Another year bites the dust

Well, it's been a pretty good year for this little crapblog, especially since DPUD invited me to be a co-blogger over at his place. Thanks to everyone who's visited and especially to everyone who's thrown a link here and there to my drunken ramblings. I'd also like to thank all the drug addicts, drunken wastrels, and stupid criminals who have given me fodder for all of my stupid jokes. Keep up the, er, good work!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Just as good as cash!

In these troubled economic times, customers don't always have cash on hand, so the enterprising salesman sometimes has to make other arrangements. Case in point:

Anthony Delmar Anderson, 38, of 1927 Cain Drive was arrested after a search warrant was executed at his residence.

“He had been selling crack cocaine and prescription drugs,” said Capt. Marty Bruce. “Officers found 2 grams of crack cocaine, 11 Xanax pills, $899 in cash and $175 in department store gift cards.”

Bruce said Anderson was accepting the gift cards in exchange for crack cocaine.

It would have been more thoughtful if the crackheads had given him something that they made themselves, but I guess he's not picky.

Hell on wheels

People sometimes feel sorry for people in wheelchairs simply because they're disabled. But as this guy demonstrates, they're often just like the rest of us. You know, assholes:

A 45-year-old paraplegic is accused of assaulting a Cincinnati police officer by ramming his wheelchair into her and then dousing her patrol car with urine from his catheter bag.

Ralph Evegan was arrested Sunday on charges of assaulting a police officer, obstructing official business, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct stemming from the Aug. 30 attack.

Court records say that when officers tried to arrest Evegan at his Westwood apartment on a 2005 disorderly conduct charge, Evegan refused to cooperate, intentionally ramming officer Stephanie Glueck with his wheelchair. Evegan then spit at Glueck, screaming that he had hepatitis C.

Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Betsy Sundermann added that Evegan also tossed the urine and told officers that he would "never be locked up because of his disability."

Now, his attorney claims that this was all just a "misunderstanding" and that his client was just trying "to break his fall" as the officers pushed him to the ground. Right. Because most of us fling bodily fluids and threaten people with disease when trying to break a fall.

Criminal foiled by tiny clue

I bet this guy wishes he had a blank sheet of paper handy before he headed out to the bank:

Federal investigators allege Thomas Infante, 40, entered the Fifth Third Bank branch shortly before 6 p.m. Friday and handed a female teller a note threatening to open fire if she did not give him cash, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday.

The robber fled with $400 but without the note, which investigators said was written on the back of a pay stub that bore Infante's name and address.

It's always the little details that end up tripping you up, huh? Especially when you're a total dumbass like him.

So that explains the whole "MC" thing...

Some egghead has apparently determined that the roots of rap music can be found in...Scotland?

Professor Ferenc Szasz of the University of New Mexico said modern rap, which was developed by African-American youths in New York's Bronx borough, descended from the Scottish practice of "flyting," which involved the trading of elaborate rhyming insults, The Sun reported Monday.

Szasz said his research found Scottish colonialists in the United States taught flyting to slaves on plantations in the South.

The article does not mention whether or not there is evidence of ancient Scottish DJs scratching bagpipe records, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time before that's found.

Anyway, below you can see an example of ancient Scottish "flyting," which involves the trading of elaborate rhyming insults...

At last, our long international airport nightmare is over

It looks like one of America's stupidest tourist attractions is drawing fewer people these days:

The men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport where Republican Sen. Larry Craig was arrested in a sex sting is losing it appeal as a tourist stop, an official said.

"We're getting there," said Patrick Hogan, director of public affairs for the Metropolitan Airports Commission. "I think we'll all be glad when there's no special interest in that restroom."

Well, that was allegedly the problem in the first place, wasn't it?

Anyway, I've never been one of those people who enjoys visiting oddities like the World's Biggest Ball of Twine on my vacations, but even so, I can't imagine how sucky your vacation would have to be in order to go out of your way to visit a somewhat-notorious bathroom. I feel sorry for whoever had to sit through one of those vacation slideshows.

Have yourselves a Merry Little Xmas

Click for full size.

