By Johnny Beaver
It’s That Time Again
You know, after the first of the year following an election season? That’s right folks, new laws abound! Woo. It’s like Christmas and the circus rolled up into one. Unfortunately the only one you care about, the marijuana legalization thing, doesn’t kick in until this coming summer. So… I guess we’ll just skip this section and move on.
Serial Masturbator Tries Hand at Hairdressing (Again)
I’ve been waiting for that headline all my life. Let’s just let that sink in for a moment.
Ahh, alright. Twenty-seven-year-old Jared Walter of Tri-Met bus ejaculation/hair-gluing fame was finally released from prison (at long last) this past Dec. 5, part of the release conditions including five years of probation. Probation that he quickly violated by creeping up behind some woman in an Oregon City Dollar Store before cutting her hair with a pair of scissors. I guess he was going to take it home and… but let’s not speculate.
Though it is no consolation to his victims, Walter is obviously sick. On multiple occasions he has expressed the desire for help, but claiming that he doesn’t know how to get it. And I mean, pfft. No available help for the mentally ill? Come on. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it. Prison obviously offers all the rehabilitation necessary for the kind of person that can’t stop touching their wang and messing with random folks’ hair.
Walter will next see a court room on Feb. 26.
50,000 Trout Up Sh*t’s Creek, No Paddle
The Willamette Valley dam that we all know and love forgot to tie its shoelaces, tripped down a flight of stairs, and experienced a gate malfunction. This led to 50,000 trout prematurely being released into the winter at a time of scarce food.
Officials are wielding diesel pumps like samurai warriors, bringing in emergency water from the McKenzie River in order to help the nearly 550,000 steelhead and trout that will stay there until spring. There’s another hatchery downstream a ways with 800,000 salmon that may be affected, but only time will tell.
If it makes you feel any better, a tanker truck crashed and spilled 11,000 juvenile salmon on the highway as it attempted to evacuate 227,000 salmon from the beleaguered hatchery. Only, if that does in fact make you feel better, you’re a terrible person.
Local Bullfighter Narrowly Escapes Darwin Award
It’s New Year’s Eve, what better way to celebrate than getting mauled by a bull—voluntarily? One Austin Bottcher of Lebanon did just that. Heading out to the Linn County Fairgrounds, Bottcher signed up for bull poker, an audience-involved event that has been deemed too dangerous by the International Professional Rodeo Association. Essentially a few audience members sign waivers that make them admit things such as having “an IQ two points less than a rock.” They all sit around a table playing poker on the arena floor while a bull is released. And if that isn’t dumb enough, this time the bull had a card on its horn that you were supposed to somehow retrieve.
A hop, a skip, and a jump later Bottcher is up in Portland having his femur re-attached to his hip, which was crushed.
Oh, but it gets worse. Bottcher’s family has put a GoFundMe (www.gofundme.com/jk5rf8) online, asking for donations up to $50,000 to help pay for his medical bills. I can’t help but wonder if they’ve only raised $450 thus far because, well, he sort of asked for it by doing something that’s barely different than bobbing for apples in a barrel of scorpions (or sticking your arm in a lawnmower)? Or maybe it was his “I don’t regret doing it” quote that was given to KOIN during an interview.
It’s a terrible debt to bear, and certainly a horrible accident, but good lord.
Because It’s the New Year, Dammit
Just to prove that not all news is bad or involves celebrity bikini posts to Twitter, a baby orca was born in Puget Sound. No, this isn’t in Oregon. And yes, when it grows up it will be a bloodthirsty man-eater, but it’s amongst a population of only 78 orcas left in the area.
One small swim for an orca, one large ploomp! (the sound it makes when it jumps out of the water and goes back in, if they even do that) for orca kind.
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