Lessons not learned

You're going to love this one, especially once you read the final paragraph of the article:

Justin John Boudin, 27, pleaded guilty Friday to fifth-degree assault in Ramsey County District Court and can expect to face a sentence for time served in jail, at least 120 days, and probation when he is sentenced May 5, the county attorney's office said.

According to a criminal complaint, Boudin was waiting at a bus stop on Aug. 29 when he accosted a 59-year-old woman and others.

"Why don't you show me some respect?" he allegedly yelled at the woman.

When she took out a cell phone to call police, he hit her in the face, according to the complaint. When a 63-year-old man tried to stop Boudin, Boudin hit him with a blue folder — which fell on the ground — and fled.

Police tracked him down through the folder, which included Boudin's anger management homework and his name, the complaint said.

That should probably earn him a failing grade in his anger management class. I hope so, anyway.

That must be one awful job

We've all had days when we dreaded getting up to go to work, and maybe came up with an excuse not to come in, but dude, this is pretty drastic:

Sheriff's detectives in Franklin County said a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn't have to go to work.

When he first spoke with deputies, Daniel Kuch, of Pasco, told them he'd been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was out jogging Thursday. But detectives told KONA radio that Kuch later acknowledged that he asked his friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid an upcoming drug test.

The friend, Kurtis Johnson, of Burbank, has been arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment. Kuch was booked into the county jail and is expected to be charged with false reporting.

Well, I guess this means that he'll still be able to avoid work for a while. Every cloud really does have a silver lining!

"An ignoble birth"

I understand that pregnant women can't always make it to the hospital, but daaaaaaaamn:

A newborn baby girl survived an ignoble birth after slipping down the toilet bowl of a moving Indian train onto the tracks when a pregnant woman unexpectedly gave birth while relieving herself on Tuesday.

"My delivery was so sudden," said the Bhuri Kalbi, the mother of the infant, born two months prematurely. "I did not even realize that my child had slipped from the hole in the toilet."

Kalbi, a 33-year-old woman from a village in Rajasthan, fainted on the toilet seat after the birth for a few minutes before waking up and alerting her family.

"They stopped the train and ran on the tracks to find the baby," she said, speaking from her hospital bed in the western city of Ahmedabad.

They found the baby on the tracks, uninjured, and since she was born prematurely, she's resting in intensive care at a hospital. A hospital where, hopefully, they've given her a good bath, since toilets on Indian trains are described in the article as "filthy chutes emptying directly onto the tracks." Lovely.

A creature of habit

I thought the thing about criminals returning to the scene of the crime was just a cliche, but this guy has proved me wrong:

Police said the same man tried to rob the same bank, wearing the same clothes and telling employees the same thing on Tuesday as he did two weeks ago. The outcome was not the same.

Two weeks ago, the robber got away with cash from the Sovereign Bank branch. On his second attempt, tellers refused to give him money and he took off empty-handed.

Police and bank employees said it was the same guy. The robber said he had a gun and demanded money both times.

You know, bank robber guy, there's probably another bank somewhere within a few miles of that one, and they might not recognize you there. And you probably could have bought a change of clothes (or even a fake mustache!) with the money you got the last time. Do something to get out of that rut.

Mother Nature hates me

That seems to be a good explanation for why, on the one day of the year that I have to wear a dark suit and tie and stand around outside quite a bit, it suddenly becomes unseasonably warm.

Asploding toilets!

Is it just me, or did I see this happen in a cartoon some time ago?

An employee of an Auburn nursing home called firefighters for help on Tuesday because the toilets were exploding with steam. The fire department said there was a boiler malfunction at Regency Auburn Rehabilitation Center that caused a minor explosion.

The blast set off the sprinkler system and flooded the floors of the three-story building.

The Valley Regional Fire Authority said no one was hurt, but water damaged electrical systems and the kitchen.

Well, I'm glad nobody got hurt, but I can't help but think it would be funny to see someone sitting on a toilet getting blown up into the air by a steam explosion.

No working girls in the workplace

I don't care where you work—even at a casino—this is a really bad idea.

A judge has denied an Iowa man's claim that he shouldn't have been fired for repeatedly requesting help to procure a prostitute.

Neil Jorgensen, 62, of Kalona, worked at Riverside Casino and Golf Resort in Riverside and was given a gift certificate and free night's stay at the casino hotel to mark a year's employment.

