This is hilarious. Wal-mart cashiers are not necessarily the nuclear physicists of the world (and neither am I), but Alice Regina Pike of Georgia apparantly believes they are dumber than a box of rocks. The 35-year-old woman tried to pass a $1 million bill at one of Walmart's superstores. The Covington Police Department reports that Pike was attempting to pay for $1671.55 in merchandise with a $1,000,000 bill. The Wal-Mart clerk called over her manager (I'm assuming she picked up on the oddity and wasn't just asking how to provide $998,328.45 in change) and Pike was arrested for forgery. Pike told cops that her husband had given her the $1 million bill, was found to have two more phony seven-figure notes in her purse. The phrase "don't take any wooden nickels" has now officially been updated. "Beware of wacky women with million dollar bills".

A Chalmette man was arrested after calling the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's
Office to complain he had been ripped off attempting to trade a microwave
oven for crack cocaine.

Joseph Bulot, 32, of 600 Oak Tree Lane, Apt. B, was booked Saturday just
after 4 a.m. on a misdemeanor charge of possession of drug paraphernalia
after he showed a sheriff's deputy a crack pipe he said he had used to smoke
what turned out to be fake cocaine, according to a sheriff's report.

Bulot had called the Sheriff's Office from the 8900 block of West Judge
Perez Drive, several blocks from his apartment. He told a deputy he traded a
microwave oven to two men for crack in the 500 block of Oak Tree Lane, but
when he took the drug home and tried to smoke it, he discovered it was
bogus, the report said...

It's not often that filmgoers feel so protective of a $30 million movie that they buy advertising for it. But Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which was released in theaters Feb. 25, is not your typical film.

The controversial movie, which Gibson directed and funded, re-enacts the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus Christ. Even before The Passion was screened, interfaith and Jewish groups began expressing concerns that the movie could incite anti-Jewish activity...

Local progressive metal band "Kurt Vonneguts Oedipus Lunch Meat" is so progressive that they have drawn scorn from the critics, venue patrons and owners, other progressive rockers, and "mostly the entire Chicago music scene", according to several followers of said scene.

The few in the local Chicago metal-progressive scene that have heard of the band mostly tend to stay away in lieu of their abominable reputation, but those that occasionally venture into the venue at which the band managed to take stage have unanimously detested the time spent listening to songs in which each member plays in a different key and time signature while being punctuated with lyrics sung in what appears to be Aramaic.

“Yeah, I know that some people would say that bringing an elephant on stage and listening to it fart is artistic, and though I doubt they’re right, I’ll concede to the fact that great art is unrecognizable at its inception,” said pop music critic John Degrode. “But this shit… if you could take the sound of someone slitting their wrists, put it to guitars and listen to it for three hours, that would be pleasant compared to the time I spent watching these f*cks. If this is art, then I’ll take a job at Starbucks and leave all this behind.”...

Tired of what he sees as the continued intransigence and financial favoritism within the Democratic and Republican Parties, consumer advocate Ralph Nader pledged Sunday that he too would become a 2004 presidential candidate, one just as removed from the realities facing the average American.

“What we have is essentially a two-party system so mired in toadying up to their corporate overlords that they are clueless as to what is going on in Middle America,” Nader asserted.

“But not nearly as clueless as me. Instead of a two-party system, what we need is a three-party system with no idea. And if you need proof of my credentials to take on this challenge, then look no further than the millions of Democrats who want to kill me for running,” he added.

Meanwhile, citing security concerns, Nader said that -- unlike his 2000 candidacy -- this time he would use doubles for all his campaign stops, airdrop leaflets over major cities and ask President Bush if he could borrow his flight suit just in case...