As we do occasionally, we offer a language quiz to keep you redoubtable readers on your toes.
The question today: Is the following situation ironic, or just stupid.
A newspaper in China has reported that nine out of 10 people who call a suicide-prevention line get only a busy signal.
The report mentioned that the stresses of living in China are causing suicidal thoughts to increase. So the country set up a hot line last year, which is now inundated with desperate callers.
And a busy signal is no help, according to a director of the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center. He was quoted as saying quite astutely that the situation is "very dangerous because [callers] may be at high risk of committing suicide."
Duh. Ya think so?

More on the daring world of ... EXTREME IRONING!
A bunch of Australians have broken the record for underwater ironing. Melbourne's Bay City Scuba Diving Club broke the record set six weeks earlier by a New Zealand extremist group.
Yes, the fellows Down Under ironed items of clothing. On an ironing board. Ten feet beneath the surface of Port Philip Bay.
Hey, it's not an Orgasmatron, but whatever presses your buttons, eh?

Poignant tearjerker story of the day:
In Georgia, the daughter of a man who has terminal cancer has tracked down the man who saved her father's life almost a year ago.
Seems that in December 2003, Joe Chapman and another person were trapped in their burning car after a two-vehicle crash. Time was ticking away. At any moment the flames could lick the gasoline, and ... KABOOM!
Along came Larry Andrews, a retired paramedic, who pulled the two people from the wreckage. Then he took off, without giving his name.
During treatment, Chapman's doctors discovered the terminal lung cancer. Sources (OK, other newspapers) say Chapman is not expected to live past Christmas, and his Yuletide wish list contained one wish: to meet the man who gave him another year of life.
Enter Teresa Woodard, daughter of Joe Chapman. Woodard got the story in a newspaper, which was seen by Larry Andrews, who called the Chapman-Woodard family.
They now have met and exchanged good wishes, and Andrews has explained why he took off like the Lone Ranger.
"We were late for a dentist appointment," he is quoted as explaining. "You know how hard it is to get a dentist appointment."
Indeed we do.
When you stop sniffling, we'll tell you that there's more to the story, but we think you've had enough for one day, Sparky.
More later.

Our feel-good survival story of the day:
A 2-year-old kid in Romania climbed into a garbage chute on the top floor of an apartment building and fell nine stories.
And -- you guessed it -- he wasn't killed.
He stunk like hell. But he wasn't killed.

The encouragement was loud: "Shove it in! Shove it in!"
And Don Ezra Nicholas did just that.
We know. You're thinking about that sex Olympics scene in Woody Allen's "Bananas," with Howard Cosell delivering the blow-by-blow.
Alas, no. Nicholas, 19, was competing in a contest among contests in Singapore to set world records. He stuffed his face with more than 3 McDonald's hamburgers, breaking the record set by some other bigmouth.
"I am the burger king," the kid shouted after extruding the hamburger mush from his mouth.
Nicholas said later that the contest was extremely important to him "because everyone’s going to know that I can shove more than three burgers in my mouth!"
Look soon for Donnie in your local video store ... but only if it has an adult section.

You'd never see an American football fan do something like this:
A guy in Romania got so angry at his national soccer (yes, soccer, not football) team that he threw his TV out the window.
It landed on a balcony below, almost hitting two brothers.
The balcony folks chose not to press charges because they understood how he felt. They too were furious at their team's loss in some championship or other.
Fortunately, we here in America are so much more civilized. Just look at our Eagles fans. Would they shout obscenities at passing women? Would they make rude gestures? Or gang up on another team's fans and beat the living crap out of them?
Oh. Yeah. We guess they would.
Never mind.

Across the river and through the hoods, a New Jersey man has his town's bowels in an uproar.
William Rhode III has twice now appeared in public wearing pink leggings into which he has defecated.
The second time, at Kinnelon Municipal Court, Rhode was wearing a diaper under the tights. But the brown discharge could be seen through the sheer leggings.
Rhode, a 53-year-old widower, also had failed to register as a sex offender in an earlier case.
So the guy has been in deep doodoo from the start.

Warning: Be on the lookout for a teenage boy on a possibly bent bicycle who is wanted for questioning after a woman reported that he tried to blackmail her into having sex after she hit him with her car.
According to highly placed sources on the Internet:
The woman struck the boy as he rode his bike somewhere in Pennsylvania about 2 a.m. Saturday.
The woman, 39, was not hurt. Neither was the boy.
The woman offered to give the boy and his bike a ride, and he agreed. She put the bike in the back and the boy in the front.
As she drove, the boy exposed himself and told her he would not sue her if she had sex with him. The woman told the little piece of fecal matter to get out of the car and to take his bike with him.
She then called police.
The child was described as a white male with medium build and scruffy facial hair. He was wearing a tan shirt and khaki shorts, the latter of which might still have an open fly if the brainless wonder forgot to tuck himself back in.

