The Bell Curve

City Paper's Quality-o-Life-o-Meter

- 6 A program that gave away free meat and dairy products to the hungry shuts down, unable to keep up with demand. "Thanks a lot, poor people!" say other poor people.

- 4 The state legislature exists in a "time warp of public corruption," says a grand jury investigating the branch. "And Desmond Hume is our constant."

- 2 Unidentified powder, first found in a balloon and then later in an envelope, leads to two evacuations in two days in Center City. In fact, the dude who found the first one evacuated on the spot.

+ 1 Stu Bykofsky writes that he was as "happy as a chipmunk on a log" to read a study that showed biking had almost doubled on Spruce and Pine. Also that he was "nervouser than a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs" and "as cantankerous as a one-eyed wallaby in the last Vegemite factory in Queensland" before Michael Days rushed over and pushed his emergency reset button. Then he made sense the whole afternoon.

+ 18 For the first time in 13 years, the Flyers make it to the Stanley Cup Finals. Joe Banner puts on a Green Man costume and a clown wig and starts holding press conferences for random shit.

0 Channel 10 weatherman Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz apologizes for his outburst after election-night coverage cut his program. "Sorry, it's just that I had this I great 'a change in temperature will enable the warm front to be reconvected' line that I know would have killed."

- 4 Philly 311 tweets: "The American Beverage Association spent $18.9 million in 2009 on lobbying, mostly against a federal soft-drink tax." And still Pepsi maybe found some extra cash to possibly build us a little bitty tiny park hopefully.

+ 2 Former Inquirer publisher Brian Tierney leaves with a parting gift: The newspaper will be in 3-D on June 13, thanks to him. Then he begins applying blue glitter paint to his face: "Now, as per the terms of my severance, bring me my Unobtainium!"

This week's total: 5 | Last week's total: 28