Somehow this seems a trifle, um, unhygienic:
Using the pseudonym “Pricasso”, Tim Patch has become an up-and-coming (no pun intended) artist with a catch. “I dip it in the paint and then apply it to the canvas,” says the 60 year old creative. “…I videotape all my work because sometimes people don’t believe me.”
I wonder if he prefers latex paints.
I don’t do coffee, generally, mostly because the amount of caffeine it takes to rouse me from my morning stupor is so immense I’d end up spending the afternoon in the restroom. This holds particularly true on road trips, since spending time looking for said restrooms detracts substantially from the joy of driving.
It did not occur to me, though, that there might be another reason for ignoring the coffeepot in my room at the Generic Inn:
Instead of brewing coffee, coffee pots are sometimes used to brew methamphetamine.
And since meth labs in hotels aren’t anything new, Rick Phillips of the Marshall County [Alabama] Drug Enforcement Unit says there’s definitely a risk.
“The coffee makers that you find in every motel room is an ideal heat source. They mix it up in the coffee pot, put it on a heat source and let it sit there and cook,” said Phillips.
It’s common knowledge to those who fight meth, but a shock to your average citizen.
And I am nothing if not average, right?
Nor is this the only risk, says Dogette:
If a person were to drink coffee from a pot used to re-warm sludge taken from the banks of the L.A. River, it could have negative health effects that might not manifest immediately.
Not that anyone wants cold sludge, but clearly this is a hazard, if perhaps not as common as meth.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever come close to this:
Last night I managed to wash and dry about 10 loads of laundry in under an hour and half. Serious superwoman abilities here.
She got most of it folded, too. But there’s a downside:
Obviously, I need to get better goals lest this is what it will take to make me feel accomplished.
Damnedest thing about housework: it won’t do itself. The moment they retrain a Roomba to do the dishes and take out the trash, I am there, Visa in hand.
People are allegedly being liquefied in Peru:
Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Col. Jorge Mejía, chief of Peru’s anti-kidnapping police. He said the suspects, two of whom were arrested carrying bottles of liquid fat, told the police it was worth $60,000 a gallon.
Colonel Mejía said the suspects had told the police that the fat had been sold to intermediaries in Lima, the capital. While police officials suspect that the fat was sold to cosmetic companies in Europe, he said he could not confirm any sales.
I see a whole industry utopia here. We have too much fat, and we pay dearly to rid ourselves of it while there in Peru they’re killing people in the most gruesome way for a few gallons. Hello? It’s silly and makes no sense, especially when folks would line up to sell their liposuctioned ass-fat on a free market to offset the expense. Might even solve the trade deficit if we can get China to manufacture these cosmetics and sell them our fat. Then they could sell the cosmetics to Wal-Mart. It’s recycling at an optimal incentive. It would work.
This being spring, beware the Ides of April: I must caution you that any income you receive from selling any precious bodily fluids, even those that weren’t actually fluid at the time you signed the release — you did sign a release, didn’t you? — is taxable.
It occurs to me that I probably should set up a category for “Posts I Wouldn’t Have Made Except For The Stirring Title Potential.”
One of the categories around here is called “Dyssynergy,” which is intended to occupy the opposite pole from actual synergy: the whole is decidedly less than the sum of its parts. While clearly there are plenty of posts in that category that don’t precisely mesh with that definition — you try fitting 14,500 posts into fewer than 60 categories — once in a while something comes up that just seems to fit perfectly.
This particular example comes from Prada’s Autumn 2010/Winter 2011 presentation. I think very highly of this shoe, delightfully insubstantial as it is, and I suspect that the tights (I’m assuming they’re tights and not actual socks, though it’s hard to tell from this picture, or, for that matter, from this one) are quite nice in their own way, but the combination of the two comes off as somewhere between “yawn” and “meh.” It’s the proportioning, I think: you wear a little nothing of a shoe, you need hosiery just this side of gossamer, or none at all, while a serious sock demands a substantial shoe.
Then again, it’s not like Prada is paying me to make these fine judgment calls, so as always, your mileage may vary.
Addendum: “So wrong,” says Lynn.
No, really, I don’t mind charging the wireless bill each month to Visa. It’s usually about the same amount, it’s always the same day of the month, so it’s not like I’m suddenly going to be shocked out of my shorts when the bill arrives. (Shorts may vary in shock capacity. See dealer for details.)
