In this age of "You can't sue me because I'm suing you first!", the idea of a lawsuit against a theme park such as Sea World or Disney World is not so weird. However, the Orlando Sentinel was kind enough to prepare a website listing all of the lawsuits against all of the area's theme parks. Most of them are your basic slip-and-fall types, but some are completely off the wall. For instance, at Busch Gardens, "A woman said she concocted blood infections after a vulture at a bird show landed on her leg and clawed it." And at Epcot Center, "A woman said she suffered bleeding in her brain due to the G-forces and jerking movements on the Mission: Space ride." But I think my favorite is the woman from Wet and Wild who "said she was struck in the head and neck and injured by an umbrella that blew out of a mount in a storm."
But apparently he's just as scary. A woman from Abbeville, Louisiana has filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart because the local store allowed their pet Nutria to run loose without alerting the shoppers. Rebecca White was so freaked out when she spotted Norman that she jumped back and her cart rolled over her foot, breaking two bones. This begs a number of questions... What's a Nutria? It's a large furry rodent (pictured, right). Why was one running around the store? Why did the employees name him Norman? And what the heck did she have in her cart that was so heavy? You can read more about it here.
What image could possibly be great enough for our milestone fiftieth installment? Only this one!
At one time, during either the seventies or the eighties, I believe, this campaign was ubiquitous. I would run across OJ and his boots in every issue of Playboy I intended to cut up for collages, whereupon I would promptly rip out the page intact and mail it to a friend. That's why I had to find a scan on eBay, for this post, and can't tell you the exact provenance of the advertisement.
Of course, today we laugh because of OJ's appearance. "So that's how he was able to escape so fast after the murders! He deployed his third leg!"
But consider the campaign even without OJ.
First you get the off-color allusion to "third leg = penis." Then you get the Addams-Family-style associations of "Our boots are worn by mutants and freaks."
Most Supreme Court cases are as dry as a particle-board sandwich. But not the one you can read about here. That's because this case involves a genuine wackjob cult named Summum, which believes, amongst other things, in sacred mummification of pets.
Sure, we all love bacon! But who wants to live next to a pig farm? Not these folks in Massachusetts, who, according to today's Boston Globe (registration required), suffer smells like those "at the bottom of a dumpster." But this new Congressional report finds the EPA ready to relax their rules for such farms.
Here's an article about a manure lagoon spill in 2005 that released 3 million gallons of pig poop!
Have a gander at Dakota Joe. He and his dog Digger are the mascots for a national Vacation Bible School Camp program. Because, you see, ultra-rationalist archaeology professors who believe fervently in the scientific method, despite having encountered various paranormal phenomena which themselves contradict Gospel, are the perfect spokepeople for Biblical inerrancy.
Seriously, though, shouldn't Spielberg & Lucas be suing the pants off these guys?
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.