May 22, 2001 | CHICAGO -- A man has been charged with trying to rape a woman who castrated him during the alleged attack, police said.
Erik Williams, 21, allegedly tried to force a 42-year-old woman to perform a sex act on him early Friday, and while the two struggled the woman bit off his testicles, police said.
The woman went to police headquarters and turned the testicles over to officers, authorities said.
Williams later arrived at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center with injuries matching the woman's description, police said. Doctors were unable to reattach his testicles, hospital spokeswoman Sandra Wilks said.
Williams remained in the hospital Saturday in police custody and was listed in stable condition.
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3. This is brilliant. There's no other good way to describe it. It's simply brilliant and unexplainable and i doubt there will ever be a satisfying explanation for it. If you have a slow modem, stick with this. It's worth every second: TRUE BRILLIANCE
Also of much less brilliance is a company that will make an action figure to your likeness for the low low price of $275. It's kind of neat -- well, if it were about $270 less: YOUR TOY
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4. Masturbation. That is the theme of this little section of this feature. Why? Well, because i happened to run into some funny stuff about it, and thought i would share. For starters, there's this great quote from the Austin Chronicle, taken from an article called "Is That a Perfectly Legal, Anatomically Correct Condom Education Model, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?" Here it is:
"What's that you say? You think you bought a dildo here in Austin? That's an "anatomically correct condom education model" to you, young lady."
Dildos illegal to sell in Texas? You bet they are. Who would have known? But anyway, what's even better is an organization called Americans for Purity, which i think must be a joke. I've read through it, and they don't ever acknowledge that they're fake, but this is just too outrageous to be real. Maybe it is, though. If the Southern Baptists are real, i don't see why this group can't be either. Here's an organization that is trying to stamp out masturbation in America, and they have a good number of methods to do it -- including selling all cucumbers pre-sliced. Oh yeah, they go there. Check it out. You won't believe your eyes.
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Feature #81:
For reasons you'll soon read about, my e-mail address appears far too many times on this feature. It's kind of absurd, really. Anyway, hi, welcome to summer. I walk outside in this south florida weather and can pretty much feel the air sit on top of me like a sweaty and bloated cow. Sure, that analogy might not have been perfect, but let's be honest -- do you want a sweaty and bloated cow sitting on you? Ok, i think that's settled now.
This week should be quite interesting for me. A middle school talent show is featuring a few girls dancing to one of my band's songs (no, i don't know these girls at all), and my girlfriend finally arrives back in the states after a month-long European voyage. Welcome back, Lisa!
But hey, enough about me. Let's talk about the feature, shall we?
1. More bitter e-mails! More bitter e-mails!
2. Worst dates ever! Worst dates ever?
3. Cops! Dummies! Same thing!
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1. The bitter-letter-exposure continues, thanks to a reader named Sarah Harmon. She says:
Okay, I was in a long distance relationship with a guy who was sort of a geek. (He was a musician and was sorta funny, the ONLY reasons I went out with him) After a while, he started to think that he was above everyone because he was going out with someone popular, so he just decided to dump me, out of the blue. The worst part is that he moved right after he dumped me so I didn't have a chance to publically humiliate him. Here's the email he sent me when he broke up with me...
"Hello. I have just been taken captive by vicious crack house owners, and I will no longer be able to talk to you. This makes me so sad I want to throw myself off of a cliff into the mouths of mad goats. I am morose. Well, since I'm not going to be talking to you anymore, I guess I should go ahead and write what I was going to tell you. I'm breaking up with you because, well, you just aren't good enough for me. I need someone who realizes that I, Matt, hold extream superiority. That is all, good day."
Is anyone else as in awe of how much of an asshole this guy is? It's amazing that this wasn't a joke, but was actually the way some dude broke up with his girlfriend. Wow. Truly stunning, sir. Rarely do we get to witness the kind of truly remarkable lack of respect for another human being that we have witnessed here.
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2. Another Sarah -- this one with the last name of Lanenga -- suggested a funny feature for the site. I'm hoping this can bloat into its own section, but for right now i'll just conduct it within the Feature of the Week. Anyhow, Sarah proposed that people send in stories of their absolute worst dates, which i will post and we can all simultaneously laugh at and pity the person. I don't really have any bad-date stories, but she was kind enough to kick this off with one of her own. So, here we go:
*Names Changed to Protect Idiots*
Wednesday Night.-7:00 pm. It's my first date out with *Nick*, boy was I excited! I was getting the first chance to meet his friends. Mind you--I'm not a devout religious person; in all reality, I have major issues. So *Nick* picks me up, and where do we go? No where else but....his church youth group. With a bunch of little catholic girls, guys forced to be there, and old ditties, I sit through prayer, interpretation of bible stories, and "god in my life" stories. It took all my energy not to go on and on about my beliefs...I was too out numbered. I did manage to say "I don't go to church" and they looked at me liek I was the devil..
Now, to make the evening more interesting--were the events to happen afterwards. I bitched *Nick* out in the car, for he perfectly knew I dislike organized religion. Then we started making out. In front of the church, in a very uncomfortable car. Worst date ever for me. Now boys...never take your girlfriend somewhere you KNOW she hates. No Dice!
Making out in the church parking lot? Would Jesus approve of that? Either way, now that you've read Sarah's, please share your worst date stories! It'll be fun... i promise. Send them here: worstdate@happyscrappy.com
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3. On one of South Florida's major highways, there was a Florida Highway Patrol vehicle parked on top a grassy medium. These cars are often seen staking out their territory, just waiting for the right unsuspecting driver to pounce upon, their lights blazing and pen anxiously awaiting its turn to write another ticket. I can just imagine the officer smiling to himself as he mouths the words, "Lisence and registration, please." It's what these sad men and women live for. It's what they wait for all day.
But, the car that was parked on that day was unlike any other car -- and that's because the person sitting inside it was abnormally still and awkwardly slumped down in the driver's seat. There was something about the nose -- a bit too perfectly sloped, maybe -- and the wide-brimmed hat that just didn't seem right. The posture and stillness was, frankly, inhuman. It didn't take much ingenuity to realize that, in fact, this cop was no cop at all. It was a dummy.
Sure, a strong argument could be made that the two are synonomous, but the staggering truth remains: this cop was not breathing. It never was. It was made of wood or plastic, and apparently held the Florida Highway Patrol's fullest confidance in its ability to deter speeding. In an area so rife with law-breaking drivers, this dummy was the best that the Patrol's had to offer. Sure, it may not have been able to drive the car, but it did an exquisite job of sitting in it -- for a week and a half.
On its first day on the job, there is a minor possibility that its presence would have cut down on speeding. People may have seen the car in the distance, slowed down, noticed that an inanimate object was occupying the vehicle, and sped back up. But, by the time ten days went by -- hell, by the time two days went by -- this car was nothing more than a useless scarecrow. Just how dumb did the Florida Highway Patrol think we were?
I called up their offices to find out, but nobody seemed very willing to talk about it. The dispatch lady was only able to tell me that, indeed, they knew it was out there and, indeed, it was a "decoy." The seargant (or whoever he was) couldn't even tell me how long they planned on keeping it out there.
"I mean, you've put a DUMMY out in the middle of the road for a WEEK. I can't imagine you'd think this was a good idea, because there's no way people still think it's a real cop, so i was just wondering how long you planned on keeping it out there," i said to him.
"I don't know," he said.
"You don't know?"
"I don't know. Call the chief blahblahblah.
Chief blahblahblah was out of the office, but the dummy was nowhere to be found the following day. I only wonder if my call made someone think that if one person had noticed that it was a dummy, maybe -- gasp -- there were others!
Which brings me to the irony of this tale: Between the cops and the daily commuters, i think we know who the real dummy was.
