My But That's Strange

This is what is great about Yahoo news: You can find out about George Bush's new Supreme Court nominee, the pending spawn of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and this:
"A 13-foot Burmese python recently burst after it apparently tried to swallow a live, six-foot alligator whole, authorities said."
There was a photograph, but the picture just couldn't touch the mental image I made with just that little bit of a story. It put me immediately in mind of any number of titanic struggles from my youth: Superman versus Spiderman, King Kong versus Godzilla, The Beatles versus The Monkees, Hot Wheels versus Johnny Lightning. It must have been an epic battle, leaving both predator and prey, alas in the past tense.
The article was disguised as biologists' concern for the introduction of non-native species into the Everglades, but it was really just a chance to feed our inner twelve-year-old. "Awesome!" I think sums up the reaction pretty nicely.
My mind races again to other juvenile grotesqueries: the exploding whale, the guy who managed to get a nail through his skull with a nail gun and LIVED! It's like getting the Weekly World News in Quicktime. Yahoo has a whole section for such things - called (those creative geniuses) "Odd News." Today there is also a link to a story about a Swedish hunter knocked unconscious by a goose that he had just shot. Another item details a fight between two six-year-olds over a pacifier. Oddly enough, the story wasn't about why any six year old boy would still be using a pacifier, but instead it recounted the police report that was created as a result of the altercation.
Pizzas that cost $138 (Canadian), Irish policemen that are selling their uniforms for theatrical costumes, and a woman who says that she owes her life to skipping her daily viewing of Oprah - right where the gigantic boulder crashed through the wall of her house! Why read the headlines anymore at all? This is where the real action is. See you in the funny papers - oddly enough.