This Guy Tops the Shit Throwing Monkey in Tampa Bay!

(Sample poop. Not the poop used by the defendant.)

01-28-2009

A San Diego home-invasion robbery trial abruptly ended when the defendant suddenly smeared feces on the face of his attorney and threw more at jurors.
Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser declared a mistrial and hiked 37-year-old defendant Weusi McGowan's bail to $1 million pending a Feb. 9 hearing.
Prosecutor Christopher Lawson says McGowan was upset Monday because the judge refused to remove public defender Jeffrey Martin from the case.
McGowan had smuggled a plastic bag filled with feces into the courtroom and he spread it on Martin's hair and face before flinging the excrement toward jurors. No jurors were hit.

McGowan is charged with kidnapping for robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and other counts for an Oct. 17, 2007, home invasion assault.

Some questions that cry out for answers:

1)From whom did the shit originate? DNA testing could be ordered by the court.

2)Does it make a difference whether it was the defendant's own, personal shit, or some shit he stole? Criminals are forever stealing shit.

3)Is it a crime in California to smear shit on your own lawyer?

Once you know the answers to these questions you will know the answers to these questions.

Barmaid Sues to Serve Wearing Bikini

In this undated photo provided by Melody Morales through her attorney, Derek T. Smith, Esq., Morales poses in a bikini. Morales, who wanted a job as a bikini-clad barmaid at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone restaurant and bar in New York City is suing the eatery for unspecified damages saying managers rejected her because she has a ''Latin accent.''

A woman who wanted a job as a bikini-clad barmaid at a New York City eatery says managers rejected her because she has a "Latin accent."

Melody Morales has sued seeking unspecified damages and saying she applied 15 times for a job at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone restaurant and bar. She says managers always denied there were any openings even though other employees said there were.

Her lawsuit says one manager told her her "Latin accent" would ruin his business. She says another told her "You don't speak white."

Morales says she was born in New York to Dominican and Puerto Rican parents. And she says she looks good in a bikini.

A Hawaiian Tropic Zone spokesman, Patrick M. Smith, issued a statement saying Morales' lawsuit was baseless.

Award for Most Cold-Hearted Bastard in America Goes To Michigan City Manager

City Manager Robert Belleman

Bay City, Michigan January 27, 2009

When neighbors went inside Marvin Schur's house, the windows were frosted over, icicles hung from a faucet, and the 93-year-old World War II veteran lay dead on the bedroom floor in a winter jacket worn over four layers of clothing.

He froze to death — slowly and painfully, authorities say — days after the electric company installed a power-limiting device because of more than $1,000 in unpaid bills.

The old man's sad end two weeks ago has led to outrage, soul-searching and a resolve never to let something like this happen again.

One of the saddest things of all was that Schur appeared to have plenty of money, and, in fact, one of the neighbors who entered the home reported seeing cash clipped to a pile of bills on the kitchen table. Schur's nephew suggested the old man's mind may have been slipping.

Schur, or "Mutts," was a retired foundry worker who lived alone, his wife having died a couple of years ago. The couple had no children. He could often be seen through the big front window of his comfortably furnished home of 50 or 60 years, watching TV or keeping an eye on his neighborhood.

On Jan. 13, a worker with the city-owned utility installed a "limiter" on Schur's electric meter after four months of unpaid bills. The device restricts power and blows like a fuse if usage rises past a set level. Electricity is not restored until the device is flipped back on by the homeowner, who must walk outside to the meter.

Bay City Electric Light & Power did not contact Schur face-to-face to notify him of the device and explain how it works, instead following its usual policy by leaving a note on the door. But neighbors said Schur rarely, if ever, left the house in the cold.

At some point, the device evidently tripped and was not reset, authorities said. Neighbors discovered Schur's body on Jan. 17 in his home, a yellow house with peeling paint. The outside temperature ranged from a high of 12 degrees to a low of minus 9 on Jan. 15, the day he was believed to have died. A heating pad was on his favorite armchair by the window. The oven door was open, perhaps to heat the place.

"The body has a tremendous fighting power for survival. He died a slow, painful death," said Dr. Kanu Virani, who found frostbite on Schur's foot when performing the autopsy. Investigators are trying to establish how long he was without electricity.

City officials are reviewing their procedures and in the meantime have suspended shutoffs and removed all limiters from homes after using the devices for 18 years.

The medical examiner is looking into whether Schur suffered from dementia, particularly after police found enough cash lying around in the home to cover his bills. His nephew William Walworth said Schur told him two years ago he had $600,000 in savings.

"It's definitely not a situation where money is an issue. The issue has to do with the mental faculties you have and your ability to make good decisions," said Walworth, 67, who lives in Ormond Beach, Fla.

"I think the utility's policies are horrible and insane," he added. "For 50 years he paid the bill on a regular basis and never had problems. If people would know who their customers are and take concern for their customers, maybe they'd go knock on the door and see if everything is OK."

Neighbors and others have posted messages on the Internet, complaining it was a shabby way to treat a veteran and demanding city employees be fired or prosecuted for not taking a few minutes to check on Schur, who was a medic in the South Pacific and earned a Purple Heart.

One blogger noted that even a pet owner who leaves his dog outside to freeze can face charges.

Sharon Gire, director of the Michigan Office of Services to the Aging, said Schur's death was preventable. "He was one of Michigan's most vulnerable citizens in need," she said. "It is a tragedy that he had to suffer such a painful death."

Michigan's big, state-regulated utilities are not allowed to shut off power to senior citizens in the winter and must offer payment plans to the poor. State regulators also discourage the use of limiters. But Michigan's 41 smaller municipal utilities — Bay City's included — are not overseen by the state.

Bay City Electric Light & Power manager Robert Belleman, upon learning that the 93-year-old man froze to death, defended the utility's decision to cut off the man's power, without warning, during last week's subzero cold snap. Installing "limiters" which put a cap on power usage and shuts off the juice altogether if an owner exceeds the limit, is company policy, noted Belleman, and he saw no reason to change it in the light of Schur's death. As for the utility's failure to inform Schur?

"I've said this before and some of my colleagues have said this: Neighbors need to keep an eye on neighbors," Belleman said. "When they think there's something wrong, they should contact the appropriate agency or city department."

Mr. Belleman also pointed to the peeling yellow paint and the overall neglect of Scur's home and indicated it was about ready to be fined by code enforcement.

Schur, who was $1,000 behind on his utility bill, was found by his neighbor—but not until four days after the limiter was switched on, in a sub-freezing room that had icicles on the insides of its windows.

What Belleman neglected to point out is that Bay City Electric Light & Power is owned by the city (one of 2,000 such utilities in the nation). And Robert Belleman is not just the manager of the utility, he's the manager of Bay City itself. So when he said that citizens had a duty to report that their neighbors were freezing to death due to the reckless disregard of the utility company, to the proper government officials, he meant himself! Sounds like a Catch 22.

At an impromptu wake for Schur, several of his neighbors suggested lynching the city manager. But cooler heads prevailed and a simple resolution was adopted to fire bomb the manager's home, when his wife and children were out of the house. A commitee was appointed to monitor the family's daily movements, to determine a pattern for when they might be away, leaving only the manager at home, alone in the house. "The ideal situation would be for him (the manager) to be taking a nap and then he'd have no time to react before being turned into a pile of cinders," said a neighbor, who asked not be identified so he could remain anonymous.

Collateral Damage From the Economic Meltdown

Substitute Family - Real Family Not Available Due to Mass Mayhem

Published - Jan 27 2009 10:54PM CST

By BOB BLATSKIN - Associated Press Hack

A man fatally shot his wife, five young children and himself Tuesday after he faxed a note to a TV station claiming the couple had just been fired from their hospital jobs and together planned the killings as an escape for the whole family. "Why leave our children in someone else's hands," Ervin Lupoe wrote in a letter posted late Tuesday on the KABC-TV Web site.

The station called police after receiving the fax, and a police dispatch center also received a call from a man who stated, "I just returned home and my whole family's been shot."

Officers rushed to the home in Wilmington, a small community between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, about 8:30 a.m., apparently within minutes of the killings. Officers could still smell the gunshot residue in the air.