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Feature #82:
Wow. Sorry for the delay in updating. This has been the worst lag in a while, and i really haven't done all too much to justify it. I've been doing some freelance work for a local newspaper, been charging up what will probably be a very unhealthy phone bill with my girlfriend, and playing a few bad cover tunes with some friends. Through the latter, i discovered my impressive ability to scream into a microphone, which is funny since i hate listening to music where there's any screaming. But to do it yourself -- well, it's rather amusing, although i did lose my voice for two days. No more of that.
Anyway, here's the feature. I'm going back to an old format for this week, since i really didn't have much else to offer. Nobody sent me a story of their worst dates, nor did anyone offer a bitter letter they recieved, although i'd still encourage it. For now, though, i'm left to amuse you on my own. Here i go.
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If you want a good social theory, try watching out for the "rule of eight." That is, it is impossible for a group of eight or more people to actively carry on one conversation. They may all be witness to entertainment, or they all may take part in a group joke, but they will not actually hold a solid conversation. Seven or less people can do this, but eight or more will break up into smaller groups for conversation. Try watching it. It's true.
If you want Madonna tickets in Germany, you'll have to have sex with a reporter. A German magazine called Thema1 is holding a contest where the winner has sex with one of their reporters -- either male or female -- and then, as a prize, wins Madonna tickets. I can't help but wonder if sex with the reporters is really going to be an awful chore for some people, but i guess i just haven't seen what these people look like. And no, prostitution is not illegal in Germany.
If you want to tell someone an incredibly tasteless joke, tell them this one: A child molester and a little boy are walking in the forest, and the little boy turns to the child molester and says, "I'm really scared of these woods. They're dark and creepy." And the child molester says, "How do you think i feel? I have to walk out of here alone."
If you are a tall, athletic and intelligent blonde woman, you can fetch around $80,000 for donating a few of your eggs, according to the Los Angeles Times. The average woman gets paid $5,000.
If you want to see incredibly poor logic, take a look at the full-page ad in the back of last week's New York Times. Some loony placed an ad that claimed "Scientific proof of God's existence!" on top, and then featured a long-winded explanation and a silly diagram. What was the scientific proof? "The law of opposites," says this non-scientific individual. According to him, the law of opposites states that everything has a counterpart -- where there is hot, there is cold; where there is wet, there is dry; so on and so forth. Thus, he argues, where there is no God, there is God. By people not seeing God, that means there's God. Quite frankly, you're free to believe what you want, but don't drag logic into it you know it doesn't fit.
If you've ever lamented the absence of a modern-day Renaissance Man, consider Mario from the Nintendo video games as a contemporary well-rounded individual. While we're not all too sure about his age, i think it's worth noting that he is a professional plumber, a race-cart driver, a doctor, a champion tennis player and referee, a brilliant swimmer, a world traveller, a movie star, a wise businessman, a good friend to Luigi and, while this hasn't been documented, i think it's safe to say he's a good lover to the princess. All that, and he's a hero, too. I don't know when Mario had the time to aquire all these skills, but it's safe to say that he's our Renaissance Man. Hooray for Mario.
If you're in search of a reasonably entertaining animated interpretation of Mario Bros., go here: Here!
If you're in St. Louis, don't drink beer out of a bucket while sitting on the curb. For some reason, that's illegal there.
If you want to tell someone a clean and amusing joke, tell them this one: Question: "What's brown and sticky?" Answer: "A stick."
If you own a digital camera, take a look at people's legs when you print out their picture. I don't have the hairiest of legs -- in fact, there is a mysterious genetic strip of no hair on both of my legs, which nobody seems to have an explanation for -- but there's certainly something there. But, when my image was captured on a digital camera, i suddenly looked like my legs were professionaly waxed. It was really the weirdest thing. There i am, and i have legs smoother than the words of Barry White. I'm not sure if this is a phenomonon familiar only to me, but i think it's worth keeping an eye out for.
If you want to read the news, don't read any stories about Chelsea Clinton graduating college. Is this news? No. Has this girl actively done anything to make herself news-worthy? No. Is her father even the president anymore? No. This crap isn't news, but the Associated Press (and countless other organizations, i'm sure) seem to think it is. One article from the AP even contained the following passage: "She's pretty social," said Zak Frentz, a 20-year-old sophomore who doesn't know Clinton but often saw her on campus. "She seems very friendly." Can you believe that? He doesn't even know her, and he's being quoted because he's seem her before. This is absurd. What a bastardization of reporting.
If you want to torture someone, encourage them to do any of the following: drink a gallon of milk in under an hour, eat ten saltine crackers in a minute, or eat two spoonfuls of cinnamon. They're impossible, and the third one will make you gag.
If you read the Sunday comics and care what i think, this is what i think. I think that the "Family Circus" isn't a circus so much as it is a church, and i think that "Rose is Rose" isn't even trying to be funny but is, instead, the product of a person with no sense of humor but who has always been impressed by their own love of children and flowers, and this person probably consider him/herself "compassionate." I think that "Blondie" should get rid of the little exclamation marks on top of people's heads, because it doesn't really do much to indicate their surprise, and it has become a punchline crutch whereas someone says something slightly surprising and, in response, everyone in the room gets an exclamation mark above their head. I think that Marmaduke isn't remotely entertaining because the silly things that dogs do can only be appreciated by their owners and, possibly, the close friends of owners. I think that, much like Peanuts has been in constant re-run mode, the comics would benifit from constant re-runs of The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes. I think the creator of Garfield needs to come up with some more personality traits for the cat because he has miraculious milked very unexciting quirks for years and, while it's impressive that he made a successful run out of something very unexciting, it has gotten very very old. And that's some of what i think.
If you ever worry about having bad breath, get a tounge scraper. The idea seemed a bit rediculious to me, but my dad gave me one and, quite frankly, it's astounding. It looks like a flat spoon, with the very end somewhat bent down so as to provide scraping. The instructions said to scrape the tounge to remove "white residue," to which i thought, "Hey, tounge scraper, you've got the wrong guy. No white residue here!" But, i tried it anyway and, suddenly, coming off my pinkish tounge, i collected an impressive and disgusting amount of white residue. Apparently, everyone's got it -- but not everyone has a tongue scraper. I'll tell you, my tounge feels quite nice after a few good scrapings. Quite nice, indeed.
If you were hoping that this would go on for longer, sorry.
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Feature #83:
Feature? Yes.
1. Worst quasi-date
2. Worst third-wheel date
3. What?
1. This is the second addition to the Happy Scrappy Worst Date Project (as i've just deemed it). If i can get a few more, i'll start a seperate page for all of them. But, for now, i'll run them as the feature. Again, if you have a worst date story that you'd like to share, please e-mail the story and any relevant background information to worstdate@happyscrappy.com. Thanks.
This one comes from Brooke Rehmann. It isn't so much a date, per say, but it's close enough.
I was reading the "Feature of the Week" last week and read that there is a new "Worst Date" thing. I read the poor girl's story, chuckled and muttered to myself, "I'd write in, but I have no story to share, how unfortunate for me." That was the other day.
Today, however, is a different story. I'm not sure if you'd consider this a date, really. But it had to be, quite possibly, my most humiliating moment in my life - EVER.
Let me give you some background. My boyfriend and I have been going out for like 2 weeks now. We've been best friends, though, for about 2 years. We go to school near each other down in North Carolina (him at Duke, me at NC State) and even though its not the same school, we've managed to become quite good friends in the process. His parents knew about me. He'd come visit me in the summer (I live at the Jersey Shore and he lives in Long Island) and we'd go to concerts together and such. His parents never seemed to care that we were friends, until they started thinking that we were dating-when we weren't actually dating. His mom was the worst. She would nag him about me all the time. Her main problem with me is that I'm not Jewish and he is. In fact, I'm every Jewish mother's worst nightmare for dating their son: I'm blonde, blue-eyed, Roman Catholic and German.
