Waddington: No Chad Kroeger for her

Winthrop, MA — One year ago, Sally Waddington had no idea who My Chemical Romance, Dashboard Confessional, and Fall Out Boy were and what kind of music they played. Now, the 52-year-old mother of three is well-versed on nearly every post-Green Day pop/punk band in existence. She even knows Gerard Way’s current hair color, how many tattoos Chris Carrabba has, and who Pete Wentz is dating.

“My kids freaked out when I started humming ‘Famous Last Words’ one morning while making pancakes,” says the full-time soccer mom. “They were like, ‘Get out of here! How do you know that song?’ It was pretty amusing.”

“It’s like, totally embarassing. Why can’t she just listen to, like, Nickelback or something?”

According to Waddington, her musical renaissance started after she created a MySpace account under an assumed identity “just to see what the fuss was all about.”

“Before you know it, I’m logging in nearly every hour,” says Waddington. “Now I have over four hundred friends.”

Waddington says she spends many hours on the networking site looking through other people’s pages to see what music they’re listening to.

“That’s the main draw for me. I’ve always been a music lover, but that took a backseat after I popped three kids out,” she says. “MySpace gives me a chance to reconnect with that side of me.”

Waddington admits she regularly visits several pages belonging to “a bunch of cool kids” she doesn’t know. “There’s a kid in Iowa that I check out everyday. He’s into a lot of good stuff. He recently got me into Hefner. There’s so much great stuff out there. It’s exhilarating,” she adds.

Her children aren’t so thrilled.

“It’s like, totally embarassing. Why can’t she just listen to, like, Nickelback or something?” says daughter Christina, 15. “You know, like all the regular moms do.”

Drake, 14, agrees, saying that parents aren’t supposed to like what their kids are listening to. “Punk music is all about rebellion. It’s kinda hard to feel that when your mom knows the lyrics to every AFI song.”

Waddington brushes off the protestations.

“Just because I’m in my 50’s doesn’t mean I should only listen to Celion Dion and Josh Groban,” she says. “I refuse to be pigeonholed like that.”

Sanchez: Happier place

Miami, FL — A homosexual construction worker is re-examining his approach to friendship with straight men after “getting his heart broke” by a man he thought was interested in him but was actually just using him to get close to a female friend of his.

Colin Sanchez, 25, says he felt like a naive fool for getting ensnared in a sneaky ploy worthy of countless straight-to-video movies about gay men falling for the unattainable.

According to Sanchez, it all started when his co-worker, Diego (not his real name), began spending lunch breaks with him. They bonded instantly and started hanging out outside of work shortly thereafter.

“I wasn’t even thinking of him as a potential lover. He’s not someone I would normally go for,” says Sanchez. “But as we spent more time with each other, I found myself falling for him. I started to think about the possibility of the two of us as a couple, short of picking a place in the Keys for us to move to.”

But everything changed, he says, when he asked his best friend Lori to join them for drinks one night.

“I was drunk on blush, slouched on the couch, and had orange lips when I saw Britney being taken out of her house on a stretcher on Entertainment Tonight,” he says. “That really struck a chord.”

“Diego kept asking about her, what she’s like and what not, so I finally brought her out with me,” says Sanchez. “I thought it was sweet of him to be so curious about my friends.”

Sanchez says the two got along very well. A little too well, in fact, as he would discover later, when Diego started acting very distant and stopped returning his calls. The lunch breaks together also ground to a halt.

“The next thing I know is that they got hitched in Vegas and there’s a bun in the oven,” says Sanchez. “It was like somebody hit me in the head with a jackhammer.”

The whole experience sent him on a downward spiral of substance abuse, binge consumption of Cheetos and Tic Tacs, and repeated listens to Cher’s “Believe” CD, but Sanchez says he got himself together thanks to the relentless tabloid coverage of Britney Spears’ ongoing meltdown.

“I was drunk on blush, slouched on the couch, and had orange lips when I saw Britney being taken out of her house on a stretcher on Entertainment Tonight,” he says. “That really struck a chord.”

Sanchez says that thanks to a really good therapist and “sweet, sweet Paxil,” he is in a happier place now and wishes his friends nothing but the best.

“I hold no grudge. Life’s too short for that,” he says. “My only regret is not ever getting him drunk enough to put out. Now I’ll never know what’s in them pants.”

My child is a poop monster!

Spotsylvania, VA — On the outside, Sophie looks just like any normal healthy baby: chubby cheeks, big doe eyes and plump doll arms. Inside, though, the tiny tot packs a big stinking secret: she is one mean poop-making machine.

“I was flabbergasted after seeing her first bowel movement,” says her first-time mother Belinda Kelly. “It was like 10 double quarter pounders with cheese. It’s unreal, the amount of poop she generates.”