Love bites

All kinds of things can happen when two people are in the throes of passion (or so I'm told) but not all of them are good:

Charris Bowers, 27, was arrested by a Volusia County sheriff's deputy at her Deltona home Saturday after the Friday night incident, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Bowers' husband, Delou, told authorities that he and his wife had been to a bar Friday night and she started performing oral sex on him after they arrived home. He said he tried to stop her after she began biting his penis, but she would not give up her grip until he punched her in the head and pushed her to the floor.

This being the Christmas Season and all, I hope the two of them can reconcile.

Perhaps with a handshake.

Surprise!

Seeing as how I'm not a lady-type person, I've never been pregnant and it's highly unlikely that I ever will be, but I'm pretty sure this isn't normal:

A woman received the ultimate Christmas present when she gave birth to a child that she didn't know she was carrying.

Tina Cook was rushed to hospital by partner Peter Hearn after waking in the night with stomach pains. Just ten minutes after arriving, she had given birth to 5lb 8oz Alfie.

Ms Cook, 31, who has two other children - Amy, nine, and five-year-old Ruben - was completely unaware of her pregnancy when she woke in the night with cramps, even though she was full term.

'I am just so shocked. I had no idea I was pregnant,' she said. 'My period finished three days ago and it didn't click until I got to the hospital and I felt the head.

'I've read about things like this but never quite believed it as I know what it is like to be pregnant.'

If you follow the link, you can see a picture of Ms. Cook and her little unexpected bundle of joy. Not to be too mean or anything (okay, yes, to be mean) you can see how she might not notice that she was carrying a little extra weight.

Really grand theft auto

I know we're not talking about the smartest (or quite possibly sanest) person here, but if you're trying to steal a vehicle, you should probably find something a little less conspicuous:

Police arrested a homeless man they say tried to steal a South Salt Lake firetruck so he could drive to Washington to see his mother.

Firefighters were on a medical call near 200 East and 3000 South a little before 11:30 a.m. when they heard the air horn on their fire engine blaring, said South Salt Lake police detective Gary Keller.

Two firefighters ran outside to find a man in the driver's seat of their $500,000 fire engine trying to drive away. He first started to drive in reverse and almost hit an ambulance, said South Salt Lake Fire Chief Steve Foote. Then as the man attempted to drive forward, the firefighters jumped into the cab to try to stop him.

The firefighters and the firetruck thief got into a physical confrontation before the firemen were able to put the truck in neutral and set the air brake. The firetruck traveled about 50 feet before firefighters were able to bring it to a stop, Foote said.

[...]

The man, 25, told police he was just trying to get back to Washington "to see his mom on Christmas," Keller said. Drugs or alcohol were believed to be factors, he said.

No, really?

Needless to say, he won't be making it back to Washington for Christmas. Or for quite a while after that, probably.

The line is...d-d-d-dead

Am I the only one who finds this just a little bit...Twilight Zone-y?

New York defense lawyer John Jacobs continues to receive voice-mail messages three years after he was buried with his beloved cell phone.

Jacobs' family buried him with his fully charged Motorola T720 phone after he died of pancreatic cancer, the New York Post reported Sunday.

His wife, Marian Seltzer, also a defense lawyer, continues to pay his monthly $55 phone bill and his cell number is etched into his gravestone under the words "Rest in Peace."

[...]

Seltzer said she keeps her husband up to date on sports news and how their sons are doing.

"Some people talk to God," Seltzer said. "I talk to my deceased husband."

That's actually kind of sweet, but what happens when his voice mail box fills up? Or...if he actually answers?

High mom

Seeing as how it's illegal, smoking pot isn't a great idea. Smoking pot in your car is generally an even worse idea. And then, there's this woman's idea:

A 39-year-old woman was arrested last week on suspicion of smoking marijuana with her two teenage children. Douglas County sheriff's deputies said the woman was detained after they responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle. Deputies said the woman told them that she was teaching her son to drive, but they smelled marijuana emanating from the vehicle.

The suspect's son, whose age was unavailable, and 14-year-old daughter told deputies they had shared two bowls of marijuana with their mother.

Well, at least it's nice that she's teaching them about sharing.

