The winning platform

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the residents of this town aren't exactly very conservative:

Council meetings in Reus could take a turn for the bizarre after the northern Spanish town voted in a councillor who promised to turn up dressed as Elvis Presley and wants to turn the square into a nudist pool.

Ariel Santamaria, a former postman, stood for a small independent party dressed in full Elvis regalia complete with sideburns and won enough votes last weekend to take a council seat.

[...]

His platform included plans to paint the town hall pink, plant marijuana in the parks and give the town police global positioning systems to find people who might need a light while rolling a joint.

Something tells me that his constituents aren't currently having trouble sparking up their joints. Just a hunch.

Something in the air

Ah, Rome. The art. The history. The beauty. And, apparently, the interesting substances in the air:

Researchers may have figured out what makes la vita so dolce in Rome. A report from Italy's National Research Council released Thursday found that there are traces of cocaine and cannabis in the air of the Eternal City.

The institute made the discovery during a study of toxic substances in the air of Rome, Taranto, in the heel of boot-shaped Italy, as well as in Algiers. The results found that in Rome, there were traces of cocaine and cannabis _ as well as nicotine, caffeine and benzopirene, which is commonly released in cigarette smoke and auto emissions.

"The highest concentrations of cocaine were found in the center of Rome and especially in the area of the University of La Sapienza," said Dr. Angelo Cecinato, who led the investigation.

Researchers can't say for sure why the high concentrations were registered in those locations, but Cecinato stressed that the findings didn't necessarily mean that cocaine and cannabis are more heavily used there.

Riiiiight. Because it's not like a bunch of eurotrash college students would be using drugs. Nope.

Cha-ching!

When something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Like when you get a $2.5 million check pretty much out of the blue:

An errant computer keystroke led the state to accidentally issue a $2.5 million check to a school counselor _ who spent thousands on cars, jewelry and electronics, prosecutors said.

Sabrina Walker, 37, was charged Tuesday with theft by swindle and concealing the proceeds of a crime. She remained in jail Wednesday in lieu of $200,000 bail.

The state's accounting system was handling money for the Department of Human Services that was intended for the Hennepin County Medical Center when the check was issued to Walker by mistake in March.

Walker was in the state's system because she was once paid $84 as a court witness. Investigators found that Walker's vendor number in the state system was only one number off the hospital's nine-digit number.

Sounds like time for a shopping spree!

Walker, along with a man she lived with, allegedly bought a $500,000 certificate of deposit, funded two retirement accounts, bought a $500,000 Treasury bond, spent $5,500 on jewelry, $3,817 at Best Buy and $2,069 on limousine services, according to the criminal complaint.

I'm sort of surprised that they spent some of the money responsibly. But then, she made a real dumbass move:

Walker also allegedly bought two cars, called the state to report the check, then bought two more cars, prosecutors said.

Why would you report the check and then buy two more cars?

Anyway, I love what her lawyer had to say about the whole mess:

Her criminal attorney, Mark Larsen, said there was more to the story than just the criminal complaint submitted by prosecutors. The complaint "fails to recite all the pertinent facts," he said.

"This is a far cry from an individual who is turning her back on what has happened here," he said.

Well, it's not like she really has a choice, now that she's been caught, does she?

Uh, no

And people say that in this day and age, romance is dead:

A thief found out the hard way that robbing a woman isn't the best way to capture her heart. Two men robbed a U-Haul store around 3 p.m. Sunday, taking an unspecified amount of cash, according the store's owner. But instead of fleeing, one man lingered and tried to strike up a conversation with the woman he had just robbed.

"He stuck around and was trying to get the female employee's number," U-Haul general manager Patrick Sobocinski said. "She said he was just saying, 'Hey baby, you're pretty fine.'"

Well, maybe romance is dead after all. She turned the guy down, if you can believe that.

Saying what we were all thinking

Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys doesn't really like the Live Earth concerts, nor the concept of know-it-all celebrities:

He said: "The Princess Diana concert is fair enough, but I feel more uneasy about the Al Gore thing.

