Archives for July 2011

Before we begin, in an effort to maintain our journalistic transparency, I must admit that I don’t smoke pot. Like many high schoolers in the 70’s I tried it, and I most certainly inhaled, but I quickly found that my body can’t process THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, so I would develop horrible allergic reactions. Fortunately for me I had a non-judgmental doctor with a sense of humor. That being said, I have nothing against pot smokers. My ex wife is numbered among their merry band. As long as they don’t blow pot smoke in my face I’m good to go.

To be fair, I also think it should be legalized. The position that pot is the gateway drug to heroin is akin to saying Bugs Bunny cartoons are the gateway to transvestism. Some people like to unwind with a puff or 12 off of a fatty in the same way people like me enjoy a frosty cold adult libation. Neither of us a threat to society.

The views expressed above reflect the views of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of NBC 5.2’s related organizations. In particular, the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the staff of Nude Hippo, nor any of its Producers.

However, there is one difference between pot smokers and beer drinkers. In the main, when drinkers break a law, there’s a tragedy involved. When pot smokers do it, there’s laughter.

Back in April the NY Daily News reported that a pot dealer sent $50,000 worth of pot to the wrong address.

Ooops.

A Manhattan dentist got a mystery UPS package Friday from a real dope – it was filled with 31 pounds of very pungent pot.

Dr. Richard Lyons couldn’t believe his nose when he opened the box that was delivered to his Chinatown office.

“From my 70’s days, when I saw the green and smelled it, I knew it was marijuana,” said Lyons, whose graying ponytail could qualify him for a bit role in a Cheech and Chong movie.

Lyons, 61, said he had no idea how the pot – worth up to $50,000 on the street – wound up at his place, but he immediately called the cops.

Now, imagine you’re the dude who has to explain that little mix up to your boss.

“Man, … dude, … like, you know, it was like just a couple of like numbers kind of off, you know?”

I’m sure everyone will be very understanding.

But not all pot smokers are so sensitive and forgiving. UPI is reporting that one young gentleman shot his drug dealer over a delivery mix up.

A Port St. Lucie, Fla., man was arrested for allegedly robbing and shooting at a drug dealer he said gave him hamburger meat instead of pot, authorities say.

Timethy Delarrance Morrison, 22, was charged Thursday with attempted murder, burglary, escape, possession of marijuana and providing a false name to a law enforcement officer, TCPalm.com reported.

The alleged victim said he was to meet Morrison Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. behind a gas station to sell him $100 worth of marijuana. The dealer said Morrison walked up to his car and demanded the drugs. He said that he then gave Morrison a white paper bag and then sped away.

Morrison told police he looked in the bag and found hamburger meat instead of drugs and then began firing at the dealer’s car.

When police arrived at an apartment building in Port St. Lucie Thursday afternoon to arrest Morrison, he fled on foot. However was apprehended shortly, near the apartment building. Detectives said found 4.7 grams of marijuana in his possession.

Morrison was being held without bail ain the St. Lucie County Jail.

Quick question, if he was delivered hamburger meat, where did the pot come from?

Given all the things that are wrong in that story I see no reason to mention that it obviously happened in Florida.

Of course, no article about marijuana would be complete if it didn’t have a blurb grandmothers who use it to feed their rabbits.

No, they are not cross dressing rabbits. Sorry.

Police in Germany say they have caught an 84-year-old woman who had been feeding her pet rabbits with cannabis.

The pensioner was contacted by cops after they spotted a field of the metre-high pot plants growing in a field she owned next to her home.

While the elderly woman denied growing the plants herself – she says they just sprung up – she did admit using them to feed her pet rabbits. Police say this is plausible.

According to Tagesspiegel she said that no only did the rabbits really enjoy munching the plants, but because they grew back so quickly they were an ideal food.

Unsurprisingly the cops chopped down the cannabis plants and took them away in three large plastic sacks … maybe they have a rabbit hutch at the police station.

This just in, 100 stressed rabbits attacked a police station in Germany.