Special delivery

When you're in sales, it's important to offer that extra level of service to your customers. Like, for instance, if you're willing to deliver your product when all of your competitors make customers come to them, you can use that to your advantage. Or maybe not:

An officer decided to make a call early Thursday after he got a tip from an informant, complete with telephone number, about a dealer willing to make home deliveries, the Houston Chronicle reported.

When the officer called, the man at the other end of the line not only agreed to bring the drugs to a prearranged location but helpfully described his appearance when asked. John Patrick Lacour Jr. was arrested when he arrived with the crack.

I'm not exactly sure what the moral of this story is, but I'm fairly certain that it falls somewhere between "Try to be helpful and look where it gets you," and "Don't sell crack cocaine, dumbass."

I'm leaning toward the latter.

I'm guessing they all had black fur

Looking for a Christmas present for that special someone who already has everything? Well, how about a goth kitten?

Humane officers say a Pennsylvania woman marketed "gothic kittens" with ear, neck and tail piercings over the Internet. Officers with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals removed three kittens and a cat Wednesday from a home outside Wilkes-Barre, about 20 miles southwest of Scranton.

Well, actually, if you were hoping to get a goth kitten, you're a little late. She's facing criminal charges, so there probably won't be any more of them available.

At least I hope not.

Happy birthday, Grandpa!

My Grandpa, who is my last surviving grandparent, turned 97 today. Think about that. When he was born, Russia still had a Tsar and Germany had a Kaiser.

Stuck in the midsection with you

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that this young woman probably had some anger issues that predate this incident:

Brittney Love Venton, 19, made her first appearance before a judge Tuesday on a second-degree assault charge after she allegedly stabbed her then-beau, Nicholas Ervin Smith, 25, in the gut Dec. 12, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Wednesday.

Smith, recovering at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, Minn., said he could not remember the subject of the fight leading up to the stabbing.

"It's all a blur to me," he said, adding all he could remember before the stabbing was an "exchange of words. I might've said something to (expletive) her off."

So, what exactly caused her to shank him in the gut?

Neighbors, including Juanita Luke, who lives in an apartment downstairs from Smith, said they could hear the couple arguing about the TV remote before the alleged attack.

Yeah, Like I said. Anger issues. And possibly a deep hatred for whatever her boyfriend was watching. I get that same feeling whenever Grey's Anatomy is on.

Commiting a FAILony

It always sucks when people don't take you seriously, but when you're as hapless as this guy, that's more or less bound to happen:

A San Antonio fast-food restaurant cashier laughed at a robbery suspect and told him to get a job if he wanted money during a failed holdup on Tuesday evening.

Police said the suspect approached the worker and demanded money, but the cashier laughed and apparently didn't realize the man was trying to hold up the place.

The suspect then allegedly pulled out a box cutter and demanded the cashier's wallet. The employee complied, but had no money in his billfold.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was quickly caught by the cops. I'm guessing they just followed the stench of failure right to him.

Best protest ever?

On the one hand, there's nudity. On the other hand, this being in Paris, there was probably plenty of female armpit hair:

Artists' models in Paris stripped naked Monday, braving freezing temperatures to protest against a ban on tips and to demand better pay and recognition.

More than 20 male and female models, some posing nude while others were draped in a colorful array of shawls, sheets and fur coats, took part in the protest that had the backing of two of France's biggest labor unions.

Oh, and there were naked dudes there, too? I'm really starting to doubt whether or not this was the best protest ever. In fact, I'm going to declare this one of the lamest protests ever.

The action was triggered by a recent decision by the Paris authorities to enforce a ban on artists' tips, known as "cornet" after the rolled-up cone of drawing paper in which painters traditionally dropped some money for their models.

"We're very badly paid and it's always been that way," said model Carole Kras, who joined others in the courtyard of a 16th century palace that houses the Paris cultural affairs offices.

You know, it would be somewhat easier to take her complaints easier if it weren't for the following details, offered later in the article...

"I don't really care about the cornet. What I want is to be better paid," said Kras, a full-time artists' model who has been doing the job for 15 years.

So, you've got a shitty job, "it's always been that way," but you haven't bothered to look for a different line of work for more than a decade?

Yeah, well, it's a little hard for me to feel sorry for your froggy ass when you've chosen a "career" path that has more or less always sucked and you knew it.

