Return to Disorder

Devout Christians from the group Return to Order are so upset over an online show called "Good Omens" that more than 20,000 of them signed a petition calling for Netflix to cancel the show. The show is adapted from a 1990 satirical novel about the apocalypse, but the British newspaper The Guardian reports that Return to Order has taken issue with what it calls an attempt to "make satanism appear normal, light and acceptable."

"This type of video makes light of Truth, Error, Good and Evil, and destroys the barriers of horror that society still has for the devil," the group asserted. Clearly, they've watched enough to know what they were talking about.

But maybe not quite enough. It appears they were tuned to the wrong online video subscription service. "Good Omens" appears exclusively on Amazon Prime, not Netflix.

On Twitter, "Good Omens" fans took turns poking fun. "I guess @netflix has no choice but to cancel it now," said one.

"They already did! I couldn't find it ANYWHERE on Netflix!" wrote another.

NetflixUK posted: "ok we promise not to make any more."

Even Amazon Prime joined in, posting a tweet to Netflix about the cancellation that was never to be, joking, "So sorry for your loss."

When fans of the show scrambled to visit Return to Order's website and sign the Netflix petition, they were disappointed to find that, sadly, the petition was gone. No explanation needed.

Boggled by Bags

You have to give this Canadian store credit for trying. To remind customers about the environmental damage caused by plastic bags, the East West Market in Vancouver decided to print a new line of shopping bags with super-embarrassing fake store logos: "Dr. Toew's Wart Ointment Wholesale," "Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium," and "The Colon Care Co-op."

The idea was to turn plastic bags — and their carriers — into spectacles and possibly even objects of ridicule so customers would stop asking for plastic and request paper instead or, better, bring their own reusable bags.

Boy, did that backfire. The bags became an overnight hit and are now collector's items. The store originally had 1,000 bags printed with the embarrassing logos. People are so interested in buying them, they're even posting their intentions on Facebook. Oh well. The message still stands: Don't use plastic.

Collector's Items

The tax collector in Howell County, south of Rolla, apparently misunderstood the part of state law that required him to collect a surtax on railroad and utility operations. He was pocketing commissions off the tax collections as they came in, treating them as a kind of supplemental salary. That is, until State Auditor Nicole Galloway told him that, no, it's not his personal money.

As part of the county government audits that Galloway's office routinely conducts around the state, Galloway discovered that Howell County collector Dennis K. Von Allmen "improperly withholds and personally retains commissions on surtax and railroad and utility taxes collected for cities. These commissions totaled $3,738 for the year ended February 28, 2018."

State law requires any funds collected, including commissions, to be deposited into the county's general revenue fund. The salary the collector receives is set by law and it doesn't include residuals that result from him doing his job. Instead of acknowledging the error, pledging to repay the money and not do it again, Von Allmen seemed noncommittal about future practices.

"I will discuss this recommendation with legal counsel and take it under advisement," he responded. Old habits, it appears, are hard to break.

Courage in the Line of Fire

Next to the word "guts" in the dictionary should be a picture of Tom Fox, the Dallas photojournalist who came across a gunman in an active-shooter scene and responded by doing his own shooting — with his camera. Fox, a photographer for The Dallas Morning News, was at a federal building in Dallas to photograph a defendant for a story, when a masked gunman appeared nearby and started firing.

As the mayhem unfolded, Fox instinctively took photos, holding his position near the gunman as others scattered. "I just stood there and prayed that he wouldn't walk past me," Fox recounted later. "Because if he walks past me and sees me, he's going to shoot me."

Amazingly, the attacker failed to injure anyone despite being armed with a high-powered rifle and five 30-round magazines and shooting up the building. He was fatally shot by police.

"Your journalistic instincts just kick in," Fox said. "You use the camera almost as a shield. I also felt a journalistic duty to do all that."

Renaming the Stars

With the relatively recent ability of scientists to identify not just countless distant stars but the planets that orbit them, the official astronomical record is filling up with planetary names bestowed by astronomers, like "HD 156411 b" and "HAT-P-5b." (Yawn!)

But as The New York Times reports, the International Astronomical Union, made up of astronomers from all over the world, is celebrating its hundredth anniversary by letting every country adopt and rename an exoplanet and its star.

The United States has been assigned "HD 17156," a yellow star a little bigger than the sun, about 255 light-years away, and the humongous planet (three times bigger than Jupiter) circling it.

The official U.S. naming campaign is just getting started. Among suggestions so far, the Times reports, are "Wilwarin" and "Sauron," from the works of "Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien.

With all due respect, Tolkien was British. And if silly British names are the people's preference, how about "Planety McPlanetface"? America's star and planet should have all-American names. "Stanley" and "Gloria" come to mind, for some reason.

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Photo credit: Jade87 at Pixabay