Vacation, all I never wanted

Thanks, but I think I'll save my money and just hang around in Compton for my summer vacation:

Sinaloa, the northern Mexican state that spawned the country's most fearsome drug cartel, hopes to lure tourists to rustic cabins in a rugged area infamous for opium fields and violent kingpins.

Generations of farmers have grown opium and marijuana in the hilly and remote Badiraguato region, a stronghold for powerful drug gangs and the birthplace of Mexico's top capo and most-wanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

But Sinaloa's tourism minister Antonio Ibarra said renting out mountain cabins could wean some of the local population off illicit activities.

"Every well-paid job we create gives people an alternative, a decent life," he told Reuters on Thursday.

Few outsiders venture outside the state capital of Culiacan, but Ibarra said the "El Perico" cabins, in a pine forested mountain area known for its rich wildlife, could attract adventure tourists who like outdoor activities.

You know, outdoor activities like harvesting opium for heroin production, or trying to outrun homicidal drug dealers.

Sounds like fun, no?

No.

Jury duty

No, I'm not talking about the smash hit comedy starring Abe Vigoda, I mean the sit on my ass all day while the judge and the lawyers blather kind. And in spite of my work reporting on local crime and my nutty political views about taking marijuana off the black market so that it can be taxed and regulated, they put me on the jury. With eleven women. Yay.

I'm starting to think that I should've accepted my brother's offer to draw a swastika on my forehead.

Call of Cthulhu

So, they find an "octosquid" last week. And now, this.

The end is coming, people.

What we have here...

...is a failure to communicate:

Teacher Dave Barclay flew thousands of miles across the Atlantic to Wales to attend his friend's wedding, only to discover he was a year early.

Barclay, 34, was told about the wedding earlier in the year and assumed it was to take place in 2007.

It was only when he had flown into Cardiff from Toronto, Canada, and rang the bridegroom seeking details of the venue that he discovered the wedding was in 2008.

[...]

The groom, Dave Best, had emailed his friend at the start of the year.

"He just said July the 6th and I assumed it was this year because if you tell the guy July 6th, they're going to think it's this year," Barclay said.

So, these guys are obviously good friends. If they were just casual acquaintances, I doubt Barclay would've flown all the way from Canada to Wales for his buddy's wedding, right? And yet, he never bothered to call Best or even send him an e-mail saying, "Hey, I'm stoked about your wedding! See you in Cardiff next week"? Because that would seem like a good idea. The kind of thing that could, say, keep you from making an unnecessary trans-Atlantic trip.

Dumbass.

You don't say

Wow, some eggheads conducted a study and found a result that was completely, utterly obvious:

Muscular young men are likely to have more sex partners than their less-chiseled peers, researchers at the University of California Los Angeles said on Monday.

Their study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggests muscles in men are akin to elaborate tail feathers in male peacocks: They attract females looking for a virile mate.

"Women are predisposed to prefer muscularity in men," said study author David Frederick of UCLA.

No shit, genius. They're also attracted to money, expensive sports cars, and large, tastefully furnished houses. And I didn't even have to do any kind of big, fancy study to figure any of that out.

What the?

Oh no. Hell no.

Erecting a new building

Uh, good luck attracting tenants to a building that looks like, well...

The developer said his design for a 40-story resident tower proposed as a gateway to downtown San Diego looks like a flower. A city consultant said it looks like a giant phallus.

"With its rounded forms and swelling of the uppermost floors...this building structure is very phallic," wrote Gwynne Pugh, a Santa Monica architect hired by the downtown redevelopment agency to review building designs.

San Diego-based Sandor Shapery's proposal for a 160-unit hotel and condominium tower was expected to go before the redevelopment agency for initial feedback this month. Instead Shapery has asked for more time to "revisit" and perhaps "tone down" the design because he does not want to offend anyone.

Then you might want to rethink the whole "building that looks like an enormous cock" thing.

You can find a picture of the design here.

Thanks, SeeDub

SeeDubya over at JunkYardBlog linked to my post about the eleven-year-old drunk driver yesterday, and I got what would normally be about a week's worth of traffic over the course of a day. I think that really says something about his popularity. And my lack thereof.

Her parents must be so proud

I don't think precocious is quite the right word to describe this girl:

An 11-year-old girl was charged with drunken driving after leading police on a chase at speeds of up to 100 mph that ended when she flipped the car in an Alabama beach town.

A video camera in the police car captured the look of surprise on the officer's face when he approached the wrecked car and got a look at the motorist.

The Mobile Press-Register newspaper said the patrolman saw the Chevrolet Monte Carlo speeding and flashed his lights to signal the driver to stop. Instead, the car sped faster, traveling at up to 100 mph (160 kph) before sideswiping another vehicle and flipping over in the Gulf Coast town of Orange Beach, Alabama, on Tuesday night.

The young driver, who lived nearby in Perdido Key, Florida, was treated at a hospital for scrapes and bruises and released to relatives. Police also charged her with speeding, leaving the scene of an accident and reckless endangerment.

I don't know if releasing her to relatives was such a good idea. I mean, it doesn't exactly sound like her family was doing a bang-up job of looking after her.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

I don't like the looks of this. No sir.

