Archives for August 2011

It’s a funny world we live in. Gov. Rick Perry, from Texas, is dumber than a box of rocks. Yet he leads the Republican polls to be president. Not that global warming is an exact science, but there are some things that require more than a hunch to refute. The sad thing is that he’s the sane one of the candidates.

Yeah, he just guaranteed the Democrats a victory.

So let’s take a look at his constituents.

We can start with streakers in Arkansas.

NASCAR fans got an eyeful over the weekend in Bristol, Tenn., when they spotted a man streaking across a busy parking lot near the track.

Hoof it over to Facebook to join the weird news herd.

Police said they arrested Joshua Greene, 27, from Parkersburg, W.Va., for streaking through the lot off Route 394 Saturday afternoon.

“I’m walking up through here and here he comes, back up and stops in front of the band waving and spinning in circles and stuff,” explained Tim Lee, a witness, to WCYB-TV.

Police gave chase and caught Greene in a nearby neighborhood.

The incident got even stranger when police officers found Greene’s car. In it, officers said, they discovered Greene’s girlfriend and a furry companion.

“With that we also found that he and a companion were in possession of a raccoon,” said Bristol Police Capt. Matt Austin.

Police called in the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to take the masked animal into custody.

“They said his girlfriend rescued it from a park, but as far as where it actually came from, we couldn’t really say for sure,” Austin said.

Greene is facing charges of public intoxication, indecent exposure and possible additional charges from the wildlife agency.

Who can argue with that?

Well, how about the cops in Miami who arrested Beyonce’s sister over her inflatable banana?

Pop superstar Beyoncé’s sister has accused off-duty Miami Beach police officers of discrimination and pulling a weapon on her during a confrontation over an inflatable banana.

MBPD spokesman Juan Sanchez said the incident began when Solange Knowles was denied access to Cameo Nightclub on Washington Avenue because she was carrying the five-foot inflatable fruit.

Knowles began to complain the reasons for not being allowed access into the club were racially motivated, according to Sanchez, and off-duty officers working at the club escorted her across the street to continue the discussion.

Knowles, 25, shortly made an informal complaint to a sergeant on duty that one of the men pulled a weapon and threatened to deflate the banana.

“A police officer just pulled a weapon on me,” she posted in a nine-message Twitter rant early Sunday morning. “I have done NOTHING illegal, against the law, or anything of the sort.

“I have literally had my last leg with discriminating police! Miami police department will be notified … I am simply tired of police using arrogance, ego and authority as an offense.”

Sanchez said Monday that Knowles would be contacted by internal affairs investigators, and as such the department would have no further comment.

Knowles stated on Twitter that she was publicizing the incident to “raise awareness.”

“I could have left quietly, but I am sick and tired of this scenario being played over and over again,” she wrote. “It is time to do something about it. I am a mother raising a young black child in America. I’m going to die trying!”

You go girl!

But, as you know, if you meet any of these people in court you shouldn’t friend them on Facebook.

No, really, you shouldn’t.

A 22-year-old male juror pleaded guilty to trying to ‘friend’ the female defendant in his case, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Instead of accepting his advances, the woman told her lawyer, who told the judge, who pounded the gavel.

It sounds like a case of eyes locking across a crowded courtroom, at least from the point of view of the juror. After the trial — involving a Tarrant County, Texas car wreck — recessed one day, he tried to link up with the defendant on Facebook. When she rebuffed his request, he suggested it was a case of mistaken identity, but that didn’t hold water.
According to the article, not only does Texas have jury instructions banning jurors from discussing trials on social media, this juror was given a copy of those instructions.

The juror was dismissed from the case, says the Star-Telegram, and his four counts of contempt of court landed him two days of community service in the bailiff’s office.

This isn’t the first case of would-be courtroom friendship turning to disaster on Facebook. Earlier this year, in the UK, a juror friended a defendant, who accepted. Both got slapped with contempt-of-court convictions — and up to two years in prison. By comparison, perhaps, the Texas juror got off easy.

UR Hot txt if u want 2 hv sex

Well, how could anyone find fault with that?

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

You think you need money. You bust your butt day after day to grab a shekel and serve mammon so it may not have occurred to you that you’re wasting your life. After all, what can you possibly accomplish without geld in the bag? I know, I know, you think I’m about to go off on some tree hugging, back to nature, horse-hockey that reeks of stupid. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever posted, at all, you know that will happen two days after the final trump. So why do I even pretend to start one of my glorious blogs by talking about how you don’t need money? Because, with some planning and a little effort, you don’t. And, given the economy we inherited this is something you might wish to read.

Heidemarie Schwermer has dedicated her life to helping others live without money and still be viable parts of the world at large.

Heidemarie Schwermer, a 69-year-old woman from Germany, gave up using money 15 years ago and says she’s been much happier ever since.

Heidemarie’s incredible story began 22 years ago, when she, a middle-aged secondary school teacher emerging from a difficult marriage, took her two children and moved to the city of Dortmund, in Germany’s Ruhr area. One of the first things she noticed was the large number of homeless people, and this shocked her so much that she decided to actually do something about it. She had always believed the homeless didn’t need actual money to be accepted back into society, only a chance to empower themselves by making themselves useful, so she opened a Tauschring (swap shop), called “Gib und Nimm” (Give and Take).

Her small venture was a place where anyone could trade stuff and skills for other things and skills they needed, without a single coin or banknote changing hands. Old clothes could be traded in return for kitchen appliances, and car service rendered in return for plumbing services, and so on. The idea didn’t really attract many of Dortmund’s homeless, because, as some of them told her to her face, they didn’t feel an educated middle-class woman could relate to their situation. Instead, her small shop was assaulted by many of the city’s unemployed and retired folk eager to trade their skills and old stuff for something they needed. Heidemarie Schwermer’s Tauschring eventually became somewhat of a phenomenon in Dortmund and even prompted its creator to ask herself some questions about the life she was living.

She started to realize she was living with a lot of stuff she didn’t really need and initially decided not to buy anything else without giving something away. Then she realized how unhappy she was with her work and made the connection between this feeling and the physical symptoms (backache and constant illness) she was feeling, so she decided to take up other jobs. She began washing dishes for 10 Deutchmarks an hour, and despite many were telling her things like “You went to university, you studied to do this?”, she felt good about herself, and didn’t feel like she should be valued more because of her studies than someone working in a kitchen. By 1995, the Tauschring had changed her life so much that she was spending virtually nothing, as everything she needed seemed to find its way into her life.