Although the fax asserted that Ana Lupoe planned the killings of the whole family, police Lt. John Romero said Ervin Lupoe was the suspect. A revolver was found next to his body.

Ana Lupoe's body was found in an upstairs bedroom with the bodies of the couple's twin 2-year-old boys. The bodies of an 8-year-old girl and twin 5-year-old girls were found alongside Ervin Lupoe's in another bedroom.

All were shot in the head, coroner's Assistant Chief Ed Winter said.

It was the fifth mass death of a Southern California family by murder or suicide in a year. Police urged those facing tough economic times to get help rather than resort to violence. They suggested shooting former President Bush's economic advisors as a better alternative.

"Today our worst fear was realized," said Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner. "It's just not a solution. There's just so many ways you find alternatives to doing something so horrific and drastic as this." Garner apparently was unaware the U.S. is currently engaged in two horrific wars and tens of thousands of people were dying as a result.

Ervin Lupoe removed three of the children from school about a week and a half ago, saying the family was moving to Kansas. School Principal Cherise Pounders-Caver said nothing seemed to be troubling Lupoe at that time; she did not ask why the family was moving, especially to Kansas.

Kaiser Permanente Medical Center West Los Angeles released a statement confirming both Lupoe and his wife had worked there; both were medical technicians. Both had been given pink slips on the same day and told to clear out their personal belongings and good riddance.

"We are deeply saddened to hear of the deaths of the Lupoe family," it said in a statement. "Since the Lupoes are no longer employed by Kaiser, their life insurance policies were automatically canceled, resulting in significant cost savings to the hospital."

In his letter, Ervin Lupoe claimed he and his wife both had been fired and that she suggested they kill themselves and their children, too. Police described the fax but did not release details.

The letter indicated that Lupoe and his wife had been under investigation for misrepresenting their employment to an outside agency in order to obtain childcare. He claimed that an administrator told the couple on Dec. 23: "You should not even have bothered to come to work today; you should have blown your brains out."

The couple complained to the human resources department and eventually were offered an apology but two days later the Lupoes were fired, according to the letter. It was at this point that the Lupoes apparently decided to take the administrator's advice, and not only blow their own brains out but those of their children, too. The administrator who made the suggestion was not available to comment. Through a company spokesperson, the administrator did say he regretted what happened but there really wasn't a lot of brains in their heads to blow out. He later withdrew this comment when his own supervisor threatened to blow the administrator's brains out if he didn't shut up. The administrator was reportedly on paid administrative leave, in seclusion, until it could be determined if any of the Lupoe's other family members had plans to blow his brains out.

Describing the entire incident as a "public relations disaster," the director of public relations said it "probably would not be a bad idea for everyone connected with the incident to blow their own brains out, but not those of their children, so we can put this thing behind us and concentrate on our core business of keeping people well and alive."

"They did nothing to the manager who stated such and did not attempt to assist us in the matter, knowing we have no job and five children under 8 years with no place to go. So here we are," continued Lupoe's note, without any indication of where here was.

At the bottom of the note, Lupoe wrote, "Oh lord, my God, is there no hope for a widow's son?"

The Kaiser Permanente statement made no comment on the claims in Lupoe's fax.

"It looks like they might have had grounds for his termination ... it wasn't that he was laid off as a result of the economic situation," police Capt. Billy Hayes said, with no qualifications or factual basis for making the statement.

In an afternoon press conference, the CEO of the Kaiser-Permanente facility, whose name was withheld out of an abundance of caution, said while it was tragic for anyone to off themselves and their children, if Kaiser were unable to terminate any employee for fear he or she might kill their families and themselves, Kaiser would ultimately be saddled with an unstable workforce of suicidal maniacs. "That doesn't play well for a company that's in the healing industry," she said.

Lupoe's fax identified his children as Brittney, 8; 5-year-old twins Jaszmin and Jassely; and twins Benjamin and Christian, ages 2 years and 4 months.

Winter said the children were ages 2 to 8 but his agency would not release the names. He said that although the father's family had been notified, relatives of the rest of the family had not been located.

The two-story home, much larger than its one-story neighbors, sits in front of a railroad track in Wilmington, a small community about 18 miles south of downtown. A children's playset stood in the backyard.

On his Facebook page, Lupoe posted photographs of a daughter at karate class, and of a fancy tub and wash basins in an apparently remodeled bathroom.

Retired truck driver Jaime Solache, who lives a few doors down from the Lupoes, and who had absolutely nothing to do with this story, had nothing to comment. Other neighbors with nothing to say were not quoted either.

In 1994, Lupoe was charged with carrying a concealed firearm but it was either dismissed or not prosecuted, court documents show.

Lupoe got a state license to work as a security guard in 1989 and a permit to carry a gun as a security guard in 1993 but both expired in 2007, said Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the state Bureau of Security and Investigative Services.

Bob Pierce, a Long Beach attorney who represented the Lupoes in an auto accident, said the case did not involve any serious injuries and the family was expected to receive "well below $10,000," he said.

Lupoe called Monday to find out when the money might be coming, Pierce said. Pierce told him that it might be another week or two "and he said 'no problem.'"

The region has been shaken by several recent mass murders.

On Dec. 24, a man dressed up as Santa Claus invaded a Christmas Eve party and killed his ex-wife and eight of her relatives. The man later killed himself.

In October, an unemployed financial manager, despairing over extreme money problems shot and killed his wife, three children, mother-in-law and himself in their home in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.

In June, five members of a Turkish-American family, clad in black, were found dead in an upscale home in San Clemente. Investigators say it was apparently a suicide pact but the reason is a mystery. One man, with no knowledge of the famly or the circumstances surrounding the mass suicide, suggested they were still in mourning over the death of former President Richard Nixon, which accounted for their black clothing. Nixon's widow did not attend their funeral, however, because she died herself, in 1983.

Iowa Town Library Introduces New Program to Discourage Reading

Ms. Koontz shown reading on the big library book.

In a bizarre reversal of two centuries of public policy, an Iowa public library has decided to discourage library patrons from reading. Library patrons who fail to return books in a timely manner are being arrested, prosecuted, and fined. Sherry Koontz was arrested and jailed for failing to return a library book. She was charged with fifth degree theft and required to post a $250 bond before being released from jail. In a private statement, Ms. Koontz said she thought the policy represented overkill. "For several months I had a series of personal problems which caused me to forget to return a library book. Now I have a criminal record. This is the first time I've ever been arrested, except for two instances of lewd behavior in a bar and one instance of engaging in a sexual act in the lobby of a church." said Ms. Koontz. "I attend church every Sunday and teach a Sunday school class for third graders. What will they think when they learn I was arrested for not returning a library book?" (Editor's query: What will they think when they learn she was arrested for fornicating in a church?)

The book is very large and weighs 180 pounds. "I needed to borrow a pick-up truck to take it back. I only borrowed it to use as a step-stool while repainting the interior of my house. I never once opened it the entire time I had it checked out. I thought libraries were supposed to be user friendly. Now I'm being criminally prosecuted by my own library."


An alternative view.


January 24, 2009 AP

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa(AP) An Iowa woman has been arrested because she failed to return a library book.

Thirty-nine-year-old Shelly Koontz was arrested Thursday night on a fifth-degree theft charge. She is accused of keeping "The Freedom Writers Diary," which she checked out from the public library in nearby Jesup in April.

Police say the book _ which is about a high school teacher's effort to inspire students to write _ is valued at $13.95.

Court records show library employees tried repeatedly to contact Koontz by phone and mail. A police officer even visited her home last September.

Officials at the Buchanan County jail say Koontz was released after posting $250 bond. No telephone listing for Koontz could be found in the Independence area.

Auto-Stealing Man-Goat Apprehended in Nigeria.

Auto and Perp


LAGOS, Nigeria(AP)1/23/09

One of Nigeria's largest daily newspapers reported that police implicated a goat in an attempted automobile theft. In a front-page article on Friday, the Vanguard newspaper said that two men tried to steal a Mazda car two days earlier in Kwara State, with one suspect transforming himself into a goat as vigilantes cornered him.