"I've always been against the idea of rock stars lecturing people as if they know something the rest of us don't - it looks arrogant.

"It's not as if they have a private source of information. To state the obvious as if you are the only person that knows it is intellectually weak."

He doesn't seem to be a big fan of Bono, either. Well, Bono the Activist, anyway. He doesn't mention Bono's singing, so he may be a fan of that.

Memorial Day

Today, before you fire up the grill, crack open a cold one, or head out to a sale at the mall, take a minute to reflect on the brave people who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our country.

I scream, you scream...

...we all scream for marijuana:

Police say the jingle of this ice cream truck meant pot-sickles. Police say elementary school students tipped them off to an ice cream truck driver who was apparently selling $5 and $10 bags of marijuana from the truck. Most customers were in the third, fourth, and fifth grades.

"It's a scary thought, but that's the info we received," Mission [Texas] police Chief Leo Longoria said.

Raymundo Flores, a 40-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, was arrested Thursday on charges of possession of marijuana. He was transported to Hidalgo County jail after a judge set bond at $30,000. His case will likely be turned over to federal immigration officials, Assistant Police Chief Robert Dominguez said.

Yeah, and I bet they'll get right on deporting his ass back to Mexico. Riiiiight.

A picture says a thousand words

Well, actually, in this case, it only says four. But really, those four (especially the second) suffice.

(Via Fark.)

I guess they're not fans

Huh. So I saw a headline for an AP story about a high school kid who ejaculated into a bottle of ranch dressing and went to look for it on Google News. When you click on the link for the story in the LA Times, something, well, unusual comes up.

Very shocking

As a regular watcher of this show, I've seen a hell of a lot of people shocked by police using stun guns. This instance seems rather puzzling, though:

It was just a little stun gun fun, but a police officer who demonstrated his Taser by zapping a willing subject in the genitals [my emphasis] has drawn a warning from his bosses.

Like I said, I've seen lots of video of people getting zapped, and I can't imagine volunteering to be on the business end, much less asking someone to taze my junk.

Officer Randy Reynolds ran into trouble when video of the incident last spring was posted on YouTube.com. The unidentified man wasn't injured, and onlookers can be heard laughing in the background.

Interim Police Chief Larry Dickerson said Tuesday that Reynolds had been attending a social gathering, but was in uniform and on his way to work at the time. The man repeatedly asked Reynolds to use the weapon on him, and Reynolds eventually obliged _ twice.

"He said he just wanted to know what it felt like. Randy didn't want to do it at first, but the guy kept asking," said Dickerson, who interviewed the man.

Again, I can't for the life of me figure out why a uy would repeatedly ask a police officer to taze his naughty bits. I mean, it sounds like he really, really wanted Reynolds to do so. Who knows, maybe he was one of these fellas.

Couldn't you just wait for some grandchildren?

Well, on the plus side, I guess she's already experienced with raising children. Plus, if those grandkids show up anytime soon, they'll have a couple of uncles they can fingerpaint with:

A 60-year-old woman became a mother, twice over, when she delivered a pair of boys Tuesday.

Frieda Birnbaum gave birth to "Baby A" at 12:44 p.m. and "Baby B" a minute later by Caesarean section at Hackensack University Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Nancy Radwin said. The twins each weighed 4 pounds, 11 ounces, she said.

"The mom is in recovery, and she and the babies are doing really well," Radwin said, declining a request to speak with the mother.

Hospital officials believe Birnbaum may be the oldest woman to give birth to twins in the United States, Radwin said.

God, I would hope so.

Birnbaum, a psychologist from Saddle River, underwent in-vitro fertilization last year in Cape Town, South Africa, at a center that specializes in older women. She and her husband, Ken, a New York attorney, have been married for 38 years and have three other children sons ages 6 and 33 and a daughter, 29.

Okay, so she's got a daughter of childbearing age, so maybe the daughter's got got a fertility issue and did this to become a surrogate mother, right?

Nope.

Birnbaum told Fox News she wanted her younger son to have siblings closer to his age and wanted to remove some of the stigma attached to older women giving birth.

