Guinness World Book of Weirdos

There is a wide world of interesting folks out there and it seems a lot of them want to be in the record books. With that in mind, my son has compiled his top 5 weirdest Guinness World Records.  I’ve add the commentary. 

1.  A German man drags a van a distance of 300 feet via two hooks inserted into the skin of his back.   Here’s a hypothetical: You’re trying to sell your home and this guy is your neighbor.  The real estate agent bring prospective buyers by when this guy is outside, bare-back, hooks protruding from his skin, dragging his van down the driveway.  Guess what the buyers will remember about the house tour.  
2. A Chinese man pulls a car forward more than thirty feet using ropes attached to his lower eyelids.  With billions of men on this planet, it’s probably inevitable that a certain subset will enjoy dragging vehicles around via cables connected to their flesh.  I say, let’s see how far they go with the hooks attached to their testicles.  My guess is not too far.
3. A Turkish construction worker squirts milk over nine feet from his eye.  I believe his next feat will involve corned beef hash.
4. For nearly fifty years a Frenchman has lived on a diet of metal and glass. I don’t know about you, but if I get even a tiny bit of aluminum foil in my mouth it is just ZING right up to my brain.
5. An American woman can pop her eyeballs almost half an inch beyond her eye sockets.  I wouldn’t recommend showing this off on a first date unless she’s out with the french guy.  But in that case, where would they go? Perhaps an electrical supply outlet, where she could pop her eyes out every time he ate a light bulb.

Middle Age Gas

I scared the living crap out of an elderly woman the other morning.

I had pulled into the local Mobil gas station to fill up my car.  As I was pumping gas, a good friend pulled up at the next bay. So I walked over to say a hello and converse for a few minutes as the gas tank filled with the kids’ college fund. 

After we finished talking, I walked back to my car and started it up.  Then as I pulled away, I heard the sound of frantic honking behind me.  I wondered momentarily what it was all about,  but undeterred I continued to drive out of station. Next thing I know, my friend runs over waving for me to stop the car.  So I stop, and well darn it all, it turns out I had never disconnected the gas nozzle from my car.  As a result, I had ripped the hose right off the pump as I pulled away.

I hate it when that happens. 

Fortunately, the pump was designed with a quick disconnect mechanism to prevent morons like me from doing any real damage.  But I don’t think the elderly woman who was pumping behind me knew that.  At least, the ash-white expression on her face and her numerous shaking body parts made me think that she had one of those “life flashed before my eyes” moments.  I’m sure she thought the station was about to go up in one of those MythBuster like explosions that make the evening news.

Chalk it up to middle age forgetfulness.   It’s tough to get old.

Liquid Torture

Occasionally I will get on a mini health food kick. More often than not, it’s because some event makes me feel remorseful about my less than wholesome eating habits. My latest guilt trip was triggered by a discussion that Jean and I had a few nights ago. Earlier that day Oprah, with the help of a mysterious Dr. Oz, had expounded on the deleterious effects of some bad ingredients we put in our bodies like hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn sryup. They also touted the benefits of some really great foods like tomatoes and pomergranates. Jean debriefed me on the show between bites of her Klondite bar.

The next day at work I decided to forgo the cheese burger and fries at lunch for a healthier menu. For my entree I opted for a chef’s salad. While looking for healthy drink, I spotted a pomergranate based beverage from a well known all natural juice company and decided to give it a try. After all, if pomergranates were good enough for Oprah and friends, its antioxidant packed juice was good enough for me.

Wow, what a mistake. Honest to God, it was one of the most disgusting drinks I have ever consumed. It might as well have been liquidified liver and onions, it was so revulsive in consistency and flavor. I would really like to see the supporting marketing data. I mean, for crying out loud, don’t they have to taste test it before they sell it? I can only recall two other times in my life when I had drank something comparable in its abomination. One was a barium brew I struggled down for upper GI exam. The other drink was a large glass of warm prune juice slowly forced down my throat many years ago to induce regularity in an intestinal track stopped cold by peritonitis.

Well no one was forcing me to drink this time. But for some God forsaken reason I felt compelled to drink all sixteen ounces of liquid torture over the next couple hours. Perhaps, it was a desire to cram my body full of antioxidants, but more likely it was a subconscious penance to the small vengeful portion of my brain still concerned about my health.

I can only wonder what my co-workers thought listening to me gag down that devil juice.

A Piece of the Rock

I don’t understand how insurance companies can make any money on life insurance. I mean, eventually everyone dies, so isn’t the pay out rate 100%? For example, I know someday my policy will pay out much more than I’ll ever pay in premiums. I suppose they make money on people who purchase coverage for most of their lives, but for some inexplicable reason decide to cancel the policy before they die. Now there’s a smart move.