But if I go to your little Web site to punch in these changes, the database, which seems to be accessed by a combination of Ajax calls and wishful thinking, goes away at the precise point where I’d be expecting to enter a sixteen-digit number and an expiration date. This is, shall we say, suboptimal.
So once again, I dial up the phone and converse, so to speak, with the disembodied voice. At least she knows where to find the appropriate data. It occurs to me that you might want to reprogram her slightly, give her more of a Catherine Zeta-Jones kind of sound. It worked for you before, didn’t it?
Okay, fine, cut out Saturday mail delivery. I won’t lose any sleep over it.
Until the next Monday holiday, when it will dawn on me that I will have gotten no mail for three days, and I will utter all manner of unpleasantries. (Especially if I have to work that day, which I usually do.)
Although James Joyner, as usual, seems quite a bit less agitated than I:
The irony of course is that people are increasingly accepting of the possibility of losing Saturday mail delivery precisely because of the obsolescence of regular mail. That is, if you absolutely, positively need it overnight, you don’t mail it. So, for the most part, all that comes on Saturday is junk mail and sundry other crap that can wait for Monday.
Perhaps his crap is sundrier than mine.
Compromise: Why not cut out Wednesday mail? One day’s as good as another, right?
“Never tell me the odds!” barked Han Solo. He might have said that because he’s a swashbuckling kind of guy, but it’s occurred to me that he might have said it because we don’t know the odds ourselves. Will Truman relates a sad story from South Africa:
Deaf hardware store cleaner Stanley Philander had the numbers that won the record $12 million rollover (91 million rand) lottery in South Africa on Friday.
Problem was, he bought it after the numbers were selected, which means, that if those numbers just happen to come up again in next weeks drawing, Stanley is golden. Not quite as golden as if he had won this week, however.
Let’s face it, not only is poor Stanley in the midst of a huge letdown at the moment, but that ticket of his is useless. The chances of the same numbers being drawn in back to back lotteries are astronomical.
Um, no, says Truman. “The chances are, of course, just the same as any other set of six numbers!” Similarly, if you’ve tossed a coin nineteen times and somehow managed to get nineteen heads, the chance of getting tails on the twentieth toss is still 50-50.
I mean, a babelicious drug lord?
Angie Sanselmente Valencia, a former lingerie model, is believed to be heading one of the world’s largest drug gangs.
An international arrest warrant has been issued for the 30-year-old, who is suspected of recruiting beautiful women and using them to move drugs to Europe and North America.
Many of these women are believed to be other lingerie and glamour models who compete in international beauty pageants, whom Valencia describes as “unsuspicious, beautiful angels”.
Moe Lane has anticipated the screen treatments:
A project to enthusiastically exploit this is being greenlit even as we speak. It’s either going to be a screwball comedy (in which case they’ll switch out cocaine for something a bit less controversial, like probably diamonds or something), straight action flick (in which case there’ll be a good deal of automatic weapons fire and exploding cars in exotic European locations), or it’ll be a Showtime miniseries (in which case there’s going to be essentially multiple counts of nipple sightings per episode).
Maybe I do need a DVR after all.
One potential plot point missed by Moe, suggested by Jenn:
Don’t forget that somehow the main bad guy / girl will somehow be linked to Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, and Ann Coulter and the only reason that the models are running drugs is the lack of affordable healthcare in the U.S.
If they somehow manage to work a speeding, out-of-control Toyota into the mix, I am so there.
If you want people to take the paper, you have to get the paper to them on a regular basis:
I did not receive my newspaper. Again. This is four times in less than two weeks. The paper is a poorly written rag with two day old news, but it is the only way to get the local news. How bad is the paper? Monday night football is covered on WEDNESDAY. You get this kind of quality reporting for $0.75/day. I can get the Indy Star for the same price and four to five times the content. Although the reporting and left-wing bias lowers the value. All the lady on the other end of my blistering phone call could say is “we have talked to your carrier.” If you do not call before 10:00 am, they will not even bring you a replacement copy. That is some fine customer service.
The carrier, inevitably, is the weakest link. If you get a good one — and the folks who slap the Oklahoman on my driveway are pretty darn good these days — you always wonder how long it’ll be before they decide it’s not worth getting up at oh-dark-thirty for that kind of money.
Disclosure: Let the record show that I have thrown the Post and Courier and the defunct-since-1980 Oklahoma Journal. I was, I think, okay, if not inspired.