For lack of a better joke, love is, apparently, blind

You know, I think I'd have probably dumped the crazy bitch after the first time she maimed me:

A Hong Kong woman who blinded her boyfriend in one eye in a fight six years ago has been jailed for jabbing a chopstick into his other eye, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Last November, Po Shiu-fong, 58, accused long-time boyfriend Kwok Wai-ming, 49, of having an affair, the South China Morning Post reported.

During the row, Po stabbed a plastic chopstick into his left eye, which she had already blinded six years ago when she poked it with her finger.

Wait, I thought she stabbed him in the other eye. Oh, she did. Apparently, being jabbed in the same eye twice wasn't enough to get this guy to leave her...

"Po became hysterical when she saw the wound and mopped it with a towel. The pair then went to bed," the paper said.

"The next morning they had another argument in which she grabbed a chopstick and stabbed Kwok's right eye," it said.

Two days later, he sought medical treatment and filed a police report against Po, whom he had dated since 1993.

The paper said he didn't report the attack six years ago, telling the court his silence was "a love sacrifice".

He says he's not going to forgive her this time, but what do you want to bet they end up back together? It's like Ike and Tina Turner, if Ike was a woman and Tina was a really whipped dude. And they were both Chinese.

We are the champions

At last, our long national nightmare is over—after six years of domination by a skinny Japanese guy, an American is once again the hot dog eating champion of the world:

In a gut-busting showdown that combined drama, daring and indigestion, Joey Chestnut emerged as the world's hot dog eating champion, knocking off six-time winner Takeru Kobayashi in a record-setting yet repulsive triumph.

Chestnut, the great red, white and blue hope in the annual Fourth of July competition, broke his own world record by inhaling 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes _ a staggering one every 10.9 seconds before a screaming crowd in Coney Island.

"If I needed to eat another one right now, I could," the 23-year-old Californian said Wednesday after receiving the mustard yellow belt emblematic of hot dog eating supremacy.

Normally, I'd write some sort of wisecrack here, but I'm just so damn proud. *Sniff* I promised myself I wouldn't cry...

Happy 4th of July!

Try not to blow any fingers off, okay?

Update: You've got to love the one night every year when the sound of sporadic explosions in the distance isn't really cause for alarm.

Awwwww

I guess love means never having to say you're sorry...for taking a bunch of people hostage at gunpoint.

A Brazilian woman whose estranged husband held her hostage at gunpoint on a bus for 10 hours along with dozens of passengers last year has decided to reunite with him.

"I forgave him out of love ... I believe it was an irrational act and that we can resume our life in peace," Brazil's Globo news agency quoted Cristina Ribeiro, 35, as saying on Monday, eight months after the nationally televised hostage drama.

The couple, who have three children, have decided to live together again, Globo reported.

The husband, Andre Ribeiro da Silva, 36, was paroled from prison in late April and is awaiting trial.

"I hear people warning me that he will do it again, but we've talked and grown into the idea of getting back together," the woman said.

I'm sure they'll be fine. I mean, he just took her and dozens of bus passengers hostage. That's hardly a big deal. I mean, it's not like he threatened to turn the situation into a murder-suicide, right? Right?

During the incident, he accused her of having cheated on him and threatened to kill her and then commit suicide. The two had been married for 10 years and separated four months earlier.

Oh. Nevermind.

"You don't see this every day"

Yeah, no kidding.

FBI agents worked Monday to identify burglars who burst through a bank's wall and then made off with the bank's one-ton safe. A gaping hole in the rear wall of the First Community Bank was reported at about 8 a.m. Sunday, police said. Investigators and a bank security expert said the bank's safe was missing when they entered the building Sunday morning.

"You don't see this every day," said Steve Frazier, spokesman for the FBI in Little Rock.

The burglars apparently stole a forklift from a construction site near the bank, then used it to hoist the safe out of the bank. Police aren't sure yet if the burglars used the forklift to ram into the bank, creating a hole, or if they used another vehicle or method to get in.

"I could say without a shadow of a doubt that whoever is responsible for this had (either) put forth a great deal of effort of planning and surveillance or was loosely associated with the bank," Detective Keith Lindley of the Van Buren Police Department said.

After creating a hole in the building, the burglars then disabled a bank's security camera by pulling out its wire and pointing the bank's other cameras away from the safe, Lindley said.

The burglars then drove the forklift through the hole in the wall and took the safe, Lindley said. Authorities believe the burglars may have loaded the safe into a pickup that was parked at a nearby church, where the forklift was abandoned.

"It had to have been a minimum of two (suspects)," Lindley said. "My gut feeling is three or four based on everything I've seen and the level of sophistication."

Frazier said agents were gathering information on who might have carried out the heist.

"We are in the process of trying to determine who did it," Frazier said. "We're not ready to release any names or identities."

"We will locate them, we will arrest them and then they will be prosecuted," Frazier said.

Investigators plan to check the surveillance videos of neighboring businesses to see if any of the burglary was recorded, Lindley said.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that anybody in the area who sees a neighbor lugging around or using torches to cut into an unfamiliar one-ton safe should probably go ahead and call the FBI.

