Voting is inherently American. We’ve literally been doing it longer than we’ve been a country. Sure, not all of us have always been able to do it, but we slowly came around to dropping those barriers. But that doesn’t mean that you have all day to vote, especially not in Alabama. According to official voting [...]

There are few things in life that are truly free, but the weather normally is counted in that group. In the winter, that means shoveling the snow, in the summer that means free car washes when it rains. And if you’re enterprising enough, old Ma Nature can provide a fair bit of water for your [...]

In the Alabama Criminal Code, there is one section that is sure to raise a couple of questions. Questions like, “Can a law be that specific?” and “Huh, are dominoes dangerous when mixed with billards outside of carefully controlled environments?” I speak, of course, of section 34-6-12 which goes as follows: “In counties having populations [...]

In Missouri, the law is quite clear – you can have yellow butter or white margarine, but yellow margarine is just not welcome. Today the idea seems quite insane, but when the law was originally created, around 1895, it was actually pretty common. Missouri law makers were trying to protect the products of state dairy [...]

One time my husband told me that our friend Jefferson was going to bring over some venison that he’d marinated.  They were going to grill it, and it was going to be delicious.  I’d never eaten venison, and I’d been watching a lot of Food Network, so I said, “Why not?” As it turns out, [...]

OK.  I know I’ve said it before.  But I love weird laws.  I love stupid laws even more.  Check this one out – here’s the full text of the law: “45-5-627.  Ritual abuse of minor – exceptions – penalty.  1)  A person commits the offense of ritual abuse of a minor if the person purposely [...]

Is it really illegal to buy or sell blue lightbulbs in Arkansas? After a considerable amount of time on the telephone, I’m afraid the answer I have to give is…I dunno.  It may be true, in some dusty old tome in an Arkansas law firm some where, but if it is nobody is talking.  I [...]

As you’ve probably already guessed, I get a lot of these laws from websites dedicated to listing crazy and weird laws from different states and countries.  And, as you can probably imagine, there is no “truth checker” that automatically tells me whether or not the law is real.  So, that’s my new mission with this [...]

photo by Jim Sneddon While false teeth are not used as widely today as they once were, there are still plenty of people out there who say, “Forget about it, just pull ‘em out and give me some fake ones.”  Aren’t there?  Sure, lots of people do that!  Otherwise why would there be so many [...]

Well this is the one you’ve all been waiting for. Indecent Exposure! While not so much strange as it is funny that it had to be made into a law, it covers just about everything that deals with sex that you would think of outside of hugging and kissing. No intercourse, no sexual conduct, no [...]