Three stories you might have missed in the news

Kirk Ericson | Mar 31, 20220

No matter how attuned you are to the news these days, you can always find a story or two each week that stretches your sense of what’s possible in this world.

Feast on these three stories:

Story No. 1

The reclusive and heretofore-unknown oldest daughter of TV mom Kris Jenner and deceased super-lawyer Robert Kardashian surfaced last week living and working in the tiny Idaho Panhandle town of Sandpoint.

Ethel Kardashian Jones, sister to Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Robert Kardashian, gave an exclusive interview Friday to the Bonner County Daily Bee in which she revealed she was a member of Southern California’s Kardashian clan.

“My oldest boy takes photos for the Bee and the newspaper’s been struggling lately, so I thought revealing my family ties might help the paper get some publicity and encourage people to subscribe,” Ethel told the Bee. “The Bee has several subscription price points for digital and print. If you want to know what’s going on in Sandpoint or the greater Bonner County-Panhandle area, you’ll find it in the Bonner County Daily Bee. Please call today. Your neighbor might be the one picking up the phone!”

Ethel, who says she’s married and has four children, works part time at the Bonner County Historical Society & Museum. She and her husband, Tim, have lived in the area for 18 years.

“We love it here,” Ethel said. “When Kim and Kanye visited a few years back, we showed them and their security team a grand old Idaho time. We sang campfire rap songs for hours around a beach fire. You should have seen the stars sparkling and twinkling over Lake Pend Oreille that night. Oh — Kanye had his first s’more.”

Story No. 2

The president of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, recently announced his nation’s plans to build the tallest underground skyscraper.

One of the emirates, Dubai, has already built the world’s tallest skyscraper — the Burj Khalifa — and the president said he wants his nation to be known throughout the world as having the tallest structures above and below ground.

“This will put the UAE on the map,” he told Western reporters, one of whom took a moment to visualize the UAE on her world map at home.

The underground skyscraper, scheduled to open in 2026, will go as deep as the Burj Khalifa goes high: 163 stories. The building, which is referred to as a “groundscraper,” will require novel design features, but engineers say the structure won’t need air conditioning because of the cool temperatures at that depth of the Earth. Also, and this went unsaid, you won’t have people committing suicide by jumping off the world’s tallest underground structure.

So, that’s good.

Story No. 3

The pursuit of better looks through medical means has taken a grotesque turn. Cosmetic surgeons — from Rockville, Maryland, to Bend, Oregon — now offer a procedure called “oradying,” which entails injecting permanent colored dye into a patient’s irises. It allows stars, starlets, politicians and ordinary rich people to have bluer, greener or browner outlooks.

The product is for people with too much money (it costs $4,000 per eye), a high level of insecurity and the inability to wear colored contact lenses. Clients also must be able to tolerate the point of a needle penetrating their eye.

A Pasadena, California, actor who underwent the procedure said he’s been trying to land a breakout acting role for three years. He said he thought having brighter and bluer eyes would put him over the top at this next audition.

“As an actor, you’re judged on your looks,” said the actor, who insisted on anonymity out of respect to his career. “If you can do something, anything that makes you unique, then you set yourself above everyone else. I decided to go for it, totally.”

Doesn’t it hurt to have a needle in your eye?

“Not as much as it hurts to be a nobody,” he said.

God bless him, totally.

Oh.

One more thing.

April Fools’ Day.

■ Contact Kirk Ericson at [email protected]