The invisible hand

Economics is an interesting subject, but it's one I don't know a lot about. I do, however, understand supply and demand, and here we have an interesting (and somewhat disturbing) illustration of those forces at work:

The price of machetes has halved in parts of Nigeria since the end of general elections in April because demand from thugs sponsored by politicians has subsided, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria reported.

NAN surveyed prices in the northeastern state of Gombe and found that a good quality machete was now selling for 400 naira ($3) compared with 800 naira before the elections, which were marred by politically motivated violence in many states.

"A price survey on machetes, which served as a popular weapon among political thugs in the state, indicated ... a drop in the price of the implement," NAN reported over the weekend.

Machetes are primarily used as a tool for farming in Nigeria but they are also popular among political gangsters.

"Before the conduct of the general elections, I was selling a minimum of seven machetes daily but can hardly sell one a day now," said Usman Masi, a trader quoted by NAN.

The article goes on to say that around two hundred people were killed during the months of campaigning before the elections, so I guess that puts our "divisive" political climate in perspective, huh?

You'd better be accompanied by an adult

It looks like my blog is rated...

Mingle² - Online Dating

...although that seems to be based on the frequency of such tame phrases as hell, death, ass, and kill. I'm pretty sure that kind of stuff shows up in the Bible, at least once in a while. Hell and death, especially.

They must base the rating on the front page of the blog, since I'm pretty sure I can remember dropping a few f-bombs and otherwise naughty words over the last couple of years. And, although there haven't been any nude pictures so far, I've included several links that hinted at dirty stuff.

It's like I'm Larry Flynt, but nobody's paying attention.

(Via Ace.)

Bad manners

The old proverb about glass houses and stones came to mind when I read this story:

A man who thought the clerk at a fast-food drive-through was rude for not saying "please" and "thank you" punched her in the face, police said. Duane L. Williams, angered by what he felt was the clerk's rudeness, walked into the store to complain just before 8 p.m. Wednesday, Penn Hills police Chief Howard Burton said Friday.

Before the manager could meet with Williams, he walked back outside, pushed open the drive-through window and punched the 19-year-old woman in the face. The clerk was bruised, but not badly hurt, Burton said.

That doesn't exactly sound very genteel on his part, now does it?

"He didn't like the girl's attitude because she didn't say 'please' and 'thank you,'" Burton said.

The store manager ran outside to get Williams' license plate number and called police.

Williams, 46, told police he had "anger-management issues" when he turned himself in later that night, Burton said.

You don't say.

Moral Majority in a Mao jacket

People are always complaining about conservatives pushing their morals on other people, but sometimes that comes from the left, too. In this case, the pretty far left, indeed:

China plans to sack all officials found to have secretly "kept and supported" mistresses, in a move aimed at raising social morals, state media reported on Friday.

The step hardens up previous policy.

"It is a misunderstanding that officials who have mistresses would only be sacked when the situation is serious," the Beijing News quoted a Ministry of Personnel spokesman as saying.

Mistresses and "second wives" are common among government officials and businessmen in China, and Chinese media have said the financial pressures of keeping mistresses have driven some officials to seek money through bribes or abuse of power.

Corrupt officials are a major cause of public outrage in China, and the country's Communist rulers have warned that if graft is not checked it could threaten the party's grip on power.

Perhaps we should be pushing for more corruption (or more mistresses, anyway) in China.

The amnesty thing

I haven't really written anything about it, mainly because it isn't really funny. I've been royally pissed off about what's been going on in the Senate—I told a GOP phone solicitor to go to hell last night, and it felt fan-fucking-tastic—but I was glad to see that the bill failed today.

If you want to see some people who have been following this issue in great detail (and with justifiable rage, if you ask me) check here and here for starters.

Now, back to sex jokes and stories about stupid criminals.

Lighten up, people

I have a feeling that most of the people involved in this story would faint dead away or possibly even have a stroke were they ever to wade into ace's comments:

A teacher who forced a pupil to write "I am a retard" 100 times was acquitted by an Italian court on Wednesday of abuse charges.

The teacher, whose identity was withheld to protect her privacy, forced the punishment on the 12-year-old boy after he blocked a fellow pupil from going to the toilet and called him "gay" and "girly."

The parents had sought 25,000 euros ($33,580) in damages and a public prosecutor had called for a two-month prison sentence, but the court cleared the teacher, a court source said.

Okay, so what amounts to an adult calling a kid a retard is kind of harsh, but thirty three grand and two months in the joint? For that? Give me a break.

And there's even more oversensitivity to go around, this time from the defendant...

The teacher said her punishment of the boy had been appropriate, particularly after a widely publicized case of an adolescent who committed suicide in Italy, apparently after receiving taunts at school about being homosexual.

When the hell did the macho swagger of the Italian people get replaced by the spirit of Sexual Harassment Panda?

Actually, that's the one bright spot that I see in this story—that the kid who got called "gay" and "girly" didn't sue for sexual harrasment. You know that would've happened here.

Wildlife

I just went out for the last cigarette before bedtime, and a couple of coyotes went running down the street. That's not all that unusual—I've seen them run past my house any number of times—but this time, one of them stopped and started to come toward me. It looked like a young one, but I still didn't feel like messing with a wild animal with sharp teeth, so I assumed a defensive posture, waved my arms at it, and said "No, no, no," at it. It eventually turned away and ran off with the other, older-looking one. Whew.

