7 Small Fights That Got Out of Hand Quickly
Say you have a nemesis. You bring doughnuts to work in the morning, he brings hookers. You get a really keen new shirt, he brings hookers. He's constantly in your face, obnoxious and smarmy and smug and Luke McKinney. He's Luke McKinney. "Look at me, I fuckin' know everything. Felix has his shoes on his hands again, everyone! Let's laugh." Fuck.
Anyway, say you have a nemesis. We all do. Every so often, you and your foe may clash, and words will be exchanged. Maybe even blows. Not the sex kind, but that does happen in movies. Please note: I never sexed McKinney. Generally, though, such feuds are fairly pedestrian and come together in predictable ways. But sometimes a small fight takes it to the next level in a way that is extremely disproportionate to the initial conflict. And then I read about them and chuckle and share the story with you. With you, not Luke McKinney.
Toxic Gas-Mart
Walmart has a bit of a reputation for being ... let's say, unseemly. Uncouth. A rancid shithole of squalor. This image is engendered by both its patrons and its corporate culture, where both seem to be borne from lizard stock, just different castes. The lizard people have a caste system, look it up.
He is the lizard king.
Given the images Walmart brings to mind, the idea that a fight might break out at a Walmart is hardly newsworthy. It's to be expected. In fact, I think someone died at Walmart once on Black Friday as a result of a good old-fashioned trampling. Suffice it to say, it lives up to its reputation. So what would make a Walmart fight newsworthy? Toxicity.
In a fight to make Bill Nye proud, two gargantuans squared off in the cleaning aisle and chose their weapons. One bleach, the other ammonia. If you know basic chemistry, you see where this went, as the ensuing chemical kerfuffle created chloramine vapors. Also hydrochloric acid and assorted other chemical treats you don't want to breathe in or get on your skin. This is why you never pee into a bottle of bleach, by the way. And you thought the only dangerous gasses in Walmart were natural.
She was "punished" by never being allowed to set foot in Walmart again.
Surf City Skirmish
Have you ever heard of the U.S. Open of Surfing? It's apparently not the movie Point Break. That's all I know about surfing and (maybe I'm taking a risk by saying this) all I ever need to know about surfing. But for those who went beyond Point Break, there's a place they call Surf City. It's actually Huntington Beach, but that tells you nothing about the metropolitan state of surfing there and uses no alliteration, so it is therefore shit on a shingle in terms of names.
This year, as thousands of guys named Bodhi and white girls with cornrows gathered to watch some surfing, a fight broke out on the beach, presumably because someone wafted an air biscuit toward someone else's wahini. Oh shit, son, I just slang bombed you. When the dust settled, the exact opposite thing happened, by which I mean the dust never settled. Instead, the fight turned into a riot, and a mob of people traveled away from the beach like a real-life Tasmanian Devil cartoon, just swarming across and destroying things as it traveled.
The eye of the douchicane.
The crowd of surf aficionados tore down street signs, looted shops, and played bongos when no one asked them to. More than 100 cops had to be called in to shoot rubber bullets as the crowd continued on, smashing car windows and flipping portable toilets. If you've never been in a portable toilet when it was flipped over, let me assure you it's not an experience you need in order to live a full and rich life. It's a lot like you'd imagine, suddenly being gripped by panic as the shit of a million lost souls tries to hug your face.
Low Volume, High Blood Loss
You know what really grinds my gears? TV volume. My TV exists in some kind of schizophrenic sound spasm where any unpredictable hoot or chirp can rise up among a sea of low-key muttering and growling at any moment. One minute House is barely audible as he explains how his patient has cardiocrotchcrab sclerosis, and then a Vagisil commercial comes screaming into my room to let me know that my cruddy vagina is ruining my neighbor's property values, maybe I should jam an ovule in there.
"Maybe I should do something about that not-so-fresh feeling ..."
Like me, Robert Wilson had volume issues at his place. Unlike me, Wilson was fuck nuts crazy and didn't know the remote control has a button to manage this terrible sound burden. He got into an argument with his roommate over the volume and, like all good arguments about a thing that is totally and epically insignificant, felt that his point would be better proved by something that actually has a point. So he went to the kitchen, got a knife, and returned to stab his roommate in the face and stomach, those being the two places where high volume is most appreciated.
American Idol I Cut You
I've seen two episodes of American Idol in my life, so it's entirely possible that the show is super fantastic awesome and I'm writing this from a place of ignorance. One of the episodes I saw was from this last season with Nicki Minaj because, and I'll be honest about this, I've Googled her butt before. I did. I just wanted to see what the fuss was about because I like butts. So I looked at hers and it was A-OK. However, she's behind a desk on America Idol, so all I could do was listen to her give criticism to musical abominations and it really didn't pop my cork.