The paper quoted police spokesman Tunde Mohammed as saying that while one suspect escaped, the other transformed into a goat as he was about to be apprehended.

The newspaper reported that police paraded the goat before journalists, and published a picture of the animal.

Police in the state couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Belief in black magic is widespread in Nigeria, particularly in far-flung rural areas.

The Original Bush Supreme Court - 2000

(Click on image to enrage)

January 24,Washington, UP

Today the United States Supreme Court announced the issuance of a special commemorative portrait of the 8 men and 1 woman who were involved in the (s)election of the first unelected President of the United States in the nation's history, Ex-President (S)elect George W. Bush. The former President, who left office three days ago, amid no fanfare and few warm, fuzzy good-byes, was reportedly relaxing and enjoying the sights and sounds of New Orleans, including a frosty reception from many of his ex friends there: former Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, New Orleans's honorary citizen, Michael "Heckuva Job Brownie" Brown, Led Zeppelen, and a special contingent of homeless New Orleanians from the former Ninth Ward, who had nowhere else to go. The Ex-President, who was not accompanied by the former First Woman, who went directly from the White House to Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, appeared relaxed and jovial as he urged the homeless people to join him in a rendition of Old Black Joe.

After a Secret Service agent whispered in his ear, the ex-President appeared suprised, but then suggested to the homeless that perhaps a better choice of songs would be "that famous Negro spiritual, Old Man River."

Two secret service agents quickly ushered Mr. Bush to his waiting limousine, which sped away before it could be damaged by rocks thrown by the homeless group. Later, one of the SS guards was overheard to mutter: "Jeez, we have to protect this clown for the rest of his life?"

The Audacity of Dope?

(Click on picture to enlarge)

Cops: New York dealers sold heroin branded with president's name

JANUARY 23, 2009--Add heroin to the scores of products that have been branded with President Barack Obama's name. Cops in upstate New York this week broke up a drug ring that allegedly sold heroin under several brand names, including "Obama." As seen in Sullivan County Sheriff's Office photos, the president's surname was stamped in red ink on small glassine wrappers that were peddled by street dealers. Investigators arrested five suspects for their alleged roles in the narcotics distribution activity. The branding of illicit drugs is a favorite of pushers, who have previously sold bin Laden heroin, Harry Potter Ecstasy, bricks of Teletubbies cocaine, and green-tinted crack in recognition of St. Patrick's Day. (2 pages)

But officer, my toilet was here when I left for work this morning!

Demonstration toilet. Not the original toilet, which was removed.




SPRING VALLEY, N.Y.(AP) A New York landlord accused of removing the toilet and other fixtures from a basement apartment to get a tenant to move out has been fined nearly $10,000. The Rockland Board of Health issued the fine to Fausto Pinos of Bushkill, Pa., on Wednesday.

Pinos did not appear at the meeting, but his brother, Jesus Pinos, speaking on his behalf, said the landlord did not dispute the charges. He said Pinos thought that removing the toilet, a bathtub, kitchen sink, stove, oven and countertop from the Spring Valley, N.Y., apartment would force the woman and her child to move.

It is not clear why the landlord wanted her evicted.

Officials said Fausto Pinos was charged with 24 housing code violations. There was no listing for a Fausto Pinos in Bushkill, Pa.

Rocket Man Pops a Reclinee?

January 20, 2009 Somewhere Strange

In a bizarre effort to reduce gasoline mileage, in order to exacerbate the oil shortage, a man invented a rocket powered Lazy Boy recliner, with a top speed of 180 mph, and an average of 12 gallons of rocket fuel to the mile. The inventor, who asked not to be identified, out of fear someone would notice him, said the fastest he had driven the recliner was 120 mph. "It just doesn't feel real stable at that speed and I would prefer not to turn over in that sucker because it has no top, no roll bar, no nothing. It is instant decapitation," said the unidentified inventor.

A spokesman for Lazy Boy Recliners, reading a prepared statement, said, "This guy is a friggin' idiot and Lazy Boy won't have anything to do with his bizarre rocket recliner. What the hell is he gonna do with it, drive it to the mortuary?"

Presidential Faux Pas

Washington: January 20, 2009

In a bizarre turn of events, newly inaugurated Democratic President Barack Hussein Obama almost succeeded in killing off two key Democratic Senators at an inaugural luncheon. Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd both suffered seizures during the luncheon and had to be carried out of the banquet hall. The Secret Service immediately removed all food from the banquet hall and sent it to an undisclosed lab in Bora Bora for testing. An unconfirmed rumor was circulating late Tuesday afternoon that Republican V.P. candidate Sarah Palin, who was not invited to the luncheon, had been spotted lurking in the kitchen area where the food for the luncheon was prepared. But a Republican spokesperson, who spoke on condition of imbecility, said Governor Palin was on an extended Safari in the Sahara Desert where she was tracking desert rats to shoot with a flamethrower. The Governor was accompanied by a tall, muscular African guide, two small, undernourished African bearers, and a Burmese python named "Snake."

Human Violence Spreading to Animal Population

(Due to technical difficulties, the video clip failed to activate and BizarreStuff was able only to publish a still photo. In the original video clip, the large penguin on the right, suddenly slaps the penguin to his left with his flipper, when that penguin tried to pass behind him, knocking the attacked penguin to the ice.)

January 18, 2009 Galapagos Islands In a report released by scientists studying the tranference of violent behavior between species, the scientists have noted a marked increase in animal violence toward members of their own species since 2001, when the first U.S. attacks were made on Afganistan. The violence peaked in 2003, with the U.S. bombing of Iraq and the Arab beheading of several Western journalists and some Chinese itinerants. The attached video clip depicts an incident of random, unprovoked violence among the penguin population, normally a placid and non violent species.

Shortly after this incident, the errant penguin was shot to death by the owner of a local tourist company. The man, who refused to give police his name, citing his constitutional right to remain silent, was led away by several burly men wearing white coats. According to a police spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anorexia, the man was not expected to live until morning.

Bizarre Stuff Announces Staff Additions

BizarreStuff is pleased to announce the addition of Kristin Rozzell-Murray to the editorial staff. Dr. Rozzell-Murray currently teaches at De Paul University in Chicago. She is married and has a two year-old daughter who was named after an American motor oil, Amalie. Dr. Rozzell's experience as a writer is expected to upgrade the quality of BizarreStuff's bizarre stuff. Additionally, Dr. Rozell is an internationally recognized expert on hawks.

We are pleased also to announce the future association of Anaiah Johnson as a contributing editor. Mr. Johnson currently lives in Austin, with his wife and family.

Mr. Randorita Allen of Oxford, Mississippi, continues to be an important element of the BizarreStuff editorial staff.

Everyone at BizarreStuff joins me in welcoming Dr. Rozzell-Murray and we all look forward to her first post and many more in the future. For our many readers who live in or near Chicago we decided to post a photo of Dr. Rozzell-Murray, but after thinking about it, decided not to. Sorry.

Dr. J.
Editor and Publisher

Shoplifter Run Over Twice By Getaway Car Makes Getaway, But Not for Long

CAPE CORAL, Fla.(AP)January 16, 2009

Authorities are looking for a shoplifter who was run over twice by her getaway car after stealing $1,200 worth of designer purses from a Cape Coral store. A T.J. Maxx security guard told police she saw a woman stuff six designer Dooney & Bourke purses into her pants Tuesday morning and walk out of the store. The guard said she was confronting the woman when a car pulled up.

A report said the shoplifter tried to get into the vehicle but fell out and was run over by the car. She then got up and jumped onto the hood of the car. As the car was driving away, the report said the woman fell off and was run over again. On her third attempt, she finally made it into the vehicle.

Police are using the car's license plate and a check the woman dropped to track her down.

