Strange Stuff Going On

I haven't been writing too much lately for two reasons:

1. Between my two sons, we've had baseball nearly every night.

2. I just haven't had anything to say about stuff (which hasn't stopped me in the past, so I'll rely on excuse #1).

Every so often, however, events happen in the news that give me pause and force me to write a post. Here are a couple of those events. The first, from a wcco.com report:

Police Seek Minn. Man Who Slashes Rubber Balls

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) ― Duluth police are looking for a man with a self-professed sexual fetish for slashing rubber balls.

Police have been seeking the 31-year-old since surveillance tape allegedly showed him breaking into a fitness clinic in May and slashing exercise balls.

Authorities are familiar with the man. A criminal complaint released Thursday says he was convicted in 2005 of breaking into a sports facility at the University of Minnesota in Duluth and slashing about 70 balls. Each ball cost between $30 and $60.

The complaint says when he pleaded guilty in that case, he admitted slashing more than 40 other balls at two clinics.

Court documents say the man told police he slashed the rubber balls to satisfy a sexual urge. Experts said he has an unusual attraction to inflatable exercise devices.

OK. I'm not going to claim that I don't have my own hang ups, but come on. Exercise balls? Slashing exercise ball as a sexual fetish? How does a guy go from being born seemingly "normal," to this? What has to take place in one's youth to lead to breaking into exercise facilities and slashing exercise balls (70 of them!) for a thrill? I just don't get it. You know, my wife has one of those exercise balls. I can't help but look at it differently now (not in a sick way or anything....).

Here is the next story that struck me as odd. It took place in 'Sconny, of course. Here is the picture:

Here is the story from startribune.com:

MILWAUKEE - One southern Wisconsin homeowner is probably not in love with the Oscar Mayer wiener.

The famed hot dog's iconic Wienermobile crashed Friday into the deck and garage of a home in Mount Pleasant, about 35 miles south of Milwaukee, when the driver tried to turn the giant hot dog on wheels around in the driveway, police said.

The 22-year-old driver thought she was moving in reverse, but actually went forward and crashed into the home, Mount Pleasant Police Chief Tim Zarzecki said. No one was home and neither the driver nor a passenger was injured.

Both the home and vehicle suffered moderate damage, Zarzecki said. No citations were immediately issued.

There are a lot of reasons that I wouldn't necessarily want to drive the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, but this is probably reason #1. I could see something like this (a Wienermobile crash) happening to me and having the picture put on the internets for the whole universe to see and then having some idiot write a blog post about it.

I'd rather be on the internets for a Wienermobile crash than slashing exercise balls, though.

Jeff