Banning plastic bags from grocery stores in recent years seems to be the hot new trend for progressive enclaves like Los Angeles and Seattle that, you know, care about the environment. Because apparently using plastic bags to carry your food purchases home is the equivalent of clubbing baby seals. Or something.

Anyway, we’ve known for a while that reusable grocery bags can make you ill (it seems that not everyone knows you’re supposed to wash them after carrying your raw chicken home in them), but now a new unintended consequence has come up -- shoplifting.

Lots of people have some kind of phobia revolving around a particular creature: Spiders, sharks, bats, snakes ... goldfish. Fine, maybe that last one isn't quite as common as the others. FINE, maybe I'm the only person I've ever met who has a goldfish phobia! But I have a feeling I won't be the sole (HA!) human being with this fishy fear for long! Nope, now that MONSTER GOLDFISH are invading Lake Tahoe, I wouldn't be surprised if people started squishing goldfish and keeping spiders in bowls as pets.

Although it is the whole "keeping as pets" thing that started what's sure to be remembered for centuries as the Monster Goldfish Apocalypse. Or, more accurately, the whole "dumping as pets" thing, officially known as "aquarium dumping."

The State of the Union Address 2013 was on tonight, but if you missed it, have no fear -- I’m here to recap it for you. It can be hard to keep everything the president says straight, especially when he says things that directly contradict with other things he’s said or done in the past. So just for fun, let’s take some of his best lines of the night and match them up against his record, shall we?

There were too many shady statements to mention them all here or I’d bore you as silly as if you had actually watched the speech. For the sake of brevity, let’s just go over the top 13 things he said that made me snicker, guffaw, or face-palm.

It's unbelievable what human beings can actually live through: An 18-year-old Australian boy named Matthew Allen was recently discovered by hikers after spending 9 weeks lost in the bush -- during a record heatwave reaching temperatures of 113 degrees. 9 weeks!?!? 113 degrees!?!? I can't even imagine surviving 9 DAYS under those conditions. Granted, the poor kid wasn't in particularly great shape when the hikers found him: Allen was reportedly "highly disoriented, partly blinded, covered in leeches, and suffering from gangrene." Over the course of 9 weeks, he also lost approximately 90 pounds -- half of his body weight. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

How on earth did this kid live through such an insanely harrowing and miserable ordeal?! Well, that's sort of the strangest part of this horrible story -- besides apparently drinking water from a muddy stream, no one really knows how he survived.

The Gowanus CanalSad, sad news: The dolphin who spent today trapped in the highly toxic waters of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn has died, officials say. Apparently injured and possibly tangled up in something, the approximately 7-foot-long, 200-pound creature struggled for hours as local residents, biologists and emergency responders watched helplessly. Because -- and this is the really sad part -- the Gowanus Canal is so polluted it's literally poisonous. Said Robert DiGiovanni, senior biologist at the Riverhead Foundation, “Unfortunately, all we can do is watch and wait for the tide to rise, so the animal can get out on its own. It’s not safe for us to get people in the water.”

What a horrible way for this majestic animal to die. And what a horrible truth that this waterway ever got so polluted in the first place.

Now, I don't have much experience with fishing -- not in lakes or ponds or rivers or the deep blue sea -- so I'm not 100% certain about this, but I'm guessing that when you go fishing in a stream in your backyard, you probably have fairly low expectations about what you might catch. Like cousins Eric Stamatin and Andrew Gainariu, both 11 years old, who were only half-hoping to nab a couple of crayfish in the creek behind Eric's house (which extends from the middle branch of Michigan's Clinton River). As usual, the crayfish weren't biting -- so the kids gave up and decided to build a dam instead. No biggie.

That's when they came across what they thought was a big rock. But, as you've probably already guessed (since why would a story about kids finding a rock make headlines?) it wasn't a rock at all.

Holy cow -- have you seen this picture of the massive Ohio sinkhole that opened up in Dover Ohio? That thing is huge! According to news reports, it took only minutes for the sinkhole to devour several acres of land -- the size of 4 football fields -- and part of a state highway. (That's State Highway 516 in Dover -- in case you were planning on driving on it anytime soon.)

The hole collapsed near a lake where, for years, an asphalt company had been dredging sand 50 feet below the surface. Pretty scary stuff. Can you imagine driving along the highway and all of a sudden having it open up? Fortunately, there have been no reports of any actual injuries.

Brace yourselves, East Coast. You just managed to pick yourself up and scrape yourself off from Hurricane Sandy when you look up and there's another storm coming your way. This one won't pack nearly the punch of storm Sandy, of course, but considering that thousands are still without power, and thousands more are living in shelters or are outside trying to clean up the ravaged areas -- and, well, let's just say this nor'easter couldn't have come at a worse time. If you've already been affected by Sandy, do you need to panic? Let's take a look at this storm surge and see what it's got in store.