More and more I find myself, and I suspect you're no different, shaking my head after reading the news. I personally read quite a bit. From time to time I read fiction, and I find it entertaining and sometimes strange. However, when I compare the fiction I read and watch, to the actual news stories I see each and every day, there's no doubt about it: The real news stories are far and away more interesting. For example, consider these true stories:

We now know who was behind the Wendy's "finger in the chili" incident.
On March 22, a woman with a history of bringing claims against large corporations, reported that she found a human finger in a cup of chili she purchased at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose, CA. Police have since determined that the woman, Anna Ayala, is a con artist and actually put the finger there herself. Ms. Ayala is now under arrest in Las Vegas awaiting extradition to California. The real victim of this crime is, of course, Wendy's. The restaurant chain claims to have lost $1 million or more each day since it fell victim to Ms. Ayala's moronic stunt.

Ms. Ayala's false claim brought many copycats out of the woodwork.
While I could fill this entire article talking about Ms Ayala's other antics, there is something more important to talk about. It seems that Ms. Ayala's stunt inspired no less than 20 other pinheads to file copycat claims against Wendy's. Keep in mind that there are usually no claims of this nature filed against the chain. Hopefully, the claims filed by the copycats will be also debunked, and, like Ms. Ayala, these morons will also wind up in jail. If nothing else, these people will be kept from further polluting our gene pool, if only for a while.

Go Daddy also has to deal with false accusations.
Most large corporations deal with this type of nonsense from time to time. Go Daddy, of course, is no exception. Not long ago, some knucklehead made a post on a chat board that Go Daddy stole his domain names. Over a few day period there were other morons who jumped into the fray, and said that they "heard" of other people having domain names stolen by us. A quick investigation revealed that this clown had registered domain names with another individual's credit card, but put them in his account. When the individual who owned the credit card realized what had happened, she contacted us, proved that she was the one who in fact paid for the domain names, and requested that we move them to her own account. As everything was in order, we of course obliged.

The knucklehead who initially registered the domain names then went looking for them in the original account he created, and of course, they were gone. We explained to this individual what had happened. Nevertheless, he went ahead and made the "Go Daddy stole my domain names chat board post." Fortunately, a loyal customer noticed the post, and the claims by those who jumped right in claiming to also be aware of "similar incidents," and let us know. We visited the site and immediately posted what had happened. He now seems to have quieted down. The damage to us, as best we can tell, has been minimal.

Unbeknownst to her husband, this woman actually hid her lover in her bedroom closet for a month.
As if the above two stories aren't enough, every once in a while I read stories that just seem incomprehensible. One of the most recent took place in Nashville, Tennessee. It seems a married woman was seeing a lover for about a month. What's strange is that during the affair, she was allowing her lover – get ready for this – to live in her bedroom closet. After about a month, her husband apparently heard snoring coming from the bedroom closet and upon investigation discovered his wife's lover. Being a reasonable man, evidently not prone to violence, he told his wife that he was going for a walk and when he came back, he wanted the man out of the closet and out of the house. The man (the lover) did not leave the house. Upon return, the husband was confronted by his wife's lover (who now had a shotgun) and was forced into the bathroom, where he was bludgeoned to death.

After reading the above story I found it tough to know who to feel sorry for. My first reaction was to feel sorry for the husband, but after thinking that it took him a month to realize that his wife had a lover living in her closet, it seems that he couldn't have been the sharpest knife in the drawer. Mostly I feel sorry for us, having morons like this among us. But once again, now that they are either dead or incarcerated, the gene pool is once again safe from them.

The wrong way to deal with a bad haircut.
These stories are endless. Here's another: In Richland Washington, Julie Anderson, was apparently a satisfied and regular customer of the Stage 1 Salon for years. That all changed on April 21 of this year. Apparently dissatisfied with a haircut she received earlier, Anderson waited outside the Salon (bad haircut and all) in the parking lot for her stylist to arrive. When her stylist arrived, Ms. Anderson accompanied her, at gunpoint, into the Salon. Anderson then demanded $100 from the Salon, which she was immediately given.

