You're Not Being Kidnapped; You're Drunk

You know, there's being drunk and then there's being drunk. But apparently, you can get so drunk that you're completely unaware of what is going on around you. On top of that, you're also so obliterated that you're completely unable to process anything going on around you. That's when you call 911 and tell them that you're being kidnapped. That's right. Kidnapped. By those nice police officers giving you a ride home. Wait. What?

Correct. According to the fine folks over yonder at NJ.com, this intoxicated individual, whose name was not released (and for which this individual is probably thanking God for repeatedly) had been found by law enforcement officers when they were investigating a different call. At some point and for some reason, they decided to transport the man home. Now, to do so, they had to put him in the back seat of the police cruiser. Seems reasonable.

I don't know about you, but I've been in a police car before. (I'm not saying whether it was the front or the back, either.) And I can tell you that it looks nothing like a regular car. In fact, it looks pretty different from most cars except cars that are police cars. It wouldn't be all that hard to discern that one was in a police car even if one was completely obliterated. I mean, even if you couldn't figure that out from the interior of the vehicle, you'd think that the uniformed chaps driving the thing might be a clue. Nope. Not for our hero here.

Nope. As he was "...being driven to his southern New Jersey home by troopers" the man "...called 911 and claimed they were kidnapping him." Now, can someone explain to me why every single recording of someone calling 911 because the McDonald's was out of McNuggets is available for public consumption, but something as highly entertaining as this has not yet been released?! Why is that?! I need to hear how THAT went down!

The article states that "After making the fake 911 call, he continued to be disorderly despite repeated warnings." What's more disorderly than calling 911 and saying that you're being kidnapped when a couple of state troopers are giving you a ride home because you're completely plowed? I can't imagine and the article doesn't say. It's quite unfortunate if you're asking me.

I'm sure that you can guess how this whole thing worked itself out, right? You got it. "When the troopers pulled over and tried to arrest him, he resisted but was eventually restrained and taken back to the barracks. He was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction." That man is a genius. Pure genius, I'm telling you. Oh, but how I wish they had done a breathalyzer test on him. I'd like to know exactly what one's blood alcohol content has to be in order to not recognize that some policemen are giving you a ride home and you are not being kidnapped (in what must have seemed like a technologically well-outfitted gang of kidnappers).

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Denizens of the Chat Roulette Dungeon

The other day I did a post about the website Chat Roulette. The premise of the site is that you allow your webcam to be accessed and so do other people who are using the site. You are then paired up with a random stranger and you can either proceed to chat with them or click 'Next' to be directed to another random stranger. And the term 'stranger' is really appropriate in this instance because there are some pretty strange characters out there in Cyber-Land. Strange is actually an understatement. Pretty effin weird is more like it. It's the dungeon of the human soul.

The thing is that I wrote my post based upon my own experiences with Chat Roulette (with my webcam turned off, thank you very much). And while it was weird, it was certainly nothing in comparison to what other folks have come up with. My experience was tame compared to what some people have encountered. Let's take a looksee at some of THAT weirdness, shall we? OK, then....

Um, yeah. All rightee then. What's next? Oh, here we have some dude who is dressed, head to toe (I'm assuming) like a cat. Behold!

Here is a man who is, um, well, let's just say "working from home." Behold!
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I don't know which one of the screenshot below is the most hilarious. The very large individual in his undergarments who appears to be scratching his very large stomach or the two dudes below him with Heineken masks, complete with red straws for antennas. Your choice.

The only thing that would freak me out more than seeing one guy covered head to toe in some sort of colored cloth suit would be two guys covered head to toe in some sort of colored cloth suit. Oh, look. There it is. Yep. I'm totally freaked out.

Not only is the screenshot below of a guy in an Obama mask and a guy in a Batman mask hilarious, what is even more hysterical is their conversation over on the right. I'd almost like to know people like that. If it weren't for the masks. Or the Chat Roulette. Or any of it. Moving on...

Hard to say what makes this next one so enjoyable. Is it the full on gas mask outfit or is it the completely wigged out girls? I think it's definitely a little of both. He's the yin to the girls's yang.

I did a little reading and I actually learned of a "regular" on Chat Roulette. It's a guy who goes by the name of Shirtless Bird Faced Donkey Man. That's SBFDM if you're into acronyms. Shirtless Bird Faced Donkey Man is just what he sounds like. He's a Shirtless Bird Faced Donkey Man. See for yourself. Behold!

I told you! As I was writing this post and as I was scouring the Internets for various screenshots of Chat Roulette weirdos, I figured I should give Chat Roulette one more shot in an attempt for me to find my own super weirdo. So I logged on and bingo. There he was. Covered-in-some-sort-of-stretchy-animal-print-guy. Behold!

Yeah, I didn't know what to make of it either. But I know this much. I know that I either have to come up with a hilarious sign or I have got to get myself some sort of a mask. Maybe a Muppet. I'm not sure. All suggestions are welcome. Some might even be considered.

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You People Fell For That?

