Something silly and happy for a Saturday. A teen-aged Annabella Lwin looked to be having a good time in this one. We only ever really know her as a teen though, as her band's time came when she was very young, and it was brief.
It's a Harry Potter summer!
I was so excited about the new book coming out that I was unable to contain myself and had to find out what happens. I went to all the spoiler sites and I found out that Snape kills Dumbledore. And why not? Dumbledore's heart was as black as Tojo's.
The thrills don't end there, though. I can't wait for the new HP film's that coming out. In one scene the Dementors pick up Professor Lupin over at the Shrieking Shack with a tranny he insists he thought was a woman. In his resulting panic he attacks them with a patronus whose shape had heretofore been indistinct -- and a thirty-foot tall Richard Simmons lays into their ranks in a frenzy of slapping. Seeing that on the big screen is going to be awesome.
(The above post is dedicated in its entirety to INDC Bill, whose boggart is, by the way, a hard day's work. Shiver.)
One of the stupidest trials in recent memory came to an end here in Broward County the other day, and the delicate sensibilities of Broward County Sheriff's Deputy Coryus Veal were upheld: prisoner Terry Lee Anderson got 60 extra days in jail for beating his meat in his cell. He is the eighth prisoner against whom this fragile flower has sought criminal charges for this act. Her chicken-choking radar is a finely calibrated instrument. A dim-witted jury bought into the notion that since a jail cell is a limited access public place, then jail cell masturbation must constitute indecent exposure. I wonder how they, and Deputy Veal, dew-covered rose petal that she is, are able to reconcile that with the reality that there are commodes in each cell into which pantless inmates defecate and urinate in front of God and everybody, including the aforementioned fair damsel. The shower room is also a limited access public place, and one can only imagine how she's coping with these males' daily naked ablutions and the possibility they might lather their genitalia just a little too long.
Yes, Mr. Anderson is a pig, and it would have been preferable for him to have been a pig in a blanket if he was going to masturbate in his cell, but for Sheriff Jenne to allow a prisoner's not treating an officer like a lady to wind up in the criminal courts is simply ridiculous.
All I can say to Coryus Veal is, "Lady, you're in the wrong damn job."
A Broward prisoner accused of committing a sex act while he was alone in his jail cell was found guilty Tuesday of indecent exposure.Terry Lee Alexander, 20, unsuccessfully fought the charge, which had been brought by a female Broward Sheriff's detention deputy who saw him perform the sex act in his cell in November.
In reaching the guilty verdict, jurors found that an inmate's jail cell is ''a limited access public place'' where exposing oneself is against the law.
The judge sentenced Alexander, of Lauderdale Lakes, to 60 days in jail, on top of the 10-year sentence he is currently serving for armed robbery.
The sole witness in the case, BSO Deputy Coryus Veal, testified that Alexander did not try to hide what he was doing as most prisoners do. Veal saw him perform the act while she was working in a glass-enclosed master control room, 100 feet from Alexander's cell. There was no video tape or other witnesses.
Alexander's attorney argued that the prison cell was a private place and that what Alexander was doing was perfectly normal.
''Did other inmates start masturbating because of Mr. Alexander?'' Kathleen McHugh asked Veal. ``Did you call a SWAT team?''
''I wish I had,'' answered Veal.
Veal, who has charged seven other inmates with the same offense, insisted that she was not against the act itself -- just the fact that Alexander was so blatant about it. Most inmates, she testified, do it in bed, under the blankets.
Veal said this was the third time she caught Alexander, and she had had enough.
In the end, it took a jury of four men and two women only 45 minutes to find Alexander guilty. Broward County Judge Fred Berman sentenced Alexander to 60 days in jail.
''It was pretty straightforward,'' said juror David Sherman. ``The prosecution's case was clear, and the defense did not dispute any of the major elements.''
Sherman said jurors determined that a prison cell, which is owned and operated by the government, is neither public nor private but is a ``limited access public place.''
He also said that none of the jurors had a problem with the sex act,per se.
The case drew snickers in the courtroom, especially during jury selection, when prospective jurors were quizzed about their own habits.
Defense attorney McHugh faced 17 prospective jurors and asked point-blank who among them had never performed that particular sex act.
No hands went up.
While most prisons deal with such an offense internally, Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne -- and Miami-Dade Corrections officials -- are hoping to curb the practice among inmates by prosecuting them.
