| OCR Text |
Show A2 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, September 9, 2008 The LIGHTER SIDE News Off The Beaten Path MUG SHOT E DA Z D Something to Shudder About James L. Davis My daughter apparently has a problem with feet. Not just her feet, your feet, my feet, everyone’s feet. She thinks they’re ugly. She says it’s nothing personal, she just doesn’t like feet. If there were a foot model, perhaps a stand-in for celebrities with ugly feet, she would hate the model’s feet as well. She apparently understands that feet are, by and large, a pretty marvelous means to get you from Point A to Point B. She just doesn’t like to look at them. They make her shudder. Not just a normal, everyday shudder, but a Teenage Girl Shudder, which is infinitely more intense than your normal shudder. A Teenage Girl Shudder requires the entire body to complete appropriately. It starts somewhere in the middle of the teenager’s body, perhaps somewhere near the stomach. From there the shudder extends outward in an ever widening circle, and it is usually several seconds before any visible sign of the Teenage Girl Shudder actually reaches the surface. By the time a Teenage Girl Shudder is visible to the untrained eye it has usually reached a Level 5 on the Teenage Girl Shudder Scale, or TGSS for short. Once visible on the surface of the average teenager, the shudder will cause the teenager’s body to begin to flail dramatically, sometimes starting with the arms and legs, but not always. Sometimes the shudder will go directly to the teenage face, which will begin to vibrate back and forth at a high rate of speed, causing the eyes to bobble and the cheeks to wiggle. The Teenage Girl Shudder usually ends in the teenager’s throat, which completes the shudder with a sound that perfectly summarizes the feeling the teenager is experiencing. “Ewwwehhhh!” This sound is used to express distaste about just about everything in the teenage world, from egg plant, to back hair, to the creepy old guy down the street who still wears jean cutoffs and a tank top and thinks teenagers identify with him. They don’t, by the way. While every teenage girl might have a different reason to shudder, for my daughter it is feet. Just talking about feet immediately starts her into Level One of a shudder, and if you happen to be removing your socks in front of her, the shudder level goes up dramatically. Her older brother realizes that the sight of feet makes her shudder. For this reason he has been known to pick his toe nails in the living room, which makes not only her shudder, but me as well. The dog doesn’t seem to like it very much either. We all have our little idiosyncrasies, I suppose, and while I don’t understand exactly why a foot repulses my daughter so, I also don’t understand why people would find a foot attractive, which I suppose some people do. I haven’t developed a complex about feet like my daughter has, but I can far more easily see her point of view than those who find feet to be sexy. But for me it isn’t the foot so much as what people put on their feet. Take sandals for instance. I’m opposed to them in all their forms. If women want to wear them, I can go along with that, because I like women and hopefully not in a creepy-old-guy-who-still-wears-jeancutoffs-and-tank-tops-and-thinks-teenagersidentify-with-him sort of way. But men should not be allowed to wear sandals. There should be a law against it, and those found breaking the law should be punished. Perhaps with a stick with rusty nails. On the feet. I don’t even pretend to understand why men would want to wear a sandal, and for those who do wear sandals, I wonder if they have ever looked in a full length mirror, because if they had, they would immediately understand why men should not wear sandals. It is because sandals make you look stupid. The only way that you could possibly look dumber when wearing sandals is when you wear sandals with socks. While I might understand the argument that sandals are comfortable and easy to slip on and slip off, there is no way that I can wrap my mind around the idea that it is OK to wear socks with sandals. Any kind of socks, but especially tube socks, or better yet, black dress socks. But I have seen a great many men, men I have thought were respectable members of the community, wearing sandals with socks. And apparently they think they look pretty cool. My daughter shudders when she sees this oddity and I do my best to shudder as well, but my version of a Teenage Girl Shudder more closely resembles a seizure of some kind, so I do my best to not shudder, even when I want to. If I do then some confused Good Samaritan might try to rush me to the hospital, which would require me removing my sneakers. “Ewwwehhh!” Photo by Rebecca Lofley Laughing it Up Tanya Higbee and Anna Turner peek over the fence, cheering on their teammates at a tennis match in Delta NEWS OF THE WEIRD Chuck Shepherd Lead Story The Other “Fight Clubs” Are for Sissies: At the August Dog Brothers “Gathering of the Pack” in Southern California, it was “(A)nything goes,” according to one warrior (looking to fight with “blunted knives”). A Reuters reporter witnessed two men without padding beat each other with heavy sticks and two others fight with electrically charged knives. The latter duel ended when, during a wrestling hold, one slipped a hand free and planted a 1,000-volt surge. The action seems exhilarating. Said one, “I’ve never felt better than when I’m doing this.” Another: “Honestly, I wish I could find a church with the same spirit of support and love (as I feel here).” Said “Crafty Dog” Denny, it’s “higher consciousness through harder contact.” Government in Action -- Florida’s nation-leading epidemic of mortgage fraud was facilitated by state regulators who permitted 2,200 people with finance-crime records to become professional “loan originators,” part of the total of 10,000 with rap sheets allowed to work in the industry over an eight-year period, according