So then about two weeks ago, we both found out we liked each other and we started dating. We went to a Dave Matthews Band concert on Wednesday and he stayed over. We were planning on having me come up and visit him on Saturday so we could hang out. He wanted me to meet his parents. His mom keeps telling him that she hopes this will just be a "fling" and that he'll find someone Jewish and yadda yadda yadda. I'm not saying this isn't just a fling, but Christ, cut me some freaking slack! So I get all dressed up Saturday morning to meet his family. I'm nervous as all hell. I know she'll be nice to my face, but I'm afraid of what she'll say behind my back. That sorta stuff makes me paranoid.
I get up there and he's home alone, thank god. We decide to go out to lunch at Ruby Tuesday's. We come back from lunch and see that just his sister and father are home. His sister is cool, we talked about the DMB concert and random stuff. His dad was nice, but that was somewhat awkward since I didn't know what to talk about. All in all, though, it was fine. I was glad I got that out of the way. So I got changed into shorts so we could go to a town called Port Jefferson and hang out. This was at, about, 3 PM.
Fast forward to about 7:30 PM.
He gets a voice mail telling him that his parents had to go out for the evening to a bar mitzvah and they wouldn't be home until around midnight, and since I was leaving at around 9, I wouldn't get to meet his mom. In a way, I was relieved, but also upset because I put so much effort into looking nice for her, that I'd have to do it all over again. The voice mail also states that his sister is out, too, for the evening. This meant one thing: we had the house all to ourselves.
We start off watching some tv and playing some Snood. Slowly, but surely, we wind up in his bedroom. Its about right now that I'd like to point out that his bedroom door has no lock. (How's that for foreshadowing?) So we're on his bed making out for like 10 minutes. Suddenly, his pants are on the floor. Ya know, pants just seem to have a mind of their own...... :) I'm telling him that I'm nervous about him not having a lock.
"Oh, don't worry. No one's home! They're all out for the evening, and besides, if they came home, I can hear the garage door open from here. And if someone comes home, I'll just run into the bathroom so they'll never know."
I'm appeased. More making out.
All of a sudden, I hear talking. I sit up. He gets up. He gets out of bed, opens the door (with no pants on, no boxers on, half naked) and there's his sister with her friend. He runs into the bathroom next to his room, but the damage is done. They saw.
His sister and his friend are playing it rather cool. I'm hiding behind his door, and I can't control my laughing. I don't know if I was laughing about how funny it was, or about how mortified I was.....I kept thinking what I would do if I saw my brother running out of his room half naked with a girl standing there. I would be screaming and I'm sure I'd go temporarily blind. I hear some chuckling next door in the sisters room.
She asks him what he's doing in there. He says he's going to the bathroom. She tells him that she has pants in there that have her money in it, and she needs them. Now, his pants are sitting on the floor in his bedroom with me, and I'm still laughing hysterically. Somehow, he gives her her pants, she laughs and says thank you.
As she's leaving, she says "Nice to meet you Brooke, see ya later!" I'm like "Nice to meet you too." I hear them laugh, I start laughing and like a few minutes later, he comes out of the bathroom.
She's going to tell his mom. What a first impression! I told him I can never come up to his house again, I can never meet him mom, I'm so mortified! He tries to tell me that they assume that sorta stuff is going on, but c'mon, the mom doesn't like me already and on my first trip there, he's caught with no pants on. Thank God, though, I was fully clothed. ::Phew!::
So I don't know if you consider that a "date" per say, but by golly, it had to be my worst ever experience with a guy. I'm praying the mom never finds out and brands me a skank...
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2. Here's another worst date story, this one in the form of an actual date from Justine Cabulong.
I decided to go out on this double date with this guy that me and my friend, we'll call her Sarah (cause it rhymes with her real name, and that to me, is amusing), met at a party we had went to the week before. Sarah wasn't so much into her date, James, and she backed out at the last minute. James and my date, Seth, decided to not completely lose the fine polluted starry night that sets the scene of our story, so they picked me up anyway. As a sidenote, I later found out that when James discovered that he wasn't going to be with Sarah tonight, who he really took a liking to, he decided to consume alcoholic beverages before they had picked me up.
At the movie theater, we were checking out the show times to see if we could find a convenient showing. With no success, we bought tickets for one that would show in about an hour. James had not mastered the skill of simply buying a movie ticket and not paying attention to the ticket lady, so he continued on a conversation with this middle aged woman working on a friday night who wore oversized glasses. He talked to her about how he was stood up and how he was jealous of Seth and how he was sad. When we finally peeled him away from the glass window which seperated him from his new friend, he left with, "hey, wanna be my date?" It's a pity that the sad ticket lady wasn't as drunk as he was, cause maybe, and i'm going out on a limb here, James wouldn't have been so sad.
Instead of waiting so long for our movie to start we proceeded to a Target center near by, which had seemed like a good idea at the time. We followed James throughout the store and at the sports section, he took down one of the bikes and started to ride it around the store. At that, I turned a corner and tried to avoid him coming toward me. Seeing my embarrassment, he proceeded to ride around the store following me while yelling my complete name and claiming to know me. For some reason, Seth thought that this idea was just so incredibly cool, so he took down a bike and followed James around.
Our adventure then took us to the jewelry department where James thought that he should get Sarah a gift. Convinced that he didn't have a chance no matter what he did, he sprawled out on the floor in the middle of the aisle yelling her name and asking the gods of the target center why she didn't like him. I was already convinced that no matter what he did, he wouldn't have a chance either.
Finally, it was time to go to the movie. The movie sucked, and James sat down a few rows ahead of us laughing and making comments to the screen as if the characters could hear him. Sad, very sad.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my worst date.
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3. What is this? What? Superdave.com
Or, even better, what is THIS? What? Classic performance by SuperGreg.
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Feature #84:
Whoa. Ok. That took a long time to update. I'm real sorry about that, hopefully it won't happen again. I'm not settled (more or less) into my apartment in Worcester. It's nice -- although the landlord seems to refuse to fix things, which leaves us with doors that don't close, a concrete step that lawyers are going to soon start hovering around, a sagging beam in the basement, and a fan that shakes so hard that it unscrews the lightbulb. The place is absolutely not worth the $825 a month we're paying, but i remain optimistic. For now.
My band's show went really well, in case you're curious. About 60 or so people showed up, and we played a nice solid 53 minutes of rock-n-roll. Plenty of jumping around and on-stage bantering was to be had, and i even saw a few people in the audience singing along, which was really neat. We're hoping to do an east-coast tour in December, so i hope to see some of you on the road then. More details as they surface.
Now seems like as good a time as any for the feature. Here we go:
1. Scary picture
2. Scary muscles
3. Not-scary jumping
1. So, i was going to put this picture in as a picture of the day, but i thought it needed a more glamorous position on the page due to its absolte absense of a rational explanation. This was sent to me by a reader named "L E M Ü R," who apparently had received this e-mail and then took a screen shot of it to send me. The subject of the e-mail was "sweet black jesus!" Here it is:
In case you can't read the text, it says: HELLO. MY NAME IS HILARY BUT I PREFERTO BE CALLED "FLUFFY". SOME OF MY HOBBIES ARE TO CHAT ON AOL. I LOVE AOL. I HAVE 76 BOYFRIENDS ON AOL. ALL I DO IS CHAT WITH THEM. I GAVE ALL OF THEM MY HOME ADDRESS. ISN'T THAT FUN!BUT MY FAVORITE HOT GUY IS AL GORE. ISN'T HE SO UTE? I HAVE 382 PICTURES OF HIM CUT OUT AND GLUED TO MY WALLS. EVERY NIGHT I LUCK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF"
That's it. I won't even try to guess what this is about. But for the record, i think Al Gore is about as hot as the frozen tundra.
2. I wrote this about something i covered for the local newspaper. I'm not really sold on the ending yet, but i thought it was worth posting.
They want to pump you up
by Jason Feifer
My friend Kevin and I walked into the high school auditorium, fully embracing how little we'd fit in. Given our shared predisposition towards bodybuilding competitions, we wanted nothing more than to feel out of place. We wanted to be outsiders, the kind of guys who aren't terribly offensive but make everyone around us think, "What are they doing here?" To blend together with the kind of people who crowd into a high school auditorium to watch purposely-disfigured men flaunt their grotesque and lumpy muscles - well, in our predisposed ignorance, it was a bit more courage than either of us were willing to muster.
