Minor Accident, Then The World's Most Extreme Temper Tantrum

There was a minor car accident somewhere in Spain recently.

That doesn't seem like a big deal. A car hit some sort of metal thing on the side of of the road, and the car's metal grill got caught on the debris.

But the ten-minute video shot from a nearby apartment building is an absolute classic. Watch the guy who was driving the car have the world's most epic meltdown over the crash, destroying the car in the process.

Yes, it's a ten minute video, but worth watching every minute. It's amazing how long someone could sustain such a destructive temper tantrum.  It's a wonder he didn't just keel over.

It's amazing what happens at the end.

How To Stop People From Peeing On Your Building

A locksmith business in Allentown, Pennsylvania had a problem.

A corner at the back of their building was the perfect place, in a lot of peoples' minds, to take a quick pee out of sight of passersby and without having to find a proper restroom in some building somewhere.

Guy tries to pee against building, building pees
on him.   

The people in the locksmith business didn't like this. Who wants the smell of stale pee wafting into your workspace all day? They needed to solve the problem.

What they did was ingenious. They set up a security camera, and anytime someone started to pee on the corner of the building, the building would pee on the pee-ers.

Well, it was just water coming off the building, but a lot of it.

The business put together a NSFW highlight video of a people peeing and getting peed on by the building.  It's hilarious.

This post won't please the commenter on one of my previous blog posts, which showed a flash flood roaring through a building. She said that video made her want to pee. This will be worse.

Here's the video, just for laughs:

Incredible Video of Flood Surging Into College

Here's quite a surveillance video of a flash flood sweeping through Carl Sandburg College in Illinois this week.

The water builds and builds outside the office until it's too much for the doors to handle, and in the water comes. What a mess.

There's been nasty flooding everywhere, so it's not surprising there's destruction everywhere.

One thing that impresses me about this video is how long the lights and the computers stay on, despite the white water surging into the building.

Incredible Bear Knows His Tricks

Here's a random video about a bear that really knows how to do some amazing tricks.

Who needs a smart dog when you can have a smart bear?

Maybe I should  go out in the woods, grab a bear and teach him some tricks.

Watch the video below before deciding how to answer the question.

Eat Mo' Bugs, Says UN. Vermont Mosquitoes, Anyone?

Well, I suppose this is one way to fight hunger, global warming and pollution, at least according to the United Nations: Eat bugs.

Doesn't sound appetizing, but that's what they're saying,. Apparently, eating bugs will solve a whole bunch of ills. According to the Associated Press:

 

 Could mosquitoes become the new Vermont cuisne

"Edible insects are being promoted as a low-fat, high-protein food for people, pets and livestock. According to the U.N., they come with appetizing side benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and livestock pollution, creating jobs in developing countries and feeding the millions of hungry people in the world."

Up in Vermont, we had more rain in one week in May than we usually get in two months. It's supposed to turn warm and humid. So the black flies and mosquitoes will be as thick as molasses.

We will be eaten alive by these awful things. But, if we take the UN report to heart, we can turn the tables and eat the mosquitoes.

I have questions, though, since I'm so inexperienced with the ways of bug eating. First of all, exactly how do you harvest them? It seems counter productive to catch them as they're biting you.  You're not the one that is supposed to be eaten.

Assuming you catch all the mosquitoes you need for a meal, how exactly do you prepare it. Fry them? Make a stew out of them? A pate?

What ingredients compliment the taste of mosquitoes? Or, probably more accurately, mask the taste of mosquitoes. I've never eaten mosquito, obviously, so I don't honestly don't know what to do.

Are there experts? Is there a mosquito cookbook? Does Rachel Ray have a whole book of mosquito recipes, full of quick, easy and tasty mosquito dinners?

Maybe they should use mosquitoes in the list of strange ingredients in the cooking competition show "Chopped." on the Food Network

The bottom line is, the field of insect and mosquito cuisine is still in its infancy. Any cooks out there want to experiement?

My Introduction to South Dakota

I'm not really well traveled. In fact, I'd never been west of the Mississippi River. Until today.

I'm writing this from Yankton, South Dakota, where I'm visiting the in laws and other relatives and friends.

