Carl Pettit
Carl Pettit is a columnist, editor and writer working for an array of colorful publications. He specializes in cultural and social issues, as well as East Asia, politics and satire.
This week, families will come together from all across the nation for Thanksgiving. They will stuff themselves full of turkey, side dishes and desserts. Some will laugh and joke with relatives, while others renew old feuds and bicker with their cousins and siblings. No matter how your particular Thanksgiving winds up, you can thank the American Pilgrims for starting this long-standing custom.
The universe is a pretty amazing place, from the unimaginably large, right down to the incredibly small. There’s an awful lot going on in this field we call "existence."
These days, most of the turkeys people gobble down are fattened up on farms. They’re only pale (under their feathers) imitations of the lean, mean turkeys roaming through the woods of North America
If you’re a TV and cinema buff, as well as a barfly, you just might be able to combine your passions together. The characters inhabiting our film and television fantasy worlds need places to hang out, just like we do.
Some towns don’t have a lot going on. They don’t have heavy industry, or Internet startups, or a booming population, or a prime location on a beautiful stretch of beach or a magnificent ski slope. Sweet Lips, Tennessee, may lack these things, but the folks who live there can definitely boast about their town's pretty "sweet" name.
Everyone knows that vampires suck … your blood!!!! Seriously though, do you know the history behind modern vampire lore? These creatures of the night have been lurking around for a very long time, although the princes and princesses of darkness have taken on different guises and mythologies throughout the ages.
Mermaids have long captured the imagination of the public. They’ve thrilled us in "documentaries", paintings fairytales and in the cinema. Sometimes these seafaring fish-ladies come to the aid of men (helpful!), and sometimes they just want to hug you to death and drown you (less helpful). Here are a few "facts" about these mythical creatures you might want to know before your next boat trip.
It’s tough being young and wild, especially if you live in a small Colorado mountain town. Sometimes kids just have to invent their own kind of fun. Perhaps 18-year-old Shelby Figueroa was thinking just that when she slammed her car into the back of an unmarked police SUV in Clear Creek, Colorado. The five-foot-tall suspect was subsequently detained and placed into the back of another police SUV. And then the real excitement began.
Like our parole officer always says: "You only get one chance to make a good first impression."
Sometimes the food you eat is trying to kill you. Not in the traditional sense, with saturated fat, refined sugars and cholesterol. There are a few foods out there that can literally end your life if improperly prepared, or at the very least make you terribly sick. While you probably won’t encounter most of the items on this list during the normal course of your life, a few of them are surprisingly common.
Just when you thought things were getting back to normal, you find out that the United States Military, plus several different law enforcement agencies, not to mention emergency workers and medical technicians, are about to get some very unorthodox disaster training.