Fresh off of a nice long weekend, I’m back with some stories
and observations that may not be for the faint of heart. All of these tidbits are recent news articles
dealing with the human body and its odd and unusual behavior.
First off, we have this guy:
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/15/11710516-shopper-bitten-by-rattlesnake-in-wal-mart?lite
He apparently encountered a nice little surprise while
visiting a Washington state Wal-Mart.
While shopping in the garden section, he bent down to brush a stick off
of some mulch and was promptly bitten by a rattlesnake. He was rushed to the hospital, and he may
eventually lose the feeling in two fingers.
It’s incredible to me how something so small can inflict so
much damage. I’m not really afraid of
snakes, but I tend to stay out of areas where they may thrive. When I’m working in my yard, I’ll be certain
to wear high-ankle, steel-toed boots and jeans rather than trotting around in
sandals and shorts. If I see a snake, I’ll
just stay clear of it. Of course, if I’m
shopping in Wal-Mart, I’m not expecting to run into any snakes, so yeah, this
would totally freak me out. The article
says he stomped on the snake to kill it.
I’m just wondering how it got in there.
Did it hitch a ride in the mulch? Maybe it heard they had a special sale going on goldfish. Wal-Mart really does sell everything, doesn't it?
Spiders are the worst for me. The other day I was sitting in my bed,
watching TV, and I saw a flash of black on my left upper arm at the edge of my
sleeve. I looked down and saw nothing,
but just as I turned my head back, I saw a spider jump back out from under my
sleeve and onto the exposed part of my arm.
Man, I freaked out like a little girl!
I bolted upright, swiping at my arm until it landed on the bed sheets. I recall doing a little dance. Twisting my shirt all inside out. I think I screamed. After I'd recovered, hahaha, I squashed the spider in a napkin,
although the thing was crazy fast and was half-way down the bed before I got it. I wish I could have captured it all on
video. I don’t know if I’d consider
myself an arachnophobe, but I get a little antsy around every spider I see,
thinking it may be a brown recluse and that I’m going to be bitten and lose my
fingers or hand. I swear I must have looked over my
arm thirty times that night. And I think
I’ve even passed down my fear of critters to my son, because while most little
boys play with or are at least interested in bugs and snakes, he gets freaked
out by them as well. And my wife? Well, she called me into the bathroom a week
or two ago to kill an ant. Yeah, an ANT!
And that’s just spiders.
Imagine being that poor girl from Georgia with the flesh-eating bacteria
that’s already taken her leg and will probably take both of her hands. Why are our bodies so fragile? I’ve seen quite a few stories about people
losing limbs or being horribly disfigured because of necrotizing fasciitis and
other ghoulish germs. It makes me
totally understand how people could become agoraphobes. Then again, somehow that rattler got into Wal-Mart. What’s stopping the spiders and snakes from
getting into their houses or the flesh-eating bacteria infecting a paper-cut or
some other innocuous scratch? It makes me want to know how much those bubble-boy bubbles cost? Not that I'd get one. But I AM curious.
Ewww…enough of this subject.
Next we have this article:
I just had to laugh when I saw this. Kids actually were thinking that hair constantly hanging over
one eye could cause a lazy eye. Seeing
as how this hairstyle is so prevalent today, I guess I could see why people
would worry. I mean, they say that if
you don’t use it, you lose it, right? =P The article itself goes on to poke fun at all
of the emo boys and girls who frequently style their hair in this fashion. I did a Google image search of “lazy eye”,
and I swear nearly a quarter of the people have comb-overs and/or bangs that
hang over one eye. Obviously people will
style their hair in this fashion to hide their condition, and so naturally it’s
going to seem more common for these types of people. It just cracks me up that some kids out there
actually believe the backwards logic, that the cause was due to the effect. Silly emo kids! I also have to wonder if emo kids who
actually have lazy eyes ever considered hanging their hair down to cover the stronger
eye, so that perhaps it would begin to wander as well in the same direction as
the first. Seems like it would be
reasonable logic to them, doesn’t it?
Also, just to note—this is not intended to poke fun at
people with amblyopia. It’s a serious
condition that not only causes vision problems but also can cause self-esteem and psychological issues. Rather, I’m poking fun at the naïve
people who believed it could happen due to the way they comb/style their hair. Making fun of people’s disabilities is wrong
no matter how you do it. Unless they are just dumb.
OK, so back to all of this silliness, finally we have this
lovely piece of art:
I remember reading about this a few years ago when the guy
was first building it, but it just made news recently again for going on
display in this museum in Australia. I
love crap like this, pun intended. It
must take one messed up, insanely creative mind to think of something so disgusting. Ummm, yeah, I want to build something
that will shock the world. I know, a
machine that creates poop! You have to
wonder where this guy was when he thought of this. I know I personally do some of my best
thinking while…
Anyway, the museum itself is host to a bunch of other
freakish pieces of art, and one patron described the work there as “confronting.” Gee, you think? This museum also had a "vomit room" at one point. I’d love to go check this place out, and my
wife would agree, so we’ll add it to our bucket list. It reminds me a little of the show “Oddities”
on the Discovery Channel, which is about the Obscura Antiques & Oddities store
in New York. The owners collect and shop
around for some very bizarre items, many of which are human oddities, bizarre
medical instruments, etc. Every time we watch it my wife thinks she knows the patrons, saying, “that guy
went to Stuyvesant” or “that chick was one of my mom’s customers at her nail
salon.” It makes me think my wife hung out with some really strange people before moving to Pennsylvania. I also just have to shake my head about the
Stuyvesant comments. If you don’t
know, Stuyvesant is a high school in Manhattan very close to the World Trade
Center area in Battery Park City, and dozens of famous people have graduated
from the prestigious school. My wife
never fails to let me know all the celebrities that went to her high school,
including Nobel winners, famous authors, musicians such as Thelonius Monk and
actresses and actors such as Lucy Liu, Paul Reiser, Tim Robbins. One of the Beastie Boys was rumored to have
gone there, but alas it is not true.
Sorry, babe! But hey, the former
coach of the New Orleans Hornets went to Hollidaysburg! At least my school had one celebrity. Sort of.
I digress. Back to
the poop machine, I just have to wonder what this guy’s thought process was
when making this. As he’s building each
component, obviously studying the science and technology required to make poop,
he was probably so proud of himself.
That’s one guy whose life’s work has gone down the crapper—and he’s damn
proud of it! Seriously though, if this
guy was interested in a poop machine, I have a two-year-old who is great at
it. Making poop, that is.
No comments:
Post a Comment