(Originally posted on the website Heron Flight)

Just when I was tempted to change my opinion of people (meaning people at large), which most likely was induced by a rather rare night of good sleep, upon retrieving the daily paper from the front porch steps, my opinion intensified. There to greet my newly awakened eyes was a headline that reinforced my assessment that the human race is made up of sick, twisted, illogical individuals:

HEADLINE: “6 SKULLS, SEVERED HAND LEAD TO STRIPPER ARREST!”

Articles about severed hands are not what I want waving at me from the front page of the newspaper first thing in the morning! It was a fine morning until I saw that headline. Opening that paper was like releasing a storm cloud into the otherwise cloud-free morning sky, tainting the sunrise, dampening the pleasant scent of the jasmine bush on the porch, and souring my assessment of mankind (womankind included).

Let’s step back and look at what the paper reported.

First, the headline said it was a stripper the police arrested. Suddenly, my perspective on strippers was challenged. This was not just a girl who would jiggle her goodies for my delight. This wasn’t one who was merely eager to slink-off her bra and show me her nearly ready to sag 31-year-old breasts while I pushed a buck into her crotch. No, this stripper wanted more! She wasn’t satisfied with the tips! She wanted the hand that stuffed them as well! (What the hell does she have in there that it could castrate a man at the wrist?)

Now, the newspaper said that the police “found the crudely severed hand in a foot-tall mason jar on a table in the basement.” They described it as large and possibly belonging to a white guy. One of the stripper’s roommates said that the residents of the house named the hand “Freddie”. They actually named it! They must have felt some amount of endearment toward the dismembered appendage. At least that is more respectful than calling it “Thing” as the Addams Family called their creepy hand that lived in a box.

Also in the house were six human skulls, neatly arranged on a shelf among other animal skulls. The police described the finding of the skulls as less “bizarre” than the discovery of the hand because “human skulls can be readily purchased on the internet.” Yes, let’s discount the skulls because the internet has normalized their availability to the average consumer. No big deal, they are only HEADS! Look, if a woman de-hands me, it’s one thing. I can probably make it through life and even continue going to strip clubs, using my other hand to continue pounding bucks into crotches. But, if she wants my head, that’s a different situation. There’s no point in having hands if my head is gone. I think someone should be a little more concerned about the skulls! Where are these internet sites that sell skulls anyway? www.heads-r-us.com? www.e-head.com? Are there headhunters in the Amazon Valley? www.amazon.com? Wait… What kind of a person would buy human skulls? (Boy, this girl is going to make me lose all faith in strippers.)

One of the most disturbing things in this news article was the reason the police were called to the stripper’s house in the first place. First the paper said, an “emotionally disturbed man” who lived at the house was “threatening to hurt himself.” No, let them rephrase that, “A caller told dispatchers a man living there was TRYING TO KILL HIMSELF WITH A HAMMER.” No! Don’t do it! Someone talk him out of it! Don’t jump! A hammer?? He was trying to kill himself with a hammer?? What has this world come to? You can’t kill yourself with a hammer! The worst you could do would be to pummel yourself hard enough in the skull to make you just a little more retarded than you already are! Kill yourself with a hammer! Good Lord! Is this what the human race has been reduced to: selling our heads on the internet and trying to kill ourselves with hammers? I’m throwing this paper back out on the porch and going back to sleep until evolution helps the rest of the world catch up!

The stripper decided to not tell the police anything. The one who bares all bared nothing this time. “She has refused to tell the police where or how she obtained the body parts.” Why waste her breath when they can just Google it? (I searched on “buy human skull” and Google gave me 4,940,000 results – in .20 seconds! One of the top listings said, “Yes, you can buy human bones. Please see the Human Skull section of our website to browse available… “) The stripper was “released after posting a $100,000 bail bond.” Any of you guys want to “give her a hand” paying that back if she defaults?