Why is my cat reading such filth?

I just retrieved this book from Chip's room (also known as the cardboard box he claimed last year after my husband and I made a whirlwind NYC-Morgantown-NYC trip to collect some stuff  from his childhood home) and would like to know why my cat is creeping around reading purportedly anthropological accounts of pervy sex crimes.

I mean, he's a cat, for God's sake. As those of us who've read Saki's Tobermory know, cats are wise to everything everyone is 

doing all the time, what with their skulking around under beds and behind doors and inside closets. So it's not as though Chip needs to study what folks get up to. And much though I love him, there's a reason Chip has a frat-boy name: He isn't exactly what you'd call a feline intellectual. In fact, he's pretty damned dumb... but he knows about the bishop and the actress.

The necklace with a "Dum Dum Dum Dum" soundtrack...

"The jeweler Eddie Borgo," writes the New York Times (Sunday Styles, Septermber 12, 2010, p.3) "based his Horror Collar [left] on the Mayor of Halloween Town in Tim Burton's 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas. 'His wild mood swings make his cone head spin around from a happy face to a scary one,' M. Borgo explains. 'It's a figurative representation of a two-faced politician.'"

Yeah, okay, sure. And that has what, exactly, to do with this Jaws necklace?

All rise for Animal House (and that means you, Snooki)

In yet another sign of the times, Animal House's villain-in-residence d Dean Wormer is sounding more reasonable by the minute.

And I can't help but hear an echo of his admonition to Kent "Flounder" Dorfman ("Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.") in New Jersey Judge Damian G. Murray's advice to Jersey Shore's fat, drunk and stupid Snooki Polizzi who was also fined $500 and ordered to perform community service for being blotto (note that I refrained from saying Bluto) and disorderly on a Seaside Heights beach: "Going through life rude, profane, obnoxious and self-indulgent — that's not the way you want to live your life."

Not as pithy, but the point is the same.

Why I Love Werner Herzeg (and his "fights" with Abel Ferrara and Chuck Norris)

I mean, let's face it: Herzog is a nut. Or a mad genius... whatever. However you phrase it he's always been, let's just say, as eccentric as he is talented. And yet these days he sounds like the most reasonable guy in the room.

Astronomy is dirty!

Oh, please: Does this “Weird but True” item from the New York Post sound like a world class prank or what?

"Space geeks have something new to snicker about. Astronomers, including one named John Johnson (above), have discovered planets orbiting a star called Sextanis 24 and have named the planets "Sex B" and "Sex C." 'This new planet pair came in an unexpected package,' said Johnson, of the California Institute of Technology. He apparently said that with a straight face."

But it appears that it’s basically true: It just sounds less smarmy in real science speak, which could the make the plot of a bona fide, hard-core porn movie sound dull.