Well, that's nice, I guess, but it'll kind of suck for them when their mom can't make it to their high school graduations because she's, you know, dead.

On the other hand, if she resents having to change the little tykes' diapers, she can rest assured that payback is just a ways down the road, if you know what I mean.

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm..."

Call it a hunch, but I get the feeling that Ace just doesn't feel that the news media are being straight with us about the results of a certain survey.

Like I said, just a hunch.

Returning to the scene of the crime

Apparently, it's not just a cliche. Well, not for these stupid teenagers, anyway:

Two teens are in hot water after police said they decided to return to a pool at the same hotel where they had robbed three people about 15 hours before.

The two women and a man were held up at gunpoint around 2 a.m. Saturday on the beach by Shorewood Villas on Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County Sheriff's Capt. Toby McSwain said.

The robbers took cell phones, purses, wallets and cash before one of them pistol whipped the man, McSwain said.

The victims then saw the same two men again at their hotel Saturday afternoon and called police. "They were basically just hanging out at the pool," McSwain said.

The gun deputies think was used in the robberies was found in a restroom trash can near the pool and other items taken were found on the beach, authorities said.

Brandon J. Brooks, 18, and Dillion Clark, 16, were charged with armed robbery. Brooks also was charged with carrying a firearm during a violent crime and misdemeanor marijuana possession.

Going back to the same place where you robbed a bunch of people less than a day later is dumb enough, but taking a bunch of evidence and some weed with you is just begging for trouble.

Morons.

The "24" season finale

No spoilers here, in case you Tivoed it.

Meh. This season was really pretty weak, overall, after starting off looking pretty promising. The main storyline ended too soon and this second story arc with the Chinese just seemed tacked-on. I mean, it's hard to get excited about a circuit board.

And the end...well, I said no spoilers, so I'll just say "meh" again and leave it at that.

If she doesn't already know about it...

...nobody tell maggie about this. I'm afraid she might asplode from all the cuteness, and I fear her hubby might frown on that.

Update: I'm stupid. She has a link to Cute Overload on her blogroll, which I would have noticed, if not for the aforementioned stupidity.

Your favorite B-side

What's yours? I'm listening to mine right now. New Order's "Touched by the Hand of God" from the "Blue Monday 1988" twelve-inch single.

By the way, if I ever make a bunch of money, I'll buy a mint condition copy of the original "Blue Monday," which is the best-selling twelve-inch of all time.

Yet another criminal mastermind

God, I bet the cops just love it when dumbass criminals like this genius make their jobs so f'n easy:

Police say a man suspected of burglarizing several vehicles left a key piece of evidence at the scene of the alleged crimes _ his wallet, with identification and his parole card.

Christopher D. Hasty, 22, was arrested after he was pointed out by apartment complex residents who said they saw him flee a car in the parking lot. Several cars had been burglarized in the lot where officers found the wallet.

Residents said they saw the suspect's baggy pants fall down as he was running away.

Officers found him inside a nearby apartment. A trail of footprints led from the door to woods where some of the items stolen from the cars were stashed.

Footprints? You've got to be kidding me. That's like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Weird Tales of the Sitemeter IV

My blog turned up when somebody did a Google search for "mr. peepers sex moves." Not sure I want to know what that's all about.

Huh

I'm not a Catholic, but I understand that the church kinda frowns on the whole abortion thing. But some liberal Catholics are apparently conflicted about that:

A group of 18 Catholic House Democrats publicly disputed Pope Benedict XVI's recent condemnation of politicians who support abortion rights, saying that "such notions offend the very nature of the American experiment."

On his flight to Brazil last Wednesday (May 9), Benedict said Catholic politicians in Mexico City who recently voted to legalize abortion could consider themselves excommunicated from the church [my emphasis]. The Vatican later said the pope was merely restating church policy, which calls for Catholics who participate in abortions to exclude themselves from taking Holy Communion.

On Monday (May 14), Catholic House Democrats said Benedict's comments "do a great disservice to the centuries of good work the church has done."

