The Luna Park Gazette

I was going through some old files when I found this transcript of an IM conversation I had with a total stranger a few years ago. The story that "Tina" told has all the classic Nigerian scam elements, including repeated references to money, or the lack of it, and someone dying "in a ghastly car accident." The only difference here is the real time element. I usually get emails about vasts sums of money that are just waiting for me in some distant country. I never had an online chat with one of these scam artists. I don't know why I kept the record of this conversation and I'm not sure why I even "spoke" with this person. I guess I didn't want to be rude and, well, maybe I was in need of some company. I guess if I had let it go on, Tina would have asked me for money, or my bank account number. I wonder how many people fell for this scam. Loneliness and the need to do good deeds can blind you to things you really need to see. But the...

Parents of difficult teenagers can take some solace in a recent news item that found even dinosaurs had to deal with juvenile delinquents. According to an article posted on LiveScience.com , the remains of three juvenile Triceratops, a species thought to be solitary, were found in a 66 million-year-old bone bed in Montana, having died together in a flood. This discovery gives more credence to the belief that “teen dinosaurs were gregarious gangsters,” the article said. There is no mention of leather jackets, zip guns, or switch blades. I wonder if they danced and sang “When you’re Triceratop, you a Triceratop all the way…” There are other recent discoveries of dinosaurs hanging out in cliques, but I’m sure none of them was a match for Predator X. That may sound like the name of a professional wrestler, but is actually a recently discovered species of pliosaur, which lived 147 million years ago. Predator X was 50-feet long (!) weighed 45 tons (!!) and could crush a Hummer in its massiv...

I couldn’t watch the news stories about Natasha Richardson last night. Every time a report came on about that horrible accident, I picked up the remote and changed the channel. I kept on telling myself—lying to myself—that she could still pull out of it, that all the reports saying she was brain dead and quoting “sources close to the family” were wrong. I thought that if I didn't watch the news, I could somehow keep it from happening. I was hoping that the next time I heard about Natasha Richardson, she would be on her way to makeing a full recovery. I didn’t want to believe that such a talented, lovely woman could just be extinguished in what initially appeared to be a minor skiing accident. She walked away from it, joking about her clumsiness, according to one report. And a few hours later she was dead. I know it’s crazy, but I still find myself making these absurd comparisons, pointing to other incidents where people fell or were struck much harder and were able to walk away wit...

"God is good, but never dance in a small boat." --Irish proverb There seemed to be fewer people wearing green this year. Perhaps I'm just being nostalgic, but it seemed that when I was growing up, everybody wore something green on St. Patrick's Day, no matter what their ethnicity was. Looks like another tradition is fading. I had a nun in fifth grade who was Bostonian Irish and on St. Patrick's Day she greeted us with "top of the morning to ye" and ordered us to respond, "may the rest of the day be yours." We did as we were told, of course, but I think we would rather have said something like, "may you rot in hell for the rest of eternity, you hideous old witch." But we were good Catholic children. I made sure to wear a green shirt today, but I'm staying at home. It's mid-week and I don't feel like showing up at work tomorrow hung over. My late father always refered to St. Pat's and New Year's Eve as "amateur...

What a great day for the Grim Reaper. Today we had news of two--count 'em, two--maniacs gunning down innocent people on this battered planet: one in the U.S. and another in Germany for a total of 25 people shot dead. These mass shootings totals are getting like the sports scores. And the kicker is that tonight I get an email from the Brady Campaign linking to a video of an address by NRA head case Wayne LaPierre speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules," LaPierre told the assembled freaks. "Our founding fathers understood that freedom always rides with a firearm by its side." Oh, Wayne, how right you are. The guys with the guns really are making the rules. Guys like John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, David Berkowitz, and Mark David Chapman to name a few. And now we have a few more names to add to that list. In Alabama, a guy with a gun made the rules. He killed 10 peo...

“When you pray, think. Think well what you're saying. Make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that way, your prayer will have strength, and that strength will become a part of you, body, mind, and spirit.” ---Mr. Gruffydd in How Green Was My Valley When it comes to old movies I confess that I am a shameless weeper. If a film has any kind of sincere sentimentally to it—and I stress sincere —you’d better put on a poncho and a scuba mask because I'm sure to be blubbering all over you. But I even amazed myself the other night when I sat down to watch John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley. The credits rolled, the narrator began speaking and that was it, brother—the tears flowed out of me like building sprinkler system in a 12-alarm fire. It was insane. Characters would say hello to each other and I’d start wailing and reaching for the tissues. I don’t enjoy living alone in my family’s house, but I was sure glad there was no on around to watch me go to pieces like...