So in 1996. she took the biggest decision of her life: to live without money. Her children had moved out so she sold the apartment in Dortmund and decided to live nomadically, trading things and services for everything she needed. It was supposed to be a 12-month experiment, but found herself loving it so much that she just couldn’t give it up. 15 years later, she still lives according to the principles of Gib und Nimm, doing various chores for accommodation in the houses of various members of the Tauschring, and loving every minute of it. Schwermer has written two books about her experience of living without money and asked her publisher to give the money to charity so it can make many people happy instead of just one. She’s just happy being healthier and better off than ever before.

All of her belongings fit into a single-back suitcase and a rucksack, she has emergency savings of €200 and any other money she comes across, she gives away. Heidemarie doesn’t even have health insurance as she didn’t want to be accused of stealing from the state, and says she relies on the power of self-healing whenever she gets a little sick.

Most Americans know that health insurance is a silly idea and no one needs it, so there’s nothing to worry about there. As for the rest, it can be done. In many ways, since I became an independent contractor in November of 2009, I’ve been doing many of the things she does. The major difference being I have to pay rent and feed my cats.

And yet, I manage.

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

We live in an odd world. Much of it is normal, we see what we expect to see. But, somehow, when it comes to affairs of the heart, people are suddenly skewed in ways hitherto undreamed of. One minute it’s all hearts and flowers and then there’s the police and then you’re off to do a featured spot on Springer. What’s worse is that I’m talking about normal people here. As it turns out there’s a whole subset of humanity I’d rather not know.

Let’s start with an easy one. I like yogurt. A lot of people do. It’s a fun little snack that doesn’t kill you as quickly as other fun little snacks. I’ve even been to a yogurt shop and seen a cute girl behind the counter. So far I have everything in common with the guy I’m about to mention. However, at no point in my life did I ever knock the counter girl out, strip her naked and stuff her in a box.

Hopefully you haven’t either. Yet, according to the LA Times, that’s what this freak did.

A Monterey Park yogurt shop owner is facing kidnapping and attempted murder charges for abducting a female employee and keeping her inside a box in a soundproof room, prosecutors said Friday.

Robert Yachen Lee alleged lured the employee to a storage room above O My Yogurt on south Atlantic Boulevard early Wednesday, knocked her unconscious and then — after removing her clothing and dressing her in an adult diaper — placed her in a box, authorities said.

The victim told authorities that when she came to, she was bound with tape and had a collar around her neck.

Prosecutors believe Lee planned the kidnapping, because the storage room had recently been soundproofed.

The woman was able to free herself and escape to a nearby optometrist’s office, where she alerted police.

Lee appeared briefly in Alhambra Superior Court on Friday afternoon. Bail was set at $10 million.

Yeah, a cardboard box may not have been the best call in a situation like this. But, for the sake of the young lady, I’m glad this guy was a moron. Things could have gone much worse.

For example, this guy just outside Detroit found his drug buddy dead in his living room, or so he claims, so he cut her up into tiny pieces and stored her neatly around his house.

The 52-year-old man suspected in the death of a 32-year-old Gibraltar woman confessed to dismembering his neighbor’s body, but said he did not kill her, Police Chief Raymond Canterbury said Friday.

Police confronted the suspect Wednesday after he was seen on video surveillance buying cleaning supplies at a nearby supermarket, according to a source close to the investigation.

Canterbury said the suspect confessed as soon as police confronted him at a local business.

“We don’t know how she died, still,” Canterbury said. “He’s saying that they were doing drugs and she was just dead … in a chair.”

Canterbury said the man admitted to police that he cut up Pam Prpich’s body, and directed officers to her torso stored in his bedroom closet. Prpich had been missing since Aug. 12.

“We had 10 detectives or so and none of them would have said, ‘Yeah, this is where she was killed,’ ” he said of how clean the closet was kept. “You would have looked in that closet and shut the door and said, ‘She’s not in here.’ ”

The suspect’s 53-year-old brother said he believes his brother may have panicked. He said his brother is an ex-con who was adamant about not returning to prison.

“I think he was desperate,” the suspect’s brother said.

The suspect remained in jail Friday, with a warrant pending with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

Now, with most of her daughter’s remains found, Cheryl Prpich said she can prepare to say good-bye.

She said the funeral is planned for Sept. 10 at the Uht Funeral Home in Westland.

Pam Prpich’s brother Michael Prpich was the first to discover the remains of his sister.

He was searching the creek behind the family’s Gibraltar home in the Bella Vista condominiums Aug. 18 when canoeists pointed out a suitcase. The body parts were found inside.

“When we get the autopsy and toxicology report, we’ll know what happened,” Cheryl Prpich said Friday. “It was a great relief to me that they had somebody in custody and were able to locate some of her remains.”

Cheryl Prpich said the suspect was the last number called from her daughter’s cell phone, according to call logs. She said she doesn’t know whether to believe the man’s assertions that her daughter died while doing drugs.

But “we’re not discounting it as possible,” she said.

Kids, if you’re playing along at home today, here’s a tip for you; another neat way to avoid going to jail is to simply call 911 and tell them there’s been an accident and your friend is dead. No one will be happy about it but you won’t be trying to raise bail from a bunch of guys selling $10 baggies.

Still, as bad as this was it was nothing compared to the love triangle nightmare that unfolded in Okanogo, Washington.

An Okanogan woman shot and killed a woman with whom she had a romantic relationship, then later died, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, investigators say.

A third woman shot during the Thursday evening incident in the north-central Washington town is listed in satisfactory condition today at a Spokane hospital.

The Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office said Shelly L. Payton, 42, shot and killed Rene J. Menard, 49, at the home they shared at 522 N. Second Ave. in Okanogan.

Payton and Menard had a tenuous romantic relationship that had ended some time ago, neighbors told The Omak-Okanogan County Chronicle. Earlier in the day Menard told Payton she wanted to move out, neighbors told the newspaper.

Payton arrived at the house around 5 p.m. and confronted Menard, who was there with Catrina M. Fling, 39, a Riverside, Wash., resident and friend of the couple.

Payton and Menard argued inside the house, then Payton walked out, went to her vehicle and grabbed a 40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, and came back inside, Sheriff Frank T. Rogers said today.

