Mark Wohlers- Yes, that cute as pie pitcher for Atlanta. I'm not giving you his biography because you're perfectly capable of going to Wikipedia yourselves. But from what I can find, he is happily remarried and has a new baby and is retired from the game and I know where (NovelChicks spies are everywhere) but I feel like if he wanted others to know, he'd have a website or a blog or something. Mark, Atlanta letting you go will always be their biggest mistake to me. In fact, the year that you left I cursed the Braves. I said they would never win another world series without you. My husband scoffed. And now? He's begging me to remove it. Ha! So, I may be willing to remove the curse if you email me and tell me it's okay with you. And no, Chasing The Fluency God, I will not be duped by any phony Mark Wohlers emails. Oh, and the darling Jeff Franceour is not one bit cuter then you were. Sure you could just eat him up with a spoon but I could say the same about you back then. Except for the hair. What happened there?
The Metric Conversion Act- I still drive 55 miles per hour, buy gas in gallons, order Quarter Pounders and measure off 10 tablespoons of butter and a cup of milk when I make scones. So what happened here? Why did we waste all of that time and energy sitting through endless conversion tests in middle school? No idea. Apparently the whole 'scaring us as children would make us volunteer to go metric as adults' just didn't work as anticipated. In 1988, Congress tried a more direct with the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act. One part amended the previous Metric Conversion Act to mandate that all federal agencies implement the metric system in all business-related activities. On July 25, 1991, President Bush issued Executive Order 12770, Metric Usage in Federal Government Programs, mandating the transition to metric measurement for all federal agencies (although I'm fairly sure that he couldn't convert a pound into grams if his life depended on it). Thus U.S. law requires use of the metric system. But when? Well, in the American school systems ongoing efforts to clot up the brains of the young with useless information, no doubt they will continue their pursuit of making a nine year old convert feet to millimeters using some incomprehensible word problem forever while the simple act of teaching them how to balance a damn checkbook is ignored. So the answer is much in the same way this ordinance is at times I am sure disregarded, Roswell City Ordinance (Article 29, Chapter 29.5, Section 29.5.2, Subsection (2), that those who choose to honor this will and those who choose not to, no one is going to check on.
Killer Bee Swarms of Africa- Remember when you saw The Swarm and you were totally freaked out by any insect thereafter for months? Turns out the Killer Bees ain't all that tough. They aren't any more potent then your average honey bee, all the panic comes because they just attack in large numbers so you're likely to get stung a lot. As it turns out, the Africanized honey bee is sort of...a wuss. It doesn't survive in the cold, it doesn't store adequate food supplies and it can get the crap beat out of it by your average European honey bee. A few have wandered up from Central America to Texas but for the most part, nothing. So you can stop stocking up on Raid and apiary fashions.
John Rocker- This was made easier because he has a website. Apparently after starring in this beauty (Which I am so sorry to say I have never seen. I have Netflixed it, moved it to the top of my list and I'm willing to throw myself on the altar of martyrdom and not only watch it but recap it for you guys. See how I love you?) The Greenskeeper, which is about a crazy serial killer who knocks off a bunch of teens at a golf course. Anywhoodles, I visited John Rocker's Web Page. Frankly, I could write a two hundred page article on this website alone but let me just give you this....he now has long hair AND at the top of his webpage is a picture of him holding a KITTEN. He looks like Kip Winger. A visit here is well worth your time.
