“Police in San Jose, Calif., said they were investigating a possible connection to Sandy Allman, the owner of several exotic animals who lost her digit in a leopard attack Feb. 23.”

Oh, and get this. The chick they’re talking about, this Allman character, is from Pahrump, Nevada. My uncle works near there sometimes. But seriously. What a kickass name. And while we’re discussing the hilarity of the possibilities of the origin of the wayward finger, check this out:

“Tepoorten [hahahahahaha] said authorities have gotten information from around the country about lost digits – including one woman who claimed she lost a finger while breaking up a dog fight ‘and apparently the hospital lost her finger.’”

Wouldn’t it suck if your hospital lost your finger?

Anyway, the New York Times emails me stuff occasionally. Like, I’m on their mailing list, but they don’t send me stuff that often. I guess it’s just whenever they feel like it’s something I need to know. I guess that’s how our relationship is; we’re not big on communication, the Times and I. But anyway, they sent me this thing the other day and the headline was “Woman allegedly traumatized by finger in chili is arrested.”

So I was like, “YES!” Because I had been under the impression that no way could this whole story get any better. But obviously I was wrong, because apparently this Anna Ayala character, the finger-finder, is all about making up this ridiculousness and then suing. She sued General Motors and also this Mexican restaurant because her kid got food poisoning or something. I mean, that’s why she sued the restaurant. She would have to be pretty creative to have a reason to sue GM that had to do with food poisoning. But the point is, the finger thing wasn’t really the Wendy’s people’s fault. I’d be delighted to know where she got the finger, though, because word on the street (shut up, in the Times) is that she just stuck a finger in her chili and proceeded to freak.

I suppose there are several important lessons to be learned here:

1) Don’t eat Wendy’s chili.

2) If you insist on breaking rule #1, run a spork or something through said chili before eating it.

3) Be careful when training snow leopards.

4) Seriously, if you’re a novice con artist, don’t go for big guys like GM or Wendy’s. Start small until you’re experienced enough to avoid finger-related scams.

• Instead of saying "warmer," he says "better." This drives me absolutely insanse. I hate it. Like, what the hell? That's temperature discrimination! He'll say something like, "Yeah, and it's gonna be a few degrees better here in the high country over the next couple of days," and I'll pretty much lose it. I can't stand this.
• He holds the little clicker so you can see it. You know how they have the little thing so they can change the projection? Yeah, well, you're not supposed to know because you're not supposed to see it. It's supposed to be this kind of... magical illusion. I mean, this guy alone has shattered my ideas of proper forecasting.
• Weather forecasters, though always wrong, should not be THIS wrong. Seriously, if he knew what the hell he was doing, I could live with his highly irritating personality. But he isn't even good at his job. If Dave Fraser tells you what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, you can pretty much guarantee that it will be something like the opposite.
  
• He flirts outrageously with Asha Blake. And Ernie Bjorkman.