haphazard world

We’re all pretty used to spam by now. Every day, my inbox is cluttered with solicitations for a new mortgage, male enhancement products, discounted software, and the interminable 419 scam emails. But today, I fired up my email to find something quite different–a matter, literally, of life and death.

As I learned last night in the course of a really interesting discussion, Woody Allen once said that 80% of life is just showing up…at least that the way I heard it. Apparently, Benedict College has taken this to heart, as freshmen are guaranteed passing grades just for…showing up.

Let’s say you’re a little short of cash, but you’ve got a gun. No problem, you think. Just walk into a restaurant and hold the place up. It seems like a great plan, until you run into some guys who actually train in physical combat. From Fox News: Russell R. Rogers, 64, walked into Elmer’s

“Those who bring cell phones to church are not committed to God,” Escobedo said. “It’s very distracting to be praying and suddenly hear birds chirping or techno music.” Source: Wired News: Word From on High: Jam Cell Calls

I had a story that seemed to be a barrell of laughs, until some hammerheads in the Pennsylvania Game Commission ruined it. It begins with a deer living in Southwest Philadelphia who decided to get some takeout fried chicken, in the neighborhood of 52nd and Baltimore (not that far from where I once lived, at

I’ve heard pieces of William Shatner’s recorded work, and I always thought that he and former Black Flag/Rollins Band/ spoken word artist Henry Rollins would eventually collaborate. Actually, I never even came close to thinking about that. But, according to NME.com, it has happened: Almost 35 years since the release of his debut album, William

Sometimes, two completely unrelated stories intersect. People from different continents find that they are mysteriously linked to events taking place far away. First, you’ve got Kire Angelov of Veles, Macedonia, a teenager who, bored with the existing languages of the world, has invented his own. This is after he went throught the trouble of learning

Three years ago, NASA scientists sent the Genesis spacecraft on a mission to collect star dust. The capsule’s contents were too delicate to withstand a crash-landing, so NASA engineers designed a ingenious system for snagging it as it re-entered earth’s atmosphere. One problem–the parachute didn’t deploy, and the caspsule crashed into the Utah desert. Read

How do you punch up a bland story about bilateral air traffic agreements? Make a reference to Chinese take-out that, to me, seems to border on the politically incorrect. From the LVRJ: With an appetite for a different type of Chinese take-out service, the Clark County Commission will on Wednesday discuss a $360,000 consulting contract

In an otherwise unremarked-upon political outrage that I picked up from the Drudge Report, here’s this.  Christie Vilsack, Iowa’s first lady, apparently has been quite critical of the ways that African Americans, residents of Eastern PA and New Jersey, West Virginians, and Southerners speak.  She’s no political lightweight: her endorsement of John Kerry is credited

Unless you watch WBAL in Baltimore, WCAU (NBC-10) in Philadelphia, or get the local Philly news on msn.com, you don’t know about the “mystery creature” that, for the past year, has been skulking around Maryland. Here’s a photo: This creature has been showing up in backyards in Maryland, and it has perplexed experts everywhere. It

Why is it illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey? What is the name of the little man with the suit and top hat from the game Monopoly? Who invented the deck of playing cards and when?  In poker, what beats what? When playing cards, why are a pair of aces and a pair of eights