Florida Weirdness Continues As Usual. Alligators And People Uphold The State's Reputation.

Florida is famous for its weird news, of couse.  Half of the time, the weirdness involves alligators.

I've got three examples. I'm sure there are dozens of examples, but three is all I have the energy for.

So let's go: Even routine traffic stops are practically never routine.'

Take one case last month in which a car blew through a stop sign in Punta Gorda, Florida.

One of the standard questions the police ask you during traffic stops is whether you have anything else on you. The cop wants to make sure there aren't any dangerous guns or other weapons in case things go south during the traffic stop.  

The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office said Ariel Machan-Le Quire, 25, answered that she did. Ariel told police she and her companion had been collecting snakes and frogs beneath a nearby overpass. OK. Then she pulled a live, foot-long alligator out of her yoga pants.

The pair were warned against blowing through stop signs, and the state Fish and Wildlife agency was called in to investigate. Possibly in that order. In Florida, hiding alligators in yoga pants could well be as common as people blowing through stop signs.

She and her companion were cited for violating the bag limit on reptile collecting, which is regulated.

The alligator and all the other animals the couple found were released back into the wild.

The next alligator crisis came last month when police in Clearwater, Florida responded to a report of a home break-in.

Homeowner Mary Wischhusen heard a crash in her kitchen around 3:30 a.m. one morning and discovered the burglar in her kitchen. She retreated to a bedroom and called 911.

When police got there, they found the home had indeed been broken into, and the perp was still there. It was a ten-foot-long alligator, and it had broken into the house through a low window.

Ten police officers and two trappers spent two hours trying to coax the alligator out of Wischhusen's kitchen. Her only regret is the alligator toppled a wine case, smashing all the bottles of red wine inside. It was the good stuff, she said.

Nobody is sure why the alligator targeted Wischhusen's house. My theory is it likes red wine.

Finally, this week, a Gainsville, Florida couple decided it would be a nice idea to have a picnic on the shores of a lake.

Then an alligator decided to join the party. The couple wisely retreated, so the alligator came up and helped itself to a block of cheese, salami, half a watermelon and an entire bowl of guacamole. 

Luckily, the alligator was full after that, so instead of eating the picnicking couple, the little monster went back down to the lake.

For now, anyway.

Wyoming State Senator Has Novel Argument In Favor Of Death Penalty

Wyoming State Senator Lynn Hutchings has some interesting views
on the death penalty, Jesus and sexual orientation.

The Wyoming legislature just debated whether to abolish the death penalty in that state. In the end, they decided to keep it. No surprise there, really. It's a pretty conservative state.

There are fairly reasonable, or at least understandable arguments on both sides of the death penalty debate, but one argument for the death penalty by a Wyoming State Senator was, um, novel.

As Patheos explains:

"Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne argued that without the death penalty, Jesus Christ would not have been able to die to absolve the sins of mankind, and therefore capital punishment should be maintained.

'The greatest man who ever lived died via the death penalty for you and me,' she said. 'I'm grateful to him for our future hope because of this. Governments were instituted to execute justice. If it wasn't for Jesus dying via the death penalty, we would all have no hope.'"

I don't know where to begin to unpack this. I guess she's saying that since Jesus was given the death penalty, it's OK to impose the death penalty. Never mind that Jesus was innocent of any crime. So is it OK to impose the death penalty on innocent people, because that's what happened to Jesus?

For such a "Christian" she's not really up on how this works. Jesus is said to have risen from the dead, and that moment was atoning for the world's sins. In other words, Jesus could have died for any reason, so long as he rose from the dead.

The Romans wanted Jesus dead. Are we really going to design state law enforcement as Pontius Pilate would have?

And just how is death "hopeful"?

Hutchings has been on a roll this month anyway.  She met with a Gay-Straight Alliance group at Central High School in Cheyenne to discuss a state bill that would ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, notes the Huffington Post, among many other media outlets.

Hutchings, who doesn't like the legislation, was reported to have said, "If my sexual orientation was to have sex with all of the men in there and I had sex with all of the women in there and then they brought their children and I had sex with all of them, and then brought their dogs in and I had sex with them, should I be protected for my sexual orientation?"

