Just Another Weird News Post

Talk about munchies - one stoner in New Zealand eats a bunch of food while waiting in line at a store, finds he has no money, and offers to pay for it with marijuana. Unfortunately for him, a uniformed police officer was in line behind him.

One guy apparently didn't understand why "javelin catcher" is a bad thing (WARNING: if you are squeamish, there's a photo here you don't want to see) - but after "catching" the javelin, he kept working.

Drinking and sex? Probably not too bad. Sex and knife play? Freaky, but not "bad", per se. Drinking and sex and knife play? Makes your safe word useless.

Rampant stupidity.

I didn't have to look far to top the stupidity described in my last post. Apparently, a substitute teacher in Florida did a little magic trick for his class in which he made a toothpick disappear. Hardly on the David Copperfield level of legerdemain. But, according to the local news in Land 0' Lakes, FL, enough to get him accused of "wizardry", a "huge issue" in the eyes of the school district, who have said the sub cannot take any assignments until they have a hearing.

Seriously. I can't make this shit up.

No word yet whether the hearing will involve Trial by Drowning.

And, lest I make it seem as if other places have a monopoly on stupidity, I shall relate what I just overheard in line at the Subway right here in my town. Two guys were standing behind me, and had this to say:

Guy 1 (reading the menu): It says "$5 any regular foot long sub." What does that mean?

Guy 2: I don't know.

I almost had an aneurism, right there in line at the Subway. I would have died, and the last thing I would have seen would be a picture of that fucker Jared.

Worst Cinco de Mayo EVER.

Man. Usually, I loves me some Cinco de Mayo. I lived in Arizona for four years as a youth, and CDM is a big deal there. Ever since, I've loved going out for CDM.

In recent years, it's changed a bit in that we often don't go for mexican food, because May 5 also happens to be my mother-in-law's birthday, and it has become tradition to go out for dinner where ever she wants. And these days, whenever my in-laws get to pick our dinner destination, 90% of the time it's Claim Jumpers. Which is fine, because they have good food, and lots of it.

So Monday, I got off work and was looking forward to not having to cook dinner. I got home to find that a) my wife was feeling sick, and b) my mother-in-law was feeling sick. So we weren't going anywhere. I threw a frozen pizza in the oven for those of us that weren't nauseous, and when it was done I popped in a DVD of one of our favorite shows and sat down with the wife to watch it.

We got maybe 10 minutes into it when a call came in from my niece...my nephew was really sick and needed to go to the E.R., but there was no-one to take him. So I got up from comfy couch and favorite show, and drove up to Everett to get him, and took him to the E.R. - where we proceeded to stay for the next five-and-a-half hours. I got to watch a marathon of Cities of the Underworld on History channel (which would be an interesting show, were it not for the exceptionally annoying hosts) while surrounded by the best and brightest Everett has to offer - i.e. a cavalcade of meth heads, homeless looneys, and teenage mothers.

Seriously. This is one of the conversations I had to sit through:

Annoying Guy (to girl - probably about 19 - who just came in and sat down): Hey! Where's Shane?

Girl: At home. Sleeping. He has to work at 6:30.

A.G.: So? He should still be here with you. How's he doing?

Girl: Sober, surprisingly. I told him he had to straighten up or I was going to leave.

A.G.: Good for you.

Girl: He got mad at me yesterday for buying diapers for my son.

A.G.: Because it cut into his beer money?

Girl: No, because we have a baby on the way and need to save money.

This made me despair for humanity. Annoying Guy went on to make jokes about wife beating (his wife was there for a swollen eye from an infection) and talked about some guy who is accusing him of being, and I quote, "a chi-mo", which I think meant "child molester". Awesome.

I was wearing one of my Utilikilts, and Annoying Guy asked me if it was a kilt or a "skilt". I told him it was a Utilikilt brand kilt. He proceeded to ask me if I knew "Morgan", his friend who had a "skilt" (part skirt, part kilt, according to Annoying Guy), as if every guy in the metro-Seattle area who wears a kilt just hangs around with each other all the time and are all on a first-name basis. Even if we did, I wouldn't associate with someone who referred to their kilt as a "skilt", because that's the stupidest fucking thing I have heard in awhile. A kilt is a skirt, it's just a skirt for men. Hybridizing the words just hurts my head. It also makes me thinks of Skittles, and if anybody ever calls my kilt a skilt, I'm going to make sure they "taste the rainbow", let me tell you what.

After 5.5 hours, they discharged my nephew with a couple of prescriptions, and he is apparently feeling better now. I got home at 4a.m., and did not make it to work on time the next day.

Sometimes, those Urban Legends are real.

I frequently check out Snopes.com, particularly the "What's New" section. Today there was an Urban Legend of sorts that rang true for me, as I knew someone who had a similar experience to the "legend"...

This entry on Snopes talks about a few instances of people dressed in costume running into trouble by going to the wrong door. One was even killed. A couple of the incidents mentioned were confirmably true.

This reminded me of something that happened to the family of some classmates of mine when I lived in Arizona. It wasn't exactly like the Snopes story, but it was similar.

In junior high, I went to school with an exceptionally bright pair of siblings, Kathy and Ben. Kathy and Ben had an older brother - I want to say his name was David - who was in high school.

One night, while their father was out of town on business, there was a news report about a violent criminal who escaped from jail that day. Their mother started freaking out and went around the house locking every window and door and pulling all the drapes. What the kids didn't see is that she also grabbed her husband's .357 revolver and loaded it.

David thought it was really funny that his mother was panicking about this escaped criminal, who was probably not going to wander into our boring suburb, and thought he would play a little trick on his mom. He pulled on a ski mask and his "Property of Alcatraz" sweatshirt, snuck out his bedroom window, and went to the front door, unlocked it with his key, and rang the doorbell. Then as his mother approached the door, he opened the door.

His mother pulled the revolver out and fired at him twice. Luckily for David, his mother was a horrible shot, and both bullets went into the doorframe next to him. He pulled the mask off and started yelling for his mother not to shoot him.

David was lucky to have lived through that experience. He later would claim he could see the bullets coming at him, in slow motion. I'm pretty sure that was just panic affecting his memory. But I'm pretty sure it soured him on practical jokes for awhile.