STRANGER OF THE WEEK: Theodore Cornell

Stranger Of The Week is a column in which reporter Miles Bonsignore delves into the life of a stranger in their natural element to unveil the truth and vulnerability of the common man. These are those interviews.

Theodore Cornell sits in a coffeeshop, with a travel mug and a freshly purchased copy of “Sunrise Over Vietnam”, a love story. A handsome young man, me, approaches him after greetings back and forth, Theodore agrees to an interview.

Theodore Cornell

MILES: First of all I would like to thank you for your time, and is it okay if I call you Theo?

THEODORE: No, son. I dont think that would be appropriate.

MILES: Of course. For my first question, I’d like to ask you what you love in this world?

THEODORE: Well, I love three and only three things. A pipe full of pall mall handpicked tobacco, a nice summer day, and my dead wife Sheila.

MILES: Oh my, I’m so sorry for your loss.

THEODORE: Don’t be. She was old as the north wind and as sweet as honeycotton in June.

MILES: Well, death can still be hard to understand sometimes.

THEODORE: Not with stamina like me young man. These old bones are still ripe for the plucking, and I know one day I will join her in the great blue sky above.

MILES: Mmm. Now, what did you spend the bulk of your life doing?

THEODORE: I was a contract killer in Alabama during the Hoover era.

MILES: Holy shit. How old are you?

THEODORE: Older than you know son.

MILES: You… You killed people?

THEODORE: No… I wasn’t terribly good at my job. But at the end of the day, as long as I had my pall mall handpicked tobacco and my dead wife Sheila, and a nice summer day, I was happy.

MILES: When did Sheila die?

THEODORE: 80 years ago today.

MILES: …and you still love her?

THEODORE: More than anything.

MILES: Wow, thats really amazing sir.

THEODORE: You’ll always remember your first wife….

Theodore finishes the liquid in his travel mug.

MILES: Oh, it looks like you finished your coffee. I can fill up your mug if you’d like.

THEODORE: It’s not coffee. It’s poison.

MILES: What?! Holy shit!

THEODORE: It’s my time son. Tell my new wife Candice I say goodbye…

MILES: No no no! What! WHO’S CANDICE?!

THEODORE: She’s a senior at McKinleys High School For The Deaf… Find her…

Theodore slumped  down motionless in his chair. Out of his pocket fell a picture of a grumpy 18 year old girl with facial tattoo of a hamburger, in a wedding dress alongside Theodore smiling ever so brightly.

MILES: Fly free, white stallion.

In some sort of twisted fate, at that exact moment the barista in a “SOCIETY FUCKS” T Shirt clicked the wheel on her ipod and Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ready To Die” sounded throughout the coffeeshop. Theodore was gone.

PhD Level Analysis Given To Txt

After receiving a txt from the girl he took out two nights earlier, Tim Benthel began to analyze the message in a manner unseen outside of English PhD candidates.

I think that sounds fun the txt read answering his earlier txt inquiring about drinks after work.

“There’s just so much subtext here!” he declared to his co-workers and de facto  peer reviewers. “It’s remarkable how she’s able to say so much with so few words. I’m going to be pouring over this for the rest of the day.”

While stopping short of diagramming the sentence, Benthel did say the txt out loud in every conceivable inflection. “I think that sounds fun. No, the ‘think’ here is a idiomatic expression of non-commitment not a statement on her actual knowledge. I think that sounds fun. Yes, that seems more of a possibility. Emphasizing the potential of the night to come while still not being too agreeable. Oh she’s good.”

“What about what she’s not saying?” a lofty voice asked over his cubicle.

“I hadn’t even thought of that!” exclaimed Benthel who began again in earnest figuring out everything she didn’t say and compiling it all in a growing Excel sheet. This was in addition to the thirty three page Word document containing all several hundred drafts of his response.

Benthel, who earned a C- minus his senior year of high school English and never took another class in college, spent the next two and a half hours debating what her delayed response could indicate.

