The sequel to the silent Christmas classic The Snowman is set to air this Monday, more than 30 years after the original's premiere. The Snowman was nominated for an Academy Award and is broadcast annually throughout Great Britain. Occasionally shown with an incongruous introduction by David Bowie, it tells the wordless story of a young boy whose snowman comes to life and take him on a series of adventures, only to melt into nothingness by the dawn of the next day.

Global life expectancy is rising. We all have more of this same shit to look forward to.

"Gangnam Style" is the year's biggest viral dance sensation. Now it's also its most deadly — and not because it drove someone insane from overexposure. A 46-year-old man attempting the dance — created and popularized by Korean rapper Psy — at his office party collapsed with chest pains and died over the weekend, prompting a warning from a cardiologist:

Just over a week since the New York Post ran its hugely controversial cover photo of a man about to be crushed to death by a train—headline: "DOOMED"—another man was killed in New York City, and the Post again decided to broadcast an imminent death on its cover.

Last Friday, the Tampa Bay Times published a nuanced and heartbreaking feature story about Gretchen Molannen, a 39 year-old Florida woman with a condition known as "persistent genital arousal." Molannen described how her condition—likened to constant, unceasing physical arousal without any of the accompanying mental or emotional arousal—forced her to masturbate for hours on end and virtually destroyed her personal and professional life. The day after the story was published, Molannen committed suicide. A local blogger says the paper has "blood on its hands." It does not.

Yesterday, 58-year-old New Yorker Ki Suk Han was pushed onto the subway tracks and killed by an oncoming train. Thousands of people who happened to see the New York Post's Tuesday-morning cover were forced to confront Ki Suk Han's plight first-hand — all of us wondering, what should I do if that ever happens to me? There are a lot of schools of thought here, but the one that seems to make the most sense is: run away from the train.

During the press onslaught surrounding Fiona Apple's recent album, The Idler Wheel. . ., the most important character in the artist's personal sphere was her pit-bull mix, Janet, a 13-year-old stray rescue.

Dog food repurposing factory Taco Bell, which is in the process of becoming "upscale" in the sense of "selling food with a greater number of ingredients than a bean burrito," is rolling out some new Snaxxx that are perfectly suited to the sensitive and ever-evolving American palate. In the sense of "containing a quantity of carbohydrates sufficient to sustain a camel's complete journey through the harsh Sahara Desert."

A festive reminder for the old folks in this unidentified retirement home that they could very well be celebrating their last Halloween among the living.

The Obama administration is institutionalizing a permanent Secret Kill List. Vote Obama, for Hope and Change.

Arlen Specter, a five-term senator from Pennsylvania, has just died, the AP reports. A Republican since 1965, he switched party affiliations in 2009 and ran as a Democrat, losing in the primary to Joe Sestak. After his defeat, Specter continued to teach law at the University of Pennsylvania, where last year he was named by the National Jurist one of the "23 professors to take before you die." He was 82.

Item: "Obese kids — even as early as age 6 — can start showing changes to their heart muscles that could lead to problems later."

Here's a novel trend: white people in America are losing relative to non-white people in America, in some way. What?? Yes, of course, this trend involves poor and/ or undereducated white people, but still. You don't see that too often. So—why are the white high school dropouts dying younger now?

The U.S. of A, the greatest country on earth, has legally executed 27 people this year, and more than 1,300 since we resurrected the death penalty back in 1976. Mr. Presidential Candidates, what will YOUR administration do to ensure that the USA is not eclipsed by nations like Iraq and Gambia, who are trying to Even Greater Than Us, in a "killing their own citizens" sense?

Taxes. Deficits. Unemployment. Wall Street. Abortion. Gaffes. Jokes. Fashion. Sports. All of these things are being given more attention in America right now, by our presidential candidates and our media and ourselves, than a place called Afghanistan. Remember that place?

Though we tend to knock the younger generation, at least they possess enough sense to understand the sobering reality of their situation: they will never achieve what they want, and their lives, such as they are, will be an endless series of battles against disappointment. Cheers to the young for their realism. More than we can say for their elders.

A pickup truck—not a van, or a semi truck, or a panel truck, but a pickup truck—ran off the road and crashed into roadside trees in Goliad County, Texas Sunday night. The death toll from this single wreck: 14 people. Fourteen dead people, in one crash.

If you are reading these words from a hospital, chances are you either are about to or already have died. Very sorry that's how things shook out for you, but that's what you get for going to the hospital in July.

As if our nation's military men and women don't have enough to look forward to with low salaries, underfunded V.A. benefits, and our frequent launching of unnecessary wars in which they will die, they all have something else waiting for them when the fighting is done:

If the average American had his way, every item that he encountered on a day-to-day basis—cars, household appliances, furniture, children—would be breaded, fried, and then cut into "chip" size for purposes of snacking convenience. Also, all of the aforementioned things would be made of chicken. The great folks in the fast food industry are doing everything in their power to make this "American Dream" come true.