After eating and drinking at a casino restaurant, he returned to his hotel room about midnight and later called hotel managers about hiring a prostitute. When managers refused to help him, he made a call to the adjacent resort and made the same request.

"The advertisement is that it's just like Las Vegas, so I thought I was in Las Vegas," Jorgensen testified at a hearing regarding his request for unemployment benefits.

I take it he doesn't know that prostitution is illegal in Vegas. I guess even the stuff that doesn't happen in Vegas stays there, too.

Hotel workers were sent to Jorgensen's room to ask him to stop demanding prostitutes. When they arrived at his room, Jorgensen answered the door in the nude, human resources director Tim Donovan said.

Jorgensen was fired the next day.

At the hearing, Jorgensen said his actions didn't hurt the casino, and he said he'd received strong performance reviews. He also blamed the restaurant for serving him too much alcohol.

Yeah, see, the problem with that argument is that restaurants don't usually serve you alcoholic beverages unless you order them. And unfortunately for Mr. Jorgensen, the judge seems to have noticed that flaw, too, since he turned down his request for unemployment benefits.

Lawnmower man

There are many ways to die, and while few of them seem pleasant, some are much, much worse than others. Like, for instance, this one:

A Buddhist monk from Japan was killed after slipping and falling under the blades of his runaway tractor lawnmower, an inquest into his death has found.

The Reverend Seiji Handa, 50, was cutting the grass around his peace pagoda in the English city of Milton Keynes when the accident occurred last August.

He got out of the tractor to inspect something but the vehicle, which was pulling a multi-bladed grass cutting machine, slipped its handbrake.

The coroner's office in Milton Keynes, northwest of London, said it had recorded a verdict of accidental death.

I would hope it was an accident. That seems like an awful, awful, horribly painful way to kill yourself.

At least it's a good restaurant

So, a local Italian restaurant which, if my memory serves me, we went to for my birthday last year, sent me a coupon for a free dinner next month. For my birthday. Which is cool, but I don't think I made the reservation, I have no idea how they'd have my address, and I don't know how they know my birthday is next month.

You see, even though we ate there for my birthday dinner, I made sure nobody in my immediate family told them it was a birthday dinner. Because I absolutely hate having a bunch of waiters sing the restaurant's own stupid birthday song ("Happy Birthday" isn't a public domain song. Did you know that? They actually have to pay royalties, apparently.) and present me with some crappy free dessert with a candle wedged into it. Ugh.

So, apparently, these people know my name, address, and when I celebrate my birthday. Without my having told them any of that stuff. Can my Social Security and Driver's License information be far behind?

I guess I should probably cancel my credit cards. But, hey, free dinner! Yay!

What not to wear

I don't know what kind of reaction this guy thought he was going to get while wearing his...er...costume, but, apparently, he didn't look good while wearing it.

A Japanese man was arrested for trespassing this week after turning up at a high school dressed in a girl's uniform and a long wig, local police said.

Thirty-nine-year-old Tetsunori Nanpei told police he had bought the uniform over the Internet and put it on to take a stroll near the school in Saitama, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, the daily Asahi Shimbun said.

When students standing outside the gates started to scream at the sight of him, he dashed inside the school grounds, hoping to blend in with the crowds of teenagers, the paper said.

They also screamed, forcing the man to flee, losing his wig in the process. A school clerk pursued him and stopped him at a nearby riverbank, the paper said.

Dude, you're a thirty-nine-year-old man wearing a schoolgirl costume. I don't think you'd blend in anywhere. Well, nowhere I'd want to be, anyway.

Update: Perhaps I spoke too soon about the guy not blending in anywhere, but I'll reiterate my point about not wanting to be there. Seriously.

Criminally stupid

Man, this is the kind of stupidity that, for me, makes life worth living:

Authorities say a man drove a stolen car to the Anderson County Sheriff's Office to demand the return of nearly $2,000 officers seized from him during a drug arrest last June.

Deputies said after they told Charles Chambers, 36, to leave Tuesday afternoon, an officer noticed he got into a car that matched the description of a vehicle stolen about three hours earlier.

Another officer pulled the man over and told him to stop the car. The officer said Chambers stuck a screwdriver in the ignition to shut it off because the vehicle's key switch had been removed.

