Now that's hard-core.

I'm just going to copy and paste this article instead of making a link to it, so you will be more likely to read it. This is a pretty cool story to tell the grandkids.

NAIROBI - A 73-year-old Kenyan grandfather reached into the mouth of an attacking leopard and tore out its tongue to kill it, authorities said Wednesday.

Peasant farmer Daniel M’Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out of the long grass and leapt on him.

M’Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard’s mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the animal’s tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.

"It let out a blood-curdling snarl that made the birds stop chirping," he told the daily Standard newspaper of how the leopard came at him and knocked him over.

The leopard sank its teeth into the farmer’s wrist and mauled him with its claws. "A voice, which must have come from God, whispered to me to drop the panga (machete) and thrust my hand in its wide-open mouth. I obeyed," M’Mburugu said.

As the leopard was dying, a neighbor heard the screams and arrived to finish it off with a machete.

M’Mburugu was toasted as a hero in his village Kihato after the incident earlier this month. He was also given free hospital treatment by astonished local authorities.

"This guy is very lucky to be alive," Kenya Wildlife Service official Connie Maina told Reuters, confirming details of the incident.

Rec Softball

Sixth-grade girls are paralyzingly self-conscious. It doesn't matter if they are the Jami Laniers or the Paula Gentrys of the world.

I happened to be on a softball team populated by Jami Laniers and Paula Gentrys. And I was a Lauren Duffey.

I only played softball because that was what you did. One's ultimate goal in life as a sixth-grader is to be popular. And the popular girls at my school were athletic and played softball. Thus, I played softball. I also played softball because I come from a pretty athletic family -- a family whose outings primarily revolved around sporting events.

I quit softball for several reasons, the least being that I was the most unathletic person on the team.

The first event that led to me renouncing the sport (and consquently, being scarred for life) occurred at a practice at Clem Community Center where the infield was pure rocks and the outfield had weeds that reached my knees. (This is no exaggeration, by the way.) We were taking batting practice which was a disaster in and of itself for me. But imagine the horror of a sixth-grade paralyzingly self-conscious girl when the "coach" yelled, "Choke up on the bat, Lauren! You're a BIG GIRL!" I was aware of enough physics and watched enough baseball to know that the two statements were totally unrelated and, thus, pure crap. So I was irrate at the idiot coach and blamed his pitching for my complete inability to connect bat to ball. (Which didn't stop me from crying the whole way home from practice.)

I mentioned that the itchy weeds in the outfield were up to my knees. (And, apparently, I was a BIG GIRL.) I know this because, yes, I was an outfielder. I can't remember if I played right- or left-field but, suffice it to say, I was where the ball was least likely to go. Unfortunately, in a real game (at a slightly better field) a ball did come my way. Which leads me to Reason #2 that I quit softball. I was running to get to the ball when somebody (I swear it was one of my teammates) yelled "FOUL," meaning foul ball, out of bounds, right? So I stopped. Not slowed down. Stopped. Only to see the "foul" ball bounce in fair territory.

And finally, the all-excusing reason that I quit softball was that, during the middle of the season, my family and I moved to Seattle for my brother's bone marrow transplant. So ha.

More

(Note: Because there is no underlining function here, and my italics don't seem to be working, I'm going to write the title of books in quotations. Which really bothers me.)

"The Secret Life of Bees" is an amazing book. Granted it's a little too much like "Their Eyes Were Watching God". (Which, by the way, I absolutely hated.) But this book isn't as bogged down in dialect and colliquialisms. This book primarily addresses the relationship between a 14-year-old white girl and the group of black women with whom she lives. It's set in 1964 rural South Carolina. (Like I really have to say it's rural South Carolina.) (Editor's Note: 1964 was the year that the Civil Rights Act was passed.) Without giving away part of the plot, there's a young black guy that she ends up, I don't know, liking? (Sara, I'm totally envisioning "Fine Johnny" during the descriptions.)

But a really cool coincidence, if it can be called "cool," is that in the book it mentions the killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. That's not cool. What is cool is that today -- TODAY -- Edgar Ray Killen (Man, did he live up to his last name.) was convicted for the killings. Read about it here.

Basically, in a nutshell, the point is a.) read the book, and b.) even 80-year-old KKK members can be convicted of a crime that they committed 40 years ago TO THE DAY.

Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

You know how your face tightens up when you get into a really hot car? That's what life is like in a 6-floor walk-up apartment in New York City with no air conditioner when it's 98 FREAKIN' DEGREES OUTSIDE (and, coincidentally, 100 degrees inside).

I've got quite a few topics to write about tonight.

You should all watch the movie Crash. It's pretty poignant. Even Lexia kind of liked it, although she maintains that something about it bothered her, but she can't remember what that something was. Apparently, "moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other." (Couldn't they come up with something a little less cliche?)

Amish Country, while beautiful and welcome to these city-weary eyes, was a disappointment. I should clarify, though. I think I wanted to experience "The Witness" and actually become a respected member of their community while still being an outsider. And marry a young widower or something with a child named Zebediah or Ezekiel. I didn't know that I couldn't even take a picture of them or that they would look the other way when they saw us coming. I seriously had no interaction with any Amish person. They're not a welcoming lot.


More to come...