The Rocket

Issue date: 11/2/07 Section: Opinion

When I look for ideas to fill this space each week, I go online and search through various news sources. Usually, I find a story that piques my interest and I voice my opinion accordingly.

Today, however, I have found a variety of stories that I would like to share with you. If you did not know the source, you might assume these appeared in The Onion or the Weekly World News. All these stories are actually from Fox News, and even though they are just a step above those other two publications in terms of accurate reporting, it's safe to say that all these articles are true.

I will start out with a story in tribute to this week's attention-getter, Halloween. A man dressed up as a zombie fell asleep on a train in Germany and the passengers thought he was a corpse. Paramedics were called in and realized he was just drunk and passed out on the train. I have met people from the Tom Savini Art School that do some incredible work, but I have yet to mistake a drunk in zombie make-up for an actual corpse. How I obtained the experience to differentiate between the two is best saved for another article.

Moving on, the best way to describe another article I found is to share the headline with you: "Scientists find oldest living animal, then kill it."

I did not think this was true until I read the piece. Scientists were dredging up waters north of Iceland when they found a species of clam. They cut it open to count its growth rings and realized it was between 405 and 410 years old. Being that the creature was the world's oldest clam, and because this is a respectable paper, I will allow you to make your own jokes about this story.

If you think that we should pull the troops out of Iraq and focus our attention elsewhere, I wholeheartedly agree. Apparently, as recent headlines indicate, we need to turn our attention to a bigger threat: pirates. A U.S. gunship that was loaned to a taskforce to battle piracy sank two pirate skiffs off the coast of Somalia. The article mentioned that pirate attacks have increased 14 percent in the first nine months of 2007. I have enough things to worry about in my life to add pirate attacks to the list. This is a threat that needs to be stopped. I have my hands full dealing with the zombie threats, so I'll leave this to someone else.

Another article I read said that two boys might face murder charges after killing their father with a tent pole. They threw the pole at their father's head as he was driving away after an argument. Being an outdoorsman myself and dealing with many horrible tents in the past, I have to say that it takes quite a bit of skill to chuck a tent pole accurately at something. To throw it through a window of a moving car and hit someone in the head is pretty impressive. Seeing as I have had tent poles bend when I have stepped on them, I know the argument the kids had with their father was certainly not about the quality of the tent. These are the things I think of when I should be studying for exams.

I never understood why so many people are reluctant to read the news and keep up with current events.

Truth is stranger than fiction and many times is a lot more entertaining. At the least, it is more entertaining than the entertainment section, which makes me more depressed than anything else. Make sure to keep an eye open for all the goofy things this world throws at us.

Tony Maiocco is a senior communication major and a regular contributor to The Rocket.

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