Drunk Woman Bares Bottom in Wisconsin IHOP

IHOP Out Of My Pants

Wisconsin perp popped after half-naked parade in pancake palace

The Hopper

JANUARY 16--Meet Consuelo Guenther. The 19-year-old was arrested early Sunday morning after she allegedly got liquored up and ran pantsless through an International House of Pancakes in Wisconsin. IHOP workers told cops that Guenther, yelling unintelligibly, ran through the pancake joint with her pants at her knees, according to a Marathon County Sheriff's Department report. Responding to a call about the half-naked romp, a deputy found an intoxicated Guenther sitting in a running car in the IHOP parking lot. Despite the extreme cold, Guenther was not wearing a coat, shoes, or socks. After failing a series of field sobriety tests, she was charged with drunk driving, disorderly conduct, and criminal damage to private property. Reached today on her cell phone, Guenther told TSG that she was in Mexico and did not want to run up her cell phone bill talking to a reporter.

"Dummy" Turns Free Dope Over To Cops - Daughter Pissed Off

DENTON, Texas(AP) January 16, 2009

A man in Denton, Texas who was expecting a shipment of tools instead received a 30-pound brick of marijuana that police say is worth more than $10,000. Officer Ryan Grelle says the man opened the box Monday night, realized it contained drugs and contacted police.

The package from the Pharr area was handled by UPS in McAllen on Jan. 6. and apparently was intended for a Dallas address.

The Denton Record-Chronicle reports no such address exists in Dallas, so the package wound up 40 miles to the northwest at the similar address in Denton.

The Denton man's daughter, age 17, when informed of the unexpected gift, said her dad is a dummy, and that much weed could have lasted her all the way through college and made her very popular with guys. "I'm just sick about the entire incident," she was quoted as remarking. "It's like turning down a $10,000 scholarship."

Uptight Spanish Prison Guards Should Be Fired Says Warden

MADRID, Spain(AP) A prison guards' union said a female stripper performed at a Spanish jail and authorities did nothing to stop it. The union says the woman took her clothes off before male inmates Jan. 2 and committed several lewd acts at the prison in Picassent in the eastern Valencia region.

An official with the Spanish Penitentiary System called it an appropriate "musical performance" for prisoners and said an investigation was trying to find out who was doing all the complaining. "There were zero complaints from any of the prisoners," said a male guard. "They really liked the show and applauded enthusiastically."

The union, called ACAIP, reported the event in a complaint filed Jan. 8 with the prison system and reported Thursday in Spanish media.

The complaint said a female deputy warden witnessed the striptease in a recreation area and did not stop it. It says several female guards left the room in disgust. The guards who left in disgust were well-known in the prison for being "uptight old witches," according to two male guards. The warden said he would fire the old biddies but they were protected by civil service. "I watched the show through my video cam in my office and that woman was damned hot," said the warden. "That kind of show keeps the inmates calm and we never have riots in this prison. If we could only get a couple of real prostitutes in here once a week, it would make our job a lot easier."

Jet Airliner Takes Swim in Hudson River - Passengers Get Off, Go For Lunch in Midtown Manhattan: U.S. Airways Picks Up the Check

Going, going, gone.







All 155 safe after pilot ditches jet in NYC river
Published - Jan 15 2009 06:08PM CST | AP
By DAVID B. CARUSO - Associated Press Writer

A US Airways pilot guided his jetliner into the frigid Hudson River after a flock of birds knocked out both its engines just after takeoff Thursday, and all 155 people on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank. "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

Jim Cornehls, a lawyer and ordained minister said, "The Governor is just trying to get some TV face time and suggest he is on good personal terms with God. God had nothing to do with this crash. S/he was asleep on the job or just didn't care. The real credit goes to a terrific pilot, rescuers on the scene almost immediately, and passengers remaining calm." said Cornehls.

A spokesperson for the New York Archdiocese said Cornehls is a non-believer, which helps explain his views. "He thinks miracles are just fairy tales, but how does he explain the fact that all persons on board this aircraft survived whereas in Flight 800, which exploded off the southern coast of Long Island in 2006, everyone was killed? That's pretty strong evidence of a miracle if you ask me."

One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

The plane, an Airbus A320 that had taken off minutes earlier from LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte, N.C., was submerged up to its windows in the river when rescuers arrived in Coast Guard vessels and ferries. Some passengers waited for help in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane.

Later, the aircraft slowly sank (see above), adding one more unusual object to the bottom of the Hudson River, which, over the years has hosted everything from a baby grand piano to a dead giraffe and a small circus from Bulgaria.

What Is This, Dumb Week?

A.P. Quincy, Fla. January,15,2009

E-mail led police to pilot's tent

Investment adviser Marcus Schrenker faced about $9 million in court judgments and legal claims, according to a review of court documents by the Associated Press.

"He muttered 'die' at one time as if he didn't want the first aid that we were rendering to him."
— Frank Chiumento, assistant chief with the U.S. Marshals

Marc Schrenker, pictured above with his wife, Michelle, tried to fake his own death to escape turmoil.

Marcus Schrenker thought he would never be found again when he leaped out of his plane over rural Alabama, police say.

His elaborate plan involved a fake distress call to air-traffic controllers, ditching the single-engine plane and riding off on a motorcycle, according to a complaint filed in federal court Wednesday.

An investment adviser who was facing accusations of defrauding clients of millions of dollars, Schrenker had maps, a tent, a first aid kit, cold- and warm-weather clothes and about $2,600 in cash, said Lt. Jim Corder of the Gadsden County, Fla., Sheriff's Office.

"He had every intention of hiding his identity for the rest of his life," Corder said.

Schrenker's plan fell apart with a single e-mail to a friend, Corder said. The friend turned it over to police, and they tracked its source to a laptop that accessed the Internet at a campground in northern Florida.

After evading a manhunt that involved federal, state and local law enforcement officials from Indiana, Alabama and Florida, Schrenker was found in a tent Tuesday night at a KOA campground in Quincy, Fla. Although the search is over, agencies are just beginning to figure out what charges he will face.

"We're going to do a roundtable and find out who's going to get him first," Corder said.

The U.S. attorney's office in Pensacola, Fla., went first, charging Schrenker on Wednesday with placing a false distress call and purposefully crashing his plane.

He faced about $9 million in court judgments and legal claims, according to a review of court documents by the Associated Press. According to a letter he wrote in early December, he was planning to file for bankruptcy. Corder said the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Aviation Administration are involved to determine whether further charges are necessary.

On Wednesday, Schrenker was in a Tallahassee hospital recovering from an attempt to kill himself by taking aspirin tablets to thin his blood and slashing his right arm, Corder said. Schrenker was found lying in his blood and unconscious, Corder said.

Schrenker was a high-end investment adviser near Indianapolis and loved to fly.

On top of his legal troubles, his wife, Michelle, recently filed for divorce. On Wednesday, her lawyer put out a statement saying Schrenker had a girlfriend in Florida. "Michelle and her three young children are victims of this man's deceitfulness as well," the statement read.

As his troubles mounted, Schrenker decided to fake his death, Corder said. Schrenker took off from Indiana's Anderson Municipal Airport on Sunday in his single-engine Piper bound for Destin, Fla. While flying near Birmingham, Ala., he placed a distress call; he said his windshield had blown out and he was bleeding.

Air-traffic controllers didn't hear from him, and the plane kept flying, presumably on autopilot. Military jets were sent to intercept it, Corder said, because the plane was approaching military bases. When the jets reached the plane, the pilots saw the door open and the cockpit dark.

The plane crashed near East Milton, Fla., and rescue workers tried to find the pilot's body — but Schrenker turned up alive more than 200 miles north in Childersburg, Ala. He ran into some officers in a store, and Schrenker, wet from the knees down, told them he had been in a canoeing accident. The police escorted him to a hotel, said Harpersville, Ala., Police Chief David Latimer.

Harpersville police later learned of the plane crash, but Schrenker was gone. Latimer said Schrenker rode off on a red motorcycle he had stored nearby.

Tom Britt, the friend who received Schrenker's e-mail, told the Associated Press that Schrenker wrote that the crash was an accident. Britt turned the e-mail over to federal authorities, fearing it was a suicide note, he said.

Britt quoted Schrenker as saying, "I embarrassed my family for the last time" and "By the time you read this, I'll be gone."

One Drunk Can't Cancel Another Drunk

MOUNT SINAI, N.Y.(AP) A drunken Long Island driver switched places with his passenger _ but the new driver also was intoxicated. Suffolk County police said an officer spotted the driver and passenger stopped on the road and switching places early Thursday in Mount Sinai.

