U.N. tries to decide: Gadhafi? Qaddafi? Khaddaffee? Kadhafhi?

Amid all the turmoil going on in Libya, the United Nations held an emergency meeting regarding the status of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gadhafi.

Officials are working on a resolution, but it has nothing to do with asking the colonel to step down from power. Instead, they are trying to decide one critical issue.

How the heck should his surname be spelled?

In Arabic, the colonel’s surname is rendered this way:

القذافي

The above is pronounced “Al-Gadhafi”.

Or Al-Qaddaffee, or El-Khadhafhi, or Al-Kadddafffeee.

“Because Arabic has so many dialects and so many ways of pronouncing the same letter, we are working hard around the clock to properly determine how to spell Colonel Gadhafi’s surname,” said U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan in an exclusive interview with Ponderings From Pluto. “We are trying to agree on a single, romanized universal spelling to help out the newspapers, websites and bloggers out there. Some say Gadhafi, others Qaddafi, some say Khaddaffee.”

Some say tomayto, others say tomahto.

Annan instead referred non-Arab-speakers to this chart:

PFP tried to reach Gadhafi for comment but encountered two problems: PFP correspondent C.F. Twob does not speak Arabic and has no idea whether Gadhafi is still alive or if what is seen on the news is mummified version of him.

The U.N. hopes to reach an agreement on the colonel’s name by the end of the week.

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New dogbreed: Chi-dane-dane or Great Mexican?

Officials with the American Kennel Club are trying to decide what to call the new breed of dog that is, somehow, a cross between the tiny Chihuahua and the very large Great Dane.

Some day Chi-dane-dane while others suggest Great Mexican.

Love at first sight.

Besides the name the question is: how?

“It took a lot of trial and error,” said Marty Samson, a canine researcher with the University of South Texas. “At first, we tried having a Great Dane impregnate a Chihuahua, but that didn’t work: the puppies’ heads were bigger than the Chihuahua mother. We tried to deliver the puppies through Caesarian section four weeks early, but they were not viable enough to survive on their own.”

Neither the Great Mexicans/Chi-dane-danes nor their Chihuahua mother survived, leading Samson to conclude the only way to breed the dogs was to have a male Chihuahua mate with a female Great Dane.

Samson’s team had to erect a ladder for the male to climb since, even with the female Great Dane laying on the ground, his climbing on top of her was similar to an adult man having to climb a small structure.

“The male dog had a very difficult time, especially with the female Great Dane barking and looking at him as if not really sure of why he was trying to, um, mate with her,” Samson said. “We had to finally give her anesthesia which helped her relax and greatly lowered her inhibitions. She probably thought of it as a drunk, one-night stand.”

The female Great Dane then was pregnant and carried four puppies to term.

The puppies then had to be fed with a bottle since, once they were delivered, their mother did not know what to think of them. Some had problems opening their mouths wide enough to suckle from the teats.

Thankfully, the litter was two boys and two girls, and they will then breed with each other to see if they can then create a new breed.

The Chi-dane-danes/Great Mexicans have the large heads of the Great Danes but are roughly twice the size of a Chihuahua. This is good, since having the head of the big breed and the body of a smaller breed would cause serious equilibrium issues.

What will these dogs be used for? Show dogs? Guard dogs? Crime-solving dogs with large appetites exclusively for Taco Bell food? It’s hard to say.

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