Um, being a nutjob is not a sexual orientation, but nice try, Lynn!

That she said this weirdness to a group of 14 and 15 year olds makes this all the more yuckier, too.

Hutchings later tried to explain these were just rhetorical questions and that sexual orientation "can be defined in so many ways."

Uh-huh.

Anyone want to try explaining to Hutchings that pedophilia and bestiality aren't sexual orientations? Anyone?

Nah, Hutchings is a lost cause. But an entertaining one, in a sick sort of way.

Amazon Echo Is Laughing Creepily At Us

Is the random laughter coming from Amazon Echo's
Alexa a sign that she's turned evil and murderous?

I'm glad I read the NPR article I'm about to cite before Alexa, the voice on my and everybody else's  Amazon Echo could scare the daylights out of me.

Apparently, Alexa has been breaking out in creepy laughter for no apparent reason.

Here's how NPR describes the typical scenario, kind of like a teaser for a horror movie:

"Late at night, in the gathered shadows of your bedroom, you may have heard it. Or, perhaps you heard it over breakfast with your family in the kitchen, the sound rising unbidden from over your shoulder in a corner of the room you had thought - and now, desperately wish - to be empty. 

Laughter. Quick, inhuman laughter."

Normally, to get Alexa to talk and give you information, you have to say the name Alexa and ask your question. Example: "Alexa: How old is Alex Trebek?" (For the record, Alexa tells me Trebek is 77 years old.)

If you don't ask Alexa any questions, she's supposed to keep her mouth shut.

But she's into the laughter lately, freaking out lots of people.   Some people have said when they hear that Alexa laugh it is "time to move" and "the scariest shit I've ever heard."

You can rig up an Amazon Echo to turn your lights on and off. One person wrote on Reddit: "I was trying to turn off some lights and they kept turning back on. After the third request, Alexa stopped responding and instead did an evil laugh."

On Twitter, a guy named Gavin Hightower wrote: "Lying in bed about to fall asleep with Alexa on my Amazon Echo Dot lets out a very loud and creepy laugh....there's a good chance I get murdered tonight."

Amazon explains that sometimes the Amazon Echo mistakenly hears the command, "Alexa, laugh" and does.

I can't imagine a random bump in the night sounds like "Alexa, laugh" but what do I know?

Or are there creepy people wandering around outside and tellling Alexa to laugh from outside the house. Or have they broken in? Yikes!

Amazon said it's working on a fix in which the Echo won't respond to the command "Alexa, laugh." If you really want Alexa to laugh, you'll have to say, "Alexa, can you laugh?"

And in that case, Alexa will respond, "Sure, I can laugh," followed by laughter.

Still, I think this whole thing means we should be paging Steven King.  He's done horror books about inanimate objects before. Think "Christine."

Imagine the fun King could have with Alexa going murderous on people?

Say What You Want, Extreme Wacko Right Wing Is Imaginative

Liz Crokin has some, um, interesting theories about
the Democratic National Committee.

The people that brought us "Pizzagate" have an even wilder theory now, and boy is it entertaining.

And they're winning the competition to come up with the most far-fetched theories possible.

Pizzagate was the theory early this year that to the wackos, indicated by John Podesta e-mails, that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton were running a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington DC pizzeria.

Among the other nonsensical parts of this story, the pizzeria doesn't even have a basement.

But, whatever.

Now, they've gone further with their theory of the evils of the Democratic party.

Here's the scoop, as Right Wing Watch tells us:

"Right-wing columinst, commentator and conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin is fully committed to the conspiracy theory that there is a massive global satanic pedophile ring run by high-ranking government officials, powerful business executives and celebrities which regularly engages in the ritual sexual abuse and murder of children."

Right Wing Watch goes on:

"Crokin said that the average person simply cannot comprehend the fact that 'one third of the government' is part of a satanic Illuminati cult that sexually abuses, kills and eats children, but 'that's what these people do.'"