Belinda and her husband Harry thought they had prepared themselves adequately for the challenges and rigors of first-time parenthood by reading self-help books and attending various support group meetings, but “this has totally caught us off-guard.”

“One time at a dinner party, her diaper broke open because there was just too much poop,” says Harry. “My wife and I were so embarassed that we had to leave.”

Worried that there might be something wrong with their daughter, the couple had Sophie looked at by three infantile excretory specialists.

“They all found nothing wrong with her,” says Harry. “And I believe them. It’s just my wife who’s worrying too much.”

Belinda said she is getting used to her daughter’s fulsome feces, which she insists she inherited from her father, but admits she gets worked up about it every now and then.

“I just can’t believe how something so little could make so much crap,” says Belinda. “I certainly hope this doesn’t hinder her chances at making her high school cheerleading squad.”

Putnam: gimme more blind old men

Chicago, ILLINOIS — Buxom blonde Cherry Putnam is feeling good after having helped a blind old man cross the street yesterday at the height of Black Friday shopping madness.

The 22-year-old junior executive assistant said she was on her mobile phone when she noticed the noticeably blind old man about to attempt to cross the very busy Michigan Avenue on a red light.

When it became clear that no one was going to assist the man, Putnam said she had no choice but to hang up on her best friend Daphne, who was pouring her heart out over a failed two-week-old relationship.

“Like, I totally don’t hang up on my friends and stuff just like that,” Putnam said. “But I just had to help that poor old man. I just hope Daphne doesn’t take me off her Christmas card list this year.”

The old man was reportedly very grateful for Putnam’s assistance. Although he couldn’t be reached for comment, street sources report he is “safe at home enjoying a Metamucil drink and reading the latest issue of The Braille Monitor.”

Putnam said she works in the area and was on her way home from a bit of after-Thanksgiving shopping when she encountered the man. She said she got some “pretty good” deals this year, including the latest Britney Spears CD, “Blackout,” which she bought for 99 cents from a street vendor.

“All my friends paid, like, 15 bucks for it. Suckers!” said Putnam.

“Blackout,” Britney Spears’ fifth studio album, has fallen out of the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 album chart less than a month after its release.

Nugent: A very ample crotch

Poughkeepsie, NEW YORK — A woman who has been suffering from inhibited sexual desire for three decades was sexually aroused after chancing upon Ted Nugent’s “Super Hits” compilation CD in a Wal-Mart bargain bin.

Dorothy McKinnon, 55, went to the Wal-Mart in Newburgh to buy some bleach and a tarp. On her way out, she spotted Nugent’s CD sticking out prominently in a bargain bin. McKinnon said she was instantly mesmerized.

“It called right out to me,” the part-time librarian and housewife said. “It touched me in that one place where I haven’t felt anything since 1977.”

The CD cover shows the rock musician in a provocative pose revealing a “very ample crotch.” McKinnon, whose musical taste is mostly limited to the adult contemporary and Christian genres, said she “picked it up, paid for it, and drove home immediately.”

“I was so excited I couldn’t wait to get home to my husband Rick,” McKinnon recalled. “I almost got into an accident on the I-84.”

Rick McKinnon said he couldn’t be happier with his wife’s sudden sexual re-emergence, and doesn’t mind that it took Ted Nugent’s crotch to “awaken the sleeping whore inside her.”

“I couldn’t tell you how happy I am. When she walked in the door that night, I knew right away there was something different about her,” said the 59-year-old bricklayer. “She was all flushed and had this naughty gleam in her eyes.”

McKinnon’s frigidity was diagnosed shortly after she and Rick married in a storybook wedding in 1977. She said they tried all kinds of things — from psychological counselling to pornography — to cure her sexual apathy but none of them worked. The couple have no children, but remained together “thanks to Jesus Christ and the occasional hiring of hookers.”

“Because of my deep love for my husband, I allowed prostitution in my house. Now, there’s no need for that anymore,” she said with a smile.

Kelsey: Quitting Internet.

Wichita, KANSAS - Local highschooler Derek Kelsey unceremoniously removed his fledgling website from the Internet and cancelled his Facebook account today.

Kelsey, 16, cited “a disheartening lack of general interest in my shit” as the main reason.

“I spent an insane amount of time putting things on my site, like my journal entries and stuff, but nobody seemed to care. I just got sick of it,” says Kelsey, who attends Wichita High School East.

Kelsey said he also cancelled his Facebook account for the same reason, and the fact that he had only managed to accumulate 9 friends after being on it for nearly 12 months.

The teenager plans to continue writing in his physical journal “for himself.”

“From now on, no one else is gonna know what I thought of last night’s episode of Ugly Betty. I am completely abandoning the online community,” says the disenchanted teen.

