Conspiracy theory du jour

Lore on The Aristocrats and the purported joke behind it. I like his theory.

My theory: this joke didn't exist before circa 2001. The actualy joke, really, is that they're making up this dirty joke, having a hundred comedians tell it, and billing it as a documentary with historical significance.

Right now, I have two pieces of, well let's charitably call it evidence. First, Penn Jillette. If anyone was going to make up a dirty joke, then fool millions of people into thinking it's a super-secret comedian thing, it would be Jillette. Secondly, I can't find any evidence that it was posted to the Web or any other section of the Internet before 2001.

The super-secret thing doesn't fly. You can't lock a joke up. Even if it started -- over a hundred years ago -- as something comedians only told each other, all it takes is one person to tell it to an outsider, and that outsider to tell it to a bunch of outsiders, and it becomes a standard joke. And it seems to me that pretty much any standard joke is going to have been put down in someone's collection of jokes on the Web sometime before 2001.

Today's locus of weird: Columbus, Ohio (shock, surprise)

A woman accused of tricking people into giving her money by pretending she had cancer died after setting herself on fire, authorities said.

Kara W. Hurt, 30, of Columbus, died Saturday at Ohio State University Medical Center after setting herself on fire in her pickup truck, said sheriff Al Myers.

...Hurt was indicted Friday by a Delaware County grand jury on a charge of theft by deception.

County Prosecutor Dave Yost said Hurt told members of Moms Offering Moms Support in a speech in February last year that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had had cervical cancer in 1996.

Hurt did not request money but club members sent her checks and gift certificates totaling about $1,900. A member later talked to one of Hurt's relatives and found out she did not have cancer and alerted police.

The stupid draws closer

Opening up your door while driving isn't a good idea, especially on a busy highway.

Robbin Doolin, 31, of the Kansas City suburb of Grandview, learned that Friday morning when she leaned out her fast-moving car to spit.

She went tumbling out onto U.S. 71 in Kansas City, and to the amazement of other drivers, she hopped up and chased her car as it careened down an embankment toward a construction site.

Okay, I ran over myself once in GTA:San Andreas. But at least I wasn't spitting.