She said all this does seem unbelievable, but the John Podesta emails prove that it's happening. Crokin does not explain how those Podesta emails prove it, but whatever.

It's actually hard to follow how all this grew into Pizzagate and beyond, but this how Crokin's "logic" apparently works. 

The Democratic National Committee emails were hacked during the 2016 campaign, and this included emails to and from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta.

Many of the emails were innocuous and referred to dinner plans, sometimes involving pizza.

Somehow, Crokin and the other right wing wackos decided the word "pizza," particularly the phrase "cheese pizza" was code for "child pornography" since both phrases have the same first letters in their words.

Podesta also communicated with the owner of that Washington DC pizzeria, so the conspiracy was born.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

A lot of other people apparently "get" it, though, as YouTube videos of this theory and social media posts got lots of followers who apparently believe this shit. A guy even traveled up from South Carolilna and opened fire on the pizzeria to stop the child sex ring.

If that many people are that stupid and that gullible, God save us.

Product Safety Commission Blows Up Mannequins In Disturbing 4th of July Video

Mean girls? Nope, just the Consumer Products Safety
Commission using mannequins to demonstrate
the risks of 4th of July fireworks. 

The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission wants you to have a safe 4th of July.

Fireworks are part of the celebration, and too many people blow off their hands or worse during celebrations.

By the way, you could have guessed this but the vast majority of people who are injured by fireworks are teenage boys.

Go figure.

The CPSC put out a video that I can't decide whether is disturbing or funny. Or maybe both.

They blew up mannequins to show how dangerous fireworks can be.

Be safer than these mannequins!

Donald Trump Loses It More Than Ever On Twitter

Donald Trump is the world's most obnoxious tweeter, we know that.

And what's with the millions of Twitter bots that he or one of his minions appears to have purchased. (You can purchase fake Twitter followers to make it look like you have a lot more followers than you do.)

Anyway, this tweet from The Donald went up early this morning, and stayed up for a few hours. Don't know where he was going with this:

If you click on the copy of the tweet I've put in this post to make it bigger and easier to read, Trump gave us this bit of profound wisdom: "Despite the constate negative press, covfefe."

Not sure what "covfefe" means, but I'm sure we can come up with some good definitions, right?

Was Trump Operating A Disco In The White House? No, But The Idea Is Fun

What was the deal with the red lights in the White House
windows Sunday night?

In a web cam that's always trained on the White House, there was a bit of a spectacle Sunday night.

It looked like there was a red strobe light going off in the second floor residence of the White House.

You could see the flashing lights in two of the windows.  

What was going on?

As always, social media had a lot of fun with this.

Michael Hicks wrote on Twitter, "Everybody relax. The flashing red lights coming from inside the White House are just a simple code being transmitted to Russian overseers."

Trey Lucas speculated: "Looks like a rave, where are my globe sticks?"

Another theory: "He probably pulled the fire alarm because his Diet Coke button didn't work."

The real explanation for the lights was much more tame, as real explanations tend to be.  Due to a medical emergency unrelated to the White House, a DC ambulance was parked on a street nearby for 17 minutes.

What people saw in those windows was the lights of the ambulance reflected in the White House windows.

Oh. Too bad. Wish the other theories were true, as they'd be more fun.

Working At White House Has Become Worst Job Ever

Working for Donald Trump has to be very rough on
anyone's mental health. 

It used to be that if you got a job in the White House, that was prestigious. If you got such a job, your elderly relatives whisper to each other about how sharp you are.

Having worked at the White House looks awesome on a resume, at least it used to. At parties, flattering friends probably pepper you for insights on what the president is really like.  

Now, not so much. We all know what our president is like.

Working for the explosive, infantile, attention-span-of-a-puppy with ADHD, narcisstic, throw-everybody-under-the-bus Donald Trump has to be the worst job in the world. 

Of course, a lot of what we hear is from anonymous sources, and not everything we read about or see on TV is necessarily true. But the missives coming from the bowels of the White House sound like hell. Except less friendly than hell.

Even so, there's all these details that leak out.

