Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (1431-1476) better known as Vlad the Impaler was a Transylvania-born ruler of Wallachia.  He is said to be the inspiration of Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula.  In case his epithet didn’t give it away, Vlad the Impaler was a vicious, messed up dude.  He is well known for his sadistic methods of execution and torture, which include boiling, skinning, forced cannibalism, roasting, and his personal favorite, impaling. 

I once knew a kid named Brad the Inhaler.  He was from Pennsylvania.  He had asthma and he wasn’t very sadistic.  Just pretty geeky and bad at sports.  He didn’t inspire any novels.

In 2007 a UK television station polled 4,000 people to determine the UK’s most ridiculous law.  The winner:  The law forbidding anyone from dying while in the Houses of Parliament.  I don’t really see that as ridiculous.  In fact, I have extended the “no dying” law so it applies to my own house.

Rounding out the list was the law making it illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament while wearing a suit of armor.    Let’s just say, I learned this one the hard way.

Coffins were initially carried on horse-drawn hearses.  By the 1920s, motorized hearses were the norm.  A few cities toyed with the idea of funeral trolley cars and funeral subway cars as a way to transport both the casket and the mourners to the cemetery.  As you can imagine, that didn’t work.  Some early hearses were also used as ambulances due to the large cargo room in the back of the vehicle.  

How horrible would that be?  You are in an accident.  You call 911.  You tell them about your condition.  And then 10 minutes later a hearse rolls up.

The koala is one of the few mammals, other than primates, to have fingerprints.  Their fingerprints are very similar to human fingerprints.  According to an infamously dubious, free, online encyclopedia, human and koala fingerprints are so similar that “even with an electron microscope it can be quite difficult to distinguish between the two.”

Crime Scene Investigator: Here’s the gun from the murder scene.

Forensic Scientist: Thanks.  Once I just take a look at this gun with my trusty electron microscope, I will be able to pinpoint the killer immediately.

Looks in electron microscope.

Forensic Scientist: I see the prints.  It looks like I’ve narrowed it down to two suspects.  But it’s quite difficult to distinguish between the two, even with my electron microscope.

LATER:

Behind one-way glass, a witness looks at the two suspects in a police line-up.  A 46 year-old man with a history of violence and drug addiction …and…  a 25-pound koala with a pouch full of revenge.

The slang phrase “going postal,” as in getting uncontrollably furious and violent, derives from tragic incidents involving United States Postal Service workers. Between 1986 and 1997, more than 40 people were murdered by spree killers in over 20 acts of workplace violence.  You know what hasn’t murdered 40 people?  E-mail.

I stumbled upon this life insurance website, and idly clicked through some pages.  In the “Education Center” section there was a list of “things you didn’t know about death.”  Here is the first one:

“After being decapitated the average person remains conscious for an additional fifteen to twenty seconds.”

Seriously?  This isn’t something that makes old people want to buy your life insurance.  It’s creepy.  It’s scientifically debatable.  It’s creepy.  But most of all, it’s creepy.  Unless your target demographic is royalty of the French Revolution, you should probably pull the plug on your death lists.

Joining a doomsday cult may seem like a good idea, but it’s not.  Actually, it doesn’t seem like a good idea at all.  Let’s take a look at the True Russian Orthodox Church cult:

• Pyotr Kuznetsov is the leader of this Russian doomsday cult.
• He tells 30 of his followers that the world will end in May 2008.
• In November 2007, his followers hole up in a cave (because that’s what you do when the world’s going to end…?). 
• Kuznetsov does not join his followers in the cave.  He says he has to wait for others to arrive (sure…).
• They pack the cave with 100 gallons of gasoline and threaten to blow themselves up if authorities try to intervene (because blowing themselves up in a cave would be better than dying when the world ends…?).  I don’t really understand the thinking here.  Or anywhere.
• In case you didn’t hear, the world does not end in May 2008.
• The crazies start to leave the cave.
• They are given milk to drink when they leave the cave.  But the milk cartons have bar codes, which everyone knows is the mark of the Anti-Christ…
• Authorities give the crazies a cow, instead.
• Kuznetsov tries to kill himself by beating himself in the head with a log.  He fails.  He’s really bad at the whole doomsday/death thing.
• He goes to a hospital.  Doctors tell him he has schizophrenia.
• His followers remain loyal.

In conclusion, don’t join a doomsday cult.  You’re never right.  And if you are right, it’s not like anyone will ever acknowledge the fact that you are right.  Everyone is dead.  It’s a lose-lose.

I always see pairs of shoes hanging from powerlines.  I have also heard a bunch of conflicting theories as to why they are there.  I looked it up on the World Wide Web, and I am still pretty unsure.  I hear that it’s to recognize a fallen friend, or to tell people that a crack house is on the street, or that someone graduated high school, or to mark gang territory.  I don’t really buy any of them.  I think it signifies that a drunk teenager threw his friend’s shoes onto a telephone wire.   But I suppose my sources on the internet could be correct.  Maybe a crackhead graduated from high school and wanted his friends to come to his grad party at the crack house.  But not all of his friends, only the ones in his gang who are still alive.  It’s like balloons tied to a mailbox, but for crackhead gang members.

Yikes, Greek philosopher Chrysippus allegedly died of laughter.  Apparently, his heart stopped during a fit of laughter, after he fed wine to his donkey and watched it try to eat figs.  For such an esteemed philosopher, his sense of humor was awfully simple.

And hilarious.

Psychiatrists are called shrinks as a result of a comparison made between psychiatrists and head-shrinkers.  Back in the good old days, head-shrinkers were the tribal members who shrunk the heads of their enemies after killing them.  I guess both a psychiatrist and a head-shrinker screw with your head, in a way.  It’s just that one tries to help you, and the other one kills you and physically shrinks your severed head.  But, I mean, I guess I see where they’re coming from…

I hear December 21, 2012 is when the world is going to end because it happens to be the end of the 5,125 year-long cycle of the Mayan calendar.  Wow!  Those Mayan calendar makers were pretty darn ambitious when they created such a long calender, especially considering their own civilization collapsed over a thousand years ago.  I’m just a little ticked off about the specific date. I feel like it’s going to be such an awkward holiday season, what with our impending doom and all.