I hope my neighbors' pets are locked up inside, nice and safe. I know Riley is.

Providing your own mugshots not a good idea

When you rob somebody, it's probably a good idea not to deliberately give your victim any evidence. Especially not if that evidence can easily identify you.

Two German teenagers robbed a girl but accidentally left their own pictures behind for police on a discarded mobile phone.

After stealing a 15-year-old's shoes, money and mobile phone, the two older girls gave her an old mobile phone, police in the western city of Bochum said on Wednesday.

But the two 17-year-olds had forgotten the phone had their own photos, striking smiley poses, which police published online on Tuesday in an effort to find the culprits.

The two muggers turned themselves in almost simultaneously when the pictures appeared on the evening news.

You try to do a good deed (sort of) and it comes back to bite you in the ass. Ain't that always the way?

Another elderly asskicker

Last week it was the 62-year-old who strangled a rabid bobcat. Now, there's this senior badass:

Bill Barnes says he was scratching off a losing $2 lottery ticket inside a gas station when he felt a hand slip into his front-left pants pocket, where he had $300 in cash.

He immediately grabbed the person's wrist with his left hand and started throwing punches with his right, landing six or seven blows before a store manager intervened.

"I guess he thought I was an easy mark," Barnes, 72, told The Grand Rapids Press for a story Tuesday.

He's anything but an easy mark: Barnes served in the Marines, was an accomplished Golden Gloves boxer and retired after 20 years as an iron worker.

[...]

Barnes said he had just withdrawn the money from a bank machine and put it in the pocket of his shorts before driving to a service station in Comstock Park, a Grand Rapids suburb.

He remembers noticing a patron acting suspiciously, asking the price of different brands of cigarettes and other items. While turned away, Barnes felt the hand in his pocket, so he took action.

"I guess I acted on instinct," he said.

[...]

Barnes said he'd probably do the same thing again under the same circumstances, if for no other reason than what he would face back home.

"I wouldn't want my wife to give me hell for lettin' that guy get my money," he said with a smile.

By the way, the crook that he beat the hell out of, one Jesse Daniel Rae, is 45 years his junior.

Tag, you're going to jail!

I'm no expert on Phillipine law or law enforcement, but I'm pretty sure that this doesn't work:

Philippine police chased down an unfit thief on Tuesday after he ran out of breath and asked his pursuers for a "time out."

"He was panting and gasping for air when we caught up with him after a 500 meter sprint," Erwin Buenceso, one of the arresting officers, told local radio station dzBB.

[...]

The robber asked for a "time out" using hand signals.

The only way that works is if you're touching "safe" or "home base," although the man's lawyers may challenge the validity of the arrest on the basis that the police neglected to yell, "ready or not, here we come," at the onset of the chase.

Lucky to be alive

Yeah, I can see how that could give you a headache.

A woman was arrested Tuesday after her husband woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible headache and later learned he had a bullet lodged in his head.

St. Lucie County Sheriff's deputies initially thought Michael Eugene Moylan had been hit by a stray bullet, but later realized the couple's story did not match up, Sheriff Ken Mascara said.

April Moylan, 39, was arrested Tuesday and was in the process of being charged with attempted murder, Mascara said.

Moylan, 45, woke up at 4:30 a.m. and thought he had suffered an aneurism or that his wife had elbowed him in his sleep, authorities said.

His wife drove him to the hospital where doctors said a bullet had lodged behind his right ear. Authorities obtained a search warrant for the couple's home, located in an upscale gated community, and later arrested the wife, Mascara said.

Evidence indicated that Moylan had been shot at close range by someone in the house and it was clear there were inconsistencies with the couple's story, Mascara said.

I don't really understand how she could screw up her story as it related to that of her husband, since his story basically amounts to "I woke up with a headache and later found that I'd been shot in the head." That sounds pretty easy to stick to.

Don't you people knock??!

Huh. I guess I really don't know what to say about this:

A MAN has been charged with having sex with his bike.

Robert Stewart was allegedly caught in the act by two terrified cleaners who walked into his bedroom in a hostel.

Stewart has denied the accusation, claiming it was caused by a misunderstanding after he had too much to drink.

The 51-year-old bachelor was charged with the bizarre sexual offence after he was disturbed by the cleaner and her colleague in a private hostel in Ayr.

The charge alleges he conducted himself in a disorderly manner, simulated sex with a bicycle and continued to do so while naked from the waist down in the presence of two female employees.

Not that I really want to know, but how exactly does one go about doing such a thing? I've owned several bicycles over the years, and I can't think of anywhere on any of them that seemed...inviting.

(Via Fark.)

The ugly American

I don't think that this is a good way to endear yourself to the locals:

A 22-year-old American man was arrested on Sunday after an early morning naked bath in the historic Barcaccia fountain at the foot of Rome's Spanish Steps, an Italian news agency reported.

The man stripped and bathed in the 17th century Baroque fountain in front of a crowd of tourists, before being led away by police, AGI news agency said.