Like how staffers in the White House turned up the TVs as loud as they could go as Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer and other top officials screamed at each other. The staffers with the TVs are kind of like terrified children whose parents are in a violent relationship.

Trump's favorite thing to do, apparently is throw others under the bus. He does something stupid, the staff tries to spin the White House out of the mess Trump creates, then Trump goes ahead and contradicts everything the spinners say.

As the Washington Post reports:

"....some aides have 'moved to angry,' frustrated with a president who demands absolute loyalty but in recent days has publicly tarnished the credibility of his team by sending them out with one message - only to personally undercut it later with a contradicting tweet or public comment."

Nothing like building morale by basically yelling to the world that your staffers are stupid.

The staffers, of course, end up looking like fools. Why do you think Melissa McCarthy mocks Sean Spicer so relentlessly on Saturday Night Live?

Speaking of massaged egos,  it turns out that the briefings Trump gets are Playskol versions, and even then, the only way to hold the president's attention when he is reading the briefs is to mention his name as often as possible.

According to Reuters:

"Conversations with some officials who have briefed Trump and others who are aware of how he absorbs information portray a president with a short attention span. 

He likes single-page memos and visual aids like maps, charts, graphs and photos. 

National Security Council officials have strategically included Trump's name in as many paragraphs as we can because he keeps reading if he's mentioned.' according to one source, who relayed conversatios he had with NSC officials."

 Of course, the media, and much of the general public - never mind late night comedy show hosts - have not exactly been massaging Trump's ego the way he likes.

That has led Trump to be dark and brooding and scary and even weirder than he usually is.  Which makes life for his aides even more dire,

The New York Times had this to report on Trump's state of mind:

"And his own mood, according to advisors who spoke on condition of anonymity, has become sour and dark, and has turned againts most of his aides, even his sonin-law, Jared Kushner - describing them as "incompetent," according to his advisors."

The incompetent one is, of course, the president. Aides have to babysit Trump during official meetings. The New York Times  says General McMaster "has tried to insert caveats or gentle corrections into conversations when he believes the president is straying off topic or onto boggy diplomatic ground."

Trump also thinks McMaster talks too much and "is a pain."

In any event, working in the Trump White House has seriously got to be a danger to one's mental health.

The Washington Post again: 

"For many White House staffers, impromptu support groups of friends, confidants, and acquaintances have materialized, calling and texting to check in, inquiring about their mental state and urging them to take care of themselves."

We don't know what will happen to the Trump administration or how long it will last, but I hope there's an army of PTSD counselors ready for any and all staffers that eventually leave the Trump White House.

They'll need it.

Sinkhole At Trump's Mar-A-Lago Is Entertaining Millions Today

Today's little sinkhole in front of Mar A Lago. 

A four-by-four foot sinkhole opened up on a street in Palm Beach, Florida, today, which normally wouldn't make the news.

Of course, the sinkhole formed in front of Mar-A-Lago, Donald Trump's ritzy resort and "winter White House," so that made the whole thing a lot of fun.  

It's the ultimate metaphor for what many of us see as a sinking ship, amid the, how shall we say, hiccups in the Trump presidency.

When the Palm Beach Post tweeted out the story of the Mar-A-Lago sinkhole, with a "Breaking News" headline, somebody responded via Twitter: "Breaking: God Sends Really Obvious Sign."

Another wag on Twitter, Elizabeth Schwartz said, "Surely, this is somewhere in revelations."

Somebody named John Maguire imagined on Twitter Trump's reaction to the sinkhole this way: "But it is a beautiful sinkhole. The best sinkhole in history. A model sinkhole for all future sinkholes."

Several people brought up that bizarre photo from over the weekend in which President Trump was seen holding a glowing orb with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Journalist Jonathan Chait said, "This is because of the orb, isn't it?"

Another observed: "The sinkhole formed right after the orb was touched."

Somebody out there want to write a great science fiction plot about this?

Quite a few other people suggested the sinkhole is the swamp draining.

Don't we wish.

Weirdest Video Of The Year: Dancing Pikachu Deflates: Special Agents Rush In

A Pikachu deflates in South Korea, and agents
move in for the kill. 

