One of many redheads who it would be mighty satisfying to kick.
As the phrase “I will beat you like a red-headed stepchild” makes perfectly clear, carrot tops are despised by pretty much everybody. They can’t step out of the shade for longer than a 10 count without getting a sun burn and among their ranks are the despicable likes of David Caruso, Lindsay Lohan and, of course, Carrot Top. If you go further back and take a look at some historical fire crotches (thank you urban dictionary), it reads like a grocery list of the worst people ever to inflict themselves on our planet: Lizzie Borden, Martin Van Buren, Oliver Cromwell – dirt-bag city, basically.
At last, however, society has dropped its gloves and put gingers, as they are also known, on notice. The TV show South Park sparked it all with an episode in which Cartman gives a class lecture on how red-haired people are basically soulless vampires (see below). Inspired by Cartman’s rant, Facebook groups began to pop up and the anti-Ginger movement was afoot. The largest Facebook group boasted some 4,000 members, testament to the fact that people do not like the red-hairs beyond enjoying the opportunity to ask whether what’s hanging on the windows is color coordinated with an area typically left out of direct sunlight.
The Facebook groups spawned “Kick a Ginger Day”, which apparently was yesterday. Canadians were asked to send their penny loafers in the general direction of a redhead’s arse, and many did — so many that the RCMP got involved and school principals threatened serious punishments for anyone caught attempting to punt a carrot top.
The readers of The Globe and Mail report telling of Kick a Ginger Day must all have been gingers or have had their senses of humor sucked from their heads by them as they suggested banning South Park, jail terms for the kickers, and bellyached about the evils of bullying (for no insight whatsoever into what causes bullying click here). We, on the other hand, are laughing so hard that we may not be able to hold a drink steady this weekend.
To our ginger readers, if there are any of you left at this point, we offer you some solace in the fact that A) Kick a Ginger Day has passed (though we’re shining our steel-toeds in anticipation of next year) and B) Contrary to popular belief and as incredible as it may seem, red heads are the ones who have the most fun (well, except for yesterday). A 2006 study confirmed that red heads are a highly libidinous people and have way more sex than their more fortunately coiffed counterparts. We would put up with a day’s worth of kicking to be swinging in those circles.
In a previous post, we noted that you could not put a price on freedom, until that is, we came upon the Excused Absence Network, a service, which for a nominal fee, provided alibis for workplace chiselers and swindlers. However, their website has since gone bust, no doubt owing to the fact that job-seekers would be circumspect about listing the ‘Excused Absence Network’ as a previous employer and perhaps the company’s generous compensation packages designed to thwart excused absences. [Editor's note: The Alibi Network is still in business and will provide you with a city of your choice to appear on your cuckolded spouse's caller ID, as well as a 24-hour hotel desk for that 'Frankfurt business trip'--hopefully staffed by someone who didn't hone their Teutonic accent by watching the stage version of The Producers]
If you have managed to snag a day off, say by bringing back SARS, throwing your back out or citing some nebulous ‘personal problems’ that your boss is willing to concede to you for fear you might one day shoot up your place of work, it’s best to steer clear of ‘man on the street’ interviews, televised sporting events and especially Facebook.
A Sydney Australia call center worker (a job that incidentally, one of us had ample experience with and would not be averse to citing an illness of the more terminal variety to get out of it) took a day off from no doubt selling time shares to a town that washed away during Hurricane Gustav, citing ‘medical reasons’.
Unfortunately, this latter day Ferris Bueller didn’t exactly grab the bull by the horns during his day of freedom but hit Facebook and updated his status to the incriminating “Kyle Doyle is not going to work, f*ck it I’m still trashed. SICKIE WOO!” (his caps)
His day began to unravel when someone in HR began asking him for a medical certificate [Editor's note: For one day off? He really did work for a call center] and sensing something was amiss, investigated further and caught Mr Doyle in flagrante delicto, via Facebook screen shot. [Very Busy Editor's Note: Check those Facebook privacy settings!]
The guy’s response, leading us to conclude that his vocational prospects lay elsewhere, was ‘HAHAHA LMAO. Epic fail…No worries man!’
With gridlock more and more common in major urban centers, city planners have hung their hats on light rail as the way to get around, with dedicated lanes for trolleys so that passengers can be shuttled across the city unencumbered, at speeds that would rival It’s a Small World After All, Disneyland.