In the end, Benthel reached the conclusion that she, in fact, definitely wanted to have sex with him but wasn’t sure about how soon they should move in. As of the publication of this story, he has not txted her back.

Paula Deen to Star In “Racy” New Comedy

The horrifying promotional poster for “Behind the Times”

For some celebrities, using the dreaded n-word in the public eye can be a death sentence. But for a select few celebrities who have committed the ultimate faux pas, things may be looking up.

“People love shows about second chances,” said John Landgraf, president of FX. “We gave Charlie Sheen a second chance, and now we’re giving a whole cast of celebrities their opportunity to think twice before saying something they’ll regret.”

The show, titled “Behind the Times” is aptly named. The show will be about a small family from Savannah, Georgia in the year 1810 who gets transported to the future and has to learn to cope with modern day standards. Delilah Ann Cromp (Paula Deen) and husband Jeremiah Cromp (Michael Richards) must adjust to 21st Century living with their daughter Anna Ann Cromp (Gwyneth Paltro).

“It gets pretty heated,” said Landgraf. “They relocate to Atlanta shortly after they come to the future, and that’s when it’s time to fasten your seat belts.”

Every publicist in Hollywood has announced that none of their clients will be involved in the project, limiting opportunities for guest stars.

“They’ll see… once the pilot airs, everyone will want to be in the show. People love comebacks,” Landgraf insisted.

The show, set in Atlanta, will be shot in Wisconsin, for safety reasons.

Snowden now blames leak on a “REPLY-ALL” mistake

“Some girls at work thought I was really edgy for trying to take down the man.  So while initially I had planned on saying it was a mistake, I started saying I did it on purpose and that my main motive was freedom.  They loved the part about freedom,” said Edward Snowden from the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow on leaking NSA information.

Snowden mentioned there were several times he could have contained the situation but chose to act against his best instincts.

“Well, I started to enjoy a certain level of celebrity that I was comfortable with,” said Snowden.

He went on to talk about how the charges of espionage provided a level of excitement for life he thought unattainable.  “When your life starts to become like a spy movie, you know you’re doing it right,” said Snowden.

“But then everything got out of hand fast like a snowball effect or what I like to call now the ‘Snowden’ effect,” continued Snowden, with a wink.

“Now, I’m in Moscow and basically reaching out to any country that will grant me asylum,” he remarked.

He plans to be very careful in the future with emails though he already admitted to accidentally sending his first asylum request to Ecuador to the wrong email account.

“The email didn’t bounce, so I thought it made it to the right officials.  But that mistake is the main reason I’ve been tied up in Moscow so long,” said Snowden.

Daredevil Dies in a Horribly Boring Way

Even The First Lady was heard mumbling “dumbass.”

 

Just hours after what’s-his-face risked his family, his career, his lunch, and his life by walking a shit-ton of feet on a steel rope across two little land things somewhere in the dry part of America (North), he was found dead in the middle of a street just outside of Reno or something.

Witnesses say he was crossing the street rather slowly, placing one foot meticulously in front of the other, and not doing a lot of looking around. He was hit by a nondescript truck that we probably won’t bother tracking down.

Man burns tongue on pizza, doesn’t learn lesson

A ghost eats a dangerous pizza.

Last night at 11:03 pm, Sam Meier was rushed to a local emergency room in Atlanta after burning his tongue on a slice of Digiorno’s pizza.

“For the burn to require hospitalization, the pizza must have literally been on fire at the time.  Why he decided to still try to eat it?  I can’t tell you, but man, he must have been hungry,” said admitting physician, Dr. Keith Bogart.

This is not Meier’s first lesson on the importance of waiting for pizza to cool.  He was previously treated for third degree tongue burns in 2012 and 2010.

“Doing something repeatedly that you know will bring severe physical harm is the definition of addiction.  The only way to understand this behavior is that either consciously or subconsciously Sam hates himself,” said Meier’s psychiatrist, Dr. Baxter Asworth.