There they were, all these Pikachus at the World Pikachu Festival in Incheon, South Korea, dancing to "Uptown Funk"

If that isn't weird enough, it gets worse. One of the dancing Pikachus starts to deflate. Literally deflate.

Emergency!!

Luckily, dark suited special agents rush in and forcibly remove and detail our errant Pikachu away, leaving the rest of our gleeful Pikachus to keep dancing, very badly at this festival.

The fun part is at the 1:12 point in this video.  After the disturbance, the video is just more strange Pikachus dancing. If you're into that sort of thing.

Watch it if you dare:

Just In Time For Mother's Day, Kentucky Fried Chicken Offers Romance Of Sorts

Who knew?

A KFC bodice ripper for your mom
om Mother's Day.

It turns out Kentucky Fried Chicken's sales increase markedly on Mother's Day.

I get it that dutiful families don't want mom to cook on Mother's Day, but really? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Whatever.

It gets even weirder.

This year, KFC has issued of all things a romance novel to keep mom entertained on her big day a week from Sunday.

The 92-page novel is called "Tender Wings Of Desire."

The cover image, which is unfortunately in this post, shows a ripped Colonel Sanders in a sleeveless shirt carrying a woman in his arms, who has a purse around her shoulder and a chicken wing in the other hand.

A big bucket of KFC chicken is nearby, in case our loving couple get even hungrier.

You can get this novella on Amazon for free. The story tells the tale of Lady Madeline Parker in Victorian England who needs to choose between a loveless marriage and Colonel saners, a supposed sailor who might not be who he seems.

If you love bad prose, this is totally for you. Here's an excerpt:

"He was the most handsome person she had ever seen; een his beard made him look more manly than unkempt. 

''I've never seen a sailor who wore glasses before,' she said suddenly. He grinned.

'Neither have I. Then again, I don't often look in the mirror,' he replied.

She felt her cheeks blush a flame red, and she retreated to the kitchen to stop them from blushing further."

It probably gets worse than that, but I'll let you figure that out if you go to Amazon, if you dare, to pick up this bodice-ripper.

Conservative Pundit Erickson Says Noncomforming Gay People Should Get Beaten Up.

Snowflake Erick Erickson wants everybody to look and act like
him because those who don't are so icky that it weirds him out

Erick Erickson, to use the term so often bandied about by conservatives, is a total snowflake.

It turns out that he finds people who are obviously different, especially gay people who don't dress and act like he wants them to, are totally icky and he Just. Can't. Stand. It.

Why can't people look and act like he wants them to? Why does he have to suffer through the torture of seeing guys who aren't as macho as he is? Why can't everybody just make him happy like he deserves? Or something.

This all started when, last week, Republican Senator Mike Enzi spoke to a group of middle and high school students in Wyoming and one of the students asked what he was doing to impro e the life of the LGBT community in Wyoming.

Part of Enzi's response was this:

"In Wyoming, you can be just about anything you want to be, as long as you don't push it in somebody's face."

Then he went on: "I know a guy who wears a tutu and goes to bars on Friday night and is always surprised that he gets in fights. Well, he kind of asks for it. That's the way he winds up with that kind of problem."

No, the problem is solved when, if you see a guy in a bar wearing a tutu and you don't like that fact, you ignore said guy in the tutu.

To Enzi's credit, he apologized for the inartful comments and called the guy who wears the tutu, who reports they had a productive conversation.

Well, pundit Erickson was NOT happy with Enzi's apology.

He responded by writing a column titled, "You Will Get Punched and Others Have Rights Too."

Erickson's column collapses in its very first paragraph, which is:

"You know, I'm really damn tired of all the people running around making other people extremely uncomfortable then screaming about their rights and priveges when called out. If you want to go around making people uncomfortable, you've got the problem, not the the rest of us."

Um, actually, you've got the problem Erick! If you fall apart because some guy is wearing a tutu in the same room as you, that makes you a total snowflake.

And you're the worst narcissist ever. It's not everybody else's job to make you comfortable and happy. You're not the center of the friggin' universe.