"The fact is that religious sanction in the political arena directly conflicts with our fundamental beliefs about the role and responsibility of democratic representatives in a pluralistic America — it also clashes with freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution," a statement from the 18 lawmakers said.

Now, I'm less interested in the doctrinal or constitutional aspects of this story than I am by the fact that, apparently, we seem to have annexed Mexico at some point. When did that happen, and how did I miss it?

(Via Dan Collins, writing at pw.)

Dirty cleaning

Why do I think that in this case, "powerless to" actually means "uninterested in"?

A nude car wash offering an X-rated sideshow and topless cleaning in Australia's tropical Queensland state has been given the all-clear after police and officials said they were powerless to scrub it.

The Bubbles 'n' Babes car wash in Brisbane prompted a flood of complaints with a topless car wash for A$55 ($45) and a nude car wash with X-rated lap-dance service for A$100. "If it was approved for a car wash then I can't imagine how we can stop them," Lord Mayor Campbell Newman told a council meeting with worried local lawmakers.

What's to worry about? Sounds like a perfectly legitimate enterprise where nothing shady or nasty could possibly happen.

Yeah.

Mother of the Year

It's nice when families care about each other and can do things together. Well, normally it is:

A 36-year-old German mother-of-five drove her son to a jewelry store he wanted to rob because she was afraid he may come to some harm, Bild newspaper reported Wednesday.

While her 17-year-old son and his two accomplices stabbed and robbed a jeweler in the eastern city of Dresden, the mother waited outside in the car.

"I knew he wanted to rob the shop and I was very worried about him," top-selling Bild quoted the mother as saying.

Awww, isn't that sweet incredibly stupid? I mean, if you know your son is planning to rob somebody and you're worried about it, the normal, sensible thing to do would be to, you know, try to talk him out of it.

By the way, dumbass mom got three years and ten months for caring too much, damnit.

That could put a damper on the resale value

When you've just bought a home, you usually don't want to find any surprises. Especially not one like this:

A man making his first visit to a home he bought in a foreclosure auction found the former owner's mummified body sitting on the living room couch, police said Tuesday.

Coroners estimate the woman's remains had been there since 2001, when she stopped making payments on the residence in the coastal town of Roses in Spain's northeast Catalonia region.

The body mummified instead of rotting partly because of the salty seaside air in Roses, a Catalan regional police official said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

The woman, in her mid-50s, was estranged from her children in Madrid, and no one had reported her missing. She was not identified by officials.

Police said her death also went undetected because her ground-level apartment is in an area of vacation homes with a high turnover of travelers.

The article goes on to say that the bank never bothered to inspect the property after they foreclosed on it. Hell, she could've just stopped paying and kept on living there, I guess, had she survived.

Darwin Awards semifinalist

I say semifinalist because the idiot didn't actually, you know, die:

A teenager who put bullets in a vise and whacked them with a hammer to empty the brass shell casings was wounded in the abdomen by approximately the 100th bullet he hit, according to Warren County deputies.

Damion M. Mosher, 18, had been discharging .223-caliber rounds, placing them in a steel vise, putting a screwdriver on the primer, and striking the screwdriver with the hammer, deputies said.

Deputies were called to his home in Lake Luzerne shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday when one bullet went about a half-inch into his abdomen. He was treated at Glens Falls Hospital and was released. No charges were filed.

And why was this genius doing this? Because he planned on selling the shell casings for scrap metal. For a whopping buck seventy per pound.

Wow. Hope it was worth it, dumbass.

Happy Mother's Day

It is indeed a happy Mother's Day for my family, since my mom has been home for a couple of weeks after having both of her hips replaced. And she's doing great, too!

Anyway, I'd like to wish everybody else a happy Mother's Day, too. Give your mom a hug if she's handy, or call her and tell her you love her if she's somewhere else.