I am in the midst of buying some additional life insurance.  I thought it would be a relatively straight forward process. When I first purchased life insurance, all I did was fill out a few forms, swear that I was in good health and in no time I had my insurance policy. Well, the qualification process has been a little more rigorous this time around.  It has gone something like this:

First of all, I downloaded the application from the company’s web site, filled it out and sent it in.  Simple enough.  But, then I heard nothing for several weeks before finally receiving a notification that I needed to fill out the same application again plus a lot of new forms.  Slightly aggravated, I completed the paperwork and sent it in.

A few weeks later, I received a call from a pleasant sounding woman explaining that she would need to come to our home to ask me a few questions, perform a simple physical exam and take a “little” blood sample.  We set up an appointment date.

She arrives at the appointed time with a big suitcase full of apparatuses. I immediately get a hunch that much more than a blood sample will be taken. I’m right. Over the next several minutes, she collects a blood sample, a saliva specimen, a urine sample, a hair swatch from my back, and a set of toe nail clippings from each foot. Then she precedes to swab the inside of my mouth, floss my teeth, fingerprint me and take several pictures of my slightly droopy right eyelid. At this point, it feels more like a cloning experiment than an insurance exam. Fortunately we complete the collection process before I run out of specimens to give.

Next up she measures my height, weighs me, takes my blood pressure (elevated at this point), checks my pulse, listens to my lungs, and measures my waist (which correlated well with my weight). By now, I half expect her to pull out a portable MRI and do a full body scan.

Then the interview portion begins. The first questions are simples ones about present health status and recent medical history. No problems there. Next she quizzes me on the medical history of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and eventually, it seems like, all my ancestors going back to the 15th century. I answer to the best of my ability.

Finally the questions start to explore my likelihood of facing accidental death. The question and answer session went like this:

Q: “Do you ever drive above the speed limit?”
A: Pause.
Q: “If so, is it typically 5mph over?
A: Another pause.
Q: “10mph over?” 15mph over?”
A: “Keep going, you’re getting warmer…”

Q: “Do you ever cross a busy street when the ‘Don’t Walk’ sign is flashing?”
A: “I plead the fifth.

Q: “Do you have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in your home?”
A: Yes.
Q: “On each floor?”
A: Yes.
Q: “Are they both hard wired and with battery backup?”
A: Yes!
Q: “Are the batteries the long life alkaline type and do you change them every fall?”
A: Yes! YES!!
Q: “Okay then, Do you have an automatic external defibrillator at home?”
A: “Well, no, you got me there.”

Finally, the ordeal comes to an end. As she is leaving she informs me that the insurance company will get back to me in several weeks. Hopefully without more forms to fill out.

They don’t drive like this in Maine

My niece, Ashley, recently moved to Mumbai, India from coastal Maine to complete a year of school as an exchange student. Below is an email she sent home to her mother describing some of her early impressions:

“Traffic in Mumbai is not unlike a cosmic game of Frogger.

There is no traffic law.

Instead cars weave in and out, threatening to hit each other or (God forbid) a nearby cyclist, only stopping at the very last instance before confronting the car in front of them.

I’m surprised more people haven’t died.

And never before has taking a cab posed such as risk as it does in Mumbai.

Speeding down a road so congested that traffic has expanded to become five cars wide, despite the fact that it is only a three lane road, seatbeltless, and held hostage by a strictly Hindi-speaking cabby who is just a bit too aggressive as a driver.

This is where you will inevitably find yourself.

And it makes me think: who needs the rush of being a covert spy when all you really need to do to feel alive is sit in the back of one of these insane automobiles and soar down Marine Drive. You’ll be kissing the pavement in shear appreciation.

And then there are the looks:

Despite being told that, due to out-sourcing, more and more “Westerners” have been moving to the city, I seem to be somewhat of a rare commodity. Even the other students in my college, students who have become used to the annual surge of exchange students, continue to ask thing like whether or not my eyes are really blue.

To which I look at them and respond in the most innocent voice possible, “Well actually I’ve borrowed them from a friend. Do you think she’ll notice?”

Yet despite these semi-inconveniences, I’ve got to say, how cool is it to be living in a place where people have to worry about monkeys getting into their house?

I mean, I not exactly used to living in a place where monkeys are one of my great concerns. (More like taking the dogs out, watering the plants, and then worrying about arming our house against buglers of the primate persuasion….it’s all about priorities)

And of course, there’s college:

Though the school itself is seven stories of helter-skelter madness, the students are all very nice, and, like all other students, they seem to have become inflicted with an “Anywhere but Here” influenza. The result of which is a lot of “bunking.”

In other words, students come up with various reasons as to why the professors should conclude their lectures early for that day.

