Today in the news

Three different articles in this morning's Post Dispatch caught my attention by their sheer strangeness:

• The Contemporary Art Museum is hosting a benefit concert tonight. Who's playing, you ask? A punk rock group called Harry and the Potters, who will be"presenting a repertoire about the books with a heavy punk rock influence". Opening for them will be - I swear to God - Draco and the Malfoys. Click here if you don't believe me.

• There was a lengthy article on the new Geico ads starring celebrities like Charo, Burt Bacharach, and the eternally awesome Little Richard. Funny as these commercials are, they still cannot touch the reigning champion Real Men of Genius (also available in mp3!).

The man and his hair, circa 1966

• Last but not least, we have an article on the fantatically stupid sport of kite tubing. A kite tube, for those who don't know (and I didn't before today), is an inflatable raft that you tow behind a motorboat. But unlike a normal raft, which was presumably designed by a sane person, kite tubes are aerodynamically made to go airborne and soar like a kite when they hit a certain speed. Hence the name. For reasons which should be painfully obvious (forgive the pun), the Army Corps of Engineers has wisely banned kite tubes from all waterways it controls, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a recall.

Yeah, good thinking guys.

Recalled or not, a rousing Marmoset salute to the good people at SportsStuff, Inc. on their ability to find exciting new ways for idiots to hurt themselves.

For the first time in ages, I am reminded of that oldest and most venerated of websites: the legendary Darwin Awards. Shame on me for not linking to that sooner. If you have never seen this site, please do yourself a favor. Natural selection has never been funnier.