But, okay, so you’re smoking your weed, enjoying the buzz but you have a government grant to fulfill. What do you do? The answer is obvious. You mess around in a genetics lab and create a glow in the dark dog.

Scientists in South Korea have created a genetically modified glow in the dark dog which they say can be turned on and off like a light switch.

The glowing beagle was born two-years-ago thanks to a cloning technique which boffins claim could be used to find cures for diseases including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Tegon’s luminosity – which can be seen under ultraviolet light – is said to be controlled by adding a doxycycline antibiotic to her food at Seoul University.

While the £2million research could lead to huge leaps in medical science, it’s already solved one of life’s great questions, are dogs or cats the brightest.

A spokesperson for the research said: “The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases.”

I’m sure that there’s an error in translation there somewhere, or maybe the scientist was stoned, but I doubt that there are going to be lots of people lining up to be injected with fatal diseases.

“MOM MOM, I just went to the clinic and got Ebola!”

Nope. Still don’t see it.

Colors of My Weed (Official Music Video) ft. Cheech & Young Fudgemack from Kris Canonizado on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

You might think that today’s blog is going to be about John Boehner holding our country hostage for a couple of months and then finally presenting his grand plan written in crayon laden with references to Dark Lord Sauron. You would be wrong. While there is a certain level of sad humor in that whole mess, I thought I would focus on stuff that impacts people a little more directly. Yes the U.S. budget is important, but it’s also important for folks to have their garbage picked up and make sure their little worlds are kept safe. I know it might seem a tad parochial, but I hope you’ll trust me when I say there’s lots of fun stuff happening in neighborhoods around this great land of ours that is just as worthy of being lampooned as anything in Washington D.C.

For example, local voting can often be more contentious than the national version. So a company in Lansing, Michigan is helping voters remain calm by giving them pot when they register to vote.

See, isn’t this better already?

A medical marijuana shop’s offer of free pot in exchange for registering to vote appears to have gone up in smoke.

Your Healthy Choice Clinic of Lansing, Mich., had been offering a half gram on its website ahead of a vote for city council seats and after the council approved capping the number of medical marijuana dispensaries within city limits and setting a $1,000 application fee.

Clinic owner Shekina Pena earlier said she wasn’t trying to buy votes.

“We really got to fight to get the voters out there because the polls are showing there’s 4-5,000 people in Lansing that are patients or caregivers,” she told NBC affiliate WILX TV. “So we need those 4-5,000 people to come forth to the polls and vote for whomever they feel is in support of what they want for access.”

“We let them know how we feel, we don’t tell them who to vote for,” she added. “We definitely want to support the ones (city council members) who are supporting us.”

On Wednesday, the state’s attorney general, at the prodding of a state senator, said he was looking into whether the clinic crossed a legal line.

Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope said if the clinic tied the offer to voting for or against a particular person then it would definitely have crossed the legal line.

Pena insisted that wasn’t the case, but Swope still had concerns that a line might have been crossed, noting that a website tagline — “Vote for us and we’ll vote for you.” — suggested a close tie to candidates.

A clinic employee contacted by msnbc.com on Thursday had “no comment” on whether the website offer still stood, and Pena had not yet returned a call seeking clarification.

The website also offers advice on how not to bogart a joint when you’re a group situation.

Does that count as “group therapy?”

But, as mellow as things are in Lansing, Sheboygan, Wisconsin is a different sack of cats all together. Their mayor, in an effort to get to know the little people better I’m guessing, went on a 3 day bender that included a bar fight and passing out in public.

The mayor of Sheboygan, a self-described alcoholic who admitted to drinking, getting in a fight and passing out in a tavern in Elkhart Lake over the weekend, apologized but says he refuses to step down from his job.

“I have every intention of (surviving the latest challenge). It’s nothing I’m proud of,” said Mayor Bob Ryan on WTMJ partner station WHBL Radio in Sheboygan.

The Sheboygan City Council will be considering a resolution on Monday asking for Ryan’s resignation.

“I do not blame the council for asking for my resignation. What I did is indefensible. I’m not proud of it. I’m an alcoholic.”

