Some things to be (kind of) happy about

My Dad returned from Illinois tonight, and while I haven't discussed Grandpa's passing with him at length, he seems to be at peace with it. He apparently didn't suffer much pain in his last few days, and he was able to go in his own home, instead of in some hospital stuffed full of plastic tubes. Also, his mind hadn't deteriorated, which is something that can be terrible, from what I understand after hearing other people's stories about the end of their elderly family members' lives.

We're all still going to miss him terribly, but it could have been much, much worse.

Rest In Peace

I got some sad news tonight. My Grandpa, who had been in poor health for a while now, passed away. He was 99. Thankfully, he wasn't in pain and he was in his own home, which he had owned for around fifty years. And my Dad was with him.

He saw a range of things that are unbelievable over the course of his lifetime. When he was born, Russia had a Tsar and Germany had a Kaiser. After two World Wars, he saw the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. He and his sister rode a horse to school, and eventually he saw Man walk on the moon.

He also built up a successful business that is still running, married the love of his life, and had two sons. He was a pillar of his community. He was a good man. And he had a good run.

Rest In Peace, Grandpa. I love you.

Since it's Friday night...

...and Friday is fun time, here's a picture of actress Malin Akerman:

Thank God she was blessed with those looks, because her parents didn't really do her any favors with that name.

Are you a drunk jagoff? There's an app for that!

I don't do the whole text messaging thing or use the "apps" that the kids are into these days, but if I did, this might come in useful:

A Florida woman said the iPhone app she created uses games to prevent people from sending drunk text messages they would later regret.

Samantha Deeter of Destin said she contacted an app development company with her idea and they made her a partner in the creation of the Textalyzer app, the Northwest Florida Daily News of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., reported Wednesday.

"This is to prevent people from doing the ultimate no-no," Destin said. "I was briefly single and would run around from time to time bar hopping after work and would always tell people, 'I wish there was a Breathalyzer for phones.' That's when I got the idea."

Now, I'm probably the most hypocritical person who could be giving this advice, but if Samantha has had problems with sending text messages that she regrets after "bar hopping," she might just want to think about cutting down on the booze.

CLOWN FIGHT!!!

I've never been to the circus, but I always pictured it involving more juggling and trapezes and less gunplay:

A shootout between two German circus families competing over tent space has left six people injured, police said on Tuesday.

The disagreement came to a head on Monday evening as the families fired guns, used knives and attacked each other with batons, police in the Bavarian city of Regensburg said.

Thankfully, no unicycle-riding bears were injured during the course of the melee.

The forbidden dance

The internets have been a great resource for finding information about a broad array of topics, including whether or not some people are lying, cheating bastards:

A New York City woman who was getting $850 a month in alimony because she was supposedly disabled and unable to work had her payments slashed after her ex-husband spotted online photos of her belly dancing.

Brian McGurk went to court after discovering a blog that showed his 43-year-old ex-wife dancing at a gallery.

In other Internet postings, she wrote about dancing vigorously for several hours every day.

Dorothy McGurk told the court that the dancing was physical therapy for injuries she suffered in a car accident in the mid-1990s.

The judge didn't go for that, so he cut her payments to $400 per month and slapped her with a couple of other financial penalties. What I don't get is why she's not spending any time in jail for fraud.

Since it's Friday night...

...and nothing here is written in stone, I thought I'd change things up a little with a song one of The Hostagettes (sorry, I forget who) linked a week or two ago:

Side effects may include gas

So, this is what a slapstick remake of Drugstore Cowboy would be like:

Pharmacist Mac Clark at Fred's Drug Store in Pascagoula had been hit by thieves targeting the narcotic pain-killer Lortab three or four times in the last six months, WLOX-TV, Biloxi, Miss., reported Wednesday.

"We know what they're after," Clark said.

Clark said he set the decoy bottle of red beans out as bait.

Around 6 a.m. Wednesday, someone broke into the store, triggering the alarm, and stole something other than what they thought what they thought was a bottle of Lortab, WLOX-TV said.

I'm not sure that setting out junkie/criminal bait is that great of an idea for a business, but I guess he got a laugh out of it, and that's really what counts.

This is comical to those of us who don't have kids

To the rest of you who are responsible parents, I'm guessing not so much:

On Friday, Taylor Dill-Reese went to an Applebee's in Madison Heights, Michigan, where - among other things - she ordered her 15-month-old son Dominick an apple juice.

What the little boy apparently got instead was a margarita. His mom told WDIV-TV that she only realized something was wrong when Dominick "kind of laid his head on the table and dozed off a little bit and woke up and got real happy."

The little boy reportedly began hailing strangers, too.

While it's really awful that they managed somehow to serve a toddler a Margarita instead of a sippy cup of apple juice, I still think it's pretty funny that the result was the same as what happens when every other guy gets too much to drink at a bar.

