Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

By now, I’m sure you have all heard about the woman who found the finger in her Wendy’s chili.

This image was stolen from Adrienne at Nosheteria. Thanks, Adrienne. It really adds to the overall impact of my post.

Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. The finger was apparently fresh, and there were two parts of the finger in the same bowl of chili. That would indicate there wasn’t a whole body that was cut up and dropped into the chili, because if that were the case, what are the chances of having two parts of the same finger in a bowl of chili? The article says the chili is made on site. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing they get ground beef, not whole beef parts that they grind up in the Wendy’s store. That means that the finger must have landed in the beef AFTER it was ground. If it had landed in there before, then you wouldn’t have such an obvious finger, manicured, in complete identifiable chunks. You’d have ground finger!

All of the people working at the Wendy’s had all their fingers, so that isn’t the source of the finger. If the finger was ripped from a person who is still alive, working at a meat plant, don’t you think the meat plant shift manager might have thought: Better check the meat she was working on!

Another theory I threw out was that of the aggressive cow who attacked a woman, ripping her finger off whole, biting it in half, then swallowing it down. Then the next day, the cow is made into meat. But the ground beef thing makes that unlikely, too.

If there’s a woman out there with a missing finger (and I’m thinking that’s the case, or you wouldn’t get this unlikely scenario where there are two parts of one finger in the same bowl of chili), I think she better step forward!

Who is this woman? Surely she’s seen the story! And who put her finger in the ground beef? Is she tied up somewhere?

I’m a rambling sleuth, but I really want to know what happened. It’s just such a strange story!

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So last weekend, Aaron and I decided to go to the Pink Palace Museum. I’d been years ago. It isn’t great, but that’s not the point of the story here. The point is that there is this completely disgusting exhibit at the museum right now. Maybe I’m overreacting, but blech.

OK, the exhibit is called CSI: Crime Scene Insects. You go in, and there are several little areas explaining different parts of why insects have a lot to do with forensics. At each station, there is a dead body painted on the floor with various demonstrations of how bugs are an important part of the decomposition process. The first one has a few fake morgue drawers with fake dead bodies in them. On the wall is an explanation of the various stages of decomposition: freshly dead, bloated, maggot-infested, etc. The names are prettier than that, but that’s basically the idea.

One of the floor pictures

Maybe it’s because of all the pictures I saw after the Tsunami. Maybe it’s because they found a dead body across the street in the park. Maybe it’s because this is Memphis, and there is a lot of crime. But I was really offended, and I’m not really one to get offended. Little kids were looking at these exhibits, standing on top of the parts of the floor with the photographs of the dead bodies on them. There was a woman there with a very young little girl (maybe 3) in her arms. The little girl was looking past her mother’s shoulder at us, and I kept thinking, “Why are you here, little girl? Why is this fun? Why is it cool?”

Needless to say, we left pretty quickly. Is the plan to appeal to what kids know? Sure, it’s interesting, but come on. So are many other things that are far less gruesome that teaching Memphis children how bugs help bodies to decompose. Who decided this was a good idea?!

If it were the same exhibit, but a little more advanced and for adults, I think it would be a pretty decent idea. But in Memphis, and with kids this young? I don’t know. Kids don’t even really have a concept of what death is yet… not like an adult. It just didn’t sit well with me at all.

Some links:

• The Official Site of the Exhibit
• An insane site that loads several auto-playing wave files at once. To watch them, close them all first, then play each one separately. (Did anyone even test to see if the site was working before loading it?!)
• A kid talks about what she learned at the exhibit.

I recommend not going!

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Quincy Market, Boston

Me and Mich

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I hate tornado warnings (see the red areas). I mean, what am I supposed to do? Take the cats into my handy dandy storm cellar? No wait. I live on the 2nd floor. I hear sirens and airplanes still flying overhead, airplanes that sorta sound like tornados. I’d rather they just turn the sirens off, since there isn’t anything I can do about it anyway.
—
Tornado Warning

523 PM CST TUE MAR 22 2005

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MEMPHIS HAS ISSUED A TORNADO WARNING FOR SHELBY COUNTY IN SOUTHWEST TENNESSEE UNTIL 600 PM CST

* AT 519 PM CST…TRAINED WEATHER SPOTTERS REPORTED A FUNNEL CLOUD 6 MILES SOUTH OF GERMANTOWN…OR ABOUT NEAR OLIVE BRANCH…MOVING NORTHEAST AT 30 MPH.

* LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO COLLIERVILLE.

.THE SAFEST PLACE TO BE DURING A TORNADO IS IN A BASEMENT. GET UNDER A WORKBENCH OR OTHER PIECE OF STURDY FURNITURE. IF NO BASEMENT IS AVAILABLE…SEEK SHELTER ON THE LOWEST FLOOR OF THE BUILDING IN AN INTERIOR HALLWAY OR ROOM SUCH AS A CLOSET. USE BLANKETS OR PILLOWS TO COVER YOUR BODY AND ALWAYS STAY AWAY FROM WINDOWS…

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See? I told you we went to Boston! Here’s Aaron (and a little bit of Michelle) in the North End.

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