Sometimes there are scams that I am just amazed that some people are able to pull off. And it's not because the person or the people pulling the scam are stupid. It's because the people getting scammed are actually going along with it and letting it happen! We're not talking about some complicated scheme that anyone would have fallen for or that no one could have done anything to stop it from happening. No, we're talking about a scam that is so perplexing to me, I can't believe that ONE person fell for it, let alone THIRTY.

Here's the scoop: According to an article by the wiry folks over there at Wired, over in Wisconsin an 18-year old male "...was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for an extortion scheme". OK, what kind of extortion scheme. Oh, you know. The kind "...that had him tricking male classmates into sending them nude photos of themselves". You may be asking yourself, "That's a scheme?" Well, it is when he was "...then blackmailing them with exposure if they didn’t have sex with him." Oh, yeah. That's a scheme all right! Wait. What?

Correct. Meet 18-year old (and old enough to know better) Anthony Stancl. Behold!

Yeah, that seems about right. Anyway, Mr. Stancl apparently "...posed as a girl on Facebook and tricked more than 30 male classmates into sending him photos of themselves." Now, you know that these photos that were sent weren't just any photos. No, they were the photos of the nude variety.

Let's just stop right here for a moment, shall we? What is it with younger people taking pictures of themselves naked? Or just taking pictures of their genitals? And then sending said pictures to other human beings. How does that work? Do you take a picture of your penis and send it out to all of your friends with the caption "Here's what my wiener looks like on Tuesday."? I don't understand the motivation behind these actions. And when you're sending said genitalia photography over the Internet are you thinking, "Oh, it'll be fine. Things only stick around on the Internet for like a week or so. It'll be gone soon." Or are you just planning to never have any sort of a job where you work with the public or what? Why are you sending pictures of your reproductive organs to other people? Why?

Since those questions, among others, cannot be answered right now, let's continue with how this scam worked. So Mr. Stancl found 30 guys who were really proud of their manhood and they snapped a couple of Glamour Shots (maybe with the penis by a lake or with the penis in the middle of a meadow) and sent them to Mr. Stancl, but who they thought was "Kayla". Huh. OK. Then what?

Well, as Mr. Stancl began receiving photos of male genitalia, he needed to keep them organized so he organized them within 40 folders on his computer and named each folder "after a victim whose photos were in the folder. In one case, police found 24 pictures of a single victim." 24?!?! Really? One for every hour of the day? (Here's my penis at noon! Here's my penis during rush hour!) Seems odd.

And it was odd. But to me, it wasn't as odd as the fact that seven of the victims claimed that Mr. Stancl "...threatened to post their nude pictures on the internet or send them to their friends unless they engaged in sexual activity with a male friend of “hers.” When the victims met with the male friend, who was Stancl, the perpetrator performed oral sex on the victims and took a photo of the activity with his cellphone." Wait. What now?

HE performed oral sex on THEM?! Huh. I would have thought he would have wanted it the other way around. He did all of the performing, eh? Strange. But what's stranger is that those folks thought that was a good idea.

I don't get that line of thinking at all. I guess because the victims were still in high school that they went along with this little plan. I mean, seriously. What went through their heads? "I'm not gay or anything, but this guy is going to post a picture of my penis online unless I let him get me off in an oral manner. Um, OK." NO! That's not right! That's not logical! But that's what happened.

The whole thing came unraveled when Mr. Stancl, still posing as "Kayla" ended up actually having sex with one of the male victims and then instructing the victim to send him a nude picture of his brother. That's when the victim went running to his parents and told them about this crazy, Facebook penis picture scheme.

Mr. Stancl has now been sentenced to 15 years in jail. Since he seems to enjoy performing fellatio, I'm sure that over the next 15 years, he'll be able to find plenty of willing participants to let him do his thing to them. Plenty of them. So let this be a lesson to you, kids! If someone wants a picture of your penis, just say no. Because really, no one wants to see that. No one. I promise. That's why y'all wear pants.

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Wheel of Weirdos at Chat Roulette

I'm not about to say that Chat Roulette is some huge craze that's taking the Internet by storm, but I am going to say that a lot of people are writing about it and/or talking about it. I'm also going to say that while it's incredibly odd, it's also incredibly entertaining.

Picture this: You're in your house, hovel, tepee, whatever, and you're bored and you'd like to talk to someone. Now picture that you want to talk to someone that you don't know. Personally, I'm not sure what the appeal is in that. I'm not a big fan of "the stranger", but I guess that for a lot of people, that's appealing. (If you know what the appeal is, please let me know. I'm stumped.)

The solution to your dilemma above is Chat Roulette. The concept is simple. You allow the camera and/or the microphone on your computer to be activated. You sit in front of your computer and you click "Chat" or "Start" or whatever it says. The image of you streams onto the screen and then the site hooks you up with the video stream of a "random stranger" that is also on the site. Then you see the image of them. At that point, you can decide to click "Next" and go onto the next "random stranger" or you can chat with whoever you have there. That's all there is to it.