The shocking revelation was made by Li Chang, a gourmet chef who used to work as Mrs. Bush’s personal chef until November 2005. Chang was dismissed after she had accidentally garnished one of Mrs. Bush’s dinners with cilantro, to which the 81-year-old mother of George W. Bush is extremely allergic.

Chang, 57, says Mrs. Bush came up with the idea of making up a gay Asian blogger back in 2000 to stave off boredom.

“Mr. Bush Sr. was away most of the time, and all the kids had gone off to their own things. She was left with an empty nest. What’s a septuagenarian to do?” said Chang.

“Mr. Bush Sr. was away most of the time, and all the kids had gone off to their own things. She was left with an empty nest. What’s a septuagenarian to do?”

Mrs. Bush’s close ties with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) allowed her to gain access to surveillance photos of millions of Americans. She decided to use a 22-year-old aspiring Asian hip-hop artist in Colorado as the likeness of Ernie Hsiung.

According to Chang, she kept mum on the deception because of her friendship and close working relationship with Mrs. Bush then. She decided to come forward with the truth now because “she can’t keep it in herself anymore.”

Chang said Mrs. Bush used her as the basis for the character of Ernie’s mother.

“I knew something was up when she asked me one day, ‘Li Chang, how would you react if you found out your son was gay?” Chang said.

The exposure of Barbara Bush’s ruse is the latest in a firestorm of controversies involving authors being revealed as liars, fakers, and hacks. JT LeRoy, the supposedly 25-year-old former male prostitute and author of “Sarah” and “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things,” was recently outed as a 40-year-old attention-hungry woman.

The Bush camp has denied to comment on the matter.

There’s a new threat to your self-esteem, and it could be standing right next to you in the elevator. It’s called the elevator slider - a random person you happen to share an elevator ride with who slides away from you the moment space becomes available.

I’ve encountered these people numerous times, and let me tell you now, they’re ruthless and oblivious to the incidental demolition of your self-confidence.

Just when you think you smell absolutely fantastic with that new Calvin Klein cologne you just bought, you would be instantly toppled from your pedestal of perfumery and left wondering, “Do I smell like a rancid goat?”

Or be made to wonder whether or not you still have that foul morning breath even though you’re positively certain you’ve brushed, flossed, and Listerined your mouth prior to leaving your place.

It only takes one heartless slide.

It is unknown exactly how many people have fallen victim to the phenomenon, but it is widely believed that one is more likely to encounter elevator sliders in metropolitan areas.

“I’d say that’s about right. They don’t have a lot of elevators in the countryside,” says elevator expert Charles A. Buckman.

Buckman adds that he knows a few farmers and ranchers who live in elevatorless towns and villages, and they all seem to be “psychologically well-adjusted.”

Nevertheless, if you’ve been slided away from in an elevator, don’t despair. It’s not you, it’s them.

Experts of proxemics - the study of the use of space in social situations - say that elevator sliding is a natural reflex action hard-wired into the human brain and shouldn’t be taken personally.

“We all have an invisible personal space that extends around us like a bubble,” says Dr. David A. Gershaw. “If someone invades this space, it makes us feel very uncomfortable. Often, the reaction is to move away.”

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall, who studied proxemics in many different cultures, says that in North America, the typical personal distance most people accommodate is between 1.5 to 4 feet. This is the spacing we use when talking to friends.

“The elevator is one of those rare places where this distance is severely compromised, yet there is nothing one can do but hope that someone else gets off quickly to free up some space,” says Hall. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it if someone were to slide away from me in an elevator.”

If, like me, you’re in this unfortunate situation, here are some possible uses for the American Idol Season 2 runner-up’s dreadful disk.

	1. Drink coaster A popular use for many an unwanted but not quite trashable CD. Makes a great coffee table conversation piece.
	2. Lube coaster Keep your sex life well-lubricated and your birch nightstand protected from unsightly Astroglide blotches.
	3. Cheese cutter/slicer Works with most cheese varieties.
	4. Pizza cutter For that perfect pizza slice!
	5. Toothbrush holder Simply slap it onto any ordinary glass or tumbler and you’ve got a functional docking place for your toothbrush.
	6. Stylish ear ornament Facial specialists often recommend big earrings to balance out abnormally large olfactory organs.
	7. Stylish pendant Crank up your bling by wearing it as a pendant on your favourite imitation 50 Cent necklace.
	8. Gang weapon accessory Attach it to a dog chain and you’ve got a formidable gang weapon that would make your enemies think twice before crossing you.
	9. All-purpose wedge Fixes shaky tables and other wonky furniture.
	10. Dust pan For picking up the small messes of your life.

