You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream for ... Human Flesh

This finger-lickin'-finger-good hoopla is really getting out of hand. Fresh on the heels, or palms, of that whole Wendy's hoax with the finger in the chili comes this Associated Press story on a confirmed case of a severed fingertip in a pint of frozen custard from a Wilmington, North Carolina, shop.

This time, the guy receiving the forlorn finger was Clarence Stowers, who had the misfortune of purchasing his frozen chocolate custard shortly after a Kohl's Frozen Custard employee accidentally chopped off his index finger at the first knuckle and left it in a bucket of custard while he presumably went off to ... scream like a motherfucker.

Not being the suddenly nine-fingered employee or Clarence Stowers, here's the part of the story I find most unsettling:

"For Kohl's, Sunday's fingertip amputation was the second time in less than a year that a worker lost a finger on the same frozen custard machine. The worker, Bill Franklin, was found by investigators to have been negligent in the July 2004 incident, and the state Labor Department cleared the company of wrongdoing.

"Franklin, however, contends he was only in his third day on the job and had been given no safety training when he was left alone to work on the machine. He is suing Kohl's, which he said fired him a short time after the incident, and has made several complaints to the Labor Department about his injury."

Two severed fingers from the same custard mixing machine within a year. Fancy that. Kinda gives one great confidence in the inspection skills of the North Carolina Labor Department, doesn't it?