You’ve heard this one before: “If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?” Charles Pergiel explains it all.
And now that that’s cleared up, I’d like an answer to this one: if time slows down as you approach the speed of light, do you eventually regain the ability to turn off your freaking turn signals already?
I have no idea what you’re talking about, so here’s a picture of a cat with a can on its head:
The can, you may be assured, has been removed:
Staff at an animal rescue centre in Fife were amazed when a lost cat found its way there — despite having its head stuck in a food can.
The Scottish SPCA, which runs the unit, said the female must have been scavenging and got her head stuck. They say she was lucky not to have been hit by a car.
Colin Seddon, manager at the centre in Middlebank, Dunfermline, said: “Luckily no damage was done and the little cat was very pleased to be freed from the discomfort that comes with having your head stuck inside a tin can.”
Ceiling Cat looks after his own.
I shouldn’t bitch too much. I mean, you’ve got to be a decadent Westerner to wake up; note “Dammit, my computer’s dead”; unplug the mouse and keyboard from it and plug them into the spare computer sitting on the desk right next to it because you couldn’t be bothered to go find your netbook and power it up and then whine wirelessly to all your friends on the intertubes about how much your life sucks).
Similarly, Bill Whittle:
Civilizations fall because people bitch and complain when the electricity is off for fifteen minutes, and never give a thought to the fact that it has been on for their entire lives.
The common thread here: bitching.
Rather a lot of noirish thrillers will show you a dame in stilettos with some industrial-strength firearm, and I’ve been known to see this display of lethality and mutter something to the effect of “Must be pretty good, to be able to shoot while teetering on those things.”
Which shows you how little I know:
I love shooting in heels. It’s what I am inevitably wearing anyway so I figure I should practice like I dress. I even took my defensive shotgun class in 3″ heels. Outshot most the guys too. I’ve been told they would screw up my shooting too. Those people are wrong. You are generally most stable in what you wear most often.
And you have to figure the sort of dame who wanders through noirish thrillers in stilettos probably isn’t spending a whole lot of her time in flat-heeled oxfords, unless she’s got that whole Double Life thing going on.
About 30 years ago, during the Carter administration, feminists noticed that airline flight attendants — who were called “stewardesses” back then — tended to be young, attractive and cheerful.
This was clearly unfair, so there was a federal civil-rights lawsuit and now all U.S. airline flight attendants are either ill-tempered, middle-aged, homely women or snarky unhelpful gay men.
However, during the Reagan years, Ed Meese put a stop to such shenanigans before the courts could apply that social-justice principle to the strip-club industry, which is why most strippers don’t look like Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg or Andrew Sullivan.
Yet.
Not that the Meeseketeers were so conservation-minded as to want to preserve the strip-club industry as it was, of course: their policy was more like “If anyone is going to persecute strip clubs, it’s going to be us.”
Still, expecting life to be fair is rather like expecting Lucy will actually hold the football for you, Charlie Brown.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this:
Sue recently purchased a new home. She writes that she closed on the house … and then learned that the previous owner had committed suicide somewhere inside it. She wouldn’t have bought the house had she known. The real estate agents claim that they weren’t aware of the situation, but if they had, did they have any moral obligation to tell her?
They didn’t have any legal obligation. The pertinent Massachusetts General Law (Chapter 93, Section 114):
The fact or suspicion that real property may be or is psychologically impacted shall not be deemed to be a material fact required to be disclosed in a real estate transaction. “Psychologically impacted” shall mean an impact being the result of facts or suspicions including, but not limited to, the following:
(a) that an occupant of real property is now or has been suspected to be infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus or with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or any other disease which reasonable medical evidence suggests to be highly unlikely to be transmitted through the occupying of a dwelling;
(b) that the real property was the site of a felony, suicide or homicide; and
(c) that the real property has been the site of an alleged parapsychological or supernatural phenomenon.
No cause of action shall arise or be maintained against a seller or lessor of real property or a real estate broker or salesman, by statute or at common law, for failure to disclose to a buyer or tenant that the real property is or was psychologically impacted.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, the provisions of this section shall not authorize a seller, lessor or real estate broker or salesman to make a misrepresentation of fact or false statement.
