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2003-07-17
Stupid People From My Hometown, Part I
Administrivia Item #1: I'll be transitioning to MoveableType over the next several days, so if things go temporarily weird, that's probably why. Administrivia Item #2: I need to add something I forgot to mention yesterday: credit goes to one of my favorite comedians, Paul Gilmartin (co-host of Dinner And A Movie and frequent Bob & Tom guest) for the phrase "Undignified Ways To Die." Moving right along...
I have a friend who was once arrested for DUI (his BAC at the time was .08, which is exactly the legal limit in Indiana, so there's something not quite right there, but that's only incidental to my story). First DUI offense, no priors of any kind. They essentially maxed him out for a first offense with no exacerbating circumstances--overnight in jail, six months suspended license, two years probation, mandatory Driver Re-education, stiff fine. He figures it ended up costing him over $4,000. The point I'm trying to make here is that the system, though somewhat heavy-handed, worked: he was genuinely remorseful about what happened, accepted full responsibility, and to this day won't drive after even just seeing a beer bottle. Contrast that with the tale of this mental defective, who, I am ashamed to admit, lives in my hometown. Nine hours after being sentenced for his THIRD DUI (five years probation and 30 days in jail with work release; the county prosecutor said there wasn't enough room at the county jail to incarcerate him immediately after sentencing), Numbnuts wraps his car around a tree. Police find--surprise!--four empty beer cans in his car. Mr. Waste-Of-DNA is in critical condition at a Kalamazoo Hospital. Some people you just can't reach.
parking_god at 1:28 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
2003-07-16
Undignified Ways To Die, #38: How Not To Behave In Your Final Moments
In the latest installment in our series, we examine a good way to ensure a nice warm Final Destination with lots of personal attention at the highest levels. From spankysplace (with a hat tip to His Imperial Majesty), here's Or I'll Sue You!. It's the story of a rather unpleasant lawyer working his last case, so to speak. A taste: The patient, between howls of pain and moans of agony, had produced a paper from his briefcase and handed it to me. His shaky diaphoretic hand held a fist-full of these documents. Some of them fell from his grasp and flitted harmlessly to the floor. He strained against an agony I hope I never experience and repeated to me, "I’ll SUE You." I didn’t understand. He had come to us for help but the first words out of his mouth in triage were "You have to see me right now, or I’ll SUE you." Now go read the rest of it. I'll wait.
parking_god at 9:02 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
2003-07-15
A Quick Peek Down Under
According to this story from Fox Sports Australia, a professional soccer team is activing wooing gay fans: CARLTON has launched a bid to lure more gay supporters.
The Blues want to recruit gay men, lesbians, transgenders and bisexuals in a new membership drive.
Art dealer Lauraine Diggins, the only woman on the new-look Blues board, is driving the push as part of a "new and expansive vision for the club".
It is front-page news in this week's edition of gay newspaper, the Melbourne Star. The newspaper reports the club will contact many of the state's "queer" community groups in its search for new members.
Diggins revealed one aspect of the plan was to attract a lesbian with a professional career and a passion for the Blues to join a new women's networking group. We have no information on whether the Blues will rename themselves the Pinks. This News Interactive story describes a Melbourne couple being the first in Australia to be charged with sexual slavery:
The charges are the first of their kind laid under 1995 sexual servitude laws and carry a maximum of 25 years in jail.
The arrests came after raids by Australian Federal Police in Melbourne and Sydney as part of Operation Tennessee, a joint operation with the Immigration Department.
Federal police allege the women, aged 25 to 36, came to Australia legally after being lured to work in the sex industry.
But instead they were forced into slavery under the guise of paying off debts, it is alleged.
The women were allegedly kept locked up in "safe houses" when they were not working.