If you think that the cops are going to give back your drug money, you're an idiot. But when you drive a freshly-stolen car turned on and off with a screwdriver right up to the Sheriff's Office, you might want to get yourself checked out by a neurologist. I wish I could make this stuff up.

Finally, I'm a winner!

Yay! See here, then here.

I don't think I actually get a prize or anything, but hey, my mother will be so proud.

Money for nothing

You know, if I was a rich guy with a big account at Commerce Bank, I'd be thinking about moving my funds elsewhere right about now.

A man was charged with withdrawing $2 million from an account after a bank confused him with a man who has the same name. Benjamin Lovell was arraigned Tuesday on grand larceny charges. The 48-year-old salesman said he tried to tell officials at Commerce Bank in December that he did not have a $5 million account.

Lovell said he was told it was his and he could withdraw the money.

Prosecutors said the bank — which advertises itself as America's Most Convenient Bank — confused Lovell with a Benjamin Lovell who works for a property management company.

The lesser-funded Lovell gave away some of the withdrawn money and blew some of it on gifts, but lost much of it on bad investments, prosecutors said.

Dude, if you know you don't have millions of dollars in the bank, but they tell you that you do, someone's made a serious mistake. And if you take that money, there are probably going to be some negative consequences down the road.

Dumbass.

Oh, and if you work at a bank, and one of your customers tells you they're pretty sure they don't have millions of dollars in their account, it's a pretty safe bet that they don't.

Dumbass.

Fight for your right to (Communist) party

China isn't a country known for its freedoms, but now some brave souls are fighting for the right to get liquored up at lunch:

Liquor makers in central China's Henan province are planning a legal challenge to fight a ban on Communist Party officials and civil servants drinking alcohol at lunch during work days, state media said on Wednesday.

The ban, introduced in January last year, has led to more than 100 local cadres being reprimanded for ignoring it, the official Xinhua news said.

Local restaurants are complaining they have taken a hit in terms of fewer lunch customers and lower revenues from not selling as much alcohol, the report said.

Damn, just how much booze were these people ordering every day? If the restaurants are taking that big a hit from people not boozing it up at lunchtime, maybe the alcohol ban wasn't such a bad idea after all.

No, really?

Wait a minute, you're telling me that college students were growing weed?

Students in a University of Michigan biology project had been assigned to grow herbs, vegetables, annuals and perennials. Police are trying to find out whether someone's green thumb also was being used to grow pot.

The Ann Arbor News reports 11 small green plants believed to be marijuana were seized from a greenhouse in the school's Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor Township, near its main Ann Arbor campus.

Police say a school employee found the plants Monday on a table while monitoring the research project.

You're not supposed to grow it out in the open like that, where someone can find it and narc on you. No, you grow it hydroponically under high-powered lights in a mylar-lined closet in your apartment. Or so I've been told. Yeah.

Crash course

You know, when you have a car accident, you're supposed to stop and exchange information with the person you ran into. And, no, being really drunk is no excuse for leaving the scene, especially after your second accident in three minutes:

A Kewaskum man could face multiple criminal charges after authorities said he caused two alcohol-related crashes in three minutes. The crashes occurred about 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the Town of Lyndon, said Lt. Mark Rupnik of the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Department.

The 43-year-old man first ran a stop sign while turning onto a highway and struck a pickup truck, Rupnik said.

Three minutes later he was turning onto another highway when he hit a sport utility vehicle, the sheriff's department said. This time the man was stopped and arrested by responding officers.

That was probably a very good thing. Unless you had money on whether or not he could break the record for most drunk driving accidents in five minutes, or something. But why would you do a jackass thing like that? Grow up, already.

Illegal aliens in love

Love blooms in unlikely places sometimes. Like, say, in the not normally very romantic city of Tijuana:

Nearly 600 Mexican couples tied the knot in a mass Valentine's Day wedding by the U.S. border on Thursday, many of them undocumented migrants who met while working illegally in the United States.

As a live band blasted out sugary Mexican love songs in the border city of Tijuana, a short walk from the busy San Ysidro crossing into California, a judge simultaneously married a crowd of couples whose ages ranged from 16 to 65.

More than three-quarters were migrants returning from, or trying to get into, the United States.