Heist of the century

These two criminal masterminds are in quite a bit of trouble after their latest caper:

Deputies arrested Robert Eugene Thompson, of 2211 Holloman Road, Plant City, and Taurus Deshane Morris, of 5852 Odom Road, Lakeland.

Besides the burglary charge, Thompson faces a charge of aggravated assault.

The sheriff's office said the two men entered the home about 3:35 a.m. Thompson armed himself with a folding knife while Morris held a chrome pistol, arrest reports said.

And what did the two of them get for their trouble?

Thompson held the knife against the victim's neck and demanded the metal eggbeater, which was found in his left back pocket when he was arrested, the sheriff's office said.

Um, I'm pretty sure they sell those at most grocery stores. If you'd stolen some money from the victim, you'd have been able to go buy one.

Bah, humbug!

The spirit of Scrooge is alive and well in England, of all places:

At this time of year, Dorothy Glenn's home in South Shields sports hundreds of festive lights and a giant tree with a 4-foot Santa Claus, The Daily Mail reported Monday.

This year, however, Glenn said she was visited by an employee of the local housing association who stood outside her home and "looked like he was counting my decorations."

"He said that the lights were offensive to the community," said Glenn, 41, adding that she is close to her Bengali and Chinese neighbors who enjoy the festive atmosphere of her home at Christmas.

She said she refused to remove the decorations, and eventually got a letter of apology from the housing association, which is fairly surprising, considering the way political correctness has run amok on the other side of the pond over course of the last decade or so.

Seriously, I'm surprised she's not getting charged with some kind of hate crime.

The science of Santa

How does a magical being from the North Pole deliver toys to good children all around the world on Christmas? Why, with kick-ass super science that the people at NASA could only dream about:

"He exploits the space-time continuum," says Larry Silverberg, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University.

Santa's magic may go far beyond merely traveling across 200 million square miles (322 million sq km) to visit hundreds of millions of homes of believing children in just one night, Silverberg said.

"He understands that space stretches, he understands that you can stretch time, compress space and therefore he can, in a sense, actually have six Santa months to deliver the presents," Silverberg told Reuters.

"In our reference frame it appears as though he does it in the wink of an eye and in fact there have been sightings of Santa, quick sightings, and that's in our reference frame, but in Santa's reference frame he really has six months".

He also has some theories on how Santa uses nanotechnology to make toys, has a surveillance system that makes the world's top spy agencies look like rank amateurs, and has genetically engineered his own breed of super-reindeer.

The presents are nice and all, Santa, but with access to all that crazy science and technology, how about a cure for cancer? I'm sure you could find a way to knock it out during the six months of your time "reference frame" where you're not working on delivering presents.

Burning love

Passion in a relationship is very important, bit as this demonstrates, it's not always good:

Police in Indiana say a woman set fire to her ex-boyfriend's clothing at a self-storage center and caused more than $100,000 in damage. Donna J. Duell was arrested on suspicion of arson in connection with the fire Wednesday night. She has been released from Madison County Jail after posting $20,000 bond Thursday.

Police say she first denied involvement but then admitted to setting the clothes on fire in an empty unit at Community Storage Lockers.

Duell told police the former couple were involved in a "bitter domestic dispute."

No, really? I would have thought they were in the midst of pure bliss and happiness.

Lost in translation

Why do I have a feeling that something similar to what happened to this magazine has happened to a lot of douchebags with Chinese character tattoos?

"The idea was to publish an aesthetic picture illustrating Chinese writing", Max Planck Institute spokeswoman Felicitas von Aretin told AFP Thursday.

The institute bought the picture of Chinese characters in good faith from a photo agency and had it checked by a Chinese speaker, she said.

The collage of texts "looked good and didn't appear to pose a problem", said von Aretin. It was published some five weeks ago on the cover page of one of the institute's journal devoted to China -- "a many-faceted, fascinating land".

Only then did readers notice that the text included a reference to an ad for stripping housewives in a brothel.

They should probably find a different "Chinese speaker" next time. Yeah.