Police claim they were only allowed out to work at Club 417, a legal brothel run by Ms Tang and Mr Davies in Brunswick St, Fitzroy. So, was sex slavery legal in Australia before 1995? And I think it's pretty odd that they called it Operation Tennessee. 'Regular' brothels (whatever that means) are legal, so why didn't they call it Operation Nevada?
parking_god at 10:36 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
2003-07-12
Stupid Lawyer Tricks
I've been bashing the French since long before it became popular, so I was all ready to label this story 'Stupid French Tricks.' However, the stupidity here appears not to be of French origin. After reading the story on This Is True, I did a little more digging around and found the original story in the Miami Herald. "In what appears to be a bizarre case of mistaken identity, French and U.S. authorities were convinced that [Nona] Cason, 39, was Nadine Tretiakoff, a Frenchwoman charged with kidnapping her own two kids from ex-husband Pierre Fourcade." It seems that Ms. Tretiakoff absconded with her and Fourcade's two children in August of 1997. By some means still not fully known (i.e., those who do know aren't talking), Cason, who bears a resemblance to Tretiakoff, was fingered as the fugitive mom. She was arrested in May, and her two children, who coincidentally are each one year older than the missing children, were placed in foster care. Fourcade was notified and returned from France, where he positively identified Cason as his ex-wife and her children as their children. I was all ready to jump his shit for that, but it's been six years, and he's probably pretty desperate, so I'll cut him some slack there. No, the stupid behavior here is from lawyers for the international arm of the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children, which, if you think about it, is kind of an oxymoron (certainly appropriate, given the behavior I'm about to describe). This group, which assists Interpol with international kidnapping cases, had a picture of Tretiakoff and claimed that Cason bears a strong resemblance to her. They were unwilling to share this photo with the Herald. I find this very odd; typically, if you have a picture of a fugitive you seek, you'd be inclined to circulate that picture as widely as possible. Stupid Lawyer Trick Of The Month Nominee #1: Kathleen Ruckman, supervising attorney for the NCMEC, "noted that Cason 'looked like a foreign person'" and that she "also heard that the kids weren't going to school and that the family had moved suddenly." Well, holy crap! Call in the friggin' Delta Force (incidentally, from the story, that's not too far off--they blocked off a whole street to trap her for arrest)! Stupid Lawyer Trick Of The Month Nominee #2: After Cason's identity had been verified and DNA testing had proven that the two children were not Fourcade's, Tim Arcaro, Fourcade's lawyer, was still skeptical, saying "When you think about it -- the length people will go to disguise themselves with plastic surgery. . .". And the winner for Stupid Lawyer Trick Of The Month: Ruckman, for this little beauty: "Tretiakoff could have been unfaithful during their marriage, resulting in the children having DNA that didn't match the husband." Um, even if that were true, THEY WOULDN'T BE FOURCADE'S CHILDREN AND HE WOULD HAVE NO CASE! And lawyers wonder why most people loathe them. UPDATE:Larry's Log scooped me (and This Is True) by almost a month on this. He has a similarly low opinion of Ms. Ruckman, but he missed the angle about the kids not being Fourcade's if the kids weren't Fourcade's. Still, it's good enough to get him blogrolled.
parking_god at 6:53 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
2003-07-11
Random Vacation Thoughts, Part IV
You get into kind of a rhythm when you rent a house at the beach (technically, across the street from the beach--the term is 'second row'). Wake up late, eat breakfast (early lunch, really), pack a cooler full of beer, hit the beach. When the cooler's empty, come back, eat lunch, reload the cooler, and return to the beach. When the cooler's empty again, you've pretty much had enough beach for the day, so you come back, rinse off in the shower underneath the house, then drip try in the breeze on the deck with more beer until dinner. After a seafood dinner that would have cost $40 per person back in Indiana, the serious drinking begins.
The amount of beer six determined adults can consume in this fashion is truly mind-boggling.