When Fling began to dial 911, Payton shot her in the lower abdomen, and Fling collapsed on the floor, Rogers said. The injured woman still was able to reach 911 dispatchers to report what was happening, he said.

It appears a struggle broke out between Payton and Menard when another shot was fired from Payton, Rogers said. The scene indicates Menard was holding on to Payton from behind and a single shot went through both women, he said.

Menard died at the scene and Payton later died at Mid-Valley Hospital in Omak, the sheriff said.

Neighbors said Payton has a teenage son who was at football practice at the time of the shooting.

Fling was airlifted to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, where the hospital this morning said she’s in satisfactory condition.

Detectives also are investigating a report from the McDonald’s in Omak that around 2 p.m. Thursday, Payton walked into the restaurant, pulled out a pistol, stuck it in the chest of a woman eating with her children, and pulled the trigger. The weapon was not loaded, according to witnesses, who said Payton stated the next time there would be bullets in the gun.

Law enforcement was not called at the time of that incident but were notified later, after restaurant managers heard about the shooting, the sheriff said.

Detectives are pulling security tapes from the McDonald’s and are looking for the woman involved to interview her.

Payton, who had a military background, and Fling both worked at Walmart, neighbors said. Menard was the manager at Caso’s grocery store and provided karaoke entertainment in the area.

Mike Kostic, manager of The Cariboo Inn, where Menard spun karaoke records, told the Chronicle, “I came back here and told them to shut the bar down,” he said. “We closed down early because nobody really wanted to work.”

The Cariboo turned into a makeshift memorial Thursday night as friends and family gathered to reflect on the day’s events.

“She was the nicest person I ever met,” Kostic said of Menard. “She just had a big heart. It’s really a shame. We were in shock. Nobody here really expected it.”

You know, this is the first karaoke related murder I’ve ever written about. I sincerely hope it’s the last. Sadly, the whole WalMart part is getting cliched.

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

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, I took a course called Driver’s Ed. It was an exciting moment in my young life. I learned how to use turn signals, how to keep my hands at 10 & 2 and how to tell the difference between forward and backward. That’s all important information for drivers to know. Later, after I got my permit and prepared to enter the world of adult responsibility, my uncle Lefty taught me how to street race, how to hide a nitrous tank and why you needed to keep extra towels in the back seat. Not for him and I, of course, neither of us swing that way but it was still good info for a young man to know when he couldn’t afford a hotel and needed to get his horn on. As you can see, I had a well rounded education when it came to cars. Oddly enough the one thing I never got good at was repairing cars. I could change a tire, spark plugs and the oil but, after that, I was useless as suspenders on a snake. Even so that never stopped me from driving.

However, there are others who did not have my advantages. They get behind the wheel and they probably shouldn’t. Other people don’t get behind the wheel at all and still manage to cause problems. For example, cops in Shelton, Connecticut had to tase a guy over parking violations after he called police to report his violations.

Yes, true American genius in action.

A Connecticut man was so upset about the lack of parking enforcement in his town that he parked his car illegally in a handicapped space and called police over a dozen times. When they showed up, they subdued him with a stun gun and arrested him.

Shelton police say they had to use the stun gun on Michael Andes Thursday morning after he became combative and screamed at officers that they weren’t doing their job. He was charged with breach of peace, interfering with an officer and was given a parking ticket.

Authorities say Andes first called police at 2 a.m. and yelled at a dispatcher.

Andes posted $1,000 bail and is due in court Sept. 6. There’s no phone listing for Andes. It’s unclear if he has a lawyer.

While, on the one hand, you can sympathize with his problem, especially if you live in a city where morons park in front of your home illegally and screw with your ability to …… never mind, you know what I mean. It was still a bad idea to aggravate the cops.

They have guns and radios and know how to use them. My grandfather used to say “Argue with the guy in the dress not the guy with the gun.” That was good advice then and is good advice now.

Other people do get behind the wheel and seem to misunderstand the basic rules of the road. For example, you’re supposed to keep the tires on the ground. Cops in Kansas City, Missouri had to remove an SUV from an attic.

Six people inside a Kansas City home were shocked to find an SUV sitting in their attic after hearing a loud boom

The residents of the home said they heard the loud boom and found the SUV in their attic at about 8:30 p.m.

“We were in my daughter’s room watching TV when we heard the noise,” said Michelle Brown.

Brown said her son discovered the SUV as he was leaving to go to the store.

“He said, ‘Mama, there’s a truck in the ceiling!” Brown said. “And I’m like, ‘A truck in the ceiling?’ And we all ran out of the house.”

When police arrived, they found three people inside the SUV.

“And the police came and they pulled some people out of the truck because they were still in the truck,” Brown said. “I don’t know how they got up there, but they’re up there!”

Brown was home with five children when the SUV flew into the house at 43rd Street and Kensington Avenue.

Police said they believe the driver of the SUV was speeding north on Kensington Avenue and drove up onto the lawn in front of the home, which acted like a ramp, sending the vehicle into the home’s attic.

The three people in the SUV were taken to a hospital for treatment of their injuries. They’re expected to recover, police said.

Police department spokesman Officer Darin Snapp said the driver of the SUV, Kristopher K. Ploof, 20, of Grandview, was charged on suspicion of driving under the influence and careless driving.

The Red Cross helped the Brown family find temporary shelter.

Really? There might have been chemical additives in his blood? I never would have guessed.

But, I’d rather have that sucker crash into my home than what slammed into a home in Gaines, New York; 300 gallons of sewage and 200 gallons of water.

Oh, joy.

Police say they’re trying to determine what caused a septic tanker truck to crash off a western New York road and slam through the wall of a home before coming to rest in the living room.

The Orleans County Sheriff’s Department says the homeowners weren’t home when the truck driven by 35-year-old Russell Calkins of Albion crashed Thursday morning in Gaines, a rural town 30 miles west of Rochester.

Calkins apparently lost control of the truck, which crossed the center line, hit a stop sign, and continued moving until it crashed through a garage attached to the ranch home and ended up in the living room, according to NBC affiliate WHEC-TV.

Calkins was transported to a Rochester hospital for treatment.

Police say the truck was carrying 200 gallons of fresh water, some of which spilled out, and a separate load of 300 gallons of waste product, which didn’t leak.

The home was declared uninhabitable after the crash, WHEC reported.

Yeah, you’re sitting down watching an exciting rerun of Wheel of Fortune when suddenly a rolling septic tank lands in your living room. That has to be a moment of fun. On the other hand you have to imagine the fun you’ll have trying to explain the situation to your insurance company.