Of course, you can just throw the dang thing in the trash if you can’t be bothered with it. But, where is the fun in that?

Museums and cultural centers are the new cemeteries. They’re just as dead and devoid of life as the average necropolis, and therefore perfect for goths to while away moments in.

People have asked me what it’s like to be goth and my responses have often been attenuated, distilled, over-the-counter descriptions. I find it a tedious task, honestly. It’s like trying to explain what it’s like to be gay, or Mormon, or a bricklayer. Besides, with so many conflicting views on what’s goth and what’s not, it’s difficult to encapsulate what goth culture really is all about. Personally, I believe that goth is what you make it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is going against the fundamental principle upon which the entire movement is based: individualism.

So, if you’re genuinely interested in finding out what it feels like for a goth, the best way is to be goth yourself. It’s easy! All you need is a genuine sense of wonder, open-mindedness, creativity and an appreciation of the duality of existence. And, to help you get started, I’ve come up with seven important tips on becoming a fierce goth.

1. Wear a lot of black.

Black is the colour of choice in the goth community. Most goths generally consider wearing anything bright-coloured as a reprehensible fashion faux pas. Additionally, black is very slimming, and a skinny waif-like countenance is what all goths strive for. It is utter perfection to be stick thin in goth culture.

2. Get the skin and the hair right.

Goths are known to possess preternaturally pale skin. Stay out of direct sunlight and cut iron-rich foods out of your regular diet. If possible, subsist on a diet of salt licks and tap water. This will not only fast-track the drainage of colour from your skin, but also do wonders to your figure. Remember, pale and skinny is to goths as dark and big-assed is to Ben Affleck.

Also, whether you’re male or female, pale or not, wearing make-up is a must. Before going out and being seen by the uncaring world, apply white powder on your face. If your skin is of a naturally dark tone, be very generous with your application. If necessary, do your neck and arms as well to match your face accordingly.

Then, take some black eyeliner and outline the top and bottom of your eyes. If you look anything like Robert Smith (pictured below), then you are doing it right. Now put on some black or dark red lipstick. If black lipstick is unavailable, use black liquid eyeliner instead. If you don’t have that one as well, then you might want to try soaking your lips in grape Kool-Aid for at least an hour. This will at least give your lips a ghostly purple shade.

As for your hair, having it long certainly helps, but by no means is it a pre-requisite. There are things that can be done to make short hair look spooky and stand out. Wear it up, wear it down, spike it up, shave it off, make it into horns… whatever strikes your fancy. There really is no wrong way to make your hair look spooky. Dyeing it jet black is a surefire way to enhance the paleness of your skin.

3. Be pierced and accessorize!

As a goth, you must have at least one body piercing. The unpierced body is considered ugly and is tantamount to blasphemy! All the goths will point at you and laugh if they notice that you don’t have a single man-made hole in your body.

In terms of accessories, most goth beginners start off with skulls. Get anything with skulls on it. Earrings, belt buckles, pencil cases, pillows, whatever you can find. The scarier they look, the better. You want to look scary and edgy.

4. Start hanging out in museums and cultural centers.

Museums and cultural centers are the new cemeteries. They’re just as dead and devoid of life as the average necropolis, and therefore perfect for goths to while away moments in. Cemeteries are still acceptable places to chill at, but in an increasingly cosmopolitan world, museums and cultural centers have the advantage because of their accessibility. People will also think you’re a hell lot smarter than you are when they see you frequenting these joints.

5. Listen to dark and depressing music.

You’ve got to wean yourself off of Kylie and Christina and start getting into Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Sisters of Mercy. And no, “Can’t Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head” doesn’t count as goth music just because New Order is sampled on it.

6. Be anti-social.

Stop calling your friends. Disconnect your telephone. Do not respond to e-mails. Make scary faces at babies. Avoid group activities. Immerse yourself in complete isolation. Remember, goths don’t mingle so when someone tries to talk to you in a public setting, look them straight in the eye, say nothing and then turn or walk away. If you are a smoker, blowing smoke in the person’s face is definitely encouraged.

7. Always look sad and whine about everything as much as possible.

As a goth, it is paramount that you appear anguished and just filled with despair at all times. A look of deep angst is what you must aim for. You are angry. The weight of the world is on you. You are carrying the burden of life upon yourself, by yourself. You are alone. No one loves you. ‘My So-Called Life’ got cancelled. Feel the anguish. Show it. Look it. Breathe it. Above all, NEVER smile. Smiles ruin the air of angst and the overall mystique of gothness.

And there you are. Seven key things that you need to know to be goth. Of course, there’s more to being goth than meets the eye. Don’t worry, once you get started, the rest will come naturally. Well? What are you waiting for? Look up a goth bar near you and start gothing!