"Isn't she gorgeous? I love her!" said Inocencio Felix of his new wife Angelica Perez, 36, dressed in a flouncy white wedding gown. Perez was deported by U.S. immigration officials two weeks ago from the state of Oregon, where the couple met.

Felix, also living in the United States illegally, said he came back to the Mexican border city of Tijuana, across from San Diego, voluntarily for the mass open-air wedding.

"We're going to go back to the United States soon, our life is there," he said, holding a heart-shaped pink balloon.

Uh, Señor Felix, are you sure it's a good idea to tell the world that you and the missus will be sneaking back into the U.S. illegally sometime in the near future?

Mexico's civil registry office began the mass weddings several years ago with migrants in mind, and has seen the number of couples attending surge as deportation rates grow.

Hey, who said getting deported was necessarily a bad thing? I mean, look at me, a legal citizen who's never been kicked out of the country, and yet, still single.

Kodiak moments

People who live in Alaska have to deal with challenges that the rest of us don't face on a regular basis. There's the cold, the wild animals, the proximity to Hosers. And, apparently, they get sprayed with strange substances by angry drunks:

A man faces assault charges after allegedly spraying bar patrons twice with bear spray. Kodiak police charged Daniel Pement after the incidents Saturday and Sunday at the B&B Bar.

Police said Pement was escorted from the bar on Saturday, but returned 15 minutes later and allegedly sprayed customers. Police talked to him later and took the bear spray, but were called away on a more urgent matter.

On Sunday, police were called to the bar again after Pement allegedly sprayed patrons with another can of bear spray.

I'm confused. Is bear spray something that bears spray on stuff to mark their territory or attract mates? Or is it something you use to repel bears? Because if it's the latter, it sounds like he was doing them a favor.

London Frog

Children's cartoons don't always strive for accuracy, but this one sure hit the nail on the head:

Zut alors! The popular British cartoon and television series "Mr. Men" has come up with a malodorous Mr. Rude who speaks with a bad French accent.

"Pardon me," says Mr. Rude in comedy Franglais as he breaks wind when his finger is pulled on a game played on the television show's website www.mrmen.com.

"Ohhh, don't seem so surpriiised," Mr Rude exclaims when loud noises and a noxious-looking gas erupt from his behind. "I'll geeve you rude," he tells children as he blows a raspberry in a promotion for the new series which will run on British television on February 25.

The French embassy in London declined to comment to Reuters on whether the coarse Mr. Men character, the only one on the show with a foreign accent, would offend.

But a source at the embassy told Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper that this kind of humor won't go any distance toward easing a centuries-old rivalry between the two nations.

"It is obviously meant in a light-hearted way, but it won't improve Anglo-French relations," the source said.

A spokeswoman for Channel Five, which is airing the show, said the Mr. Rude character was just a bit of fun that is not meant to offend France or the more than 300,000 French citizens who live and work in Britain.

"Mr. Men is a comedy show for four to seven year olds. The fact that Mr. Rude has a French accent is meant to be light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek and no offence is intended," she said.

Now, why would the frogs get offended by a character who's essentially a rude, stinky Frenchman? Oh, right. I suppose it could be worse. They could give him a little white flag to wave whenever a German-accented character appears on screen.

Bombed mom

I hear pregnant women can get really moody. It's usually the hormones, they say. But sometimes it's because they're mean drunks:

A woman who is seven months pregnant is accused of smashing a beer bottle against a bartender's head after she was refused another drink. Police said Keisharra Abercrombie, 30, assaulted the female bartender on Saturday after being told she shouldn't be drinking alcohol.

Police say Abercrombie also smashed a glass over the bartender's ear and head.

Authorities said the bartender's ear was partially detached. A surgeon in Pittsburgh used two staples and 28 stitches to reattach the top of the ear.

Boy, that kid of hers sure has a bright future, huh? Assuming it makes it out of the womb alive, that is.

The internet is a sordid place

You know, you really can buy just about anything online these days. And if you're not careful, you might just get a little something extra:

A woman in Germany who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the Web site that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who's the father.

Six different men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman in April and May last year. They were only known to her by their online names, a spokesman for a court in the southwestern city of Stuttgart said Wednesday.

"The woman wanted to discover which one of the men had made her pregnant," the spokesman said. "So she needed their contact details. Of course, if they're not willing to go along with the gene test, she'll have to take them to court."

