Before We Take a Week Off: Ten More Embarrasing Ways to Die

Greetings to our blog readers in Latvia, Spain and Cyprus, and we send out a special greetings to Glenn Beck, Edward Snowden and Paris Hilton: Three of our favorite celebrity narcissists.

Let's go to the big list on ten ways no one wants to die:

1. Getting hit by a Valley Metro bus in Roanoke, Va. (top image)

2. Seizure from playing War of the Warcraft for 48 straight hours.

3. Getting struck by lightning while playing mini-golf in Ocean City, Maryland.

4. Choking to death on a bowl of Rice Krispies (center image)

5. Getting hit by a foul ball at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game.

6. Getting struck down in the parking lot by an oncoming vehicle after shopping at Target.

7. Smoke inhalation from house fire caused by smoking Marlboros in bed.

9.  Drowning while fishing in the Dan River in Eden, North Carolina.

10. Getting hit by a falling coconut from a tree while vacationing in Belize (bottom image).

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http://www.ncnorthstar.com/

http://www.travelbelize.org/

Happy New Year from Lucky Luke/Red Kit

Today, we are taking a brief hiatus from blogging about our family trip to Washington, DC, which had elements of both "National Lampoon's Vacation" and "Taxi Driver" to send holiday greetings via our favorite French cowboy Lucky Luke, whom I still refer to as Red Kit since that was his name in the Turkish translations of his adventures.

Surprisingly enough, even though Lucky Luke's stories all took place in the American west, and featured such real-life figures as Billy the Kid, who Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico did not pardon yesterday, the comic book was never popular in America. Though, Lucky Luke did develop a loyal following in Canada, Turkey, Italy, Germany, the former Yugoslavia and even Vietnam.

The first Lucky Luke comic books arrived in 1946, and his rivals were the Dalton Brothers, a Keystone Kopsesque bunch of numb-skulls who were based loosely on the real-life Dalton Gang.

The books were drawn by the Morris (1923-2001) and the stories were written by the late French icon Rene Goscinny, who also worked on the adventures of Asterix the Gaul.

Red Kit rode a white horse named Jolly Jumper and he was accompanied by a stupid dog Rantanplan, who was a satire of Rin Tin Tin. In fact, the dog was called Rin Tin Tin in the Turkish versions.

Lucky Luke was criticized for using cigarettes, and Morris defended the character using the tobacco product in the children books up until 1988 when he decided it was time for the French cowboy to go cold turkey.

New English-language versions made by Cinebooks can be found at considerably more retailers here in les etats unis than in years past. One of them is my personal favorite comic book shop Chapel Hill Comics in Chapel Hill, NC, where one can also see a Tom Waits octopus!

SIDEBAR: Kudos to the following New Years Day babies who were among the first born in their areas: Colton Jackson Rodenhauer of Richmond, Va., Sean-John Arruda of Fall River, Mass. and Jasmine Bessou of Winston-Salem, NC.

True Confessions (10 of 11)_ The Camel Days

As I was walking on campus today, I held my nose with two fingers as I walked right past a smoker.

It's a bit ironic since I used to be a smoker myself!

For a brief while in 1989, I did actually indulge in this very bad habit.

My cigarette of choice was mostly Camels.

The habit formed purely from peer pressure. In the summer of 1989, I traveled to my father's country Turkey for the usual summer trek.

While there, my friend Muzzafer and his gang of friends would all smoke. After a while, it seemed socially appropriate to fit in and smoke with them.

I actually brought a whole carton of Maltepe-brand Turkish cigarettes from Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul which I brought with me to Roanoke, Va.

I would smoke these cigarettes and share them with friends who smoked when I attended Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke.

The story of how I quit smoking is perhaps the more interesting one though. A few years later, when I was attending Radford University, my friend Bahadir and I went to a bar in downtown Roanoke.

Though we were both smoking Camels, we told a couple of attractive women who saw us that we weren't really smokers. They didn't buy it. I quit smoking after that.

Alas, I now live in an area along the Virginia-North Carolina border where many people still smoke regularly.