvement? Don't guys work at your companies and why aren't they thinking outside the box? When did such stunning complacency set in?

Here is what I mean: the technology for the improvement I'm about to describe has been available for 20 years or so, but no one appears to have thought of this yet. Wake up implant manufacturers!

Go ahead and call up Reebok and work out an agreement to license their Reebok Pump technology and adapt it to your implants. You will create adjustable implants that women and their sex partners can inflate or deflate to their preferred sizes. Every woman can let her lovers customize her chest. What could be better?

Now, I know the objection will be that pumping in air won't feel right. I agree, and that's why I propose pumping silicone in and out. But where to keep the excess silicone when it is not inside the implants? I've thought of that too--remove one of the woman's kidneys and place a sack of silicone connected to the implants by a small plastic tube. Removing a kidney may seem extreme, but women do plenty of grotesque things to improve their appearance. For example, models remove ribs so they'll be more slender; women stuff bags of silicone into their torsos already and undergo all manner of painful surgical procedures. Besides, a second kidney is just plain redundant.

I'd also like to point out that this new procedure would have the happy effect of greatly increasing the number of kidneys available for transplant. Women would feel they were doing the humanitarian thing by getting their implants instead of merely serving their vanity.

Now of course, women will then demand that men in turn have adjustable penile implants with the pump technology. Well, turnabout is fair play.