jimcofer.com

– First of all, let me just say that my thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti. I’ve been watching CNN all day, and it appears that the death toll will be in the hundreds of thousands (500,000 is not impossible here). It’s heartbreakingly sad, and I hope that rescue workers can get there as soon as possible.

– Speaking of disasters, a mystery object flew by Earth yesterday. The object, which was no larger than 50 feet across, came within 76,000 miles of our planet, or roughly a third of the way to the moon. That’s pretty close in planetary terms! Astronomers disagree about what it might have been. Italian scientists Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero think it’s space junk, but NASA is not so sure. Given the object’s trajectory, the space agency thinks that it’s unlikely to be space junk and is more likely to be a small asteroid.

– Fast food giant KFC is suing itself. Sort of. It’s complicated.

– A lost and hungry pig made her way to the drive-through at a Quizno’s in Lake of the Pines, California last week and attracted the attention of employees by oinking into the microphone. They fed her some Quizno’s while they waited for Animal Control to arrive. The pig was malnourished, but is now doing fine and should have no problems being adopted.

– I’m not a big fan of “emotional distress” in lawsuits, but I think I agree with this one: a family is suing two funeral homes… because they included a mother’s brain in the personal affects given to the family. The woman (named only as “M.F.R.” in the suit) died in a car accident in Utah. The body was prepared there, then returned to her home in New Mexico for the funeral service and burial. During the embalming of someone who died from trauma, organs in the damaged area are typically removed from the body and placed in plastic bags (which makes sense: if someone died from a bullet wound to the head, it would be kind of gross to have brains leaking out everywhere). Somewhere along the line, the bag containing the woman’s brain was mixed in with the bag of her personal items (clothes, purse, etc.). The two funeral homes blame each other, and the family is presumably having nightmares about the entire incident.

– Speaking of gross, I guess you’ve heard by now that a Mexican drug cartel killed an opponent, skinned his face, and then stitched it to a soccer ball.

– Lastly, in lighter news, fans of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia might like this pic from a local newscast, where the dreaded Dick Towel made an appearance: