Not much is new with me since yesterday. Tonight Jen is having dinner with some friends tonight, so I'll be home alone - which is fine. Perhaps I'll take a nap.
Anyway, in today's entry I have the usual Headlines Column where I piss people off by poking fun at the president, etc... except now there is something new: reprinted weird news articles. Enjoy.
Holdouts killed
� All 6 al-Qaida holed up in Kandahar hospital dead
These once injured Al-Qaida dudes had locked themselves in a hospital wing back in December. U.S. Forces left them alone for two months so they could heal. Then after they're healed, feeling better and thus starting to cause some trouble, our U.S. Forces decide it's time to take care of the problem and end up killing all 6 in a commando raid.
"We let them heal because it's wrong to re-wound the wounded." - Pentagon.
The day after
� WashPost: Inside Bush circle on Sept. 12
"They're going to love me! I am going to be popular!"
"Yes Mr. President, but we'll have to kill people, mess with civil liberties and spend a lot of money thus inflating the National Debt."
"I don't care Mr. In-a-Secure-Location, straterery is your job, but they're still going to love me! "
Super Bowl set
� Patriots, Rams advance to championship game
I watched this game yesterday. I enjoyed it. I remember the past two Superbowls the Patriots were in. Both were horrible losses. I didn't enjoy watching those.
However, what I enjoyed most about that Pats game were the Pittsburgh players and fans who were making Superbowl reservations and buying plane tickets the week before the game... and they lost! Ha!
Bush struggles to revive drug cards
� WSJ: Issue a political headache
"Sir... giving the cards mouth to mouth won't help."
"Oooh, I'm feeling light headed."
"If you don't stop blowing on the cards you're going to get a headache."
� Dalai Lama reported in 'normal' health
Yeah, if normal for the Lama is: ABOUT TO DIE. Actually he just had a bowel infection.
� Newsweek: Security is no game
Security is no game? Security would be security unless it is the security game - in that case it involves handcuffs, a blind fold and a 12 inch tall canister of Vaseline.
TRUE STORIES:
The Dumb Gun
� "...but my fingers ain't demented!"
The Alaska Court of Appeals ruled in November that a judge could not take away a man's gun permit just because the man was suffering from a delusional disorder and believes that he has been injected with deadly chemicals and that a computer chip was planted in his head. State law, said the court, allows the denial of a permit only if a person has been taken through a full incompetency adjudication. The man, Timothy Wagner, came to the attention of authorities when he entered a store in Anchorage dripping wet because, he said, he was trying to soak the chemicals out of his body. He had a loaded .357 handgun (fully licensed) with him.
Corporate Cocks
� "I don't care what I see, you're eyes are NOT bleeding."
Trial got under way in January in which residents of Anniston, Ala., are suing for compensation for Monsanto's (and its corporate successor, Solutia Inc.) routinely having dumped deadly PCBs into the ground and local rivers for 15 years after it knew, from the company's own research, that the pollution was so deadly that fish in the rivers died bloody deaths 10 seconds after initial exposure to the water. According to documents from a chemical-safety organization and published in The Washington Post, Monsanto and its executives actively hid the dangers from its factory's neighbors while also dumping millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. (Monsanto no longer produces chemicals but does make genetically engineered food, which, it assures consumers and the government, is totally safe for human consumption.)
� The Police Blotter
Sentenced to 70 years in prison for armed carjacking in Kansas City, Mo., in December: Mr. Montea Mitchell (whose actual birth name, before social workers got it legally changed, was Murder Mitchell, named because an uncle was murdered around the time of little Murder's birth). �
Booked for aggravated assault and burglary in Salt Lake City, on New Year's Day: Mr. Joe Snot, 31. �
Arrested for robbery in Ottawa, Ontario, in November: Mr. Emmanuel Innocent (and, for aggravated assault in Kingsport, Tenn., in October: Mr. Innocent Safari Nzamubereka). �
Sentenced in December to at least 60 years in prison for the first-degree murder of a waitress in Washington, D.C.: Gene Satan Downing, 19. �
� Material for the writers of Law & Order and The Practice
In January, the brother of one of the seven people killed in October when a deranged man attacked the driver of a Greyhound bus in Tennessee filed a lawsuit against Greyhound and the driver. Apparently, the brother believes that the company should have hired a driver who could safely drive 60 mph while fending off a knife-wielding psychopath (or else trained drivers better to do that). �
In October, a judge in Rio de Janeiro turned down a defamation lawsuit brought by the daughters of the late Brazilian soccer player Manuel dos Santos ("Garrincha") against a biographer who had written that Garrincha was a "sex machine" with a penis nearly 10 inches long. The daughters had thought the disclosure was an insult to the memory of their father, who died in 1983, but Judge Joao Wehbi Dib concluded that, contrary to defamation, most Brazilian men would view such a reputation with great pride. �
The family of Paul Waymant filed lawsuits for more than $1 million in October in Salt Lake City against the searchers who failed to find Waymant's 2-year-old son before he froze to death on a hunting trip in October 2000. Waymant had left the boy alone in his truck for a few minutes, which allowed the boy to get out and wander off, and he eventually froze to death. Waymant was convicted for leaving the boy unattended, but in July 2001, rather than serve his 30-day sentence, Waymant committed suicide. Now, Waymant's family believes this tragic chain of events was all the fault of inept county search-and-rescue teams and their dogs, who did not find the boy in time. �
Lynn Rubin sued the school district in Union City, Calif., in November for $1.5 million because his son Jawaan was improperly assigned to his high school's junior varsity basketball team after failing a tryout for the varsity. Rubin said the family had already made logistical plans to accommodate the varsity practice schedule and that he, as Jawaan's father, was not consulted by the coach before Jawaan was sent back to the JV. �
According to witnesses, Kevin Rodriguez, 11, choked to death in January 2000 in his Broward County, Fla., school cafeteria after a hey-watch-this exhibition in which he shoved a large part of a hot dog into his mouth. In December 2001, Rodriguez's family filed a lawsuit against the school board because cafeteria and other personnel were not able to save Kevin's life and because hot dogs are too dangerous to serve 11-year-old kids. �
Just Plain Weird
It took emergency workers 45 minutes with hydraulic spreaders, but they finally freed a 2-year-old boy's head from a bongo drum (Fitchburg, Mass.). �
The mayor of Rio de Janeiro pressured prosecutors to send TV meteorologist Luiz Carlos Austin to jail for incorrectly predicting rainstorms over New Year's (and possibly panicking already-flood-weary residents). �
The owner of a single-engine plane watched helplessly as it, with engine revving yet no one on board, burst loose of its moorings and made a perfect takeoff and brief flight, before crashing (Sonoma County, Calif.). �
A 63-year-old woman, watching a supposedly helpful video demonstrating the open-heart surgery she was preparing for, got scared and suffered a heart attack (Workington, England). �
Someone Push The button Already
A North Vancouver, British Columbia, herbalist introduced four owner-friendly perfumes for dogs, marketing them as scents that both owner and dog could wear when they are out and about together. �
A jury in Miami awarded a 79-year-old woman $20.9 million in an auto crash case, despite the defendant's lawyer's argument that she should get only a fraction of that because her life expectancy is so short (and even shorter, due to his client's negligence behind the wheel) �
Hospital authorities in Australia told the Sydney Daily Telegraph in December that a (now-deceased) 15-year-old terminally ill boy, who had decided that his one dying wish was to experience sexual intercourse, got his wish via a hospital-arranged prostitute, but that the boy's parents, and church leaders, were outraged. �
� Near Darwin Awards and people who should just be 'helped'.
Bob Bowling, 32, shot himself in the thigh on Jan. 7 while practicing his quick draw on a snowman (Willard, Ky.). �
Paul D. Dimoff was accidentally shot in the chest at 2 a.m. on New Year's Day by the shotgun he had rigged as a booby trap to fire at burglars (McVeytown, Pa.). �
C*O*P*S Backfires
� Who says you can't learn from TV
James Clyde Shields, 35, became the latest person in custody to escape by driving off in a law-enforcement patrol car despite having been handcuffed with his arms behind him. Shields had been arrested on drug-manufacturing charges near Vancouver, Wash., in August, and was momentarily left in the back seat of the locked (but engine-running) car. He pulled his hands underneath him to be in front of him, opened the Plexiglas shield, squeezed into the front seat, got behind the wheel, and led a chase up Interstate 5 before crashing into a pole. Said a sheriff's sergeant, of Shields' limberness, "I know I couldn't do that, I'm a fatty."