The Oklahoma law (O.S. Title 59, Section 858-513) is similar, at least as regards items (a) and (b). (Soonerland presumably ain’t ‘fraid of no ghosts.) In California, however, crimes within the past three years must be disclosed, and the result is often a lower price:
For example, the condo residence in the Los Angeles area where Nicole Simpson and friend Ronald Goldman were murdered was initially on the market for $795,000. It eventually sold for $595,000. The house where O.J. Simpson lived in Brentwood couldn’t be sold and was finally torn down.
The property where 39 Heaven’s Gate cult members committed suicide in San Diego County sold for less than half its listed price.
Nicole Simpson’s house, in fact, took two years to sell; the new owner remodeled it extensively and petitioned for a new street address to be assigned. (This is not unheard of in Los Angeles. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, after leaving Washington, moved into Bel-Air, at 666 St. Cloud Road; Nancy didn’t like the number at all, and eventually it was changed to 668. Across the street, if you’re curious, is 657.)
I once suspected one of the CrappiFlats™, perhaps the very one I lived in at the turn of the century, had been the location of some sort of killing; but hey, that was a rental, and geez, look at the neighborhood, what was I expecting? It wasn’t exactly Bel-Air.
I don’t know what I’d do were I in Sue’s circumstances. Officially, I snicker; late at night, though, every little noise speaks something to the contrary directly into my subconscious.
I’ve had some fairly crummy jobs in my day, but nothing that even approaches this:
Back in the olden days (about 25 years ago), my job du jour was delivering balloons and singing telegrams. No, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket but people tend to cut you some slack if you’re wearing a bikini or leotard when you warble.
I had to work Valentine’s Day delivering multitudes of pink and red balloons, singing “You Are My Sunshine” to dozens of people whose significant others thought this was just what their partner wanted. I wore our traditional Cupid outfit… a pair of white tights, a white leotard with a big pink heart on the tush and pink heart pasties, and wings, and pink ballet slippers. When you imagine this, remember how long ago it was and that Time had not yet beat me to bits with the Large Cast Iron Skillet Of Reality And/Or Gravity. I looked pretty damn good.
And what’s the weather like in mid-February? Right:
That Valentine’s Day was the day we had blizzard warnings. That Valentine’s Day was well-digger’s-ass cold. That Valentine’s Day gave us over three feet of snow in about two hours. And that Valentine’s Day I still went to work because I was at the time married to a complete and utter waste of oxygen and I would have gone to work in a shark tank wearing a chum bikini rather than stay home with him.
So I got in my little bitty antique VW and picked up my balloons and drove/waddled off into the blizzard.
Frankly, I prefer a more scientific approach. Sometimes.
The Post-Star of Glens Falls, New York is partially retreating from the Web:
Today we started removing items from our free Web site — comics, letters to the editor, puzzles, TV grid and letters to the editor.
The idea is to wean people off the free Web site and either get them to buy the print version or the e-edition, which is just a PDF of the paper.
Evidently the letters to the editor are so heinous they have to be removed twice.
On the other hand, I suspect that those letters are the one thing people — the people who write the letters, anyway — will actually pay for. (Comics can be had from the syndicator, occasionally delayed, like it matters so much with Rex Morgan, M.D.)
And no one, Web or otherwise, has come up with a really good substitute for the old, dead TV Guide.
But here’s the kicker, from Wikipedia:
For a time, the Post-Star maintained two distinctly different online presences. PostStar.net was an all-inclusive, subscription-based offering; Poststar.com is freely available and advertising driven. As of April 2007, PostStar.net ceased operation.
See also “insanity, definition of.”
(Filtered out of the stream at the Professor’s.)
In class-action suits, the plaintiffs receive something nominal and the lawyers receive a bundle. And don’t you dare mess with that system:
A retired Los Angeles County judge who ordered that a lawyer be paid in $10 gift cards from a women’s fashion store as part of a legal settlement was censured Tuesday and barred from presiding over future court cases.
The Commission on Judicial Performance accused Brett C. Klein of showing bias, abusing his authority and “grandstanding to the press” in a class-action lawsuit that he briefly presided over last year.
The lawsuit was brought by a woman who accused a clothing store chain of violating privacy laws by asking for personal identification information when customers used credit cards to make purchases. As part of a settlement, which had been given preliminary approval by a different judge, the two sides agreed that Windsor Fashions would pay the customer who brought the suit $2,500 and her attorney $125,000. Other customers who came forward as part of the suit would each be given a $10 gift voucher.
