Random Shots: Teens and Other Freaks

R.F. Kampfer

MANY PARENTS ARE annoyed by the popularity of “freak-dancing” among today’s teenagers. Of course, annoying parents is the teenagers’ main purpose in life.

It really makes you feel old to realize that many teens regard oral sex as just second base.

An Earth, Wind and Fire concert tour this summer is being sponsored by Viagra, which pretty much dates that audience.

Helpful hint: When small children get anesthesia, they should be told that they will “take a nap” rather be “put to sleep,” a phrase they may associate with family pets.

You Gotta Believe

BRITISH WICCANS HAVE lodged a protest about inaccuracies concerning the Craft in the new Harry Potter movie. The producers should have heeded the warning of Malaclypse the Younger: “Meddle not in the affairs of wizards, they are subtle and quick to anger.”

None of the justly critical reviews of “Bride of the Wind,” the film biography of Alma Schindler, seems to have mentioned that the subject was handled much better by Tom Lehrer on the “That Was The Year That Was” album:

“Her lovers were many and varied,
Since first she began her beguine.
There were three famous ones that she married,
And lord knows how many between.”

The Illuminati in Tomb Raider seem to be the same rich, white men who already rule the world.

Military History

IT HAS BEEN theorized that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor actually strengthened the U.S. Navy. Sinking the obsolescent battleships freed the aircraft carriers to act independently, rather than being tied to combined fleets as per pre-war doctrine. Not that the movie spends much time discussing the question.

During the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a Roman frontier town was besieged and captured by Germanic tribes. Food had run short during the siege, so one German burst into a home to find a woman sitting down to a meager meal of garden snails fried in olive oil. The warrior, who would have stood his ground against any number of Roman soldiers, was so repulsed by the thought of eating gastropods that he fled in disgust.

When North Korea’s Dubya, Kim Jong Il, visited Moscow recently, he traveled across Siberia in an armored train. That’s carrying nostalgia for the Bolshevik Revolution a bit far: It’s not known if he wore a Budenny hat and Mauser pistol for the occasion.

A new Playstation 2 video game “Red Faction” pits rebellious coal miners against company gun-thugs. Sounds like a keeper.

Missing Pieces

A RECENT INVENTORY of FBI property reveals that a lot of guns and computers are missing. Given past practice, they’ll probably blame the CIA.

The extradition of Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal will set an interesting precedent: Let’s hope it gives Henry Kissinger a few sleepless nights.

When you buy a Dunhill, you pay $100 for the pipe and $200 for the ivory dot on the stem.

It used to be that many places of public accommodation had booths where you could check your hat and coat. In Michigan, these may have to be re-opened for people to check their handguns.

Both nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and ether were once popular as recreational drugs, before the medical and dental professions adopted them.

from ATC 94 (September/October 2001)