Um, I'm sorry, but how is she sure that one of those six is responsible for knocking her up? The woman is, after all, a whore. Literally. I guess it's possible that she only banged those six guys at that time of the year. And if it turns out that it was one of them, hey man, money well spent, huh? Get ready to spend some more. A lot more.

Drug money

Man, I hate it when I make a mistake on a deposit at the bank, but I've never made a mistake as bad as the one this woman made:

Credit unions accept deposits — just not of methamphetamine. A woman who allegedly dropped an envelope containing money and a bag of meth at a Kitsap Credit Union was arrested and charged with drug possession, according to court documents.

A bank employee reported the deposit to police, who contacted the 18-year-old customer.

Yeah, I bet they did. And it probably wasn't to tell her to come pick up her bag of meth at the lost and found, either.

Dim bulb causes bulbs to dim

Apparently, since the Chinese have been buying large quantities of the metal, copper wire is a hot target for thieves. In this case, the wire was very, very hot:

Police in central England are hunting for a badly scorched would-be copper power cable thief after finding a hacksaw embedded in an 11,000 volt power cable Saturday night.

The thief, who also left a lit blow torch at the scene, is expected to be badly charred, spiky haired and not exactly the brightest bulb in the socket.

"The sheer stupidity of cutting through power cables should be glaringly obvious to everyone," said Phil Wilson, customer operations manager with local power company Central Networks.

"At the very least putting the hacksaw through the cable would have created an almighty bang and the line would have burned for quite a few seconds, showering them with molten copper... We can only assume they left in a great hurry or they were injured and were dragged away by an accomplice." But searches of local hospitals have so far not found the culprit, a spokeswoman for Derbyshire Police said Tuesday.

Right about now, I'm sure you're expecting me to make a joke about how it was a "shocking experience" for the thief, but that's a joke a hack would write and a moron would giggle at. You and I both know that we're better than that. Shame on you.*

*In other words, no, I can't think of a way to end this without using that stupid pun. God, I suck.

The perfect gift for the guy who has everything

If you forget to buy that special someone a Valentine's day present, don't worry. Starting next week, you'll be able to get them their very own Formula One race car. And, conveniently, you can pick it up on the way home from the airport:

Passengers passing through Zurich airport can add a Formula One car to their usual duty-free shopping this month.

A selection of cars and memorabilia owned by Peter Sauber, whose Swiss-based team were taken over by BMW at the end of 2005, will be auctioned off at the airport over a six-week period from February 19.

"This is the first time Formula One racing cars will be up for sale at Zurich Airport," said Patrick Graf, head of marketing retail for the company that holds the government concession to operate the airport, in a statement.

Really? You mean they don't usually sell race cars at the Zurich Airport? How quaint.

Oh, and by the way, the cars will set you back to the tune of at least seventy three grand. If you have that kind of change just jingling in your pocket, why not?

House of horrors

Ordinarily, an apartment crammed full to the ceiling with rotting trash and buckets full of shit would be bad enough, but apparently, there was something even worse inside:

A dried and decomposing body was found in a bathtub filled with dirt in a Phoenix apartment that was stacked to the ceiling with garbage and human waste.

Owners of the small, standalone unit thought it had been abandoned in August, when they stopped receiving rent payments, Phoenix police Sgt. Joel Tranter said Monday.

Tranter said the owners didn't decide to do anything about the filthy apartment until last week, when they paid other tenants in the complex to clean it out.

He said the cleaners began by removing garbage and boxes and buckets filled with human waste.

When they made their way to the bathroom Friday, they found the bathtub covered with plywood, a sheet, and plastic, and filled with dirt. When they started shoveling the dirt out, they found the leg of a body and called police, Tranter said.

He described the body as part skeleton and partly mummified, and that it had been there at least several years.

"Very unusual, very bizarre," Tranter said. "This guy was literally buried in the bathtub."

Yeah, that's definitely something you don't see every day. At least, I would certainly hope not.

That sounds...unpleasant

Dude, no matter how good you think you look dressed like this, you really should keep it to yourself. Or maybe a few like-minded individuals:

The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office is looking for a man with a mustache who is pulling in front of female drivers and then jumping out of his vehicle while wearing women's underwear, a garter belt and black high-heel boots.

Since last spring, there have been six reports about the cross-dressing motorist. The most recent incident was last Sunday. The episodes have occurred in the Standish-Buxton area.

