Marlboro
February 9th, 2010 by ciketoptue
men
always
remember
love
being
one
real
orgasm
Only two bird watchers in history have ever seen more than 8,000 of the approximately 9,600 species of birds found on our planet. Phoebe Snetsinger, of Missouri, was one of the two. Her father, Leo Burnett, was the ad exec who helped bring the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man, Toucan Sam, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, the Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger into our lives. Why is that important when discussing a birder? Easy: money! Only 900 species are found in the US and Canada, so a serious birder needs to have enough dough to travel around the world.
To give you some perspective on just what an fantastic accomplishment seeing 8,000 birds is, consider this:
Only 250 or so people have ever hit the 5,000 mark. Only 100 people have made it to 6,000 and only 12 or so have seen more than 7,000. In addition to money, serious birding requires time and strict adherence to the rules. There are birders who’ve been blacklisted for cheating and others that have fought over what actually constitutes a sighting (some birders say if you “hear” a bird, you’ve seen it.)
Phoebe Snetsinger (with a name like that, you’re a born birder, eh?) only became a serious bird watcher after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. It’s quite possible that counting, or listing as it’s sometimes called, actually helped her beat that diagnosis; she lived not just another year, but another 17 years! And she would have lived longer, no doubt, were birding not such a dangerous hobby. Yes, on top of the financial independence and time, one also needs a certain amount of courage to trek into the wild, deep into jungles and forests of enormous size.
In 1999, on a birding trip to Madagascar, as she prepared to see her 8,500th bird, Snetsinger was killed in a freak car accident in the middle of nowhere. So, in the end, cancer didn’t do her in, but her obsessive hobby did.
Not that many moons ago, if you asked an ornithologist how many species of birds there were, s/he would have said about 6,000. Five years from now, they expect there will be more like 18,000. It’s not that birds are evolving, it’s more that we’re changing our definitions of what we call a species. Who knows how many of those 18,000 Snetsinger could have crossed off her list.
Any serious birders out there? How many have you counted? What’s your best birding story?
Stash Spotted! The 10 Weirdest Places Drugs Have Been Found
It’s not outer space that has NASA seeing stars. It’s cocaine!
There was no failure to launch at a NASA this week, as a worker discovered a bag of cocaine outside a bathroom in a secure part of a space shuttle hangar at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Despite being all spaced-out, NASA has a zero-tolerance drug policy (and is now drug testing everyone with access to the area), so it’s an extra odd place to find some dope. Perhaps not the strangest or funniest, though. Check out some of the most memorable places (that don’t involve dead baby corpses) where drugs have been discovered.
In an ATM, February 2008
• An 18-year-old woman in Bremerton, WA accidentally placed her bag of meth in a deposit envelope instead of her money and tried to deposit it at a Kitsap Credit Union ATM. Silly junkie! Depositing your meth is the how you go through withdrawal!
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In fat rolls, September 2009
• A 5-foot, 220-lb. woman in Pontiac, MI, who’d been sentenced to jail time at her court hearing, tried to sneak her stash in with her by tucking it in some sweaty blubber—completely overlooking the standard strip search. Suddenly smuggling dope in through your anus seem less gross.
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In a public flower pot, September 2009
• Practical jokers in Millville, NJ put planted marijuana in a flower pot hanging from a lamppost on…wait for it…High St. Police eventually noticed the three-foot-tall plants sticking out and took them down, but it was high-larious while it lasted.
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In front of a donut shop, September 2009
• A man, who was apparently unaware of the strong bond between police and pastries, got caught dealing heroin out of a Marlboro Menthol cigarette pack in front of the local Dunkin Donuts in Easton, PA. Hey, some people like their donuts with sprinkles of heroin on top.
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In shark corpses, June 2009
• Drug gangs in Mexico City, Mexico tried to conceal more than a ton of cocaine slabs destined for the U.S. in the frozen corpses of sharks. When Naval officers discovered the stash, those responsible for the shipment claimed the drugs were a conserving agent. Coke—it does a shark body good!
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In stuffed animals, August 2009
• You know how they make teddy bears so cuddly? They slice the cute lil’ fuckers open and stuff ‘em full of heroin! At least that’s what a smack ring in the Bronx, NY did, filling Build-A-Bear dolls with dope before delivering them to distributors. With so much junk coursing through their bodies, we guess you could call them “unsteady bears”!
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In dogs, July 2004
• Dogs may be man’s best friend, but we don’t think they’re cool with drug dealers surgically inserting eleven containers of cocaine in them to smuggle from Colombia to the UK, as a northwest London couple did to some sweet pooches. Sometimes it’s absolutely right to bite the hand that feeds you.
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In a shipment of artichokes, September 2009
• In Peru, police uncovered four tons of high-grade liquid cocaine hidden amongst 8,000 cans of artichokes at the port of Callao. That’s one way to get kids to eat their vegetables.
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In a cast, March 2009
• A 66-year-old Chilean man, who had two fractured bones below the knee, tried to smuggle cocaine into Barcelona in his cast made out of cocaine! The man couldn’t catch a break, in part because he was also hiding coke in his luggage, a six-pack of beer, and the aluminum legs of two stools.
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In a submarine, October 2009
• In Guatemalan waters off the Central American Pacific coast, U.S. anti-drug agents and the Guatemalan Army intercepted three Colombians and a Mexican in a small submarine carrying ten tons of cocaine. That’s even more drugs than the Beatles fit in their yellow submarine!
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In a religious statue, May 2008
• U.S. customs officials with drug-sniffing dogs seized a 6.6-pound statue of Jesus Christ, which a Mexican woman had in the trunk of her car. It turned out God’s son was made from a mixture of plaster and cocaine, which gives a whole new meaning to the “most high.”
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