Apparently in the UK, some schools are banning friendship. No really!  See, it’s too hard on the poor children when their best friends inevitably betray them, so we’d better protect them from that by making sure they never make any good friends. Sounds perfectly logical to me!

OK, yes, I realize it’s The Sun, which isn’t exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity. Still. That’s pretty awful right there. Also, I’m totally sick of the “WE MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN” line. What makes children so important, anyway? Most of them can’t even talk right. Idiots.

… Mr Alan L. O’Neill of Washington! Mr. O’Neill got married in 2001, then left his wife in 2009 and moved on. Except, hey, he forgot about that whole “getting a divorce” thing. He skipped that step, and moved directly on to the next step, “getting re-married.”

And he might have got away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.  I mean, if it weren’t for Facebook. Turns out, wife #1 was minding her own business on Facebook when she got one of those automated “people you may know” friend suggestions. She clicked on it, and hey, what’s this? It’s her husband and this woman together in a wedding photo.  As in, they were getting married. To each other. Did I mention he never bothered to get divorced from his first wife?

So naturally, she called his mom. That’s what I like best about this story, actually. The woman’s first reaction to finding out her husband was married to another woman wasn’t to call the cops (she did that later) or to call him on the carpet herself. No, the first thing she did was rat him out to his mom. That’s so junior high. And yet… so appropriate!

The second best thing about this story is the mention at the end about how Mr O’Neill is “free, but due in court later this month, which is standard procedure for non-violent crimes.” Prosecutor Mark Lindquist explains: “About the only danger he would pose is marrying a third woman.”

And that, ladies and gentleman, is what we call a money quote.

In the poker world, it’s common for the winner of a big tournament to pose for pictures while sitting behind a giant mound of chips (or cash). Often the photo op will include the winning hand, either proudly displayed by the winner or propped up in front of the chips.

So this quick snapshot I took of a magazine cover is pretty standard stuff, really:

Except… take a closer look at that “winning hand.” You may want to go ahead and click on the image to get the full sized view. I do apologize for the crappy cell phone snap, but it’s all I had available at the time.

Do you see it? That’s right, Johnny Scruffbeard there apparently won a sizable Texas Hold’em tournament with suited nines in the hole. Just in case you didn’t know, Hold’em is played with a standard 52 card deck, which does not include two nine of spades. At least, it sure shouldn’t.  It’s not unheard of for a bum deck to get into play, even at the highest levels of tournament poker. But when that happens, it is generally discovered rather quickly, and any action that took place with that deck is voided (if possible) and play will resume with a new deck.

So, I’m thinking this is a stupid Photoshop mishap. But the fact that such a stupid mistake could not only be made, but would make the cover of an actual magazine is mind boggling. I mean, I would think that somebody at this here poker rag actually knew enough about poker to know you can’t have suited nines wired. But perhaps I expect too much?

You know how you’ll be tooling along at 40 MPH on your way to work, and holy shit, out of nowhere there’s a horde of mewling little bastards blocking your path on their way to serve their daily prison sentence learn how to become upstanding members of society? And how you gotta jam on the brakes and go slow through the school zone because there’s a special speed limit in effect during the times the kids are most likely to be busy getting in your way?  Well, imagine if you had to deal with signs like this:

AP Photo/Tim Thompson

That there is Michigan resident Greg Smith, standing in front of one of the signs in his neighborhood. Some genius clearly decided to save a few bucks on a flashing light to indicate when the school speed limit is in effect and instead decided to list in painstaking detail all the times when the 25 MPH limit is in force.

As Greg points out, drivers almost have to come to a full stop just to have time to READ the entire sign to figure out what the speed limit is! And the thing is ludicrously specific as to what times the reduced speed limit is in effect. Why is there a 15 minute period between 8:22 AM and 8:37 AM when it’s not in effect? For those 15 minutes only, it’s perfectly OK to do the normal speed limit through there, but once that clock ticks over to 8:37, better stomp on those brakes son! Wouldn’t it be easier for everybody involved to just say “6:45 AM to 9:00 AM, and 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM” That does away with the weird gaps and makes the sign, you know, READABLE. By humans. Driving by in cars.

No, that would definitely be too sensible.