When I was doing this man’s butt hole, he clenched up tightly in response to the pain. When he finally released his the muscles, little bits of poo sprayed everywhere. I was wearing gloves and an apron, but a few spurts definitely got in my hair.
— Phoebe, 28
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I had a one-time client who looked like she was in her late 60s. She was super relaxed and said that she was a pro at handling pain, which made me feel better about putting hot wax on a fragile old lady. As I positioned her legs, I could tell she was still strong and flexible. When I saw her vagina, though, I had to do a double take. There were bruises everywhere. I looked up to meet her eyes, and she’d anticipated my concern. “Don’t worry, Sweetie,” she said, “I like it rough. My husband really pounded me last night.” I was stunned, but also kind of impressed.
— Carla, 35
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Once, I waxed a lady who was making gasping noises even when I wasn’t ripping the wax strips off. I figured she was really sensitive to pain, so as I went in to do the labia, I gently warned her that things might get more uncomfortable. She winced and said, “It’s okay. The contractions are just getting to me.” The woman was actually in labor! She wanted to look her best down there for the doctor, I guess.
— Farah, 39
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I had a client once who was so obese that I had to use one arm to hold up the woman’s fat rolls just to locate her vagina. There were a lot of dingle berries to look out for with that one.
— Carol, 35
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One customer insisted on being accompanied by her boyfriend. I agreed, but I’ve never felt weirder during an appointment. After giving the lady a few minutes to change out of her clothes, I walk in to find her butt naked instead of wearing the paper gown I’d provided. Her partner was just staring at her. I can’t be sure since my backed was turned to him, but I think he was fondling himself as I went about my work.
— Lyla, 34
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I was seeing someone new to Brazilian waxing who said she wanted her butt waxed too. But as soon as she spread her ass cheeks for me, she started cracking up. It only got worse as I started with the wax. She laughed harder and harder. I guess she was really ticklish in that area for whatever reason. You’d think the giggling would be a nice change from screams of pain, but it was so hard to stay professional and not to laugh at her laughing.
— Gillian, 32
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One of my clients is required to get her entire body waxed before her period starts every month for religious reasons. Waxing hurts like hell, and I guess it hurts even more if you’re not really getting it done by your own choice. This woman screams hysterically throughout the process, which is always especially long for her because she gets the head-to-toe treatment. The last time she was in, the police actually turned up. Someone had called in to report a possible “torture chamber.”
— Theresa, 27
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This woman came in and asked if I’d wax her even though she was on her period. I said of course since I wax women wearing tampons all the time. But when I came back into the room after giving the customer some time to change, what I saw looked like a murder scene. Her disposable cloth panties were drenched in blood, and there was blood all over the table. Standing there with her bloody hands, she says, “my flow’s pretty heavy.” Luckily we have the right to refuse services so I politely excused myself and notified my manager of the situation.
— Jules, 30
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When my older brother brought his new girlfriend over for dinner, I realized immediately that she was a client. I didn’t say anything at the table, but I pulled my brother aside to tell him I’d seen the goods before he had! Awkward.
— Rachel, 36
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At my very first job, I had a customer who handled the waxing pain really well but as soon as the aloe vera calming mixture touched her skin, she started screaming like crazy. Confused, I squirted a bit more onto her immediately. But then I noticed an odd smell. The cleaning staff had accidentally filled my unmarked spray bottle with industrial strength cleaning solution. I apologized profusely, but I never saw her again.
Poop is the last place most of us would expect to find the next miracle beauty ingredient. But according to certain skincare experts, there’s something exceptional about nightingale excrement. Reportedly, Victoria Bekham agrees. For $180 at New York’s Shizuka Spa, bird poop aficionados like Beckham can get their faces smothered in an unusual mixture of avian waste over the course of an hour. We only hope they smell okay post treatment.
Lindsay Lohan is the latest to join the ranks of celebrity waist training enthusiasts like Kim, Khloé, and Kourtney Kardashian. What does “training” your waist entail, exactly? Basically, it means wearing a brace around your midsection that physically squeezes your sides so you can look less human and more hourglass. To us, the idea sounds frighteningly reminiscent of foot-binding, a Chinese custom that involved wrapping young girls’ feet in painfully tight bandages to prevent further growth. And yet, we have to admit that waist training seems a whole lot more reasonable than having your ribs removed to achieve the same end, a la Pamela Anderson.
3. They attach blood sucking leeches to their skin.
To some, leeches are disgusting creatures to be avoided at all costs. But to Demi Moore, they’re mystical worms with phenomenal detoxifying potential. In an interview on The Late Show With David Letterman, Moore described the process of attaching “highly trained medical leeches” to various parts of her figure in an effort to cleanse, which sounds nothing short of horrifying. Whether or not blood-sucking spas are destined to replace organic juice shops remains to be seen.
Supposedly, Christie Brinkley advocates the use of kitty litter as a body scrub, which means that your cat’s litter box might just be the key to maintaining desirable thighs. The idea is simple enough: By rubbing the grainy stuff all over your legs, you remove dead skin cells while fighting cellulite. Meow.
5. They rub hemorrhoid cream all over their faces.
Sandra Bullock is one of many performers rumored to rely on hemorrhoid cream to reduce fine lines and the appearance of circles beneath the eyes. As it happens, the method of applying ointment to your cheeks and forehead that’s intended for your butthole is a lot less (ahem) asinine than you might think. This tactic has long been championed by theater actors eager to achieve a youthful on-stage glow, and there’s solid evidence to substantiate their claims. Under-eye bags tend to appear as our skin loses its elasticity, and over-the-counter hemorrhoid creams are designed to tighten skin and minimize swelling by constricting blood vessels.
Divergent star Shailene Woodley believes that clay is “one of the best things you can put in your body.” Why? Because a taxi driver told her so. Plus, she purports that it “bonds to negative isotopes…and helps clean heavy metals out of your body.”
Former football player turned life coach Tony Robbins is a huge proponent of chryotherapy, a super expensive process that involves standing in a cylindrical, sauna type structure filled with nitrogen. After three minutes, your body temperature drops to negative 220 degrees Fahrenheit, which sounds extremely dangerous, except that the lack of moisture prevents you from freezing to death. Advocates like Robbins swear by routine chryotherapy as a way to stimulate endorphins and increase energy. Is Robbins’ permanent ear-to-ear grin proof of this odd strategy’s effectiveness? Maybe.
According to The Black Book of Hollywood Secrets, Terri Hatcher attributes her soft smooth skin to bathing regularly in red wine. Allegedly, you just have to pour one cup of fermented grape juice in the tub before stepping in. The upside here seems obvious: You’re left with three-quarters of a bottle to slug while you relax and let the warm (nutritious?) liquid seep into your pores.
According to Eddie Murphy’s daughter Bria, a leggy 20-something who’s starred in several beauty campaigns and appeared in Maxim magazine, models today are turning to the “cotton ball diet” to stay thin. Adherents swallow OJ-soaked cotton in place of consuming actual food so they can feel full without actually ingesting any calories. As you might guess, this practice is terrible for you.
What do Kim Basinger and Demi Moore have in common, besides impressive career longevity and a couple of failed marriages? Shiny hair! What’s more, rumor has it that each of these leading ladies achieves the impossibly lustrous look by rinsing her locks with bottled water. For those of us hesitant to spend yet more money on a hair care program, it’s worth asking: Does filtered water do the trick?
11. They refuse to eat anything except purple food.
Several sources have reported that Mariah Carey embraced the “purple foods diet” to shed her baby weight after giving birth. The theory behind the diet—which encourages people to sustain themselves by consuming only lilac colored edibles—is rooted in the fact that plums, blueberries, purple potatoes and beets contain powerful anti-oxidants called anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are known to protect cells from damage and are believed to have anti-aging benefits. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how wrinkly Mariah gets in the next few years.
12. They clean their teeth with crushed up strawberries.
Apparently, Catherine Zeta-Jones is a fan of brushing her teeth with a concoction made from baking soda and crushed strawberries. This “natural” DIY teeth whitening strategy is endorsed by the likes of Dr. Oz, who claims that strawberries contain an astringent, which helps in the removal of surface stains, as well as Vitamin C, which clears plaque. Unfortunately for would-be berry brushers everywhere, scientists have noted that the delicious red cone-shaped fruits also contain a high concentration of citric acid, which can really weaken tooth enamel.
