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The continued decline of the once-hallowed newspaper and total obsession with national politics by the television networks is allowing important news items to slip through gaping cracks. When’s the last time anyone heard about the Abominable Snowman or Scotland’s once-feared Loch Ness Monster? Doesn’t anybody disappear into the Bermuda Triangle anymore? Is Hitler being kept alive by futuristic computers in the mountains of Bolivia? Is Paco Paco really a clone of David Fritz, thus allowing him to play at two venues simultaneously seven days a week? Inquiring minds want to know, and The Flying Pie wants to tell them. Turn on your ticker-tape machine and get all the latest from the source that keeps on giving.
Hark! Was that A Blivet Or A Slider?
Are you broke, jobless, living in your car, searching the dumpsters for pizza crust and half-eaten fajitas? Don’t like washing dishes, bumming cigarettes or cadging quarters? Is the highlight of your day the hour Krispy Kreme takes the doughnuts out of the oven and the aroma seeps out into the streets? Have we got news for you, pal. With a very small investment, you can get started in the exciting world of Neo-Flatulence, like Stephanie Matto did.
Miss Matto, an “influencer,” YouTuber, author and former star of TLC’s Ninety Day Fiance, merely adhered to the age-old secret to accumulating great wealth—find a need and fill it. After Stephanie received a fan request for a jarred fart for a pricey $1000, she spent the next two months farting into glass jars with flower petals adorning the inside, then shipping them to fans for a cool grand apiece, with a slight discount during holiday season (and a whole different meaning for “Black Friday”). At one point, she sold 97 jars over two days. Now the cynic in us all might cause us to suspect that no farting at all was required and that any deficiencies in the newly arrived scent could be blamed on the petals in the jar, but Miss Matto is not that kind of girl.
“I actually changed my diet to satisfy the demand,” she avows. “I exclusively ate beans, eggs and protein muffins. One day, I had three protein shakes and a large bowl of black bean soup just to keep the engine revved up.”
Like any new fad diet, however, Stephanie’s new regimen caused a few problems. “One evening, I was lying in bed and I could feel a pressure in my stomach moving upward,” she recalls. “It was hard to breathe, and every time I inhaled I felt a pinching sensation around my heart. My anxiety was through the roof.”
Matto phoned a friend and they drove to a nearby hospital, fearing a heart attack. “I thought I might be a goner but it was only very intense gas pains.” Alas, Stephanie’s acute misery forced her into early retirement. “It actually came at a good time,” she contends. “The fart business was both physically and mentally exhausting. I’m refocusing my efforts on selling digital NFTs (non-fungible tokens) of farts instead of the real whiffs.”
Fake farts for a thousand a jar? Call us full of hot air but the world is even crazier than we thought.
“Got A Whale Of A Tale To Tell You, Son….”
Most of us remember the Biblical Jonah described by Mark and Luke in their best-selling tome, Whoppers ‘R’ Us. According to the scribes, Jonah was swallowed by a very large fish and remained inside the critter’s belly for three days and three nights, during which he prayed hard and made promises to God, who then ordered the whale to plunk his magic twanger and vomit the poor fellow back into the ocean. Who’s going to buy a tale like that, right? But last year it happened again, this time with witnesses.
Michael Packer, a lobster diver, was minding his own business one fine Summer’s day, hunting for product off the coast of Provincetown with his partner, Josiah Mayo. After a disappointing first haul, Packard dove back in around 8 a.m., scouring the sandy bottom of Herring Beach Cove. Suddenly, something bumped him hard from behind. “All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black all around me.”
From the surface, Mayo watched as Packard’s air bubbles suddenly vanished. Josiah was terrified, but could never have guessed what was going on down below. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, did I just get bit by a shark?’ Packard fretted. “Then I felt around and realized there were no teeth and I had felt no pain. Finally, I realized I’ve got to be in a whale’s mouth and he’s going to swallow me!” For perhaps 40 seconds, Packard struggled in the darkness. He still had his breathing apparatus on—would he be stuck inside the whale until he ran out of air? What would happen to his wife and teenage children?
“I thought, ‘OK, this is it—I’m going to die.’ There was no getting out off there. I could feel the whale squeezing the muscles of his mouth.” Then, suddenly, the monster started to shake his head. The lobsterman felt himself zoom outward and toward the surface. Just like that, he was free.
From their ship, Mayo saw a burst of white water, then spotted his partner soaring through the air. A nearby charter boat captain named Joe Francis saw the same thing. “I saw Mike flying out of the water, feet first with his flippers on, then landing back in the water,” Francis said. He jumped aboard Mayo’s boat and helped pull Packard out of the water. “It tried to eat me!” Michael gasped.
Mayo worried that his partner had suffered broken bones, an embolism…something. Embolisms can occur when a diver surfaces too quickly, but Packard was physically fine. Who knows what the whale thought? The creatures are rarely aggressive toward humans and probably was unaware it had swallowed the diver while trying to feed.
