News You Can't Use: Dead Goose Falls From Sky, Sends Waterfowl Hunter To Shock Trauma

I've decided to switch to a format of covering nothing but objects falling from the sky with tragi-comic results. Yes, I see big things for "Chicken Little Lectures" in the future, but maybe having somewhat regular posts would be a better starting point. In any case, today's offering barely even qualifies as a news story, quite frankly, but there's enough "that ain't no duck, son" controversy to make it worthwhile. Well, not really, but if I'm going to live with perpetual flat-pocket, I'm not about to surrender that sweet editorial control. Also, please ignore the "that isn't funny, this guy got really hurt and my brother died that way" aspects, it's for the best.

An Eastern Shore waterfowl hunter was flown to Shock Trauma Thursday, according to the Maryland Natural Resources Police.

When the hunter becomes the hunted, oh the irony. Seriously, ain't it heavy, man?

Investigators say 51-year-old Robert Meilhammer was hunting with others in Easton near the Miles River shortly before 5 p.m. when a dead goose fell from the sky, knocked unconscious and caused him head and facial injuries.

I love all the missing details and the fragmentary and intentionally misleading narrative. I mean, are geese simply falling like rain, did this guy shoot it, or is there some even more incredible alternative explanation? I feel we all deserve to know.

Maryland Natural Resources Police, Talbot County Sheriff’s Office deputies and local EMS responded to the scene.

Bird falls on armed man, multiple government agencies swing into action. Keep paying those taxes.

Out of an abundance of caution, it was decided to drive the victim by ambulance to Easton Airport, where he was airlifted to Shock Trauma for treatment.

Now it's time to grind in addition indignity with that whole "abundance of caution" line. Yes, this guy was such a wuss that after a kamikaze attack by a honking water-bird we needed several alphabet agencies to drag him into unnecessary medical care.

He has been listed in stable condition, according to officials.

The body will heal, the spirit is, presumably, permanently broken.

Full Article.

Komment Korner

He should have ducked.

Gives me Goose bumps just thinking about it

Back in school we had “Duck Drills”

No offense, but do Americans know the difference between a goose and a duck. The hunter shot and killed a duck but a dead goose fell out of the air and hit him on the head.

I wish Dr Walter Palmer’s arrow missed, and Cecil the lion mauled that demented dentist to death.

So many ugly, liberal comments on here. Many people like my father hunt for food. Chances are, this guy was hunting for that reason. Nobody wants to eat hormone infused meat from the store. I hope this man recovers. What a freak accident.


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can Use: Now HALF of Families Text Each Other in the Same House

We live in an age of miracles. Everything is bigger, and yet, smaller. Computers, man. High school football is great. Then there's the phones, which are successfully eliminating the misery of brief interpersonal communications with human units that share a lot of your genetic material and inhabit the same residential unit. Yes, a simple text message can prevent the need for yelling "Chow's ready!" up stairs or showing any sort of ordinary human warmth toward the offspring you deeply resent. Cat's in the cradle? Naw, sucker. It's in a little glowing screen.

Some will find it depressing. Others will recognise an all-too familiar snapshot of tech-obsessed modern life.

Some will experience an emotional reaction, others are so dead inside that the best we can expect is some grim nodding.

But nearly half of families with children now text each other when they are in the same house.

At first I thought it was because of massive prosperity and everyone living in palatial estates. Then I glanced at so-called "financial news" and that illusion went into a cocked hat.

Just under a third of us (32 per cent) are guilty of tapping out messages on mobiles when we want to talk to someone under the same roof, according to research.

First it was almost half, now almost point three repeating, the outrage is shrinking rapidly, our big reward for actually reading the body of the article.

In a third of households, people use their mobiles during their mealtimes.

Let me get a picture of this noodle caboodle so all those information gathering site "friends" can enjoy it with me!

In fact, tablets and mobiles are so prevalent at home, they are also depriving us of rest.

There is no rest for Angry Birds, until they finally sleep in hell.

Last night campaigners warned the surge in mobile phone usage could be ‘catastrophic’ for family life. Dr Richard House, a psychologist, said: ‘These communication technologies are almost certainly having long-term and possibly dramatic impacts on family life.
 
That's tragic and all. In other news, I'd bet you a can of Coke that "Dick House, psychologist" is a made-up person.

‘It is potentially catastrophic for the human relational values that underpin family life at its best, with real, face-to-face communication being increasingly displaced and sidelined by the machine.’
 
I bust out highly jargony and complex answers to questions I'm asked and I'm certainly real so stop wagering sugar water.

The study found that a third of us worry that family members have become ‘lazy’ because they spend too much time playing video games. But whilst these findings would fill many of us with horror, eight out of ten still say that technology has had a positive impact on their lives.
 