Sensitivity

Adding insult to injury is usually just a figure of speech, but in this case, it was quite literal:

Police investigators said while the unidentified woman frantically attempted to contact authorities this week after allegedly being beaten by her boyfriend, a Retriever Towing driver prepared to tow her car away, KPTV of Portland, Ore., said Wednesday.

The unidentified tow truck operator then charged the injured woman at least $360 to remove her vehicle from the towing harness, police allege.

A responding police deputy said his requests to the driver not to charge the woman Monday night were ignored.

Retriever Towing owner and noted dick Gary Coe said his driver could have released the woman's vehicle and not issued a charge, but stood behind the driver's decision on the matter.

Oops. I may have ever-so-slightly misquoted the report there in the last paragraph, but I stand behind what it says.

A sad day for L.A. talk radio fans

My favorite talk radio host, Larry Elder, announced this evening that after nearly fifteen years on the air, he's going to be doing his last show on KABC tomorrow. I hope he'll have a new gig somewhere here in SoCal sometime soon, and he's hinted that he'll be back soon, so that's good. Wherever he ends up, I want to wish him the best of luck.

Just point, click, and shoot yourself in the foot

Thinking of doing something stupid or possibly even criminal? You probably shouldn't take pictures of yourself doing it. And, unlike these ar-tards, you really shouldn't post those pictures online:

A trio of Anderson girls are in hot water with their fast-food employer for dipping themselves into the sink used to clean dishes.

One of the girls bathing in the sink at the Anderson Kentucky Fried Chicken posted the photos on the Internet and after management learned of them, all three were suspended today, said Cheri, assistant manager at the restaurant. She declined to give her last name.

“The girls are being reprimanded for it,” Cheri said.

She said she learned of the photos, which had been posted publicly on the girl’s MySpace.com social Web site, during the dinner rush today.

Cheri did not give the names of the girls.

The photos, which appeared to have been posted late last month, showed the girls bathing in the deep commercial sink and posing in their underwear and swimwear.

As if all of that weren't stupid enough in the first place, the pictures were posted in a gallery called "KFC Moments."

You see, these days, there are these things called "search engines," and...aw, screw it. I'd probably have to draw pictures for idiots like this to understand the point, and I'm pretty sure crayons don't work on the internets.

This guy goes in Santa's "naughty" column

I know that the Holiday Season can be a stressful time, but just relax and take a deep breath, or you might end up like this guy:

Halton Regional Police were called at 11:30 p.m. Monday night to Roseland Motors by a witness, the Burlington Post reported Wednesday.

Sgt. Brian Carr said the man used his Mazda pickup truck to smash into at least five parked vehicles. He then drove through the front doors of the Volkswagen dealership, but became stuck, the Hamilton Spectator said.

Witnesses said he then ran around the lot, urinating on vehicles before returning to his truck.

"He reached inside and pulled out a bottle of Champagne and a glass, climbed up onto the roof of his truck, dropped his pants and committed an indecent act," Carr said.

Police arrived just as the man was throwing debris at a tow truck driver, the report said.

Carr said the man had almost no alcohol on his breath and "there was not a mental health issue with him."

So, in other words, he was just being a prick. Well, he did between $10,000 and $15,000 worth of damage and was also slapped with a charge for the "indecent act," so I hope it was worth it.

I thought love was blind

I know (okay, I've been told) that in the throes of passion, things can get a little crazy, but until now, I've never heard of anyone getting kissed hard enough that they lost their hearing:

The 20-something girl from Zhuhai city in Guangdong province was treated by hospital doctors after completely losing the hearing in her left ear, the China Daily reported, citing the Guangzhou Daily.

"The kiss reduced the pressure in the mouth, pulled the eardrum out and caused the breakdown of the ear," the treating doctor, surnamed Li, was quoted as saying, adding the woman's hearing would likely recover in about two months.

The incident prompted newspapers to dispense kissing safety advice.

While kissing is normally very safe, doctors urge people to proceed with caution, the China Daily reported.

Yeah, and just generally ease up on the suction.

Aussie idiocy

Oh, you have got to be kidding me...

Teachers using red pen to mark students' work could be harming their psyche as the color is too aggressive, according to education strategies drafted by an Australian state government.