“I read that stuff about Jonah when I was a kid,” laughed Packard. “I remembered he was inside his whale for three days and three nights and I wondered if that was even possible, Thank God I didn’t have to find out!”
“Well, Our Motto Is “Be Prepared, Right?”---David Hahn
As a lad, I was never involved with the Boy Scouts of America. Too much non-baseball time. I got the drift, though. You and a bunch of other kids met weekly, got to wear nifty uniforms, tromp around in the woods a lot and do good deeds, like walking grandmas across the street whether they wanted to go or not. If you were an ambitious Boy Scout you could get colorful little merit badges to sew onto your uniform, like General Douglas MacArthur had. There were badges for stuff like camping, swimming, hiking, cycling, putting your pants on frontwards and tickling Girl Scouts. My friend Jackie Mercier got a white one with bubbles for doing the dishes, but he had a lot of ‘splaining to do down at the ballpark. If you accumulated at least 21 of these things, you qualified to be a fancy Eagle Scout, which is Boy Scoutese for lifer. I don’t mean to sound snippy, but large boys in short pants should be playing basketball, not helping nanas across the street. The BSA retirement age should be 12, tops. Go beyond that, you’re looking for trouble.
Case in point: David Hahn, a Michigan teenager who caught the attention of local authorities for stashing “suspicious materials” in his car. Further investigation revealed a series of backyard science experiments by the mild-mannered Scout, who claimed he was only trying to get his atomic bomb badge. David, it seems, was trying to build a nuclear reactor. He had already managed to successfully create a homemade neutron source in his backyard shed and had nearly irradiated his entire neighborhood.
Hahn had been fascinated with science since early childhood. While the other kids were reading Batman comics and pantsing each other, David was trying to build a breeder reactor. He failed, of course, but the effort just made him more determined. One day, he telephoned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission looking for help, but they thought he was a wise guy and brushed him off. Hahn kept at it anyway.
Now, as everyone who has built a nuclear reactor knows, you’re going to need a little Uranium. The pros use the very scarce Uranium-235, the homebound amateurs are stuck with the generic Uranium 238 (thorium). And so, incorporating a few houseful items and a lead block as a reactor, David got to work collecting thorium from lanterns, radium from clocks, tritium from gunsights and lithium from $1000 worth of batteries he bought by breaking into his piggy-bank. Hahn also employed coffee filters and pickle jars to handle dangerous and potentially lethal chemicals. The lack of protection---he wore only a gas mask---will undoubtedly affect his longevity, but that’s for another day. As it was, the Boy Scout suffered burns on his skin, turned his hair green and caused himself to black out. Some people will do anything for a merit badge.
Eventually, the Environmental Protection Agency got wind of Hahn’s shenanigans and came a-knock, knock, knocking at his front door. David led them to his shed lab with the “Caushon” sign on the door. Inside, the feds found evidence of Hahn’s little hobbies. The remnants of his experiments posed numerous health risks and the EPA declared the property a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site. Following the dismantling of his lab and the attendant hubbub in town, Hahn achieved his Eagle Scout ranking despite efforts to deprive him of the honor by the locals, who tabbed David “The Radioactive Boy Scout.” “It has a nice ring to it,” Hahn smiled. “I think I’ll put it on my business cards.”
WARNING: All citizens should refrain from building nuclear reactors unless they have had a prep course in The ABCs of Nuclear Fission (a minimum of 12 hours) at their local community college. Or you could live in Oklahoma, where it doesn’t make any difference.
You’ll Get A Kick Out Of This
A criminal complaint recently filed in Spring Valley, Wisconsin, accuses a 38-year-old nurse named Mary Brown, of all things, of amputating the foot of a 62-year-old man and keeping it for display in her taxidermy shop. This is not necessarily against the law, but it is when it happens against the patient’s will. According to her colleagues, Brown planned to put a sign next to the frostbitten appendage which read, “Wear your boots, kids!”
On November 3, 2022, Nurse Mary was charged with two felonies: one for mayhem and the other for intentionally causing great bodily harm to an elderly person. If convicted, Brown faces up to 92 years in jail.
The patient was admitted to the Spring Valley Health and Rehabilitation Center in March after suffering severe frostbite on both of his feet, which several employees of the place described as looking “black, like a mummy.” In May, the man rolled out of bed and further damaged his mangled right foot, which by now smelled like the outskirts of Perth Amboy. Director of Nursing Tracy Reitz said the foot was “dead as a doornail and hanging on by a tendon.” Mary Brown asked for permission to amputate the foot but the clinic declined. Believing “it was the right thing to do,” Brown cut off the foot with gauze scissors. “If it was me, I would have wanted it off,” claimed Mary.