Sexual-reassignment surgery is expensive, I am given to understand. At least it’s deductible:
The U.S. Tax Court ruled Tuesday that a Massachusetts woman should be allowed to deduct the costs of her sex-change operation, a decision that could have broad implications for transgender people.
Rhiannon O’Donnabhain, who was born a man, sued the Internal Revenue Service after the agency rejected a $5,000 deduction for approximately $25,000 in medical expenses associated with the sex-change surgery.
The IRS said the surgery was cosmetic and not medically necessary.
O’Donnabhain’s lawyers argued that the surgery was a proper treatment for gender-identity disorder, generally accepted as a disorder, and that the deduction should be allowed.
Not all of her expenses qualified, however:
The tax court said O’Donnabhain could deduct as a medical care expense the costs associated with treating her gender-identity disorder, including sex-reassignment surgery and hormone therapy. But the court said she could not deduct the costs of breast augmentation surgery because it found that she had achieved breast enhancement through hormone treatments.
Recap: Do not include breast-augmentation costs on Schedule A.
(Seen at Interested-Participant.)
One thing that is always helpful when cruising the supermarket is to have a really good confused expression. I’ve got this down pat. I never know when to give up and bother an aisleperson to ask to locate something. I don’t know how busy they are. But if you walk around with a good confused expression for a little while, they’ll find you! Incidentally, eyes made uncomfortable with contacts and the squinting that bad contacts require really helps you out in this regard. You can have the confused expression even when it’s not your intent.
I’m good at confused expressions, but grocery clerks leave me alone for the most part, no matter how befuddled I appear. On the other hand, someone at Lowe’s will always ask what I might be needing; I suspect this is because I look like I’m too dumb to be operating power tools.
The Law of the West, unsurprisingly, honored the laws of physics:
When physicist Niels Bohr watched westerns, he noticed that the cowboy who drew his gun first and so had an advantage, was often the one shot.
The Nobel laureate’s favoured solution to his “gunslinger’s paradox” has now been confirmed in part: people move faster when reacting than when they initiate the same actions.
Such reactive responses are about 21 milliseconds quicker than planned actions, according to research. It means that the gunslinger who draws last, draws faster.
This does not mean, of course, that you should wait:
While drawing and shooting might take less time, any advantage is lost by the 200 milliseconds it takes the brain to notice that the enemy has gone for his gun.
Han Solo was not available for comment.
(Via Scribal Terror.)
M. Simon catches the AP in some New Math:
Although President Barack Obama’s push for a health care overhaul has stalled, conservative lawmakers in about half the states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates.
Lawmakers in 34 states have filed or proposed amendments to their state constitutions or statutes rejecting health insurance mandates, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit group that promotes limited government that is helping coordinate the efforts.
So now thirty-four is “about half.” Have we gone from 57 states to more than sixty all of a sudden?
Anyway, someone jostled the AP, a calculator was located, and now the current version reads:
Although President Barack Obama’s push for a health care overhaul has stalled, conservative lawmakers in more than two-thirds of the states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates.
See? Math isn’t so hard.
Deborah Gibson has not been smoking in the girls’ room:
While [I was] in the restroom, the flight attendant started banging on the door saying “Miss! Smoking is NOT permitted in flight!”
I was thinking — “Is she talking to me?” So, I replied… “Sorry?” — as I’m trying to do my business in peace!
Then, I feel her hands all but coming through the side of the restroom. There must be someway they can bust in or whatever. She’s banging and I quickly pause what I’m doing, pull up my jeans, and open the door. Can you say “feeling a bit violated?”
I suspect they’d have left her alone if she’d been sporting explosive underwear.
You want to see some action on space travel? Get the Feds out of it, says Tam:
Even the most Heinlein-quoting, Ayn Rand-lovin’, taxation-is-theft Wookie suiters get all weepy when NASA takes a shot in the payroll, when the simple fact of the matter is that the only spaceships the federal government has any constitutional business building should be run by the USAF and have frickin’ laser beams on them.
It’s a good thing NASA didn’t exist from the nation’s founding, or Lewis & Clark’s canoe would have taken thirty years to build and contained strips of birch bark from 72 different Congressional districts. If we want to see progress in space, we need to tell NASA to go research airfoil shapes and just declare everything that happens above X miles to be extraterritorial and tax-free.
Aside: More than anything else he’s ever done, Mike Myers will be remembered, I predict, for establishing frickin’ as the default modifier for laser.
