News of the strange

Newsday reports California Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger will be charging $100,000 for people to sit with him in a luxury box for a Rolling Stones concert in Fenway Park. I can't decide which is more odd: 1) A California politician is attempting to raise money in Boston; 2) A Republican is going to a Rolling Stones concert (I was pretty sure that was illegal, or at least frowned upon by both the Stones and Republicans); or 3) Someone is probably going to pay about 1,000 times the going rate for a ticket to sit with a man who has all the personality of a cardboard box, to watch an ancient band who hasn't had a hit since I was a schoolboy.

Hip hop is passe'. How do I know? There's a youth camp in Ohio that offers kids a "historic" look into the music genre. When kids start majoring in this in college, I'm checking out.

Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo is moving a 38-year-old cantankerous elephant to Tacoma. This angry pachyderm is not friendly with the younger snouts, and will be placed with two females of similar demeanor at -- not kidding -- Point Defiance Zoo. I've set the odds at 2:1 this becomes the next Fox reality TV show.

Further proof of the decline of critical thinking skills in America: researchers at MIT are developing cell phone software that determines how much of a jerk the person on the other end of the call is. They are calling it the "Jerk-O-Meter." The article does not say whether or not the software will determine if the other person is talking while driving a car at high speeds on the freeway.

I thought I was insensitive. This guy is the insensitive role model: A Panama City, Fla., man who got angry with his wife because she wanted to cuddle after sex when what he really wanted to do was watch sports on television was sentenced to death for killing her with a claw hammer. If our courts were just, this guy would be going straight to the chair. If our courts were only halfway just, this guy would spend the rest of his life in servitude to battered wives. They aren't just, but at least we'll know he won't be the one making decisions when to cuddle anymore.