When they started moving again, their car began tailgating another vehicle, causing it to go onto the shoulder.

Both men now face charges of felony driving while intoxicated. Police said both have previous convictions.

The car was seized although there were no allegations it had been drinking. 18 out of 20 lawyers surveyed stated that a vehicle cannot be charged with a DUI. The 2 lawyers who disagreed had been drinking.

Try Next Door

NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. January 14, 2009(AP)

Police said a man showed a gun and tried to rob a bank, but he wasn't in one. The Jessamine South Elkhorn Water District has offices in what was formerly a branch of Farmers Bank. City police spokesman Scott Harvey told the Lexington Herald-Leader a man came into the building Tuesday, showed a pistol and demanded money.

When an employee told the man the office really didn't have any money, the confused would-be robber replied, "I know you have money. It's a bank."

He was told it was no longer a bank and he left with nothing.

Harvey said the office takes payments for water bills, but doesn't have anything worth stealing.

Shit Throwing Monkey Loose in Tampa Bay, Florida

CLEARWATER, Fla.(AP)January 14, 2009

Wildlife officials said a rhesus monkey known to throw feces when mad is on the loose in Tampa Bay. Authorities have been trying to capture the primate since Tuesday afternoon, but it managed to evade a bucket truck and tranquilizer dart.

Gary Morse with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the adult male is thought to have escaped from an unlicensed source. It was last seen in Clearwater.

Several teenagers were playing kickball in a park when they suddenly came under a monkey shit attack. They at first thought some friends were playing a prank by throwing soft fruit at them. When one of them tasted the supposed fruit, his immediate response was, "Holy shit." The youth went to a hospital emergency room to get a shot and have his mouth disinfected.

The monkey is not considered dangerous.

Another for the Dumb Crooks Collection

(Substitute Dumb Crook)

SCARSDALE, N.Y.(AP) Police in a New York City suburb say they arrested five teenagers in the beating and robbery of a 50-year-old man after they called the victim the next day to taunt him.

Police say the victim was waiting for a bus in Scarsdale last Tuesday night when a group of young men robbed and beat him. He suffered head and facial injuries and his briefcase was stolen.

Authorities say the teens called the man the next day to taunt him.

Police traced the call to a house in White Plains, where they found three young men and the victim's briefcase. They later arrested two other suspects. All five are charged with second-degree robbery.

Fickle Finger of Success

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID - AP Science Writer January 12, 2009

WASHINGTON(AP) The length of a man's ring finger may predict his success as a financial trader. Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England report that men with longer ring fingers, compared to their index fingers, tended to be more successful in the frantic high-frequency trading in the London financial district.

Indeed, the impact of biology on success was about equal to years of experience at the job, the team led by physiologist John M. Coates reports in Monday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The same ring-to-index finger ratio has previously been associated with success in competitive sports such as soccer and basketball, the researchers noted.

The length ratio between those two fingers is determined during the development of the fetus and the relatively longer ring finger indicates greater exposure to the male hormone androgen, the researchers noted.

Previous studies have found that such exposure can lead to increased confidence, risk preferences, search persistence, heightened vigilance and quickened reaction times.

In a separate study last year, Coates and colleagues reported that the hormone that drives male aggression and sexual interest also seemed able to boost short term success at finance.

They studied male financial traders in London, taking saliva samples in the morning and evening. They found that those with higher levels of testosterone in the morning were more likely to make an unusually big profit that day. Testosterone, best known as the male sex hormone, affects aggression, confidence and risk-taking.

In the new study, the researchers measured the right hands of 44 male stock traders who were engaged in a type of trade that involved rapid decision-making and quick physical reactions.

Hey, Isn't This Going the Wrong Direction?

GREENFIELD, Calif.(AP) Police have arrested a Greenfield man for allegedly arranging to sell his 14-year-old daughter into marriage in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat.

Police said they only learned of the deal after the 36-year-old man went to them to get his daughter back because payment wasn't made as promised. The man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of human trafficking.

Officers also arrested an 18-year-old man on suspicion of statutory rape. Investigators believe the girl went willingly with the man, but she's under California's legal age of consent and can't legally marry.

Police say arranged marriages involving underage girls have become a problem in this small Central Coast farming community.

I See a Bad Future for this Relationship

PORTSMOUTH, N.H.(AP) A couple accused of assaulting each other over an unappreciated Christmas gift have been ordered to stay away from each other. Randi Young, 24, and Heath Blom, 26, were arrested on Christmas day. Police said the pair argued after Blom complained about getting a Wii game system from Young instead of the remote control airplane he asked for. When Young started to leave, Blom allegedly grabbed her by the hair and she turned around and hit him,

In court Monday, Young asked that the no-contact order be lifted, saying they just had a bad Christmas. But the judge denied the request.

The Last World War - The Womens War

Sometime last summer - AP News

A lot of politicians and other officials, who should not be authorized to speak publicly, talk about ending all wars. But that's all it is, talk. After talking for two or three weeks at an international meeting in someplace like Mozambique, which lacks the capability to carry on a war with grasshoppers, promises are made, non-aggression treaties are signed and everyone adds two more days to the end of their official trip in order to get a mini vacation at public expense. The next week one of the signatories to the non-aggression treaty invades its neighbor, also a signatory to the treaty, about a border dispute over a tiny swath of barren, rocky, God forsaken land that no one in their right mind would want, that has been going on between the two countries since 1853.

But an informal group of women, who met at a Tupperware convention in Birmingham, Alabama, decided to take real action to end the devastating wars that kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people, and even more animals, and destroy the productive apparatus of entire nations. One day everything in the world is ok and the next day you can't get a cup of Starbucks Latte because of a new war.

The women assembled at Pompano Beach, Florida, or one of those other places in Florida with the word beach in it, to demonstrate their plan to end all wars. Actually, you can still hold wars, under their plan, but no one would get hurt and no property destroyed.

The plan, which is fairly easy to understand just by looking at a sample, live war; (see above photo) consists of women with little or no clothing, shooting one another with water pistols. (See photo) There is an unlimited supply of ammunition (the ocean) for both sides and a minimal amount of equipment is needed because the women (soldiers) hold the war on a warm beach where they can wear tiny regular bikinis, string bikinis or no bikinis at all, the preferred field dress. Actual, war looking clothing, like heavy boots, helmets, and bullet proof vests are banned, as are men on the field of combat. Men always want to vanquish their opponent and will start substituting.45 caliber automatics for the toy water pistols, to try to gain an advantage, and then the whole thing is shot to hell.

The only details about this new form of peacefare which have yet to be worked out, are how to determine when the "peace" is over and which side won. Public input is welcomed but stay off the battlefield to minimize casualties.

A spokesMAN for the women's army made the point that while current wars can cost up to a billion dollars a day, the new women's peace wars can actually make money, because spectators (mainly males) will pay to watch the war, probably as much as $50 a pop, which could be used to fight world hunger.

PRESIDENTIAL IMAGERY

Jezbu or
The Real Deal, Maybe


Many of you may have noticed that a campaign already has begun to "rehabilitate" the image of our 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, or whatever you wanna call him. Pundits are noting that there was a soft, compassionate, forgiving side to the President which was never revealed publicly. Instead, the President chose to show his evil side: lying, approving torture, cutting school nutrition programs for poor children, forcing destitute women in poor countries to give birth to babies they could not feed, spending billions on senseless wars, appointing incompetent cronies to key government positions and symbolically pissing on the Constitution.

It is thought by some that it is unseemly to have an ex-President of the U.S. who is widely regarded as an imbecile, a schmuck, a loser, a crook, and a warmonger. Following the old saying, often repeated by the soon to be ex-President, (who frequently studied important official documents reproduced by his assistants as picture books) that "a picture is worth a thousand words," the soon to be ex-President's handlers commissioned well-known artists to paint a portrait of and photograph the soon to be ex-President in a manner that would convey a softer, gentler George W. Bush.

We, at Bizarre Stuff, wanted to be among the first to participate in this effort to render the soon to be ex-President in a light more reflective of his true inner spirit, and his extraordinary yet somehow endearing gift for fucking things up.

