She can forget a Mother's Day card

There is an unwritten Guy Code that spells out certain things any real man really should do for himself. Shaving is one. So is hooking up new electronic equipment. Sending hate mail to a former elementary school classmate you haven't seen in more than a decade? That's definitely on the list.
That last one should probably be self-explanatory, but some people have to learn the hard way.
Anthony Perone did. According to a March 16 story in the Hartford Courant, the 20-year-old Faribault resident wrote two letters to a girl he'd gone to school with in third and fourth grade. He wrote things like, "Your gonna learn about suffering and having nothing. Pain you will feel. Fear, Being alive," and filled the letters with drawings of tombstones and rifles and hearts with chunks bitten out of them. He signed them "Love, Death Stalker."
Then, he left the letters for his mom to mail.
This is where is plan starts to fall apart. Because Perone's mom, presumably thinking she was being helpful, put her son's name and return address on the envelopes and put them in the mail.
This might have been the easiest stalking case Connecticut police have ever solved.
Clearly mothers are nothing but trouble. Sometimes they put return addresses on letters that threaten death to people who are practically strangers. Sometimes they give their son's phone number to strange women they meet in book stores, just because the woman says she likes biking.
Not that I know any mothers who would do anything like that.
Imagine how much easier it would be to solve crimes, though, if every criminal was so dependent on his mother. The Unabomber would have been caught within days, although I imagine it would have taken some time to track down a return address for "crazy person's shack in the woods."
The anthrax scares that happened after 9/11 probably would have been over before they started because the mailer's mom would have been just certain her boy would never have meant to send such messy packages. And shouldn't he come out of that lab for just a little while? At least go sit in the yard. It's such a nice day.
Obviously Peron has some problems. Aside from bad grammar and a pushy mother, I mean. Police found an assault rifle and ammunition in his bedroom, along with a machete and evidence he planned to travel to Connecticut. He'd been obsessing over a girl who he'd last seen when both were in elementary school. And he wanted to go to Connecticut.
Still, there's no excuse for this kind of mistake. Does Peron ask his mother to soap him up when he showers? Does she clip his toenails? I'm guessing she doesn't. And he really shouldn't ask her to mail his anonymous, venom-filled letters. Hate mail is a very personal thing, after all.
According to the Courant, Peron has pleaded guilty to two counts against him and could face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000 when he is sentenced June 5.
It is not clear whether he would write his mom from jail.

Keep on truckin'

It seems like every third commercial on TV these days involves one automaker or another telling everyone how big and powerful their pick-up trucks are.
This isn't an entirely new thing. Americans have been infatuated with larger-than-necessary trucks ever since we as a culture decided we didn't give a darn how much gas cost — or how often news anchors told us prices were increasing — because we needed to drive around town in something larger than many people's first apartments.
Still, things seem to be getting out of hand. These commercials are everywhere. I see them a lot during sporting events, which makes a certain amount of sense. Manly Men watch sports, and Manly Men need big trucks so they can pull up stumps or haul construction debris or drag Rhode Island over to the West Coast just for the heck of it. Probably while wearing flannel shirts and steel-toed work boots. These are things Manly Men do.
But I also see a lot of commercials for these trucks during The Office. Do Manly Men like quiet, observational comedies shot in a documentary style? Do Manly Men care whether Jim and Pam end up together? Do they wipe away tears with flannel hankies? Maybe Manly Men are more diverse than I give them credit for.
I'm learning things watching these commercials. A few weeks ago I had no idea what a leaf spring was. Now two manufacturers are telling me their massive springs — "honkin'" is the term one of them uses — are the reason their trucks are strong enough to hold all of the rocks or manure or small office buildings you want to load them down with. Frankly, I would have thought a part so vital to making our trucks super-tough would have a more rugged-sounding name. Something less plant related. Like, biceps spring, maybe. Or tough-guy spring.
I've seen trucks pulling trains. I've seen trucks driven at breakneck speeds to the edges of cliffs. Manly Men have very little respect for the well-being of their trucks. Then again, their trucks are tough. Their trucks can take it. Their trucks want it that way, because they are Manly Trucks.
I'm sure there are people who need trucks like these. These are people whose job involves activities more strenuous than sitting at a desk and typing all day. Although, to be fair, I'm at serious risk of carpal tunnel. I take that risk every week because I want to entertain you, my readers. I don't consider myself a hero for that, but it's OK if you do.
Still, I'm not sure the market is so large I need to spend every commercial break learning about fully-boxed frames or supersized tow hitches or brakes the size of manhole covers apparently designed specifically to stop speeding trucks at the edges of cliffs.
Then again, maybe these automakers know something I don't. Maybe our environment is worse than we realize and we'll all soon need trucks so large they have their own gravitational pull just to survive. Or maybe our obesity epidemic is spiraling out of control and we'll need super-sized trucks just to haul our super-sized butts around.
Better beef up those tough-guy springs.