Again, the solution is so, so easy: Ignore the people you don't like.  You don't get to punch people who you believe are aesthetically displeasing.

Erickson goes on:

"I know liberals in the coastal bubbles of homogenized whiteness and skinny jeans think everyone has to be think like them - not does, but has to - but the reality is we don't. We are a culurally heterogeneous nation with diverse cultural norms."

Um, since when does anybody think you have to like their point of view and their skinny jeans. Nobody is making you do anything, Erick. You get to think what you want. And if skinny jeans give you the vapors, they you're really a wimp.

Erickson demands in his column that everybody he thinks are icky should "get over themselves." No, Erick, you need to get over yourself.

You don't get to dictate how others look and act. Just like me or anybody else has no right to demand that you act or look a certain way.

Sure, we can criticize you, and you can criticize anyone you want.

But don't go around justifying beating up people you think are weird.

Frankly, Erick, I think you're weird, but I don't want to beat you up and I don't want anybody else to, either.

Just chill.

Truck Drags Car Four Miles Along California Freeway. Truck Driver Shrugs.

An oblivious or cruel truck driver dragged a Nissan
he had collided with up to four miles along
a California freeway. 

I guess anything can be denied nowadays.

A big rig truck driver who dragged a car he had collided with up to four miles along a California freeway says he didn't know the car was stuck to his truck.

Riiigght.

The viral video of all this is at the bottom of the post.

The first part of the incident I can accept. Accidents happen. The truck and/or the Nissan changed lanes, and there was a collision.

The Nissan got hung up on the truck and was dragged along Interstate 15 in Cajon Pass. Other drivers honked their horns and tried to get the attention of the truck driver. The person behind the wheel of the Nissan waved his arms out the window yelling for help.

I get it the truck is much bigger than the Nissan, but the truck driver couldn't figure out his rig seemed to be handling a little weirdly?

Eventually, a vehicle pulled out in front of the tractor trailer and forced it to stop. Luckily, the driver of the tractor trailer didn't try to run that person over, too.

When the truck driver was told there was a car stuck to him he said, "I didn't know it." Again. Riiight.

Not sure why the truck driver didn't stop, though, until forced to.

So far, no criminal charges have been filed, which is also odd. Truck driver must know the local cops or something.  KTLA said California Highway Patrol told them the 62-year-old truck driver showed no signs of impairment and there were no mechanical issues with the truck.

He was allowed to leave after the incident was investigated. The driver of the Nissan wasn't seriously hurt.

Here's the video:

Check Out What This Drunken Driving Suspect Was Wearing

In Newville, Pennsylvania recently, police arrested a guy named Elwood R. Gutshall III, 44 for allegedly driving under the influence. 

Police there said he committed several traffic violations and that his blood alcohol level was up there at 0.217 percent.

He was also driving with a suspended license.

Gutshall's booking photo is in this post.

Check out what he was wearing

Apparently, Police In A Lot Of Places HATE It When You Wear A Mask

This guy was arrested for wearing a 'Joker'
 makeup in Virginia. Apparently, it's illegal
to be out in public wearing a mask in Virginia.

Dressing up in costumes is fun.

That's why Halloween is so popular.

Some people take that dress-up ethos to other times of year.  Some lawmkers, and some police agencies, hate it, hate it when you do that.

Apparently, wearing a mask presumes you will commit a crime any minute now. So some jurisdictions go after masked people, just to show their law enforcement cred, I guess.

So it was in Virginia recently, police arrested Jeremy Putman, 31, for walking around the town of Winchester dressed as the Joker, complete with makeup on his face.

He was also carrying a sword, which police didn't seem so worried about. Instead, they nailed Putman for wearing a mask.

I have no idea why Putman wanted to walk around town dressed like the Joker, and he didn't commit any kind of violent crime. But who knows what he intended?

The original intent of these laws was pretty good: Lawmakers didn't want to make these easy for robbers, or the Ku Klux Klan.

However, like almost every well-intentioned statute, some law enforcement types will always find a way to abuse the law.

