The! Biggest! News! of! the! Day! - Not Alibaba.com IPO, Google's Android, Activision or Richard Stuckey

Here are some of the contenders for today's biggest...news...of...the...day...

• The surge of Alibaba.com shares following their IPO in Hong Kong...
• The appointment of Richard Stuckey, "who helped unwind Long-Term Capital Management LP's bad bets nine years ago", to try to unwind Citigroup's (C) subprime mess...
• Continued chatter about Android, Google's (GOOG) mobile technology platform...
• Earnings from Sun Microsystems (JAVA)...
• A charge and dividend halt at Beazer Homes (BZH)...
• Earnings from Activision (AVTI) which benefited from "Guitar Hero"...
• Optimism on Quanex (NX) as it is said "S&P likes the steel and aluminum fabricator's low debt, strong free cash flow, and relatively stable earnings, and ranks the shares a strong buy"...

While those are all stories worth watching, I think it is obviously clear that the biggest news is this pair of "bad idea" articles -

• Texan sets record with 87 snakes in tub - "Jackie Bibby, the 'Texas Snake Man'...spent about 45 minutes in a see-through bathtub with 87 rattlesnakes Monday, fully clothed, shattering his own record by 12 snakes"...
• Shake, shake, shake your booty for cash - Jockey, the Kenosha-based maker of intimate apparel, "is sponsoring an online competition for adults to post videos of themselves dancing in their drawers"...

The reason for the first article is just to set your expectations for why any future articles along the lines of "Texas Snake Man Bitten" will not be listed as a "biggest...news..." candidate. Okay - who am kidding, of course it will. However, I will not consider it part of the animal uprising....

As far as the second article, I think it is clear that encouraging people to dance in their underwear is naturally going to produce "a clip that is at once entertaining and slightly disturbing". Slightly? How about this - Jockey should pay me not to participate in the contest just to protect their brand...