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American Madness readers: meet William Johnson.
William, it is my pleasure to introduce you to American Madness.
I apologize up front for the awkward introduction, but this is the only way we could arrange for this meeting. William is currently incarcerated in Brazoria County, Texas on a burglary charge.
Turns out, he asked one of the local trailer park residents to help him move a big screen TV out of another trailer home that wasn’t William’s. Outside of stealing someone’s snuff, thievin’ a TV from a trailer park is about the highest crime you can commit in that part of Texas.
And he might have gotten away with the theft if he hadn’t been pulled over during a couple suspicious U-Turns in the middle of the Interstate. And even that might not have got him nabbed if the officers didn’t think it entirely too weird that his co-pilots were a six-foot long alligator and a water moccasin (a type of poisonous snake).
Ok, I’ll pause and let you read that last little bit over again.
Yep, William here is a man with a fondness for reptiles. The Houston Chronicle reports Johnson told the pokey that he found the snake and the alligator on the sides of roads and picked them up because he has an interest in cold-blooded, scaled creatures. Read more »
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I just came across an article I missed from the middle of September. Newsweek reported on a website called MarryOurDaughter.com. The site appears to be under construction right about now, but here is what it had offered (according to Newsweek): “a matching service for followers of ‘the Biblical tradition’ of arranged marriages.” It allowed people to look through profiles of girls… and when I say girls, I mean girls, the majority were apparently around 15… whose parents wanted to marry them off and were asking for a price for their hand in marriage, a dowry if you will, usually something in the low to mid- 5 digit range.
Seems like an obvious choice for Newsweek to write about. Mail-order brides are not a new thing to the internet, but usually hey are from foreign countries and they are not underage girls. The thing is, Newsweek was not ‘exposing’ this site and telling us about the dangers of the internet, instead they were discussing the true mission behind the site.
According to MarryOurDaughter.com the site was not exactly a hoax, but rather an attempt to educate folks through something they call ‘viral politics’:
Call it an experiment an experiment in Viral Politics. That children can marry down to twelve years old in America, which they can do, is Not Right. That the age of consent is higher than the age of marriage is Not Right. That parents can marry off their children for money or for any other reason is Not Right. Railing about it on the web, as many do, wasn’t making a difference. Thinking outside the box led us to marryourdaughter.com.
Read more »
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That my friends is a pickle. Specifically a Kool-Aid Pickle.
I am not fucking with you.
The NY Times had an article yesterday called “A Sweet So Sour- Kool-Aid Dills” about a growing trend amongst students in the South who are eating some intriguingly horrible combinations of food:
Warm Cheetos & Ice Cream
Blow Pops & Pickles
Lemons & Peppermint Straws (which will continue the trend we are developing on this site of discussing Easting Lemons)
But specifically the article focused on these home brewed pickles. They come in every flavor combination imaginable made by the Kool-Aid folks. The recipe listed in the article sounds like it will rot your teeth if you read it too many times let alone eat it. And yet I am intrigued and kind of want to make them (though I know my wife would kill me… though my dentist would probably pleased with the extra cavities I developed). Reading is believing on this one.