“Hello, Super Cheap Discount Insurance Company, how may I ignore you?”

“My house just got run over by a septic tank.”

Click.

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

We love our legends. We wrap in mythos even the most mundane and trivial things. Something cannot just be, it must be larger, better, more than anything of its time. I think that explains why when researchers admitted they’d actually found Atlantis that people flocked away from the story. What fun is there knowing that Atlantis was just a kingdom in the south of Spain with a big army? Oh, sure, archaeologists are going to go nuts over this find for quite some time but Joe and Jane Sixpack are going to stick to their aliens or psychic friends or whatever. They find no romance in the truth.

Which is a pity.

But not all legends are lost in the mists of time. Some are appearing right before us. For example, bars in Michigan, upset over the smoking ban that is killing their businesses, are now banning politicians. That is legendary in a very cool way.

Or how about the memorial in Ohio that keeps getting vandalized? Police set up a stake out only to find out that all the little flags were being stolen by a squirrel. No arrests have been made as of this writing.

Obviously no article on legends would be worth reading without a glance over at a guy who accidentally got an air cannon stuck in his butt and it inflated him to near fatal proportions.

I have read the article twice and still have no clue how a large pipe, which is what an air cannon is, carrying 300lbs PSI of air ended up in his anus. But, if you’re going to go, that is certainly one legendary way to try and exit this mortal coil.

Of course, what article about legends would be complete without a look back at one of the most persistent legends of all, King Arthur. Most scientists contend that the story is mere allegory for a culmination of events and people. Others contend that it is completely fabricated as there is no evidence of any kind to support it. Certainly not current to the time.

But …… wait.

Scientists in Scotland have finally been granted permission to conduct a noninvasive search of an area long associated with Arhturian lore. And, guess what? They found the freaking round table.

The King’s Knot, a geometrical earthwork in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle, has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years.

Though the Knot as it appears today dates from the 1620s, its flat-topped central mound is thought to be much older.

Writers going back more than six centuries have linked the landmark to the legend of King Arthur.

Archaeologists from Glasgow University, working with the Stirling Local History Society and Stirling Field and Archaeological Society, conducted the first ever non-invasive survey of the site in May and June in a bid to uncover some of its secrets.

Their findings were show there was indeed a round feature on the site that pre-dates the visible earthworks.

Historian John Harrison, chair of the SLHS, who initiated the project, said: “Archaeologists using remote-sensing geophysics, have located remains of a circular ditch and other earth works beneath the King’s Knot.

“The finds show that the present mound was created on an older site and throws new light on a tradition that King Arthur’s Round Table was located in this vicinity.”

Stories have been told about the curious geometrical mound for hundreds of years — including that it was the Round Table where King Arthur gathered his knights.

Around 1375 the Scots poet John Barbour said that “the round table” was south of Stirling Castle, and in 1478 William of Worcester told how “King Arthur kept the Round Table at Stirling Castle”.

Sir David Lindsay, the 16th century Scottish writer, added to the legend in 1529 when he said that Stirling Castle was home of the “Chapell-royall, park, and Tabyll Round”.

It has also been suggested the site is partly Iron Age or medieval, or was used as a Roman fort.

Extensive work on the royal gardens was carried out in the early 17th century for Charles I, when the mound is thought to have taken its current form.

The first known record of the site being called the King’s Knot is from 1767, by which time it was being leased for pasture.

Locals refer to the grassy earthworks as the “cup and saucer”, but aerial photographs taken in 1980 showed three concentric ditches beneath and around the King’s Knot mound, suggesting an earthwork monument had preceded it.

The new survey — funded by Historic Scotland and Stirling City Heritage Trust — used the latest scientific techniques to showing lost structures and features up to a metre below the ground.

It also revealed a series of ditches south of the main mound, as well as remains of buildings, and more recent structures, including modern drains which appear at the northern end of the gardens.

Mr Harrison, who has studied the King’s Knot for 20 years, said: “It is a mystery which the documents cannot solve, but geophysics has given us new insights.

“Of course, we cannot say that King Arthur was there, but the feature which surrounds the core of the Knot could explain the stories and beliefs that people held.”

Archaeologist Stephen Digney, who coordinated the project, said: “The area around Stirling Castle holds some of the finest medieval landscapes in Europe.

“This investigation is an exciting first step in a serious effort to explore, explain and interpret them. The results so far suggest that Scotland’s monarchs integrated an ancient feature into their garden, something we know happened in other countries too.

“We are looking forward to the next stage in September when we hope to refine some of the details.”

Dr. Kirsty Owen, Cultural Heritage Adviser at Historic Scotland, added: “The project has the potential to add to our knowledge of the landscape context of the medieval and early modern occupation of Stirling Castle.

“The ditches identified may intriguingly be part of historically documented earlier garden features, or if prehistoric in origin could add to our scant knowledge of prehistoric activity at Stirling Castle.

“We look forward to seeing the results of the next phase of investigations.”Futher work including a ground-penetrating radar survey, is now planned to take place next month to find out more.

A small display of the interim results can be seen close to the site at the Smith Museum.

Like with the discovery of Atlantis, there has been no sign of magical or alien artifacts, just the kind of stuff that could have been built by people in the 6th century in England. But, even so, this is kind of cool.

The legend of King Arthur, his knights and the love of his life, Guinevere, has been handed down in one form or another for almost 1,600 years. I’m impressed if people pay attention to what I write for 16 minutes. Let’s face it, this story has staying power.

I don’t know when, or even if, they will be allowed to dig on the site or if technology is getting to the point they may not have to. But this is one story that I’ll be keeping an eye on. After all, what red blooded boy didn’t dream of saving a damsel in distress and then getting lots of rescue nooky as a prize?

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

Guys are already beaten senseless about how crude we are. We’re easy bait for comics, the fact that we may like to go commando brings out veritable ads for laundry detergent, the whole idea of a man asking for directions is linked to some genetic defect due to the amount of sperm we carry and so on. Like it’s our fault we come fully loaded. Knowing this, can we be surprised that a jury, led by 6 women who threatened 6 men, told a guy who’d just lost his penis that he should just shut up and go home and cook? After all, what’s the big deal? He’s just a guy. It’s not like he has anything to offer society.

