“I read the news today, oh boy ...” (Pre-Holyday Edition)

While our crazy Uncle Jay sings out the soon-to-be-old year, we bring you a few various and sundry items coming across the mwbh news desk. This first one is what he missed:

• Kim Jong-Il, "Surpreme Leader" of North Korea, and arguably one of the cruelest dictators in recent memory, who would dine on lobster with silver chopsticks while his people were starving, has died of a heart attack (thus proving that he actually had one) at the age of 69. He is succeeded by his twenty-something third-oldest son, Kim Jong-un -- so far. (BBC News)

• According to a study by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, four out of ten adults termed "whatever" as the most annoying word in the English language, beating out such timeless classics as "like" and "you know." Well, like they say ... whatever. (Reuters)

• Two high school students in New York have been suspended for "Tebowing" in the school hallway. For those who have been listening to such reports without being told what it actually is, this amounts to getting down on one knee and praying when everyone is doing something else. Too bad they weren't Muslim; they would have at least gotten off with a warning. (Yahoo!)

• Police in Portland, Oregon, were called to a Toys-R-Us store, to contain a man who was going on a rampage, assaulting people with a plastic light sabre, described as "an elegant weapon from a more civilized age." Apparently the Force was not with this guy. (The Oregonian)

• A landlord in Cincinnati, Ohio, was found to have discriminated against a black girl by posting a “White Only” sign at a swimming pool. He wants a state civil rights commission to reconsider its decision. According to them, the landlord says she posted it because the girl used chemicals in her hair that would make the pool “cloudy.” (AP via Washington Post)

• Christopher Artes and Medeana Hendershot enjoyed hopping freight trains and traveling the country without a plan. They were recently found dead under a mound of coal at a Florida power plant, the victims of a railroad car unloading from the bottom. The movies always made this look easier. (AP)

And that's all the news that fits. Stay tuned, and stay in touch.