Yeah, so-called "lazy." Tell that to all the citizens of Cyrodill I saved from marauding hell-spawn. My Witch Hunter gained three levels today, I'm certainly accomplishing a lot.

Those who think technology has improved their lives value activities such as online shopping and the ability to stream TV shows on Netflix and the BBC iPlayer. 

My passive teevee viewership now has a more technical veneer. My life is better.

Lindsey Rix, of Aviva, said there was evidence that ‘the “always on” culture is making it difficult for people to switch off, and in some cases is causing people to become stressed’.

It's worth it for the current cultural golden age.

She added: ‘Households with children in particular suggest that technology can at times be intrusive, with people communicating via their phones rather than in person, and at inappropriate times such as during family meals.’

It seems pretty crazy, but there's unidentified folks out there who think this.

Full Story.

Komment Korner

Not interested in yelling at my kids to come down for dinner.

Now this is complete bull!... What smack!

Why is everyone laying into Lemon Tree

i use it simply to listen to music... nothing sinster

You are living the high life, two malted milk biscuits, luxury


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.  

News You Can't Use: Many NYC Students So Tech-Oriented They Can’t Even Sign Their Own Names

As a connoisseur of all forms of societal collapse and general intellectual entropy almost every day is a glorious banquet, even when I'm not reading one of those "that daw gawn worst generation" stories. Luckily, today I have that profound pleasure and it turns out Generation Nothing has trouble making the old John Hancock, certainly bad news in today's high tech and fast moving economy where they'll be expected to sign welfare checks and lists of personal effects while being processed by prisons. The good news, if you're into delusional optimism, is they're all about "tech." The bad news is the "tech" in question mainly involves genital photography and launching ball-shaped cartoon birds, not the good kind that fills those factories depicted in political advertisements.

Many Big Apple students, including the children of several state lawmakers, can’t even sign their own names, it was revealed at an educational budget hearing in Albany today.  

How well they performed on "finding rear end with both hands" and "emptying a boot full of water with instructions written on the heel" remains unknown but probably isn't good news either.

“Not only is it sad, but it’s a security issue,” said Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-SI/Brooklyn).

Security issue for sure. Not sure how, but it's impossible to make anyone care about quality of life or "our kids are morons" issues without appealing to the grim specter of deadly violence that we have such a bizarre national love/hate relationship with. Still, I can imagine the scene in a Tom Clancy thriller. "You've got to sign your name for the launch codes to activate, President Jayden!" "I don't know how, I was raised by friendly tablets."

Malliotakis said the penmanship problem was brought to her attention while helping one of her constituents fill out a voter registration form. He printed his name, and when she told him to actually sign it, he insisted that was his signature.

The democratic tradition, where we believe the most profoundly ignorant members of society have the magical ability to select the best leaders.

Even the 11-year-old daughter of veteran Harlem legislator Herman “Denny” Farrell doesn’t know how to sign her name.

Really? Of "Denny Farrell???" It just got real, mang.

“They don’t teach it. I’m going to go home now and teach her handwriting.”

It's time we have an important talk about the birds, the bees and script.

“Can you imagine?” Malliotakis told The Post. “Not only does it mean you can’t sign a business contract, but it makes you vulnerable to identity theft because anyone can just go ahead and print your name.”

Because everyone prints exactly the same but cursive is as unique as your genetic code.

Here, have some free college.

Elia said she would look into the issue.

Action will be taken, you can bank on that! *Goes into office and drinks for six hours*

Full Article. 

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.    

News You Can't Use: Robots Could Soon Read Your Mind

It's very important that we somehow gain access to those sweet cranial electrical storms for the purpose of selling you products and not otherwise specified evil. In the past it wasn't easy and we had to rely on sharpened rocks and the like to get at the old head mush. The end result was barely worth the effort. Fortunately you and I are living in the best moment in all of human history (tomorrow will be even better!) and the technology for stamping out day dreaming, gaining easier thought crime convictions and selling, selling, selling based on frontal lobe invasion is near at hand.  And it's going to be robots! The future! I can barely believe it, honest.

Robots could soon be able to read your mind - and we won't be able to stop them because there are no laws against it, experts claim.

If only there were laws, that would stop it. Just like how they wiped out marijuana abuse and jaywalking. Please, elected officials, pass more laws and save us from the mind-reader bots. If you don't we'll be stuck with having to try to constantly think "Down with Big Robot!" as a pathetic and impotent final act of defiance.

If expert predictions come true, by 2030 smartphones, tablets and computers will be able to examine our brain activity to see what we are thinking.

Nice to see the "Flying car by 1965!" brigade hasn't lost any of their optimism for a high tech nightmare world.