Summer freelancing for the local newspaper had led me to a number of things I wouldn't otherwise have done, but covering a bodybuilding competition was a bit out of my league. I'm the kind of person who sees things for their immediate value, and working out doesn't quite fit my skewed pragmatism. Bike but don't travel, run but go nowhere, climb stairs but never reach a higher elevation, pick up obnoxiously heavy items only to put them right back where you found them - this all sounds like a big joke, a series of directionless gestures by people who, deep down, must wish for a job in manual labor. I have a hard time taking it seriously, and had a harder time making it sound important in print. A local theater production consisting of 70-year-olds cracking sexual jokes had proved to be no problem for me, but bodybuilding? This was David vs. Goliaths - a whole lot of abnormally sized Goliaths.
Music fizzled out of ancient speakers and, one by one, inhumanly sized men stumbled to the front of the stage and flexed. Their bleached-white teeth sparkled from deep within their painted-on tan faces, and they grimaced politely while the rest of their bodies bubbled like a contained seizure. They stuck poses that I thought were reserved only for a mockery of such events - most notably, the Hulk Hogan downward bear-hug - and it looked as if some horrible assemblage of slugs was migrating from beneath their skin. As health concerns go, these guys would have had more functional bodies if they put all their bodybuilding energy towards something like chewing lard.
"These guys must work out," whispered Kevin, and I laughed for a second before catching myself. I didn't want anyone to think we were making light of the event, for fear that we'd be rewarded with a few speeding fists to the face. Everyone else around us was too busy cheering, although I couldn't begin to understand what was so inspiring about similar-looking men striking identical poses. But, at least it meant that nobody else caught Kevin's joke. For now, I thought, we were spared the audience's wrath.
After the event, I was supposed to get a quote from the winner, which I saw little reason for. Athletes are notorious for not providing an interviewer with anything insightful, and watching a post-game chat on any national television network will invariably confirm it. Ask the star athlete a question about the game, and they'll revisit exactly what you just watched while managing to avoid any perceptiveness or dim wisdom whatsoever. When they're out on the court, they don't have time to philosophize, let alone think. They're on auto-pilot, flailing their bodies around in a desperate attempt to move a ball from one place to another. Sports players are bulky individuals who bump into each other for a living, and they just about never have anything interesting to contribute to a post-game analysis - let alone anything. The only thing that ever varies from their expressed desire to score is a brief religious comment, which, by design, is void of insight. These are men who think that an almighty creator of existence is highly concerned with the NBA semi-finals. What more could possibly be expected of them?
Thus, I didn't expect much from Eric Hoult, the 28-year-old winner of the bodybuilding competition, and I got exactly that. How did he feel about winning? "I feel great." How hard did he train? "I dieted for 12 months." What does this mean to him? "It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but I'm glad I did it." That was about it. Out of breath and dripping with oil, his arms so bloated that they were unable to naturally rest against the side of his body, Eric Hoult was a man of few words. When he left, Kevin said he thought that Eric should open up a travel agency, because he could probably just physically hurl people to their destination.
I couldn't help but wonder what drives a man to do this to himself. Staying healthy is a respectable objective, but as Eric waddled away from me like he just dismounted an overweight horse, he looked as healthy as the population of a cemetary. Was winning a competition like this his actual goal? If it was, I felt awful that, as a guy who equates the excitement of bodybuilding with that of reading the phone book, I was the first one he spoke to after achieving this victory. Who was I to be there? I knew Eric wouldn't say anything interesting for my article, and I was right. He should have been left alone, free to marvel in his misunderstood accomplishment. I could have made up a standard quote, something proud but not boastful, and nobody would have known the difference. If Eric ever actually read my article, I doubt he remembered what he said to me anyway.
About ten feet away from me, Eric's wife and young daughter ran over and embraced him - or, rather, they were all but consumed by his stiff breasts. It was sobering to see this little girl, who at the age of around five was dwarfed by his bulging neck, look at Eric with all the devotion and awe of a proud daughter. To her, he wasn't some behemoth freak with a propensity for protein shakes. He was daddy, and daddy just won a trophy. He was like nobody else to her and, while I personally and professionally wasn't interested in anybody but the winner, I'm sure her face lit up when he was on stage. She was part of that cheering crowd, rooting Eric on because he was striking poses that, to her, were inspirational merely by his presence. She must look up to him regardless of the trophy, and she probably doesn't give his muscles a second thought. By just being happy to see her, he fulfilled her expectations. And, by feeding me a positive and mindless quotation, he fulfilled my reader's expectations of a sports article.
For all the writing experience I have, there's no way I could have harnessed the honest perspective of that little girl, but the nature of sports writing luckily doesn't require such devotion. All I really needed were some uninspiring facts, and I'd receive a paycheck and a cramped spot on page 53. It's the nature of the sports section, but it's amazingly uninspired. Perhaps this is why I could never find sports interesting to read about, even when I did follow a few professional teams.
Eric's daughter probably enjoys simpler things like Barbies and Nickelodeon, but that night, she was a bodybuilding fan. She and I may both have been in a rather foreign environment, and we both had a specific reason to be there, but only one of us actually cared. Unfortunately for the newspaper, it was the other one that had to write the story.
3. Why didn't i think of this? Oh, how jealous i am. Jumping movie.
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Feature #85:
I wake up at 7:45 a.m. and go to work at 8:30. I take a generous lunch, and don't work too hard, and if all goes according to plan, i should see a welcoming paycheck in two weeks. Working isn't all that bad, but then again, my job isn't all that bad. Waking up is about the hardest part of it.
In a nutshell, that's my day. Ah, summer.
Feature? Sure, why the hell not.
1. The worst worst-date yet
2. 52 oz. of bleh
3. Crooning child is truly wonderful
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1. Yet another submission for the "worst date" project. This has got to be the most bizarre and disturbing date I've ever heard, without a doubt. It comes from Susan (she didn't want me to write her last name), and i can't even begin to properly introduce it, so i won't. Just... just read it.
This is really strange and i don't know if I want to share it, but it's much stranger about my date than it is for me, so I'll tell you this story anyway. I had heard from a friend of mine that a guy in my biology class was talking about how "cute" he thought I am, or something like that, and I didn't really think much of it because I had never really talked to him. But then about a week later, the guy starts talking to me as we leave class. It started out with little comments about how boring our teacher is (he puts me to sleep all the time), and then he started trying to get a little more chummy by joking about the stuff I have on my backpack like a Ralph Nader pin and a pink triangle that says "I'm straight but i'm not narrow." I couldn't tell if he agreed with the pins or not, but I admit that I thought it was charming that he was really fishing for conversation.
This goes on for about two weeks, and then one day after school I'm walking to the parking lot and he comes up to me and asks if I wanted to go out to dinner that weekend. I had never really been asked on a date so bluntly, usually I meet guys through friends or at a party or something. But he just asked me like that, and I said yes, sure, why not.
We exchange phone numbers, and talk a bit more after class, and decide to go out on Friday to this sushi resturaunt nearby. The dinner was fun, he's a nice guy and reads a lot, which is a plus. But then we start talking about politics, and it turns out he voted for Bush and is a conservative and, like I said, I voted for Nader. Eventually we started talking about oil drilling in Alaska, which wasn't so good because it soon stopped being a discussion and became an argument. He's really for it. I can't even remember all his reasons, but I'm sure they included killing the environment for a small amount of oil. I don't mind discussing issues, but I don't like arguing about them. Especially on a first date, because that's just not much of a turn-on.
Finally, he drops it, which he probably did because I started putting on a real "I'm getting annoyed with you" face. It was awkward for a few seconds, then he started talking about the bio class again, and things got better.
