EUGENE, SIR: I was at a business dinner that went late and involved more alcohol than should have been consumed by me. During the loose talk that followed, some version of Truth or Dare caused me to let people know that I had once been to a prostitute. It was actually pretty cool, and I said so. The argument that followed involved talk about exploitation, because clearly I’m not bad looking and I didn’t need to do this to find a sex partner, they said.

In the sixth inning against the Sioux Falls Canaries, the 23-year-old lefty pitcher for the St. Paul Saints, an independent minor league baseball team, headed for the mound ... and into history.Facing off against three batters on May 31, 1997, this pitcher wasn't making the most exciting debut. Except for one small detail: Ila Borders was the first female pitcher to grace the diamond in integrated men's professional baseball.

Nimric. Star. Dandy. Hercules. Atlas. Mogul. Beatty Pumper. These are just some of the names of the 31 well-oiled wind pumps that scatter the grounds of the Fred Turner Museum in tiny Loeriesfontein, South Africa. Trying to think of the second-coolest thing to do in this dusty, windswept dorp (Afrikaans for "town") may take a while. But there's no doubt that the wind pump display is Loeriesfontein's No. 1 attraction. Before you ask, let's clear one thing up.

In 1957, while a prisoner at the Atlanta penitentiary, I was recruited by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University to join a medical project that was researching a cure for schizophrenia. For our participation we would receive three days of good time for each month on the project. Each week we would be locked in a secure room in the basement of the prison hospital, in an area where mental patients were housed. We went in from 9 a.m. Tuesday to 9 a.m. Wednesday. We were injected with massive doses of LSD-25.

The first time I visited the Trabocchi Coast in Italy, on a rainy December day, I had the best fish meal ever. And it was served up in a slice of Italian history, in a wooden hut suspended above the sea called a trabucco. However, the rickety structure, while rustic and quaint, was missing one creature comfort normally found in a dining establishment: a bathroom.The trabucchi, which sit a few meters from the shore, are not part of your average restaurant.

Eric Czuleger is the author of Immortal L.A. and Eternal L.A. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer, current Oxford student and the creator of the weird fiction podcast Howl.A hippie is doing tricks on his BMX bike outside my window. That's Ky, and from what I can tell, after three years of knowing him, his BMX bike is his only sole source of income and he may not own a shirt. I also know that he works harder doing tricks on his bike than most people do toiling away in offices.

You may not recognize her face, but you know her sweet, robotic voice. She's inside your phone and knows your calendar by heart. She boasts her encyclopedic knowledge all the time, but you don't mind. She is Siri - aka Susan Bennett, the voice actress behind Apple's witty digital assistant. Bennett has also loaned her voice to other familiar brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Cartoon Network, Waze and Delta Airlines.

I played a lot of games growing up in Harlem. You can be a somebody or a nobody. But basketball was a part of life for me. I came into it because my uncle was playing it, my father was playing it. Everything was always basketball. My game reflected what I was doing on the streets. That’s how I played. If I was a badass gangster dude running around with guns, then that’s how I played on the court. Not that I played dirty or shot elbows. Not that. But if someone did it to me, it was on.

The moment had come. I decided to tell her. We sat in the sun dipping our feet in the dark blue pool water. I had taken her to the community center that sunny afternoon, after the court order was issued, trying to find the words to deliver the news.We had the place to ourselves. It was a hot, August day and she jumped, splashed and played, like any other carefree 9-year-old enjoying summer. I sat near the lifeguard's chair and prepared to tell her that she was never going home again.

Success stories are always so goddamned wearisome. Mostly because the "Wow, look what happened to me!" moment - when the subject at hand finally hits - is one you can never fully believe. That it happened, yes, of course, is easy to believe. Just not that it wasn't exactly what they had been thinking about since, well, they were old enough to be thinking about anything, really. That's much harder to buy.But Joe Sib? A total buy.