While only an idiot would claim that men have been the benevolent overlords for the planet, there is still this new streak of meanness towards men that makes the Tea Party’s vitriol concerning our president seem subtle. There are numerous, poorly designed, websites designed to male bashing. Even CNN has jumped on the bandwagon by offering men advice how to appeal to women without acting like … well, without acting like guys.

But humor is one thing, now this attitude is starting to creep into the actions of real life. Jay Ditzer, yes, that’s his real name, tells of a guy who’s Kentucky GF beat him with a brick because … well, because she wasn’t really pregnant.

Police said two people got into a physical altercation when a woman went to her ex-boyfriend’s house to tell him she was pregnant — even though she wasn’t.

According to arrest records, 20-year-old Charity Moore went to her ex-boyfriend’s house on Monday to tell him she was pregnant.

Police said Moore became upset with her ex-boyfriend after he knocked a pregnancy test out of her hand.

Moore began hitting her ex, according to arrest records.

The ex-boyfriend then struck Moore to get her to stop attacking him, police said.

Moore then picked up a brick and threw it at her ex’s head, giving him a mild concussion, police said.

According to arrest records, Moore is not actually pregnant.

She is charged with second-degree assault.

Okay, maybe she’s an aberration. After all, women are loving creatures right? Hugging Gaia and all that. According to cops in Pine Grove, Virginia, maybe too much so.

Police in Hardin County have arrested a woman on a bigamy charge, saying she was married last month even though she was already married to two other men.

Kentucky State Police said Vine Grove police arrested Angela K. Christensen after a state police investigation showed
Christensen married Christopher Lee Ferguson on July 10 in Hardin County while she was also married to Natale Romanczak of Texas and Brian Soarling of New York.

Police said there’s no evidence that Christensen divorced Romanczak or Soarling or had reason to believe she was divorced.

Police said Christensen was also married to Jerry D. Jackson of Pasadena, Texas, who was reported deceased as of March 7.

Okay, I can see loving too much. But what about grief? What if a woman grieves do much so she claims her husband is dead. And then that he died again and wasn’t looking so hot now either? Dan Rozek tells about a loving and caring woman who claimed her husband’s death benefits twice. In fact, she was so full of grief she also claimed the life insurance on her three children that she hadn’t quite got around to having.

Bridgette Buckner had terrible luck with marriage: Her FBI agent husband died in 2007 — and again in 2008.

The 50-year-old Bartlett woman twice claimed her husband had died as part of separate scams to illegally collect life insurance benefits from her Aurora employer, according to DuPage County authorities and corporate security investigators.

Buckner also killed off three fictitious children in other insurance schemes to collect cash, officials said this week.

The bogus insurance claims — supported by forged or fake death certificates — netted Buckner about $70,000, officials said.

But they also left her facing up to seven years in prison after she pleaded guilty earlier this year in DuPage County to insurance and wire fraud.

Buckner — who more recently was charged in Cook County with identity theft — failed to show up Tuesday to be sentenced for those DuPage County offenses.

It was her 2008 insurance claim that her husband had been killed in the line of duty that led to her initial arrest in that DuPage County case. Buckner sought $15,000 in insurance benefits from her employer, Hallmark Services Corp. in Aurora — which just months earlier paid $10,000 to her after she claimed her 4-year-old daughter had died.

Two security consultants — both former FBI agents — who reviewed the claim for her employer quickly realized it was bogus.

“I immediately told her it was nonsense,” said Tom Bourgeois, one of the consultants who checked the claim. “If someone had been killed in the line of duty, we would have heard of it.”

Buckner already had collected $40,000 a year earlier from her former employer after claiming her husband had died.

“She killed off the same husband twice,” prosecutor Helen Kapas said.

But if Buckner’s claims were outrageous, she appeared sincere, Bourgeois and co-investigator Diane Rivers said.

“She is incredibly believable,” said Bourgeois. “When you talk to her, she seems like a nice, sweet lady.”

Even when confronted with evidence that her husband was alive, estranged from her and not a federal agent, Buckner was “incredulous,” Bourgeois said.

“She said, ‘You mean he’s not dead?’” Bourgeois said.

While authorities could find no proof Buckner ever had any kids, she collected about $30,000 in life insurance benefits for three children she claimed died in 2007 and 2008.

A DuPage County judge issued an arrest warrant for her, while prosecutors asked that Buckner be sentenced next month even if she’s not in court.

Those big meanies should just leave her alone. After all, look at all the loss and suffering she’s been through.

Oh, wait. Never mind. Women are just as conniving and manipulative and duplicitous as their ‘y’ chromosome counterparts. In some case, maybe more so.

I have a buddy’s who about as gay as gay can be and he tells me, often, that he’s got the perfect world. After all, he can sit on the couch, watch the Bears game and have celebration sex with a Bears’ fan without once needing to talk about tampons.

I used to laugh at him, now I’m not so sure.

Before I go I want to remind you that some of the Nude Hippo crew, including me but don’t let that deter you, will be at Hines Hospital this Saturday from 11 AM until about 3 PM entertaining wounded vets. There will be motorcycle stunt riders, free food and games.

I hope to see you there or, if you can’t make it, then I hope you’ll donate. 100% of all monies raised go to the vets and there’s info to help you do so when you click the link.

Just FYI, when I looked for a video about “loving women” not one of the 163 I found that were on point involved a man. I wonder if I should worry?

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

This may be the blog that makes you cringe every time you hear the phrase “Hump Day.” In fact it may just cause you to cringe in general. There are lots of things that creep people out. Some are general phobias, some are universally reviled as disturbing and some are just odd. For example, I know a lady who loses her mind at the sound of someone turning a page of a newspaper. Yeah, every time people see her they buy a paper, it’s human nature. But whatever creeps you out I’m pretty sure there’s something.

Here at the World News Center we have documented several examples of people being creeped out by clowns as well as a general panapoly of creepy things in general. It’s what we do.

Well, clowns are fighting back and trying to make people understand they’re innocent expressions of childish glee and not psychotic serial killers. David Moye takes a look at their progress.

Clowns devote their lives to making people laugh, but there are some things that are no joke to them — like being called “creepy.” That term makes many clowns as red as their rubber noses.

While the creepy label is now commonly thrown around like confetti at a 3-year-old’s birthday party, it wasn’t always that way.

Believe it or not, clowns were beloved characters for thousands of years, and their crazy antics, acrobatics and slapstick were considered important forms of social communication and, in some cases, social protest.