I just wonder what the toddler equivalent of "'Sup, brah?" is.

Now, he belongs to the ages

Some people achieve "immortality" by reaching their sport's Hall of Fame. Others do so by creating a masterful work of art that will be enjoyed and discussed by subsequent generations. And then, there's this guy...

In life, Pall Arason sought attention. In death, he is getting it: The 95-year-old Icelander's pickled penis will be the main attraction in one of his country's most bizarre museums.

I'll let you go ahead and click on the link if you want to find out how Paul will gain the attention of museum-goers.

Evil genius tripped up by telltale clue

If you watch shows like CSI, sometimes a criminal is tripped up by a fiber that they left behind at a crime scene, but it's much easier for the cops when they leave behind this many fibers:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said two men broke into a home March 29 while a man and a woman were home and stole a wallet and jewelry from the residence, The Charlotte Observer reported Monday.

The man struggled with the robbers as they fled the home and a T-shirt fell from their vehicle before they sped away. The man told investigators the man pictured on the T-shirt was one of the suspects.

It certainly doesn't help if you're leaving a crime scene and you leave it behind, but unless you're in a famous band that's on tour, there's really no good excuse for you to be driving around with T-shirts which bear your likeness.

Since it's Friday night...

...and Fridays were made for gawking at beautiful women, here's British model Kelly Brook:

The look on her face is about 50% "come hither" and 50% "SECURITY!!!"

Right to knife

I could make some kind of joke about one-armed 1950s juvenile delinquents here, but instead, I'll go ahead and wonder how this law got introduced in the first place:

Maine lawmakers on Wednesday approved legalizing switchblades for people with one arm, moving close to becoming the first state to make such an exception to laws that ban use of the spring-action knives.

Backers of the measure say legalizing switchblades would eliminate a need for one-armed people to be forced to open folding knives with their teeth in emergencies.

The bill to allow amputees and other one-armed people to carry the quick-opening knives cleared Maine's Senate on Wednesday after passing the House on Tuesday, Senate officials said.

Don't get me wrong, this actually sounds somewhat sensible, but was there some kind of clamor from the one-armed community to allow them to use switchblades? And are there a lot of people up there who are missing an arm for some reason?

Better late than never

Yeah, actually, that principle doesn't really apply here:

Officers say Jerry Maestas drove to the hospital Tuesday with the 33-year-old woman's decomposing body propped up in the passenger seat.

The 64-year-old Maestas asked hospital staff to come outside and help his sick friend. Police spokesman Jeremy Apodaca says the staff could tell by the smell that the woman had been dead for some time.

Man, I doubt there are enough air fresheners in the world to get that smell out of his car.

Seriously, though, he's being charged with failing to report the woman's death.

Just kidding!

I enjoy a good joke as much as the next guy, provided that the next guy isn't an undercover cop:

Police in Florida said an alleged drug dealer who fled with $525 from undercover agents claimed the incident was an April Fools' Day joke.

The Marion County High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force said undercover agents arranged through a confidential source to purchase 40 oxycodone pills from Sara Medeiros, 30, and they met with her Friday at an undisclosed location, the Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner reported Tuesday.

The task force said Medeiros told the agents she had to take the money to another location to get the drugs from a third-party dealer and she left the scene with $525. Agents said the woman never returned.

Medeiros was later located inside a vehicle in Ocala and she told officials during an interview she had taken the money, which was recovered, as an April Fools' joke.

Yeah. April Fools' jokes are normally wacky things that you play on people you know, don't involve you running off with several hundred dollars, and don't have a chance of backfiring on you in that you could end up either in prison or a shallow grave. Although I may just be a bit too timid with my April Fools' jokes.

Buyer beware

You know, you might want to do some research before making a big, stupid purchase:

A man who bought a used 300-foot Staten Island Ferry to convert it into a waterborne dorm for New York college students is drowning in a bad case of buyer's remorse.

Former marina owner Jacques Guillet bought the orange ferry for $162,000 at a closed-bid auction three years ago.

But he's failed to find an affordable parking spot along the area's waterfront for the 3,500-passenger boat, named the Gov. Herbert H. Lehman. The city wanted to charge him $1,000 a day.

Now, I've never been on the Staten Island Ferry, but I'm almost certain that I wouldn't want to live on it for any extended period of time.

In the meantime, I just came into some money, so I'm thinking of buying a bunch of old subway cars and stacking them up to form a cheap apartment building. What could possibly go wrong?

Since it's Friday night...

...and now is the time on Sprockets when we dance, here's Teutonic treat Heidi Klum:

She married a pockmarked guy who hasn't done anything notable for a decade, so there may be hope for the rest of us!