The Daily Show does such a great job of providing comedy yet remaining sensitive while covering international tragedies. Last night’s reaction to the Mumbai attacks was a perfect example because it also contained a hefty dose of profane catharsis, making for a very satisfying bit.

While browsing CNN today, I came across a story about a 20-year-old Chinese student who was, shockingly, bitten by a panda bear when he jumped into its zoo enclosure and tried to hug it. If that story sounds as familiar to you as it did to me, it’s because the same thing happened just two years ago.

What’s the deal with people thinking they can hug a 500 pound beast without getting seriously messed up? And why is everyone’s choice the panda? If you dropped me into a pit with a couple of those things, I’d more or less be scared shitless. I would think one would be more inclined to hug, say, a Koala bear, which is much smaller but ten times nastier and would leave an entertaining series of scars that you could tell the grandchildren about.

As punishment to anyone who chooses to throw logic out the window but avoids their deserved fate of having their face ripped off by a wild animal, they should be forced to hug every other animal in the zoo at least once, starting with the porcupine and ending with the giant boa constrictor if they make it that far. Whatever limbless body that can emerge from that test will probably have learned its lesson.

I came across this article today courtesy of the Telegraph dealing with the age old question: do you make your dog sleep on the floor, or allow the cuddly critter up onto your bed so you can snuggle and wake up in a pool of saliva that (for once) is not your own? To be totally honest, I didn’t even read the article. I was about to, until I saw this photo:

Anything strike you as odd about that picture? Maybe the fact that it looks like that dog is getting cozy with the two dead bodies of his owners lying in bed together??? Look at those feet: they look cold, lifeless, and deceased. Even if you scrutinize their blurry faces in the background, they have that bloodless hue to them, not to mention more than a hint of “vacant, dead stare-itis.” It also may not be a coincidence that the dog kind of looks like it’s just realized it might not be getting fed any time soon. Perhaps it’s an odd choice of camera filter made by the photographer. Perhaps it’s a race of people who, unbeknownst to me, do not require circulation to survive. But whatever the reason, I took the liberty to photoshop back in what the Telegraph so clearly airbrushed out in the first place:

So this morning a story broke about New York Governer Eliot Spitzer being involved with a prostitution ring blah blah blah… As usual with political stuff, rather than wanting to know about the actual story I was more interested in the funny photos of the douchebag it was about, particularly the pics from CNN:

Is it just me, or does Spitzer look like he’s so embarrassed he’s trying to swallow his own head? It’s not totally unlike the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Guy:

Oh political scandals, you bring me hours of glee and delight. And at least a few minutes of Photoshop manipulation.