According to news reports the town of Hamelin in northern Germany is overrun with rats. Officials say the infestation is the result of a local garbage dump serving as a "refuge" for the booming rodent population.

According to legend, Hamelin experienced a similar problem in the year 1284, prompting city fathers to hire a "pied piper" to lure the rats out of town with his magical flute. When the time came to pay the piper, however, the townspeople reneged, for which he took revenge by herding a hundred or so of their children into a faraway mountain cave. They were never seen or heard from again.

Memo to the current Mayor of Hamelin: hire an exterminator. And pay him when he's done.

Read more:
• Rats Return to Pied Piper Town
• Legend of the Pied Piper
• The Children of Hamelin (Brothers Grimm)

I see by a spate of denials that appeared over the weekend that the Miley Cyrus death hoax was resurrected via a YouTube video (now deleted) attributed to the teen star's best friend, Mandy Jiroux. The fake announcement claimed Cyrus was killed in an auto accident by a drunk driver. It didn't happen.

Jiroux disavowed the YouTube hoax in this note posted on her MySpace page: "some1 hacked the miley and mandy youtube account and we cant get back into it just yet!! MILEY IS OK!!"

Read more: Miley Cyrus Victim of Hacker Hoax

In case you weren't properly terrified at the prospect of President-elect Obama and his "terrorist pals" remaking this country into a communist police state, the right-wing blogosphere would like you to get a load of this prescient quote from a past leader of the Soviet Union:

AND SO IT BEGINS!

"We cannot expect Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism."

-Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

Except, um, Comrade Khrushchev never said any such thing.  Read more...

Self-styled "culture jammers" the Yes Men put out a 14-page alternative-reality edition of the New York Times and distributed at least a million copies in New York and Los Angeles yesterday. Unsuspecting readers did a double-take.

"IRAQ WAR ENDS, TROOPS TO RETURN IMMEDIATELY," blared the front page headlines. In place of the usual Times motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print," the box in the upper-left-hand corner read, "All the News We Hope to Print."

Said a Times spokeswoman with a straight face, "This is obviously a fake issue of The Times."

• Web version of the fake NY Times
• Reuters coverage of the prank
• A Times editorial blogger reacts
• Yes Men press release

"Yesterday, the brass at ABC News issued orders forbidding reporters to wear lapel pin American flags or other patriotic insignia," accuses a popular forwarded email. "I urge you to boycott ABC and its sponsors and affiliates."

Boycott whomever you please, but know this: it was seven years ago in the aftermath of 9/11, not yesterday, that ABC asked its news anchors and reporters to eschew on-air displays of patriotism. Among other things, the network said it was concerned for the safety of American journalists working abroad.

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Via Museum of Hoaxes: Michiganders are reminiscing about the "Little Blue Man" hoax of 1958.

In April of that year, folks driving between the small towns of Elkton and Bad Axe, Michigan began seeing a strange, blue-clad figure with a cape and blinking helmet who would suddenly appear by the side of the road at night, cavort in the glow of the headlights, and disappear. He was described as anywhere from two and ten feet tall and able to run faster than an ordinary human being. One eyewitness claimed to have seen him perched on top of a telephone pole.

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The lab results are in.

A PR firm for Arnold Bakers emailed me a copy of a certificate from Maryland food testing laboratory Strasburger & Siegel stating that microscopic analysis has determined that the "rodent" found baked into a hot dog bun by a Charlotte, NC man was, in fact, "starchy residue."

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Police in Canada and Australia are advising citizens to disregard viral emails warning that women have been approached at gas stations by men handing out business cards soaked with an incapacitating street drug called burundanga.

The messages are slightly revised versions of similar texts circulating in the United States since mid-2008.

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The Washington Redskins lost a home game to the Pittsburgh Steelers last night, which, if you believe in the ballyhooed "Redskins Rule," means Barack Obama will win the presidential election.

It works like this. If the Redskins win their last home game prior to an election, the incumbent party will stay in office. If they lose, so does the candidate of the incumbent party. The only year in which this hasn't held true since 1936 was 2004, giving the Redskins Rule a 94.4 percent record of accuracy.

As a culture, of course, we're too rational and enamored of the scientific method to really believe in such bunk. Or are we?

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