News Tidbits to Make Fiction Writers Commit Suicide

Lots of news tidbits in the past week or so proved the adage that truth is stranger than fiction. And if you want to write a novel about weirdness, it's hopeless. You can't outdo reality.

One well publicized case Friday was the guy who held a hostage in a Pittsburgh building and would only negotiate with cops, or talk to anyone, via Facebook.

Limbaugh has interesting new theories on
human sexuality

What, did he have to "friend" the chief hostage negotiator? Hit "like" when the cops didn't storm the building right away? Instagram smiling pictures of himself and his hostages?

Then there was a woman in Texas who was arrested for child endangerment for the high crime of letting her kids play outside. A neighbor apparently called police because she didn't see anyone watching the kids, but the mother was indeed out there, sitting on a lawn chair and keeping an eye on things.

But don't you know nowadays if you're a parent you're supposed to hover like a helicopter inches from your kids at all times. They are not to make up their own games, use their own imagination, make decisions for themselves or have the temerity to wander more than one foot away. Independent thinking is for losers! You must control and make the decisions on what the kids do at ALL TIMES.

The woman spent 18 hours in jail for her "crime." Now, in a terribly unsurprising development, she's suing.

If she wins, maybe she can hook up with billionaire Richard Branson. Branson wants to colonize Mars within two decades, according to CBS. It will probably be expensive to live there, so winning a lawsuit might help.

I dunno. I'm not sure Mars is that attractive. The pictures coming from Curiosity, that robot we sent to Mars to study the plante are lovely, in their own way. But it seems awfully dusty and cold up there. No trees, either, which is a bummer. And I like playing with perennials in my garden, and I don't know what frost zone Mars is in.  So I'll skip that, I guess.

This looks like a nice place to live, right? Richard Branson
wants to colonize Mars

On the other hand, moving to Mars would probably get me away from Rush Limbaugh, who came up with one of his, uh, best theories in the past week. He says men's penis size has on average gotten smaller in the past few decades and his dreaded "feminazis" are to blame. I'm not sure how, considering researchers blame the problem on obesity, smoking, stress and environmental pollutants. But if Limbaugh says it's so, it is, right?

Of course, maybe he was referring to just his own dick, which really is TMI, even if his dick is much less than too much.

There's an upside, so to speak, regarding Limbaugh's newfound expertise on all things penile. As The Frisky notes, "rush limbaugh small penis" is going to be a delightful Google search for the forseeable future.

A man in New York is thankful that the small dicked but otherwise hefty Limbaugh was not on the futon mattress that fell 30 stories and landed on him.

The college student was knocked unconscious, but recovered and suffered no serious injuries. And luckily, there was a handy futon mattress right there, for passersby to put the guy on to recover at the scene while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

Since there's apparently so many extra futons down there in New York, maybe Branson can use them to take to Mars for his settlement up there. Just a thought.