Monster Killer Grizzly Bear Slain in Alaska

(Click on photos to enlarge)




World's largest Grizzly Bear shot and killed: ate at least 2 people

veblo.com — January 8, 2009

The bear wieghed more than 1,600 pounds. It stood 12' 6″ high at the shoulder, 14′ to the top of its head. It’s the largest grizzly bear ever recorded in the world. But it was shot to death by a U.S. Forest Ranger who was out deer hunting last week when the huge bear charged him from about 50 yards away. The ranger emptied his 7mm Magnum semi-automatic rifle into the bear and it finally dropped, only a few feet in front of him. The bear was still alive so the ranger reloaded and shot it several times in the head, to end any suffering.

The bear will be stuffed and mounted, and placed on display at the Anchorage airport to remind tourists of the risks involved when in the wild. "Confronting a 14', 1600 pound Grizzly bear in the backwoods is not something the average tourist wants to experience," said the Game and Wildlife commissioner.

After analyzing the contents of the bear's stomach, scientists with the Fish and Wildlife Commission established that the bear had killed at least two humans in the past 72 hours including a missing hiker.

The US Forest Service, backtracking from where the bear had originated, found the hiker's 38-caliber pistol emptied. Not far from the pistol were the remains of the hiker. The remains of the other missing person have not been found.

Although the hiker fired six shots and managed to hit the grizzly four times (the Service ultimately found four 38 caliber slugs along with twelve 7mm slugs inside the bear's body), he only wounded the bear and probably angered it.

The bear killed the hiker an estimated two days prior to the bear's own death. "There is no question this was a dangerous bear," said the commissioner.

An average sized man would be level with the bear's navel when standing upright. The bear would look him in the eye when it walked on all fours! This particular bear, standing on its hind legs, could look in the bedroom windows of a two-story house.

When informed of the bear killing, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin claimed to have tracked the bear herself days earlier, when out moose hunting, forcing it out of its lair. The bear fled when the Governor confronted it and yelled, "Back off - dammit. I'm the Governor and a probable Republican candiate for Pesident, and I could have you delisted with one stroke of my pen." (to be delisted means removed from the endangered species list)

Governor Palin declined to elaborate, citing the Governor-Bear privilege, honored only in Alaskan law, stemming from ancient traditions of the Aleuts, the native inhabitants of Alaska. The Aleuts consider the Grizzly bear sacred, like the cow in India, and believe it is a sacrilege to kill them or report their presence to the U.S. Forest Service. As a result, the protected bears have grown to enormous sizes. The Grizzlies have grown even larger in recent years, as a result of eating Twinkies, Hostess cup cakes, donuts, tostitos and hot dogs with dill relish, all washed down with beer pilfered from the campsites of tourists.

Midnight Rambler IV

Well, here we are again. Another year has come and gone and we are face to face with our own mortality, and that shit just won't go away. Willy Nelson helped put it all in perspective, at least for older men, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Willy observed that he had outlived his own dick.

Now we all understand what Willy was referring to. He had, with the help of modern medicine, lived to the age of 75, despite a very dissolute life, but he had lost his ability to perform sexually. That's a big thing for men because so much of their ego is invested in that one, fairly small part of who they are. A man just doesn't really feel like a man when that part dies.

But how can it be that our whole body outlives certain parts but in many cases there are no replacement parts? We're working on that, with heart transplants, liver transplants, artificial joints, and an array of prosthetic devices that is astounding in its extent and quality. But for that one body part that is monumentally important for one half of the population, there has been very little progress.

Interestingly enough, that one little manly body part is of great importance to women also. It's probably the most important way they have of connecting with the other half of the population.

And just when the drug companies come along with a little pill to partially revive men's dead parts, like Viagra, then along comes a cardio vascular ailment, and the cardiologist says you need to take a blood thinner, to prevent clotting. So whoops, there goes the Viagra, which essentially works in the opposite direction of the blood thinner, along with all the other erectile dysfunction medications. So, many men actually live to be 72 or 75 or even 80 or 85, but their most cherished body part is now dead. No matter what you or your partner do, it just lies there, like a wet noodle, and does nothing for either of you except suggest suicide or murder.

Women don't have this performance problem and don't need replacement parts for their most intimate parts. About the worst thing that can happen is they have to use a lot of KY jelly or some other lubricant, but they can go on doing that until the day they die and still keep performing. On the other hand, there is just no way to fake a hard dick.

We, here at Bizarre Stuff, believe that a man's essential parts ought to last at least as long as the man. It would be one thing, if, like an automobile, a man could replace a worn out part, either with a new replacement or a rebuilt part. But when you can't get a replacement dick you are fucked, or maybe that should be not fucked.

So we strongly urge you, men and women alike, to write to your elected representatives and urge them to take strong action to find a cure for this deadly ailment. Many of our political representatives are themselves old, and are personally affected by the problem. Senator Robert Dole, a former candidate for President, made TV commercials about his own limp dick problem, with strong encouragement amd support from Elizabeth Dole, his wife. In fact, every commercial for performance enhancing drugs for men invariably shows a smiling, happy woman, strongly suggesting she is getting more sex, and is glad about it. And, women buy more Viagra than men.

For starters, we believe it would help America much more to spend about half the stimulus funds on research and development to find a quick replacement part for men's dicks. If America can spend $100 billion plus so the President can get a little payback for his dad against Saddam Hussein, surely it can spend $300 billion to get American men back in the saddle and off the battlefield.

"My country 'tis of the, sweet land of cuckoldry, of thee I sing etc. etc. etc."

Hey, you....yeah, you with the mask..what are you doing?

Police say masked man waited in line to rob bank
Published - Jan 09 2009 05:06PM CST | AP

A man may have tipped his intentions when he stood in line at an Ohio bank wearing a ski mask before staging a holdup. Police in Stow near Akron said 24-year-old Feliks Goldshtein of Highland Heights was arrested minutes later on Thursday following a brief car chase.

Police said the teller asked the man to take off the mask before being served. At that point the man displayed what turned out to be a toy gun and told the teller to give him all the money.

Police Captain Rick Myers said it's unusual for a masked robber to wait in line at a bank.

Goldshtein was being held at the Summit County Jail Friday on charges of aggravated robbery and failure to comply with a police order. He had an afternoon court appearance scheduled.

Alaskan Bar Bouncer Pissed On and Pissed Off

(Not the actual urinator. An example urinator. Click on photo to enlarge.)

FAIRBANKS, Alaska(AP) A 22-year-old Fairbanks man was arrested for allegedly urinating on a bouncer at a bar on Sunday morning. The bouncer at Kodiak Jack's told police that he was trying to remove another man from the bar for causing a disruption.

The bouncer said he was trying to calm down the other man when he noticed the man behind him urinating on his leg.

The man was charged with harassment, indecent exposure and making a false report. He was apparently angry that his friend was being thrown out of the bar

Sample Essay Found on Microsoft Office OnePage Notes

January 9, 2009, Sault St. Marie is a U.S. city with an unusual name. It is located on the U.S. side of the St. Mary's River, which is the dividing line between Canada and the U.S. at that point. I haven't had sufficient time to determine why the Canadians got to name it? The city is the closest thing you can find to a singularly Catholic place. Marquette University, while technically located in Milwaukee, is a solidly Catholic school where you can easily get your ass kicked by suggesting that God was a big, burning hunk of love and never had any intention of letting Joseph in on the grand prize, Mary. And Mary, who was a steamy, sweat-smelling "hotty," would get it on with a Syrian, if that was her dick of last resort.

One thing you had to watch out for with Mary is that she would literally fuck your eyes out, on a dare. She probably fucked a third of the male population in Jerusalem and was the first equal opportunity fuckess.

No, wait, Cleo had already done that and found Ceasar wanting. Cleo, whilst on a shopping trip to Athens, talked Ophelia into having a four way with a centurian and a comely lass she bought in the slave market, especially for the occasion. She later had the poor girl de-clitorized, sodomized with the mast from a sailboat, and disfigured by pouring boiling water over her face, neck and shoulders.

