Off-Kilter

Barney a Dope Fiend?: Maybe some of you thought we were exaggerating when we said Barney the dinosaur is a scourge upon the face of the Earth, the locus of all evil and a lousy tipper. But now there’s proof.

In the dinky town of Waltham, Minn., police have seized the flabby Dino Flintstone rip-off for being stuffed with drugs. According to state narcotics squad chief John Fossum, who probably should receive a congressional Medal of Honor, a drug-sniffing dog found a kilo of cocaine inside an 18-inch talking Barney doll at a post office.

Three humans were taken into custody.

The Salt Crystal Cathedral: Today’s award for most edible church goes to Blessed Kinga’s Chapel in Poland, which is made entirely of salt. Located in a massive underground salt mine, the 180-foot-long church includes salt staircases, intricate salt chandeliers, a salt balcony and a sodium chloride altar. According to Avenues magazine, the crystalline chapel was started in 1895 and was finished in 1963.

Nearby is a gallery of statues sculpted from pink, green and white salt, and another underground chamber used as a basketball court and opera hall.

The place might sound bizarre, but from a metaphorical standpoint, there isn’t a better building material for a Christian church. Although salt is now more often associated with heart attacks and cholesterol, in biblical times it was used to preserve things from decay, hence the New Testament description of Christ’s followers as “salt of the Earth.”

Brine-Soaked Vegetables Department: In honor of International Pickle Week, we feel compelled to mention that during World War II, 40% of America’s pickle output was reserved for U.S. soldiers. Also, in case you were wondering, Atkins, Ark., often known as the “home of the fried dill pickle,” just concluded its annual pickle-juice drinking contest.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Story: If there’s ever a Pulitzer Prize for supermarket tabloids, the award for creativity will have to go to the Weekly World News, which is probably the only publication on the planet that claims to have bureaus in Washington, New York, Paris, London, Rome, Moscow . . . and Roswell, N.M. (although, when we called directory assistance in Roswell, there was no listing for either the WWN or alleged bureau chief Ernst Craven).

WWN’s latest tour de force is a story about a “new Titanic” being built as a luxury spacecraft to ferry 2,500 people to Mars in 2012, exactly a century after Leonardo DiCaprio’s cruise on the ocean liner turned him into a human Popsicle. Commissioned by a Texas billionaire, the nuclear-powered Titanic II spaceship will feature six restaurants, three Olympic-size pools, a casino, golf course, bowling alley and 12-screen movie theater. Billed as indestructible and able to withstand “even a direct hit from a meteor,” the spaceship will, of course, foolishly travel to Mars along the edge of an asteroid belt. It has 15 small space shuttles that can function as lifeboats. But critics say that isn’t enough to handle the craft’s passengers.

In other words, it’ll make a great disaster flick: James Cameron meets “Deep Impact.” Starring Marlon Brando as the asteroid.

* Roy Rivenburg’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com.

Contributors: Associated Press, Father Jim Nisbet, Ann Harrison, Wireless Flash News Service, Martin Miller and Steve Voldseth. Paul Melton, we’ll miss you.