It started gradually. Simply, actually. A lot of sneezing. We both assumed it was allergies, and so did the doctor. Rhinitis, Dr. Reznik diagnosed. Chad was only 8-years old at the time, but he was an avid reader. He would read anything and enjoy it. So of course he read the doctor’s notes and the diagnosis startled him. “I’m turning into a rhino?!” he asked us, tears welling up in his eyes. Confusion grew in them, too, when Dr. Reznik and I burst out laughing at my poor little boy. “No, no,” the doctor said. “Rhinitis. Inflammation of the nasal passages — the inside of your nose. It just makes your nose runny and stuffy. If you take your medicine like your mom and I tell you to,” the doctor assured him, “it should clear up in a few days and you’ll be all ready for school on Monday!” Chad groaned. “I’d rather turn into a rhino so I can live at the zoo!” In addition to being an avid reader, he was a great student. Yet, like all kids his age, he would rather have stayed home and played video games.
That doctor’s appointment was on a Friday, exactly 10 years ago today. I don’t have much time to recall all of this, because I have a lot of important tasks to attend to today. But Chad is really such a wonderful and unique boy — now a man, by law, but still my baby boy — that I must tell you how I help him.
As the weeks and months wore on, the rhinitis never cleared up. Other symptoms started to appear; a harsh cough, itching and flaky, rashy skin, and an increased appetite. “Increased” is an understatement. Chad would eat anything. I tried to fill him up on protein, but chicken and beans just weren’t doing the trick. Eventually, he was eating moderate to large amounts of beef every day. The doctors (now others instead of Dr. Reznik, because Chad’s symptoms were beyond his practice of pediatric medicine) advised against his diet of red meat; they suggested I clean the house every day and wash his laundry with mild laundry detergent (to ease his apparent allergic reactions); they recommended specific and expensive air purifiers; they prescribed medicines I could barely pronounce.
None of these things worked. For a while, I stopped taking Chad to any doctors at all. His symptoms, I noticed (and also kept track of in a journal), seemed to ease while he was eating, but they flared up and made him miserable when his appetite was strongest. After several years (Chad was then 14), school became too difficult for him. He was embarrassed by his constant, unrelenting sneezing and itching, and the rashes had darkened and spread over nearly all of his exposed skin, which he was made fun of for. He began skipping his classes and spending them in all of the lunch periods so that he could eat. It didn’t take too long for the faculty to catch on. He was not gaining the weight that a person of his age, consuming thousands of calories a day, would normally have gained. His principal told me that he was probably going through a “teenage growth spurt” and that “boys get really hungry” and that Chad was “experimenting with rebellious behavior, which is to be expected by a boy in a single-parent household.” The principal allowed him to “take some time off.”
It was time to see more doctors. Chad’s internal organs were checked. He was studied, poked at, and prodded. His brain was scanned. Nothing at all was visibly wrong. That’s when his neurologist said he should see a psychiatrist. I was shocked, and a bit offended. Chad was a wonderful teenager, I never had any issues with his behavior, but he had no friends because of his symptoms. He was no longer doing well in school because his symptoms and his appetite interrupted his studying. But otherwise…he was a wonderful child.
I was forced to home school Chad until he turned 17. We managed his symptoms the best we could. On my salary, after paying bills and buying groceries and necessities, I could not fully afford the extra food that Chad needed. I had to work extra hours, but I ceased to do that when Chad turned 18.
One evening, the doorbell rang. Chad was impatiently waiting for dinner to be ready. He was in his room, trying to distract his growling stomach by occupying his brain with violent video games.
It was a stranger at the door, an elderly man. Simple chance brought him to our door. “Hello there!” he said. “I’m Eddy, I’m new next door. I’m sorry to ask on our first meeting, but may I use your bathroom? The plumbing is all messed up at my place.” Eddy was a very nice man. At least he was on that one occasion. “Nice to meet you, Eddy,” I said. “I’m Charlotte. I live here with my son, Chad. Do you live alone, if I may ask?” Eddy told me no, he lived alone. In fact, he confided, no one had even known he moved. He was a private man with a very small family who lived nearly all the way across the country, but he didn’t much like them anyway. “No one would even miss me if I hadn’t made it here!” he said, and I couldn’t tell if that upset him or if he was indifferent.
I told him where the bathroom was. Upstairs, second door on the right. Chad’s room was the first door on the right. I didn’t tell him that, though.
Eddy thanked me and went upstairs.
I heard Chad’s door open, and I heard muffled conversation. It was brief, but friendly. And then I heard the scream. I stood in front of the closed front door with my arms crossed and just listened. There had been only one scream. Good, I thought. No struggle. After a few minutes I went upstairs. I was thankful that I have hardwood floors throughout the house, because had there been carpet in the upstairs hallway and in Chad’s room, I never would have gotten the bloodstains out.
Chad had dragged Eddy’s body into the middle of the bedroom floor, and used a pair of scissors to cut him open from the sternum to the top of his groin. That wasn’t what had killed him, though. Chad had used the scissors to stab the old man in the throat, just under his chin, and it was obvious from the blood all over his face that he had drank a lot of what had spurted from Eddy’s throat.
I sighed heavily. I was angry, I’ll admit. There was such a mess! Chad had started scooping out the man’s intestines and — liver? Or maybe it was the spleen, I couldn’t tell the difference what with all the blood — and his room was a pigsty to begin with. There was blood on the clothes that I had just washed for him and had repeatedly told him to hang up in his closet. Teenage boys! You know how it is if you’re a parent.
“Chad Alexander!” I had my hands on my hips, like a sitcom mother who has just discovered her toddler has drawn all over the walls with permanent marker. “No dinner until you clean up this mess. How many times did I tell you to put your clothes away? Do you want them to be wrinkled? And—stop that! Don’t eat that raw, let me cook it for you.”
Chad must have heard my conversation with Eddy; of course he knew that the man wouldn’t be missed. Otherwise he would have risked getting us into major trouble, and Chad was never a troublemaker. He was a wonderful boy.
Chad’s symptoms nearly disappeared that night, after his dinner. I did not ask him to help me dispose of the remainder of Eddy, but I did make him mop his floor. Chad enjoyed leftovers for the rest of the week, and his symptoms were mild or nonexistent for the rest of the month.
After that night, though, he became very sick. I had to continue providing for my son. I started to hunt more frequently, but I had to travel farther. No, not the deer or skunks or possums or even rats that lived in the woods behind our house — I had to go find people. People who wouldn’t be missed. The few times I turned on the news, I watched for a bit about the prostitutes or runaways who had mysteriously vanished, but I never heard anything about the homeless men and women. I still haven’t. If you think about it, we’re doing society a favor by ridding it of undesirables. The prices of beef, a few years ago, began rising and eventually were too much for me to afford. I had to try an alternative. Sure, the “shopping” now carries risks and is messier, but it is, ultimately, much cheaper. And wouldn’t you do anything for your child?
I could go on for pages and pages, but like I mentioned, I have things to do. I keep very busy these days. But if you’re a parent, you know the joys that come along with knowing how your hard work and tight schedules ultimately benefit your pride and joy, your child.
Chad really is such a fantastic boy. And good mothers provide for their baby boys.
As an author, sometimes you get stuck. The well of inspiration runs dry. What do you do? Well, when I need a good kickstart to get writing again, I look online for weird or interesting articles. But here’s the thing: I write horror, so my search for a subject to ignite a fire in my brain tends to lead me down a darker rabbit-hole than most.
Here are some of the creepiest true stories I’ve discovered lurking in the shadowy depths of the world wide web.
This Disturbing Painting That Predicted Hitler — In The Year He Was Born
Something about this one really weirds me out. In 1889, prolific painter Franz von Stuck created a harrowing piece that depicts German god Wotan leading a procession of the dead. Between the look of anguish on the faces of the damned and the soulless eyes of Wotan, the painting is not exactly something one would hang in their living room. (Not even me.) But here’s the really creepy part: it was painted the year Adolf Hitler was born, it was said to be one of Hitler’s favorite paintings, and let’s not beat around the bush here: IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE GOD DAMN HITLER.
Here’s another thing. Wotan was not a very nice god — in fact, he was a god of war — and upon his awakening, legend said he would do basically just what’s depicted in the painting. He would, essentially, lead a march of the dead through Germany. Sound familiar to you?