We stopped in Vermillion,  South Dakota today on the way
from the Sioux Falls airport to Yankton, where I will spend the week.
Vermillion reminds me a lot of Bristol, Vermont

I've only been in South Dakota for a few hours, but I'm impressed.

Where my hosts see flat, featureless plains, I see a unique beauty. On the drive from the airport in Sioux Falls to Yankton, the landscape was fascinating.

 I didn't have much time to take pictures today, but I will try the rest of the week.

The scenes were beautiful because they were simple.

An isolated tree in a vast cornfield. A church poking up above the plains with a huge expanse of open landscape and nothing else around it.  A crumbling, abandoned farmhouse collapsing slowly and gracefully in a small thicket of trees.   You could see forever, and watch the cloud formations seemingly 100 miles away.

We stopped for lunch on the way to Yankton in the small town of Vermillion, South Dakota. I felt at home there, in large part because its downtown looked a lot like Bristol, Vermont.

There are quirks in South Dakota that I'm not used to in Vermont. There's quite a few small scale casinos and rather shady looking payday loan centers interspersed among the solid, stolid old businesses in sedate small towns across the state.

And my inner fifth grader came out when I saw the bad humor in the name of a Sioux Falls convenience store. It is called "Kum and Go."  I am not making this up.

I left Vermont at the end of a week of record rainfall and flooding that finally broke on Monday. I arrived in South Dakota to the beginning of what promises to be a  week of flooding,  severe storms and a tornado threat. I feel like that guy who always has a raincloud above him.

Yankton seems like the most peaceful community in the world in which to live, even if it has a minimum security federal prison in a former college smack dab in the middle of town.

Even the prison is relaxing. It is gorgeous,  with tree-lined, park like grounds, with prisoners milling about outside, just chilling. The inmates are all white collar or non-violent convicts, so there's little physical threat to the public.

The prison grounds are so beautiful I almost want to commit a crime. Almost.

I'm staying at Jeff's parents' house, which is adjacent to a beautiful golf course. They have a sunroom, which looks out into the course. Jeff's parents say they often get up early and sit in the sunroom, just enjoying the scenery. I can see why.

We probably won't do much out here in Yankton. Let's face it, Yankton is not Manhattan. Heck, it's not even Manhattan, Kansas. But that's the point. Sometimes we need a place that's calm, solid, homey, quiet.

It's been a tumultuous few weeks in Jeff's life, and in my life. We've both been working our butts off. He's been traveling all over the place, working. We lost our beloved dog Bailey a few days ago.  

The friendly quiet of Yankton is going to be the perfect place to recover and recharge.

Don't Let The Neighbors Borrow The Police Cruiser

Municipal police departments are wise to embrace community policing, you know, getting to know the neighbors, the neighborhoods, all the people who live there.

Note to police departments: Don't let the kids
drive your police cruisers  

It builds alliances, and making it more likely people will cooperate if they suspect something illegal is going on.

But community policing can be taken way, way, way, too far. Take Valley Falls, Kansas. In a bid to increase community involvement, they started an auxillary police force to go on patrol in police cruisers.

You can see where this is headed already, can't you?

Let's go to television station WIBW in Topeka, to get a quote about what the appropriately named Doug Wildeman allegedly did during his stint as a cruiser driving auxillary cop:

"He was turning the siren on and off, the headlights on and off, the flashers on and and off, hit the airhorn a couple times," said witness Lee Kahn of Valley Falls. "He floored it and he gunned it at maximum speed. I assumed it was a police officer so I came to City Hall to file a written complaint, only to find out it wasnt even a police officer driving the car, that it was a civilian."

Residents also alleged Wildeman was driving around in the cruiser with a girl on his lap.

You sexy dog, you!

The City Council in Valley Falls has decided to abandon the idea of letting civilians drive around in police cruisers, which is probably a good idea. Though if anybody had a video camera, it would have made a good beginning for a revival of the TV show "Dukes of Hazzard."

The police chief in Valley Falls also might be looking for a new job soon, WIBW reported.

So, yes, it's good to have Officer Friendly hang out with the teens hanging around downtown. But maybe they should keep the keys to their cruisers, just to be on the safe side.