Meier was not able to speak at the time of the interview due to injuries sustained, but he was able to write his thoughts.  “I knew that the pizza should be hot.  I took it out of the oven which was set at 425 ⁰F and then blew on it a little bit thinking it would knock a few degrees off.  But I was wrong.  Horribly wrong,” wrote Meier.  It should be noted that Meier underlined “Horribly wrong” seven times.

Health policy advocates are now calling for images of burned tongues to be featured on the packaging for all brands of frozen pizza like Digiorno.  But experts in the field speculate this preventative measure is unlikely to come about because of the powerful frozen pizza lobby.

Study finds you can get sunburned at places other than the beach

Leading scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) proved that it is possible to get sunburned when you are not at the beach.  “It makes sense.  I just don’t know why we hadn’t thought of it before,” said Dr. Jasper Hevers, chief researcher of this effort.

Hevers said he got the idea after returning home from watching a Baltimore Orioles baseball game to find his skin red and painful to touch.  “I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, ‘Is this a sunburn?  But I wasn’t even at the beach,’” Hevers recounted.

A survey was distributed by the NIH before Hever’s study which found 87% of people say they have never even thought of applying sunscreen when not at the beach.  Of the 13% who had, only 4% had actually done so.  Of that 4%, 100% are not fun to hang out with.

Hevers conducted his study by attending the Bonnaroo musical festival in Manchester, Tennessee. There he distributed SPF 50 sunscreen to five hundred festival attendees and enrolled another five hundred who would not receive sunscreen.

“The results were astounding.  Basically every single person who did not receive sunscreen got burned pretty badly.  Then I verified the results by checking Google Maps, and there definitely wasn’t an ocean nearby,” Hevers reported.

Dr. Hevers now plans to promote how important it is to apply sunscreen when outdoors.  “I hope that one day people who are fun to hang out with start using sunscreen when at places other than the beach,” said Dr. Hevers.

Area Man Believes It’s Time to Start Farting in Front of His Girlfriend

It’s a sunny day. Hopeful, even.

Evan Woods bravely stands outside the apartment of Sophie Grant, his girlfriend of three months and seventeen days.

“And six hours, if you want to get all exact about it,” Woods said.

He takes a deep breath and explains that, though he really likes Grant, it’s time to put their relationship to the ultimate test. Some people believe that test is moving in together, but not Woods.

“See, if you haven’t farted in front of each other yet, and then you move in together, and one day you’re just sitting there watching a movie and you don’t want to make up some lame excuse as to why you need to leave the room for a second, you need to be able to let one go without fear of being asked to move out.”

When asked if he thought flatulence brought up a hygiene issue, he shook his head no and rambled on about “positive, reaffirming colon cleansing” and “air ducts.”

Some people choose to believe that “cutting the cheese” is an unacceptable public practice. We caught up with Pamela Dawson, one of Woods’ neighbors, who agrees with this point of view.

“It’s like pollution. Only disrespectful people pollute,” Dawson said. “Sometimes, yeah, it’s funny to pollute. I get it. I was a kid once. But that’s the stuff that ruins relationships. Ruins trust. My first husband polluted a lot. It’s just…global warming, you know?”

Woods openly disagreed. “One, I’ve never liked people who use metaphors. I never know what they’re really saying. Two, flatulence only ruins trust when not discussed first. Sure, surprise farts are almost never a good thing. Trust broken. But an expected fart, pre-warned…no way that can ruin trust.”

So, as Woods squares his shoulders and makes his way into his unassuming girlfriend’s house, one thing is clear: it’s not really about farting. It’s about honesty, respect, and being who you really are in order to establish solid, emotional relationships and support systems.

UPDATE: Woods and Grant are no longer together. According to Woods, Grant had been on the Atkins diet for quite awhile and “long story short, she let one go on the way home from dinner, and I kind of threw up in her car. I didn’t apologize because I was trapped and it wasn’t fair because she doesn’t have automatic windows. She broke up with me. Probably for the best.”