Carl Jung even likened Hitler to “Wotan’s avatar” and, as early as 1936, theorized that Wotan had “awoken and resided not only in Hitler, but the German people as a whole”. That’s what makes the painting and its backstory so unsettling to me. Did Franz von Stuck know what he was creating? Was it just a bizarre coincidence? Or is history already written long before we have a chance to recognize it?
Politician Budd Dwyer’s On-Air Suicide
You’ve either never heard of Budd Dwyer in your life or you wish you’d never heard of Budd Dwyer. Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way: Dwyer was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate and, most notably, the 30th Treasurer of Pennsylvania.
But something went wrong. In the early 80s, the state discovered its employees had overpaid federal taxes due to errors in withholding. Accounting firms lost their shit competing for the multimillion dollar contract to fix the mess. Supposedly, Dwyer had received a bribe from a firm in California who wanted the contract; he maintained his innocence, but he was convicted and scheduled to be sentenced on those charges on January 23, 1987.
Which leads us to January 22, 1987. Dwyer called a press conference the day before his sentencing and the media went nuts, assuming he was going to resign from office. Reporters showed up in droves, ready to get the top story.
Dwyer began by reading what people described as a “rambling polemic about the criminal justice system”, where he speculated on his sentencing, which was a maximum of 55 years in prison and a $300,000 fine. He restated that he was innocent and hadn’t participated in any illegal activities. Then, he stopped reading from his prepared text (leaving out the last page, which contained the true reason for his press conference) and began handing out envelopes to his staffers.
That done, he produced from his own manila envelope a blued Smith & Wesson Model 27 revolver. Dwyer told the crowd, “Please, please leave the room if this will… if this will affect you.”
Those in attendance immediately began pleading with him to put the gun down. Dwyer tried to continue his speech but kept the people trying to approach him at bay, telling them, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, this will hurt someone.” After only about 15 seconds, Dwyer put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, committing suicide in front of a live midday television audience. He died instantly.
In the unread page from his prepared text, Dwyer stated his suicide was meant to be a sacrifice to encourage “the development of a true Justice System here in the United States”. Many years later, the main witness in his trial admitted to lying under oath about Dwyer taking the bribe, effectively clearing his name… far too late.
David Parker Ray’s Reign As The “Toy Box Killer”
Considering how truly and utterly insane this guy was, I’m surprised he’s not one of the more well-known serial killers. And that may be due to one simple fact: David Parker Ray has a total confirmed victim count of 0, but he’s suspected to have taken part in the sexual torture and murder of between 14-60 women.
His victims woke up in an old mobile home that Ray spent $100,000 customizing into his very own torture chamber, which he fondly called his “toy box”. It was stocked with what he called his “friends” — whips, chains, straps, clamps, surgical blades — and a homemade electric device he used for some really awful purposes. It’s bad enough that there was ONE guy who was willing to do these things to innocent women, but get this: Ray had at LEAST two other accomplices, one being his own daughter.
You can find the transcripts online to the tapes he played for his captives that laid out the “rules” for their stay but I warn you, they are extremely disturbing. Here’s a little taste, the very first thing his victims heard upon waking up in hell: “Hello there, bitch. Are you comfortable right now? I doubt it.”
June and Jennifer Gibbons, The Silent Twins
Here’s a great example of how a little online sleuthing can really inspire an author. After stumbling upon June and Jennifer Gibbons, I immediately wrote this piece about my own pair of spooky twins. While my story is fictional, the story of The Silent Twins isn’t, and it’s just as eerie — with a mysterious, tragic end.
June and Jennifer Gibbons were born in Barbados and moved with their parents to Wales after their birth. Life was hard for the daughters of Caribbean immigrants; they were the only black children in their community, not popular in school, and spoke so quickly that it was hard for anyone outside their family to understand what they were saying. After being bullied and ostracized, their language became even more difficult to interpret and eventually became completely unintelligible.
The twins began to speak only to each other and their younger sister. Therapy didn’t work, and sending them to boarding school caused them to go completely catatonic when separated.
As many children who don’t fit in tend to do (*ahem*), the twins found an outlet through creative writing. Their stories were usually set in the United States and revolved around young men and women exhibiting strange, criminal behavior. They penned a few novels and tried selling their pieces to magazines without success. So, understandably, they turned to a glamorous life of crime. Who wouldn’t? Rejection sucks!
After being charged with a number of illegal activities including arson, they were committed to Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security insane asylum. They remained there for 14 years, silent and despondent.
Sad, yes, but not really all that creepy, right? Well, according to journalist Marjorie Wallace, the twins had a long-standing agreement that if one died, the other was supposed to get her shit together and start living a normal life. During their years in the mental hospital, they became obsessed with the idea that one of them HAD to die in order for the other twin to speak again. Like a champ, Jennifer decided to be the “sacrifice”.
In March of 1993, they were transferred to a clinic with less security; upon arriving, Jennifer didn’t wake up. She was rushed to the hospital and died soon after of acute myocarditis, a sudden inflammation of the heart. Doctors were stumped. There was no evidence of drugs or poison in her system, and she’d never had heart problems before. Weird, right?
And guess what? June DID get her shit together. No longer committed to a mental institution, she lives a quiet life near her parents and was even quoted as saying, “I’m free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life for me.” So basically, Jennifer took one for the team — literally. What has your sister done for YOU lately?
The Train Wreck That Killed Over 100 Circus Performers
I’ll admit it, I don’t fall into the category of people creeped out by clowns. I mean sure, I don’t want one to murder me or anything, but I just don’t have that visceral reaction to clowns that a lot of others seem to. However, the idea of a catastrophic train wreck where massive numbers of circus performers were mutilated beyond recognition? Yeah, that’s a visual to keep me up at night.
Early in the morning of June 22, 1918, Alonzo Sargent was operating a Michigan Central Railroad train with 20 empty cars. He’d been following close behind a circus train going considerably slower, and whoopsy-doodle, fell asleep at the wheel. (Do trains have wheels? Or is it like a control panel? Whatever, he fell asleep at a bad time.)
The 26-car circus train had stopped to check a hot box but Sargent was taking a little nap so his train plowed into the caboose and four rear sleeping cars at an estimated 35 miles per hour.
Most of the 104 dead were killed in less than a minute after collision, then the wreck burst into flames. Many of the bodies couldn’t be identified due to the severity of the injuries, so most casualties are marked “Unknown Male” or “Unknown Female”. In case that’s not creepy enough, you’ve also got graves marked “Smiley” and “Baldy”, plus the confirmed deaths of the Great Dierckx Brothers (a strongman duo) and Jennie Ward Todd of The Flying Wards. (If you’re interested, you can visit Showmen’s Rest in Forest Park, Illinois.)
A historic tragedy, sure — but there’s just something undeniably haunting about the idea of an early 20th century circus wandering the train tracks at night, searching for the final performance that will never come.
Tara Calico And The Mysterious Polaroid
On September 20, 1988, 19 year old Tara Calico went on a morning bike ride in her hometown of Belen, New Mexico. She never came back.
Almost a year later, on June 15, 1989, a Polaroid photo was found in the parking lot of a convenience store in Port St. Joe, Florida. The photo showed an unidentified young woman and an unidentified boy, both gagged and bound.
There was speculation on the identity of the boy that eventually fell through, leaving who he was a mystery — but Tara’s mother insists the woman in the photo is her daughter. There’s a definite resemblance, but the biggest clues were a scar on her leg (similar to one Tara had gotten in a car accident) and the V.C. Andrews book in the photo, which happened to be one of Tara’s favorite books.
Scotland Yard says it IS her. The Los Alamos National Laboratory says it ISN’T her. The FBI has no friggin’ clue.
And to make matters even more insidious, two more Polaroid photographs that are similar to the one found have surfaced since her disappearance… but they have yet to be shown to the public. Nearly 27 years later, no one has even CLOSE to an idea about what happened to Tara Calico, if she’s still alive, or who the boy with her in the photograph is.
20,000 Orphaned Children Who Became Mental Patients Thanks To The Canadian Government
I’ll be totally honest here, I didn’t find this one online on my own. I heard about it from the movie “Tusk” and looked it up so it sort of counts, okay? Anyway, in the 1950s, the premier of Quebec was Maurice Duplessis and he was a super-staunch Catholic. He decided that the Church should be the sole caretaker of the poor, alcoholics, orphans, and unwed mothers. Good idea in theory, right? Duplessis said he “trusted them completely” and signed over responsibility of schools, orphanages, and hospitals to the Catholic Church.
