Since you need to wash your hands more these days, now there's a site that'll put song lyrics to a hand-washing poster for you.

Oh, coronavirus. Sorry, Coronavirus-19. Or Corona-19. Or novel coronavirus. Or the mass hysteria gripping the world.

Whatever you call it, people are obsessed with hospital masks, toilet paper (why?), and washing their hands these days. While washing your hands is always a good thing, a little spritz of water doesn't do the trick.

Since health officials for decades have recommended washing your hands for 20-seconds (usually the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday to yourself twice), this led a U.K. teenager named William Gibson to create a website that generates song lyrics to accompany hand-washing posters by the U.K.'s National Health Service:

🎶 I made a little site in 24h that generates hand washing instructions accompanied by lyrics from a song of your choice instantly - check it out!

🔗 https://t.co/JKAQRYy5Yz pic.twitter.com/S1bDLyKt6C

— William (@neoncloth) March 8, 2020

Washyourlyrics.com simply asks for an artist's name and song title, and it'll populate the hand-washing poster with lyrics timed to the poster's instructions:

Obviously pic.twitter.com/VvGPwRlmvo

— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) March 9, 2020

And it's not just song lyrics. Even Shakespeare's plays work out:

Forget singing in Happy Birthday twice: THIS is what you recite to tell you how long to wash your hands. H/t @ninjalampie pic.twitter.com/TjXMZCQbt2

— Reduced Shakespeare Company (@reduced) March 3, 2020

Sure, the Reduced Shakespeare Company could've picked a more lighthearted play than Macbeth. But if everyone is lathered up in hysteria, you might as well choose a play where nearly everyone dies.

It's called synergy, folks.

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: The 1970s was not a hotbed of action when it came to color.

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.


Today:  TWO Red Cross PSAs for the price of one!






Random Thoughts and Questions (PSA #1):
1.)  Some tender flute music is the hallmark of a quality PSA.
2.)  Everything in the 1970s was just a varying shade of sepia.
3.)  Correction: Everything in the 1970s was just a varying shade of sepia with a dash of beige to jazz things up.
4.)  The two seconds of wannabe Saving Private Ryan was unexpected  random  lacking missing limbs.
5.)  So I take it that the wife/mom is bored out of her skull with her kid?
6.)  That three page brochure is probably chock-full of info. It might take all day to read.


Random Thoughts and Questions (PSA #2):
1.)  Ten days at this aquatic "center." Also known as the woods.
2.)  BREAKING NEWS: Every modern man today from Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia is still rocking a hairstyle popular forty years ago.
3.)  The hand gesture for diving seems redundant. Did he think the diver was going to take flight?
4.)  "...come to the aquatic skooowa..."
5.)  "Most students come [...] to learn water safety," says the teacher. And the rest show up to get a nice tan apparently.
6.)  What's with the freeloader in the middle of the canoe doing nothing? AND THEN HE FLIPS THE BOAT LIKE A TROUBLEMAKER!

BREAKING NEWS: UConn student who wanted his "(expletive) bacon-jalapeno mac and cheese" has been expelled.

Luke Gatti, the very passionate mac and cheese lover who was arrested after causing a hubbub at UConn's food court, has reportedly been expelled from the school.

Here was his mugshot after the arrest:

Aww, he's so young, he could still stand to use some Proactiv! But it appears that our baby-faced lush is going to have to find his beloved bacon-jalapeno delight somewhere else next year.

Let's remember our cheesy pasta lover one last time:

BREAKING NEWS: Elmo isn't going to the big house.

The man who accused Elmo puppeteer, Kevin Clash, of an underage sexual relationship has recanted his allegations, and now admits it was a consensual adult situation. Nothing to see here, move along now, move along.

This is bad news for anyone hoping for a limited edition Maximum Security Prison Elmo toy.

BREAKING NEWS: United States National Scrabble Championship marred by cheating scandal

Geeks and English snobs around the country have gathered in Florida for a week of avoiding the sun and beach at all cost in order to play Scrabble indoors at the United States National Championship.

Now, all that is precious and socially awkward has come crashing down, as a cheating scandal has erupted.

In the 24th round of the 28 round tournament, a competitor was seen concealing two blank tiles to use at his discretion. The only thing more blank than the tiles was this anonymous competitor's moral compass.

When confronted by organizing officials who undoubtedly asked politely while dancing around the topic, the cheater crumbled under pressure and came clean. He was immediately disqualified from the tournament.

John D. Williams Jr., Executive Director of the National Scrabble Association, said this is the first incident of hoodwinkery in the history of the Scrabble championship.

"The Scrabble world is abuzz," Williams told the Associated Press.

You know what would also get the Scrabble world buzzing? Seeing the sun sometime. A suntan. A little vitamin D.

Randomness Corner--BREAKING NEWS: FUGITIVE PENGUIN STILL ON THE LAM.

Japanese officials updated the public to the renegade Humboldt penguin that made a daring escape from the Tokyo Sea Life Park into Tokyo Bay a few months ago.

It's alive and apparently fattening up.

In new video taken by the Japanese Coast Guard, the tubby fugitive mocks its captors by keeping just enough distance from being arrested. Experts believe the penguin is going all-you-can-eat buffet style like a trucker from Iowa, gorging on small fish in the harbor during daylight hours before heading to an unknown lair on shore where it probably entertains various unsavory characters in the midnight hour.

Officials are still uncertain how the penguin exactly escaped in the first place. They now claim there was a 13ft concrete wall it had to get past on top of the barbed wire netting originally reported as its main obstacle to freedom.

My guess is he used a small pick to cut tiny chunks out of the wall and used a poster of Raquel Welch to disguise what he was doing from the guards.



photo: Reuters

Little Rock, AR, news station has technical difficulties with spelling.

News station KTHV, which is too busy tackling hard news to tackle grammar, had some, uh, "techincal" difficulties:

First the satellite, then the spellchecker--my guess is KTHV is going to be doing an exposé on how badly computers suck.



photo: mediabistro.com

BREAKING NEWS: Andy Rooney hospitalized in serious condition.

According to the AP, Rooney is hospitalized in serious condition for unspecified reasons.

Just goes to show that retirement will kill you. Do you know of anyone who retired and didn't eventually die?

Exactly.

Tomas Transtromer won the Nobel Prize for Literature just now. I assume he's an autobot.

Rumor has it that Tomas Transtromer is a poet out of Sweden. He also just won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Actually, for a second I thought his last name was "Transformer" and that Optimus Prime just won a literary award. Which would be understandable, because it's likely Optimus Prime has had a greater literary reach by blowing crap up than Tomas Transtormer has with his writing.

Granted, this is the Nobel Prize. It's flashy, but they hand it out every year to either...

1.) Someone who was famous fifty years ago.
or
2.) A kindly old man at the assisted living facility who's good with a limerick.

Apparently there's an old adage that the more complex your name is, the more likely you'll win a Nobel Prize.

"Cuff" ain't winning me a thing then.

BREAKING NEWS: Andy Warhol's photo still creepily staring at someone from their living room wall.

And they still paid $643,200. It's not getting any cheaper.