“It’s sunny. We should be outside celebrating a brake (sp.) in the rain.”

“But Professor, it is Friendship Day!”

“Sir, it’s raining outside. Don’t you agree that we should leave early in order to catch our trains before the tracks flood?” (Which is actually a legitimate excuse)

And of course, my version:

“You see, we’re just so exhausted from our other lectures that we are unable to impart on you the respect and focus that you deserve. That being said, holding class today would be disrespectful to you.”

I think I’m beginning to adapt.”

Lee-ward

I have started a new job and yesterday I got a tour of the facility from an engineering manager, whose name is incidentally also ‘Lee’. It’s the first time I have ever worked with another Lee. In fact, I don’t recall ever going to school, college or otherwise with someone who had the same name as I have. Well, as we were going around one particular hallway corner we were nearly run over by another employee. Lee and this other person look at each other peculiarly for a couple of moments and then both of them look at me. Finally, this other employee says, “Hi, I’m Lee and you must be Lee also.” Strange.

As the three of us are standing there and looking at each other, we notice overhead there is one of those reflective half-spheres (probably with a security camera inside) and so looking down at us is a mirror image of the three Lee’s. Even stranger still, I got this sudden sense of déjà vu, and for an instant I was convinced that I was about to step into a parallel universe and royally screw up the space-time continuum.

Gutter Ball

I have been fortunate that middle age has given me an deeper appreciation for the finer things in life such as plasma TV, central air conditioning, and debris-free gutters.

Regarding the latter, I recently had new ones installed on our home. I opted not for just any old water channeling gutter, but the glorious Shutter-Gutter system. This highly praised system (especially by the installing company) guarantees you’ll never have to clean leaves out of your gutters again. Since that activity typically occurs during football season, when a grown man’s thoughts turn to beer, chips and his favorite recliner, the decision to purchase was a no-brainer.

Given my historic timing with these sort of things, however, I was confident that this expenditure would ensure a drought of colossal proportions. Just last year, for example, I spent big bucks on a lawn irrigation system and then watched nearly biblical levels of rainfall come.

So of course it didn’t rain for several days. Finally one Saturday night, as I was in bed reading one of my scintillating technical journals (Please don’t be jealous of my jet-setter lifestyle), a clap of thunder rumbled in the distance. Excitedly, I turned to my wife and exclaimed “It’s going to rain!” But alas, like a narcoleptic coming off an all-nighter, my reading out loud had driven her into a deep sleep. I thought about waking her, but hey, I learned a long time ago that you don’t rustle Jean when she’s in hibernation mode.

Instead I threw on my slippers and hurried downstairs as the rain drops started to fall. I grabbed a flashlight (our standard model: batteries weak, light dim, requires periodic wack on the side to work) and without a moment’s hesitation dashed outside to the see the gutter in action. In my haste I barely avoided falling down the deck stairs, grabbing the railing just before a likely tumble to the emergency room. I slogged through the wet grass to the downspout, where in the faint illumination of the flashlight, I witnessed the successful runoff of rain into my yard.

As I stood there in the wet grass in my PJs and slippers, I took a moment to reflect. Quite frankly, I was feeling far too delighted over what was really no more than a simple functioning gutter. How did it come to this where a Saturday night consists of reading in bed and running outside to watch water run out of a gutter? Is this what middle age brings? Serious questions, for sure, but much better contemplated inside from my favorite recliner with Sportscenter on the big screen TV.

So I headed back into my nicely air conditioned home, carefully walking up the deck stairs.

Elevator Horrors

For the last five years, without exception, I have been the victim of an unending nightmare of traveling the elevator with some most elevator ignorant people in North America. (Honestly, I couldn’t make this stuff up.)

First of all, I always found the elevator to be a pretty darn easy thing to use. I mean, doesn’t everyone? But that’s apparently not the case for some folks in my office building. Now, in fairness, I’ve noticed that most of these people are visitors, but still, I always thought an elevator was a pretty self explanatory convienence of modern life.

So to help them and to get this pent up frustration off my chest, I’ve come up with six helpful hints:

1) If you are on the ground floor and wish to go up to the second floor, there is absolutely no reason to push the ‘down’ button. Instead, the trick, believe it or not, is to push the ‘up’ button. Ok, I realize that it may be hard to find because it is often disguised under the shape of an up pointing arrow.

2) Correspondingly, if a down traveling elevator stops on your floor and you wish to go up, don’t get on and then have this surprised expression on your face when the elevator continues to go down.

3) When an elevator arrives, wait for the door to open before attempting to enter. Yes, at times it may seem that we have glacially slow elevators, but forcing the door open may actually break it. This is especially frustrating for us that know the elevator the you have just disabled was traveling in the direction you didn’t want to go.