Well, there were a few problems with that plan. A lot of orphans were actually born to parents who weren’t married, but the Church didn’t approve so they were sent away. So not only were the orphanages fuller than they should’ve been, but the Quebec government didn’t get enough money to subsidize orphanages. They did a little math and found out they were getting $1.25 a day for orphans but $2.75 a day for psychiatric patients.
Here’s where it gets really screwed up: there was an old law called Loi sur les Asiles d’aliénés (Lunatic Asylum Act) that said you could commit someone to an insane asylum for three reasons: to care for them, to help them, or a security measure to maintain social order. So the idea of “social order”, not being directly defined, translated into 20,000 orphans being deemed “mentally deficient”. Suddenly there were a lot less orphans and a hell of a lot more psychiatric patients. Weird how that worked out.
These kids were subjected to abhorrent treatment, including sexual, mental, and physical abuse, all for a little extra cash — not to mention the drug testing and medical experiments, because you know, they were “mentally deficient” so I guess that’s a good excuse? The 1960s ushered in the end of the asylum era but by then the damage was done for most of the former mental patients; about 78% of orphans from this time period reported difficulty in maintaining a normal, healthy adult existence. They dubbed themselves “Duplessis Orphans” for Maurice Duplessis, whose poor decisions they felt ruined countless lives. As of today, the Catholic Church has refused to apologize.
Everyone’s seen the image in popular culture of the nervous nail biter who’s come up against a stressful situation and begun immediately trimming their nails with their teeth. It’s a trope almost, as familiar an image as the nervous chain smoker.
Well, not so fast, one study suggests that people who do things like bite their nails, pick at their skin, and pull at their hair do so not because they’re nervous but because they’re inherently perfectionists. People that bite their nails are more likely to be bored, more likely to be unable to sit calmly in a room, and more likely to become frustrated than their non-nail biting counterparts. In short, nail biting, etc makes a perfectionist feel like they’re getting something done.
2. Nose Picking….And Booger Eating
While simple nose picking is easily explained (these boogies are clogging my nostrils and I don’t have a tissue), booger eating carries with it a whole host of judgements from society and even the psychiatric community. Scientists who study obsessive compulsive disorder have found that, among populations of psychotic persons, there was a correlation between nose picking and the motive to self mutilate.
There’s just one problem with this kind of study though, 91% of people interviewed in other studies admit to picking their noses and sometimes eating what they’ve found there. So where is the line drawn? You’re only suffering from a psychological condition, it seems, if you spend circa one to two hours a day engaging in the practice and maybe even mutilate your nose in the process. This group of people suffers from what’s known as rhinotillexomania, which I hope I am never asked to pronounce, and are in a category outside your every day American nostril cleaner.
But why do people do this? Well, outside the realm of obsessive compulsive behaviors, some people simply claim to like the taste and one doctor has even gone so far as claiming that eating your boogers boosts the immune system which might make it an evolutionary development.
“With the finger you can get to places you just can’t reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner. And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system. Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.”
Welp.
3. Singing In The Shower
This is a habit that almost everyone in the world relates to. According to one survey, three out of five people end up singing once their toes cross the threshold of their shower.
But why the shower? Well, the answer, simply, is tile, alone time, and enclosed space. This results in a sound resonance that you just won’t get in any other room of your home. As a result, you can hear yourself better and your voice has reverb and sounds fuller. Plus there’s no one there to judge you when you want to have a Hootie and the Blowfish throwback Thursday morning.
But going further, these are somewhat superficial reasons. The real question is why do you want to sing when you’re alone at all that would make singing in the shower so much better? Put simply, we sing in order to feel something. Think about it, when are the times you’re most likely to sing when alone. It’s when you’re doing some mundane emotionless task, right? Doing the dishes, cleaning the house, sitting in traffic and, yes, showering, are all essentially mindless. It’s a time when you’re not being stimulated emotionally. In this sense, singing is a kind of talking to yourself in an attempt to create a mood or relive a memory that you’re not being provided with by outside stimuli and, as such, is a kind of imaginary expression.
So while you may think of singing in the shower as an unexplainable oddity, the reasons for it are actually deeply creative and universally expressive.
4. Thumb Sucking
Thumb sucking is more widespread that you might think but since society tends to see it as a sign of immaturity rather than an acceptable coping mechanism like pen biting because, y’know, babies do it, it’s talked about less than it might otherwise be. A decidedly non-scientific survey taken on ancient website thumbsuckingadults reveals that nearly two thirds of thumb suckers are female and that the largest category of all thumbsuckers are between the ages of 16-23 with 24-28 being the second highest age group. The tendency tapers off severely after that suggesting that this is either a generational phenomenon or people stop doing it as they get older.
Even more interesting is that nearly 29% of respondents also use a blanket while sucking their thumbs and nearly the same amount, 24% masturbate while sucking their thumbs. This later bit is significant because masturbation is also sometimes considered a coping mechanism in children and can be the reason for compulsive masturbation in adults.
But the simple reason most adult thumb suckers continue to take comfort in the act is simple, their parents didn’t make them stop. It’s not more psychologically odd than other oral habits like it, however, just less common and hidden.
5. Earwax Eating
Bizarrely enough, there’s almost no information available on earwax eating as a phenomena outside of universal ridicule towards those that do it. I would say that it’s along the same lines as picking your nose and eating but according to others (note: not me) earwax is distinctly bitter in taste. The good news is that if you’re one of the few members of the shunned earwax eating population it doesn’t appear to be bad for you.
And earwax is also anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. So, there’s that. No word from any doctors on whether or not eating the stuff is actually good for you.
Salon, and by Salon, I mean former Assistant News Editor Prachi Gupta suggested Thought Catalog do an article with this title when she wrote 150 whole words of news on this publication called “10 Trolly Stories Thought Catalog Could Write Next.” One of them was “5 Easy Ways To Nab A Significant Other By Eating Only Peanut Butter.” As you can see, this is the title of this article.
When I saw that beef, I thought “this girl is about to get told.” But Prachi Gupta of the present no longer does Salon stuff. Present Prachi managing-edits Animal New York. On one hand, I don’t live in New York. On the other, their “Features” page has amphetamine pics and film reviews with penis drawings, so I’m immediately supportive of Prachi and all her future endeavors.
Anyway, Past-Prachi still exists as a construct and her constructed ass has obviously not met Alfred, because she thinks no one could write about five easy ways to nab a significant other with peanut butter. I’m about to come on this two-year-old callout like Animals Eating Animals. Also, I should probably find a better way to phrase the previous sentence that does not start with “I’m about to come on this two year old.”
1. Use your peanut butter as lubricant
I know it’s a bit classless to start out with your best reason, but I care about you. I want you to walk away with the most important bits first.
Peanut butter is a versatile lubricant. If you make the peanut butter really cold, you can actually create really shitty sculptures out of it. So if you’re a guy, a neat trick is to lay in a very seductive pose with peanut butter all over your cock and the tip sculpted. This might sound a little ridiculous because no one who rubs peanut butter on their dick will bother to sculpt the tip, but if you manage to get it really cold, you can actually sculpt a dick on top of your dick. This is self-referential and she’ll appreciate the creativity.
But the real power of peanut butter lubricant shines when you use it as an anal lubricant. Now I know I wrote a great guide to anal sex, but that was serious and this is not. So, let’s get serious: when you use peanut butter as an anal lubricant you don’t even have to worry about taking a shit. Actually, if you use enough peanut butter you won’t even know the difference between completely coating a dick in shit and completely coating a dick in peanut butter. Plus, the peanut butter smell will totally mix with the farty shit smell, and you’ll feel the warm gooeyness of shit thinning the peanut butter. You might not even know it’s there!
2. Use your peanut butter as a taxidermy finisher
Taxidermy is a pretty neat hobby. Actually it’s the second creepiest thing you can do. Being a clown is the first. Seeing as we’ve established how great it is, the obvious solution is to incorporate peanut butter.
Guys appreciate raw visuals. You should get a nice cat, or kitty, or any other noun used to describe a feline you’re going to stuff hard. Make sure it’s ready to die. Now, take a picture of it and post it to Reddit and get karma. Then, ignore the cat and find a really shitty-looking animal, like a possum or something, and kill it. No one will care, because the cat is still alive and society only cares about violence toward cute animals. After thinking about how much this impacts deep sea fishing, remove the fur of the animal you killed. Coat the animal in peanut butter fur. I don’t really know how taxidermy works.