In any event, police are charging Putman with a felony.  According to Winchester Police, "Officers do not believe there are additional suspects, but want to remind the community of the seriousness of the crime."

Really? Serious? Some nutcase decides he wants to dress up as the Joker and that's a crime against humanity?

The Virginia law has exemptions for Halloween, theatrical performances and that kind of thing.

Still it wold have been nice in the case of Putman to have some discretion, to at least see what he was up to before automatically arresting him.  Some people just like to play dress up.

It appears Putman is just an eccentric who likes dressing up as cartoon characters sometimes. He reported has no prior arrest records and people who know him say he's not scary or dangerous.

The arrest forced him out of his Walmart job, and Putnam says the arrest is ruining his reputation, 

Alex Jones, Who Is Trump's Wacko Muse, Is Entertaining In A Scary Way

Alex Jones is one of Donald Trumps most, um,
interesting news sources.

One of Donald Trump's favorite news sources seems to be Alex Jones.

Jones is the visible head of something called InfoWars, which is, to put it mildly, a wildly crazy, train wreck of an extreme wacko conspiracy theories.

There's an entertaining video of him at the bottom of this post.

Jones is the guy who informed us that terrorist attacks and mass shootings in Orlando, Sandy Hook, Boston and other places were "false flags" by the Obama administration to take away all our guns and all of our freedoms.

He's the guy who informed us that the government is creating gay people by putting estrogen in juice boxes,thereby being a method of population control.

When a terrible tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma in 2013, he said the U.S. Air Force has the ability to control and direct swarms of tornadoes and launched a strike on Moore. No word from Jones yet on why the government targeted the fine people of Moore.

Also, Diet Coke is a by-product of a Pentagon study that would engineer e-coli bacteria and the fact that Taylor Swift endorsed Diet Coke in ads means that she loves genetically modified bacteria poop. 

So, yes, Jones is, um, interesting, which makes it very easy for me to pick on him. I know I'm being mean. I shouldn't abuse the mentally ill.

But in Jones' case, I can't help it. He needs to be taken down a notch.

Thankfully, we got some help from Vice, who tweeted the compilation you'll see below of clips from Jones' radio show.

Jones tends to have a temper, or which he also apologizes for. The wax and wane of these episodes is something to behold.  The dude certainly is excitable.

Watch the clip if you dare:

 Alex Jones wants you to know he’s sorry for his outbursts pic.twitter.com/i83ubKiwNp

— VICE News (@vicenews) March 5, 2017

Congress Wants Crazy People With Guns To Shoot Bears From Airplanes

Wolf pup emerging from a den. Is it really OK to go
into dens and shoot hibernating bears and wolves?

I'm not sure why some Republican lawmakers are stumbling over each other trying to outdo each other for most batshit crazy legislation, but that's where we're going.

First, Congress repealed an Obama-era rule meant to limit the sale of guns to some people with mental disabilities.  

Let's let more unstable people have guns!

People who wanted to do away with the rule said lax or incorrect reporting standards meant that people who had mental issues, but who were still safe with guns, were barred from having firearms.

As a person who is high functioning but has a (mild) mental illness, I can see that concern.

After all, I have ADHD, but because of psychiatric counseling, effort on my part and a fairly low daily dose of Adderall, I function just fine. If I were trained to properly use handguns, I'm sure I'd be safe with them.

But wouldn't it be better just to make a case by case judgment on this?

Now that practically everybody can have guns, what are we all gonna sboot?

In Alaska, the answer apparently is, we want to shoot bears and wolves from airplanes, or barge into dens while the animals are hibernating and shoot them there.

Sounds fun! If you're into unsportsmanlike hunting, that is.

Yep, the U.S. House of Representatives, voting along party lines, approved the repeal of laws that prohibited people from shooting bears and wolves from airplanes and entering dens to shoot hibernating animals.

According to Buzzfeed and many other news outlets, this all started last August when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under the Obama administration, sensibly issued rules banning hunting tactics that then-director Dan Ashe said was "a withering attack on bears and wolves that is wholly at odds with America's long tradition of ethical, sportsmanlike, fair-chase hunting."