The Bible, the Koran of Christianity, originally was contracted to be about some of the disciples writing down the history of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, although it's hard to see how anyone would forget that trick of turning water into wine. Taking dirty water from a cistern and converting it into wine, is the Holy Grail of the Wine Heads.

Mosquitos Teach Humans How to Mate

Veri Veri Tru, Phenom Pen January 7, 2009

In a multi-year study involving billions of test subjects, housed in several large climate-controlled buildings,scientists at Cornell University have discovered certain patterns in the sex lives of mosquitos that may have huge implications for the diagnosis and treatment of human sexual disfunction. (Sexual disfunction is the seventh leading cause of divorce in Western nations), following: 1)disagreements about money; 2)credit card abuse; 3)meeting someone cuter and sexier than your current mate; 4)monopolizing toilets while text messaging; and one or two others.

The researchers at Cornell have discovered that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes _ the ones that spread diseases like yellow and dengue fever _ alter their wing vibrations in a mating signal. Males can virate their wings (legs) at 600 beats per second, females at 400 beats per second.

The good news is that the finding could lead to better ways to manage coitus in human subjects, according to Roland P. Slaw, an author of the report published Thursday in the underground edition of the journal NonScience, popularly known as Nonsense.

When asked to specify how the discovery could aid in the treatment of sexual disfunction, (the seventh leading cause of divorce in Western nations), Dr. Slaw explained that if women and men can learn to move their legs 400 to 600 times per second during intercourse, sexual disfunction, (the seventh leading cause of divorce in Western nations), could be reduced by more than 7% in two generations, at a cost less than it would take to eliminate starvation in the world.

Meanwhile,outside the office of the Dean of Science, a group of insects rights activists were preparing to hold an all-night, candlelight, prayer vigil, to stop the wanton destruction of one of nature's most common and endearing insects, the pesky little mosquito, the one that buzzes your ears and won't land. "Billions of mosquitos are being held against their will, in unsanitary conditions, many without a taste of blood for days, so some college preppy can get it on with his lay lady lay," said an insects rights spokesperson, on condition of insomnia.

Boys Will Be Boys and Parents Will Be Prosecuted

January 7, 2009

In two unrelated incidents, authorities in Kansas reported that an eleven year-old adopted boy disappeared from his home ten years ago but no one thought to report him missing until now. The adoptive parents said they just assumed he had gone back where he came from. His 17 year-old sister said that was not a very good excuse. A manhunt for the former boy has now been initiated by authorities. The adoptive parents say they feel real bad about not reporting him missing before now. "We just kept putting it off," said the woman. When police arrived to arrest the parents, they asked if the whole matter couldn't just be forgotten since it had been such a long time ago. They pointed out in their defense that they couldn't even remember what the boy looked like. One of he arresting officers hit the man in the face with a car jack, flattening his nose, splitting his forehead open, and turning his face into a bloody pulp, as shown in the above mug shot taken after his arrest and booking.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, a six-year-old boy's mother did not get up in time to take him to school after he missed the school bus. The boy took his mother's car and drove himself almost to his school, crossing a large suspension bridge and making several left turns successfully, before losing control of the vehicle and crashing into a utility pole. The boy got out of the car and continued on foot toward the school. He was picked up by authorities before arriving and charged with leaving the scene of an accident. His mother and father were charged with reckless endangerment of a child.

The entire states of Kansas and Virginia were charged by federal authorities with gross stupidity, under a law enacted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Kansas attorney general said the law probably could not be applied retroactively to the missing kid case. Federal authorities said the law could be used against Kansas because the adoptive parents had not reported the boy missing until 2009. If a jury should find Kansas guilty, every Kansan would receive a framed official letter of stupidity signed by the Governor.

Four Year-Old Boy Shoots Babysitter for Stepping on His Foot

(Photo not the real toddler. Example only.)

JACKSON, Ohio(AP) Police say an angry 4-year-old Ohio boy grabbed a gun from a closet and shot his baby sitter. Nathan Beavers, 18, was hospitalized Sunday with minor wounds to his arm and side after the shotgun attack. Police say another teen was also injured.

Witnesses told police the child was angry because Beavers accidentally stepped on his foot. One witness said the toddler had warned the babysitter not to step on his foot but the babysitter did not take him seriously. He does now.

Beavers was watching the child at a mobile home in Jackson with several other teenagers and several other children.

Jackson County Sheriff John Shashteen says authorities are investigating. The child has not been charged. A local judge said this should serve as a warning to babysitters everywhere. "Toddlers are natural born killers." The four-year-old's parents said their son had never shot anyone before except his uncle, and that they intended to tell him not to shoot any future babysitters.

Cheeks Ahoy on the Ski Slopes

(Click on picture to enlarge.)

Skier Suffers Exposure
Man left dangling upside down, pantsless after Vail lift mishap

JANUARY 6--In a bizarre incident that will surely lead to litigation (or an out-of-court settlement), a skier at Colorado's ritzy Vail resort was left dangling upside down and pantsless from a chairlift last Thursday morning. The January 1 mishap apparently occurred after the male skier, 48, and a child boarded a high-speed lift in Vail's Blue Sky Basin. It appears that the chairlift's fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding. As seen in the photo above(which was snapped by a laughing female skier), the Skyline Express lift was stopped shortly after the pair's botched boarding resulted in the man dangling from the lift. The exposed skier was stuck for about 15 minutes before Vail personnel backed the lift up and successfully dislodged the unidentified man from the four-seat chair. In a statement released this afternoon, Vail Resorts, which operates the ski area, reported that the skier was not injured after being "suspended for approximately seven minutes." The press release did not explain how the mishap occurred, only that "the man was caught on the chair." In a statement released by the man later, he said, "I damn near froze my boys hanging up there. A few more minutes and I could have made my own vanilla soft serve." The photographer, who made the photo available to the local news media, said it would be a chihuahua's portion of soft serve if he did. "That dude was badly shortchanged by nature," she remarked.

Spying On Americans and Designating Them White Supremacists? For What? Protesting the War? You have to be kidding. No one is that dumb! Oh yeah?

Sunday 04 January 2009

»
by: Lisa Rein and Josh White, The Washington Post


One of the groups spied on, the DC Anti-war Network were labeled as white supremacists for no apparent reason. (Photo: Charlie Archambault / USN&WR)

New documents reveal Maryland program's reach.

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored - and labeled as terrorists - activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

One of the possible "crimes" in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights."

According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents, the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of two men on death row.

The operation has been called a "waste of resources" by the current police superintendent, whose salary is the real "waste of resources"," and "undemocratic" by the governor, who was elected on a platform of denying voting rights to "anyone who has been issued a speeding ticket."

Police have acknowledged that the monitoring, which took place during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), spiraled out of control, with an undercover trooper spending 14 months infiltrating peaceful protest groups. Troopers have said they inappropriately labeled 53 individuals as terrorists in their database, information that was shared with federal authorities. But the new documents reveal a far more expansive set of police targets and indicate that police did not close some files until late 2007.

The surveillance ended with no arrests and no evidence of violent sedition. Instead, troopers are preparing to purge files because they are expecting lawsuits.

The effort, made public in July, confirmed the fears of civil liberties groups that have warned about domestic spying since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Interviews, e-mails, public records and an independent state review reveal that police in Maryland were motivated by something far narrower: a query about death penalty activism directed to a police antiterrorism unit that was searching for a mission.

But some observers say Sept. 11 opened the door. "No one was thinking this was al-Qaeda," said Stephen H. Sachs, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) to review the case. "But 9/11 created an atmosphere where cutting corners was easier."

Maryland has not been alone. The FBI and police departments in several cities, including Denver in 2002 and New York before the 2004 Republican National Convention, also responded to the threat of terrorism by spying on activists. Some Texas state troopers even set up a plan to spy on each other.

Sachs's review, released in October, condemned the Maryland spying as a severe lapse in judgment, "just plain stupid, imbecilic." No one has been reprimanded or fired, however, and the undercover trooper has been promoted twice.

To date, the activists listed as terrorists are not known to have experienced any related limits in their travel, employment or financial transactions.