The "Good Mental Health Rocks" kit, which was distributed this month to about 30 schools in Queensland state, offers strategies such as "don't mark in red pen (which can be seen as aggressive) - use a different color."

Now, this is part of a larger set of suggestions aimed at, in part, curbing teen suicide. Now, I'm no psychologist, but something tells me that if seeing a red mark on your homework causes you to finally shuffle off your mortal coil, as it were, you've probably got more serious problems.

Well, at least she was already at the jail

It's generally a bad idea to show up for work when you're half in the bag, but when you've got a job like this, it's a really bad idea:

A contract worker for a Nevada sheriff's department is accused of driving drunk to a jail to test a suspect's blood alcohol content.

Fifty-three-year-old Kathleen Cherry told a Carson City sheriff's deputy who smelled alcohol on her breath that she had one margarita before driving Friday night.

She's accused of failing field sobriety tests and registering a blood alcohol content over the state's legal limit of 0.08 percent.

Which begs the question: if she was driving there to test a suspect, and she was drunk, who tested her? Because in a situation like that, I'm pretty sure they don't let you test yourself.

Infamy

Case dismissed

I'm not a judge or a lawyer, so I'm not sure if the idea that a plaintiff is batshit crazy is grounds for dismissal in a lawsuit, but that seems to be what happened here:

A Canadian judge has thrown out a lawsuit by a British Columbia man who says various software companies and police invaded his brain.

The lawsuit seeking $2 billion was filed three weeks ago by Jerry Rose in the city of Nanaimo. It names software companies Google and Microsoft, communications company Telus and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as being responsible for invading his brain and manipulating his thoughts, The Province newspaper in Vancouver reported.

Aside from the money he was seeking, he was also asking for (specifically) a red Ferarri, a black Lamborghini, a black Dodge pickup truck, two Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and two dirt bikes (no colors were specified for those last four). I don't really see how those things compensate for having one's brain invaded by a search engine or the Mounties, but then again, I'm relatively sane.

Friends don't let friends drink and legislate

Apparently, the Foster's has been flowing a bit too freely (try to say that five times fast) for Aussie political figures:

Politicians in Australia's most populous state could be breath-tested for alcohol before voting on laws after a series of late-night incidents that have embarrassed the center-left government.

New South Wales state lawmaker Andrew Fraser resigned from his conservative opposition frontbench role after shoving a female colleague in the wake of Christmas party celebrations.

"Breath test this mob," said a front page headline in Sydney's mass-selling Daily Telegraph newspaper. State police minister Matt Brown was dumped from his portfolio in September after allegedly "dirty" dancing in his underwear over the chest of a female colleague after a drunken post-budget office party.

Hey, can't a guy celebrate the passage of a budget? I mean, if it had been a pre-budget party, that would be different. Well, he probably should have kept his clothes on either way, but I'm sure you see what I'm talking about.

The great skyscraper caper

I've never so much as swiped a pack of chewing gum, so I'm pretty sure I'd have trouble stealing one of the world's most famous landmarks:

City crime is one thing, but a New York tabloid upped the ante Wednesday -- stealing the entire Empire State Building.

The Daily News claimed it had pocketed the 102-storey [sic] Art Deco icon by filing fraudulent documents with the city register to expose New York's dangerously lax system for recording property.

According to the News, the "heist" took just 90 minutes. They then returned the building to its real owners, Empire State Land Associates.

The phoney [sic] documents were made even more laughable by appearing in the names of legendary bank robber Willie Sutton and original King Kong movie star Fay Wray.

I've seen lots of polls over the last few years which have found that the general public doesn't trust the media. Stealing skyscrapers probably won't help with their image.

Um, there's just one small problem...

Dead men tell no tales, and I'm pretty sure they sign no forms, either:

Sally Guidon said she wrote to North Manchester General Hospital officials after the death of her father, James Johnson, 76, listing a series of complaints and asking for hospital staff to investigate the death, The Daily Mail reported Thursday.

However, Guidon said hospital bosses responded with a letter saying they needed Johnson to give written approval before his file could be opened.

"I cried for about an hour and a half when I got the letter," Guidon said. "It was the final insult, I don't know why I was surprised by it after seeing the way they cared for Dad -- it is typical of them to make such a basic error."

