Exhaustion. I’m on deadline for my new book and feel like a mama pig’s teat. I’m so tired I just put shaving cream on my toothbrush.
Airline security. I just flew back from the Midwest and I’ll tell you airline travel isn’t getting any easier. This week a Salt Lake City man, who after a war with his seatmate to “claim” the armrest, threatened his fellow passenger with a knife that he happened to have in his bag. Responding officers found the knife and we see that, once again, TSA agents had nabbed that bottle of water and let the knife slide on by. I feel safe.
Heads up. U.S. officials say they expect a dead satellite to fall to Earth this week. NASA has been closely watching the satellite, which is 35 feet long, 15 feet in diameter, and, oh, weighs 13,000 pounds. They say it could hit Florida or New York, or Iran or India. Um, basically they don’t know where the hell the thing will land. NASA put the chances that somebody somewhere on Earth will get hurt at 1 in 3,200, and any one person’s odds of being struck at 1 in 21 trillion. I can’t decide if that makes me want to play Lotto, or not.
Ride of your life. So, as you might have heard Dr. Death, Jack Kervorkian, is dead. So, what’s one have to do for assisted suicide these days? Well, Julijonas Urbonas envisions a Euthanasia Coaster. Urbonas, who worked at an amusement park in his native Lithuania and is a PhD candidate in London’s Royal College of Art, has designed a roller coaster that will do you in. The three-minute ride involves a long, slow, climb to 1,600 feet– nearly a third of a mile long — followed by a massive fall and seven strategically sized and placed loops. The final descent and series of loops take all of one minute. But the gravitational force of 10 Gs from the spinning loops at 223 miles per hour in that single minute is lethal. Question I have is: do they buckle you in or is that totally unnecessary? Enjoy the ride.
Enough is enough. Another bullied kid commits suicide. Buffalo 14-year-old Jamey Rodermeyer’s found him dead this past weekend. They say he had been harassed and teased on a regular basis at school about his perceived sexuality. We can’t let this continue. Please, folks, encourage your kids to be a friend and, if they are themselves having trouble, please assure them that they are ok just as they are and find someone for them to talk to.
Short people. Bridgette Jordan, a 22-year-old student at Kaskasia College in Centralia, Illinois, has just been named the world’s shortest woman by Guinness World Records. She’s two feet, three inches tall. For most of us that’s a little more than knee high. Standing next to her, her Chihuahua looks like a Great Dane. Bridgette, and her three feet, two inch tall brother Brad, have a genetic condition known as Majewski osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type II, but both lead active lives.
Reminder: It’s not pre-marital sex if you never get married.
Paraprosdokian of the week: Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
Now, rake those leaves and eat your dinner!
