We worried that the Wastebook, highlighting ridiculous spending by the federal government, would retire with former senator Tom Coburn, but Arizona's Senator Jeff Flake has inherited the Wastebook mantle.

Flake's debut Wastebook was released yesterday –just as Congress is huddling to decide how to spend our money. Flake's Wastebook has a "Star Wars" art theme, with a fetching pig added in to nail the pork barrel theme.

Some of the wasteful spending has already been widely publicized (the $43 million service station in Afghanistan and millions paid for on-field honoring of the military at sports events), but there will be lots of waste of your money  you probably haven't hear about yet:

* The Southwest National Primate Research Center in Texas received $8 million from NIH this year to train twelve marmoset monkeys to run on a Nordic Trak treadmill. Researchers said that “to our knowledge, this is the first described method to engage marmosets in aerobic exercise.” One monkey got sick and vomited. Feel free to do the same thing.

*Despite an understandable hesitation by U.S. citizens to travel to Middle Eastern nations just now, coupled with official warnings that such gadding about can be dangerous, USAID spent $2 million promoting tourism in Lebanon. Hey, Beirut has long been considered the Paris of the Middle East.

*The California National Institutes of Health received $5 million to organize parties at bars and nightclubs where hipsters will be urged to "take a stand against tobacco corporations." Whoever dreamed up this expenditure must have been smoking something stronger that tobacco. (Researchers found that smoking rates were unchanged by the parties.)

*Do foam koozies really keep your beer cold?  Washington State National Science Foundation received $1.3 million to explore this intriguing question.

*New York National Institute of Drug Abuse got $780,000 to study whether pizza is addictive. "When the results were tallied, chocolate, ice cream and French fries were rated as even more addictive than pizza for most students," we learn. Handy to know.

This just scrapes the pork barrel. The entire Wastebook is here.

Remember all these wonderful projects on April 15!