Today is a great news day

On Saturday, the opening day of Fright Fest at Six Flags Great America, guests will be given a chance to eat a cockroach on the Mission Stage in Southwest Territory. Successful eaters will be given four Fast Lane passes, which allow park guests to enter at the front of the line on thrill rides.

I am a rollercoaster fanatic. Unfortunately, so are a lot of other people. The best rides are almost always heavily populated and waiting for over an hour to go on a 90-second ride is commonplace. What would I do to by-pass all those "You are 90 minutes away from the ride at this point signs"?

First, I'd need some questions answered:

(1) Will these Fast Lane passes permit me to go to the front of the line multiple times or is it a one-shot deal per ride?

(2) Will the Madagascar hissing roach be alive or dead when it goes into my mouth? In either case, I would require that it be made to hiss at some point prior to ingestion.

(3) Is there a limit on how many people can compete in these contests? At some point, "going to the head of the line" will become a long wait in itself...and, I imagine, would really piss off the non-roach-eating patrons.

(4) Will I be provided a security detail to protect me from the crazed PETA protestors who think that eating roaches is "barbaric"? [This is one of the reasons I don't endorse PETA...any group that recognizes roaches as a class of animal to be protected is a little too zealous for me]

(5) Is there a secret cash prize that goes to the person who eats the biggest or most?

Provided I like the answers to these questions, I...oh, who am I kidding. I would never (possibly barring attempted survival after a nuclear war) put a roach (or any other insect} in my mouth. Eeeeewwwww!!! It's a ROACH for heaven's sake! They are made to consume waste. I don't even want to KNOW where that thing has been, never mind ingesting all those unnecessary germs and bacteriums it's carrying around!

But I bet I could get some guy to do it to try and impress me. And I would get the benefit of the free "You're cooler than hell" tix.

Note to self: Start looking for roach-eating sucker.

Also in today's news:

"When It Comes to Orgasm, Women Work Harder" in which former Playmate of the Year, Jenny McCarthy and sex therapist (on the down low, she's really a urologist), Laura Berman who is now hosting Showtime's new reality series, "Sexual Healing." (I hope Marvin Gaye is getting some sort of kickback for this), chat it up about...well, women achieving The Big O.

On a related note is "Spinal Device Yields Surprise Orgasm". (I'm going to let you use your imagination for the details on that one.)

And then there are the ABC News videos: "High heels to blame for a model spill on the catwalk in Paris" (3" heels = bad), "Bear gets drunk from eating too many fermented apples" (I wonder how a bear deals with a hangover), and "Woman is allegedly kidnapped by her parents to stop her from getting married" (she's pressing charges because her parents are obviously nuts).

For some reason, the spinal device story is not on videotape. I don't understand why not.

But the best story is actually the most serious one. "The Truth Behind Women's Brains." It's got some science-y stuff in it, shows pics of PET scans and sounds authoratative. It also has a quote that reinforces what we women already knew, "...the male amygdala, which also controls sexual thought, is twice as large as that of females. Fueled by testosterone, it triggers the typical teenage male brain to think about sex every 52 seconds [n.b., grown-up boys think about sex every 56 seconds], compared to a few times a day for teen girls."

I'm still trying to figure out how men get anything done if they're thinking about sex all the time. I have yet to meet one who could adequately explain this phenomenom to me.

But it works out to my benefit when I want to find someone who is willing to eat a roach for me, so I'm all for it.

Go testosterone!