Remember when I complained about ruining my shirt by leaving an uncapped pen in my pocket?
My dad, who follows my blog, sent me a bunch of dark colored shirts, including a black dress shirt.
Without thinking, I put on the black shirt today, and also grabbed a pair of black slacks.
I got comments on my style sense from about 5 people at work, the best being, “Johnny Cashing it today?”
I think that this is the closest that I have ever been to being fashionable in my life.
It’s now official. Paul Kevin Curtis, the Elvis impersonator originally accused of being the Mississippi ricin mailer, has been exonerated, and Wayne Newton impersonator James Everett Dutschke has been indicted:
A federal grand jury has indicted a Mississippi man suspected of sending poison-laced letters to President Barack Obama and other officials, according to an indictment made public Monday.
The 5-count indictment charges 41-year-old James Everett Dutschke (pronounced DUHS’-kee) with developing, producing and stockpiling the poison ricin, threatening the president and others and attempting to impede the investigation.
………
George Lucas, an attorney for Dutschke, said he had not yet seen the indictment and had no immediate comment.
Dutschke is the second person to face charges in the case.
Paul Kevin Curtis, a 45-year-old Elvis impersonator, was arrested on April 17, but the charges were dropped six days later.
So yes, the Wayne Newton impersonator attempted to frame the Elvis impersonator, and he got caught, and now his lawyer, George F%$#ing Lucas is waiting for the details.
This is beyond the wildest dreams of the writers for The Daily Show or The Onion.
Background here.
Yes, I put a pen in my pocket without putting the cap on, and ruined yet another shirt.
I’m thinking that I may have to start wearing a pocket protector, which would make my transition to poster child for sex without partners complete.
Damn!
H/t Jim Romenesko.
The head of the US Airforce’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Branch has been arrested on sexual assault charges:
A key point in last year’s Academy Award nominated documentary “The Invisible War” was that the military was structurally incapable of adequately policing sexual assault in the armed services. As if to bolster the filmmakers’ case, the Air Force officer in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Branch has been arrested and charged with sexual battery.
“The DoD estimates that, on average, there are more than 50 sexual assaults involving military personnel each day. The only thing unusual about this particular assault is that the accused was actually arrested and charged, and that senior officers in his chain of command cannot intervene to prevent his prosecution,” Kirby Dick, the director of “The Invisible War,” told CQ Roll Call. His film’s key tenet is that the military does not follow standard criminal justice procedures in sexual assault cases, keeping them within the chain of command, and that this has helped lead to an epidemic of sexual assault in the armed forces.
Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski was arrested by Arlington County, Va., police on Sunday in a Crystal City, Va., parking lot, as first reported by ARLnow. According to the police report “a drunken male subject approached a female victim in a parking lot and grabbed her breasts and buttocks. The victim fought the suspect off as he attempted to touch her again and alerted police.” Krusinski was arrested, charged and held on a $5,000 unsecured bond.
I am not particularly surprised.
The US military has long history of (at best) indifference to issues of sexual assault, as evidenced by the recent spate of get out of jail free cards issued by senior officers.
Jon Stewart was positively ecstatic last night about the whole ricin mailer thing (see video).
You remember, how Paul Kevin Curtis, the Elvis impersonator, was framed for mailing poisoned letters to President Obama and Senator Wiker? Well they have now fingered an enemy of his, Everett Dutschke, for the deed, and he is a Wayne Newton impersonator.
Remember what the Chinese say about living in interesting times?
Well, for Jon Stewart, this makes his job pretty easy.
You know that guy who is alleged to have mailed ricin laced letters to Obama and Congresscritters?
Wanna guess what his day job is?
He was an Elvis impersonator:
An Elvis impersonator named Paul Kevin Curtis who lives in Corinth Mississippi was charged Thursday for allegedly sending ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wiker (R-MS), and a judge in Lee County Mississippi. Court documents released by the Department of Justice show Curtis was charged with one count of sending a letter “containing threats to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States” and a count of sending a letter “containing a threat to injure the person of others.”
We are living in very strange times.
We went to Barnes and Noble to celebrate Charlie getting into a magnet program.
We got some books, and picked up some snacks.
Charlie wanders off and browsed some books, and he decided to glance through the erotic novel 50 Shades of Gray.