The “clowns are creepy” meme is a new, and according to one clown, if anyone is to blame for making life sad for people who try to make us laugh, it’s Stephen King.

Paul Kleinberger — who performs as Fuddi Duddy the Clown around Albany, N.Y. — says King’s 1986 novel, “It,” with its evil clown character Pennywise, is blamed by most contemporary clowns for hurting their image.

“Some people say that if it wasn’t for Stephen King, clowns would have an easier time,” Kleinberger told HuffPost Weird News. “I don’t know if that’s the case. I mean, when someone tells me they’re afraid of clowns, I say, ‘Well, I’m afraid of bankers.’

“People have to understand: A clown deals with feeling. When you meet a clown, you don’t remember what they look like, but you remember how they made you feel,” he said.

John Wayne Gacy didn’t help clowns’ image, either; he committed serial murders while performing as “Pogo the Clown.”

But New York-based clown Chris Lueck believes that any animosity that exists towards clowns is actually a reflection of the critic’s own unhappiness.

“There is a freedom in clown and if you see someone being free and you’re not, it can be threatening,” he said.

Lueck, who also teaches slapstick (“It’s a great aerobic workout”), says dealing with people who hate or fear clowns is part of the job. Still, he thinks “clownism” is an exaggeration.

“Some people may be clownphobic,” he said. “However, others are just commenting on it. It’s funny that they’re telling me they’re afraid of clowns because it’s usually when I’m dressed as a clown.”

Lueck says many clown haters will blame their fears on an incident in their early lives, but he thinks that they were merely conditioned by others to think negatively.

“Here’s a perfect example: I was performing at a birthday party for a one-year-old and it was late in the day when the family wanted to take photos,” Lueck related. “The mom shoves the kid in my face and he starts crying. Mom says, ‘I guess he’s afraid of clowns.

“The grandmother then came up and took the baby and, again, he started crying. She said, ‘I think he needs a nap,’ and I joked, ‘I guess he’s afraid of grandmas.'”

Yeah, my buddy’s grandma creeped me out. If I never hear the phrase “Hold nana’s smoke while she takes a (dump)” again it’ll be three days too soon.

But, a new thing has cropped up in the creepy category. PETA, which has exploited more women than Hugh Hefner on a bender, is opening (and, no, I’m not surprised) a porn site dedicated to preventing animal cruelty.

Oh, and porn.

PETA knows how to raise eyebrows. The animal rights group’s memorable campaigns have entailed everything from celebrities posing nude for its anti-fur campaign to scantily clad women having an erotic moment with their vegetables to support veganism.

Now, PETA has pulled out all of the stops with a XXX porn site for its next clever marketing endeavor, reports The Register.

PETA confirmed the XXX site in a phone interview with The Huffington Post.

“We live in a 24 hour news cycle world and we learn the racy things we do are sometimes the most effective way that we can reach particular individuals,” said PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt.

Instead of focusing on anti-fur, the porn site will raise awareness of veganism, said Rajt. “We really want to grab people’s attention, get them talking and to question the status quo and ultimately take action, because the best way we can help the greatest number of animals is simply by not eating them.”

An increasing number of groups are suggesting that eating less meat is better for your health, and certainly better for animals. PETA’s website describes life for animals on factory farms:

Chickens have their sensitive beaks seared off with a hot blade, and male cattle and pigs are castrated without any painkillers. Farmed chickens, turkeys, and pigs spend their brief lives in dark and crowded warehouses, many of them so cramped that they can’t even turn around or spread a single wing. They are mired in their own waste, and the stench of ammonia fills the air.

So how pornographic will PETA go? According to Rajt, it will have enough adult content to qualify for the XXX domain site but also some other graphic images of animals that viewers may not expect to see.

Australia’s Herald Sun reports that “PETA’s sexy side displayed in galleries and videos will quickly give way to the sinister world of animal mistreatment uncovered by the group’s hidden camera investigations in a very different kind of graphic content.”

With the finer details still to be finalized, PETA did confirm that regular people, not just celebrities, will also be featured in the project.

“There will be a lot of girl and boy next door content, but we haven’t ruled out celebrities on the site as well,” said Rajt. “People who are extraordinarily dedicated to helping animals and who are willing to do whatever it takes to draw attention to the suffering they endure.”

The first environmental porn movement was founded back in 2005, reports The Independent. Set up by a Swedish and Norwegian couple, the duo offered a subscription video service with money being raised for the environment.

PETA’s jump into adult content comes on the heels of Brooke Hogan posing nude for a photo exhibit to benefit PETA, although there was no direct affiliation.

PETA has done ad campaigns with adult film stars Sasha Grey, Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson. In 2008, the organization’s YouTube account was temporarily shut down after posting racy videos of celebrities and others posing nude.

Even though PETA’s intention is to improve animal welfare, some argue that the move to protect animals comes at the cost of exploiting women. A Facebook group, Real Women Against PETA, was created after the organization posted a billboard of an obese woman that read, “Save the Whales, Lose the Blubber, Go Vegetarian.” A headline for The Sydney Morning Herald once read, “Pro-vegetarian group treats women like meat.”

But Rajt explains the motives behind these tactics are cleverly thought out and ensure they get results: “We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals … We are careful about what we do and wouldn’t use nudity or some of our flashier tactics if we didn’t know they worked. We also track the effectiveness of our actions very closely and see if we get visitors checking out other features on our site.”

Well of course nudity works you moron, porn’s been around since before Pompeii fell. Why? Because people like looking at naked people who are better looking than them. But, and this is kind of important, never once have I watched a porno and then decided to be a vegetarian.

Hell sometimes I’ve watched porn while eating a burger or a pepperoni pizza.

I guess, for some, that thought’s kind of creepy

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

I’m a guy. Like most guys I spent my formative years, 11-100, masturbating to images of women dressed in spandex and leather. It’s what guys do. Yet, oddly enough,except for Austin Grossman, most of us don’t imagine being super villains. What’s the point? No matter what you do you end up in prison or dead. Depending on how dark the author is. But there are people who are taking wearing a costume to new, and incredibly uncomfortable, levels. They are trying, to the best of their pathetic abilities, to make comic books real. They want Lex Luthor and Double Doctor X to reflect the world they live in. They also want bunnies to speak Latin and old people to be ninjas.

These people are what we, in the World News Center, call morons.

We mean that in the kindest way.