After leaving the Salon, Anderson started to drive away but then stopped her car, got out and pumped a shot into the back window of her stylist's car. She then threw the handgun through the car's now shattered back window. Anderson then got into her car and drove to another Salon where she used the money she just received to have her hair restyled. Anderson was arrested upon leaving the second Salon.

Julie A. Anderson, 48, was booked for investigation of first-degree robbery and second-degree malicious mischief.

Those the God's are about to destroy, they first make angry.
The above story reminds me of a saying that Arthur Ashe (the famous tennis player) used to keep taped to his locker. The saying goes "Those the Gods are about to destroy, they first make angry." Obviously Ms. Anderson would have been much better served to have simply waited for her bad haircut to grow out.

If you need to remove handcuffs quickly, you might think twice about going to Wal-Mart.
Then there's the episode that took place way back in February of 2004 in Magnolia Arkansas, at a Wal-Mart at 4:30 in the morning.

The Wal-Mart clerk, first became suspicious when she noticed that her customer who was paying for a pair of bolt cutters also happened to be wearing handcuffs. After James Cotton paid her $14.97 (with a check no less), and was seen going into the rest room with his new purchase, she immediately called the police.

Mr. Cotton was apprehended by police in the woods in back of the Wal-Mart Officers said that handcuffs were found in Mr. Cotton's pockets at the time of his arrest.

Police said that Mr. Cotton had been arrested and handcuffed the previous night in Haynesville, La., on charges of battery and narcotics possession, but fled after kicking out the window of a police car. He faces additional charges of resisting arrest and property destruction for his visit to the Magnolia Wal-Mart.

Why truth will always be much stranger than fiction.
And so it goes. So why is truth stranger than fiction? The reason is really simple. Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction needs to be believable and make sense. If fiction didn't make sense we wouldn't buy it.

Radio Go Daddy's 5th Radio Broadcast.
On Wednesday, at 7 pm PST/10 pm PST Radio Go Daddy will be broadcasting its 5th Show. The show is available on Satellite (XM and Sirius) and via live audio stream available on the internet by clicking on the"listen" icon at www.RadioGoDaddy.com. The "listen" icon appears on the www.RadioGoDaddy.com page 9 minutes before the show starts. Full details on the show are at www.RadioGoDaddy.com.

This week's show is produced by David Lawrence and myself, Bob Parsons. This week's guest is Candice Michelle, our Go Daddy girl. Candice starred in our controversial Super Bowl commercial, and in several commercials we produced since then. We will be broadcasting from Denver, Colorado where Candice is starring in a few new Go Daddy commercials, one of which stars yours truly.

We will also be talking about Pharming, the newest internet scam. And we'll be providing you with my very first book recommendation. I'm not going into the book business. I'll just be recommending them from time to time. If you like learning neat, off-the-wall and interesting facts, you'll want this book.

Candice, as well as David and I, will be available for your call in questions. For instructions as to how to call in, and a lineup of what we plan to talk about on this week's show, please visit www.RadioGoDaddy.com.

How to see our Super Bowl commercial in both the version that aired, and the extended, uncensored, "web only" version.
To see any of our current and past commercials, just click on the following link: http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/superbowl05/landing.asp

References:

For the "finger in the chili" story: www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/national/23wendys.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=11143 40584-dv9unsU+J4MyvQV53gJrpA&oref=login

For the "lover in the closet" story: http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/09/21/closet.murder/

For the "bad haircut" story: http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2005/04/27/O pinion/Life-Lessons.In.Haircuts-941370.shtml

The "bolt cutters at Wal-Mart" story is too old for news accounts to still be on line. I did find references still in a few commentary and blog articles. One of them appears at: www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=9495&z=27