Of course, it's not just drinking beer. The surf on Oak Island was good enough for some decent bodyboarding; indeed, most days the hardest part was fighting your way out past the waves breaking right on the beach to get to the ones you want to ride. I claim no special skills here: mostly, I just jump out right in front of a wave and let it push me in to the beach. Occasionally, I hit one Just Right and actually get a good hard ride out of it. A couple of those in a row and I start thinking Dangerous Thoughts. F'rinstance: one time, I saw a benign-looking big wave, and I got cute and tried to ride across it instead of straight ahead. The ocean was having none of it. To punish me for my impudence, it rolled me, then flipped me, then, in a final indignity, cracked me in the head with my own board. I swallowed enough seawater to salt meals I'd crapped out three days ago, and I had an entire gravel pit in my swimsuit. And all I could think about was how fast I could get back out and catch another wave.
parking_god at 4:20 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
2003-07-10
Random Vacation Thoughts, Part III
Whenever I travel, I like to pick up a copy of the local paper to get a feel for what kind of news the area residents are getting. Sometimes it's a daily, like the Lawton (OK) Constitution with its frequent attention to nearby Fort Sill. Other areas have a weekly paper, like my hometown Allegan (MI) County News. Anyway, it's easy to forget that even though I spent the last two weeks on a tourist trap island, only a few miles inland is rural North Carolina, where you get stories like this (courtesy of Oak Island/Southport's local paper, the State Port Pilot): A resident of the 300 block of Liberty Road said she returned home from work Friday evening to find that her home had been entered. Officer C. Ledbetter said the woman reported a $100 radio, four cans of beer, and a roll of generic toilet paper were stolen. Police found no evidence.
--State Port Pilot, June 25, 2003, p. 7A
parking_god at 7:58 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
2003-07-09
Random Vacation Thoughts, Part II
One day on vacation, I was sitting on the front porch of the house, which overlooks Beach Drive, and the oceanfront houses, and the ocean, when I heard a stereo coming down the road. A long time later, the car that was the transport system for said stereo came into view. The car was a Mazda Protege5 four-door hatchback; the driver was a sullen twentyish male with the requisite baseball cap, Oakley shades, and B-pillar lean (you know what I'm talking about: the driver's seat is reclined nearly all the way back and the driver's head is leaning against the door pillar so it looks like there isn't actually anyone in the driver's seat at all). The only thing I could think of as he went by: "Dude, it doesn't matter how loud your stereo is or how cool you think you are--you're still driving a station wagon!"
parking_god at 5:34 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
2003-07-08
Hulk Shag!
Ya gotta love those Spainards. According to the London Sun, Spanish toymaker Play By Play created a 12-inch stuffed Hulk doll that's not only anatomically correct, but anatomically proportional as well! The story features this picture:
which of course made me think of this (probably fictional) exchange between the photographer and the little girl: "OK Leah, now look at the doll... no, I need you to look up at its head... no, the OTHER head..." [CLICK!] "Finally!"
Money quote:
"And last night [mother] Kim called for a ban on the saucy toy. She said: 'A hulk with a bulk like this just shouldn’t be allowed.'"
parking_god at 12:31 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
2003-07-07
Random Vacation Thoughts, Part I
I'm back from vacation, tanned (more or less), rested (definitely), and ready to run. I'll be emptying out the notebook over the next few days as I transcribe what I thought about while on Oak Island (not this one, this one). So let's get started. I never understood the fascination with 'Southern' culture, usually manifested by the Confederate flag. I've always considered it a code word for redneck racism, but I could never quite quantify why until now. I was at a souvenir shop on Oak Island when I saw a t-shirt that said 'celebrating a rebirth of southern culture' or some stupid shit like that. On the back was a map of the US with the 'usual suspect' states highlighted, as well as one that surprised me--Missouri. I lived in Missouri for two years, and I know that the only people who fly the Confederate flag there are the same kind of shit-for-brains rednecks that fly the Confederate flag in other Northern states. Then it hit me--what all those states have in common. Before the Civil War, they were slave states. Thus, my conclusion: "Southern 'culture'" = "slavery." I welcome any rational attempt to explain exactly where I got it wrong (hint: if your response contains the word 'Yankee,' it probably fails the rationality test and you submit it at your own risk. Especially egregious responses will be vigorously fisked).
parking_god at 1:16 PM | Comment | Read comments | link
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Recently arrived from GeoCities
- Nothing of note. I really need to bring over my U-M football pages, what with football season coming up and all. Again.
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