He opened up to a random page, and was rather nonplussed about what he encountered.
I wasn’t upset. This sort of exploration is all a part of growing up.
But when I looked at him, and I made a most unhelpful suggestion:
How about you do a YouTube based on this.
You do a takeoff of 50 Shades of Gray based on the Smurfs.
You could call it 50 Shades of Blue.
Charlie’s response was to complain that he could not get that image out of his head. (I am afraid to Google it)
I am a bad, bad, parent.
The New York Yankees are claiming in court that they should hold the trademark on the term evil empire, at least as it applies to baseball:
Fans of the New York Yankees might bristle when they hear their team referred to as the “Evil Empire.” But the team itself doesn’t seem to mind, at least judging from a recent legal dust-up over the phrase.
A panel of trademark judges in Washington, D.C., earlier this month denied a request from a private entrepreneur, known as Evil Enterprises, Inc., to register the trademark for the phrase “Baseballs Evil Empire.”
Evil Enterprises wanted the exclusive right to market merchandise using that phrase, which was coined in regard to the Yankees by Larry Lucchino, the president and chief executive of the Boston Red Sox, back in 2002. Upon learning that the Yankees had signed sought-after Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras, Lucchino was widely reported as saying: “The evil empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America.”
Evil Enterprises initially applied for a trademark back in July of 2008.
But the Yankees objected, arguing that they had the rights to the phrase—at least when used in connection with baseball.
This is a level of truth telling by the Yankees that rivals that of the satirical publication The Onion.
So not the f%$#ing Onion, but they are dosing mice with Tylenol and dropping them from helicopters on Guam:
Something about this just does not sound like a good idea. In the coming months, toxic mice will rain down on the jungles in Guam. They are the solution to the intrusion of the brown tree snake which has wiped out much of Guam’s native bird species after first arriving on the island in U.S. naval ships after World War II. With an estimated 2 million of the snakes on the island, the military has decided to carpet bomb the island with dead mice laced with lethal painkillers. Italy carpet bombed one its islands with poison to combat a similar rat problem. The brown tree snakes have been cutting power lines and even biting residents. However, there is the obvious problem of other animals eating the mice. To reduce this problem, the scientists have developed a flotation device with streamers designed to catch in the branches of the forest foliage, where the snakes live and feed. Yet, if anything goes wrong, we have replaced a brown tree snake problem with an army of airborne paratrooping zombie toxic mice with addiction problems.
What the hell?
Seriously, someone has jumped the f%$#ing shark!
I’ll go with the aesthetic sensibilities of the Norwegian people:
The TV program, on the topic of firewood, consisted mostly of people in parkas chatting and chopping in the woods and then eight hours of a fire burning in a fireplace. Yet no sooner had it begun, on prime time on Friday night, than the angry responses came pouring in.
“We received about 60 text messages from people complaining about the stacking in the program,” said Lars Mytting, whose best-selling book “Solid Wood: All About Chopping, Drying and Stacking Wood — and the Soul of Wood-Burning” inspired the broadcast. “Fifty percent complained that the bark was facing up, and the rest complained that the bark was facing down.”
He explained, “One thing that really divides Norway is bark.”
One thing that does not divide Norway, apparently, is its love of discussing Norwegian wood. Nearly a million people, or 20 percent of the population, tuned in at some point to the program, which was shown on the state broadcaster, NRK.
In a country where 1.2 million households have fireplaces or wood stoves, said Rune Moeklebust, NRK’s head of programs in the west coast city of Bergen, the subject naturally lends itself to television.
“My first thought was, ‘Well, why not make a TV series about firewood?’” Mr. Moeklebust said in an interview. “And that eventually cut down to a 12-hour show, with four hours of ordinary produced television, and then eight hours of showing a fireplace live.”
………
But the real excitement came when the action moved, four hours later, to a fireplace in a Bergen farmhouse.
Perhaps you have seen a log fire burning on television before. But it would be very foolish to confuse Norway’s eight-hour fireplace extravaganza on Friday with the Yule log broadcast in the United States at Christmastime.
