Tom Cruise is still alive (I guess)

Every morning, there are websites I peek in at. After I check my email, I almost always look at Engrish.com for the daily Engrish. I usually scan the News1130 headlines to see if, amidst the uniformly depressing stories of murders, rapes, burglaries, arsons, and car accidents (the only news that's fit to print is bad news, apparently), there is something Vancouver-related that I need to know about. And I check in with Wikipedia recent deaths, usually posting a little RIP here if someone I care about passes (tho' I neglected to mention Sirone's death a couple of weeks ago, I realize now, mostly because I didn't figure any of my blog readers would know who Sirone was). Very occasionally, you'll catch a bogus death report that someone has posted for a laugh; usually, these are removed within minutes.

Today, just a few minutes ago, a report that Tom Cruise had died at age 47 of cardiac arrest on a plane to Hong Kong lingered briefly at the top of the page. I must confess it: I felt a flickering of hope that it was not a hoax. Granted, the media frenzy around that sad deformity of the spirit, Michael Jackson, since his departure proves that death is no remedy to the problem of overhyped, insane celebrities fouling the world with their presence, but the thought of a planet without Tom Cruise briefly warmed my heart. Could it be? I promptly searched Yahoo News, but no one else was reporting it, and now it's been taken off the board. Looks like Tom Cruise is still alive.

But I'll check in again with Wikipedia Recent Deaths in a couple of hours, just to be sure...