“I’ve been successful in spite of it, and I will continue to be successful.”

Ryan explained the events of the weekend.

“I consequently went out for dinner on a Friday, began drinking and it began a three-day drinking session. I’m not proud of it. That’s not me, but that’s the alcoholic within me,” said Ryan.

“Did I pass out on a bar? Yes I did. I’ll admit that. Was I in a scuffle? Yes. Did I start it? No, I did not.”

He claims that his job performance has never been affected by his alcoholism.
Read the original story and see video from WTMJ

“Alcohol has never affected the way I do my job. Alcohol has affected my personal life greatly,” said Ryan. “I have never walked into a city meeting or council meeting under the influence of alcohol.”

Ryan also detailed his attempts to cope with his alcoholism and his plans moving forward.

“I work every day on it. I do go to group meetings. I have been through treatment. I do meet with doctors. I do meet with psychologists. I will continue to do so. I am going into an intensive outpatient program which will allow me to work on my issues more readily and still continue on my job. That will be an evening and weekend group session, and I will still be able to carry on my duties as mayor.”

A past YouTube video detailed Ryan making sexual comments about a relative on a cell phone, and he also faces a sexual harassment accusation from a female employee he fired.

No one living in Sheboygan has filed a formal complaint against Ryan, which would be a necessary step for the Common Council to be able to remove Ryan from office. If no one resident launches such a complaint, Common Council members, as taxpayers, stand ready to act.

“We’ll lodge the formal complaint and do the judge and the jury all together,” Alderman Scott Varsey told TODAY’S TMJ4 reporter Cody Holyoke.

“This needs to be taken care of sooner rather than later. And not a slap on the hand, either,” he continued.

Residents say it’s about time for Ryan to battle his demons in private.”If [the story is] as it appears on its face, a change needs to be made, because Sheboygan is bigger and better than this story is making us look,” said Scott Kautzer of Sheboygan.

This marks the second time that the City of Sheboygan has made our blog. Kind of impressive for a town the size of my closet.

But, believe it or not, the mayor’s following a grand political tradition. There’s even a website dedicated to politicians who have been arrested for various forms of drunkenness. With some obvious exceptions, all of which are clearly noted, most of them serve their communities well.

Of course, none of them were heinous criminals like the South Carolina sexagenarian, yes that’s a real word and it fits, who was arrested for driving with testicle hanging off her mirror.

The police chief of a small South Carolina town will ask a jury to decide if a woman broke the state’s obscenity laws by driving a pickup truck with plastic testicles hanging from the back.

Bonneau Police Chief Franco Fuda ticketed Virginia Tice, 65, in early July at a local convenience store after spying the adornment dangling from her truck.

South Carolina law considers a bumper sticker, decal or device indecent when it describes, in an offensive way as determined by contemporary community standards, “sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body.”

The offense carries a maximum fine of $445 but no jail time, Fuda said.

“This is certainly not a staple of my ticket writing in Bonneau,” the police chief told Reuters on Wednesday.

The Charleston law firm Savage & Savage will represent Tice for free, attorney Scott Bischoff said. The trial had been scheduled for next week but was delayed because the defendant will be out of town.

“She’s such a sweet lady and she just says ‘I don’t want to pay the fine.’ We’ll let a jury decide whether this is really criminal behavior. I don’t want to take away from the importance of free speech, but it’s really comical,” he said.

Lawmakers in some states have sought to ban the colorful plastic or rubber devices that go by brand names such as Bulls Balls and Truck Nutz.

Fuda said if the fake testicles were a free speech issue, “I don’t know what they would be trying to express.”

“I went to (a) few websites that said, excuse the expression, ‘show your nuts,'” he said. “I didn’t see anywhere it said support your local proctologist or farmer.”

Um, not to belittle Chief Fuda’s ability to read English, but the phrase is “Show you’re nuts” which is clearly a constitutionally covered statement concerning one’s personal mental state.

Of course, he may be baffled about how that whole Interweb thing works. Much like this New York genius who taunted cops using Facebook.