One thing leads to another, and we're back at his house and his parents are away for the weekend. Convienent. He shows me around the house, and then we end up in his bedroom, and start making out. Now, don't think I'm a slut, because I am in complete control of how far i'll go, and i felt quite comfortable with, well, let's just say we eventually weren't wearing pants. Ok. Fine. Normal things are happening when two people aren't wearing pants. Then suddenly, he whispers, "They won't destroy the environment by drilling."
He's talking about Alaska. He touches me. He must be joking. I laugh.
"Say that they won't destroy the environment by drilling," he says again. Another touch.
"Are you kidding?" I ask.
"Say that they won't destroy the environment by drilling," he says AGAIN! More touching.
I move his hand away from me and ask if he's kidding again. He says no, that he thought we'd come to a common understanding, or some kind of crap like that, and that he'd feel more comfortable if he knew we were on "the same page" about the Alaska drilling. At this point, I just don't even know what to do, but I knew this was seriously messed up. So, after asking him to just drop it, and him continuing to convince me that drilling in Alaska won't harm the environment, I get up, put on my pants, and start walking out of the room as he just sits there with a half-grin, half-confused look.
I got in my car and drove home as fast as possible. That's the last time I ever date a conservative. God damn.
Anyway, that's that. Regardless of your political affiliation, that's just disgustingly surreal. If anyone else has a worst date story to share, please e-mail it to me and i'll post it up here. Thanks.
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2. I'm always impressed when a reporter takes a mundane or uninspiring topic and turns it into an entertaining article... much like this one:
7-Eleven comes up with a bigger Big Gulp
By Aline McKenzie
Dallas Morning News
Good grief, where will it all end?
It used to be that a 6-ounce soft drink was good enough for a red-blooded American. Then there was the 12-ounce can, and the 7-Eleven Big Gulp.
7-Eleven's Big Gulp has mutated to the 52-ounce X-treme Gulp. That's 1.6 quarts - just over 3 pounds. A two-handed, foam-insulated, don't-wear-hand-lotion-or-you'll-drop-it bucket-o'carbonation.
Compare that to the human stomach, which according to the encyclopedia holds about a quart.
This is not a drink you guzzle. This is a drink with which you have a prolonged relationship.
"A lot of people tell us they buckle it into the passenger seat," says spokeswoman Dana Manley.
What's next?
The Ford Expedition Gulp? The Gulp of Mexico?
(c) 2001, The Dallas Morning News.
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3. You ABSOLUTELY MUST check out Eugene Mirman, the marvelous crooning child. You'll be amazed and baffled, filled with wonder and creepy crawlies. Do it. Do it now.
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Feature # 86:
I am making a bad habit out of updating late, and for that, i apologize. I really do have good excuses for this time, though. First, the host of this site was updating its security, so i couldn't upload anything to the page. Then, it was my birthday (July 28th -- happy 21st to me!), and then the phone line in my apartment suddenly went dead for two days. The first dead day happened to coincide with my birthday, which stripped me of my much-appreciated birthday phone calls. That, i do declare, was "a bummer, dude."
I am painfully difficult to shop for, but that didn't stop me from walking away with some mighty good presents; most notably, my girlfriend Lisa got me (amongst other things) a book called "Culture Jam: how to reverse America's suicidal consumer binge -- and why we must" by the guy who founded Adbusters. As soon as i finish Mick Foley's new book, i'm tearing through that thing like Michael Jackson goes through child porn.
Ok, it's been almost two weeks. No time to waste. Here comes the feature.
1. Who wrote the book of love?
2. Hmmm, screwed you are
3. Quick burning tip
4. My suggestions
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1. So, Lisa found this unbelivable "how babies are made" book in a nearby used bookstore. It's not in english, so we don't have a clue what it's saying, but i think the illustrations say quite enough for our satisfaction. Let's take a look:
This is the cover. Please note that the woman is breast-feeding, and the dad seems to be checkin' the situation out with uneasy interest. Again, we haven't a clue what the title of this book means, but we're assuming it's Swedish. If anyone can read this, PLEASE e-mail me!
Before this picture, we've already seen them standing clothed, then naked, then with the man aroused, and then having sex on the bed -- which, by the way, is decorated with multi-colored hearts. It's really amazing. But here, we (we presumably being us, the parents, and our curious kids) get to take in the full, somehow-transparent act of penetration. Amazingly, that bow stayed quite comfortably in her hair. Wow-ee.
This is absolutely the money-shot of the book. The previous page shows the same scenario, but the baby's arms have yet to pop out with a "Heyyyyyyyy" Fonz-like gesture. The father and doctor seem to be enjoying the scene, although neither seems to have the courage to face her. It's like someone's taking a picture, and everyone, including the newborn baby, but the mother has been informed.
Anyway, what i really love about this book, aside from its cheap thrills, is that there's no WAY this kind of thing would go down in America. Could you imagine? People would be outraged. They'd protest, and our "compassionate-conservative" president would nearly shit himself, but not before somehow expelling the author from the country. And you wonder why America is such a sexually-repressed country! In America, we either clump sex together with rap music and WWF wrestling as "things that can ruin our children," or we let some awkward teacher deal with it in a sex-ed class.
In Europe (or wherever this book came from), people can apparently handle talking about sex. This book tackles the subject with no shame, and it leaves no room for childish misunderstandings. Hell, you don't even need to know how to read, because this book takes care of it all. Before the hospital, we get to watch the baby grow inside the mother's belly -- while her naked husband stands by, constantly smiling. There are probably 50-year-olds in conservative America that wouldn't be able to bring themselves to glancing at this book.
I wish this book was everywhere. In every classroom, in every bedroom, in the hands of every child old enough to ask questions. It might not move America into the modern world, but it would be an amusing start.
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2. My dad sent me this article, which is great for its revolution around a bad pun.
Winner sues over toy Yoda, wants car
The Associated Press
PANAMA CITY · Oh, what a feeling. Toy Yoda!
A former Hooters waitress has sued the restaurant where she worked saying she was promised a new Toyota for winning a beer sales contest.
Instead she won a new toy Yoda.
Jodee Berry, 26, won a contest to see who could sell the most beer in April at the Hooters in Panama City Beach. The top-selling waitresses from each restaurant in the area were entered into a drawing, and her name was picked.
She thought she had won a new car.
She was blindfolded and led to the restaurant parking lot, but when the blindfold was removed she found she was the winner not of a Toyota, but a toy Yoda, the little green guy from Star Wars.
Inside the restaurant, the manager was laughing, Berry said. But she wasn't.
"A corporation can't lead their employees on like that," Berry said. "It's not good business ethics. They can't do that to people."
Berry quit a week later.
She sued Gulf Coast Wings, Inc., owners of the restaurant, alleging breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation. Her lawyer, Stephen West of Pensacola, said he is looking at false advertising statutes.
She's seeking as compensation, cost of a new Toyota -- the car, not the Star Wars figure.
Berry said restaurant manager Jared Blair told his waitresses he didn't know what kind of Toyota it would be -- a car, truck or van -- but told them the winner would be responsible for the tax on the vehicle.
Blair, reached at the restaurant Saturday, said he had no comment.
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3. By the way, if you've ever laughed at "It tastes like burning," a line Ralph whines during an episode of The Simpsons, then i implore you to try a sip of courvoisier. It actually DOES taste like burning!
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4. If you've got a fast internet connection and care to see a rather absurd but unique interactive viewing experience, check out dancingpaul.com. If you have a slow internet connection and want to see a sock puppet travel around the world, check out socko.com. And, if you don't have an internet connection at all, and thus you have defied science by viewing this page, then i'd advise you to check out any books by David Sedaris. And those are my suggestions for the week.
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Feature #87:
It's so humid outside that the pages of my book are turning by themselves. I think my cactus is sweating. I don't think i've ever missed air conditioning more than i have these past two weeks. I'm going to make this declaration now: after i graduate college and move out of this apartment, i will never live in a hot area of the world without owning an air conditioning unit. I'd rather forgo a car and walk twenty miles to work, so long as i can come home and soak in the unnatural cool of my controlled environment. I hate sounding like such a modern-day, far-from-the-natural-world child, but i think i just have to face the music on this one.