State police officials have provided only glimpses of their intelligence-gathering and have defended some of it as necessary to ensure public safety at potentially contentious protests, such as a suspected terrorist attempt to disrupt a turtle race in July. Although they have provided related documents to the American Civil Liberties Union and Maryland lawmakers, they have not given the same records to The Washington Post under the Public Information Act.

The department declined to make the officers involved available to answer questions. Some sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the case's sensitivity. Ehrlich also has declined to comment; senior police officials say he was never briefed on the program. The newly discovered documents do, however, reveal for the first time the stated purpose of the operation: "To assess the threat to public safety by various protest groups, and identify high threat groups for continued monitoring."

* * *

The documents and law enforcement sources say the operation began in 2005 with a simple request from Maj. Jack Simpson, a field commander in special operations. In late February, he called Lt. Greg Mazzella in the intelligence division and asked for a threat assessment of protests expected before the scheduled execution dates for two men on Maryland's death row.

After trawling the Internet, an analyst reported a "potential for disruption" at both executions. Mazzella dispatched a corporal who needed experience in undercover work to the Electrik Maid community center in Takoma Park, where death penalty foes were organizing rallies.

At a rally to save Vernon Evans Jr. outside the Supermax prison in Baltimore a few weeks later, the woman who said her name was Lucy McDonald asked veteran activist Max Obuszewski how she could learn more about passive resistance and civil disobedience.

The activists recall that she had a genial disposition and refreshing curiosity, and she quickly became a fixture at meetings and rallies of death penalty opponents and antiwar activists. She used a laptop computer at meetings, but the activists say no one was alarmed. "Maybe I wondered what she was typing," said Mike Stark of Takoma Park. "But you always check yourself. In our movement it's very important to be outward and not paranoid. She could have been writing love letters to her fiance in a federal maximum security facility for all I know."

The trooper provided weekly reports to her bosses, logging at least 288 hours of investigative time. She did not return phone calls seeking comment, and The Post is not identifying her because of concerns about compromising her cover in other possible operations. "The Bush administration has taught all of us in journalism to learn the value of keeping our mouths shut and our keyboards locked," said a reporter who refused to report the matter.

The logs described silent vigils outside the prison and a ceremony of poetry and songs to commemorate the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. The activists pledged nonviolence. Yet she closed several entries this way: "Due to the above facts, I request that this case remain open and updated as events warrant."

The woman's bosses considered her surveillance a low-risk training exercise; it quickly expanded to the antiwar movement as she met activists whose causes overlapped, police said.

Intelligence commanders discussed the spying at their daily briefings and made Lt. Col. Thomas Coppinger, then the chief of the intelligence bureau, and Superintendent Timothy Hutchins aware of it, law enforcement officials said. Coppinger and other officers involved in the case declined to comment.

The program emerged after the antiterrorism squad had been whittled from almost 65 to a dozen.

Hutchins's predecessor, Ed Norris, a hard-charging former Baltimore police commissioner, had built up the division after the Sept. 11 attacks to fight terrorist threats.

But when Norris was forced out by corruption charges in 2004, the unit was gutted. Most of the computers and other high-tech equipment for intelligence troopers were literally ripped out of the walls, law enforcement sources said.

"We concentrated on what we could do best, rather than a little bit of everything," Hutchins said.

When Simpson called, the unit finally had a mission.

Greg Shipley, a police spokesman, said the undercover operation spanned months as the death penalty cases saw their timelines grow and the executions delayed.

Other intelligence gathering was prompted by planned protests largely to ensure that no violence occurred, Shipley said. Investigators had concerns about the potential for "counter-demonstrations" to planned protests, he said.

Current Superintendent Terrence Sheridan said in a Nov. 25 letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery) that police had a right to monitor activists in public forums.

"Presence at a rally, a demonstration, gathering information from open sources such as the Internet, etc. are all part of the collection of the knowledge and information crucial" to police work, Sheridan wrote.

* * *

The undercover trooper's early moves were sometimes clumsy. She sent e-mails from a domain linked to the state police that could easily have been uncovered with an Internet search. She sprinkled truth across her cover story, once revealing her home county. She suddenly changed her name to Lucy Shoup and offered a new e-mail address, claiming a change in marital status. She asked lots of questions but never shared her thoughts, activists say. She also tried to use her new friendships to learn more about other groups.

Then, with Evans's execution stayed, the woman disappeared. "Lucy was no more," Obuszewski recalled.

Meanwhile, the intelligence-gathering expanded in other directions, to activists in New York, Missouri, San Francisco and at the University of Maryland. Shane Dillingham's primary crime, according to the six-page file classifying him as a terrorist, was "anarchism." Police opened a file on the doctoral student in history a week after an undercover officer attended a College Park forum featuring a jailhouse phone conversation with Evans.

Investigators also tracked activists protesting weapons manufactured by defense contractor Lockheed Martin. They watched two pacifist Catholic nuns from Baltimore. Environmental activists made it into the database, as did three leaders of Code Pink, a national women's antiwar group, who do not live in Maryland.

PETA was labeled a "security threat group" in April 2005, and by July police were looking into a tip that the group had learned about a failing chicken farm in Kent County and planned on "protesting or stealing the chickens." A "very casually dressed" undercover trooper attended a speech by PETA's president that month and waited afterward to see whether anyone talked about chickens. Nobody did.

Police had turned to the database in a low-cost effort to replace antiquated file cabinets. The Washington High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a regional clearinghouse for drug-related criminal information, offered its software for free.

But the database did not include categories that fit the nature of the protest-group investigations. So police created "terrorism" categories to track the activists, according to the state review. Some information was sent directly to HIDTA's main database as part of an agreement to share information.

Putting the activists into the database was "a function of nothing more than the insertion of a piece of paper in a paper file in a file cabinet," Sheridan wrote. But labeling them "terrorists," he said was "incorrect and improper."

The activists fear that they will land on federal watch lists, in part because the police shared their intelligence information with at least seven area law enforcement agencies.

HIDTA Director Tom Carr said his organization's database became a dead end for the information because law enforcement agencies cannot access the data directly. The database instead acts as a "pointer": Investigators enter case information and the database indicates whether another agency has related material and instructs investigators to contact that agency. The activists were not a match with any other data, Carr said, and their information has since purged.

"The problem lies in the fact that once [the state police] checked it out and found it was not accurate, they should have removed it from the system," Carr said. "And they did not do that."

* * *

The surveillance program became public largely because of documents released during a trespassing trial for Obuszewski, the nuns and another activist arrested during an antiwar rally at the National Security Agency. The documents showed that Baltimore intelligence officers were tracking them. The American Civil Liberties Union then filed public records requests with several law enforcement agencies. When the state police refused to release what they had, the ACLU sued.

O'Malley condemned the monitoring as a politically motivated mistake and moved quickly to seek answers. He appointed Sachs, who had prosecuted Catholic activists for raiding a Selective Service office in 1968.

Sachs called the spying a "systemic failure" that violated federal regulations and said police were oblivious to the activists' rights to free expression and association.

The Maryland State Police have changed their policies and plan to solicit advice from the ACLU, the General Assembly, prosecutors and police about regulations that would raise the bar for intelligence-gathering to "reasonable suspicion" of a crime.

Some activists have responded by redoubling their efforts.

Pat Elder, a Bethesda advocate who organizes a demonstration on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the gates of Lockheed Martin's headquarters, sent a public message to police last month on a local Web site.

"Did it ever occur to you that we're on the side of the good guys and you're not?" Elder wrote in an open letter to the NSA, the Maryland State Police and Montgomery police. "How do you think it makes us feel to know you're looking over our shoulders this way?"

In a joint statement, the current head of NSA and the Superintendent of the Maryland State Police responded, "How do you think it makes us in law enforcement feel to get caught violating the law and look like the bunch of idiots we are? You stop protesting and we won't violate your constitutional right to protest. That's only fair, and then we won't look so stupid and you get to keep your damn rights. Some of our little guys, at the bottom of the feeding chain, will have to be sacrificed, to make it appear we are handling the problem, and the fault for their loss of employment and the resulting family suffering will be on your back."



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Staff researchers Julie Tate and Meg Smith contributed to this report.