4) Once inside an elevator, simply push the button corresponding to the floor you wish to be go to. I repeat: ‘To the floor you wish to go to”. So, sticking with the second floor as the desired destination, there is no reason whatsoever to ever push the third floor button or the fourth floor button or, for that matter, some combination of the third, four and fifth floor buttons. This rule applies equally well to all other floors.

5) Get off the elevator when it reaches your floor. Let me put it this way, if you want to go to the second floor and you push the button for the second floor but choose to get off on the first floor, you’re still not on the second floor! That’s just the way three dimensional space works in our little universe.

6) Please take the stairs to the second floor.

Whew, I feel much better.

Here piggy, piggy

Did you catch the story out of Alabama regarding an 11-year-old boy that killed a half ton, feral hog? The story has run on a number of our local TV news outlets plus I’ve seen articles on the Fox News and the USA Today websites.

It seems everyone is amazed that this young boy, Jamison Stone, was able to successfully kill a beast that apparently weighed 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.

Well, I don’t think that’s the impressive part of the story. I mean, honestly, it’s not like he chased the darn thing down and snapped its neck with his bare hands.  He shot the thing eight times with a $1500 Smith and Wesson. Plus, dad and his buddies were standing nearby with high powered rifles in case the creature tried to charge.

No, I’m more astounded that any parent would let their eleven year old son run around with a $1500 weapon in the woods. I mean that’s a lot of money. What if he lost it? I did read that Jamison is an honor roll student at a private Christian school, so maybe he has a better attention span than most kids his age. I bet he gets an ‘A’ in taxidermy this semester.

Also, what’s the deal in Alabama? Is there no limit to the hunting season? Can you chase after furry creatures with guns and rifles anytime the mood strikes you? I imagine a year-round open season must make hiking something special for those dressed in brown and tan. Of course, if you wander into the backyard of some monstrous pig, that’s the least of your worries.

Finally, let’s give the pig a little credit. According to the story, the creature ran for hours for finally succumbing. I can’t imagine a 1100 pound human being doing anything but hanging around in a reinforced Lazy-boy like a slothful Jabba the Hutt.

Lawn-Boy

Some thoughts on wonderfully miraculous power of fertilizer and the agony of lawn care:

Every autumn we have the quickest browning lawn in the entire neighborhood. I must admit I’m a bit bewildered as to why this is the case. We water, fertilize and fret about lawn as much as our neighbors do. Certainly, the weather isn’t any different on our side of the street. Could there be some arduous, labor intensive yard activity that I have subconsciously rationalized not doing that has caused this effect? Maybe, but I would like to believe that it is the karmic consequence of a past life spent as a notorious, multi-stomached, bovine grazer. I know that this would certainly help explain my periodic need for Gas-X.

Anyway, Jean wanted it to green up pretty quickly this spring, so one chilly, rainy day in April, I raced around with the EasyGreen spreader successfully broadcasting fertilizer. Or so I thought. In retrospect, there were two problems with my approach. One was the use of an apparently faulty spreader and the second was my failure to inform Jean. So early the next week, she repeated the activity with another 25,000 square of feet of coverage using the same faulty spreader.

Well, you reap what you sow, and we reaped awe inspiring crop circles of rapidly growing grass and embarrasingly over-fertilized dead zones. So far we haven’t had any close encounters, but I’m pretty nervous that someone will spot the Virgin Mary in one of the various lawn patterns and I will need to hire a traffic cop just to get into my own driveway.

By the way, are you familiar with a short-term disability inducing tool called the ‘thatcher’? A “trusted” reference source, Dictionary.com, defines a thatcher as “a rake or other tool designed to remove thatch from a lawn”. First of all, they clearly hire out their lawn care and secondly what kind of the definition of thatcher is that, using the word ‘thatch’ in it? Anyhow, it doesn’t come close to capturing the hell that this tool will bring down on you.

First of all, this nefarious instrument consists of two opposing sets of rake teeth. Each set is made out of some mysterious high density metal alloy so that the weight of the rake head approaches that of a neutron star. The massive front end weight ensures that even a casual drop of the rake will enable it to dig deeply into the soil requiring strenuous effort for removal.

On the upside, when you do manage to extricate it from the lawn, lots and I mean, lots of dead brown grass or thatch will come up with it. Enough, I imagine, to redo the roofs of an entire medieval village. Of course, along with the thatch, comes about eight thousand newly agitated insect species and their children. And finally, unless you’re Olympic decathlete, you will fatigue to point of requiring medical intervention before you’ve cleared an area the size of a small shower stall.

If this type of activity appeals to you, my thatcher is currently available on eBay, barely used and cheap. Just don’t tell me it’s the only way to prevent premature autumnal lawn browning.