Things You Didn't Know To Worry About

Yeah. We all know the obvious things to worry about, like losing your house to foreclosure (up 57% since last year), being unable to afford the gas to drive to work so you can buy gas to drive to work (average price is now $3.50 a gallon), global warming raising sea levels so that your land in Florida will be underwater (even if it wasn't before). But that's just the tip of the melting iceberg. There's lots of things to worry about you may not have suspected. And as a public service, I'll let you know what a few of them are.

Having Two Penises

You may think you know how many penises you have. But if you do, and you are correct, you probably don't have a drug problem. I don't like the idea of drug testing any more than any other citizen who has actually read and understood the Constitution of the United States. But I like unemployment even less, so I put up with it. It isn't an issue for me, since I am not a drug user and don't eat poppy seed muffins. But for some people, it is an issue; and the latest scam to enable drug users to pass drug screens is to wear a second penis. This has come about because high-risk druggies (the ones who weave their way into the clinic) are watched while they pee into the cup. (By the way, I wonder what that job pays? On second thought, I don't.) So, in preparation, they purchase a Handy-Dandy Faux Pee-Pee complete with reservoir into which the urine of a non-drug user can be placed. Step into the restroom with the witness, whip out Mr. Plastic, press the hidden button that releases the reservoir, and Voilá! You're clean.

This has become such a problem that one doctor in Sweden has gone public about the need to check patients' underwear for extra penises.

Parenting A Five-Year-Old Junkie

You might wonder, who, exactly, do druggies obtain clean urine from? In the case of one Utah couple, it was their five-year-old son. The mother used the reservoir-and-tube trick (presumably without a plastic penis) to try and pass her drug screen. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong donor. The urine tested positive for cocaine—and when the little boy was examined, urine and hair, he tested positive, too.

And his parents thought he was just assertive.

Having Your Place Of Work Rammed Repeatedly By A Vehicle Driven By A Crazed Cross-Dresser

Yes, record numbers of people are out of work. And thanks to that and the foreclosures, lots of people are sleeping in their cars. And the ones in Michigan can't even afford the gas to drive to a warmer climate. So it's probably inevitable that, among these, at least a few would snap.

But who would've guessed it would be 27-year-old Jeremy Paul McIntosh, who rammed his Geo Tracker into the building where he'd failed to get a job…seven times. So hard that merchandise fell from shelves and his car was totaled.

When the police arrived, McIntosh told deputies he was homeless and wanted to go to jail because he had nowhere else to go and was sick of freezing in his car at night.

McIntosh self-identifies as heterosexual. This may turn out to be something for him to worry about, since he was wearing makeup, blue Capri pants, red flip flops, a flowery blouse and a matching bra when arrested. It's certainly likely to draw unwanted attention in jail.

But at least he won't have to worry about freezing.

Problems With Elevator Shafts

In October 1999, Nicholas White took a cigarette break, leaving his jacket (with cellphone and wallet) in his office. Since he worked on the 43rd floor, he took the elevator down; then, after his smoke, he took it back up. Well, part way up. It abruptly stopped at the 13th floor which, since this was an express elevator, had no doors anywhere near him—he checked.

He was in the elevator for thirty hours before anyone noticed him ringing the emergency bell and pounding on the door in front of the video camera.

His response, of course, was to sue the company. The trial went on for four years, during which time he lost his job and his apartment. He also didn't get that much money, and has since spent it.

See, those cigarettes will get you every time.

More recently, Germany's Jens Wilhelms fell 25 feet down an elevator shaft in his apartment building. The good news: His fall was broken by something soft. The bad news: It was the unconscious body of a woman who'd fallen into the shaft the day before.

The ugly news: Jens apparently lives in a building where no one thinks to make sure the elevator cab is actually on the other side of the elevator doors when they open.

Being Private Ryan

In the movie, Saving Private Ryan, we learned about the law that will not allow all the siblings in a family to die in war. In that film, Ryan's three brothers had all been killed fighting World War II, so Tom Hanks was sent to find him and bring him back home to his widowed mother in Middle America.

