VBVW for May 18, 2007:
Wolves and Whales

• The Very Best

Paul Wolfowitz finally resigned as head of the World Bank. It’s amazing how someone who was supposed to be helping the Third World with its money problems will be remembered for helping his girlfriend make more money.

The Reverend Jerry Falwell died. We should leave it at that, but we can’t. Everyone who believes we are all created equal — regardless of Jerry’s preaching to the contrary — will sleep easier from here on in. Not counting the “abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” who caused 9/11.

In Middletown, NY, a woman was sexually assaulted while praying in church. In Nigeria, a man who raped two girls has been condemned to death by stoning, a religious punishment that hasn’t been carried out in recent memory. But it’s probably about time.

• The Very Worst

Bono is fighting the board of his New York City co-op to have chimney emissions curbed. Due to the fact that he lives at the top of the building, he worries that fireplace smoke is seeping into his abode. The primary offender? None other than ’80s time-capsule nominee Billy Squier. Everybody sing: “Smoke me, smoke me . . . Smoke!”

Overpopulation in India may finally have found its smoking gun. Turns out it’s more like a cap gun than a long-barrel .12 gauge. A survey of more than 1,000 Indian men found that condoms manufactured according to international sizes are too large for a majority of the nation’s men.

Marine biologists were unsuccessful in luring two injured humpback whales out of California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and back into the open Pacific. The scientists had hoped the mother and calf, who were apparently injured by a boat’s propeller, would follow their recordings of humpback songs. More and more whales worldwide have been escaping the oceans and heading into rivers, so what do they know that we don’t?