Balloonicorn Boy a Hoax!!!

After what I read in the news today, I don't know if I have any faith left!

A 6-year-old Colorado boy named Falcon Heene, supposedly released his father's weather balloon and then hid in his family's attic while the world watched the balloon travel 50 miles while they thought he was in it.

Well, guess what. It turns out that this was all part of an elaborate plan orchestrated by his parents in an attempt to secure themselves a spot on a reality television show.

As if this weren't bad enough, it has also come to light that, despite claims by his family to the contrary, Falcon Heene is also not a unicorn.

Here is a picture released by the family, compared to the original which has recently been discovered by reporters:

I give up! I'm never going to believe anything again!

Buyers: Beware!

Some classmates and I just finished up a project for Advertising class called "Buyer Beware", for which we researched the dangers of Tanning, interviewed some tanning customers, and went around to different Tanning Bed Providers (TBPs) in the city to find out which of them provided information about the dangers of the service they offer. Information that could help to prevent something like what happened to this poor humicorn:

Some of the information we gathered before going to the TBP's was quite surprising. I was pretty blown away by the evidence I found that tanning is chemically addictive. Apparently it releases endorphins, and people sometimes go through symptoms of withdrawal if they stop too suddenly.

Anyway, out of the 5 tanning places I visited with my group, only 2 of them actually offered any real information about the dangers of UV radiation to the skin. And even those places played down the risks a lot, focussing instead on issues like Vitamin D.

Much of the information offered either in store or online by the major Tanning Bed Providers defends indoor tanning by pointing to the fact that it's no more dangerous that tanning outdoors. To me this is like saying that it's ok to text while you drive because it's no more dangerous than driving while pissed drunk. The sun hasn't been safe for years! What the hell kind of a defense of indoor tanning is that?

My group and I also interviewed some people about their experiences with indoor tanning. We spoke to a woman who got cancer from tanning (and who still goes), a girl who was so addicted that she had three separate accounts so she could go more often (and whose skin started actually peeling off in chunks at one point) and a woman who got a staff infection from a bed (and who had to get the ensuing puss drained out of her arm at the hospital.)

The fact is that tanning, whether it be indoor or outdoor is dangerous; especially if it's not done in moderation. Other than ruining your skin and making you look way older than you actually are, you could end up DYING. Is it really worth dying to go and pay money to lie in a bad that makes you orange and gives you cancer?

You decide...

(Ok, ok, I admit it; it's pretty sneaky to put this picture here. Tanning was only responsible for making this couple dark orangey-brown. It had little to nothing to do with how douchey they are.)

How you know you're going to have a great day:

The other day, I was on my way to school for an eight a.m. class, and I was having one of those days when I was only about 50% certain that I wasn't actually still lying in bed dreaming. You know the days I'm talking about: you wake up, shower, shave, get dressed, eat breakfast, and then while you're riding your purple horse on the way to school through a forest possessed by the spirit of your fourth grade teacher, you realize that you are still dreaming, and will have to go through your entire morning routine all over again. (Except for the horse in the forest part.)

Anyway, on this particular day, I was only about half sure that I wasn't still dreaming, and then something happened that didn't help the situation at all:

When I got to my bus stop in Osborne Village, I stepped in something squishy.

My first reaction was to try and wake up. I thought, "If I am still dreaming, then what's the point of even looking down? I don't want to see something really nasty if I don't absolutely have to." After about 20 seconds of pinching myself and violently shaking my head, I realized that I was actually awake, and that sooner or later, I would have to deal with the squishy situation that I was still standing in at my bus stop. Curiosity was starting to get the best of me anyway.

So I took a deep breath and looked down...

I had stepped in vomit. Not just any vomit, either, but fresh steaming vomit.

I thought to myself, "OK self, this day can go one of two very different and distinct directions: I can either have the worst day ever, or the best day ever." I decided it would be the latter of the two, be like most people, I prefer having really good days to really bad days.