Relationship Repo business takes off by taking back

Have you ever had a relationship end, only to find you left something of yours of value in an ex’s apartment?  You really want that something… say, some DVDs or a t-shirt with sentimental value, but you just can’t bring yourself to ask for it back?  Relationship Repo is cornering this void in the market by providing a repossession service from your ex.  For 10% of the value of the item being reclaimed, Relationship Repo helps you avoid any awkwardness or stress that accompanies getting your stuff back.

“My ex-boyfriend basically had half of my Tupperware set at his apartment.  So rather than buying it again new, Relationship Repo made him clean it all then give it back for only $7,” said Jennifer Russell , a recent customer.

While customers are enthusiastic about the repossession services, there has been some resistance from ex’s along the way.

“Yeah, it gets kind of crazy sometimes because the ex is all like, ‘Who are you?  I’ve never heard of Relationship Repo.  Hey, that’s my stuff!  Stop it, I’m calling the police.  You’re here only for the first 3 seasons of Seinfeld on DVD?  Did John send you?   Typical John, he never could do anything for himself,’” said Allen Wood, CEO of Relationship Repo.

Relationship Repo plans to release their initial public offering of stock in the next month.

STRANGER OF THE WEEK: Gary Nigel Wisp

Stranger Of The Week is a column in which reporter Miles Bonsignore delves into the life of a stranger in their natural element to unveil the truth and vulnerability of the common man. These are those interviews.

Gary Nigel Wisp

Gary Nigel Wisp sits alone at a computer in a local fair trade coffee shop. He is surrounded by a computer, a watch, and a mug with remnants of old cappuccino.

MILES: Gary! thanks for doing the interview.

GARY: Yes.

MILES: So you have a computer, what are you working on?

GARY: Buyin’ my mom cleats.

MILES: Okay, so your mom plays soccer?

GARY: No.

MILES: …okay. So why the cleats?

GARY: Shes falls a lot.

MILES: So the cleats are for traction?

GARY: My mom is a really big woman.

MILES: Gary, let’s get into some hard hitting questions. What do you want to be when you grow up?

GARY: Not my stepdad, he’s a dick.

MILES: Okay, so not your stepdad, but have you always wanted to be something? Maybe an astronaut or a lawyer?

GARY: Derrick said I would make a good doorstop.

MILES: Derrick is…?

GARY: My stepdad. He’s a dick.

 MILES: Got it. So back to your dreams. When you were a kid did y-

GARY: You’ve got a weird face.

MILES: Um. thanks.

GARY: And a big nose.

MILES: Ha. Yeah. It’s pretty big. I like to say its a Roman nose, because its Roamin’ all over my face!

GARY: My mom’s from Rome and she’d be really offended by that.

MILES: Oh, I didn’t mean to-

GARY: You know what you meant to do.

MILES: No, Seriously, I’m Italian myself!

GARY: …Really?

MILES: Well. Sicilian.

GARY: YOU ARE JUST LIKE DERRICK.

…

MILES: …It sounded like you were gonna storm off.

GARY: YOU can leave. I was sitting here first.

MILES: Well…I-

GARY: What?! DERRICK JR!

MILES: I… I need to charge my computer, and there’s an outlet at this table.

GARY: My mom would roll over in her grave if she knew I was talking to you.

MILES: Your mom’s dead? I thought you were-

GARY: YES. Okay… Every year I buy her a pair of cleats for the summer, because she would get sweaty and fall a lot. Then I throw them in the ocean, which is salty, like her sweat on a hot day.

MILES: Wow. That’s really sweet.

GARY: Thanks.

A car pulls up outside driven by a man with a mustache and a yellow polo shirt. She shouts Gary’s name and points at his watch. Gary sighs angrily and stands. Before he leaves, he looks at me one last time, and says his parting words.

GARY: Thats my stepdad. He really is a dick factory.