Days later, the man died. He and his foot were summarily sent to a funeral home, from which the nurse eventually “retrieved” it. The community’s reaction is mixed, Nurse Brown has her supporters and detractors in about equal numbers. Her critics wanted her led off to prison. Her supporters ask what critics would do if the shoe was on the other foot.
Return of The Mad Pooper
Farts in jars are one thing, but rampant and indiscreet pooping is quite another. During the Summer of 2017, an unnamed female jogger terrified the proper citizens of Colorado Springs, depositing excrement here and there along her morning route. One family’s (the Buddes) property in particular seemed to hold an unexplainable fascination for the runner, who stopped by often. One morning the kids were playing in the yard and they came upon the woman with her shorts around her ankles, not a pretty sight for first and second graders. They tore into the house, yelling for succor. “Mom, you won’t believe this but there’s a lady pooping in our yard!!!” Colorado Springs can be a pretty wacky place thought the mom, but this was a new low.
The afflicted family left notes begging the woman to take her business elsewhere. Photographs were taken and made public but no one recognized her. After the poopfest gained national attention, a video appeared on YouTube claiming the jogger’s actions were related to recent medical issues, thus she was entitled to First Amendment protection. Procter & Gamble offered her a year’s supply of its best Charmin toilet paper if she agreed to turn herself in. Nothing. Then, slowly, the pooper sightings diminished and finally disappeared. The Mad Pooper was finally gone, or at least on hiatus. The happy population of Colorado Springs breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Fast forward to 2021, when North Park Hill residents called in the police after catching another Mad Pooper on film defecating in broad daylight. “It looked like a guy from a distance, but who knows?” testified an aggrieved resident who prefers to remain nameless for obvious reasons. When asked why this seemed to be an ongoing Colorado phenomenon, local authorities deflected the question. “We think this sort of thing probably goes on everywhere but is underreported in the press,” said a Park Hill police spokesman. “Either that or a higher percentage of Coloradans are full of shit.”
“Come Along And Sing The Song And Join The Jamboree! M-i-c….”
Call us old fogeys if you will, but many of us Central Floridians are the victims of Disney World Overload. Ever since Walt and the gang dropped anchor in the wilds of Orange County, the hills have been alive with the sounds of earth-movers, giddy tourists and traffic jams. The nice polite Orlando airport has morphed into a human jungle of wailing kids, put-upon mothers and testy security personnel. Crime is up, real estate prices are through the roof and the orange groves have disappeared. But still they keep coming, legions of them, pouring into town from grim outposts like Waco and Truth or Consequences and Woonsocket to visit the shrine, purchase the ears and cross another one off the bucket list.
I have been to a Disney property about four times, mostly with children. I recall one unending line after another at the rides, overfilled eateries and a Space Mountain ride that was pretty good. Once, Siobhan had a visit from a Bayer representative named Karen Brown, who was a big kid. Karen wanted to see The Mouse, so we did. It was a rainy day, which it often seems to be at Disney, but that wasn’t stopping Karen, who was hell-bent on checking out all the rides. Siobhan will not go on a single one, so you know who kept Ms. Brown company. There’s nothing like sitting in a roller-coaster in dripping wet pants, knowing you have ten more similar episodes to go.
Well, you say how about Epcot or Animal Kingdom? Tried both, the first with a new girlfriend who wanted to visit Epcot on opening week. Meh. Fewer kids and less crowded, but a yawner. Where were the Dodgems and the penny arcades? Where was Tripoli’s Thin Crust Pizza? In all fairness, Siobhan and I went to Animal Kingdom the first week it was open and most of the animals were on a slow boat from China, yet to arrive. There’s nothing worse than a place called Animal Kingdom with a shortage of animals. While there, a hyena walked up to us and said, “This is IT? The famous U. S. of A.? Where’s the beef? I came all the way from Zimbabwe for this? I think I’d like to renegotiate my contract.”
Of course if you’re a diehard Disney buff like Jeff Reitz, none of this matters. The 49-year-old California fun boy once attended Disneyland in Anaheim 2995 days in a row, a streak that ended only because the place shut down for Covid. The whole thing began as a joke between Reitz and a friend when the two were between jobs in 2011 and went to Disney to celebrate New Year’s Eve. The original plan was to spend every day of 2012 at the park, in part because it was a leap year. But then Jeff couldn’t find the brakes and kept going for 8 years, 3 months and 13 days. Reitz worked in nearby Long Beach and would usually arrive at Disneyland between 4:30 and 5 p.m., logging some 10,000 steps during his three to five hour visits. Asked about his feelings when the streak was broken by the pandemic, Jeff said, “I struggled with it at the start but eventually made peace with it. I’m good with it now. I went more than eight years, watched a lot of changes, met some interesting people. I met a little kid once who asked me what I was doing. When I told him about my streak, he said I must be goofy. I told him I actually WAS Goofy in disguise. He ran off to tell his father and I got the hell out of there. I think I really AM Goofy.”
That’s all, folks….