John Bobbit- Yes, yes, we all heard rumors of the porn career but here's the scoop. After his reattachment surgery, John enjoyed a brief career as a porn star oddity, appearing in the movies Frankenpenis and John Wayne Bobbitt … Uncut (and I refuse to post any links to these), in part to finance the operation which reattached his penis. In "Frankenpenis", Bobbitt played a character who was made with spare parts and whose penis inexplicably comes off during a rousing (hee.) session of intercourse. Bobbitt then moans, "Oh no, not again" (I got that straight from Wikipedia and it is their quote. Could I make that up? I wish I was that talented.). In 1996, John Bobbitt moved to Nevada, where he worked in a brothel (no word on which one), as a bartender, a tow truck operator and a minister in Vegas. After divorcing Lorena, he married Dottie Brewer and Joanna Ferrell (apparently not at the same time but I don't think anyone would have been shocked). After two trials for domestic abuse in 2004 (he was convicted in one) he was arrested for a third offense in September 2005. No word on his current whereabouts but I'm going to guess he's wearing an orange jumpsuit. I'll get my spies to work on this one.
UPDATE: Novelchicks spies (let's call them the Chicklets) have found John living in Las Vegas. He has recently been in the custody of the Nevada Department of Corrections (via Churchill County) for a probation violation stemming from his earlier domestic abuse conviction.
Tawney Kitaen-Since shaking it on the hood of Whitesnake's car, things have been going downhill. On December 13, 2001, Kitaen was arrested for allegedly vandalizing another woman's automobile (no word as to why that I can find). On April 1, 2002, she was arrested and charged with attacking the father of her two kids, Mr. Finley ( the baseball player). All hundred pounds of her reportedly brutalized the professional athlete by kicking him several times with her high-heeled boots, and severely twisting his ear, leaving a booboo. She admitted shortly afterwards that she had become addicted to prescription medications. She got slapped with a restraining order, lost her kids temporarily and had to undergo drug abuse counseling. The judge also ordered her to issue a written apology, after she told whoever was actually listening to the Howard Stern Show in September 2003 that she had been forced to plead guilty, that she had never abused drugs and that she was actually the victim of her steroid and alcohol abusing husband. I'm not coming down on either side of this, I'll just say that as a rule if one's doing it, both are doing it.
Y2K Survivalist- We all heard it ad nauseum. Think of a dead national power grid. It's winter in the northern hemisphere, where most of the world's production takes place. All heat ceases for high-rise apartments and offices. Their water pipes freeze and crack, ready for a thaw. All municipal water/sewer systems cease functioning as soon as they run out of back-up diesel fuel. The fire department can't put out fires without water. The public can't bathe or get safe drinking water out of the tap. There are no flush toilets. The ground outside is frozen solid. Diseases begin to spread through the cities; these will become epidemics when things begin to thaw. The banks are down, so no one gets a paycheck. The police then quit to stay home and protect their families. Looting begins. The stores are stripped by panic buying or thieves in just one day. Gasoline can't be pumped: no electricity. No privately owned trucks come in re-stock the shelves: no means of payment. The military seals off all main highways out of the cities, to keep the roads open to get emergency supplies in and get the trucks back out, so they can make return trips. City dwellers are now locked in: martial law. Meanwhile, almost all railroad traffic has ceased, meaning no grain is shipped from the farms to the cities. The military can barely feed itself. Food riots start before the end of the first 30 days of the power failure. Famine appears before 60 days are over. And ...it didn't happen. So where are these folks who had their teeth pulled in anticipation of no future dental care? Those that raised their own sheep for clothing? Bought isolated land and put everything they had into underground bunkers, generators and wells? Gary North (who was the author of the above) and Ed Yourdon are both alive, well and still talking about the downfall of society. Apparently a very popular mindset amongst former Y2Kers is that Y2K did take place in some form and that there is a government conspiracy to cover it up. Those aren't the people I'm interested in. I want to know how the people who were stockpiling enough MREs for eight years and learned to ground their own wheat feel. Relieved? Pissed? Embarressed? Okay? And the answer is...I don't know. I visited several of the big Y2K boards and a few survivalist webrings and they are for the most part deserted. So what happened to them? I'm not making fun of them by any means but I'd like to know. If you know one of these folks, do a little interview and let me know. I'm considering emailing a few of them from these web boards and just asking them what's been going on since then, their opinion about what happened and what they have done with any survivalist gear since then.
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