HARPER'S WEEKLY
January 26, 2010

An excerpt from Harper's Weekly for your entertainment:

The lone bookstore in Laredo, Texas, closed, and a Georgia mother punished her 12-year-old son for his bad grades by forcing him to hammer to death his pet hamster. Erich Segal, the author of "Love Story," who coined the phrase "Love means not ever having to say you're sorry," died of a heart attack, as did "Spencer" crime novelist Robert Parker, whose body was found at his writing desk. "He loved doughnuts," his agent said. A popular British health club released an ad warning "fatties" that they would be the first to be eaten by aliens. Moments before Gillian Cooke, a British bobsledder who will compete in the Winter Olympics, jumped into her sled during a World Championship event, her suit split open and revealed her buttocks. A visitor to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art tripped and fell into Pablo Picasso's "The Actor," causing a six-inch tear to the canvas. The saltmarsh sparrow was found to the be the most promiscuous bird in the world, and a pair of swans stunned staff at a British wildfowl sanctuary by becoming only the second couple in 40 years to divorce. To dispose of the elderly, Martin Amis, age 60, called for euthanasia booths "on every corner where you could get a martini and a medal," and scientists concluded that engineers could learn from slime.