He faces charges of committing an obscene act, it said.

The article doesn't mention it, but I'm guessing that the vino had something to do with this. And lots of it.

And here I am, single

I'll be the first person to admit that I don't understand women in general, but I really don't understand women like this one:

It began with an inmate pen-pal program. It blossomed into poetry. It led to a marriage.

James Lewis Morgan and the former Tracy Cope are husband and wife. She, formerly of Nottinghamshire, England. He, of death row at Central Prison in Raleigh.

Tracy Morgan began her courtship of convicted killer James Morgan 4 1/2 years ago, visiting him in prison from England five times before she moved to Raleigh with her 15-year-old son.

Ah, well, now her boy has a father figure he can look up to. Great.

Her poetry touched Morgan, she said.

"It was called, 'Where Is My Beloved?'" she told WRAL-TV in Raleigh. "When he wrote back, he was so touched by it, and he said, 'Nobody's ever called me beloved before.'"

Gee, I wonder why.

James Morgan, 52, was convicted of the November 1997 stabbing death of 34-year-old Patrina Lynette King of Asheville...

Hm. Maybe that had something to do with it.

...His new wife says they talked about the crime and it was no longer a concern to her "once I found out all the details."

If only the jury had seen it that way.

The article didn't mention where the happy couple is registered, but I'm sure a nice set of shivs or a few cartons of cigarettes would suffice.

No seal of approval

Hmmmm...I wonder how you would procure such an item. On second thought, I don't want to know:

An Alaska man has pleaded guilty to selling more than 100 fur seal "oosiks" -- or penises -- to a local gift shop that intended to sell the items as an aphrodisiac.

Michael Richard Zacharof, an Aleut and former tribal president from the Bering Sea village of St. Paul, pleaded guilty this week to one count of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Federal law forbids the sale of any raw marine mammal parts unless they have been crafted into pieces of Alaska Native artwork.

What possible market could there be for seal penises? I mean, who in their right mind would want something so nasty?

In Zacharof's case, the former tribal leader sold the raw seal penises to a gift shop catering to customers from Asia [my emphasis]. The shop then sold the items for about $100 each, according to the Justice Department.

But of course. Is there any disgusting animal part that isn't considered an aphrodisiac somewhere in Asia?

Don't enter any drinking contests in Washington

A little while ago, I wrote a post about a woman in Washington who blew an astonishing .47 on a breathalyzer test. At the time, they thought it might be a state record. Well, it looks like they have a new champ up there:

A Pierce County woman apparently tied a record for the amount of alcohol in her blood when the Washington State Patrol toxicology lab measured a blood-alcohol content of 0.50 two hours after she was arrested for investigation of drunken driving.

Ann Marie Gordon, manager of the lab in Seattle, said the reading _ more than six times the legal limit of 0.08 _ tied the highest level ever found by technicians at the patrol's lab. A King County driver also registered 0.50 on a blood test in 2000, Gordon said.

"It certainly would kill many people," she said.

The average blood-alcohol content of drunken drivers stopped in Washington is about 0.15, Gordon added.

Rebecca G. Lingbloom, 45, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to one count of driving under the influence of alcohol on May 10. Authorities contended in an affidavit that she nearly hit a pedestrian that day and was seen swerving all over the road.

A Pierce County sheriff's deputy later found her passed out behind the wheel of her car in the Summit area, the affidavit states.

Sweet Jesus, isn't there anything to do up there but drink yourself to death?

The talented Mr. Rippy

I'm gonna go ahead and nominate this guy for Badass of the Year:

Dale Rippy says he was acting on instinct when a rabid 25-pound bobcat attacked him on his porch in this central Florida suburb.

Rippy, 62, endured the bobcat's slashes and bites until it clawed into a position where he could grab it by the throat.

Then he strangled it.

Daaaaaaamn! Sounds like the dude has balls of steel.

Rippy said it was clear the crazed bobcat had to be stopped.

"I was bleeding everyplace," the Vietnam veteran said of the May 30 attack. "If that cat had attacked a child, it would've been really bad. It wouldn't have quit."

I find it amazing that he could think that clearly in such a batshit insane situation. Me, I'd probably be wetting myself, certainly not thinking about the safety of the neighborhood children.

"We give this guy a lot of credit for what he did," said Pasco County Animal Control Manager Denise Hilton. "The man was definitely using his head when he did that. If he let the cat go, we could have had more victims."

Not to mention the fact that he would probably be dead, too.

The purloined lettuce

I've never burglarized anybody's home before, but if I did, I think I might try to swipe something a little more valuable:

Someone kicked in the door of a man's apartment, stuck a knife in the door and took a chilled salad from his refrigerator.

Somerset police said the man reported the bizarre burglary on Monday. He told investigators someone broke into his apartment while he went to a nearby tavern. Nothing but the salad was missing, police said.

Police say they have a suspect. I think we can rule out this guy.

Sexual healing?

Sounds like the doctor is in...the nude:

A Malaysian traditional folk healer who dances in the nude while treating her patients has upset some people in the conservative, mainly Muslim country, a newspaper said Tuesday.