Women are sensitive, so you’re going to want to get to her emotions. The best thing to do would be to get a pig ready for taxidermy, then abandon the project all together and spell out her name in the pig’s intestines. This will surprise her — in a good way. But instead of just spelling the name out, add a special touch by putting little hearts and stars around her name in peanut butter. It shows your gender fluidity.
3. Write a letter in peanut butter
This one is kind of lame, but bear with me. So you’re going to want to introduce yourself to their family, first, obviously. This’ll let them know you’re a family man, or a family woman.
After you’ve looked at the perimeter of their house on Bing satellite, find the best external spot next to your man or woman’s room. Discreetly dig a hole under their room until you have a nice chamber going. Hop to the next forest and grab a few branches to use as torches. Once you’ve set up some cute little fires, start writing all of the details of your partner on the wall.
I personally like to write their name about 50 times with slight variation every so often, because I’m often accused of not caring enough. You can also add some deep music to set the mood. I enjoy choral music because it’s really minimalist and fits the whole minimalist vibe you have going on, which will also match the theme of repeating their name on the wall. It’s very Philip Glass.
Once you’ve done that, just draw a huge circle in the middle of the room with peanut butter and wait to see your new significant other’s eyes bust wide open.
4. Make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
I honestly don’t know anyone who has made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This is really esoteric shit, but we can mainstream it a little bit. Here’s how.
The guy or girl you’re interested in likely has never heard of a peanut-butter-and-jelly whatever, so you’re going to add some sentimental spin on it. Gelatin is actually a protein and you can make it from boiling goodies like skin, tendons, ligaments, and bones. You could just buy gelatin from the grocery store, but real artisan gelatin is locally made, so that’s what we’re going to do.
Remember that satellite image of their house we had set up earlier? Pull it up again. Use Spokeo.com to really get an idea of what their parents do for a living. Now, pose as a private investigator (they usually use black cars with black windows) and stay in their neighborhood for a while. If anyone asks, just say you’re in there for vehicle repossession and that they can call the police if they really care. If they actually do call the police, get the fuck out of there and come back in a different vehicle.
So once you’ve watched their house for 16 hours and made a note of their parents’ work schedule, you can surprise the family by breaking and entering. Make sure your guy and girl won’t be home. Once you’re there, you have a lot of options: you can club the husband while he’s out of sight from the wife and wait until the wife turns the corner, or you can just pull a gun to the husband’s head and order the wife to tie herself up, then tie the husband up as well. Either way works, you can get really creative with this one.
So once they’re fully bound and incapable of calling law enforcement, put them in bags and take them back to your house. You want this to be surprise, so you can’t risk bae catching you in action.
After they’re back to your house, drag the body bags into an enormous pot. You can usually find these from restaurant supply stores. You can remove the bags, and of course they will make muffled attempts at screams due to the rush of hormones released by their bodies. This will add to the result, so let it happen.
Once you’ve started heating the pot, you’re halfway there. Don’t mess with them beforehand. The result is much better when you have fresh gelatin, as opposed to stale gelatin. As the water boils, watch their abject terror as every psychological mechanism produced by their bodies tries to rationalize the event, such as by coming up with religious conceptions of afterlife and punishment to escape the unfathomable silence of nonexistence they will be subject to once their brain’s perceptive abilities are severed. Their bodies will be flooded with norepinephrine and cortisol, some of the “fear” hormones, which is great for your gelatin. Eventually their thoughts will be completely drown out by pain and suffering as their physiological processes struggle to maintain body temperature and their organs cease to function; what was once their internal monologue will be replaced by a dull hum; what was once their eyesight will be consumed by a hallucinatory blur; finally, oblivion consumes them as their bodies are defeated by external forces and their core neural and cardiovascular operations fail beyond repair. Their eyes have this nice stillness going on, and the only sound you hear after the calm of their death is the bubbling of the water. Very 4’33”.
Now, here’s the tricky part: you’re going to want to keep this boil going for several hours. Gelatin was originally made by boiling calves feet — here’s some background reading. Anyway, you’ll eventually need to strain the liquid. That’s a good guide but there are others if you need them.
Make sure you cut out their eyes though — we’re going to make this really special.
So once you have the eyes and gelatin, mix the gelatin with the peanut butter on triangle bread slices, smush the slices together into a sandwich and put two eyes from each parent on the sandwiches with little toothpicks. You can use a picnic bag if it’s more cute that way. But you don’t want to mess this one up, so here’s what I recommend saying:
“I know we’ve been apart for a while, but I’ve been thinking of you a lot. I really wanted to make this one special for you, so I thought about what was close to you, and, well, here. I put a lot of work into it. You’ll love it.”
If they don’t love it, fuck them. You’ve been in the friendzone too long anyway.
5. Make the peanut butter work for you
Look, I know what you’re going to say. “Some people have peanut butter allergies.” Some people can even die if you give them too much peanut butter. That’s great, right?
So a neat trick here is to put a shit ton of peanut butter in their food, and make it look like an accident. That way, when they die, you’re not responsible. Plus, you can sue the place that did it for emotional damages or something.
Post a really elaborate facebook status update to make it look like you care. Change your cover photo to them with their name and “[birth date] – [death date]” on it, so that there’s no way anyone would suspect you of peanut buttering them.
Now, you might be thinking “isn’t that illegal?” Look, tons of laws are unethical, and what is illegal isn’t always ethical. Just a while ago it was illegal for interracial marriage to happen. Do you think the law is correct 100% of the time?
Or, you might be saying “they’re not alive, doesn’t that defeat the purpose?” Nah, not at all. Because look, these are easy ways to nab a significant other. They’re still nabbed, even if they’re dead. You got this, girl.
6. Eat peanut butter in a kind of sexy way
Whaaaaaaaaat? That’s six reasons, Prachi. Get. Fucked.
Anyway, now that I’ve owned this chick from two years in the past, I’ve said all I’ve needed to say. I really have to give it up to Gupta though because if it weren’t for her, I’d never have written this, and I like this a lot. So if you like what I have to say also, follow me on Twitter. Maybe I’ll even holla at our girl Prachi. I promise I’m just as approachable as I am here.
You remember that girl with the perfectly straight blonde hair who sat next to you 4th period? Or the effortlessly cool dude with too many muscles for a high school junior? You didn’t even really know them, not really, but you wanted to. You wanted them to like you, to validate you, to say or do something that says: “Yes, we see you. We accept you. You’re one of us.” But the problem is when you’re just trying to impress people for the sake of status or aesthetics, it doesn’t mean much of anything. If you’re packaging yourself as just something to sell, you aren’t really making lasting friendships. But when you stop putting up fronts and decide to let people get to know you — the real you — those who stick around are the some of the best and most important people you’ll ever know.
2. Your weirdness attracts other weirdness
Everybody is actually super weird. Being human is kind of weird. Being ALIVE is kind of weird. Your body is doing all these crazy things and you’re just walking along, thinking about Chipotle. THAT’S WEIRD AND AWESOME. Okay, sorry, I got distracted thinking about extra guac. But when you start to embrace the things that might make you a little bit different, you find other people who are into the same things. Sometimes we get lost in this “I’m a special snowflake!” mentality and think nobody else could possibly understand our quirks. But people totally do. Someone out there also loves that strange thing you do. Trust me.
3. Self-love is a whole lot easier
Listen, self-love is a goddamn JOURNEY. I think there’s this misconception that once you figure out how to love yourself, that’s it. You’re just set for life. And that’s totally wrong. You’re going to experience those highs and lows that come from living, and that includes your own perception of self. But when you start accepting who you are and not trying to change it, the road to self-love can become quite a bit clearer.
4. You aren’t afraid of looking foolish
Quite frankly, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned so far in life (and in being happier in general) is being OKAY with embarrassment. The whole DGAF attitude is a fallacy. Sure, you can pretend you don’t, but most of us do give some fucks. It’s not a sin to care what others think about you, it’s human nature. It’s only a problem when you let it hold you back from fully being yourself. I do a lot of dumb things, but they are dumb things that make me happier. Damn right I’m going to dance down the street with my headphones while the old lady at the bus stop watches me. Because it makes me feel good. And like I’m enjoying life. So embrace those moments with open arms because it feels so much better than holding back.