Speaking of, the mp3s for my band's second album have finally been posted. Take a listen, if you care or dare.
In other news, i'm scrapping the t-shirt trading idea. A good number of people said they thought it was a decent concept, but only one actually submitted anything. That's a pretty lousy turn-out, so it's a no-go. Ah well. I do appreciate the one person who cared about it, though. Thanks, dude.
Don't wet your collective pants, but i brought back the Poll of the Week, which can be found under the feature. Each week, you'll be able to vote on something where, much like the U.S. presidential elections, your vote won't actually matter. Oh sure, it'll be tallied, but that's about it. Hey, it should be fun... i hope.
I noticed that a bulk of this feature is me whining in some form or another. I don't know what caused that, although i'm quite willing to blame it on the weather. Here we go.
1. Satan Bunny
2. Vacation bastard
3a & 3b. News from my dad
1. Say hello to Satan Bunny.
A few years ago, a friend of mine bought her close friends these crazy bunnies which, while fulfilling their function of being rather creepy, also work as a coin bank. Originally, i chose a blue one, but someone made a small fuss about wanting the blue one and so, with no other color available, i adoped this pink item.
After a few minutes, i started to really appreciate this little pink bunny. With ridigly fake fur, deep red eyes and a downcast, plotting face, this had to be one of the most disturbing items ever sold on the mainstream market. Who would possibly buy this with the intention of actually using it as a coin bank? It's the kind of thing you mail to someone you want to kill.
It seemed only appropriate that i wrote "Satan Bunny" on its belly, so there was no doubt in anyone's mind that i knew exactly what kind of disturbing piece of plastic i had on display. Satan Bunny has been with me for three years now, and i'm still never completely comfortable looking at him.
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2. It seems that the unfailing strategy for success has come too late for Al Gore. Turning to the American people for help had yielded some results, but he forgot to appeal to the one man whose reality train seemingly hadn't quite come in yet.
"Dubya," Al should have said. "Do you realize that you're going to actually have to work if you win?"
That may have done it. It is possible that our future president was assuming that winning the election would have afforded him an overwhelming amount of time to relax and vacation. Did he think that the White House could be left behind, paperwork and important documents shoved away in favor of romps at the massive estates he has scattered throughout the country? That the American people would smile broadly as he boarded his plane for a month-long vacation, only half a year into his term?
Oh wait. Maybe he did know what he was getting into.
In Italy, August is national vacation month, where every employee of every business is entitled to four solid weeks of rest and relaxation. In America, it can take ten loyal years at a company to accumulate a month-long vacation. If even a significant variation of Italy's worker-friendly policy was proposed to Bush's administration, the word would never seriously get to Bush - perhaps because, by the time he got back from vacation, everyone would have finally stopped laughing at it.
It's baffling that, for a country whose work force is treated like slave labor, the supposed leader of our government can take a month-long vacation and nobody loudly complains about it. Instead, they sympathize with the stressful work that being president requires, and assume that the vacation is more than well deserved. Take Ken Khachigian, speechwriter for Reagan and Nixon, who defended presidential vacations to the Associated Press by saying, "They just want to get away from Northwest Washington and have a little privacy and relax. They want to feel like they don't have to wake up in the morning and go to some boring meeting with a budget guy, or have to listen to a Cabinet officer talk about something."
Well, you know what? If you can't handle waking up early and talking to budget guys and Cabinet officers, don't run for president. When did overseeing one of the world's superpowers become a half-assed cakewalk? Despite the less-than-significant grumbling that this month-long vacation has stirred up, even the White House knows that this is bunk. Otherwise, they wouldn't have tried defending it by claiming that Bush is looking forward to being out of Washington and around "real" people, where he can get back to the "heartland" and really feel their problems.
Bush is going to a ranch in Texas that he bought with the money he gained during his partial ownership of the Texas Rangers. Does anyone in America actually believe that he's going to be surrounded by anyone but his spoiled family and their underpaid servants? The White House seems to insinuate that Dubya is planning on strolling down to the local unemployment office, perhaps to take a job scrubbing bathrooms and chatting about why his new co-workers aren't getting significant tax cuts in comparison to his co-workers in Washington.
As the leader of the country, Bush should set an example. If his laws aren't going to enable the American people to take a month-long vacation every six months, then he shouldn't even consider leaving Washington. At least with Clinton, the American people had the freedom of following suit and having affairs - which, of course, isn't something I'm actually advocating. In our floundering economy, insisting on a month-long vacation has the potential to hurt a family more than an affair does, considering that losing a job is becoming more permanent than going to a marriage councilor. But who was it that claims the family values in America need to be strengthened?
Oh, right, it was Dubya. I guess we'll have to wait a month to ask him about it.
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3a. My dad has, once again, provided me with two quality examples of absurd news. File this first one under "cops are stinky goats," an observation from one of the home pages that most readers of this page seem to agree with:
Altered decal on truck leads to driver's arrest
By David Cázares
Miami Bureau
Sometimes it just doesn't pay to have an attitude. Just ask Andy Polo of Pembroke Pines.
Polo's smart-alecky sense of humor got him in trouble with a police officer in the scrappy industrial town of Medley in Miami-Dade County on Friday when the officer objected to a sticker on the window of Polo's pickup truck.
The sticker is a popular takeoff on a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. It depicts the irascible Calvin expressing his dissatisfaction by urinating and "flashing the bird." Polo landed in jail because he had put the names of real people under the stream -- people he had had problems with, such as his ex-girlfriend and her husband.
According to the police report, Polo, 35, was arrested for displaying "obscene material," a misdemeanor that threatens to turn into a major dispute between police and civil libertarians.
Polo, who went to Medley with his 14-year-old son to pick up some auto parts at a junkyard, said he was stunned by the arrest, even though the officer had warned him twice in the past month or so that he would be arrested if he returned with the "offensive" decal.
"It's totally beyond ludicrous," said Polo, a driver for Publix supermarkets. "I've had this for years and I've never had a problem. Everybody's always thought it was funny."
The arrest caught even some in Medley off guard.
"Are you serious or are you joking?" asked Mayor Jack Morrow. "It sounds absurd."
But it was no joke, said Polo's wife, Rosana, who couldn't believe it when her husband called her about posting a $1,000 bond.
"This guy was waiting for him," she said. "This is ridiculous."
Even though Polo peeled off portions of the sticker, Officer Jose Ayala arrested him anyway.
Medley Police Chief Patrick Kelly said Ayala could have made Polo promise to appear in court to face the charge, which carries a possible penalty of up to six months in jail and six months probation. But Kelly defended the arrest on the grounds that Ayala might have prevented confrontations between Polo and others offended by the decal.
"Our stance is as long as a law is on the books, we have a right to enforce it," Kelly said. "It's not for us to interpret it. That's for a judge to do."
But a civil liberties advocate criticized the arrest as an abuse of police power.
"I don't think carrying a badge gives [the arresting officer] the authority to go around and impose his taste on people and declare what doesn't meet his standards to be obscene," said Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida American Civil Liberties Union, which is looking into the arrest.
"This is why people get so angry at the police," Simon said.
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3b. And this one isn't just impressive because of the alligator but because that guy's priorities are exactly the reason why people thrust themselves on television to exploit their problems. You need help? Might as well exploit it and cash in your fifteen minutes. Take a look at what he does before he calls the cops. Unbelivable.
Man's discovery: that's not a dog -- it's an alligator
The Associated Press
WINTER HAVEN -- The dark shape Felipe Barrera noticed on the bedroom floor as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes wasn't a pet, but an alligator that had crawled into his home through a pet flap.
Barrera said he walked right by the 3-foot alligator after waking up Thursday morning. He thought the lump was the family dog, Cookie.
``I started to walk into the living room -- that's when it started to hiss at me,'' said Barrera, a landscaper.