Mokhtar Mohamad Noor, 53, a teacher who wanted his sick wife to be cured, said the healer gave his wife a drink and spoke an incantation before she and some male followers in their 20s and 30s started dancing in the nude, the Star newspaper reported.

"She kept muttering unintelligible incantations which sounded like the singing of Koranic verses," Mokhtar said, adding that the woman sat under a yellow umbrella and the dance continued before he left with his wife, tired of the group's antics.

Uhhhh, dude, you took your wife to a friggin' witch doctor. What did you expect? Antics are kind of what they do.

The local Muslims are, as you might expect, not amused.

"I want the state religious affairs department to take stern action against the bomoh [shaman] whose healing practice is against Islamic teachings," the Star quoted a neighbor, Fuzi Nor, as saying.

Malaysia is a relatively modern and relaxed Muslim country where about 40 percent of the population is non-Muslim, but authorities in Kelantan, which is ruled by an opposition Islamist party, frown on departures from Koranic injunctions.

I guess naked dancing qualifies as a "departure from Koranic injunctions." Yeah.

Call it a comeback

This may well be the best come-from-behind win I've ever seen in a ballgame. And Figgins going six for six? Icing on the cake, my friends. Man, I love the way the Angels have been playing as of late.

Not smart

I think I can see why this kid was afraid of flunking:

A 16-year-old Berlin student was so worried he would have to repeat a year at school because of poor marks he convinced two friends to storm his class and steal the report cards with his bad grades.

"The student probably honestly believed that he could avoid repeating the school year if he made the report cards disappear," said a spokesman for local police Monday.

See, that's brilliant, because it's not like the teacher would remember that he had flunked or anything if she didn't have the report card to remind her. Nope.

His buddies didn't even get away with the report cards, either.

The youth sat quietly at the back of the classroom as the two masked robbers, aged 14 and 15, burst in and threatened his teacher with a steel bar if she did not hand over the reports.

After grabbing them, the two tried to flee but dropped the reports as other students leapt to defend the teacher. The two were arrested close to the school, and told police their friend had devised the raid because he was afraid of flunking a year.

He may be going to jail for this, but on the bright side, I guess that means that he won't be going back to repeat that year of school right away.

Happy Father's Day

A lot of us take our dads for granted, but today's a day to be thankful for them. And to be thankful to them as well. So, if your dad is around today, give him a hug.

(Or a manly handshake, if that's more his style.)

Tequila!

I guess this means some adult ended up with a glass of apple juice:

Kim Mayorga was confused when her 2-year-old started making funny faces and pushing away the apple juice he had ordered at Applebee's. The explanation came when she opened the lid of the sippy cup and was hit by the smell of tequila and Triple Sec.

The restaurant staff accidentally gave Julian Mayorga a margarita Monday. He grew drowsy and started vomiting a few hours later and was rushed to the hospital.

"I wasn't going to make a big deal about it," the mother told the Contra Costa Times on Thursday, "but then he got sick."

She seems pretty laid back for the mother of a toddler. If that had happened the me when I was a little tyke, my mom would've gone berserk.

The apple juice and margarita mix were stored in identical plastic bottles, and the manager mistakenly grabbed the margarita container to pour the boy's drink, said Randy Tei, vice president for Apple Bay East Inc., which owns the franchise restaurant and nine other Applebee's in the San Francisco Bay area.

Now, I'm not a bartender, but don't they usually keep the tequila and the margarita mix separate? Maybe not at this place, because I really can't see someone being so boneheaded as to pour the margarita mix into a sippy cup and then pouring tequila in and snapping on the top without thinking, "Oops!" and pouring it out.

Still, they might want to start using different-looking containers for the two liquids.

Persistence doesn't always pay

It's good to have goals, but, dude, just give up already, or you'll probably die alone.

A 73-year-old Indian farmer who vowed not to marry before passing his high school exams has failed to get through for the 38th time.

Shiv Charan Yadav has been taking the exams -- normally given to schoolchildren at the age of 15 -- every year since 1969, without success.

[...]

This year, he failed everything except Sanskrit, scoring only 103 out of a possible 600 points.

[...]

"Once I pass I want to get married to a girl who's under 30," Yadav, who lives alone in Kohari village in the western desert state of Rajasthan, told Reuters.

Yeah, good luck with that, dude. Try looking for a girl with daddy grandpa issues.

When you care enough to send the very worst

Looks like somebody decided to send out some hate mail.

A foul-smelling package that led to the evacuation of a post office next to the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum contained two cans of spinach and a dirty diaper, authorities said.

"No wonder it smelled," said Deborah Yackley, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service. "I don't know why it was being mailed."

My guess would be that somebody is an asshole with a nasty sense of humor.

I'm not a cat person...

...but this shit cracks me up every day.

Dedicated drunkard

Some people have drinking problems, sure, but then, there's this guy:

A man was cited for drunken driving twice in the same day, by the same officer, and jailed after authorities said he showed up drunk for his arraignment.

Court records said Adam T. Lundgren, 42, was cited for misdemeanor drunken driving after being spotted driving erratically at 5:30 p.m. Monday.

He was later released to a sober friend, but jumped from the friend's car and returned to downtown Missoula, where he continued drinking, court records said.