While the Yule log fire plays on a constant repeating loop, the fire on “National Firewood Night” burned all night long, in suspensefully unscripted configurations. Fresh wood was added through the hours by an NRK photographer named Ingrid Tangstad Hatlevoll, aided by viewers who sent advice via Facebook on where exactly to place it.
For most of the time, the only sound came from the fire. Ms. Hatlevoll’s face never appeared on screen, but occasionally her hands could be seen putting logs in the fireplace, or cooking sausages and marshmallows on sticks.
“I couldn’t go to bed because I was so excited,” a viewer called niesa36 said on the Dagbladet newspaper Web site. “When will they add new logs? Just before I managed to tear myself away, they must have opened the flue a little, because just then the flames shot a little higher.
Yes, this is deliciously weird, but this is a hell of a lot less pathological than the American regime of reality programing.
I give you Ryan Werber, who created the world’s most amusing traceroute:
6 Episode.IV (206.214.251.1) 68.642 ms 67.307 ms 67.005 ms
7 A.NEW.HOPE (206.214.251.6) 65.986 ms 68.502 ms 68.708 ms
8 It.is.a.period.of.civil.war (206.214.251.9) 67.067 ms 70.139 ms 66.52
9 Rebel.spaceships (206.214.251.14) 70.214 ms 70.192 ms 71.622 ms
10 striking.from.a.hidden.base (206.214.251.17) 71.427 ms 74.206 ms
11 have.won.their.first.victory (206.214.251.22) 71.665 ms 70.434 ms 7
12 against.the.evil.Galactic.Empire (206.214.251.25) 69.218 ms 70.621
13 During.the.battle (206.214.251.30) 69.059 ms 68.931 ms 69.981 ms
14 Rebel.spies.managed (206.214.251.33) 77.247 ms 72.757 ms 77.61
15 to.steal.secret.plans (206.214.251.38) 71.224 ms 71.164 ms 69.543
16 to.the.Empires.ultimate.weapon (206.214.251.41) 68.744 ms 68.824
17 the.DEATH.STAR (206.214.251.46) 72.316 ms 74.551 ms 66.354 ms
18 an.armored.space.station (206.214.251.49) 69.413 ms 70.334 ms 6
19 with.enough.power.to (206.214.251.54) 66.182 ms 66.627 ms 71.23
20 destroy.an.entire.planet (206.214.251.57) 71.926 ms 71.266 ms 70.
21 Pursued.by.the.Empires (206.214.251.62) 67.298 ms 65.956 ms 66.
22 sinister.agents (206.214.251.65) 65.020 ms 67.806 ms 70.508 ms
23 Princess.Leia.races.home (206.214.251.70) 68.894 ms 71.147 ms 71
24 aboard.her.starship (206.214.251.73) 72.130 ms 71.093 ms 74.026
25 custodian.of.the.stolen.plans (206.214.251.78) 68.568 ms 67.939 ms
26 that.can.save.her (206.214.251.81) 67.063 ms 69.874 ms 68.889 m
27 people.and.restore (206.214.251.86) 70.395 ms 70.144 ms
28 freedom.to.the.galaxy (206.214.251.89) 66.098 ms 65.432 ms
29 0——————-0 (206.214.251.94) 75.931 ms 74.159 ms 80.012
30 0——————0 (206.214.251.97) 73.026 ms 73.403 ms 73.256
31 0—————–0 (206.214.251.102) 83.602 ms 82.079 ms 70.743
32 0—————-0 (206.214.251.105) 70.459 ms 69.403 ms 68.782 m
33 0—————0 (206.214.251.110) 68.516 ms 72.472 ms 71.811 ms
34 0————–0 (206.214.251.113) 69.056 ms 65.981 ms 68.202 ms
35 0————-0 (206.214.251.118) 66.790 ms 71.556 ms 74.292 ms
36 0————0 (206.214.251.121) 68.286 ms 71.042 ms 71.587 ms
37 0———–0 (206.214.251.126) 72.702 ms 71.785 ms 72.442 ms
38 0———-0 (206.214.251.129) 78.143 ms 74.411 ms 72.828 ms
39 0———0 (206.214.251.134) 69.692 ms 66.187 ms 67.369 ms
40 0——–0 (206.214.251.137) 69.184 ms 70.678 ms 67.445 ms
41 0——-0 (206.214.251.142) 70.383 ms 68.220 ms 67.543 ms
42 0——0 (206.214.251.145) 67.593 ms 72.970 ms 73.220 ms
43 0—–0 (206.214.251.150) 70.964 ms 69.082 ms 70.831 ms
44 0—-0 (206.214.251.153) 73.856 ms 71.848 ms 70.311 ms
45 0—0 (206.214.251.158) 71.517 ms 69.204 ms 69.538 ms
46 0–0 (206.214.251.161) 68.076 ms 68.179 ms 67.620 ms
47 0-0 (206.214.251.166) 68.738 ms 70.518 ms 68.757 ms
48 00 (206.214.251.169) 68.281 ms 70.225 ms 74.811 ms
49 I (206.214.251.174) 70.203 ms 71.668 ms 71.672 ms
50 By.Ryan.Werber (206.214.251.177) 68.900 ms 71.461 ms 72.297 ms
51 When.CCIEs.Get.Bored (206.214.251.182) 75.816 ms 73.957 ms 71.333 ms
52 read.more.at.beaglenetworks.net (206.214.251.185) 70.254 ms 73.799 ms
Unfortunately, his little trick went viral, and then the script kiddies decided to DDOS the site, so the traceroute no longer works.