5. You might land your dream job
Okay so to be fair, this point is a little bit biased because I’m going to just talk about my own experience. And if your dream job is to be president or an astronaut, posting obnoxious videos of yourself lip syncing and wearing wigs probably won’t do it. But I digress. I always liked performing. As an only child, I would gather up my parents and put on shows in the living room. My dad gave me his old school camcorder and I started recording little videos, sketches before I really knew what sketches were. I was painfully shy in middle school and early high school so a good outlet for me to be my ~*~true self~*~ was posting these videos on a brand new website known as YouTube (EVER HEARD OF IT????). FAST FORWARD MANY YEARS, a former writer for Thought Catalog saw a video I’d done, enjoyed it, contacted me, and here I am. Working on the internet. A dream job for me at 14 when I didn’t even realize that’s what I was gearing up for. So you never know where your weirdness can land you.
6. Life is just way more fun
Plain and simple. Playing some character for society really sucks. We all do it from time to time, but it’s never as fun as letting go and being whoever the hell you want to be. Life is full of difficulties — pain, loss, moments that will forever humble you — but it’s also the only time we’ve got here so don’t be afraid to inject some fun into it. Let your freak flag fly.
Mayor Joel Vasquez Rojas held a public ceremony in his town for a very special occasion: his wedding. It was the second one in only two years, and both times his beautiful bride was a crocodile.
I should have known when the squad car pulled into the run-down police station that something wasn’t quite right. The building looked old and abandoned. The police insignia lay crooked in a bed of tall grass, the letters “PO” were missing from the display above the main doors, leaving only “LICE” in their wake, and graffiti littered the outer walls. If not for the two other vehicles at the very back of the lot, I would have thought we’d pulled into the wrong place. The squad cars were in as pitiful a shape as the station. Their emblem and motto – “To Serve And Protect” – were faded with age and coated in dirt, their tires were deflated, and one of their tail lights had shattered. Yeah, warning bells definitely should have gone off in my head, but if you can’t trust the police, who can you trust? I attributed the building’s poor condition to budget cuts. Since they could not go on strike, officers frequently and openly protested the city’s cheap financial support by wearing mismatched socks and all sorts of inappropriate pants, ranging from army print to clown stripes.
Two officers escorted me inside. If the main lobby was any indication, then the interior was as poorly maintained as the exterior. I waited by the reception desk on an old schoolhouse chair. Its green and cracked back did not match the colors of the other two next to it. While the officers traded a few words with the woman behind the desk, I couldn’t help but notice how very much alike they were. It wasn’t just the uniform, either. The three were the same height, had the same hair color and style, carried themselves in the same posture, and shared the same build.
“Excuse me,” I interrupted, walking over to the trio.
One of the officers who’d brought me in turned towards me.
“What?” he asked.
I motioned to a chipped mug full of pens, “Can I have one?”
“Yeah, sure,” he replied, his tone barely registering emotion.
I pocketed the pen happily, and took a seat once more. If I was going to be stuck here all evening, at least I’d get a souvenir. The three continued to talk while I waited in the humid lobby. Couldn’t they at least open a window to get a breeze rolling? The air was so thick and tasted so bitter that I could barely breathe.
Once the officers sorted everything out, they lead me down a dirty corridor. Dried leaves littered the ground, crunching under my feet as I walked. Surely, they could find room in their budget for a janitor? As we moved through the station, I began to notice more and more issues: missing doors, broken windows, and even a hole in the roof. Frankly, I half expected to see a family of raccoons scurrying about. There also seemed to be a surprisingly small roster of officers on duty in the station. We seemed to pass the same two guys almost everywhere we went.
“In here,” said one of the uniformed men, motioning to a set of doors, “we’ll come get you when it’s time.”
I nodded and stepped through the double doors. The smell on the other side was even worse than in the lobby. It was a mix of sweat and the unique odor of slightly-burnt skin after a few hours under the sun. Unsurprisingly, the room was full of men with very similar features to my own. Aside from one old man in the corner, we also looked about the same age.
“Guess we’re all here for the lineup, huh?” I asked, in an attempt to break the ice.
The others averted their gazes. The situation wasn’t ideal, but I saw no reason to be sour about it. It was our civic duty, and being grumpy wouldn’t change a thing. We’d all been cherry-picked to act as distractors in a police lineup. I hadn’t been particularly thrilled when the police officers stopped me on my way home from work telling me I matched the description of a violent mugger, but I calmed down once they reassured me that I was not the suspect — merely a decoy. I was missing the season finale of my favorite show for this, but at least I was doing something useful for society.
The old man’s head rose slowly, “Son, you won’t be leaving any time soon,” he warned.
When I saw his face, I nearly gasped. He was old, yes, but his facial features were remarkably similar to my own. We had the same green eyes, curved nose, and similar cheek bones. If we were to walk around town together, people would surely assume he was my dad.
“Oh, that’s okay. I’m not in a rush,” I answered cheerfully.
My gaze shifted from the old man to the others in the room. We all shared a remarkable likeness. Whoever the victim was, he’d have a hell of a hard time identifying the attacker. No one stood out. Even I would have trouble telling us apart. I thought the others would be as amused as I was, but they all kept to themselves. Unable to find a conversational partner, I took a seat so I could wait for the officer to return. The silence started making me nervous, as though everyone knew a secret I wasn’t privy to. Every now and again, I caught them glancing at me from the corner of their eyes. It was unnerving.
Silence…it was so quiet that I could hear the hum of neon lights all the way down the hall. They played in peculiar unison, like instruments in a Beethoven orchestra.
The door creaked open. The others cringed and recoiled as an officer stepped inside. I honestly couldn’t tell if it was one of the two that had driven me in, or a different officer altogether. It was only when I saw him next to the other men in the room that I realized something: he, too, could pass as one of us. The eyes, the cheekbones – he looked like me. Like us. My skin crawled at the eerie realization that everyone I had seen in the past hour or so looked just like me. How had I not noticed sooner? I tried to shake the unsettling feeling away with a forced shiver, but I was only half successful.
An officer lifted his hand, his index finger pointing to six of us, “You. You there. You two…you, and you, by the wall,” he commanded.
I got up and walked over, while the other five gasped and groaned. They reluctantly approached. Though I did not understand their gloomy reactions, part of me felt the same way. Still, the quicker we went through the line-up, the quicker we’d get to go home. I, for one, was glad I’d been chosen to be part of Group 1.
The officer handed out numbered boards. My board, #5, looked ancient. Its corners were rounded with wear, coffee stains coated the surface, and yellowing tape kept portions of it in place. The others took their boards with as much enthusiasm as a kid handed a plateful of steamed broccoli. I’d never seen grown men quite manage the childlike look of disgust and accompanying pout until that day.
Once we received our numbers, we were brought to a suffocatingly narrow room with doors on both ends. I could hear the door locking behind us, which made me wonder if the mugger was in the room with me. Fortunately, I was at a police station. If there was one place a violent mugger wouldn’t try anything stupid, it’d be in the middle of a police station. The back wall was decorated in faded height lines like those seen in mug shots. They made me realize that, strangely enough, we were all the exact same height, right down to the half-inch. In front of us was a large glass pane through which we could see a pair of identical-looking police officers sitting on stools, watching us. That’s odd, I remember thinking, Don’t they usually use double-sided mirrors?
“Not me … not me … not me …” murmured No. 3, his voice quivering with fear.
He wasn’t the only one acting strangely. No. 1 and No. 4 were huddled in the corner, facing away from the window. No. 2 and No. 6 were fidgeting and whispering beneath their breaths. Grow up, I thought. Why were they all so nervous? Was I missing something obvious? Could we get in trouble if we were mistakenly identified?
The victim walked into the room on the other side of the glass. Even though he held his head low, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities. He had my build and my haircut, though his body was covered in bruises and blood. I felt a chill run down the back of my neck, filling me with the same anxious dread as my fellow distractors. A feeling in my gut urged me to run away, yet I found myself paralysed with unexplainable fear. This was silly. There was no reason to be afraid, or so I hoped. My nervousness increased with every step the victim took. He looked pretty banged up. There was no reason to think he hadn’t been attacked by a mugger, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on.
The victim’s head turned upwards.
“Oh, god …” I whispered.
