Italy is a place of many strange and wondrous sites. Rich in history, literature, and art, you can’t wander anywhere in Italy before stumbling across something relevant to something in human history. Including, apparently, the corpses of game show hosts. Also, does America approve of girl-on-girl cheating? It just might! The proof, plus celebrity corpse stealing, here at Uproxx News.
That’s Not What We Meant By Digging Up Answers
First, we have the story of Mike Bongiorno, Italy’s version of Bob Barker and close friend of the most entertaining politician in Europe, Silvio Berlusconi. Born in New York City, Bongiorno started out in journalism, and had a long history on Italian television. So long, he literally hosted the first broadcast on the public airwaves in Italy in the 1950s. He spent fifty years hosting various game shows, always greeting the audience with a hearty “Cheers!” and earning the nickname “The Quiz King”, before passing on of a heart attack in Monte Carlo in 2009 in the arms of his wife, Daniela.
In other words, he led a charmed life where he was loved by and entertained millions, and was even the subject of academic discussion: Umberto Eco insisted that Bongiorno was so bland that he made absolutely everybody feel better about themselves in a scholarly paper.
And now, for some reason, somebody’s stolen his corpse from its resting place in Milan. This isn’t actually unheard of in Italy: occasionally big-name corpses will be abducted and a ransom demanded, or else the thieves will pretend that the corpse is their uncle and go on some wacky adventures. But no ransom has been demanded, a week later, and nobody knows who stole the corpse or why. Maybe Eco was right and even in death, he’s just a walking (well, lying-down, really) self-esteem boost. Berlusconi was understandably distraught, humping traffic cops mournfully instead of with his usual exuberance.
College Students Love Lesbians? Shocking!
Meanwhile, in yet another contender for “least surprising study results ever recorded”, apparently among 718 college-aged men, half would forgive their girlfriend sleeping with another women. Surprisingly, this was not dependent on managing to secure a threesome.
The numbers are generally interesting: men would forgive their girlfriend cheating with another man only 22%, while women would forgive their boyfriend cheating with a woman 28% of the time while if he was on the down low with another guy, he only has a 21% chance of forgiveness. Gays and lesbians weren’t polled because the study was conducted in Texas, which has an official policy of homosexuals being an urban legend propagated by the North.
The lesson we take away from all this: college students love lesbians, but apparently fear the gay man. We’re pretty sure America’s porn purveyors could have clued us into that one, Texas.
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- Somebody has stolen a game-show host’s corpse. Let’s hope they don’t do it to Regis Philbin, it’d be a shame to lose our only extant example of the zombie. (BBC)
- Texas fights hard for “study with the most obvious foregone conclusion ever” award. (TODAYOnline)
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- In tech news, it looks like Amazon has accidentally leaked word of its plans to compete with Netflix. It seems that members of Amazon Prime, its $79 per year premiere service, will get free unlimited streaming of over 5,000 movies and TV shows in standard definition, which is a quarter of the selection of Netflix. As that works out to $6.50 a month, speculation is running rampant that Amazon is about to try and hit Netflix where it hurts. Or it could simply be a lure to get more people onto Amazon Prime. Either way, it looks like unlimited streaming will be flowing out of Amazon sooner rather than later. We threw in Erin Toughill because who would you rather look at? Her? Or a river? And remember, if you say “the river”, she’ll beat you up. (Engadget)
- And in the smartphone world, Android has become the number one smartphone OS, beating out the former competitor, Symbian, owned by Nokia. This might be because “symbian” is one letter off from an…adult novelty. We’re just sayin’. Might be a marketing issue. (Yahoo!)
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- Italy currently owes its various creditors 103.7% of its GDP. The US? 60.8% USA! USA! USA! (Visual Economics)
- Depending on who you ask, between 2% and 13% of the population is homosexual. So odds on that threesome are pretty low, college students, contrary to what those movies you’re downloading right now are teaching you. (Journal of Theoretical Biology)
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