Worst Gender-Reveal Party Ever Caused $8 Million Brush Fire

Gender reveal: It's a boy! But the explosion set off all that tinder-dry
brush you see, causing an $8 million wildfire. 

Dennis Dickey wanted to throw a nice, explosive gender reveal party, as he and his wife were expecting a baby.

He had what he thought was a great plan.

As NPR and numerous other news outlets explained, Dickey placed Tannerite, a very explosive substance inside a target, which he would shoo with a high-velocity firearm bullet.

Tannerite makes an explosie powder that produces some water vapor and a thunderous boom. Not to mention flames and what not. You can get Tannerite powder that sprays in pink or blue for a gender reveal party.

I don't know what Dickey,  a Border Patrol agent, was thinking when he pulled this stunt for his friends. As you can see from the video, below, everything around on that hot Arizona April day looked super, super tinder dry. Just thinking about a lighted match would start a fire, you might imagine.

The big fire caused by a gender reveal party burns along an
Arizona ridgeline in 2017.

At the time, the area was under a Red Flag Warning, which means there's a high risk of wildfires. Winds at the time were gusting to 40 mph.

But Dickey fires his gun. A big spray of blue. It's a boy!! But immediate, the tinder dry vegetation goes up in flames. What else would you expect?

The resulting fire would soon consume 47,000 acres and cause $8 million in damage. I guess Dickey had an $8 million baby, huh?  

On the bright side, although residents of many homes were evacuated, firefighters prevented those homes from burning down.

To be fair, Dickey did report the fire right away, but it was still too late. The fire quickly spread out of control. He has agreed to pay restitution, but I don't know where he's going to come up with $8 million.

He's already ponied up $100,000 and will pay monthly installments of $500 over the next two decades, but that won't cover it. And so much for the baby boy's college fund.

He'll also be on five years of probation and appear in a public service announcement for the U.S. Forest Service.

A New Sport: Shooting Down Drones!

A lot of people don't trust drones, I get that. It would be annoying them having fly over our yards, spying on us doing whatever we do in the privacy of our yards.

Drones are in our future. Is drone hunting in our future, too?

But I'm dubious about a proposed ordinance in a tiny Colorado town. The town of Deer Trail want to issue drone hunting licenses for people who want to shoot down drones belonging to the U.S. gummit.

Maybe it's becauseI don't trust anybody, but I don't think this is such a good idea. You shoot a drone and it blows up or crashes. What does it land on? Probably Deer Trail, Colorado.

I also think the gun hunting for drones would bring a scary element to the fine community of Deer Trail. Yes, there are plenty of Second Amendment fans, libertarians and such that would probably be OK, hunting these drones safely.

But a significant subset of these activists are, how do we put this delicately? Total apeshit wackos.  Do you really want everybody with a huge arsenal and pea sized brains and balls to come to your town and  start firing guns into the air?

Bullets don't keep going up forever, you know.

Assuming anyone hits a U.S. government-owned drone, you'd think that somebody in the government might be a little annoyed by that. Yes, you might not be afraid of the gummit, but they still can put you in jail. So be prepared for that.

What if the drones are witnesses, too. Most of them have cameras. Even if shot down, I bet they could recover them and see who shot at them.

The FAA even weighed recently, warning people not to shoot down drones because, among other things, what if something gets hit by the falling wreckage?

The FAA says shooting a drone carries the same penalties as shooting at a manned aircraft.

The guy who dreamed up the Deer Trail proposed ordinance scoffed, saying the FAA doesn't have the right to make laws.

Um, true, but they have the right to enforce them.

So, we'll have to wait and see how this drone hunting thing goes. I don't think it's the start of a trend, though.

Four Men, Four Ideas, Possibly Four Bad Ideas

Today, we offer four men with four unique ideas who are pursuing their goals with gusto.

You gotta admire that.

The only questions are whether the ideas are indeed good ones, or are they on to something?

I hate to be negative and shoot down some unique ideas, but I feel like I must critique these guys anyway.

Our first man recently appeared in the Huffington Post as a man holding a sandwich board, advertising for a wealthy woman who he would like to become his bride.

This guy's looking for a wealthy
bride. Think he'll get her?

On the whole, this is a good idea, as you do want to put yourself out there, making as big a pool of people aware that you're available. That's why God created  Match.com, Grindr and swingles bars.

However, I might be working with stereotypes here, but if you're marketing toward a certain demographic, namely wealthy women, you've got make your advertising appeal to them.