At about 10 p.m., Lundgren drove into a bridge railing and started to run away. Witnesses captured him and held him until police arrived.

Officer Cody Lanier of the Missoula Police Department again cited Lundgren for drunken driving, along with reckless driving and failing to heed a stop sign.

It's too bad that they don't have a Nobel Prize for public drunkenness, because this Lundgren guy could probably win.

Everybody wins!

It's a match made in heaven. On the one hand, you've got a hotel that needs to be renovated, and on the other, some people who need to blow off some steam in a bad way:

A Spanish hotel chain is running a competition for stressed executives to let off steam in a fashion usually reserved for rock stars -- by smashing hotel rooms.

NH Hoteles will allow 30 people chosen by a team of psychologists to help demolish the interior of the 11-year old NH Alcala hotel in central Madrid as part of its refurbishment, it said.

The chosen 30, armed with mallet and hard hat, can destroy any part of the 146-room building, NH said, from bringing down walls to smashing windows.

Damn, that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. Too bad I'm not a highly-stressed executive. Or Spanish.

Germans will apparently eat anything

I don't know how to say this without sounding kinda gay, so I'll just say it—I enjoy sausages. All kinds of them. But I want nothing to do with any of these:

Hoping to spice up their summer business, German butchers have introduced a new line of exotic-tasting sausages with flavors ranging from kiwi, maraschino cherry, lemon and even aloe vera.

The wide variety of new ingredients may seem like heresy to what is for many ordinary Germans the national dish. But for others the new flavors may help negate stagnant demand for the greasy Bratwurst you can find on almost any street corner.

Berlin butcher Uwe Buenger has developed a "chili-honey" Bratwurst while rival Dankert has come up with a "kiwi wurst" that also includes pineapples and maraschino cherries, Bild newspaper reported Tuesday.

I'm sorry, but I just don't want a sausage that's full of fruit. I'll take the greasy Bratwurst from the street corner, thank you.

Wow. That all sounds gay, too. Really gay.

Old spice

Sexy poses, near nudity, helping a charity--hey, sounds good, right?

Giving sultry looks and sexy smiles to the camera, 12 Pittsburgh-area women recently posed at Monongahela historical sites, baring it all -- or almost all -- to create a charity-driven calendar. The catch?

Wait, there's a catch?

The nearly nude ladies are all in their 70s and 80s, driven to adventure by a desire to raise money for a historical society in Monongahela, a small community 17 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Gah! The goggles, they do nothing!

The blind leading the stupid

Hey, I'm all for hiring people with disabilities, but in this case, it doesn't sound like such a good idea:

A Chinese court has jailed two officials after they let a blind contractor build a bridge which collapsed during construction and injured 12 people, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday.

Huang Wenge, township head of Bujia in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, and colleague Xia Jianzhong were sentenced to 18 months and one year in jail, respectively, for not stopping the project, Xinhua said.

"Huang Wenge and Xia Jianzhong, who were in charge of road management and supervision, did not ask the contractors to provide certificates guaranteeing their proficiency," it said, citing the court ruling.

Certificates guaranteeing proficiency would be good. You know what would be even better? The ability to actually see the bridge that you're building.

Oh, dear God

This is just six kinds of disgusting:

Animal control officers wearing protective suits and air packs rescued 47 cats from a house filled with feces that in some areas was half a foot deep.

Two kittens were found dead in the one-story house in Martinsburg, said Melissa Susko, director of PIGS Animal Sanctuary in neighboring Jefferson County, which helped remove the cats from the house Thursday.

"They were just in a pile of feces," Susko said.

One pile of cat feces was about 3 feet wide. In other areas, the feces was 3 inches to 6 inches deep, said E.N. Webber of the Berkeley County Animal Control office.

"We were slipping and sliding in there. It was pretty bad," said Star Silva of the Promise Animal League, which also helped remove the cats.

Animal control officers went to the house in response to complaints from neighbors about odors.

Berkley County sheriff's Chief Deputy Kenny Lemaster said authorities were looking for the house's owner, who was not identified. No charges have been filed.

I'm guessing there was probably some kind of crazy cat-hoarding lady involved. Yep, that sounds about right.

Happiness is...

...a big-ass silver trophy.

Seriously, this is great for Andy, who's been a true-blue Ducks fan since the beginning, even when they sucked. Now he knows how this felt for me, when it finally happened.

Burge in '08

Iowahawk throws his hat into the ring and lays out a campaign platform that I think I can get behind. Take a gander at his thoughts on foreign policy:

With our nation facing challenges from extremists and madmen around the globe, Americans are asking serious questions of the presidential field. Questions like, "does this candidate have the mature, thoughtful, and sober judgment to lead us through the threats that confront us?" And, "if necessary, is this candidate capable of doubling down on the crazy stakes to scare our enemies shitless?"

Ask anyone who knows, and they will tell you: when sober, Dave Burge has the mature, thoughtful judgement called for in 50 to 60% of foreign policy situations. These same people will also tell you that after eight or ten Jager shots, all bets are off. And let this be a notice to America's enemies: President Dave ain't gonna put no padlock on the Oval Office liquor cabinet.

If that doesn't get your vote, I don't know what will.