The commotion awoke the family's 5-year-old daughter, who sleeps in a bed in the master bedroom. She jumped onto her parents' bed and huddled in a corner with her mother. Barrera jumped onto a dresser, then over the gator to get out of the room.
He called a state agency to come remove the intruder, but not until after he called a Tampa radio station to tell his story to a morning disc jockey.
A trapper with the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission arrived an hour later and caught the alligator with a noose. The uninvited reptile was released into a nearby lake.
The family believes the gator got into their central Florida home by walking under the garage door, which they usually keep raised a few inches for the family's two cats.
The surprise guest then must have slithered through a pet flap in the kitchen door.
A Fish and Wildlife spokesman said the gator may have gotten disoriented while out scouting for new territory.
Although the Barreras live half a mile from two lakes, they say they aren't too worried they'll wake up some other morning to another gator intruder.
``That's just not one of those things you expect to find when you get up in the morning,'' Cindy Barrera said. ``It's just one of those one-in-a-million things. I don't really think it'll happen again.''
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4. As a vegetarian, this was one of the more unsettling things i've read in a while. Actually, i'd venture to say that even a meat eater might not be fond of this. He's a Porketarian and I Love Him
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Feature #88:
Someone in my guestbook claimed that they've seen rocks update faster than me. I can't really figure that out, being that rocks don't generally have the capability to update themselves. Perhaps they grow some moss, but that isn't really much of the rock's doing. In any case, i do apologize to those of you who wish there were more updates on this page. I try, but time is limited. I really do appreciate you sticking with me.
It finally started to cool down in Massachusetts, which i am deeply thankful for. I spend a day last week without even putting a shirt on, just sitting in front of a fan and eventually confusing myself by watching Kubric's 2001. Really now, just what the hell happened in that movie?
Anyway, it seems that a feature would be appropriate, so that's what we'll do. Enjoy.
1. But, Europe?
2. A bad date in a bad place
3. Crazy news from a mile above
1. My girlfriend got this in the mail.
It's a catalog of all kinds of non-touristy tourist sites in Europe, the kind of places that are visited by people who would find it personally insulting to shuffle through world-renowned historical sites because that would mean lowering themselves to the level of tourists just like themselves. These cataloged places are for the kind of tourists that prefer to discuss the last time they were in Paris rather than the awe of their first time. Essentially, from what i could surmise, this is a catalog for Europe snobs. That is, Americans who are snobby about their limited experience in another continent -- yet, naturally, substantially more cultured in comparison to the guy who came to see the Mona Lisa.
Thus, it is with quite glee that i noticed what i only hope is an underhanded insult to these people. Take a look at the cover, and then consider the catalog's name: "Europe through the back door" and there, penetrating the word "through" -- going straight THROUGH the word "through," i would say -- is a phallic symbol. Are we all talking the same language here? Are we?
Because if we are, then we're all laughing about these people going to Europe and being screwed in the ass.
This kind of reminds me of a cookies that were on sale two weeks ago at the grocery store called "Great American Creams." Now, has there ever been a snack food whose name more resembles a porn flick? I wish i had a camera when i saw them.
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2. Boy am i glad that i'm not in the dating scene. This is the latest contribution to my calling for bad date stories, and i'll just let it speak for itself. If you've ever gone on a truly awful date and want the world to know about it, please write about it and e-mail it to me. This week's story comes from Ashley Cogliano:
So this guy at school asked me out last week, which I thought was kind of weird because I really didn't know him very well. But, he's so damn cute, with this shaggy hair and blue eyes and real thin (but not lanky), so I thought it might be a good time. And damn, he really is cute. I can't believe I hadn't seen him around school more, but it's a big school so I guess that explains it.
I tell him where I live and he says he'll pick me up at 7 pm on Friday night, which was also kind of weird because it wasn't like we had ever even talked on the phone. In fact, we didn't talk on the phone up until the date. He asked me out on Wednesday, and then the next time I saw him was Friday. At like, 6 pm, I was kind of wondering if he'd even show up. But, right on the dot, there he was at my front door with a little yellow flower. It was cute, I'll admit.
We get in the car and he asks where I want to go. I was surprised that he didn't have a plan, but I hadn't eaten so I said that we should go get some food.
"At the supermarket?" he says, kind of surprised.
I laughed because I thought it was a joke, but he seemed dead serious. Or, dead seriously confused, I don't know. So, I stopped laughing and said, yeah, the supermarket. And we were off.
The supermarket is actually kind of a fun place to go on a date, even though it's really strange to be there. I just kept hoping my mom wasn't going to go shopping and see us wandering around, throwing bags of pasta at each other or whatever we did. He somehow made it entertaining, which was really impressive considering I would normally hate to go grocery shopping. He even opened boxes of cookies and we made a little secretive feast out of walking by the open box, grabbing a cookie, walking away, and then swooping by a few minutes later to grab another one. I think the grocery store staff was onto us, but for some reason nobody actually said anything and neither of us minded the strange looks people gave us.
Then, we're standing in front of an open freezer full of frozen waffles, laughing at how we can see our breath, when he turns to me and says, "You know what I've always wanted to do?"
"No," I say.
"Have sex in a grocery store."
What the hell? I'm not having sex in a grocery store! I kind of awkwardly laughed, because I wasn't sure if he was just being stupid or actually suggesting that, but he started trying to justify it. He said it'd be really sexy and risky, and that if we went under the fruit stands, chances are that nobody would notice us, that kinky people put food on them when they have sex but who has actually just had sex around food? Crazy stuff, but after a little bit it stopped being so creepy and kind of seemed like maybe a good idea.
But no, no way. I wouldn't want to get busted like that. It would be awful. So, I suggest that we just make out in the grocery store instead, which seemed less risky and less embarrassing and, come on, he was so cute. When I said it, I was thinking about making out under the fruit stand, but he just leans over and kisses me right there, and so I kissed him back and there we were, making out in the grocery store.
I opened my eyes ever so often and saw people look at us for a few seconds and then turn away in confusion or disgust, but nobody really seemed to know what to do and so they just let us keep on making out. After a minute or two, our hands started roaming, and I was sure that some unfortunate employee would eventually come over and kick us out.
And then, with his hand on my boob, I hear someone say in a real pissed-off tone, "Excuse me, I need to… ASHLEY!"
I know this shit happens in those YM stories about most embarrassing situations and stuff, but this actually happened at the Food Lion in Kannapolis, North Carolina. I was worried my mom would find us tossing around pasta but instead, there she was while we were making out in front of frozen waffles. And she freaked out.
"I can't believe you'd sink to this level!" and "So this is what you kids do with yourselves!" and "Your father is going to shit himself!" and all sorts of things were yelled by her, and then she grabbed my arm and literally dragged me out of the store while a few assholes actually clapped. I'm grounded for two months now, and haven't even seen that guy around school anymore, nor did he ever call to ask how I was or anything. I think he's too embarrassed to talk to me, which is pretty lousy.
But not as lousy as my date at the grocery store. Damn.
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3. Here's our weekly dose of strange news, this time courtesy of a reader named Krystal Strada. There are just so many strange elements to this story, but in particular is the service that this airplane offers. I guess, if anything, it's better than making a very uncomfortable situation for everyone on a sold-out commercial flight... or an uncomfortable situation for the stewardess who finds it odd for two people to be slyly sneaking into a cramped bathroom.
Couple Dies Off Florida Keys in Sex-Plane Hijack
MIAMI (Reuters) - An elderly couple who chartered a small plane on the pretext of having sex in the sky died when the plane plunged into the sea off the Florida Keys after they tried to hijack it to Cuba, U.S. authorities said on Friday.
The unidentified couple scuffled with the pilot when the Piper Cherokee was about 40 miles south of Key West, sending the small plane plunging into deep water in the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba, the pilot told agents investigating the alleged hijacking attempt.