Cheer up, fellow fat people! We now have our own beauty pageant!
You'll have to go to Italy to participate. And you will have to weigh a bunch -- a BIG bunch.
We're not sure just how much. The news article we "borrowed" from said the winners were a stone woman and a stone man. You have to figure people made of stone would weigh a hell of a lot.
Or it could have been a misprint, and the man and woman were stoned.
Nonetheless.
It's a contest just for us fatties. And it's intended to make fat people feel better about being fat.
Oh, does the word "fat" trouble you? Would you prefer "obese"? Or "overweight"? Or "blubberbutt"?
OK, let's go with "big."
The "big" winners in the Mr. and Mrs. Over Size contest were Fabio Teseo and Giovanna Guidoni.
Let's congratulate them now and call them names later, OK?

There was an old woman who lived in California
She was nice and polite, and you knew she'd never scorn ya
She ate bacon, drank coffee,
had some hootch now and then,
Elma Corning reached 112, two years past 110.

Elma Corning died at a California rest home. She had been California's oldest woman. An age researcher said Corning lived so long because she acted as if no one ever told her she was old.
So quit telling us we look old, dammit!

This guy, as a colleague has pointed out, must have been trying to break every record in the Guiness Stout Book of Dubious Records. For his "alleged" crimes we award him the Extreme Freak of the Week.
The man was pulled over in Toronto (that's in Canada, we think) because he was driving the wrong way down a one-way street.
Ain't that always the way it starts?
Police found the guy naked from the waist down, watching kiddie porn on his laptop computer after apparently stealing an Internet connection, and, of course, driving stupidly.
When the half-naked man was stopped, he was watching a video that involved a 10-year-old girl doing a very adult thing, a thing that might still be illegal in some states.
'Nuff said about that.
Walter Nowakowski, 33, of Delhi faces numerous charges related to child pornography and theft of communications.
At his home police found 10 computers and thousands of discs that police suspect contain "Martha Stewart Living" episodes.
No, but really.
More generally, police say, according to some Toronto publications, that "stealing the Internet is becoming more common among perverts trying to avoid online detection."
As practicing pervs, we just want to state that we've never stolen anything ever in our lives. We acknowledge our perviosity and perv out only in legal ways.

Impatience. Intolerance. Indigestion.
Our society is becoming so short-tempered it's exhausting us. Even trying to order at a place as comforting and pleasant as McDonald's at 2 a.m. has become an ordeal.
A man in the drive-through lane at a McD's in Florida was attacked this week by two guys who thought he was taking too much time.
Edward Archer was the attackee of sorts. Bogdan T. Rasoi, 24, and Catalin Ionut Rasoi, 20, were the attackers. They punched Archer as he sat in his 1996 Sebring convertible and then dragged him from the car. Archer pulled out a small knife.
The fight continued.
When police arrived, they found three bloody men, two of whom were driving away in a 1996 Sebring convertible.
One of them was not Edward Archer.
The brothers are charged with burglary and aggravated battery.
But back to the impatience thing. Is a hamburger really worth all that?
Even a Big Mac?
We want everyone to get along.
And hurry up about it, would you????????!!!!!!!!!

First it was Puke. Now it's F--king.
Yes, another village has decided to stay with a decidedly odd name.
Earlier we told you about the town of Puke deciding against changing its name.
Now the Austrian village of F--king (the hyphens are for propriety’s sake, not part of the name, according to town signs) has seen an increase in the disappearance of town signs.
A spokesman says, "Everyone here knows what it means in English, but for us F--king is F--king – and it's going to stay F--king – even though signs keep getting stolen."
F--king newspaper editor Menhardt Buzasa said, "F--king is universal. Germans use it as much now as the British, and it also means the same to the Americans, Australians and anyone in the English speaking world."
Just an FYI: F--king is near the towns of Vomitville and Windpassing.
Those Austrians must have a hell of a social life.

Philly's skater kidz surely will empathize with their Louisville bretheren and sistern now that Louisville has declined to fund an indoor track at its Extreme Park.
One Indiana kid said, "I wish they would finish it, because it is more fun skating inside."
A 31-year-old sports biker said, "I'd like to see them get it done so we wouldn't have to go somewhere else to ride in the winter."
What kind of attitude is that? Don't roll over like the French did back in WWII! If you're gonna roll over, do it on a skateboard!
Remember Love Park! Remember Extreme Park!
Get mad as hell, and go jump over something!