to a July investigation by The Miami Herald. At least 20 registered brokers kept their licenses after fraud convictions. A 2006 state law required criminal background checks for broker licensing, but fewer than half were ever done, reported the Herald. And the crisis continues, according to a Virginia research firm, which found in August that almost one-fourth of new mortgage fraud in the U.S. emanates from Florida (mostly on scams exploiting people who face foreclosure). -- A cautionary note about “early voting” was registered in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas, in May, when Mayor Becky Miller built a nine-point lead in early bal- The Duplex loting before a Dallas Morning News report on fanciful parts of her biography caused election-day voters to cast her out. In her campaign, she had emotionally referred to a brother killed in the Vietnam War, but her father said her only brother is still alive and was never in the military (which Miller “explained” by alleging that dad has Alzheimer’s). She later gave a name for her brother, but the Morning News found that that soldier, unlike Miller, is black. Miller also claimed to be a backup singer for Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne (and once engaged to the Eagles’ Don Henley), but spokesmen for each said they never heard of her (which she “explained” by saying she was earlier known as “Pinky”). -- An Insurance Institute for Highway Safety spokesman said in July that “billions” of dollars are unnecessarily spent annually because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration still fails to regard SUVs and light trucks as “passenger” vehicles. One result, according to an MSNBC report, is that otherwise-benign bumper-tobumper nudges (harmless because passenger-car bumpers are required to be of standard height) turn into major repair jobs when higher-bumpered SUVs crush the headlight assemblies of lower-bumpered passenger cars. -- Two Cheers for Democracy: (1) Angela Tuttle was elected constable in Hancock County, Tenn., in August, simply because she showed up and voted. There were no candidates on the ballot, and thus her own write-in vote for herself carried the election, 1-0. (2) After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s party retained control in India in the July elections, supporter (and Assam state legislator) Kishor Samrite decided to give traditional Hindu thanks for the victory. He sacrificed 200 goats and four buffaloes at a temple in Gauhati. Police Blotter -- Paul Baldwin, 48, was ordered held on $10,000 bail in Portsmouth, N.H., in May after his arrest for stealing a can of beer, which seems expensive except that it was Baldwin’s 152nd arrest. When a judge asked if he wanted a lawyer appointed for him, Baldwin said, “I don’t need a lawyer. I’ve been in this court more than you have.” -- Crimes From All Over: (1) A gentle armed robber was being sought in July in Poplar Bluff, Mo.; he took $25 from a man at gunpoint, but then hugged him before he left. (2) Arrested in Tampa in the span of 23 hours on July 1 and July 2: Mr. Telly Savalas Cheatam (grand theft auto) and Mr. Telly Savalas Wimbley (trespassing). Unclear on the Concept -- (1) In July, St. Mary’s Airport on the Isles of Scilly (off the southwest coast of England) posted a vacancy announcement for air traffic controller that added, helpfully, that applications were available in alternative languages, “in larger text (or) Braille.” (2) Police were called to a home in Wichita, Kan., in June after two young men had been arguing over which was more deserving of the street name C-Thug. The fight ended when a woman old enough to be their mother came along and stabbed one of the “thugs.” -- Illinois requires all state employees to pass an annual 10-question, multiple-choice “ethics” test (whose format lends itself to simplistic answers that, for instance, most college students might handle easily). In January, state ethics officials declined to accept the passing grades of 65 Southern Illinois University professors because they finished “too quickly.” Asserted a reviewing state official, anyone who failed to spend at least 10 minutes on the test was being unreasonable. Least Competent Criminals Oblivious: (1) In August in Billings, Mont., federal officers recognized Wyoming fugitive Sterling Wolfname, 26, on the street, but the man tried to give a different name, seemingly oblivious that “Wolfname” was tattooed on the side of his head. (2) Fugitive Willie Vickers, 46, was arrested in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in July on old burglary warrants after he volunteered to help a woman and a police officer get into her locked car. Vickers said he had lots of experience with locked cars, seemingly oblivious of tipping the officer to run his name through the computer. Recurring Themes The economic slowdown and rising prices for scrap metals have provoked desperation and creativity among down-market criminals. A 42year-old man was arrested in his car heading for a metals-recycling center in Miami in July with a 40-foot-long municipal street lamp strapped to the roof. And police in Williamsburg, Ky., easily tracked the stolen railroad rail in August, which was so heavy that it left gouge marks in the pavement as the thieves dragged it away. And the badly burned man found in July by police on a utility pole in northwest Dallas died days later (one of several who so far this year have tried, unsuccessfully, to safely remove copper wire from power poles). Names in the News Arrested in Tampa in June and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to sell: Mr. God Lucky Howard, 39. Convicted in Kansas City, Mo., in June of 31 counts including 12 rapes and other non-consensual sex: Mr. Shy Bland, 52. Arrested in Broomfield, Colo., in August in a raid on a “massage parlor” that police said was a brothel: Ms. Mi Sook You, 48. (Copyright 2008 Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.) By Glenn McCoy |