Late night musings about dirty f'n hippies

When I was a stupid kid, I thought it would have been cool to have grown up in the sixties. I blame this mostly on Fred Savage, The Beatles, and the fact that I spent my adolecence in the cultural void that was the late eighties and early nineties. I have since re-evaluated my regard for this shrill and pointless decade.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, because I just saw the last few minutes of this on one of the local PBS stations. And I saw a bunch of slavering hippie idiots cheering while Mick Jagger shakes his bony ass and removes his shirt to reveal a bunch of fake devil tatoos. And then, at the end, they're all sitting together—the Stones and their fans—all of them wearing big, stupid floppy felt hats. Stupid hippie hats.

I can't believe I ever admired the culture that these people created. Which, I might add, led to the ugliest decade the world has ever seen—the seventies. And it's really, really scary to think that this unserious generation of idiots is basically in charge of the world these days.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed so I can wake up in time to go to brunch with my mom who—ugh—used to enjoy folk music in her misguided youth. Thankfully, she's seen the light since then and is currently one of the most heartless conservatives I've ever had the pleasure to have known.

Ewwwwwwww

I don't see how it could be very likely, but God, I hope nothing like this ever happens to me:

This nasty rescue is no fish tale.

Rescuers cut through a filtration tank of dense fish feces to reach four workers who fell into the sludgy dung Friday while cleaning the 18-foot tank at a western Massachusetts farm.

The workers became trapped for 45 minutes after a bracket holding a plastic filtration pad collapsed as workers stood on it to clean the fiberglass tank at the Australis Aquaculture fish farm, said Turners Falls Fire Capt. David Dion and the fish farm's manager, Josh Goldman.

One of the farmhands was submerged in what Dion described as a sand-and-feces mix, while the other three had their heads above the sludge, he said.

[...]

"It was very slimy and it was heavy," he said. "Never seen anything like it in my life."

I don't think I could ever take enough showers to feel clean again after something like that.

Not a people person

Sometimes we take our friends and family for granted. One good reason not to do so? Well, so that you don't end up like this guy:

The decomposed corpse of a German man was found alone in his bed after nearly seven years, police in the western city of Essen said Thursday.

The police said in a statement the man was 59 and unemployed at the time of his death. He most likely died of natural causes on November 30, 2000, the date he received a letter from the Welfare Office found in the apartment, police said.

[...]

"No one missed him. No missing person report was ever filed," the police said.

The weird thing about cases like this is that the dead person's landlord never seems to notice, either. And since the guy seemed to have been unemployed and on welfare, it doesn't seem likely that he had any great sum of money in the bank that could have been used for direct deposits.

Anyway, imagine what a lonely, solitary life this poor bastard must've led. For seven years, he was lying dead in his bed, and not a single soul ever missed him. Pretty depressing.

Yikes!

Every once in a while, I come across a story that makes me glad to live in a safe, normal Western society. This would be one of those stories:

Riot police have been sent to a remote mountainous village in Papua New Guinea after a gun battle between police and members of a cult involved in human sacrifices, local media reported Wednesday.

The National newspaper said several people were killed and many injured in the fighting last week in the Finschhafen area of Morobe province, 350 km (220 miles) north of the capital, Port Moresby.

[...]

Police who flew to the area Sunday said they believed they were dealing with a cult movement involved in murders and human sacrifices to their gods, the newspaper said.

Morobe's chief police inspector, Augustine Wampe, said suspicions of cult activity started in April when a child was kidnapped and police were attacked trying to rescue the child.

"It takes a whole day to walk from (the town of) Sialum to the village in the mountains, where the child was held. The four (police) were ambushed and attacked by the villagers," he said.

"Gunfire was exchanged and one of the policemen was injured in the leg with an arrow. Another policeman fell over a cliff."

Police reinforcements were attacked and forced to retreat. The villagers then went on a rampage killing one man and chopping up his body and burning houses, Wampe said.

Damn, that's some crazy, Indiana Jones-style shit! You might get mugged or beat up or run over by a drunk driver here in California, but chances are pretty good that you're not going to be killed by a rampaging murder cult.

Not this week, anyway.

Great idea!