Then I turned around an saw the guy who had obviously just vomited, lying on the bench by the bus stop. I decided to thank him for the vomit, and so I yelled: "Woo Hoo! Thanks for the vomit, Sleeping Homeless Guy!" And then something amazing happened:

When I yelled, a horn suddenly became visible to me on his forehead. Just like it had so many times during my Scream Testing of pictures of famous people. This meant that the Scream Test for detecting pictures of unicorns works in real life on live unicorns too! You can probably imagine how exciting this news was to me.

Since finding out this amazing new piece of information, I have not been able to stop unicorn hunting. In other words, I've been walking around downtown yelling at strangers while staring at their foreheads.

I've gotten a few weird looks, but when I find a heard of unicorns in business suits out for a noon time power lunch, and then they take me back to their den to teach me magic, it will all have been worth it. Trust me.

More Myths, and the "Busting" Thereof

Hey everyone, Here is a piece I've been working on about the origins of unicorns that I hope to have published in one of the more reputable scientific journals. In it, I try to dispel some of the most common myths about unicorns, while at the same time, share some interesting and little known facts about these majestic yet tragically misunderstood creatures. Although, as I've already discussed in my previous posts, unicorns come in all shapes and forms, this eye-opening essay deals exclusively with the horse-shaped variety of unicorn, which, for the purposes of this essay, I will henceforth refer to simply as unicorns. I hope you learn as much by reading it, as I did by writing it...

Common Myths About Unicorns:


Myth #1: Unicorns are Mythical

Though many people believe that unicorns are mythical beasts, they are entirely real--or rather more accurately; they were real. Fossil records clearly show that unicorns did, in fact, roam the earth some time in the seventeenth century BC in what is now Ireland for a period of about thirty years. Scientists were initially baffled by the unusually short lifespan of the unicorn species, until it was recently discovered with the help of genetic testing of fossilized unicorn remains that the first generation of unicorns simply did not reproduce due to the fact that they were all gay. Every last unicorn. Unicorns are the only species known in nature which is exclusively homosexual.

Myth #2: Unicorns are Magical

Another commonly held belief about unicorns is that they were magical. Unicorns were not magical because there is no such thing as magic. Magic is just another word for what science can’t yet explain. We now know that, while unicorns could shoot rainbows out of their horns, this was due to the existence of a special light-emitting ‘rainbow gland’ at the base of the horn, which was also responsible for producing glitter and happiness.

Myth #3: Unicorns are Docile and Friendly

Many people believe, perhaps due to an almost unethical distortion of the truth in the media, that unicorns were friendly beasts who loved and cared for all the creatures of the forest. Nothing could be further from the truth: unicorns were vicious and merciless killing machines. Like sharks, unicorns were omnivorous, meaning that they ate anything and everything they could gore to death with their huge and unyielding horns. Unicorns would roam the forests killing everything they saw and devouring their carcasses for the sustenance they would need to continue goring animals to death. They spent nearly half their time goring and devouring. The rest of their time was spent violently trying to reproduce with members of the same sex, which brings us to Myth #4.

Myth #4 Unicorns are G-Rated

It is ironic that so much children’s literature of our time makes reference to unicorns because, in reality, a unicorn would be the last thing you would ever want your children to see. When it wasn’t tearing through the flesh of an innocent forest creature with its razor-sharp horn and subsequently bathing in its blood and entrails, a unicorn would spend most of its time having violent sex, while whinnying in both ecstasy and agony. Unicorns were not only the only exclusively gay species, but they also hold the distinction of being the horniest creatures in nature. They had sex randomly, indiscriminately and almost aimlessly, though sadly for the species, never progressed into any sort of heterosexual experimentation.


I hope now that you all know the truth about unicorns, the next time you see them being irresponsibly misrepresented (say in a theatre while watching a children’s movie) you’ll have the stones to stand up and cry: “Bullshit!”