Less boring ways to die

There’s a headline on the Today show website right now that seems sensationalized, but maybe they know something I don't:

Can your flip-flops kill you?

Uhhh...no? Flip flops? No, right?
Like, set-off-a-chain-of-events-Final-Destination-style kill you?
Oh, germs? Shut up.

On a related note: THE Final Destination comes out IN 3D on some Friday in the relatively near future (I don’t have the time to look things up, I’m way too busy spending time writing about how I don’t have the time to look things up) and holy crap, it promises to be just as ridiculous as we all hope it to be. I had forgotten all about the Final Destination movies until a few months ago when Tony ordered the second one on Netflix and we all watched it right before we went to the carnival in Brooklyn, which could be the most horrifying thing to do after watching Final Destination 2. Obviously, Skinner and I almost died on the twirly ferris wheel.

I’m not kidding, that thing was terrifying. The cars flipped over upside-down and something on our car was held on with a zip tie. Had this scene taken place in that movie, my huge scarf dangerously dangling outside the car waiting to get tangled on the rusty 30-year-old screws that held that death trap together, would have definitely been my cause of death.

There are a lot of ways to die, and let me tell you, if you’ve ever cheated Death, you might not want to go tanning or make spaghetti.

“Women Stick Together” or “Sticky Situation” or another glue pun

This story is awesome for like 800 different reasons, one of which is the subtle yet revealing facial expressions in their mugshots, but most importantly, the fact that Wisconsin actually issues cartoon-style black and white striped inmate uniforms. I like it, it’s like a sorority theme party. Prisoners are usually all mopey about being locked up and wasting year after year of their lives, but if they’re dressed like the Hamburglar, it just makes it more fun.


I have no doubt that all these ladies are in high demand in their respective towns of Kaukauna, Menasha and Fond du Lac, so this guy must be good because he got all 3 of them (one of the ladies is just somebody’s sister who came along for moral support, I assume) to sleep with him and give him money. Anyway, they all found out about each other and long story short, they tied him up and super glued his penis to his leg.

He went and whined to the cops, so now they could get up to 6 years in jail. That seems excessive to me, but I don’t have a penis. Guys are really weird about them.

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The cat's the smartest one in this whole story

I’m sure this kind of thing happens all the time, but usually the cops turn the dashboard camera off before they record themselves outlining their plan to break the law. Luckily for Alexandra Something-hyphen-Something, this time they didn’t. The video is long and boring, mostly because this girl can’t figure out how to put a sentence together, but that’s also why it’s funny. Maybe she’s still drunk.

Here’s the gist: She got tanked and thought the best thing to do would be to go for a drive with a cat on her lap, because drunk driving is more exciting if you have a live animal to further distract you from not mowing people down like in Grand Theft Auto. I guess the cat decided it had a better chance at survival if it jumped out of a moving car than it did if it stayed inside with this drunk bitch behind the wheel, so she pulled over and stumbled to the side of the road to find the cat and drag it back into her death machine. While she was “looking for the cat” (throwing up jello shots), a police car rear-ended her car that was stopped in the left lane of traffic, just in time to keep her off the road before she killed an entire family or a bus full of orphans. PHEW. Unfortunately, Officer Dewey (like David Arquette’s character in Scream?) “masterminded” (ha, irony) a perfectly-thought-out plan to blame the accident on her and forgot to turn the camera off. So now the cops are suspended, the dumb bitch is totally free to do 9 car bombs before she drives her cat around, and I’m annoyed.

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If you do watch it, note that she can't even keep a straight face and around 5:10 in the video, her lawyer has to reach over and stop her from violently shaking her leg like a 4-year-old who's lying to her parents.



BTW, I’m not talking about all cops. I love cops. I think the ones who do it for the right reasons are the best people in the world. I like to be really dramatic and assume that most cops here are on the take, but in reality, my only actual interaction with the NYPD was very positive (as far as the cops were concerned). Not to mention, NYPD cops always have great cop names like Spinelli or O’Malley, and really thick New York accents. It's just like TV.

