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Secret Origin Of A Super-Villain

1 Aug

August 1, 2011

Think over the top bad guys and evil geniuses exist only in comic books? Think again.

Johnathan T. Pinney first came to the public’s attention in 2008. He had been arrested for biting a police officer. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be enough to get noticed by the nationwide press, but at his trial he had a few demands. 

There was more but that gives you the idea. I direct your attention to the third paragraph. This man has been found fit to stand trial.

He claimed he “embraces evil” and wanted to wear a cape for his trial. At the hearing, he “fingered his beard while sitting at the defense table.” Personally, I would have said he fingered his beard diabolically while sitting at the table. That’s the way to write an article.

As you might expect, things didn’t go so well for him. That was the last we heard from Mr. Pinney until this article from this past July:


This guy needs a comic book name. Too bad Doctor Doom is already taken. (BTW- Dr. Doom isn’t a doctor. He never finished his degree. Victor von Doom dropped out of college and it was all the accursed Reed Richard’s fault.)

He wants his own nation. Can this get any better?

Yes it can. 

Doctor Mayhem has thought this one through. He wants his own country. Not just any country, but one with an adequate water supply, and he has given thought to the issue of “native pest control,” by which I assume he means any native population. He is clearly an evil scientist since he refers to the “stimulation of volcanic activity” which I take to mean that he will soon develop a secret lair inside an active volcano. And he seems to know many hidden secrets since he demands access to Area 51. Can he be forging an alliance with hostile aliens, like the Skrulls? The diplomatic immunity and fifty billion dollars are just icing on the cake. And the money, I’m sure, will go a long way in financing the creation of a race of Atomic Supermen with which to rule the world.

This man is too dangerous to go free. Surely he is also too dangerous to remain in the general prison population. If he has gone public with his demands, I can only assume that he has already amassed his henchmen and goons and will soon escape the prison via an inter-dimensional tunnel, or at the very least a hot air balloon like Gene Hackman in Superman II.

I urge the authorities to take this man seriously. He needs to be imprisoned in The Phantom Zone, ASAP.

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Imponderable #8: Mt. Tabor Oregon

27 Jul

July 27, 2011

Doesn’t Portland have a filtration system in their reservoir? Actually, it does not, which seems a little reckless when you consider that they had an e coli scare in 2009 and everyone was told to boil their water. It seems that the unfiltered nature of the water was an unspoken secret that only came to light in 2008 when a pair of skinny dippers were found having fun in the water.

It is a fact, admitted by the Water Bureau administrator, that crap gets into the water supply all the time. I am not even talking about illegal dumping or anything man-made, I am talking about dead animals, sick fish, ground toxins, and yes, animal waste and pee. That is a fact and it is assumed and even expected. Strangely, rather than a way to treat or filter the water, which may be expensive but would be practical since it could be done at one central location as water leaves the reservoir, the city floated plans to cover the reservoir, at a cost of $500 million.

According to The Big Book of Boy Stuff by Bart King, an average man pees about 1 to 2 quarts per day. So assuming the drunk peed the limit, that would make 2 quarts of pee diluted in 7.2 million gallons of water. Or 1 quart of pee to every 14.4 million quarts of water. That means that every quart of water from that reservoir would be 1/14,400,000 pee. In other words, that is 6.944 X 10 to the power of -8 percent. This is far, far less than the proverbial drop in the bucket. It is a molecule in the bucket.

Compare this to the FDA guidelines for peanut butter. BEWARE, this is disgusting. The FDA allows an average of 30 or more insect fragments per 100 grams and an average of 1 or more rodent hairs per 100 grams. That makes the drunk peeing in the reservoir positively hygienic by comparison.

So is the Water Bureau administrator over-reacting? After all, the two people who skinny dipped in the reservoir didn’t cause him to dump the water, and who knows what kind of bodily fluids they released?

In this era of droughts is it wise to dump 7.2 million gallons of water?

In this economic climate is it wise to waste $35,000 to dump effectively clean water? I admit that no, I don’t want to be drinking anyone’s pee, but at one part per fourteen million I don’t think I am. Consider that the EPA allows up to 7 asbestos fibers per liter of water. Asbestos is a known carcinogen.

Is one quart of human pee worse than the probably thousands of quarts of animal pee and possibly infected waste that goes into the reservoir?

Granted that the reservoir is in the middle of public parkland, how many people have already peed in the water over the years?

The question is Imponderable.

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