It’s been more than ten years since I lost my mom. Frankly, I’m glad she’s gone. Now, before you accuse me of being a shallow, selfless, ingrate, let me explain. I loved my mom. I really did. But technology made the decade beginning in 2008 brutal for old people. First there were self-driving cars. Then came the Amazon Kindle, followed by the Mars rover and the Hadron Collider. Even I felt overwhelmed. No sooner did my mom learn how to retrieve re-runs of Bonanza using her TV remote, someone went and moved all the controls to her cell phone. Her cell phone! “Let me get this straight,” she said. “I’m…
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My Sizzling Russian Bride Finding "Ms. Right" after Farmersonly, GothicMatch, STDFriends, CougarWomen, DirtyEncounters and Meet-an-Inmate.com
By the time I found Svetlana, my Russian bride, I knew I was in love. Having been tossed off all the run-of-the-mill American online dating sites like Farmersonly, GothicMatch, STDFriends, CougarWomen, DirtyEncounters and Meet-an-Inmate.com, I finally resorted to trolling for eastern European women on SizzlingRussianBrides.com. That’s where my troubles began. After combing through thousands of profiles of beautiful Russian women, I settled on someone I thought could be “the one.” Svetlana was a voluptuous 27-year-old dental hygienist from the small village of Trochenbrod. According to her profile, she was college educated, spoke “some English” and loved reading, cooking, photography and pole vaulting. Her carefully crafted message read, “Hi. I’m Svetlana.…
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Pardon Me, But You’re Stepping on My Boundaries They’re not much but they’re all we have
The first thing I noticed about the gleaming new Porsche was the way it was parked–strategically straddling a disabled space and the one next to it—my parking space. But, instead of throwing a hissy fit, I calmly took out my car keys and gouged a continuous line along the entire side of the car. That is, after I surgically removed both windshield wipers and liberated the air from all four tires. So much for social and personal boundaries. I suppose to some my reaction might have been a tad over the top for something as innocuous as stealing a parking space. But, it’s my space. It’s the one possession I…
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Blaschko Lines Blaschko's lines disease proves there's a little zebra in all of us
Nature has an interesting way of identifying animals in the wild. Lions have their manes, leopards have spots. Tigers and zebras have stripes. And apparently, so do people with Blaschko Lines. Blaschko Lines are common skin patterns that were first identified in 1901 by a German dermatologist named Alfred Blaschko. Over the course of years of examining thousands of patients, he often observed people who exhibited unusual patterns of dark stripes and swirls that encompassed their entire bodies. Some patterns were restricted to an arm or a leg. Other patients had stripes that ran from head to toe, beginning on their face, migrating to their chest and wrapping around their…
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Life on the Body Farm What really happens to our bodies after death?
When Mary Scarborough wrote the lyrics to “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” in 1923, she probably didn’t have a research facility in mind. She wouldn’t find cows, chickens or pigs at “The Body Farm” – just scores of rotting human bodies, covered in maggots. The Body Farm (officially known as the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Facility) was the brainchild of Dr. William Bass, a Forensic Anthropologist from Kansas who helps law enforcement agencies estimate how long a person has been dead. Determining the time of death is crucial in confirming alibis and establishing timelines for violent crimes. After 11 years of watching human decomposition, Bass realized how little was…