I don't know if his sign accomplishes this. I'm guessing these wealthy women would respond to a sign or logo that suggests luxury, but the sign looks battered, as if it was a piece of debris from a tornado.

Though I'm no expert, trust me. Tornado debris does not attract wealthy women, unless they want to donate money to the storm victims.

The lettering on the sign has an messy, unkempt quality to it, so I don't know if that's helping. And his telephone number has obviously changed, with a piece of paper over the original sign displaying the new number. It just seems amateurish.

Our next man's idea is one of kindness. He wanted to take his girlfriend and her two children on a Disney cruise ship. Sounds very nice. And generous. We all like kind, generous people, right?

Here's the problem: At the last minute our guy, Cedrick Royce Swinson, 37, of Charlotte, N.C. discovered   some money he anticipated didn't come through. He apparently said it was in the bank, but for some reason didn't have access to it for withdrawal.

He didn't want to disappoint the girlfriend or her kids, especially since they were already in Florida on the way to the trip, so to come up with the money, he robbed a credit union, according to Florida Today.

The Florida Today article included the perspective of the girlfriend and the kids after the failed bank robbery:

"She was horrified and the children were upset. They watched as we took him into custody. They drove here overnight from Charlotte for a cruise. But they didn't know he was going to do this," said (Satellite Beach Police Cmdr Brad) Hodge, adding that police were searching Swinson's bank records to verify his claim."

Hmm. I wonder if they'll let Swinson watch Disney movies from jail, as sort of a consolation.

This guy's eyes are closed. He tattooed images
of eyes on his eyelids.  

Next we go to Chicago, where a man named Cesar Ruelase is going through extraordinary efforts to demote popular Chicago television meteorologist Tom Skilling to something called "weather guesser."

It seems Ruelase is frustrated by some fairly inaccurate weather forecasts of late. 

I'm not sure what changing Skilling's title would do to improve weather forecasts, but I guess you have to try something. And since weather is inherently unpredictable, I don't thing there's a chance Ruelase will ever get 100 percent accurate forecasts all the time.

And you can bank on the prediction I just made.

Finally, we have a man who's come up with the perfect solution for those of you who fall asleep at work during long, boring meetings, yet the Powers That Be expect you to be fully alert while they drone on with the PowerPoint presentation of the marketing department's annual budget projections

A man has tattooed an image of open eyes on his eyelids. When he closes his eyes, it looks like his eyes are open. Photo is here on this post.

I think I'd rather just fall asleep during the staff meeting and let nature takes it course.

Parents: Let's Do Better With Baby Names in 2013

Though I'm loathe to tell a parent how to raise a child, I have some concerns with a list that came out from the web site Babycenter listing some of the more unusual first names given to children in 2012.

About a half million people shared with Babycenter what they named their new bundles of joy over the course of the year. To qualify for the list of unusual names, at least two kids had to be given these unusual names.

I'm all for giving kids unique and memorable names, but there is a danger with that idea. Below is a list of names and why I think they could be dangerous. Let's start with the girls' names:

Admire: What if she grows up to be a jerk and everybody hates her. Admire wouldn't work in that case, would it.

Excel: You're naming your kid after a spread sheet. Is she going to be as boring and colorless as a spread sheet?

Fedora: Better have a big budget for hats with this kid.

Inny:  And meet her twin sister Outie.

Jury: When she grows up, will she be stuck with jury duty like, every week?

Rogue (Also a boy's name) Well, if the kid grows up to lead a life of crime, the name sure fits.

Sanity: And if she's crazy?

Sesame: I can hear the school yard taunts now. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?!?

Thinn: And if she ends up overweight?

Zealand. And if she has a daughter once she's grown and married, the kid's name will be New Zealand.

Let's go to the boys now.

Alpha: What happens if the kid turns out to be a milquetoast?

Cobain: Naming him after a supremely talented but very troubled man who committed suicide? Seems risky to me.

Drifter: Aren't those the guys who wander from town to town committing petty crimes?

Hippo: Opposite problem of his sister Thinn. What if Hippo is the preverbial 90 pound weakling?

Hurricane: The name hurricanes after people. Will the coast one day be struck by destructive Hurricane Hurricane?

Neon: Don't blame me if the boy comes one day with his hair died bright fuschia, spring green and fire engine red.

Savior: Oh, please. I know you love your kid, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Trust me.

Vice: He's grow up to be a chain smoking gambler.