By Anna Boratyn
Features Editor
The Abominable Snowman
The Story: A man wearing an inflatable Frosty the snowman decoration wandered about Vanceboro, North Carolina with a four foot long candy cane.
He was reported to the local police by four locals who felt that he was a threat.
Among complaints from the locals were that he frightened a little girl.  Furthermore, a cashier at a local tobacco shop felt threatened when the Frosty impersonator tapped on the window to get her attention.
The man behind the mask has been reported to be Jeffery Acker.
“Christmas is everything to me.  I love it,” Acker said.  “It was never an intention to be scary.”
My Take: If someone told me that they had been frightened by a well-meaning man wearing a Frosty outfit, I would think them a ninny.
Yet pictured on a lonely road in North Carolina, Acker is a sight to behold.  Poor Frosty’s face looks like a misshaped lump of clay; Acker wears a khaki green industrial
jumpsuit, and waves his hand guilelessly.
It’s the type of image that sends civilians scrambling for the opposite side of the road.  There, they hunch their shoulders around their ears and don’t make eye contact with the lunatic.
Oh, Acker.  What are you doing?
I can just see you sitting by your Christmas tree, downing one too many Eggnogs, and deciding to make everyone’s holiday a little brighter.
Acker, keep the costume ideas for Halloween.
Or rather, don’t.
Taking the Cake
The Story: After logging long hours for seven days straight, chefs in Shanghai have set the record for largest Christmas log, a piece of chocolate cake traditionally shaped like a log, at 3,503.94 feet, according to Cheng Dong, official adjudicator at Guinness World Records.
The eighty chefs from the Pudong Shangri-La Hotel beat out the old record of 681 feet and 9.12 inches set in Paris a year ago, and beat their own goal of 2,913 feet.
My Take: Many might complain bitterly at the gross overuse of energy, time, labor and resources present in this lengthy pastry.
To this valid and just assessment, I reply with the equally valid and just assessment that it’s cake we’re talking about.
In AP’s video of the measuring of the cake, Cheng Dong, measurer extraordinaire, measures the log, hand shaking from the colossal potential energy of the inert sugar rush contained within.
Nearby, dazed chefs hover.
You better not screw this up, Cheng Dong they think.
But Cheng Dong doesn’t let them down.  The Shanghai group steamrolled the French.  So why did they go the extra 2,822.7 feet after beating the French by a foot?  Probably just to make them feel sad.
This is cake we’re talking about here.