Is it just me, or has the news gotten predictable lately?

Open your paper, turn on your radio or TV, go online, and you get pretty much the same stories in every category:

Politics: Yes we can, no you can't, we don't wanna.

Sports: I didn't - but I'm really, really sorry.

Finance: We did, we got rich doing it, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Celebrities: Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Leave me alone!/p>

(Yes, "celebrities" is a "news" category now. We know about Angelina Jolie's children except the location of the countries they came from. You're welcome.)

International: Bombs, hostages, threats, suits, waving, elections, marches. Nothing unusual.

Disasters: Record heat, record floods, record oil, record fires, record mud, record quakes. Nothing unusual.

You have to dig for a story with a surprise twist in it. Or just let me do it for you.

If you go to the Magic Kingdom and/or Epcot, for example, you expect long lines and a big hit to the wallet. You don't expect to be molested by a duck.

According to The Associated Press, a Pennsylvania woman "is suing Walt Disney Parks and Resorts because she claims she was inappropriately groped by a man dressed up in a Donald Duck costume."

Could Donald Duck grope appropriately?

She approached him with her child for an autograph in May 2008, and the feathers flew. According to the suit, she has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, "severe injury," "muscle contraction headaches," "acute anxiety," "nausea," "cold sweats," "insomnia," "nightmares," "flashbacks," "digestive problems" "and other conditions that are 'permanent in nature.'"

This misbehavior shocks me from Donald. Daffy ... now there's a menace. Still, Mr. Duck is a sailor who doesn't wear pants. Will Daisy stand by him or throw him under the monorail?

In the realm of real, rather than hat-wearing, animals, Reuters reports a story out of British Columbia about marijuana growers who gave cops a surprise. The unexpected part is not that the growers protected their crop by posting guards, but that the guards were bears.

The unemployment rate among bears is extremely high, and if the growers had hired human guards, they probably would have had to pay them in something other than dog food. As the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (We Always Get Our Bear) was shutting down the pot plots, officers noticed about 10 black bears lounging around the property.

This was alarming until the cops realized the bears were "very docile and content just to sit around while the marijuana was seized."

Of course they were. They were totally mellowed out, man. The would have been dangerous only if the RCMP had gotten between them and a Tim Hortons.

And park officials in China have stolen an idea from a German sculptor's art installation decrying the commercialization of modern life. It was a park bench with a coin-op meter and a pointed ejection mechanism. Oh, modern art!

Chinese parks get overcrowded on the weekends when everyone is trying to get away from everyone else. Bench hogs are a problem.

Not anymore, at least in Yantai Park, Shendong province. Some parks would deploy more benches, but where's the fun in that?

According to Orange News, loaf too long without feeding the meter and "dozens of sharp spikes shoot through the seat."

And you thought parking tickets were a pain.

We're lucky. The city of Pittsburgh may be planning to lease its garages and give you less time for your quarters, but no one's suggested a public seating charge.

Now there's a surprise.

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