Initially this will be used for security as a kind of 'pass thought' - the user thinks of a specific song or thought which the device recognises and then unlocks itself.

Hold on, let me concentrate on this highly detailed sexual/violence fantasy that unlocks my device so I can play some Angry Birds go to Brazil.

But a panel at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, warned of the terrifying possibility of hackers reading people's innermost thoughts.

Have you even considered the horrors this will unleash? Horrors like poorly written and completely unengaging "dystopia" novels about this possibility. Can we still love and chase nihilistic individuality in a world with hackers reading our thoughts? Find out next year in the artistically important new release "Summer of 1987."

"It turns out every person thinks quite differently about the same thing.

Your pathetic human minds full of stupidity and worthless non-collectivism. Prepare to be absorbed.

"So you could think like a song or a little ditty in your head while you are wearing a consumer based EEG device and then that, which has a unique neural signature, can be used as your pass code.

I guess you could just type in a word or whatever, but come on, future! Put these electrodes on, dawg.

"It turns out that's an incredibly effective, incredibly safe and almost impossible to replicate pass code, so there is discussion about using pass thoughts."

No one else could ever correctly visual the music video for "Last Christmas." No way.

She added: "Then you've got to really think about privacy."

Thinking about my love of privacy is my new pass thought.

But she warned once out there, "not good Samaritans" could access the data. 

I am aware of reality, at least in a highly abstract fashion.

One of these in every house.

"The idea that law is going to help us is not likely." 

There's some refreshing cynicism.

"There are no legal protections from having your mind involuntarily read," she added.

I'm pretty sure the Witchcraft and Devilry Act of 1691 covers at least some of that territory, actually.

Robot teaching assistants were also predicted at during the panel discussion.

Just when you thought that Geology 103: Rocks for Jocks lab session couldn't be any more half-assed.

"So I am imagining a world where we all have a bunch of cognitive assistants helping us."

We used to call them "family and friends" but let's get with the times.

Full Story. 

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.    

News You Can't Use: Man Hit Girlfriend With Anger Management Book, Both Arrested

Who here likes irony? Based on the popularity of his annoying and moronic little brother "sarcasm," I'm guessing we all do. Well, we're in for a treat because today's story is serving some up, and I mean the real irony and not the off-brand fake stuff like a man scared of planes dying in a plane crash or rainy weddings.

A Spartanburg County man is accused of hitting his girlfriend with his anger management book while she was accused of stabbing him with a boxcutter, landing both of them in jail.

After the inevitable lawsuit we'll get a warning label on the book that clarifies it's not a weapon for bludgeoning truculent loved ones into submission. Or at least the soft cover version isn't, the hardback would probably be serviceable.

Deputies said they were called to the woman's apartment Monday night where the fight broke out while watching a movie.

"He spoiled the mystery of what "Rosebud" was so I ran up on him. Sled, my ass. I'm a gonna cut ya for that."

Seriously, how does a fight start when watching a movie? Was he loudly rooting for the C.H.U.D.s or something? Constantly making MST3K-style obscure snarky references? I just don't get it.

According to the deputy's report, Sheelah Thompson, 22, claimed Tyler Ford, 23, strangled her and threatened to kill her several times

I'm assuming that means he made the threat several times and not that he was going to kill her, somehow resurrect the mortal remains, kill her again and keep repeating that process. That's how that sentence actually reads, but I'm pretty sure if we could bring people back from the Big Black we wouldn't waste that technology on Jerry Springer brawls that erupt over movies.

He put her phone in the oven

Today on the "Cell Phone Chef" we share amazing recipes that only require an oven, a phone, and a state of temporary insanity created by ugly disagreements over whether of not the guy in Blade Runner is a robot.

At one point, Thompson said Ford rolled up his anger management book and hit her with it, according to deputies.

The amazing thing is this is just the main highlight of what sounds like a 15 round knockdown-drag out.

The report stated Ford was asking Thompson questions about their relationship, about why she tries to get him angry knowing he was in anger management class, but she would only shrug in response, so he hit her on the foot and then the cheek with his book.

Looking forward to reading about how he assaults her with a "Couple's Communication Skills" book in a few months.

Both Ford and Thompson were arrested. Thompson was charged with criminal domestic violence high and aggravated while Ford was charged with criminal domestic violence second offense.

The "it was mildly humorous if you ignore some of the more horrific details so don't punish me" legal defense seems likely.

Full Story.

Komment Korner  

Ain't love grand?

Really, does it get any better than this? HAHAHA!

South Carolina, the part of the bible belt that stresses good family values.

Wait until Charlie Sheen hears about this

Check Out My Books!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read a free excerpt here.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.