May 24: Suicidal Pilots, Jesus on the Beach, and A Correction

• Alive!  It’s alive!  It’s alive! -Gene Wilder, 1974. And also, it appears, Craig Venter, 2010, genomics pioneer, who has just announced that scientists at his laboratories in Maryland and California have succeeded in a 15-year project to turn inanimate chemicals into a living organism – thus, simultaneously, playing God, Dr. Frankenstein and  Mel Brooks.
• Welcome aboard Jet Blue’s flight to my girlfriend’s house.  Pilot yanked from scheduled flight at Boston’s Logan airport after allegedly sending a text to his girlfriend threatening to end his life “in spectacular fashion” if they didn’t reconcile their relationship.  She called the cops.  They took him to a hospital for – as they say – “evaluation.”  How do you post that delay – “Pilot Freaked”?
• BP ordered to find a less toxic dispersant for use on oil spill. Easy. GTC green cleaning products.  They clean better than any of the toxic junk.  They absolutely won’t kill the turtles…or anything else.  And every last dime goes to the Imus Ranch for Kids with Cancer.   No brainer.
• A trifle on the messy side, but effective. Taliban in Pakistan introduce new capital punishment method.  Strap explosives to two men accused of being in cahoots with U.S., and blow them up.  Townsfolk say this is a new one.  Militants have killed hundreds whom they said were spies over the past few years, but usually just, you know, decapitate or shoot them.  Residents say this is the first time anybody knows of that Taliban has blown folks up.  Also suspect it won’t be the last.
• What Would Jesus Probably Not Do? What Travis Emmett Wiley did do, police say, in St. Pete Beach, Florida.  Mr. Wiley, according to officers, went up to a woman sunbathing face-down on the beach, announced, “I’m Jesus,” and told her he was going to have sex with her and could, thank you, because he had “created her.”  Wrong on all counts, as police doubtless carefully explained to him as they “marched him to Pilate” and charged him with sexual battery.
• Hey…you gotta better idea?  Carl Fuermann of Boulder, Colorado is offering to stop the BP Gulf oil gusher if he can get enough people together to “visualize the leaks” and then meditate intensely demanding that they stop.  Is it any nuttier than chunks of tires and golf balls?
• Michelle Thomas, of Hudson, Texas, apparently does not fall into the 63% of married women recently polled who say they’d rather, sleep, read or watch a movie than have sex with their husbands.  Michelle stabbed hers with a pair of scissors, police say, for failing to “satisfy” her.  On second thought, maybe she would rather read a book. 
• Correction:  In Friday’s headlines, 5/21/10, we reported that a man had offered to trade his 3-month-old daughter for two forty-ounce bottles of beer at a Chicopee, Mass. convenience store.  Police say it wasn’t for beer, it was for crack.  We regret the error.