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry

Can we please cool it with the rage?
Earlier this month the St. Paul Pioneer Press printed a Columbia News Service story about the growing incidences of what the story calls Sidewalk Rage, which it apparently defines as any incident in which one person gets really ticked off at another person where both of the people involved are on a sidewalk at the time. Apparently the term was considered more concise than "getting really ticked off at other people in public rights of way."
I guess I get that.
I don't know if Road Rage was the first commonly recognized form of situational rage, but it's was the first to enter my consciousness. This was back around the time we started seeing all kinds of stories about drivers in California who had started opening fire on the Interstate, having deciding a raised middle finger was no longer an appropriate response to the jerk who cut you off.
At the time, it seemed like an appropriate turn of phrase. Drivers were getting honked off at the idiots on the road all around them and were flying off the handle. They were on the road. They were in a rage. Simple as that.
Now, rage is everywhere. It's moved from the road to the sidewalk and there's no stopping it. Consider these terms that turned up at least one recorded incident in the first five responses from a Google search:
Travel Rage: A blanket term that includes Air Rage (getting miffed at altitude when), Hotel Rage (wanting to ring the bell of the clerk who lost your reservation) and Train Rage (like Air Rage, presumably, but on rails and generally at a lower fare and with more stops).
Restaurant Rage: Now getting irate at the waiter who takes an hour to bring your soup or the jerk at the next table who won't get off his cell phone gets its own diagnosis.
Cable Rage: The Urban Dictionary describes this as getting extremely frustrated at a particularly nasty tangle of cables. I'll admit, it sounds a lot better than, "Becoming upset at the realization your sloppy cable-routing habits have created a disgusting mess behind your home entertainment system."
Parking Rage: Pretty much what it sounds like. Someone takes the parking spot you wanted, you flip out. Someone parks too close to your car, forcing you to contort your body like Plastic Man just to get out of the mall parking lot, you key their door. Someone's car alarm won't stop going off, you smash a trash can through their windshield. Simple.
Snow Rage: This might be a particular concern this week. According to the Chicago Tribune a 73-year-old man was charged with assault in March of this year after he reportedly slashed his neighbor with a knife because he didn't like the fact the neighbor was blowing snow into his yard.
"I'm very upset about what happened," the man reportedly said after he was released on bail. "We're good friends, good neighbors. I just want this to blow over."
Apparently this assumes it doesn't blow into his yard.
Sports Rage: This one's easy. Parents go nuts at a sporting event. Parents attack ref. Parents attack opposing coach. Parents attack their own child's coach. Take your pick, really.
To be fair, there were several terms that don't yet turn up claims of rage syndromes. So far as I can tell, nobody has yet coined the term Soup Rage. There was nothing for Slacker Rage, although that one seems pretty self-explanatory. A search for Salamander Rage turned up a review for the Sega Genesis game Streets of Rage 2 (which was awesome, by the way) but no incidents of people getting angry over newts. There were no valid responses for Television Rage, which seems really surprising. Seriously, nobody's blood boils when they watch Two and a Half Men?
A search for Marshmallow Rage turned up a story about Fluffernutter wars raging in Massachusetts. That doesn't really fit this discussion but it suggests that despite playing a key role in the American Revolution Massachusetts now has the lamest wars ever.
I'm sure these types of rage and more are on the horizon, though. It's just a matter of time. And when I see them I'm going to get really mad.
Call it Rage Rage.