Everything Else But Us Is

My co-workers are talking in one corner of the room about something wildly improbable, so I hit the Great Gazoogle and -

Wallabies get high in poppy fields, make crop circles

Jesus Donkeypunching Christ. Why do I get up in the morning? For stuff like this:

WALLABIES are breaking into Tasmania's poppy fields and getting high. The strange occurrence, revealed in a State Government Budget Estimates hearing, has also solved what some growers say has spurred a campfire legend about mysterious crop circles that appear in northern Tasmania's poppy paddocks.

In true X-Files-style, Attorney-General Lara Giddings said the drugged out wallabies had been found hopping around in circles squashing the poppies, creating the formations – and hence solving the mystery.

This morning, I was walking into the library and most of the sky was gray but a big part was a really beautiful blue-blue. Naturally, I thought, 'I feel great! Crap!' but we can also attribute that to getting up at stupid o'clock and making Pete take pictures of the squash blossoms in our backyard before dew evaporated, which I totally did. Stoned wallabees! I'm set till lunchtime.

Siobhan has mad cheesecake skilz.

Sometimes, what you need is precisely what you don't. I know. The thought of it makes my eyebrows ache. Picture this: famous desert horrorscape and resort, where the problem is a little fresh water.

The parched moonscape, famous as the site of biblical Sodom and Gomorra, is the lowest point on earth and runs more than 60 miles through Israel and the West Bank. Large sections of the coast are fenced off and signposted in Hebrew and English: "danger, open pits" and "sinkhole area ahead." But it's too expensive to inspect every place for danger. Just two months ago an Israeli hiker wandered into an area that had no warning signs and was critically injured when he fell into a sinkhole.

While such accidents are rare, Raz says there are up to 3,000 open sinkholes along the coast and likely just as many that haven't burst open yet. And they're having a big impact on Israeli development plans.

The collapsing terrain has forced authorities to close a campground, date groves and a small naval base, and to scrap plans for 5,000 new hotel rooms, said Galit Cohen, director of environmental planning at the Ministry of the Environment. The holes, also found on the Jordanian side of the sea, are the result of the Dead Sea having shrunk by a third since the 1960s when Israel and Jordan built plants to divert water flowing through its main tributary, the Jordan River.

The holes form when a subterranean salt layer that once bordered the sea is dissolved by underground fresh water that follows the receding Dead Sea waters.

I'm no geologist, but it sounds like the earth's surface may not be where the people walking around on it think it is. For safety's sake, everyone should consider carrying around thirty-foot inflatable stilts and a bicycle pump. Taking into account the trouble our Northern European brethren are having with global warming and rising ocean levels, I bet you can find these useful appliances at Ikea. Or what about piping the stormy North Atlantic straight to the parched spa oasis, hmm?

I kind of live in fear of having to explain that was a joke.

Did you know there were such things as "mad cheesecake skilz"? Because I did not. This cake is covered with glitter dust. Richard Simmons was not harmed in the making of this cake - only in the eating of it.

What else is bugging me?

Kimberley Vlaeminck from the city of Kortrijk, 90 km (56 miles) northwest of Brussels said she fell asleep during the procedure, and woke up in pain when her nose was being tattooed.

But the 18-year-old was caught off camera on Dutch television when she said she quite liked the tattoo, but lied about asking for all 56 stars when she saw her father's furious reaction.

A teenager lied, the sky is blue and this is news. That could bug anyone.