Two fans who are asses, as opposed to fans of asses, were also watching this season, maybe even the episode I watched, who's to know? Anyway, this couple was watching and became impassioned as they discussed their favorite crooners. Can I call them crooners? It seems nicer than calling them "ponies that the FOX network will ride into the ground and then leave at the state fair, which is the only place you'll ever see them perform." Did you know last year's winner is performing on a Duck Dynasty cruise? Yes you did.
I Googled "Nicki Minaj butt hugging a goblin" and got this.
During the course of their argument over who should win, it became imperative that a knife be used to further argue the point, and both people were stabbed. It's worth noting that they were stabbed by the same knife, which is to say that one of them went and got the knife, stabbed the other, and then put it down. The stabbing victim then retrieved the knife and stabbed the stabber. Both claimed the other stabbed first. And in the end no one cared who won and I never saw Nicki Minaj's boomshakalaka.
Mac 'n' Cheese 'n' Stab Wounds
Macaroni and cheese holds a strange place in the American zeitgeist. It's a staple dish, it's comfort food, and it's the mealtime equivalent of falling asleep while masturbating with a rubber glove on -- sad, disappointing, and unfulfilling. You should never, ever try to murder someone over mac and cheese.
Save that shit for pizza.
Randy Zipperer, a man who probably never got to fulfill the porn potential of his name, became agitated one day when he was unable to find his mac and cheese. While his brother helped him look for it, Zipperer's beer was spilled, and that was the last straw. No mac and cheese was one thing, but no mac and cheese and no beer? Hell nah! So he had to stab a bitch. Guess what state this happened in, incidentally. Just guess.
Zipperer's brother was stabbed in the gut with a 6-inch kitchen knife, and police found him in the bedroom. As for Zipperer himself, he was arrested and was very apologetic, although he did let officers know that, once he was out of jail, he still had plans to beat the shit out of his brother. He also posed for this charming mugshot. Why don't you go ahead and print a copy for your wallet.
Lovin' you / Is easy cuz you're beautiful!
Monopoly Melee
The game of Monopoly was invented by a rich, bemonocled midget in the 1940s as a means to force the peasant class to experience boredom and rage at the same time. This mix of unpleasant emotions has followed the game through its many nauseating permutations over the years from the Juicy Couture edition (it's a real thing) to the UPS version, which must be easily as fun as the name implies and not a drop more. Data from MIT indicates that no one has ever finished a game of Monopoly with a smile on their face and no one has ever played as the banker without cheating.
Which is actually a great way to prepare kids for banks in adulthood.
Given Monopoly's shady pedigree, it shouldn't be a surprise to learn that the playing of the game is often steeped in misery. Still, being miserable at the dinner table and wishing you had diarrhea so you could go do something more fun is one thing; whipping out the deadly weapons over Baltic Avenue is quite another.
Sixty-year-old grandmother Laura Chavez was not enjoying a family game of Monopoly with her boyfriend, Butch, and her 10-year-old grandson. Chavez accused Butch of cheating and sent the boy to bed as the argument continued, until Chavez realized that fighting over a board game was silly, hugged her boyfriend, then put the game away and watched a show on TV together. Awww-psych! That never happened. Instead she brained Butch with a bottle, then went at his face like a hungry monkey trying to get into a coconut with a knife, stabbing his head, neck, face, arms, and hands.
When cops showed up, the boy was asleep, having never even heard the Parker Brothers near-homicide in the other room while the apartment was apparently bathed in blood and, presumably, Community Chest cards.
"Can't I just use this?"
The Orgy of the Feuding
You probably hate your neighbor, right? Probably. I had to sit with my neighbor on his porch while he cried about his girlfriend being so insane that he couldn't handle her any more and how the sex was great except for when it hurt. You ever have a weepy man tell you his insane girlfriend hurts him sexually? I don't have time to deal with that. I was trying to watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Phillip Conran also hated his neighbor, and sadly law enforcement wouldn't even explain why. Whatever the reason, his hatred inspired him to seek vengeance the only way a hilariously awful person knows how -- a Craigslist ad. Conran posted that his neighbor wanted to please as many men as she possibly could before leaving for work. Yes, Conran pulled the old "orgy at the neighbor's" prank.
The ancient Greeks once tried something similar, but everyone hidden in the giant condom suffocated.
With no basis for comparison -- if you've never advertised a Craigslist orgy, you may have no idea how popular these things may or may not be -- you probably wouldn't be able to presume to know how many people would respond to such a posting. The answer, we're told, is many. At least a half-dozen men showed up to take advantage of this offer while more kept circling the block in their smutmobiles. One even went to the wrong address and groped the teenage girl who opened the door, isn't that charming? I'm all for being a pervert -- I wrote this whole article one-handed in the tub -- but I try to make sure everyone consents to my awfulness. (Editor's Note: Soap does not need to give consent.)