The pilot, Thomas Hayashi, 36, managed to scramble out of the sinking plane and suffered only cuts and bruises. But the man and woman apparently were trapped.
"This is what the pilot is telling us," FBI agent Judy Orihuela said. "An elderly Cuban couple in their sixties asked to be taken on a 'Mile High' tour. Once they were up in the air...they demanded to be taken to Cuba."
"There was a scuffle and the pilot tried to maneuver the plane. The man fell on the throttle and made it so that he (the pilot) couldn't fly the plane. He had to ditch the plane."
It was the second bizarre incident involving a small plane in the Florida Keys recently. On July 31, American pizza delivery man Milo John Reese took off on a flying lesson in a Cessna and ended up crashing the plane on a beach in Cuba. He was charged with transporting a stolen plane.
Local media said Hayashi was the co-owner of a tour company called Fly Key West, which on its web site advertises "Mile High Club" tours for people who want to have sex in a plane.
"Come fly the very friendly skies," the web site beckons. "Cleaner than a hotel room. Brand new Key West Mile High Club souvenir sheets on every flight."
The company offers a "Quickie" flight of 35 minutes for $199, up to $349 for a 55-minute sunset tour. It notes that flights will not be videotaped unless passengers ask for it. "Our voyeur cam is only in the plane by request."
The Miami Herald reported that the six-seat plane had been converted to a two-seater with a "lounge" area in the back with a privacy partition behind the cockpit.
A message on the answering machine of Fly Key West said: "We have suspended operations until further notice."
The company issued a statement through its lawyer on Friday saying the male passenger pulled a knife on Hayashi, switched off the plane's avionics and ordered him to fly to Cuba. When the Piper approached Cuban airspace, the passenger refused to allow the pilot to turn on the radio to contact Cuban authorities and the struggle ensued, the statement said.
The Coast Guard said Hayashi issued a distress call about 12:05 p.m. Thursday and the plane ditched 40 miles south of Key West. Rescue crews in a Coast Guard plane spotted one person in the water, dropped a life raft and then hoisted him aboard a helicopter.
The Coast Guard said its crews were at the crash scene only 21 minutes after the distress call to Key West's airport tower but did not see any sign of the plane or the two passengers.
"The pilot told the Coast Guard he did not believe they were able to get out of the plane," Petty Officer Robert Suddarth said.
The Key West Citizen, citing a Coast Guard official, reported that the pilot told investigators the passengers had inflated their life jackets while they were still inside the plane, contrary to routine advice.
Orihuela said authorities were not certain if the aircraft and the bodies of the couple could be recovered. The Piper may have gone down in water up to 3,600 feet deep.
She said there were a lot of unanswered questions about the flight, including the identities of the couple.
"We have no reason to disbelieve the pilot's story," she said. "But we still need to look at it."
The Federal Aviation Administration said it would look into the qualifications of the pilot and the firm. But a spokeswoman said tour operators who leave an airport on short flights and return to the same field do not need to file flight plans or passenger lists.
Feature #89:
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I'm catching my breath. Bare with me.
Hi again. Thanks for sticking around. I haven't updated this page in about two weeks, and that's reasonable grounds for your complete abandonment and lack of faith in my ability to maintain a webpage at all. If you're still around, i thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my fast-beating heart.
The last two weeks were chaos. I went through training (for the third damn time) to work as a "peer advisor" for Clark University's orientation, then i took a group of fourteen freshman through orientation, and now i'm dealing with the beginning of classes. When things calm down, this webpage will benifit. For now, though, i can only promise to try. That's half the battle, right?
My schedule is awful. I'm taking classes with names like "Bend over, Jason, so we can screw you in the ass" and "My sole function is to put Jason through Chinese water torture, after which i'll probably eat his liver while he screams in agony." One of these classes is commonly referred to as "Elementary Spanish Intensive." My teacher speaks as much english as i speak spanish, so this is going to be a very trying experience. But, it's a requirement that i've avoided for the last three years, so i'm going to act like a weary tourist who finds himself in a fancy resturaunt, staring down a plate of bull testicles: i'll squint, wince, and whisper to myself, "well, let's get it over with already."
Anyway, what i have for you this week isn't much but, like i said, times are not filled with much free time. We'll all pull through this together, i promise. For now, though, it's scooby jokes and illegal hobbits.
1. Scooby jokes
2. Illegal hobbits
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1. This is a game my friend Harris and i made after suffering through a few bad jokes on the wrappers of "Fun Size" snicker bars. It's really quite a wonderful exercise in absurdity, and it's the great equalizer: no matter how good or bad your joke is, it's always good. Always. I'm not going to even explain the joke, i'll just give you a few examples:
Q: What does Scooby Doo wear on his feet?
A: Scooby shoes
Q: What legal procedure is Scooby Doo entitled to?
A: Scooby due process
Q: What does Scooby Doo sing when he's walking down the street?
A: Scooby doo-a-ditty-ditty-dum-ditty-doo
See where we're going with this? If it includes a word that rhymes with "Doo," even if it's just the first syllable of the word, you're golden. Simple words, cultural references, political jabs -- the game works for all. Let's see some more...
Q: Where would Scooby Doo go to the bathroom in England?
A: The Scooby Loo
Q: What did Scooby Doo discover on himself when he was 11?
A: Scooby pubes
Q: Who is Scooby Doo's favorite Earl?
A: The Scooby Duke of Earl
Trust me, if you start doing this with a friend, you will be able to think of nothing else but Scooby jokes like...
Q: What did Scooby Doo discover on girls when he hit puberty?
A: Scooby Boobies
Q: Scooby Doo is feeling a little down today. What is he?
A: Scooby blue
Q: What is Scooby Doo's favorite board game?
A: Scooby Clue
Q: What psycho-politician would kick Scooby Doo out of the country because
of his brown fur?
A: Scooby Buchanon
Anyway, this goes on forever. Try it with your friends. You'll never turn back.
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2. My dad sent me this article. Now, i've read lots of crazy stuff about the Stans (a grouping of countries near Russia that all end in "-stan"), but this is really one of the strangest.
Police get tough with the hobbit-lovers of Kazakhstan
Patrick COCKBURN in Moscow
PEOPLE who dress up as hobbits have become the latest victims of a police crackdown on unconventional lifestyles in the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan.
J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is very popular in the countries of the former Soviet Union, where thousands of fans dress up and re-enact scenes from the book. But this innocent if dotty pursuit is seen as subversive by the notoriously brutal police in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan . It is part of a wider drive against those whom the police suspect of enjoying "bohemian" lifestyles.
"We are perfectly legal," said Vitaly, a so-called "Tolkienist". "In fact we spend most of our time in the mountains. We only hold conventions in the city twice a year. It's our lifestyle. The police don't like it, but we aren't going to stop. It's our entire life."
The London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) says that, besides Tolkienists, people detained include buskers, "alternative artists", gays and lesbians, anarchists, hippies, punks and members of dissident religious sects, many of whom complain that they have been systematically tortured.
Alexander, the leader of a punk-rock band in Almaty, said he was held for two days in a so-called "water tank". This is a method commonly used by the police to extract confessions. "They put the person arrested in a narrow cell about 4ft 6in high, and half fill it with cold water. You cannot stand up straight because the ceiling is too low, and you are unable to sit down because you will be under water so you have to crouch all the time."
Tolkien's writings have been widely read in the former Soviet Union ever since he was first translated in about 1988 during perestroika. They reached a peak of popularity in the mid-Nineties.
Several hundred Tolkienists gather in Moscow on Thursday evenings in summer in Neskuchny Park overlooking the Moskva river. One enthusiast, Askar Tuganbaev, a computer salesman, said: "In Yekaterinburg [in the Urals] they even built a fortress and fought a battle a couple of years ago with everybody dressed up."
Mr Tuganbaev says the police in Russia are tolerant of the Tolkienists and it is only in Kazakhstan that they are accused of "being Satanists and conducting dark rituals".
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There are more features to be had.
Features I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI
Or, we can always go back.