A fugitive from upstate New York who taunted police on his Facebook page to `catch me if you can. I’m in Brooklyn’ has been arrested.

The Daily News says U.S. marshals and NYPD detectives tracked Victor Burgos down to an apartment in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood Monday night, sitting at his computer with his Facebook page open.

The 29-year-old suspect was wanted by Utica police on multiple arrest warrants for domestic violence and harassment of his former girlfriend.

He allegedly issued the Facebook challenge after his mug shot appeared on the Utica Police Department’s 10 most wanted list.

Utica Sgt. Steve Hauck tells the News: “He told us via Facebook to come and get him and we did.”

See? Despite being cold sober and a member of law enforcement, he still manages to have a sense of humor and do his job.

It can happen.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Many moons ago, a television show called WKRP in Cincinnati had an episode where Dr. Johnny Fever interviewed a, self proclaimed, child psychologist who proposed that all children under the age of 13 should be locked away in concentration camps. It was a funny bit. It may also have been prescient. Way back on July 15th I wrote about how a restaurant had banned children under the age of 6. In it I noted that this wasn’t even the first restaurant to do so. But now it seems that the floodgates have been opened. Children around the world are being denied the privilege of making our lives a living hell.

This despite the fact that some adults seem to think it is their child’s God given right to do just that. I don’t blame the kids for this turn of events, I blame their parents. Kids don’t know how to behave in public. There is no “social skills” gene that kicks in when they learn to talk. It is up to the parental units to teach their kids how to say please and thank you and to show respect to not just their elders but to all around them regardless of age. Little Timmy and Suzy aren’t going to magically learn their manners watching mommy and daddy fart on the couch while watching Wheel of Fortune.

Our regular reader, Jordan Brandes, pointed me to an article written by Piper Weiss & Shine Staff which reports that the child banning trend is starting to become entrenched.

What’s the matter with kids today and why doesn’t anyone want them around? In June, Malaysia Airlines banned babies from many of their first class cabins, prompting other major airlines to consider similar policies.

Lately, complaints about screaming kids are being taken seriously, not only by airlines, but by hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, and even grocery stores.

Earlier this month, McDain’s, a Pittsburgh area restaurant that banned kids under 6 became a mascot for the no-kids-zone movement.

According to a Pittsburgh local news poll, more than half of area residents were in favor of the ban. And now big business is paying attention.

“Brat bans could well be the next frontier in destination and leisure-product marketing,” writes Robert Klara in an article on the child-free trend in AdWeek.

Klara points to Leavethembehind.com, a travel website for kid-free vacations, with a massive list of yoga retreats, luxury resorts and bargain hotels around the world that ban children.

“Call me a grinch, a misanthrope, a DINK (dual-income-no-kids), or the anti-cute-police, but I hate (hate a thousand times over) ill-behaved children/infants/screaming banshees in upscale restaurants (ok, anywhere, really, but I don’t want any death threats),” writes Charlotte Savino on Travel and Leisure’s blog. She lists a slew of a popular destination restaurants with kid-free areas and policies for travelers looking for quiet vacation dining.

Traveling is one thing, but what about in kids’ own hometowns? Should kids been banned from local movie theaters, like they were at a recent adults-only Harry Potter screening? In Texas, one cinema chain has even flipped the model, banning kids under six altogether, except on specified “baby days”.

Even running errands with toddlers may be changing. This summer Whole Foods stores in Missouri are offering child-free shopping hours (kids are allowed inside but childcare service is available for parents who want to shop kid-free.) Meanwhile in Florida, a controversy brews over whether kids can be banned from a condominium’s outdoor area. That’s right, some people don’t even want kids outdoors.

When did kids become the equivalent of second-hand smoke? Blame a wave of childless adults with money to spare. “Empty nesters continue to wield a huge swath of discretionary spending dollars, and population dips in first-world countries mean more childless couples than ever,” writes AdWeek’s Klara.

Catering to the child-free community may be good for business but is it good for parents? It could help narrow choices and make kid-friendly environments even kid-friendlier. And let’s be honest, babies won’t miss flying first class. They won’t even remember it. But their moms and dads will.