Hmmmm...it's hard to believe the geniuses behind this idea didn't forsee any problems with it. Oh, wait, maybe they were drunk:

On second thought, maybe it was not a good idea to give an award for drinking to local government officials.

The South Korean county of Koesan has decided it will discontinue giving out its "Drinking Culture Prize" after being flooded with complaints that the award promotes drunkenness among municipal employees and encouraged binge drinking.

No, really? You don't say.

A county official said Wednesday the public misunderstood the intention of the award, which was meant to recognize government workers who go out to local restaurants and bars to meet citizens and hear what they have to say.

"I guess it was our mistake that the purpose was misinterpreted," said the official, who asked not to be named.

Well, then maybe, just maybe, you should have called it something other than the "Drinking Culture Prize." How about something like...the "Responsive to Citizens During Off Hours Prize," or something like that?

The prize, which included round-trip tickets to the resort island of Cheju, was given out for the first time earlier this month to three municipal workers.

Local media reported one winner had his driver's license revoked in 2005 for drunk driving.

Well, I guess he was really, really dedicated to local citizens. If he was guilty of anything, it was caring too damn much.

And drunk driving. Yeah.

Thanks a lot, dicks

Dang, you try to do something nice, and look where it gets you:

A service station that offered discounted gas to senior citizens and people supporting youth sports has been ordered by the state to raise its prices. Center City BP owner Raj Bhandari has been offering senior citizens a 2 cent per gallon price break and discount cards that let sports boosters pay 3 cents less per gallon.

But the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection says those deals are too good: They violate Wisconsin's Unfair Sales Act, which requires stations to sell gas for about 9.2 percent more than the wholesale price.

Bhandari said he received a letter from the state auditor in late April saying the state would sue him if he did not raise his prices. The state could penalize him for each discounted gallon he sold, with the fine determined by a judge.

So this guy does something to help people on fixed incomes and kids who want to play sports (and mind you, the state thinks obesity is a big problem), and the state steps in and tells him that he can't sell his product for a price that he feels is appropriate? Now, I'm no Libertarian wacko—I understand that there are some functions of government that are really necessary—but this really seems stupid. Pointless, even.

But I can't say I'm surprised.

Aw, man!

Rarely have I been let down so badly as I was after reading the headline to this article. Sheesh, that sounded a lot more interesting than it actually was.

Barf bags

If you're going to smuggle a bunch of illicit drugs by swallowing them, I'm pretty sure it would help to have a strong stomach:

A passenger on an Australian-bound plane vomited a nylon bag of white powder suspected to be heroin, causing the plane to return to Vietnam in the latest drug mule case between that country and Australia, officials said.

The Vietnam Airlines plane had been flying for an hour after leaving Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday when an Australian man of Vietnamese descent took ill, airline officials told the state-run Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

The aircraft turned around and made an emergency landing at Tan Son Nhat Airport, where the man coughed up two more bags of white powder. He was detained by police and taken to hospital.

Another newspaper, Lao Dong (Labor), reported doctors found 30 red nylon bags in the man's stomach. It identified him as 35-year-old Nguyen Kant.

That's why I could never be a mule—I have a hair-trigger gag reflex. That, and I'm not really big on smuggling illegal drugs.

The year of living joylessly

Are you an urban yuppie enviro-scold who prays to St. Algore of the Inconvenient Truth? Are you doing all you can to help save Mother Earth? You are? You really think so?

WRONG!!!

Bear witness to the yuppies who are even better than you, as profiled in (of course) the New York Times. They even gave up on toilet paper! I'm guessing their friends are reluctant about shaking hands.

But the juciest part is the hypocrisy, as usual:

Ms. Conlin, acknowledging that she sees her husband as No Impact Man and herself as simply inside his experiment, said she saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in an air-conditioned movie theater last summer. “It was like, ‘J’accuse!’ ” she said. “I just felt like everything I did in my life was contributing to a system that was really problematic.” Borrowing a phrase from her husband, she continued, “If I was a student, I would march against myself.”

