The News: A Barrel O' Laughs

Every now and then the evening news provides a good belly laugh, and I'm not talking about the tendency of weather people to try and desperately outdo each other in the frantic, slightly pathetic, and often bizarre attempt to be funny. It's dispiriting that most news broadcasts nowadays have got themselves confused with sitcoms, but sometimes the news itself is downright entertaining. The latest was a story that aired yesterday, and it's bizarre enough to be worthy of its own joke: there was this man who managed to get on an airplane with a monkey in his hat. I'm not kidding. It happened. He subsequently flew from somewhere in South America to Miami, changed planes without attracting attention, and was on his way to New York when someone noticed the monkey clinging to his pony tail. The man never did explain how he got past security screeners and customs officials, which is a little bit scary since it could've turned out to be a terrorist monkey.