The world reached peak hot-car hysteria this week when Hoboken, New Jersey cops shattered a car window to rescue Todd, the not-even-particularly-lifelike baby doll trapped inside.

In Oregon, a woman yelled "Gun!" in a crowded movie theater while witnessing a confrontation between a 70-year-old man and a father of a 14-year-old boy whom the older gentleman had just urinated on. The movie theater was evacuated, but no gun was ever found.

Adults on TV shows are very fond of asking the teens with whom they are acquainted (typically via familial ties but occasionally through non-sexual mentoring relationships) "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?"

What heinous acts of consumer fury can we blame on unsustainable social coupon site Groupon this week? A Santa-seeking stampede that led to the resignation of one of Santa's elves. Groupon stole Christmas!

Here's a trailer for the bawdy new period sex (historical period, grossies) comedy Hysteria, about the invention of the vibrator. Mr. Claire Danes himself Hugh Dancy plays a young man tasked with calming the nerves of hysterical women by, well, giving them the big one.

Watch out, residents of Pocatello, Idaho! A "suspicious man" driving a "tan/brown van" was seen at the local park, "taking pictures of children." Is he a pedophile? A murderer? A Satanist sex perv? He "ran off" when confronted by parents!

Last night, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission met to discuss possibly designating a building on Park Place, north of Wall Street, as a landmark. Of course, the hearing was not about architecture. It was about saving us from THE OTHER.

Flash mobs terrifying business owners in Philly are said to have been inspired by "Twitter messages to 'come to South Street.'" That is bullshit: Twitter didn't cause these flash mobs; neither did "social-networking". It was a dance crew.

As the hysterical rhetoric surrounding health care reform escalates, many lawmakers are reporting receiving violent threats. Like Eric Cantor, Republican Minority Whip, who says someone totally shot his office, with a gun. [Update: Police confirm an attack on Cantor's airspace!]

Heaving, bulbous bosoms—of doom. That is what America and, indeed, the world is facing, in the alternate universe where terrorists with plastic explosive breast implants threaten airline safety. Also, butt bomb implants. Please let this be real.

Happy May Day! Have you marched in solidarity with any workers today? No? Well, it was raining. We forgive you.

Citizens: do not be alarmed that hundreds of your children are now being mangled by Killer Swine Flu Virus. The government will not stop until it has wasted billions on fighting this mild illness!

Here we are two days into the Swine Flu Panic of '09, and dead bodies have yet to be stacked up like cordwood on the streets of American cities. Face it: this story is dumb.

We love to ingest smoke the old-fashioned way: straight into our lungs. Second-hand smoke will do in a pinch. But third-hand smoke? What kind of smoking hysteria is that?

So there was that guy killed by a shark last week. But that was only the beginning! Because it's almost summer. And there are sharks with lots of teeth everywhere-and they're gonna eat ya! "Two deaths in the waters off California and Mexico last week and a spate of shark-inflicted injuries to surfers off Florida's Atlantic coast have left beachgoers seeking an explanation for a sudden surge in the number of strikes. In the first four months of this year, there were four fatal shark attacks worldwide, compared with one in the whole of 2007, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville."

Today the New York Times picks up on a story about their former reporter Kurt Eichenwald, one that's been drifting around the internets for a week or so. It began with a piece on Counterpunch by Debbie Nathan. Here's the Times's hedging-some-bets opening: "A former New York Times reporter who wrote an article in late 2005 about a teenager who operated a pornographic Web site may have sent more money to the young man than he had previously acknowledged, according to people familiar with sealed documents filed with a court in Tennessee."