I was looking at myself. He wasn’t just a crude look-alike like the others. No, he was definitely me. Even through the swollen lip and black eye, I recognized every square inch of my face: the placement of my freckles, my childhood scar along my hairline, my right eye, which was slightly smaller than the left. He had them all. I didn’t have time to fully take in the phenomena before the doppelgänger lifted his arm, an accusatory finger outstretched. I knew before he even did it. I knew he was going to point to me. I knew, yet it didn’t, spare me the shock when he did it. It felt like being smacked in the face by a stray baseball. He pointed straight at me, an electrifying feeling surging through my body as he did so. If that wasn’t bad enough, the others in the lineup suddenly calmed down. They looked like they’d just dodged a bullet, which sent me into a panic.
When I saw the police officers rise from their seats while looking at me, I knew I had to run. I bolted to the emergency exit. The door was locked. I could hear the sound of a key jingling in the door on the other side of the room. There was no doubt in my mind that the officers were coming for me. With a fair dose of adrenaline fuelling my actions, I grabbed a fire extinguisher and smashed it against the doorknob. It took three tries to get it, but it finally broke off, allowing the door to swing open just as the cops came in from the other end. I could vaguely hear them shouting, though I could not make out a word of what they were saying over the combined sounds of my heartbeat and blood gushing to my head. I ran as fast as my feet allowed, feeling myself drowning in unexplainable fear.
Lost…I was lost. Lost in the building, lost in fear, lost in desperate and unshakable panic. An alarm went off, practically paralysing me with its piercing shriek. More than ever, I wanted to escape the endless maze of run-down hallways and broken light fixtures. I could barely hear the officers’ footsteps over the mechanical warning call, but my senses were just sharp enough that I could safely evade them.
I ran for what felt like hours, but could have been minutes. I ran until my chest burned with exhaustion and my muscles cramped. I ran until I came across the waiting room from where I’d been in earlier. Hoping to warn the others, I stepped inside.
The room was empty, but for the old man in the back.
“Hey!” I shouted, “We’ve got to get out of here!”
He didn’t answer.
I walked closer, and noticed something on his head. My scar. That’s impossible… I thought, gasping in shock. I placed a hand on his shoulder to try and shake him, but he’d gone cold. His skin had become dry and pruny, like a tomato left out in the sun for too long. I recoiled in terror, a loud scream escaping my lips. Suddenly, I felt a pair of fingers digging into my shoulder with the strength of a crocodile’s jaw. Again, I shouted, desperately swatting at the captor’s hand. By twisting my shoulder uncomfortably, I managed to break free of the vice-like grip and turn around, only to be confronted with my bruised doppelgänger. A look of bitter contempt had found a permanent home on his face. I never realized how unsettling that look was when I gave it to others. My lookalike deliberately blocked the exit, ensuring that escape would not be easy. When he made a move towards me, I acted on instinct and felt my arm flying towards his face. The sound of broken glass erupted from him as my fist connected with his already damaged eye.
Pain. Sharp, blinding pain…
I stumbled to the side, holding my throbbing right eye. It thumped and prickled with a thousand needles. My vision became blurry, but not blurry enough to keep me from seeing the other “me” run towards me. I had to defend myself. I punched, elbowed, and jabbed at him. Few of my blows actually connected – I’m not exactly a martial arts expert – but the ones that did sent pain flooding into me. My frantic blitz came to an end when I went for his stomach. The pressure nearly took my breath away. There was no beating him: I had to run. I shoved him aside, fully expecting him to try and grab me. To my surprise, he fell to the floor and didn’t try to get up. Had I hurt him more than I thought?
My relief was short-lived. As soon as I stepped back out into the hallway, I ran into a pair of officers. Their expressions were strangely blank. An thought came to mind when I realized that I was covered in bruises. What if they thought I was the “victim”?
“He’s in there,” I said, mustering up every bit of calm that I could manage.
The officers, without hesitating, ran into the waiting area. I didn’t know how long my ruse would work, so I took off towards the entrance. When I reached the lobby, the receptionist from earlier stood up and turned to me. I only looked at her for a moment, but my eyes caught sight of my scar on her head. What the hell. There was no time to think or try to understand. She started chasing after me, so I ran out the doors as fast as I could.
The air outside smelled so fresh, devoid of the stagnant aftertaste in the police station. It was dark out, and I remember feeling hopeful that I could blend into the night and escape. I heard stomping footsteps behind me, saw beams of light pointed at me, and could hear sirens blaring in the distance. I recall running, but I confess, I don’t remember how I got home. I have no recollection of reaching my apartment complex, unlocking my door, or getting in bed.
But I must have.
I woke up this morning safe and sound in my bed, albeit quite sore. When I got up to brush my teeth, my reflection sent a shiver down my spine. My face was bruised and swollen. The wounds were identical to the ones I saw on the victim at the police station. The busted lip, the black eye, and the cut on his cheek … they were all the same. My heart raced wildly, blurry after-images dancing in my head. Running. Police officers. My face. My face everywhere. As I leaned back, I felt something in my pocket. I reached for it and retrieved the pen I’d taken from the police station, inspecting it closely. The city police motto was written on it, though half of it was scratched out. It read:
New Hampshire mailman Richard Ringer broke into one of the houses on his route — not to steal anything — just to try on some boots.
A hidden camera that the homeowners had just recently installed showed the man immediately going to the master bedroom, pulling the boots out from under the bed, and modeling them in front of a mirror.
When the homeowner saw the footage, she immediately recognized the home (and boot?) invader as her mailman.
Despite his break-in, absolutely nothing was stolen or disturbed (besides the boots he put on).
“He didn’t take anything from the house,” according to Lt. Brant Dolleman of the Dover, N.H. Police Department. “Apparently he went into the house once, left the house and went back into the house. While in there, he put on some boots that she had and wore them inside the house, walked around with those on inside the house for some reason.”
Ringer was found later that day, still wearing the same clothes from the video footage. Apparently he already knew the boots were under the bed, making the homeowner concerned that he has broken in multiple times in the past.
Robert “Alex” Kaseberg is a freelance writer who is accusing Conan O’Brien and his comedy show — cleverly entitled Conan — of stealing jokes from his Twitter account.
As the story goes, Kaseberg posted the following joke on his Twitter account and personal Blogspot site (I didn’t realize Blogspot was still around).
“A Delta flight from Cleveland to New York took off with only two passengers. And they wrestled for control of the armrest the entire flight.”
Kaseberg claims that the exact same joke appeared on Conan’s show the next night, but that he initially brushed it off as a coincidence.
My immediate reaction was they stole my joke. But then I remembered that, although the odds are slight of somebody also picking an armrest struggle for a joke, I decided maybe it was a coincidence. Conan and his staff did not seem to me to be the type to steal jokes.
But then, according to Kaseberg, it happened again:
[On] Feb. 3rd I wrote and posted this joke on my blog at 9:02 am and on Twitter;
“Tom Brady has decided to give his Super Bowl MVP truck to the man who won the game for the Patriots. So enjoy that truck Pete Carroll.”
Again, like my armrest joke, the very same joke appeared the next day, Feb. 4th, on Conan’s monologue almost exactly word for word. Conan said; “So they gave the truck to Pete Carroll.”
After a third incidence of “joke stealing,” Kaseberg had had enough. He decided to contact Conan’s head writer, Mike Sweeney.
For what seemed like 15 agonizing minutes, Mike Sweeney, the head writer of “Conan,” angrily and loudly denied those were my jokes. He was furious that I was accusing them of stealing jokes, but most of all he was incensed that I would suggest his writers would have anything to do with my pathetic blog and it’s author, me, a no-name failure.
This whole situation is kinda weird. As many people have pointed out, Kaseberg’s jokes were all about topical events and contained material that could be easily thought of by others. Kaseberg also comes off as a conspiracy theorist, who is easy set-off and upset.
But, I am also struck with how bizarre The Conan Show’s response to the allegation has been. If his account is true (which it might not be), why was Mike Sweeney act so pissed off during their phone call? If I am Sweeney, and the allegation is false, I sweetly tell the person that we didn’t steal their content, offer a complimentary tote bag, and hang up as soon as possible. I don’t rant and scream into the phone like a crazy person.
Conan assistant Andy Richter has also made a weirdly defensive tweet about the whole ordeal:
There's no possible way more than one person could have concurrently had these same species-elevating insights! THESE TAKES ARE TOO HOT!
