MONDAY, AUGUST 4 One Day at a Time cares. And we especially care about your busy schedule and inability to keep up with the landslide of gossip and hateful innuendo we impart every week. That's why we've decided to begin this week's column with JUST THE HEADLINES so the busiest of our readers can be quickly informed and then go about whatever it is they think is so god-awful important. So! Here they are (and with little to no explanation)... JUST THE HEADLINES. From Britain's Daily Mail: "My Life Was Saved by the Same Knife-Wielding Robot that Treated Patrick Swayze." (See? Not all knife-wielding robots want to rape you.) From the AP: "Matthew McConaughey to Plant Son's Placenta in Orchard." (And here we were thinking boys couldn't have babies!) From Celebrity News: "Jamie Lynn Spears Takes Daughter Maddie to Local Wal-Mart." (Can you believe she waited almost seven weeks? That's tantamount to child abuse.) And finally, the headline we've all been breathlessly waiting for, from E! Online, "No Amputation for Shia LaBeouf." (But just in case they did... think they might put the amputated part on eBay?) MEANWHILE... The barely disguised Sapphic romance between Lindsay Lohan and her testosterrific girl-toy DJ Samantha Ronson has stopped being annoying and has now officially become "downright cute." New photos show both LiLo and SamRon have teensy-tiny matching heart tattoos on their hands, which only adds fuel to the fire of rumors that the two are planning a commitment ceremony. (That's never going to happen... but let's allow the gossip rags to dream, shall we?) Regardless, whether or not Lindsay and Sam's holy union ever takes place, LiLo's dumbshit dad, Michael Lohan, has weighed in with his stupid irrelevant opinion. While he supposedly wants his daughter to be happy, "If she was marrying Sam, I don't think she'd ask me to walk her down the aisle," daddy Lohan said. "She knows about my [Christian] faith. She just wouldn't ask." Yeah, and we're pretty sure his Christian faith forbids him from buying them anything off their bridal registry as well. GET A JOB, DEADBEAT.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5 After years of the frustrating search for the architect of the 9/11 attacks, a military jury has tried and convicted... Osama bin Laden's chauffeur. (Baby steps, people! Baby steps!) Salim Hamdan has been sentenced to five and a half years (having already served five years at Guantanamo Bay) for driving bin Laden. However, not-so-objective AP reporter Mike Melia described Hamdan as getting "a surprisingly light sentence" for "aiding terrorism by driving... bin Laden." REALLY? So driving bin Laden back and forth to the mini-mart is aiding terrorism? Dropping off bin Laden at an 8 pm screening of Mama Mia! is a war crime? Note to our government: Forget the little fish and focus your energies on capturing bin Laden. (Our sources tell us he's currently in a matinee of Mama Mia!. He really loves that movie!)

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6 We never thought we'd say this but... "We love you, Paris Hilton!" After the John McCain campaign produced a video attack against Barack Obama that compared his celebrity to that of Hilton and Britney Spears (see last week's One Day), Paris struck back with her own campaign ad (with help from funnyordie.com). "That wrinkly, white-haired guy [McCain] used me in his campaign ad," Hilton said, while lounging at a pool dressed in a bikini, "which I guess means I'm running for president. So thanks for the endorsement, white-haired dude." She then went on to deftly explain her platform on how she would solve America's energy woes. "We can do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars," she intoned. "Energy crisis solved!" Oh, and if elected she also plans on making R&B singer Rihanna her VP and "painting the White House pink." We know she's just being funny... but after eight years of Bush? Would it really be that awful?

THURSDAY, AUGUST 7 Californian Bernann McKinney, 57, celebrated today after a South Korean genetics firm successfully cloned her dead dog, Booger. McKinney sold her house to raise the $50,000 needed to clone her deceased pet, and received five allegedly identical puppies. "I dream of the day when everyone can afford to clone their pet," McKinney happily sobbed, "because losing a pet is a terrible loss to anyone." Another terrible loss is the thousands of animals who are euthanized in shelters every year because of idiots like McKinney. BUT JUST WHEN YOU THINK THIS STORY COULDN'T GET ANY WEIRDER... A day after this story was released, it was revealed that McKinney may in fact be the same woman who kidnapped and raped a male Mormon missionary in the '70s. Bernann McKinney denies that she is actually Joyce McKinney who in 1977 stalked a 19-year-old Mormon missionary, chloroformed him, and took him to a remote cabin, where she chained him to a bed, read religious text and sexually stimulated the young man before raping him. (Oh, and he was apparently wearing a male chastity belt at the time.) To secure his release and escape, he promised to marry her. Sometime after her arrest, Joyce McKinney forged documents and got away, escaping prosecution... but as previously stated, Bernann McKinney flatly denies she's the same person. However... who would be crazy enough to do these things? Certainly not someone who'd pay $50,000 for cloned puppies.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 "If you want to beat me up feel free," John Edwards announced today. "You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself." (OH, YEAH?) Today Edwards admitted to an affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter, a videographer for Edwards' presidential campaign. Edwards (who previously dismissed the National Enquirer's stories about the affair as "tabloid trash") went out of his way to note that a child of Hunter's—born in February of this year—was not his, while a former Edwards campaign staffer claims to be the father. (Looks like Hunter was the campaign's Little Miss Popular!) Well, there goes that rumored Obama/Edwards ticket, so let's try out a new juxtaposition: "Obama/Hilton 2008." Who wants to make bumper stickers?

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9 In what's being widely acknowledged as a Sign of the Apocalypse, Clay Aiken is a father. "Clay Aiken had sex with a woman?!" you ask. Well, um... no. Using in vitro fertilization and a "platonic friend" (Aiken's fiftysomething producer, Jaymes Foster), Aiken has deviously created Parker Foster Aiken, an ungodly product of science and showtunes who, mark our words, will one day grow up to terrorize us all. MEANWHILE... In more lousy news, Bernie Mac died today from pneumonia. The 50-year-old comedian, the star of The Bernie Mac Show and a featured player in everything from Ocean's Eleven to Bad Santa, was soon to appear in Soul Men, a comedy costarring Samuel L. Jackson and Isaac Hayes.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10Oh, crap. Isaac Hayes is dead, too. The 65-year-old musician—famous for crafting the theme song to Shaft and voicing Chef on South Park, before falling out with the show over its anti-Scientology views—was found dead by his wife today. Scientology bigwig Emperor Klaaktu of Rigel VII offered his condolences. "Know that Isaac is happier now, and that his human form has been cleared of all its Thetans," Klaaktu said in a somber holo-wave. "Also, I bet you South Park guys feel really bad now! Also, Samuel L. Jackson? First, loved you in Iron Man! Second, you might want to write up a will. Know what I'm saying? Something weird seems to be going on here." MEANWHILE... We're proud to announce the first novel in the One Day at a Time Book Club, in which we'll all pretend to read a book before meeting at somebody's house and getting soused on Arbor Mist. The book? A touching little memoir entitled Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World, which comes out this week (EEEEEEE!) and is penned by none other than Lynne Spears, who did such a commendable job raising Britney "Trainwreck!" Spears and Jamie Lynn "Pregnant Before She Graduated Fourth Grade" Spears. We'd make a joke here, but it's probably a better idea to just prefunc with a few margaritas and then make Hubby Kip drive us to Barnes & Noble. This is going to be great.