The people you see jumping off buildings and driving cars off cliffs in your favorite movies have their own awards show. It’s called the Taurus World Stunt Awards, and it took place recently in Hollywood.
As the stunt doubles gimped down the red carpet, the same question often arose: "Who are these guys?"
If that question reminds you of Butch and Sundance, just remember that Paul Newman and Robert Redford had stunt doubles to ride those wild horses, jump off that cliff and make love to Katherine Ross. (OK, maybe not that last.)
The event is sponsored by Dietrich Mateschitz, one of Austria's richest men.
And according to the New Yorker, the Taurus awards "adhere to Mateschitz’s strict marketing policy: stunt people are the extreme athletes of the movie industry."
Among the "celebrities" at the show: Zoe Bell, who was sometimes Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill, Vol. 2"; Tanoai Reed, The Rock’s real-life cousin and his double in "The Rundown" (who fell 100 feet off a jungle cliff and 55 feet into a pool); Arnold Schwarzenegger, action hero and now governor of California; and Billy Lucas, the guy who did all the action stuff for Arnie in "Terminator 3."
And even though it's an awards show, we don't think Dick Clark has gotten hold of it and turned it into one of his "timeless" TV specials.
These people may be stars in their galaxy, but that galaxy is far, far away

If you saw Smarty Jones' recent editorial in the Daily News, you know that Smarty hates flies.
Well, it turns out that someone else may hate flies even more than Smarty.
A Chinese businessman, Hu Xilin, has been on a fly-squashing rampage for 10 years. It began with a fly squatting in his soup, which ruined Hu's business party. Actually, the official Chinese news agency didn't specify soup, but hey, give us a little room for poetic license, OK?
So Hu's been at war with the pesky insects ever since. Now he's recruiting a "swat" team (not our pun, thank you very much) of fly killers.
If Hu can rid the world of flies, we're sure Smarty will be quite pleased.
The ecological ramifications, however, could be severe. It could mean ... the end of the world.
Eek.

About 100 college students recently stripped down and rode the terrifying Nemesis Inferno roller coaster naked at a park in England.
We can’t show you the pictures. But they're swell. We bet you can find them through a search engine or something.
The stunt helped raise money for some good, albeit unnamed, causes.
It also helped the park celebrate its 25th birthday.
Birthday. Birthday suits. Get it?
Nuff said. We have to go back to the photos, make sure those folks are really naked.

More excitement on Mount Everest: A disabled climber has reached the summit.
Nawang Sherpa, who has a prosthetic left lower leg, reached the potentially killer crest Sunday.
Nawang’s fake leg was made especially for climbing. As was he, being a Sherpa and all.
Keep in mind that Everest is, like, thousands of feet high. Climbers face injury, even death, because it’s cold and icy and, way up there, you can hardly breathe, and you have to cross deep chasms, and climb vertical walls, and this year apparently, you have to survive flying oxygen bottles thrown down by negligent or malicious climbers above you.
What an adventure!
We think we’ll stay home.

OK, boys and girls, it's sing-along time. This one goes to the tune of "Wichita Lineman." Ready? A one, and a two:

I am a drunken drivin' cowboy,
I can't walk a straight line,
Fightin' with the hayseeds
and smellin' like some swine

Yes, Limestone Cowboy Glen Campbell has pleaded guilty to extreme driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident. His blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.20 percent (0.01 percentage point higher than the level found in a beloved member of the "Would We Lie?" staff when he was improperly pulled over for simply weaving from lane to lane and being unable to turn his car lights on).
Campbell was arrested in November in Phoenix, his hometown. He'd crashed into another car and was, of course, drunk. By the time he got to the Phoenix police station, he was feisty - or as they say, "extreme drunk." He fought with the lawpeople.
As part of his plea agreement, Cowboy Glen must spend 10 days in jail.

And I need help more than want it.
So just give me more booze.
And the drunk-drivin cowboy's
still singin' the blueeeees.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!
It’s ... Extreme Ironer!
You think those people who die on Mount Everest every year have it tough? Just try ironing your favorite shirt while hanging from a rope at 20,000 feet.
The sport of extreme ironing is ready to take over America, and perhaps the Olympics one day.
And yes, there is such a thing as the Extreme Ironing Bureau, which is planning the two-week extravaganza.
It starts Monday in Boston, shifts to the Black Hills of South Dakota (maybe Rocky Raccoon will join them), and concludes at Times Square on Memorial Day.
In case you’re unclear: Extreme ironing involves ironing items of laundry in remote, inhospitable, dangerous or unusual locations.
By that definition, our mother was an extreme ironer for years and didn’t know it.
Follow the high-flying excitement at ExtremeIroning.com.