Sheriff Mark Dion said that while the man's behavior may not be criminal in terms of dress, the fact that he's jumping out in roadways and apparently targeting women who are alone is cause for concern.

Yeah, especially if you're a female motorist in the Standish-Buxton area of Maine. Me, I'm not really concerned at all, being male and on the other side of the country and all.

Congratulations to Ace

He won the Blogger Moron of the Year Award at CPAC. You can read about his uncomfortable speech (which, apparently was televised on CSPAN) here.

Oh, and check out the pot calling the kettle a nutjob.

Make money from (someone else's) home

If there's a lesson to be learned from this, it's probably that counterfeiting is best done in your own home.

A man was arrested for allegedly breaking into a home and trying to use the computer there to make counterfeit money.

Charles Chase Nobles, 28, was booked Tuesday into the Natchitoches Parish Detention Center on one count each of counterfeiting, unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling and probation violation, according to a press release from Natchitoches Parish Sheriff Victor Jones Jr.

Goldonna Police Chief Kenneth Martin and Natchitoches sheriff's deputies made the arrest after getting a call at about 1 p.m. Tuesday from a citizen who reported seeing a suspicious vehicle parked in woods behind a Goldonna residence.

I wonder what made him think that particular residence had a computer capable of creating counterfeit money. How do you case a joint for that?

(Via Fark.)

Trapped in the closet

Selling a house can be difficult for all kinds of reasons. Ugly carpet, bad landscaping, or, maybe, something a whole lot worse:

An estate agent who took a prospective buyer to view a house in central England found the owner hanging dead in a closet, the agency said Thursday.

It was the first viewing of the 350,000-pound ($700,000) house which had been on the market for a week. The owner was hanging from a belt inside a walk-in closet in the main bedroom.

"It was quite a shock," said a spokesman for estate agents Hartleys. "Our agent quickly ushered everyone out, locked the property and called the authorities."

Yeah, that's gonna be a tough sell right there. "The previous owner? Oh, he...uh...."

No takebacks

When you're filling out forms at the hospital, it's generally a good idea to pay attention to what you're doing. Case in point:

The Minnesota Court of Appeals has ruled that a mother who didn't like the way her baby's circumcision looked cannot sue a Fridley hospital for medical malpractice.

Dawn Nelson sued Unity Hospital and Dr. Steven Berestka, claiming the doctor removed "the most erogenous tissue" after the boy was born on Jan. 21, 2000 — without consulting either parent. Nelson and the boy's father, David Nelson, were unhappy with the result.

But the Appeals Court noted in its Tuesday decision that the mother indicated on a prenatal form that the baby should be circumcised.

Attorney Zenas Baer, who is representing the mother and son, said he was disappointed with the court ruling.

He said federal regulations say there has to be a signed informed consent form before any surgery — and he argued that a checked-off box on a form regarding circumcision is beside the point, saying "isn't the mom allowed to change her mind?"

Um, no, in that situation, not really. That's the kind of thing you really can't change your mind about.

Oh, and that attorney, Baer? Well...

According to Baer's Web site, he "contributes substantial amounts of time to ending the barbaric practice of routine infant male circumcision worldwide, insuring genital integrity for all citizens of the world."

Uhhhhh...okay.

Picture this

Now, why would you do a thing like this when you know your phone number would show up along with it?

A 21-year-old German man has been convicted of sending a photograph of his penis to an unknown woman via mobile phone, authorities said on Wednesday.

"We all had a bit of a laugh when we saw the thing," said Christian Kropp, presiding judge at the court in the eastern town of Sondershausen.

That's probably not the kind of reaction he was looking for when he sent the picture.

The woman reported the sender to police after receiving the photo attachment of the man's genitals, the court said. Officers found evidence he may have sent similar images to other women.

And yet, this sounds like the first time anybody called the police on him. Maybe most German women enjoy getting pictures of tiny penises sent to them by random strangers.

Priorities

To be fair, I really hate it when I get home to find that my beer is all shaken up, too.

Police have arrested a motorist they say had a 24-pack of beer strapped in with a seat belt but had a 16-month-old girl unrestrained in the back seat with the toddler's mother.

Tina D. Williams was pulled over in St. Augustine on Sunday for allegedly running a red light.