While Ms. Conlin is clearly more than just a good sport — giving up toilet paper seems a fairly profound gesture of commitment — she did describe, in loving detail, a serious shopping binge that predated No Impact and made the whole thing doable, she said. “It was my last hurrah,” she explained.

It included two pairs of calf-high Chloe boots (one of which was paid for, she said, with her mother’s bingo winnings) and added up to two weeks’ salary, after taxes and her 401(k) contribution.

If she was a student, she would march against herself, but she just had to have those boots. Two pairs, even.

And while I mentioned that these douches gave up on toilet paper—and apparently all other paper products—the husband is blogging about their experience. He pays extra for "green" energy, but I'm sure the family has some sort of carbon footprint.

Did I mention that he did this as part of a book deal? No? Well, imagine the trees that will be cut down in order to produce this eco-warrior's book.

(via See-Dubya, who's filling in at Hot Air for Allahpundit)

Slow news night

Wow. The local Fox station is doing an "investigative" report on (drumroll please)...emo kids.

Like I said, wow.

Bad luck

Dang. Sucks to be this guy:

York Heiden is one unlucky crime victim _ his car was stolen twice in one day. Even he can't believe it. "Everyone says, 'You shouldn't have left it,'" Heiden said, laughing. "But I know, I know ... So many what-ifs: I shouldn't have done this, I should have taken the tire off."

According to Heiden, here's what happened:

His pearl-colored 1990 Audi Quattro was stolen from a grocery store parking lot April 27 while his wife was running errands. The keys were left in it.

Okay, now that's just plain stupid. You may as well put a sign on your car saying, "Please, steal me."

Heiden, who owns River West Motorwerks, an automotive repair shop, quickly called some friends and the car was found about a block from the grocery store. The keys were gone.

After removing a bag of pet food, some pieces of mail and other personal items from the car, Heiden told a friend to disable the car's ignition. The mechanic removed a coil wire, evidently forgetting the car had a two-coil system.

Police were told the stolen car had been found and Heiden, 36, left to pick up a spare key.

With only four of the car's eight cylinders disabled, the car still was mobile enough to be stolen a second time, apparently by the same thief, Heiden said.

The good news is that they found his car earlier this week. The bad news...well, I guess he won't be winning the lottery anytime in the near future.

Rope and duct tape are more traditional

Getting robbed in your own home is bad enough, but this is ridiculous, not to mention really, really mean:

A gang stripped a South African man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

"The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut," SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.

The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.

The article doesn't mention how they eventually got the guy off of the exercise bike, but I'd imagine it was most unpleasant.

A bit of a pest problem

I would imagine that this is probably a big problem for Batman, too:

An upstate New York couple didn't think a few bats in the attic were much of a problem when they were buying a house last summer.

Months later, they found out how wrong they were when they discovered more than a ton and a half of bat droppings up there.

Nick LaBoda and Jenna Caputo say a home inspector informed them about the bats. They called an exterminator, who told them to wait a while before removing the bats because the babies were too young to fly.

Then they forgot about the bats until they smelled a foul odor in January. When they checked the attic, they found dead bats and piles of guano.

The article goes on to say that the couple is fighting with their insurance company over the $25,000 it cost to clean out the attic. I think they might also have a case against the home inspector and the exterminator, as well.

"You heard that new Kenny Winker record?"

NSFW because of some very salty language, but it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.*



*No, not really.

Handy, indeed

How come this never happens to me while I'm watching the teevee?

Children here [in Middletown, NJ] got more than they bargained for when they tuned in to "Handy Manny" on the Disney Channel this week _ hard-core pornography.

Cable giant Comcast is investigating how the porn was broadcast during the popular cartoon, which is about a bilingual handyman, Manny Garcia, and his talking tools.

Customer Paul Dunleavy was stunned Tuesday morning to find his 5-year-old son watching the broadcast.

"It was two people doing their thing; it was full-on and it was disgusting," the father of three told The New York Daily News.

What kind of attitude is that? I mean, when two people make love screw each other's brains out, it's a beautiful, natural thing. Well, except for the woman. Parts of her probably weren't natural, if you know what I mean.