Most parents with young children have self-imposed limits on spending and leisure. This new movement imposes limits set by the public. And the public isn’t as child-friendly as it used to be. As businesses respond to their new breed of ‘first-class’ clientele, are parents in danger of becoming second-class citizens?

No, parents aren’t in danger of being marginalized. They have a long way to go before they get treated like smokers and porn lovers. All people are saying, and they are saying it loudly and with their wallets, is that people deserve to be able to spend their leisure dollars leisurely. It’s not that freaking much to ask.

Also, as my radio co-host Taylor Harris noted, it’s hard for restaurants to make money off of kids. They have cheaper menus, can’t be upsold on drinks and tend to require more clean up than adults. That would seem like all the more reason for parents to make sure that their public dining experience is pleasant.

I do understand that parents who are traveling are stuck. It’s not like they can toss a kid into their neighbor’s yard and hope their little bundles of joy can fend for themselves for a couple of weeks. And, thanks to that pesky nanny state, you can’t drug the little darlings so they’ll be quiet for the flight.

I’m not sure what the solution is for them, but there has to be an alternative to listening to a child scream bloody murder for four hours straight.

It’s really not any fun.

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

We’ve all had days we’d rather forget. The kind where you wake up in the morning, go to the store and, somehow, end up in a hospital staring at a ceiling being asked if you can spell your name. Bonus points if you have no idea what that name is. Alex Trebek had one of those days yesterday. In an attempt to stop a burglar in his hotel room, things went slightly south. He explained, “It happened at 2:30 a.m., chasing a burglar down the hallway of my San Francisco hotel, when my Achilles tendon ruptured and I then fell on carpet, bruising the other leg in process. Surgery on Friday.” Smart as he is he forgot the one fundamental rule of staying in a hotel, lock the chain and not just the knob. I have a friend, who’s one of the good guys (thankfully), who once showed me how he could bypass any hotel level electronic card lock with a 9 volt battery and a generic key card. No, I will not tell you how he did it. Nevertheless, that quibble aside, what the heck was he thinking? That nut job could’ve been armed!

Oh well, all’s well that ends well. The suspect was apprehended, Mr. Trebek got back everything but his spending cash and no one was killed.

Speaking of people who get one over on electronic systems, let’s take a peek at what happened in Florida this week.

Authorities say an inmate at a central Florida jail used a glitch in the facility’s phone system to bond himself out.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office says 32-year-old Larry Stone discovered the glitch earlier this month. The phone system charges inmate accounts for calls but refunds the money if the call doesn’t go through. But the system was reimbursing inmates twice for incomplete calls.

Authorities say Stone repeatedly made calls and hung up until he had more than $1,250, enough to bond out of jail. Stone had been arrested in April on property-crime charges.

Stone was only free for a few hours before he was re-arrested. Officials became suspicious by the inmates’ increased phone use.

The software error has been fixed and accounts restored to their previous totals.

He gets an “A” for Effort in my book. However I admit to being concerned that an inmate noticed this glitch before the people in charge of accounting did. They must have been out partying at the local amusement parks or something.

If they’re not careful they could end up being accountants in Taipei. Not that there’s anything wrong with Taipei, it’s a beautiful city, but now the city is attempting to turn dog poo into gold.

A city in northern Taiwan is trying the Midas touch to persuade reluctant residents to clean up after their canines: offering a chance to win gold bars to anyone handing in bags of doggy deposits.

Starting Aug. 1, dog owners and other residents of New Taipei City, bordering the capital Taipei, can hand in waste to government cleaning teams in exchange for tickets to a lucky draw. The prizes: three gold ingots worth T$60,000 ($2,100 US), T$18,000 and T$12,000.

The number of draw tickets is unlimited, and the winners will be named in October, the city government said in a statement.

“We are hoping the draw will attract a wide participation, especially as the gold price is rising,” said New Taipei City Environmental Protection Department official Chen Chao-ming.