More from Buzzfeed:

"The banned activities on Alaska's wildlife refuges including hunting tactics common elsewhere in the US but nevertheless troubling to wildlife advocates: baiting brown bears to draw them to hunters and shooting them; shooting bears ensnared in traps, and shooting bears and wolves in their dens with their cubs or pups."

That last bit is something. Go into a bear den and shoot the mother bear and cubs. Because you can, I guess.

People want to be able to shoot bears and wolves, even if they are in dens, because bear and wolves sometimes eat moose and elk.  

That reduces the number of moose and elk that people can, yes, hunt. So people want to hunt bear and wolves in nonsportsmanlike ways so they can, um, hunt other animals too.

It's true that some Alaskans hunt moose and elk because they rely upon them for food. However, my suspicious mind thinks that Congress approved this change to satisfy their rich contributors who go to Alaska to hunt, but don't rely on wild animals for sustenance.

Basically, what's going on here is, "Let's kill more animals so we can kill more animals."

Wildlife advocates say it's not like they're trying to stop hunting on wildlife refuges. They just want to stop extreme forms of hunting that throw off the ecosystem.

It seems especially galling to go into dens and shoot sleeping bears and cubs. I don't know why anybody would get off on this, but you never know what some people think.

Look, I'm not against hunting. I live in Vermont, where there is a big hunting culture and I have no problem whatsoever with it.  As long as the hunters are responsible and not a bunch of yahoos. Most hunters are great.

But, we're in an anything goes atmosphere now. Time to start shooting everything in sight, I guess.

"Devil Went Down To Georgia" With The Help Of A Washing Machine

For your weird moment of pleasure, here's a video of a guy performing the song "Devil Went Down To Georgia" with accompanying help from an out-of-balance washing machine.

It's actually better than you'd expect.

H/T BoingBoing.

Watch:

A Moment With The Nation's Most Patriotic Chicken

This patriotic chicken knows how to play "America
The Beautiful" on a keyboard

Because we all love America, despite some of the politics going on in the nation these days, we all need a patriotic song or two to get us into our Love of Nation spirit.

With that, I bring you Jokgu, a 19-month old chicken from Germantown, Maryland who plays "America The Beautiful" on a keyboard.

Yep, you got that. A chicken knows the song. You can watch the video at the bottom of this post.

Normally, a chicken would just pluck and peck on things at random, but they can be trained to do things a certain way through clicker training.

The method uses positive reinforcement to shape behavior. When the chicken pecks at the right key,she gets a reward. The wrong key, no reward.

Pretty soon, the system of rewards can get the chicken to peck at the keyboard in a certain order, and Voila! A song is born.

Plus, "America The Beautiful," while aa wonderful song, is also pretty simple, so a chicken can handle it.

Watch the video, stand up and be proud!

 

Woman Somehow Manages To Get Snake Stuck In Her Earlobe

Ashley Glawe got her pet python Bart stuck in her
gauged ear. Both are fine now, though. 

I'm prone to pratfalls.

I'm always tripping, dropping things, losing things, losing my marbles.

My sister Lynn says I'm fun to watch.  

Maybe.

But I was delighted today when I learned I've never got myself in trouble in this weird a fashion: A woman in Oregon managed to get a snake stuck in her earlobe. 

I bet that will never happen to me.

The woman in question, Ashley Glawe, has a rather unique fashion sense. Part of that is her gauged earlobe. That means it's stretched to a large, weird shape, I guess so you can put big earrings in or sonething.

So she has a big hole in her earlobe.

Glawe said her pet python, Bart, decided to slither into that big hole in her earlobe and got stuck. Which meant she had to go to the emergency room to fix the problem.

I'm sure the medical personnel at the hospital had never seen anything quite like that.

Thankfully, everything ended well. Doctors numbed Glawe's ear so they can stretch it more without inflicting a lot of pain so that Bart could slither out.

And, bonus! Bart was not injured during his ordeal. Glawe is fine, too.

Well, as fine as a woman can be with big holes in her ear and a pet python named Bart