So lets take a look at our favorite spandex crusaders who make us wonder why procreation is such a popular activity.

MDeeDubrof reports on Winnie The Pooh terrorizing perfect strangers.

What is Winnie the Pooh up to these days? According to Japanese police, it appears that our favorite winsome little bear is committing assault and armed robbery.

Unlike most fairy tales, this one does not have a happy ending.

Tokyo police have arrested Masayuki Ishikawa, a 20 year-old man who attacked and robbed two people because they had the nerve to stare at his Winnie-the-Pooh costume.

At the time of his arrest, he was in the company of two costumed friends; one a panther and the other a mouse.

Apparently the threesome had donned the costumes because they ran out of clean clothes, (which is, in all probability, worthy of another news story all by itself).

Once upon a time, Ishikawa told the police, he was standing on a street corner minding his own truculent business while wearing the cuddly costume when two passersby had the nerve to stare at him and he took offense. (A grown man in such an outfit is worthy of at least one sideward glance, n’est ce pas?)

Police told reporters that “It’s uncommon to see people dressed up like this, so the victims were watching them. Then the perpetrator came up and said, ‘What are you staring at?’”

In true Winnie-the Unpooh-like fashion, Ishikawa and his two cohorts beat up the two unfortunates and stole 160 dollars from them.

All’s well that did not end well, and Winnie has now become for all time, Winnie-The-Perp!

Here’s to once upon another, better time and a rehabilitated Winnie!

Mr. Milne, creator of Mr. Pooh, used to whack off to pictures of Dazzler but the idea’s the same.

However, Mr. Pooh is not the worst offender. As it turns out the The Cookie Monster is a child molester.

A registered sex offender was employed as a costumed character at a fair in Mississippi, and readily posed in photographs with children, before greeting a police officer and subsequently being arrested, as reported by the Quad-City Times.

The man, J.L.R., 25, of Perry Street in Davenport, was arrested on an aggravated misdemeanor charge and remanded to Scott County Jail on August 8, 2011 – the same day he attended the Mississippi Valley Fair in costume.

J.L.R., dressed from head-to-toe as the furry Cookie Monster from the well-known Sesame Street children’s program, was handing children fliers in his job for Q.C. Characters. Besides the fliers, J.L.R. also offered children the opportunity of posing in photographs with him – and was seen by law enforcement doing just that.

At approximately 4:45 in the afternoon, J.L.R. then approached at police officer and simply said “hello” to him.

The officer, R.A., a member of the Scott County Sex Offender Task Force, was shocked to recognize what he thought was J.L.R.’s voice. In wanting to confirm his suspicions officer R.A. asked the “Cookie Monster” who he was.

J.L.R. removed the costume’s head piece and identified himself to the officer.

Scott County Sheriff’s Detective S.B. was then called to the fair – as he is in charge of keeping track of the county’s sex offenders.

J.L.R., still wearing the body of the costume, was questioned by Detective S.B. in the fair’s office.

Fair director B.F. said, “There he was, dressed like Cookie Monster, sounds weird.”

J.L.R. was arrested after the interview and taken in to the Scott County Jail.

Due to his past record and conviction, J.L.R. can only attend a fair but is not allowed to work, or volunteer himself, in any way at a fair. Detective S.B. said, “He’s not allowed to sell corn dogs, let alone be in a Cookie Monster outfit.”

Per records, J.L.R. was convicted for lascivious acts with a 7 year-old girl in 2005.

A maximum two-year prison sentence can be handed down if J.L.R. is found guilty on a charge of sex offender prohibition of certain employment.

Any company that does business at the carnival – working the rides, renting or buying a booth – must submit a list of their employees. These lists are then given to fair management, and police, to perform background checks.

Detective S.B. said, “There’s a lot of security, especially to ensure there are no sex offenders.”

S.B. added that B.F. is known to hire several off-duty police officers just so that security is well-covered during the 6-day fair.

Q.C. Characters did not submit a list of their employees but, in their defense, B.F. said, “The company hired him to stand there and wave. He was stupid enough to introduce himself to an officer.”

Detective S.B. added “I don’t know what motivated him to do that.”

Yeah, that’ll screw with your regular Sesame Street afternoons. Hopefully parents are paying more attention than that.

But what if you’re in England and need a superhero to save you from masturbating Muppets? According to UPI your virginity is safe.

A British gardener said he has taken to patrolling the streets of his city in the guise of the Knight Warrior, a super hero dedicated to protecting the public.

Roger Hayhurst, 19, of Salford, England, said his mother helped him buy a blue-and-black lycra costume from the United States for about $330 and he dons the suit at nightfall to patrol the streets for fights and anti-social behavior, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

“When people see me coming up it does tend to stun them into silence. I just carry on trying to get them to calm down, and eventually most of them do,” he said. “If I think things are getting a bit hairy, I just back off and phone the police. They know what I am doing and have been very kind to me.”

Hayhurst said he was inspired by other costumed crime fighters he learned about on the Internet.

“All I want to do is try and get people to like each other. I just want to do good in the world, that’s all,” he said.

The Knight Warrior’s mom, Jennifer, said she was “slightly worried” when her son first began his quest, but she is determined to support him.

“His absolute genuineness is his best defense. He is one of the kindest young men I know,” she said.

Kindest? Okay, I’m assuming that’e the new word for stupid.

BTW, Elliott Harris has been buying me drinks while I write this, so I’m going to go home and look at spandex.

Then I’m going to make a mess.

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

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

This weekend saw Chicago welcome its annual Air and Water Show. Our very own, Gina Ferraro even wrote an nice article about the best places to see the sights. Of course, the sights that Gina wants to see aren’t necessarily the same ones I want to see. No offense to Gina, she just doesn’t appreciate female breasts as much as I do. Fortunately for me, yesterday was also National Go Topless Day. This is an annual event urging women to throw of the shackles of oppression and celebrate the gifts God gave them. An event encouraging women to finally say “ENOUGH!” and prove to the world, once and for all, that if I have the right to show off my hairy boobs, they should have the right to show off their non-hairy ones. At least I’m assuming they’re not hairy.

Shudder.

Anyway, as per the norm, the ladies who participated avoided going to jail by some very clever uses of body paint and flowers. CBS News (Chicago) was at the event and brought us this report.

What would the Chicago Air & Water Show be without a topless protest? Men go topless all the time. So why not women? That was the message of a protest Sunday at North Avenue Beach, as a group of women fought for the right to bare their breasts.