The city will give free garbage bags to would-be collectors. It is also beefing up more conventional measures, including rewarding people for photographing dog owners leaving mess uncleaned, and stepping up its own poo patrols in dog haunts.

But it will be hoping for better results than the central city of Taichung saw in 2009, when its offer of T$100 shopping vouchers for each kg of excrement collected yielded little more than criticism and ridicule.

“What do you do for a living dad?”

“I count bags of dog poo.”

And at that exact moment every one of those child’s dreams died.

Even so, at least dear old dad is contributing something to society and is free to walk among us.

How would you like to be arrested for writing a thank you card?

No, I’m not making this up.

A woman will go to court next month after she was charged with first-degree trespassing after sitting at a picnic table at Weatherby Lake.

Jennifer Payne is in the Kansas City area on business. She said she went to the lake on Monday, found a picnic table by the water and filled out thank-you cards.

“On my way to my next appointment, I wanted to go sit in a park and get some work done. I knew the lake was across the street,” Payne said.

KMBC’s Dan Weinbaum reported that the problem was the lake is private. Payne said she failed to see the signs saying it was private property. A Weatherby Lake police officer showed up and told her she could not be on the property.

“‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea this was a private lake. I don’t want to cause harm, and I’ll get out of here and won’t ever come back,'” Payne said she told the officer.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“He said I need to start calling people because he was going to place me under arrest. I was like, ‘What for?'” Payne said.

The officer said for trespassing.

Weinbaum reported that Weatherby Lake is both public and private. The streets are public and so are the handful of city parks. But the lake, the water and the access areas are all private property.

The board that oversees the property pressed charges against Payne.

“I was sitting on a bench writing thank-you cards. ‘Can’t you let me go with a warning?'” Payne asked.

The answer was no. Payne was arrested, fingerprinted and had her mugshot taken. She was kept for a couple hours at the Weatherby Lake Police Department and was about to be sent to the Platte County Jail for the night until her boss bailed her out.

The Weatherby Lake police chief told Weinbaum that this is standard operating procedure. The property owner has the right to file charges.

Just a moment, I’m adding Weatherby Lake to the list of places I’ll never visit. No word on whether that hell hole is named after Principal Weatherbee.

Not that it really matters.

But, if you think her day was bad, try this, a guy fell down at home and woke up in a morgue.

A South African man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge — nearly a day after his family thought he had died, a health official said Monday.

Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said the man awoke Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family called in an undertaker who sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack.

Morgue owner Ayanda Maqolo said he sent his driver to collect the body shortly after the family reported the death. Maqolo said he thought the man was around 80 years old.

“When he got there, the driver examined the body, checked his pulse, looked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing,” Maqolo told the Associated Press.

But a day after staff put the body into a locked refrigerated compartment, morgue workers heard someone shouting for help. They thought it was a ghost, the morgue owner said.

“I couldn’t believe it!” Maqolo said. “I was also scared. But they are my employees and I had to show them I wasn’t scared, so I called the police.”

After police arrived, the group entered the morgue together.

“I was glad they had their firearms, in case something wanted to fight with us,” Maqolo said.

He said the man was pale when they pulled him out.

“He asked, ‘How did I get here?'” Maqolo said.

The health department said the man was then taken to a nearby hospital for observation and later discharged by doctors who deemed him stable.

Kupelo, the health department spokesman, urged South Africans to call on health officials to confirm that their relatives are really dead.

The man’s family was informed that he was alive during a family meeting convened to make funeral arrangements. They’re very happy to have him home, Maqolo said.

But Maqolo said he is still trying to recover from the traumatic experience.

“I couldn’t sleep last night, I had nightmares,” he said. “But today I’m much better.”

Mr. Maqolo is the one traumatized? The guy surrounded by armed cops and his employees is the one who needs a hug? What about the poor sap who was locked in a freezer drawer? That had to be somewhat worrisome. One minute he’s getting ready for a nice family dinner and the next he’s naked on a slab, flat on his back, waiting to be buried.

That kind of thing can cause all sorts of stress.