I just threw up

If I ever become this desperate, someone shoot me. Or give me this book, tell me that I’m just like this, and then I’ll shoot myself. So Janice Lieberman is the consumer reporter on the Today show, and now that she's married, apparently a relationship expert, so she wrote a book to help women “shop for a husband.” The excerpt online is so packed full of cutesy shopping analogies (“how to get a great buy on a guy — and to get you to that checkout counter, pronto”), that I almost had to stop reading, but good thing I didn’t because the rest of it is pretty funny. I don’t think that was on purpose.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30727287/

Here we go, Janice is going to help us find a husband. I mean, she really knows how we feel. Like when she talks about dating in America compared to arranged marriages in other countries:
Are you thinking, Lucky them?
We hear you. The state of dating in America today is enough to make a girl wish the fine art of marriage arrangement weren’t a dying practice.

Yeah, totally. Wait…WTF DID SHE JUST SAY? I’m not married, and I’ve been on some bad dates (when I was 26, a guy-whose outfit was purchased entirely from Express Men, I’m almost positive-asked me when I was planning on having kids, because my I didn’t have much time left) but I don’t think I’ve ever thought, “Man, that was a bad date. I wish my parents would just make me spend the rest of my life with someone I don’t know.”

Unfortunately for whoever the hell she's talking about, we don't arrange marriages here in civilization. Don't worry, though, it's just like buying a blender.
I decided to approach dating in a smart, systematic way, as if I were making the purchase of a lifetime. Slowly but surely, and almost before I even realized it, I began to apply the rules I had learned as a consumer reporter — caveat emptor, don’t get scammed, learn where to shop, and know how to close a favorable deal — to shopping for a husband.

Ok, so I have to know what to look for, where to find it, and how to make him buy you a diamond before he changes his mind. Got it. #1. Know what makes perfectly good husband material or “PGHM.” (Who else hates unnecessary acronyms that are supposed to be cute and funny?) Hmmmm…it seems really tricky to figure out what would make someone a good person to marry. Lots of money, definitely, right? And…I think he should like movies. And music. And animals. This is confusing, I need Janice…
We’ve done the legwork for you, ladies, and we’ve uncovered exactly what it takes to be PGHM.

Phew! Oooh, the suspense. You have to buy the book to find out, but I’m guessing loyalty and honesty make an appearance. Cool car and killer abs probably don’t.

As it turns out, shopping for the typical consumer goods — a car, a bed, or a diamond ring — is really not that different from shopping for a guy.

You just haaaaad to throw “diamond ring” in there, didn’t you? Salt in the wound, Janice. And I think that if a guy wrote a book about “shopping” for a girl the way he shops for a car, Gloria Steinem would take a hit out on him.

You’ll be glad to know that I’m pretty sure I've cracked this code, so you don’t have to rush out and buy the book. What I’ve learned from this 2 page excerpt, is that with Janice's help (or your brain), you will learn how to make a list of things you want in a guy, how to recognize what makes a guy "PGHM" and, from what I gather, how to make yourself marry someone you don’t really like all that much, because he’s nice and you’re not getting any younger. And then you get married. It's like a fairy tale!

That buys you quite a bunch of Big Mac

Ok, I know it’s criminally cheesy, and Ann’s whisper-voice when she’s trying to get someone to cry is more than enough to change the channel, but I love the damn Today show. It’s where I get the majority of my news and my fluff. I’m sorry, “human interest.” I promise that I won't post something from the Today show every single day (or maybe I should, it could be a regular feature—“Today on Today.” Hmmm, I’ll think about it.) but I dare you to watch this and not tear up. I don’t want to give anything away, but this old man is living in a garage in Germany and has no idea that his dead friend from Pennsylvania (America comes to the rescue!) left him 500 g’s. Oops.

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How can you not want this dude to get half a million dollars? Pennsylvania could have kept that money and someone would have given him 500 grand after this interview, just for being so cute.