Johann: Vending Machine Master

Recently, I've become something of a theater kid. I'm not as eerily flamboyant as a conventional theater kid, but since my casting in the last play I've been much more involved with the Theater department. On this particular day, I was slumming around the theater after school, when I overheard a conversation. Some girl was really hungry, but couldn't really leave rehearsal lest she risk the wrath of the Theater director. Now, it's a common practice for theater kids to take someone's money and buy their food for them, because students are frequently unable to leave the theater and rehearsals can drag on for hours. I offered to get her food and she handed me a dollar. When I asked her what she wanted, she vaguely replied "I dunno, something that will keep me awake. Skittles or chocolate or something."

Upon arriving at the vending machine, I inserted the girl's dollar and typed in the button code for a package of Skittles. The machine started to dispense the Skittles...then it gave up. The candy just sat there, staring me down and saying "Hahahahaha fuck you."

Oh, you paid for me? That's cute.

I stared at the machine in disbelief. I couldn't exactly return empty-handed; the girl expected her candy, and I was determined to see it through. I left my bounty, silently muttering "This isn't over...candy." I tracked down a janitor and asked if he was capable of opening the vending machines. In a voice slightly tinged with a Mexican accent, he replied "No, but you could probably try the front office." When I went to the front office, a woman with an absurd hairdo sat at the front desk. With a shrieking shout-like noise where her voice used to be, she yelped "Hi! How can I help you?" She drew out her 'hi' for a good 3 seconds. Wincing from the pain of hearing her talk, I said "Yeah, I paid for something from the vending machine, but it's not working. Is there any way to get it open?"

"Well, what you have to do is go to the Guidance center, talk to Ms. Lou, reserve an appointment with Mr. Brass and wait until he gets back from coaching soccer practice. He should be done sometime within the hour."

"...It's a bag of Skittles."

She heaved an exasperated sigh and said "Well, I actually do have some money here. How much do you need?"

"Eighty-five cents."

She opened a drawer and pulled out a roll of quarters. I watched uncomfortably as she struggled to open the roll. Finally, she got pissed and smashed the whole thing on the desk. Quarters flew everywhere, much to the surprise of her and absolutely nobody else. After retrieving my money, I left her to her quarter-grabbing and returned to the vending machine. I figured that, if I re-bought the bag of Skittles, then I could probably get another bag for free. I inserted the coins, entered the code...and watched one lonely bag of Skittles drop from its shelf.

"No!" I thought to myself. "I want those Skittles, damnit!"

After casting a furtive glance to make sure nobody important was watching, I chose what I believed to be the best course of action and tackled the vending machine (side note: apparently a lot of people are crushed to death by vending machines. Who knew?). Much to my dismay, the Skittles stayed firmly in place. However, a completely different bag of Mini Ritz crackers was dislodged and fell down instead.

Whaddup.

Satisfied with my display of dominance, I retrieved the spoils of my brief war with the now-defeated vending machine and walked away. I spent the rest of the day basking in the kind of glory that one can only get from tackling an inanimate object that is fully capable of crushing the life out of you at a moment's notice.

Crosswalk Buttons

So I went out to lunch with a friend of mine during school today. We were waiting at a crosswalk, making idle small talk, when suddenly, I encountered what must have been the most retarded girl in recently recorded history. Before I go into the grisly details, I'd like to preface the whole terrible story by explaining how crosswalk buttons work.

That was sort of a lie, because most crosswalk buttons don't technically 'work.' Sure, at some intersections, they'll activate that little white guy which signifies that you're safe to cross. But for the most part, crosswalk buttons are installed simply for the sake of giving the impatient and the idiotic something to mash while they wait for a light that couldn't really care less whether or not they're pressing it. By and large, crosswalk buttons do nothing to affect the speed at which a light turns from red to green. It's also important to point out that crosswalk buttons generally come with a huge sign or sticker that enlightens the reader as to what direction the button corresponds to. This is an important detail, so remember it.

Idiot-proof instructions. Except not at all.

When the aforementioned girl came within the vicinity of the crosswalk (which had not one, but two buttons), a look of apprehension and terror crossed her face for a brief moment. She appeared to be in the midst of some intense decision making, and I was very curious as to what she was so confused about. My unspoken inquiry was answered rather quickly when she started mercilessly smashing both buttons while screaming to her friends "OH MY GOD, I NEVER know which button to press! It's sooo confusing trying to remember which button goes which direction!"

Her friends apparently shared her hardship. "Oh God, I know just how you feel. I just let somebody else press it for me."

I tried to watch the entire exchange, but after a few seconds my brain cells began committing mass suicide due to the sheer stupidity of it all, so I opted instead to look onward and did my best to begin repressing yet another memory. 

Don't ever let somebody tell you you're stupid, because with a minimum of effort, I guarantee you can find somebody who doesn't know how to operate a goddamn button.

Mike the Headless Chicken

Sometime in September 1945, there was a little chicken named Mike who lived on a farm in Fruita, Colorado. One day, Mike was strutting nonchalantly when, much to his dismay, his master grabbed him and promptly removed his head via an axe. Shortly thereafter, Mike regained his wits and went about his day, sans head. This isn't uncommon, as poultry are known to continue kicking around for a while after their heads have been removed. Mike's owner apparently didn't think too much of this and left him alone. The next day, the farmer found Mike, and I quote, "sleeping with his head under his wing." The farmer decided that, since the chicken had apparently forgotten how to die, he would do his best to keep the thing alive. The farmer proceeded to use an eyedropper to drip feed milk, water and bits of corn into the tattered end of Mike's esophagus.

"Gurgle glub glub splutter." - Whatever was left of Mike's larynx.

Mike slowly became accustomed to life without a brain. There was a bit of a grace period, during which his movements were rather clumsy and awkward (on account of not having a goddamn head), but eventually he was strutting about like normal again. Unfortunately (and again I quote), "His crowing, though, was less impressive and consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat, leaving him unable to crow at dawn." Mike's owner apparently looked at this pathetic neck-stump chicken zombie and decided that he could probably make some money off it. A week after Mike's beheading, the farmer packed his gurgling ass up and took him to the University of either Utah or Colorado (different sources cite different universities.). There, it was determined that the axe used to behead him had somehow missed his jugular. A clot had prevented him from bleeding to death, and he even had most of his brain stem and an ear left over from the ordeal. 

The farmer would tape the chicken's head on and pretend to be mortified every time it fell off. He was an asshole.

Mike's fame was eventually established and he found himself living the kind of life that most chickens can only dream of (Mike's own dreaming was somewhat hindered by the absence of his goddamn head). Mike was both valued at, and insured for $10,000, which in today's currency is a hell of a lot more than a gurgling stump chicken should ever be worth. Mike soon got a manager and embarked on a nationwide tour that saw him in almost every major city in America. Inspired by his fame, other farmers throughout the country decided to get a piece of the headless chicken fame pie, and proceeded to do so by beheading a shitload of chickens. Unfortunately, none of the chickens survived for more than a couple days. 

At some point in his nationwide tour, Mike and his crew stopped at a motel in the Arizona desert. In the middle of the night, Mike began choking. Unable to find his feeding and cleaning syringes, the farmer and his wife could only look on in horror as the life slowly drained out of their gurgling little money maker. Mike lived an astonishing 18 months without a head, and managed to gain around 4 and a half pounds in the process, which is absolutely hilarious in a deeply disturbing kind of way. 

Every single detail of this story is both incredibly wrong and incredibly funny.

Sources: 

http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

http://farm-animals.factoidz.com/mike-the-headless-chicken/