Who knew? Punxsutawney Phil is being exploited by humans:
Punxsutawney Phil might be the most pampered groundhog in the world, but that’s not good enough for the folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
They sent a letter to Phil’s handlers, urging them to use a robotic rodent rather than the real Phil on Tuesday.
“Make the compassionate decision to use an animatronic Phil and retire the live groundhogs who are used for Groundhog Day activities to a sanctuary,” wrote Gemma Vaughan, an animals in entertainment specialist for PETA. “Tradition is no excuse for cruelty.”
And in other news, Punxsutawney Phil is being exploited by humans:
Punxsutawney Phil might be the most pampered groundhog in the world, but that’s not good enough for the folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
They sent a letter to Phil’s handlers, urging them to use a robotic rodent rather than the real Phil on Tuesday.
“Make the compassionate decision to use an animatronic Phil and retire the live groundhogs who are used for Groundhog Day activities to a sanctuary,” wrote Gemma Vaughan, an animals in entertainment specialist for PETA. “Tradition is no excuse for cruelty.”
Bill Murray was not available for comment.
(Via Scribal Terror.)
Our smutsational society, says Robert Stacy McCain, is putting women into some awkward situations:
One of the weirdest effects of pornified culture is young women feeling pressured to conform to the Porn Norm. Beyond the trend of extreme depilation — the deforestation of the pubic delta, so to speak — now girls are getting surgically altered:
[A] young woman consulted a doctor about the fact that her labia minora extended slightly beyond her labia majora and that this caused her embarrassment. Instead of reassuring her that this was entirely normal, the doctor recommended, and carried out, surgery on her labia.
Ouch. And, honestly, what a tragedy. I’m struggling to find a way to say this in a PG-13 way, so I’ll just say it: Lots of guys like that extra helping of cauliflower. IYKWIMAITYD.
Previous commentary on landing strips here.
Disclosure: I was once married to a girl from Mount Pleasant. Said so right on her birth certificate.
Cue Titus Turner, Little Willie John, or any number of bluesmen:
If I don’t love you, baby
Grits ain’t groceries
Eggs ain’t poultry
And Mona Lisa was a man
The last of these, evidently, is under consideration:
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is arguably the most famous portrait in the world, but now some are speculating that the woman with the inscrutable smile may not be a woman after all. They are suggesting that the Mona Lisa may be a self-portrait, da Vinci in drag.
Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, is undertaking the investigation. They think the artist who died in 1519 is buried at a French castle and plan to dig up his skull. Using CSI-style technology, they want to rebuild da Vinci’s face. Will he resemble the mysterious Mona Lisa?
While they’re at it, why don’t they see if he has extra arms and legs? Sheesh. Pass the grits.
(Via Fark.)
“Who’s that sleeping in my bed?” “Oh, we’re not sleeping; we’re just warming it up for you.”
Not for me, you’re not, and Jennifer is not keen on the idea either:
In the interest of full disclosure, I worked at a Holiday Inn years ago. There is not enough money in the world that would have gotten me to provide this service. No offense to Holiday Inn patrons, but I’ve seen you people eat. Well some of you anyway. Also, I knew the other employees. If you knew what I knew about some of them, you wouldn’t want them warming up your sheets. (*If one of my former coworkers is reading this, just know that you aren’t the one I’m referring to. You know who I’m talking about.)
Besides, as too many of you have read too often, I’m used to a cold, empty bed.
Face it: you’re not going to punch a bear in the face. Not gonna happen. So you might want to put some distance between yourself and the nearest ursine.
Of course, there’s an app for that:
A new iPhone application designed to frighten away aggressive black bears uses the recorded sounds of an airhorn, bear bells, hands clapping or rocks shaking in a tin can. Inventor Alex Tiger, a lawyer, understands the decibel level of the sounds falls short of the real thing, so he’s selling “Scare Bear” as a novelty item to cover liability concerns. Good idea.
Tam figures it’s not going to help anyway:
If you do see a black bear, and it’s coming at you, that’s because it’s half-crazed from hunger and you look tasty. The only way your iPhone is going to do any good at that point is if you can somehow wedge it in the critter’s jaws to impede its chewing.
Alternatively, depending on how long the batteries last while playing the “bear scaring app”, it could act as an audio beacon to help searchers find your gnawed remains.
Well, that’s a comfort.
(Hat tip: Maddened Fowl.)