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
H/t Crooks and Liars.
Satanists Rally For Florida Governor Rick Scott
When the going gets tough, the weird turn pro.
It appears to me that if you are going to do your level best to be horrible to teachers, and to make their lives a living hell, it’s Probably not a good idea to let them bring firearms to work and to give them military training:
Tennessee has emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting.
A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during its upcoming session to introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms so, the sponsor told TPM, potential shooters don’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) has said the idea will be part of his discussions about how to prevent a shooting like the one in Newtown from happening in the Volunteer State.
This is not quite as stupid as McArdle’s suggestion that we brainwash 6 year old children into gang tackling gun toting maniacs, but it’s pretty f%$#ing close.
I am waiting for The Onion to announce mass layoffs, because they can no longer compete with reality.
And I have to preface this by, “No, this is not The Onion.”
It appears that Quebec police have foiled a massive theft from the Canadian Strategic Maple Syrup Reserves:
It was a culinary whodunit involving a daring heist, a golden bounty, and now, some allegedly sticky-fingered suspects.
Police in Quebec announced the arrest of three men in the theft of 6 million lbs. of maple syrup from a provincial warehouse, a haul estimated at $18-million and enough to smother a Himalayan mountain of waffles and pancakes.
The arrests mark a badly-needed break in a case that circled the globe and pulled in law-enforcement agents operating in two countries and three provinces, all deployed in the retrieval of one of Canada’s most cherished resources.
The theft was discovered in August at a depôt rented by the Quebec Federation of Maple Syrup Producers, in what police believe was an inside job. Some 10,000 barrels of stockpiled syrup, part of the federation’s carefully guarded “International Strategic Reserve,” had gone missing. The Fort Knox-style controls reflect the fact that Quebec dominates the world market in maple syrup and carefully controls the commodity’s price and supply.
(emphasis mine)
Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve? Seriously?
Something is seriously weird here.
Also: If they have a International Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve T-shirt, or a baseball cap, I want one.
It happened twice in a 24 hour period.
In the 2nd, and somewhat less alarming case, I was driving Natalie to an outing at the mall with her friends, and she needed some money, and I knew that she had money in her cash account, but I was not sure that I needed to go to an ATM, so I handed her my wallet, and asked her to count the cash in it.
And then it hit me, I just asked my teenage daughter to go through my wallet and count my cash.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I handed my daughter my wallet, and I told her to count my money?!?!?
In the 1st instance, we were talking about relationships, and boys, and texting, and we were talking about how some of the kids in her school were making “impolitic” posts to their significant others.
I was trying to impress upon her that “sexting” was a really bad idea, because you never know when pictures like this will end up.
I ended my comments with the statement that, “If she wants to show her breasts to a boyfriend, she should do it in person, and not with a cell phone picture.”
And she looked at me.
And my wife looked at me.
And my son looked at me.
And I realized what I said, and, as a result, I probably looked like a cow that had just stepped on its own udder.
I am so not going to get a trophy for parent of the year.