Now, in case you’re wondering how to tell if I’m yanking your chain, Bernd Wurm has developed an online BS detector. With zero being a perfect score and 1 being a fail, I tested 5 random World News Center article and averaged as close to zero as you can get without being nominated for sainthood. How did others fare? I’m glad you asked.

So does it work?

That’s a matter of perspective. The texts for both President Obama’s speech about the debt ceiling and John Boehner’s response ranked very low in B.S.: Obama earned a .1 rating while Boehner scored a .2.

Meanwhile, a press release about Miracle Whip’s new offer to contribute $25,000 towards a wedding or a divorce to couples who can’t agree on the condiment came in .24, with this comment: “Your text shows some indications of ‘bullshit’-English, but is still within an acceptable range.”

Since some people might assume HuffPost Weird News stories are, well, B.S., it’s only fair to put ourselves to the test.

For instance, a story written by this reporter about an artist who has created gay pin-up pictures of famous superheroes earns a .12 rating because there are “only a few indications of bullshit.”

Meanwhile, Lee Speigel’s story, “UFOs Exist … At Least On Google Earth, If You’re Gullible” ranks in at .09 with “no or marginal indications of bullshit English.”

However, Ben Muessig gets a .2 mark for his story, “Rat Catcher’s Day: Exterminators Celebrated On July 22 Holiday,” which means there is some “bullshit,” but it’s still within acceptable guidelines.

HuffPost Weird News Senior Editor Buck Wolf was pleased to discover that the stories on the site have relatively little B.S., but jokes, “that just shows how inaccurate the technology really is.”

Wurm insists he doesn’t intend to mock people’s writing, but hopes the “BlaBlaMeter” will allow writers to pre-check their stories for B.S. before publication.

“Surely there are many writers who do an excellent job and will not need this tool,” he said. “But there is no harm checking their own writing from time to time. Even I use this tool occasionally.”

Oh, in case you were wondering, this story ranks a .15, which means it has “only a few indications” of B.S.

In case you want to test the meter for yourself, just click here to have some fun.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

You all know that I love a good conspiracy theory. Completely devoid of facts or rational thought they’re like living out an episode of the X-Files.

Egyptians had batteries, Delco makes batteries, therefore Delco is ruled by the Goa’uld!

Don’t even get me started about the Energizer Bunny a/k/a the true spawn of Satan.

As you can see, they’re pretty easy to conceive. In fact, if you want to kill some time, feel free to create some of your own and share with us. I’ll post some of the fun ones here for our readers. Since our readers are all intelligent and good looking I’m hopeful to get some winners.

In all senses of the word.

All you have to do is email me by clicking that link. Yes, it’s really my email address and not some bizarre scam to add you to a mailing list you hate. Speaking of which, if you do want to join our mailing list, just fill in the “Join Our Mailing List” box at the top right of the page. You’ll have to enter a cpatcha code to prove you’re a real person and not a spam bot, but the whole process takes less than 30 seconds so it’s not painful.

What is painful is listening to the end of the world theorists, and I use that last word very loosely, who keep informing us that our lives are forfeit and worth nothing so we may as well kill ourselves yesterday. These raving ignoramuses have been proven wrong so often that it stopped being funny, yet they keep popping up on the internet and my TV to warn of doom and gloom and basically put me off my feed.

The whack job favorite of the week is the Mayan Calendar. All life will end in December of 2012. All of the people who tell us this manage to be devoutly anything but Mayan. Tony Phillips, from AOL.com, decided to do something completely nutty and ask a real Mayan about their calendar.

The life of Luis Calderón de Huatapotliz y Barca de Madera is essentially identical to the lives of his distant ancestors (except that he’s fictitious). Luis, a Yucatec Mayan, wakes each morning with the sun’s first glow and enjoys a light breakfast of plantains and horchata. He then leaves behind his wife and 14 children, setting off on a 43-mile walk into the jungle where he plies the trade of his heritage — foreseeing the future.

