Editorial: Casual Fridays 10/26

Minimum-wage-employee style

In southern California, a group of lifeguards made a spoof of “Gangnam Style,” aptly titled “Lifeguard Style.” All of the lifeguards involved were initially fired. Although the city council recently recommended that they be reinstated, a decision has not yet been reached. One thing is for certain: Donald Trump would probably sympathize with the pool authorities on this matter.

Suddenly 1000 percent cooler

While the Dalai Lama was giving a recent speech at Brown University, he shared some wisdom with students and encouraged them to share his thoughts with others if they were interested. If not, they could forget it. However, because of the Dalai Lama’s strong accent, the transcriber writing the closed captioning mistook what he had said. The closed captions said that “they could f*ck it.” Unfortunately, most of the students are unlikely to forget that awkward mishap.

Dogs have feelings too

Swedish researchers conducted a study to see if dogs could recognize human emotions and express empathy. They discovered that dogs can demonstrate empathy for humans by yawning after a human yawns. They suggested that showing empathy by yawning is something that occurs in later stages of emotional development. Perhaps this will change Pavlov’s theory of salivating dogs — they probably acted the way he wanted them to because they felt sorry for him.

Chemically-enhanced produce

In the Netherlands, more than eight tons of cocaine were found among boxes of bananas traveling on a ship from Ecuador. Although the cocaine was confiscated while the ship was at sea, the bananas reached their final destination and were ultimately donated to a zoo. On another note, zoo visitors have noticed that the monkeys have been acting a bit erratic lately.

Oh deer

In northeastern Philadelphia, a family heard the discomforting sound of broken glass coming from a neighbor’s house and called them, fearing burglary. Police arrived shortly after and searched the house. They soon found the home intruder: a 300-pound deer. You can’t blame the deer, though — he saw the doggie door and thought it would work out better.

They won’t stay dead!

Furbies, the fleecy, animatronic, talking gremlin dolls from the ‘90s, are set to be re-released this year. The updated nightmares come in 10 colors, have an app and can also talk and sing. They have “expressive” LCD eyes and form “unique personalities” that allow them to demand that their humans feed or pet them. Also new this year: Furby’s cameo in “Paranormal Activity.”