It’s never recommended though, especially if you’re half in the bag, to consider train tracks as a traffic-free shortcut home either on foot or behind the wheel.
In our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, a particularly controversial chapter was Contents May Shift in Transit: Drunk and on the Move, where we detailed some of the world’s most absurdly idiotic drinking and driving cases, including ice cream truck joyriding, some bozo with a pig in the backseat (of the animal variety), snowplows, a guy who mistakenly called the cops instead of roadside assistance when he got a flat, and now a gassed train tracks DUI.
Let’s just say that after chronicling these tales, not to mention wasted riding mower riders, a guy blotto doing 182 mph in an Italian convertible (a speed that would test the adhesive properties of any toupee) and blasted drivers who were legally blind, er drunk, it would take something fairly substantial to warrant entry into a second edition but we think we’ve got a standout now.
In the existential comedy Groundhog Day, Bill Murray wakes up to live the same day over and over again. This might not have a been a problem if it was New York City, or somewhere comparable where a life of hedonistic pursuits would take a while to grow old (and where a subsequent reexamination of life and priorities would come at a point that would’ve by then taxed the patience of any theater-going audience) but soon became a sticking point as it was rural Pennsylvania.
Murray’s character grows increasing weary of small town existence after bedding all the eligible women and tries various ways of offing himself that include electrocution (seen here), driving off cliffs and yes, driving on train tracks to prevent waking up to the same day over and over again, to the music of Sonny and Cher no less (a one-time exposure is bad enough) and a not exactly Pulitzer courting news assignment involving the woodchuck Punxsutawney Phil.
In Ashland, MA, witnesses reported huge sparks shooting from a nearby train track that couldn’t be explained away as another day in the underfunded life of Amtrak and officials arrived to find a car had driven onto the tracks by some drunk with a Bill Murray-esque death wish. The wastral, in the dedicated lane for trains, was shoved out of the way by an oncoming one into some nearby water. Police and fire officials used a thermal imaging camera to find the driver and credit quick-thinking conductors for slamming on the brakes, preventing a fatality as well as inclusion in our inferior competitor, The Darwin Awards.
Canadians who were children or unemployed adults during the 1980s might remember the game-show Bumper Stumpers on which contestants had to decipher various vanity license plates. Like all Canadian game-shows, it was the kind of program where contestants would have to defend their titles in a reign that would rival Rocky Marciano’s in order to get their hands on a prize that would normally be found under every audience member’s seat on Deal or No Deal.
Among the puzzles never solved on this show was why anyone but the most vulgar human beings tearing up the asphalt on god’s formerly green earth would bother forking over good money to get a personalized plate.
Vanity plates, while a ray of sunshine on a state prison work detail, do not brighten the day of anyone else maintaining a three-Chevron distance between themselves and your tailgate, who are either mocking you or secretly wishing they could scoop you into the nearest ditch with a giant cow catcher.
Like the Metallica plate above (if Metallica ever got wind of that, they’d set their lawyers on the poor owner with Napster-like ferocity), most vanity plates are devotional, mocking of the poor (KYLIESBMW) or convey some cutesy sentiment about a physician’s particular area of expertise involving odor emitting body parts. They also show someone’s affinity with outlaw biker culture, an ‘ezy rydr’, in a sensible Japanese import with decent mileage.
A man in Christchurch New Zealand recently received his just desserts for putting a vanity license plate on his newly purchased Subaru. “”A while back me and a group of friends were sitting around thinking up great names for personalised plates,” the man said, adding that the brain trust eventually selected “STOWLN” from among the “great names” being bandied about.
According to the country’s insurance reports, Subarus are New Zealand’s second-most stolen vehicles, so going the extra mile to tempt thieves into jacking your particular vehicle might be unwise. The car with the “STOWLN” license plate was stowln, err stolen, that is.
The man, whose sense of humor needs some emergency work done under the hood immediately, said: “When I got my car, I thought it would be hilarious to get the licence plate, so I bought it and put it on my car. It was so funny but I’m certainly not laughing now.” (We’d like to point out that laughter was more appropriate after the theft than before). “My friends have all been giving my sh..t about it as well, I don’t think I will ever live it down.” Certainly not if we have anything to do about it.