(Via Dan Collins, writing at protein wisdom, whose blog host would make a fine Veep, if you asked me.)

Kid stuff

Ah, an alcoholic beverage that can be sold to kids. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol which they say can be sold legally to minors.

The latest innovation in inebriation, called Booz2Go, is available in 20-gramme packets that cost 1-1.5 euros ($1.35-$2).

Top it up with water and you have a bubbly, lime-colored and -flavored drink with just 3 percent alcohol content.

Okay, so it's not exactly strong stuff, but it's cheap, so the kiddies can get their mitts on plenty of the stuff.

"We are aiming for the youth market. They are really more into it because you can compare it with Bacardi-mixed drinks," 20-year-old Harm van Elderen told Reuters.

[...]

"Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16," said project member Martyn van Nierop.

The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.

Imagine the shrieks of protest if someone in America said something like that. "They're selling poison to children! On purpose!"

Operation Overlord

Sixty-three years ago today, these men were fighting and dying to free Europe from tyranny. Spare a thought for them, as well as the men and women serving us today, as you go about your business today. I think I'll watch some of this later tonight.

Hard case

I don't think this is the kind of boost the guy was looking for:

A man has sued the maker of the health drink Boost Plus, claiming the vitamin-enriched beverage gave him an erection that would not subside and caused him to be hospitalized.

The lawsuit filed by Christopher Woods, of Manhattan, said he bought the nutrition beverage, which is made by the Novartis pharmaceutical company, at a drugstore on June 5, 2004, and drank it.

Heh. "Woods."

Sorry, that's just how my mind works.

Woods' court papers say he woke up the next morning "with an erection that would not subside" and sought treatment of the condition, called severe priapism. They say Woods, 29, underwent surgery for implantation of a Winter shunt, which moves blood from one area to another.

The lawsuit, filed late Monday, says Woods later had problems that required a hospital visit and penile artery embolization, a way of closing blood vessels. Closing off some blood flow prevents engorgement of the penis with blood and lessens the likelihood of an erection.

Now, it sounds like this guy has some serious problems with his weenis, but who or what exactly led him to the conclusion that the energy drink caused said problems? Was it a doctor's opinion or a lawyer's?

I'm guessing it was the latter.

Hit parade

Damn. The Angels got 16 runs on 23 hits tonight. Every starting player had at least one hit. That was a fun game to watch, unless you're a Twins fan.

A fool and his money, Chinese edition

If you think Americans are the only people who engage in conspicuous consumption, dig this:

Fancy a diamond-encrusted cellphone for $3.5 million, or a gold-plated, musical Swiss watch costing more than $2 million?

Those luxuries, and thousands like them, were on display at a weekend Millionaire Fair in Shanghai, a lavish exhibition targeting the ranks of newly rich created by China's economic boom and a stock market bull run.

The gold-plated Swiss watch I suppose I can understand, but why the hell would you want a diamond-encrusted cell phone? Carrying something like that around with you is like wearing a t-shirt with "Mug me," printed on it.

Hundreds of wealthy Chinese -- many of them dressed casually in sportswear or slippers, and indistinguishable from pedestrians on the streets outside -- crowded the exhibition hall, looking for ways to spend their money.

"The rich people here are still learning about global brands. We're helping them to understand the lifestyle and how to live it," said David Zhong, one of the organizers of the exhibition.

Nice work, if you can get it, telling wealthy suckers that they should buy ridiculous bejeweled geegaws.

Concerned by social tensions caused by the widening gap between rich and poor, Chinese leaders are promising more policies to reduce income inequalities. Higher import duties were imposed this year on luxury goods from cosmetics to golf clubs.

Hey, what kind of commie crap is that? Oh, right.

Read the whole thing, especially if you want a taste of some delicious irony about the building where the exhibition is being held.

Okay, then

If you enjoy stories about kooky whackjobs, well, enjoy:

A U.S. scientist and a small band of believers are planning a journey to the Canadian Arctic for what they call "the greatest geological expedition in history."

Are they searching for Arctic oil reserves? Documenting evidence of climate change?

Not quite. They're looking for a fog-shrouded hole in the Arctic Ocean that leads -- they say -- to the centre of the Earth, where an unknown civilization is lurking inside the hollow core of the planet.

This time next year, Kentucky based physicist and futurist Brooks Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada's Arctic islands.

"Everest has been climbed a hundred times," Mr. Agnew says. "The Titanic has been scanned from stem to stern. [But] this is the first and only expedition to the North Pole opening ever attempted."

You know why people have done those other things, like climbing mountains and searching for famous shipwrecks? Probably because those things, you know, actually exist.

Oh, and I loved this bit:

While he insists the journey has a genuine scientific purpose, Mr. Agnew also says the expedition will include several experts in meditation, mythology and UFOs [my emphasis], as well as a team of documentary filmmakers.

You don't say.

(Via Fark.)

A fun little game

Okay, let's try something here. I'll take a detail out of the first paragraph of this story, and you see if you can figure out where it happened:

Police found more than 8,000 pieces of women's clothing and lingerie in the home of a...man who stole the items so he could sleep buried in them.

No fair peeking, either!

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.