All the big headlines are worthless

Any given week at least one funny or amazing thing has spontaneously occurred in nature or been perpetrated by real people, giving me fodder for a column, or at least a passing comment.

You know, a sinkhole opens up and swallows a church, a firehouse and a brothel, and the real-life story inspires a joke with a punch line like: "So the little boy points into the hole and says, 'Well then, who dat?'"

Or, a researcher discovers how to make bubble bath bubbles fuller and hardier using some microbe synthesized from cow dung. Of course, then Pamville News reporters discover that the researcher has made a fortune in Hollywood selling her cow-plop bubble bath solution to be used during the long hours shooting bath tub scenes — with the bulk of her income coming from the porn industry.

Pam Burke

Or, one of those hip young guys gets kicked out of school for the day for wearing his pants too low around his hips and exposing his boxers to the world. So he decides to rob a bank to help finance his future because his education prospects are looking pretty slim and, y'know, he has free time. While trying to get away with the stolen money, though, his pants fall to his knees, tripping up his getaway and landing him in jail and on the six o'clock news. But his mom won't bail him out because everyone in town sees on the news cast that he obviously wasn't wearing clean underwear. She figures a night or two in jail will learn him to keep up appearances with some tidy whities.

No, nothing like that in the news.

It's all women and children getting bombed or disappearing or getting sexually assaulted. Move along, ain't nothing to make fun of here.

There's the last of our World War II heroes visiting Pearl Harbor, and no joke in the world will fix our heartache or keep prideful Americans from beating the bejeeses out of someone trying to poke fun there.

Even the politicians are taking a break this week. No major gaffs or blunders. Cain dropped his presidential race even though it would've been funnier if declared himself a fundamentalist Mormon who wants to make honest women out of his mistress and any of those women he sexually harassed, so his sister wives can jump on board the Cain train to the White House.

Not even former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, managed to grand stand, bluff or blunder his way into a funny headline while trying to garner a minimum sentence for his conviction on attempting to sell a seat in his state legislature. The guy was humble and apologetic. Great for him, but what about me, huh? What am I supposed to do with that?

Thankfully, the folks at Macy's in Portland, Ore., have at least given us "Santagate." The Portland department store where Santaland has been located for at least 50 years was purchased by Macy's in 2006. The Portland Santaland had a longstanding tradition of hiring Santa look-a-likes for holiday picture-taking.

These were no ordinary Santa stand-ins, though. These guys took their role of Santa's big helpers seriously, grooming their gray beards, feeding their robust bellies and rocking their jolly ho-ho-ho all year round. Generations of families even scheduled knee-sitting photo shoots with the same Santas every year. Until this year.

Macy's changed its policy and outsourced their holiday cheer to some lame-o Santas with fake beards. In outraged response to this scandalous betrayal, Portland community members pointed their fingers and yelled, "Wait a minute. Who dat?!"

They raised such a clatter the Portland-based company that hires out the traditional, real-bearded Santas is setting up a custom-built house by the downtown Christmas tree and doing their own Santa face-time scheduling. Rock on Portland.

Even more exciting for the Pamville News team is the juicy gossip our reporters uncovered while investigating the story in Portland: The real, honest to jolliness Santa is experiencing a few modern difficulties as Occupy Toyland has overtaken the North Pole.

More on this shocking news in upcoming columns.