The article goes on to say that hospital administrators blamed the letter on an "administrative error." Well, I would certainly hope so. After all, if it was standard procedure, that would be incredibly stupid.

Money for nothing and the chicks...they're, um, upset

In today's tough economy, it's always a good idea to find ways to save money on non-essential purchases. This probably isn't the best strategy, though:

Investigators said a former U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer and a graphic designer created fake 20 and 100 euro notes that were "virtually indistinguishable" from real money, ANSA reported Wednesday.

However, police said the bills were spotted as fakes and brought to the attention of authorities by lap dancers and prostitutes frequented by the counterfeiters.

They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but I'm guessing that a woman who's expecting legal tender for those kinds of services can't be too far behind.

There's naughty or nice, and then there's just being a jerk

Do you remember the artist asshole who set up the Gingerbread Nazi display a couple of years ago? Well, he's back, and he's just as much of a dick as ever:

Once again, he’s pushing the envelope.

In his latest display called “Tanenbaum” — a misspelling of “tannenbaum,” the German word for Christmas tree — Santa has no legs after a boozed-up accident involving some power lines.

If that’s not bad enough, a crazed tree is seen pushing Santa’s wheelchair down a flight of stairs.

[Keith] McGuckin said he expects to touch a few nerves.

“I think a lot of people will be upset about a legless Santa,” he said.

Yeah, like, maybe, you know, children. They might not appreciate that sort of thing. But who cares? None of them write columns in the local paper's Arts and Leisure section.

Although you don’t see St. Nick’s sad end, McGuckin’s narrative that accompanies the display tells the rest of the story.

When authorities examine the heap of twisted chrome and crimson, they rule Santa’s death an accident.

The tree goes off to a strip club to live it up on money taken from Santa’s Salvation Army kettle.

Sheila Ross of Oberlin was among library patrons Tuesday who didn’t appreciate the humor.

“To me, it’s terrible,” Ross said. “I wouldn’t bring my grandson to see this — it’s sick.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” McGuckin said. “It’s a cartoon.”

That might be true, but it's also your latest attempt at being "edgy." And, seeing as how you're an "artist," I'm sure you've exhibited some great courage in "pushing boundaries" and making people "ask questions" about the way they look at celebrating Christmas. But let me ask you a question...

Got anything planned for Ramadan?

I thought not.

Ugh

Sorry for the non-existent posting today, but I just got back from a four and a half hour city council meeting. That was fun.

(No, it really wasn't.)

The Lord works in mysterious ways

Well, so they say. But I'm pretty sure His work doesn't include telling nutjobs like this guy to try to kill random people:

A man who rammed his truck into a woman's vehicle on a highway early Friday told authorities he crashed into her while going more than 100 mph because God told him "she needed to be taken off the road."

The truck rear-ended the car on U.S. Highway 281, both vehicles spun across a median then came to a stop along a barrier in the opposite lanes. Both drivers suffered only minor injuries.

"He just said God said she wasn't driving right, and she needed to be taken off the road," Bexar County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kyle Coleman said in the online edition of the San Antonio Express-News. "God must have been with them, 'cause any other time, the severity of this crash, it would have been a fatal."

Now, the guy who decided God had told him to go all "ramming speed" on some poor, innocent woman didn't have any drugs or alcohol in his system, so the authorities have ordered a psychiatric evaluation. That sounds like a prudent move to me.

What a bright idea!

I don't know how the hell anybody could have thought that this was a good idea:

A Belgian TV network has been criticized after advertisements for a travel-themed show depicted the host as a scantily clad Adolf Hitler.

The print ads for broadcaster VRT's travel show featured host Tomas de Soete dressed as a Hitler caricature wearing only a swastika armband and pants while giving a stiff-armed salute with the Nazi flag behind him, the Daily Mail reported

The picture was accompanied by the message: "Discover the real Europe. Not the cliches. Test it yourself: This is the first image you'll get to see when you enter 'German' in Google."

The ads were pulled after a "torrent of complaints" that they were in bad taste. No, really? People might find Hitler and Nazi imagery offensive? Well, I guess that never crossed the minds of the geniuses who run the company.

Dumbasses.