That law—or is it a suggestion?—still applies. So when Jason Hubbard, 33, and his youngest brother, Nathan, enlisted while they were still grieving for their brother, Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Hubbard, who was 22 when he was killed in a 2004 bomb explosion in Ramadi, they should have seen this coming. Sure enough, in August, 21-year-old Cpl. Nathan died when his Black Hawk helicopter crashed near Kirkuk. His brother, assigned to the same unit, was part of the team assigned to remove his comrades' bodies from the wreckage. Still-living Jason was sent home with his brother's body, forbidden to fight any more since he was the last remaining son of his parents.

He was also married and a father-to-be. So it was a bit of a shock to find his veteran's benefits had been cancelled during a pre-natal visit to the doctor's. Not only that, but the Army was demanding that Hubbard repay $6,000 from his enlistment bonus and was denying him up to $40,000 in educational benefits under the GI bill.

On the other hand, it could be worse. Lance Cpl. Isaac Gallegos got to meet President Bush and even got a nifty t-shirt thanks to the severe disfigurement he suffered in Iraq.

Being Hit By An Asteroid

Just because NASA insists we're in no danger from meteor strikes doesn't mean it can't happen. First, there's 99942 Apophis, the asteroid (cleverly named after one of Stargate SG:1's villains) that will be coming within a hair's breadth of Earth in 2029. NASA's original estimate was that there was a 1 in 270 chance of its hitting Earth that year. However, President Bush, aware of his plummeting popularity, instructed NASA to recalculate odds more favorable.

Their next guess was a 1 in 45,000 chance, though it didn't make Bush any more beloved. But a 13-year-old in Germany, Nico Marquardt, used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam to calculate that there was actually a 1 in 450 chance that Apophis will collide with Earth on its next orbital pass in 2036. He figured that the odds of Apophis colliding with at least one of the 40,000 satellites we have in orbit are high enough to take seriously; and if it does, the collision could slow it down just enough to alter its orbit so that, on its next go-round, it smacks right into Mother Earth. (Obviously, this kid comes from an apartment building where people check their elevators.)

But you need not limit your worrying to large asteroids. The house of Bosnia's Radivoje Lajic has been hit by meteorites five times in the past year. Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed this. Mr. Lajic believes the freak occurrence can't possibly be mere chance, and has concluded that aliens have singled him out for attack, though he doesn't know why.

Closer to home, two Pittsburgh homes were demolished by…something. There's no evidence of a gas leak, according to the gas company; nevertheless two rowhouses were destroyed by some kind of sonic shockwave emanating from the kitchen of one. Luckily, no one was home at either dwelling when the explosion occurred on the morning of April 11; but the boom was heard at least a half-mile away.

Meteorites have hit 13 houses or cars in the United States between 1911 and 1994, according to records. They don't generally cause explosions (though one is known to have zipped off part of a man's ear). However, the small meteors that usually make it to the Earth's surface to become meteorites, have been greatly slowed by our atmosphere. A larger one might well retain super-sonic speed.

Finding A Side Order of Marijuana With Your Bucket of Chicken

Apparently the aroma of the Colonel's chicken was so strong, it attracted the attention of the police. Savalas Vantoli Stewart was just minding his own business, driving home from a pick-up at the local KFC, when the smell of something not right induced an officer to pull him over. Savalas willingly agreed to having his car searched, as any law-abiding citizen would do. In amongst the wings and drumsticks was a carefully-packed side-dish of marijuana. (Though maybe not carefully enough, to be smelled outside a moving vehicle!)

The officer might have believed Stewart's explanation that he didn't know how the marijuana got in his order—"I assumed it was oregano. Isn't that one of the seven secret herbs and spices?"—until he also found several Ecstasy pills in Stewart's pockets. Not even blaming them on the annoying Taco Bell chihuahua could get him off the hook from that.

That's why you need to check your order before you leave the drive-thru window.