Fake Girlfriend is now a meme

How long does it take for a sports scandal to result in an Internet meme? Less than a day. First, the background:

Because it was too good to ruin with facts. Why sports journalists, who ought to be the most hard-bitten cynics in the industry, suddenly melt when presented with a tale out of Love Story, I can't say. This is the internet. This is where people come to pretend they're really, really ill (yet capable of typing 247) and / or invent imaginary BFs or GFs who are awesome.

The inevitable internet craze: Putting your arm around an imaginary girlfriend, having your picture taken, and posting it with the Impact font. It's called Teo'ing.

Not as dumb as planking or owling, but close. Here's a Gopher-themed addition.

Okay, this can be over now.

SCIENCE! There's something about this that seems insufficiently sourced. The story:

I guess the science is settled, then. Here's the original website. It says they found fossilized diatoms in a meteorite. Odd how a discovery so incredible should be confined to a small internet newspaper, eh? Somehow it came to the attention of Slate's Bad Astronomy blogger, who wrote:

Doesn't mean the diatoms-in-the-rock finding is wrong, though. Someone who's really looking hard for proof may actually find it. Read the entire article.

But let's back up to the first story. The site is "unknowncountry.com," and the masthead says "Editor-in-chief Anne Striebver." I haven't followed the ups and downs of the UFO world since Art Bell went off the air and took his comedy show with him, but the last name is the same as the fellow who wrote about his own alien abductions in the 90s. They started out to be quite terrifying, but I recall towards the end it was just standard apocalyptic stuff: the aliens were here to warn us that we were destroying our species through (fill in the Concern Du Jour here) and we'd better stop. They knew this because, well, aliens know these things. They are smart. So smart that they kidnap people in their sleep, send them back with unprovable stories and experiences, and expect everyone to listen to the abductees, most of whom have . . . issues about other things.

At one point in the series, I remember Strieber describing how an alien explained to him that white chocolate was really bad for him and he shouldn't eat it. Now we know he was either making it up or had been kidnapped by Mike Bloomberg.

Anyway, yes, it's Whitley Strieber's wife, and he has "Whitley's Space." If you wondered what he's up to: why, pointing out how NASA is manipulating Curiosity images. Remember all those people who thought there was a face on Mars, and evidence of past civilization?

It's OBVIOUS, Sheeple. NASA is covering something up. That's why they send robots to other planets and release gigabytes' worth of images to the public. To keep you from knowing the truth.