En route to the fabled Vision Rocks of Tlacolopatatlanqatl, Luis follows the trail blazed by those venerable truth seekers whose stories are now lost to colonial history, kept alive only in the undying memories of modern-day prophets like Luis and the half-dozen other Mayan holy men who travel each day from their huts, some as far away as Houston, to summon the spirit mediums and invoke their sustenance of life on this fragile earth. Their ritual involves gruesome self-mutilation, ingesting live scorpions and channeling the harnessed energy of five-pinioned jaguars representing the five primary elements: earth, air, fire, water and crinoline.

Luis and his compatriots are among an estimated seven million Maya living in Southern Mexico and Central America (that’s actually true). Like most other contemporary Maya, Luis speaks a derived form of his people’s traditional language as well as a regional Spanish dialect. His life and culture exhibit clear evidence of his ethnic connection to pre-Columbian Mayan civilization, though heavily influenced by the encroachment of Hispanic society.

Having learned recently of the approaching end of time (December 21 of next year) marked by the end of the ancient Mayan calendar, we traveled on horseback several weeks through the treacherous, steamy growth of the subtropics to find Luis and learn once and for all what the Maya have to say about that ominous date.

Luis told us through a translator, “Get a life.”

A quick perusal of the most prominent 2012 pundits turns up a cast of international characters representing many cultures and many traditions save one, but no Mayans. There are self-styled spiritualists, hack meta-physicists, and this huckster. There are White Americans, Europeans, Scandinavians, a few Canadians and a Russian or two all invested in the End-of-Days industry. There are sites devoted to selling memberships in underground survivalist colonies and others to selling survival gear for do-it-yourselfers. There are handbooks and guidebooks and textbooks and rulebooks. There are testimonies, acrimonies and sanctimonies and the one thing lacking from any expert account of what’s going to happen to turn our globe to a cinder two winters hence is a single Mayan who might actually know what he’s talking about.

Back to the fiction …

Pressed for details, Luis addressed our queries about the supposed end of the Mayan calendar, saying, “The calendar is circular. Where is the end of a circle?”

He pointed out that other remnants of history have run their course — the Sumerian Language, British possession of Hong Kong, The Golden Girls — and the world has not yet ended. In the sacred, liturgical tongue of the Mayan priesthood, Luis proclaimed, “In k’aabae’, tikin oot’el, chi’il chi’ u chi’chi’al, u chá’acha’al tumen u dzay máako’ob. Dzok in pitik u nóok’il in k’aaba’ je bix u podzikubal kan tu xla’ sóol,” meaning, “No kidding. Get a life.”

At trek’s end we — my faithful cameraman Lars and I — found ourselves no closer to solving the mystery of 2012, Luis having chosen to keep the secret to himself. Such is the way of the Maya. There can be no doubt they know the truth. The wisdom of their ancients is evident from the record — human sacrifice, animism, putting up a heckuva good fight against a few hundred Spaniards with swords and funny hats. Luis himself bears a heavy burden, laden as he is with foreknowledge of the apocalypse but unwilling to speak it lest humanity be thrown into chaos.

One ponders and one fears. But should one instead welcome the impending terminus of all our journeys? Ought we to embrace the arrival of comets and sun blasts and tsunamis and volcanoes and earthquakes, birds, snakes and aeroplanes and John Cusack’s worst role in decades? To each soul falls the task of preparing itself for the end. To each life is given knowledge of the eternal and to each wallet, discretion. Should we rather seek in the purveyance of charlatans or in the wisdom of the forest our own path to Revelation or…

Seriously y’all — get a life.

I think that sums things up very nicely.

I was in college, back in the 80’s, when I first heard about the calendar. After being scared poo-less by a devotee of the arcane a teacher, who was of Mayan extraction, pointed out the same thing as Tony’s shaman; the calendar is a circle, it just starts over. What that means is anybody’s guess, but mine is that it won’t mean much.

Decemeber 22nd 2012 will be the day you’ll be out hustling to get all those last minute Christmas gifts you put off because you thought Armageddon was coming.

For today’s closing musical number, I’d like to thank my bud, Joshua B Ludzki for sharing this gem with me this morning. There just aren’t enough Klezmer/Punk bands in the world singing about the end of all life.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!