Someone in St. Paul is short a piglet
Scott Bauer
The St. Paul piggie is way cuter
Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked throughout the week. Here are some things to think about as the weekend begins.
• Record low barometric pressure. Right-wing goons planning voter intimidation efforts. A new Kings Of Leon album. It was the kind of week that makes you understand why so many people on the Internet ignore the real world and post pictures of adorable kitties instead. Not that we would ever stoop so low. So check out this adorable piglet! He was found wandering the streets of St. Paul earlier this week, and animal shelter staff named him Ziffel, after the Green Acres pig. If no one claims him by today, he will apparently be adopted by a local farm (which we sincerely hope is not a euphemism). In unrelated adorableness, this baby is eating a watermelon from the inside.
• The Twin Cities are four metro areas dumber than they were this time last year, according to website The Daily Beast. We ranked fourth in 2009 and eighth in 2010, based on such spurious criteria as percentage of residents with a college degree and sales of adult nonfiction books. (Media coverage of homeless farm-animal cuteness was apparently not factored in.) So if you live in a college town where Eat, Pray, Love sells briskly, you are evidently surrounded by geniuses.
• Then again, if we’re so smart, why are we paying three-figure sums for tickets to a haunted house? After The Soap Factory complained on Facebook that scalpers were hawking tickets to the Haunted Basement at outrageously jacked-up prices, Secrets Of The City did a little digging and found tickets priced at $195 on eBay. As of this morning, the tickets are gone, so either the scalper was shamed into pulling them offline, or someone out there was really desperate for a scare.
• Finally, to coincide with the public memorial last night in St. Paul for Micheal “Eyedea” Larsen, First Avenue added a star to its wall for the beloved Rhymesayers MC and his DJ collaborator Abilities. In case you haven’t heard, there will be a musical tribute to Eyedea, who died two weeks ago at the age of 28, at First Avenue on Nov. 9.