I guess I just don’t find it very likely that Conan stole some jokes off an obscure blogspot website, but I also think that if the allegations are false, they really need some new PR people to help guide them through shit like this.
True or not, Kaseberg is going through with a lawsuit. He is suing Conan O’Brien and the show in California court for violating his copyright on the jokes. I guess we’ll see how this turns out?
Ted Cruz is here to teach us how to cook bacon. You think there isn’t much to it — just throw it on a pan and on the strove — but that’s not how they cook bacon in Texas (apparently).
Cruz, who is seeking the presidency with some lagging poll numbers, shows us how to rap bacon around a machine gun and then go out for target practice.
Apparently it tasted good, so I guess that’s all that matters.
Dorina Rosin is adamant that she is going to give birth in the Pacific Ocean and that a dolphin will be her midwife.
No, this isn’t a joke.
Rosin is a “spiritual healer” who is defying the warnings of numerous health officials in continuing to prep for her ocean birth. Rosin claims to have the power to use sound to heal people, and it only costs $100 an hour!
Rosin says she was healed by the power of dolphins, which is why she wants one to midwife her child. She believes having a dolphin assist in the birth of her baby will result in giving her child the power to “speak” dolphin and other magical abilities.
There are high dangers to Rosin and her baby, but also to the marine life in the area. Rosin is set to go ahead with her plan, however, and her story will air on “Extraordinary Births” a British documentary about stupid people giving birth in stupid places.
1. “He wanted me to put a plug up his butt and call him every hour at his office to make sure he still had it in. I did this for an entire week, only letting him take it out to use the bathroom and go to sleep. I actually enjoyed the power play of it way more than I thought I would.”
—Emily, 27
2. “One guy asked to call me ‘mother’ the whole time we were having sex. Keep in mind, variations of this are pretty common stuff but I’d never had anyone want to matter of factly call me ‘mother’ like he was an English butler giving instructions on cleaning the mansion. It actually seemed weirder to me than a guy begging for a dildo ramming while calling out ‘mommy’.”
—Tammy, 23
3. “Testicle slapping. I’ve had several clients request this but the first one had injected saline into his scrotum so that it was enormous. He wanted them smacked until they were red and hot. The guy came three times that way. It was actually kind of impressive.”
—Brianna, 30
4. “I had a client that wanted me to tell him about how I lost my virginity during foreplay. Considering I lost mine the way most people do, in an awkward fumbling session that’s completely forgettable, I just made some stuff up about an older man who wanted to teach me, etc. He was super into that. I didn’t see him again. Every man I’ve come across that wanted to hear virginity stories has ended up being a super creeper and borderline pedo.”
—Michelle, 25
5. “He wanted me to spit in his mouth and tell him what a piece of sh*t he was so I did. I mean, this isn’t that uncommon but at the time it was all I could do not to crack up. The whole thing seemed hilarious to me.”
—Jacqueline, 22
6. “I had a client who wanted me to dress like his ex-wife (he brought a picture) and have conversations with me. It was a little disturbing at first but after a couple of sessions I realized this guy was harmless and just had a lot of bottled up emotions. When we had sex on the fifth date he thanked me and I never saw him again. You could actually see a transformation over those five sessions from a very unhappy and emotional person to a more relaxed and hopeful one. One of the few times I’ve felt like my work was objectively helpful to someone.”
—Sandra, 26
7. “This actually happened just last week. A client had three different outfits for me for every part of our session. He wanted me to wear one during the getting to know you conversation, a second for foreplay, a third for actual sex (which he took off), and then he had me change back into the first one when the session was over. They were nice clothes too and he gave them to me as a gift which was cool.”
—Danielle, 25
8. “I have two types of clients, people who want an intimate encounter and people who are working out psychological issues for themselves. Sometimes these two things cross over and sometimes they don’t. I had one client who was so insecure about his body that he wanted to watch me with another client beforehand so that he ‘wouldn’t do it wrong’. I ended up getting my boyfriend who’s totally cool with exhibitionism to pose as a client and we had a pretty hot sex session, apparently too hot. The poor client was so intimidated by what good sex looked like that that was the last time I saw him.”
—Anna, 26
9. “I had one client who asked me to stick thumbtacks into his dick and got mad when I wouldn’t. Um, no. Also, get out.”
—Charlotte, 25
10. “I considered this weird at the time because I was new to the game but I had one client, about 40 years old, who wanted me to crush bugs in stiletto heels while he watched. The guy brought a whole cardboard box of cockroaches (who knows where he got them) and a pair of vinyl heels in my size. He didn’t tough himself or anything, just watched as I played sexy exterminator. It was definitely gross at the time but it was also some of the easiest money I’ve ever seen.”
—Sarah, 24
11. “I had one client who only wanted to see me when I was on my period so he could go down on me and he really enjoyed it. I have to say I enjoyed it too.”
—Catherine, 23
12. “The weirdest request I ever had was from a guy who wanted to take a dump on my chest. When I said no he asked if I would take a dump on his chest. The answer to that was also no.”
—Ophelia, 22
13. “I cam about once a week and the strangest request I’ve had that I was willing to do was a couple from the UK who wanted me to watch them have sex and kind of talk dirty to both of them while I played with myself. They were good looking and fun to watch so I didn’t mind at all but it was still the most unique non-gross request I’ve ever received.”
—Samantha, 24
14. “I’ve had a number of ‘first timer’ clients but the only one I rejected was when this 18-year-old skinny kid made arrangements with me and then when he showed up and I spoke to him for about ten minutes it was clear his older brother had pushed him into the entire thing, that he wasn’t comfortable, and was possibly in denial about being gay. I felt really terrible for him and cancelled the appointment.”
—Denise, 30
15. “In my profession you run into some extremely specific client fantasies and a lot of them seem very odd since you’re not the one having them. There was one client of mine who wanted to watch this specific Brazzers clip over and over with me and recreate it. I was fine with it but he acted like a director the whole time. He definitely seemed to enjoy it.”
—Cindy, 21
16. “Not so much a weird request as just a weird thing that happened. I met one client who had warned me beforehand that he was unusually hung and I took this for the standard humblebragging that I’d heard so many times before. Well, when he arrive he really wasn’t kidding. The thing was as long as my forearm and thicker than my wrist and it looked even bigger than that since he was only about 5 and a half feet tall. I had to politely decline because there was no way I could have made that work. I actually felt bad for him though, he’d clearly been declined for the same reason before.”
—Jamie, 26
17. “The first time I did a BDSM session I laughed through nearly the whole thing. It was something I was trying to branch out into because it can be a bit easier physically but it’s just not my thing. Every BDSM scenario I’ve ever seen or taken part in just makes me laugh because they all seem so absurd and hilarious. The costumes crack me up. I did two sessions like this and the second client who was apparently a BDSM veteran told me very nicely that this just wasn’t my thing. I was glad to hear that, actually.”
—Christina, 23
18. “I have a fair number of clients who are trying to work through issues they have but I rarely have female clients. However another client of mine referred one woman to me who was a total sub but didn’t seem to know it. She had been married for 10 years and the sex between her and her husband had become almost nonexistent. Within three sessions I’d so worn her out with toys and bondage play that the problem became obvious. She didn’t feel comfortable being that vulnerable in front of a man. Once she knew it she was able to address it with him and herself. I mention this as weird because most people her age know what they like but she was basically just too stubborn to admit she liked being a sub.”
—Shannon, 30
19. “I have a particular talent for being able to fit large things in my throat without gagging. I had one client who, once he discovered this, spent the entire session sticking large dildos into my mouth until he finished on my face which was fine by me but not at all the vanilla sex he’d said he was into when we chatted at the beginning of the session.”
—Emily, 20
20. “I had one client who wanted to watch a friend and I pretend to study. He didn’t even touch himself while we did this but he would direct like ‘stretch and yawn like you’re tired’ and things like that. His one stipulation was that we never acknowledge his presence in any way other than following his directions. My partner was actually in school at the time and actually did study during these sessions which was even better for the client. I must have done this with her 10 times.”
—Janelle, 20
21. “I was once asked to wear a pony costume so that the client could then penetrate me with a rubber horse phallus. While creative, I passed on that one. The costume material was polyester and I couldn’t imagine covering myself in it head to toe for more than a few minutes.”