A 24-pack of Busch beer was strapped in with the passenger-side seat belt, according to an arrest report. The girl was in the back seat with 20-year-old Amber Tedrick, who is the toddler's mother.

Williams, 46, said she didn't know why the child wasn't restrained.

Williams refused to take a breath test and a deputy found two metal pipes commonly used to smoke drugs in her purse, authorities said.

Williams was charged with driving under the influence, child abuse, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving without a license, a jail official said. She remained in the St. Johns County jail Tuesday after bail was set at $31,000.

Yeah, but at least she was spared the embarrassment of getting sprayed in the face with beer foam or having it drip on the floor. Really dodged a bullet there, she did.

So...

...anything interesting happen today? Oh, yeah, right.

Not that anybody cares, but I voted for Romney in the primary here today. Which doesn't look like it did a whole lot of good. So, uh, yay McCain. Yeah. I guess.

Update: See the comments for some additional discussion. If you even care at this point, that is.

Grandma's (crack) house

Normally, a visit to Grandma's house is a nice, pleasant experience, possibly including candy or delicious baked goods. But that's probably not true when your Grandma is dealing coke:

Broward County authorities said a grandmother was arrested for hiding cocaine in her bra during a drug raid in Oakland Park. Eight others were also arrested Friday at or near the home of Henrietta Corvin Daise, 62. Many of them were her grandchildren.

[...]

The Broward County Sheriff's Office said deputies conducted a search warrant on her home and found Daise with powder cocaine stuffed in her bra. Deputies also found 20 crack cocaine rocks, four grams of powder cocaine, marijuana and $1,000 in cash.

The eight face various charges including possession and intent to sell cocaine within 1,000 feet of a church, probation violations and marijuana possession.

Man, spending time together as a family just ain't what it used to be, is it?

Loco motion

Ah, it looks like Mexican cops have a whole new system for collecting bribes set up:

Motorists in northern Mexico who are caught dabbing on lipstick, shaving or carrying a pet at the wheel will now face hefty fines as authorities try to cut down on traffic accidents.

Putting on make-up or shaving with an electric razor will land drivers fines of up to 346 pesos ($32) in the northern Mexican city of Torreon from this month, Mexican media reported on Saturday.

I realize this is pretty much a third world country we're talking about, but thirty two bucks is a "hefty" fine there?

City halls across Mexico are stiffening traffic laws as motorists in Mexico regularly ignore stop lights, drive drunk or with children in the front seat, and carry passengers in the back of pick-up trucks. Fatal accidents are common.

Remind me to stay off the streets of Mexico. My luck is usually pretty bad as it is, but when you throw in a bunch of drunk drivers who don't pay attention to traffic signals, that's just asking for trouble.

Weird tales of the Sitemeter VI

Someone showed up here after searching for "hemaphrodite canine," apparently. I don't think I want to know what that's all about.

What could possibly go wrong?

They say it pays to advertise, but I guess that sort of depends on just what it is that you're trying to sell:

If you're looking to sell high-grade marijuana, Craigslist may not be the place to do it. A man learned that the hard way when the "buyer" who contacted him turned out to be an undercover officer, Stamford police said.

Police said Steven Zahorsky, 24, posted an ad for "Mary Jane in Fairfield County." The ad offered a half-ounce of "A plus" marijuana for $220 and the same amount of "B plus" marijuana for $160.

Stamford Lt. Jon Fontneau said officers spotted the ad and responded, claiming to be a painting crew interested in buying drugs during a work break.

Zahorsky allegedly agreed to sell three-quarters of an ounce of marijuana at an Interstate 95 rest stop, Fontneau said.

Police said they arrived Wednesday afternoon and called Zahorsky's cell phone. He answered and agreed to meet at the rest stop McDonald's in 15 minutes.

Zahorsky allegedly stopped at the undercover officer's car and took $320 in cash in exchange for the marijuana, police said.

When Stamford and Darien officers arrested Zahorsky, he claimed he was at the McDonald's to eat and had no idea why police were arresting him, Fontneau said.

He said police found $320 on Zahorsky and the undercover officer's number on his cell phone.

That's probably why they were arresting you there, Steve.

Now, selling weed on Craigslist, where anybody could find out about it may be an extremely stupid idea, but to be fair, when he decided to tell the world that he had weed for sale online, he was probably really, really high.