The thing is that this site seems to be like the dungeon of the human soul. There are a lot of people sitting in very dark rooms, as if they are doing something sinister. In a few cases, there was plenty of sinister going on (ie, crank yankers). No one looked particularly happy. The men outnumbered the women on probably an undercalculated average of 10 to 1 (it's probably closer to 15 to 1, but I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt here, something I'm getting good at these days). I come to those conclusions having spent about ten minutes on the site with my camera and my microphone off, so I could see into the dungeon of the human soul, but it couldn't see into mine. Seemed safest that way. How about some examples? All rightee then!

Here we have some of the aforementioned (and censored) crank yankers. Behold!

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? I was NOT. Let's see, what else? The sunglasses look was fairly popular (though if they were worried about being seen, they just could have turned off their camera, so I don't get it.

I like the Unabomber look that the one dude is sporting there. Sure. That's normal. Who else? We have perplexed guy...

Hooded guy amidst one heck of a mess...

Cousin of perplexed guy...

And pot smoking guy...

I did really enjoy puppet guy...

But you know what I really enjoyed? This could make the site something other than an anonymous outlet for public masturbaters. I really liked the hats and masks. Yes. The hats. And the masks. Behold!

I really admire the guy in the furry hat there for not covering up his face. Way to go, anonymous chat dude! Way to go.

And finally, we have the signs. I appreciate the signs. I don't know how successful they are going to be in their quest for breasts, but if they were only trying to amuse, they succeeded on several different levels. Behold!

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Crack is Whack

Don't do drugs, kids. Drugs are bad. Drugs will take their toll upon you faster than you realize. Now, for Whitney Houston, I'm not sure how "fast" drugs took their toll, but the drugs definitely took her voice and they took her gift. Below is a video of her singing recently in Brisbane (that's in Australia). She's supposed to be singing "I Will Always Love You". And technically, she is singing that song. But it's not the Whitney Houston of yore that's singing it. It's the new Whitney. The one that spent years sucking on a crack pipe or a meth pipe or whatever pipe it was that ruined her pipes. It's just a sad, sad testimony of how something so beautiful and so wonderful can just be thrown away like she did with it. When she was good, there was nothing like her. And now that she's not so good, I highly doubt that there ever will be anything like her in the near future, if ever. It's very sad. It's also a horrible attempt at an awesome song. Ugh.

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Reshaping Food In America

To be filed in the category of "We're Too Stupid To Use Common Sense", we have this little gem from the folks over there at Times Online that tells us "Doctors in America call for 'safer' hot dog to prevent child choking deaths." Wait. What now?

Correct. It would seem that in the journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics (I subscribe, do you?), hot dogs are responsible for "...causing nearly one in five food-related choking deaths among young children." Huh. OK. Didn't know. But one in five food-related choking deaths, well, that sounds serious. How many choking deaths are there per year? Let's see...oh, there it is. 77. "Up to 77 children die from choking in America each year" according to the article. One in five of those are choking on a hot dog, so that means that there are about 15 children that die each year from choking on a hot dog. No word on what the other 62 died choking on, but we're just going to focus on the 15 kids out of a country with a population of approximately 300 million. Why does that sound silly to me? Oh, that's right. Probably because it is.

So now what? Well, according to that article, “Food manufacturers should design new foods, and redesign existing foods, including meat products, to avoid shapes, sizes, texture and other characteristics that increase choking risk to children." Wait a minute. Do what now?

Redesign the...the...hot dog?? Like redesign it how exactly? It's a hot dog. There's really kind of only one shape for the damn things. What do they want it to look like? Well, the article (of course) doesn't specify that. They just say that's what should happen. Change it. Is society so dumb that it's come to this?

Wait. Before you answer that, let me hit you with this quote from the article: "...there are no food regulations comparable to those intended to stop children swallowing toys, even though “food is more likely to go into a child’s mouth than a toy.” ::: blink ::: ::: blink :::

Really?! You don't say?! Food is more likely to go into a child's mouth than a toy is?! Food? Are they sure about that?! For cryin' out loud, we KNOW! We know! You know what else we know that the article felt the need to state? That “stuffing large numbers of marshmallows in the mouth also may increase the risk of choking”. Whaa....?

Are they serious? Yes! Yes, I would imagine that stuffing a ton of marshmallows in your mouth would make it difficult to breathe and that it could possibly make choking more likely! I would also guess that stuffing a large number of, oh, anything in your mouth would increase the risk of choking! What is wrong with people?

Now, mind you that this choking risk is higher for children between the ages of 1 and 5. If you have a kid between the ages of 1 and 5, aren't you cutting up their food for them? Aren't you watching them eat? Aren't you mainly responsible for the well-being of your child? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that any child who has ever died due to choking on a piece of food did so at the fault of the parent. That's not it. I'm saying that this shouldn't be something that needs to be regulated. Some things just are what they are!

If I have to hear one more time about some group from somewhere overreacting about something and wanting a complete overhaul of some industry, I might just hang myself. Why can't common sense take care of this? I fear it's because we are out of common sense. And if that's the case, what say we focus on regaining a little bit of that as opposed to turning people into sheep (also known as sheeple) that just follow blindly because they can't think or figure things out for themselves.

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