WBBM Newsradio’s John Cody reports that at noon Sunday, in the middle of the Air and Water Show, a group of women took off their shirts and exposed their breasts for National Go Topless Day.

Several held signs reading “Equal topless rights for all or none. Women’s breasts are family friendly.”

Diane Brisebois, spokeswoman for the organizers of Sunday’s protest, wears a pin-striped suit during the week, but on Sunday, all she was wearing was a white skirt, fluffy white angel wings and strategically-placed daisies on her chest.

“If we are successful, women and men will have the same right to be topless on the beach,” she said.

As part of the protest, men with the group wore bras or bikini tops, instead of going topless.

“This is to demonstrate the support. We want to show that if men can be topless, women should be allowed, too,” Brisebois too. “And if women have to wear bikini tops, then in support men today are wearing bikini tops … to demonstrate that.”

Although the women were technically going topless, police weren’t making any arrests at the protest, as the women had all strategically painted over their chests just enough to stay within the law.

Going topless is not illegal for women everywhere in the country. The State of New York, for example, permits women to go topless in public areas.

But Chicago does not.

Under the city’s Municipal Code, it is illegal to “appear, bathe, sunbathe, walk or be in any public park, playground, beach or the waters adjacent thereto, or any school facility and the area adjacent thereto, or any municipal building and the areas adjacent thereto, or any public way within the City of Chicago” exposing “any portion of the breast at or below the upper edge of the areola thereof of any female person.”

“The police came earlier, they know us, we’ve been here for the past four years and they always support us,” Brisebois said. “We are not doing anything that is illegal. We’ve covered our breasts from the nipple down and, therefore, we’re perfectly legal. But we also want to show that, if men can go on the beach without wearing paint, why can’t women?”

The protest event, which is now in its fourth year, proclaims that women have a constitutional right to go topless in public. It encourages equal opportunity by urging women to bare their breasts, and for bare-chested men to cover up with bikinis or bras.

Organizers say men should be legally required to cover up their chests as long as women are.

In Chicago, the prescribed penalty for indecent exposure – of the female breasts, or of the male or female buttocks or genitals – is a fine of $100 to $500.

They need to work on their signs, those aren’t catchy at all. But, c’mon people, if an inbred cow town like New York City can allow women equal rights what’s holding a cosmopolitan metropolis like us back?

And, when you think about it, how the hell can they enforce most of that ordinance anyway? Do they arrest every woman wearing a thong? Every guy wearing a Speedo?

Well, okay, if I wore a Speedo I would deserve to be removed from society, but you know what I mean.

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

‘What if’ is the two word phrase responsible for all great thoughts. In science; “What if I can build a quantum string generator in my kitchen?” In mystery novels; “What if NUMA really had a militarized arm?” Even in romance paperbacks; “What if that smoking hot stripper cum millionaire lawyer wants to have lots of meaningless sex with me?” You get the idea. Every great idea ever conceived of in the history of humanity has come from that simple two word phrase.

Today we are going to look at another great “what if” scenario. Before I do I need to synopsize a lengthy caveat that appears under the original article. While one of the authors of the paper referenced therein works for NASA, this has nothing to do with NASA. This is not your tax dollars at work, this is great minds at play. And being able to share something like that is a rare and wonderful thing.

Our BFF Ian O’Neill from Discovery News hangs out with cooler people than I do but isn’t snooty about it.

There’s no subject more fertile for debate than hypothesizing about the nature of extraterrestrial beings.

So, in a study carried out by researchers affiliated with* NASA and Pennsylvania State University (“Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis,” arXiv:1104.4462v2 [physics.pop-ph]), several intelligent extraterrestrial encounter scenarios are examined. One of the scenarios is a sci-fi favorite: what if we encounter an alien race hell bent on destroying us?

But this isn’t mindless thuggery on behalf of the aliens, and they’re not killing us to get at our natural resources, they have a cause. They want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way.

Yes, they consider us cockroaches. Cockroaches left in charge of increasingly advanced and destructive technology.

Let’s face it, with ecosystem destruction on a global scale and greenhouse gases being belched out into the atmosphere at record rates, to a distant alien observer we may look like a destructive civilization spiraling out of control — and they wouldn’t be far wrong.

Therefore, as the ET logic may go, if we’re making such a mess of our own back yard, if we venture deeper into space and become a true interstellar civilization, what hope is there that we’ll treat the rest of the galaxy (and the other beings in it) with any respect?

“A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilization may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand,” the study says. “Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilizational expansion could be detected by an ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions.”

Of course, ETI might just be an aggressive race, so like Stephen Hawking’s recent warning, the authors of the study suggest that perhaps we shouldn’t transmit too much information into space.

The authors explore other scenarios as well, including other destructive outcomes of encountering an alien race. Positive and neutral outcomes are included.

One positive outcome that could arise from bumping into a friendly ETI is that it takes our fledgling race under its wing (tentacle) and helps us, technologically, to push deeper into space. Perhaps they’ll even let us join their Interstellar Rotary Club! They might even join forces with us to repel another, less-friendly alien race — something that would be advantageous if we find ourselves embedded in a galactic ecosystem.

But what of the “neutral” outcomes? Well, say if the ETI is incomprehensible? They may be too alien for us to communicate in any meaningful way.

As noted by the Guardian, their entry requirements into a hypothetical Interstellar Rotary Club may be wrapped in bureaucratic red tape, making the whole “alien encounter experience” a bore. Said aliens may even just turn up unannounced, “District 9”-style, and impose on our planet like a friend’s sofa. They might be content just eating snacks and watching our TV.

Needless to say, all these scenarios are completely constructed from human experience — any study into the hypothetical nature of ETI will have a heavy anthropocentric bias. What if we encounter an alien civilization whose intentions are completely baffling? What if we can’t decide whether their intentions are positive, negative or neutral?

Well, I suppose that’s why we need studies like this.

There have been tons of books written about the possibilities of first contact. From Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, to David Brin’s Uplift series to Jack McDevitt’s Chase Kolpath series, to the thousands of worthy looks at the concept, the idea has brought wildly diverse concepts.

No one asked me, but since I’m writing this and you’re not, here’s what I think; they’ll be more like us than we’ll be comfortable with. Kind of like the stranger you meet in a new city who knows as much about your home town as you do, if not more so.

How we deal with that will decide how the future unfolds for us.

Or we could just be assimilated.

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