Janelle Hall, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Corrections, said that while no charges have been brought against inmates, the department is working with State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle's office to discuss prosecution of such ''egregious'' cases in the jail.
''It has been a hot topic so to speak in our department,'' Hall said. ``In those cases that are egregious, where there is some sort of intent to deliberately expose themselves, those cases will be reviewed further in the courts.''
A spokesman for Broward State Attorney Michael Satz said prosecution is warranted when an inmate exposes himself in plain view of the detention staff or others.
''Female detention deputies are human beings, too. Why should they have to view such vulgar and indecent behavior in their place of work?'' said Satz spokesman Ron Ishoy.
Prosecutors filed charges in all seven of Veal's other cases, Ishoy said, but later dropped the charges in one of those cases to allow the defendant to begin his sentence in the state prison system on a more serious, unrelated charge.
Four of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charge of exposure and were sentenced to time served. Charges against two inmates are pending.
The State Attorney's Office did not have the number of cases involving inmates charged with indecent exposure in BSO jails.
And there was no information on whether similar charges had been brought against female inmates.
''When an inmate exposes [himself], it's up to the deputy's discretion how to handle it,'' said Elliot Cohen, a BSO spokesman. ``It can be a verbal reprimand to the filing of criminal charges.''
Teri Barbera, a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, said jail inmates there are written up for violating jail rules and subject to disciplinary actions.
As columnist Fred Grimm put it:
''It was very vulgar. Very indecent,'' Veal testified.She was describing the crime but she could have been characterizing the prosecution, the trial, the verdict and the obscene, indecent, vulgar, lascivious, downright stupid waste of time and money.
If your county comes up with a stupider reason for a trial, let me know, but I think we'll be hanging on to the trophy for a while.
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice.)
They may be able to knock twenty years off Faith Hill using computer software, but absolutely nothing will remove the taint of Tim McGraw.
Good thing this Bobby Sherman performance was probably on past my bedtime or I might have hit my head when I swooned. Was there anything back then that didn't get fringed leather attached to it?
Submitted from the list "Songs I Recorded On Our Reel-to-Reel."
UPDATE:
Via CJ, Homer Simpson illustrates perfectly Bobby Sherman's appeal.
I picked up something once in the woods of California that gave me a rash all over my legs. Take a tip from me and don't share a sleeping bag with any encamped homeless guys:
Once upon a time, there was a guy who was walking around and minding his own business when a bunch of snakes attacked him. They grabbed him with their snakey parts, bit him 5 billion times, then dragged him into a hot tub full of lava. Then they dragged him back out, all bit up and burned and stuff, and put him in the middle of the road, where he was run over by a billion minivans and a water buffalo.And right now, I would gladly trade places with that guy. Why? Because I have a poison ivy rash and he doesn’t.
I don’t know if you’re allergic to poison ivy, but if you are, then you know how miserable it is. It’s just plain awful. Poison ivy rashes don’t itch all that bad; that’s not the problem. The problem is that the itchiness never, ever stops. You wake up in the morning, you itch. You go to bed at night, you itch. You catch a plane to assassinate insurgents in Prague, you itch. It never, ever stops. It’s the Chinese water torture of minor ailments.
I’ve had poison ivy rashes before, but not like this one. I used to get poison ivy all the time when I was a kid. I’d play in the woods behind my house all the time, and every summer I’d spend two or three days lying in bed, covered head to toe in angry red dots. I did this because I was a stupid, stupid child.
Read the rest here.
Bonus: poison ivy sampler! Proportionately speaking, it runs a little heavy on the cherry nougat.
They lied and unleashed a scourge but they won't be serving any time:
A federal judge on Friday fined Purdue Pharma L.P., the maker of OxyContin, and three of its executives $634.5 million for misleading the public about its risk of addiction.Purdue Pharma, its top lawyer and former president and former chief medical officer pleaded guilty in May for claiming that OxyContin was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications.
Michael Friedman, who retired in June as Purdue's president, general counsel Howard Udell and former chief medical officer Paul Goldenheim each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of misbranding the drug. Of the total fine, $34.5 million was levied on those three.
U.S. District Judge James Jones placed the company on probation for five years and each of the executives on probation for three years. He also ordered the three to perform 400 hours of community service related to prevention of prescription drug abuse.
400 hours of community service for knowingly creating thousands of addicts. What a joke. At least the toothless, scab-covered dipshit cooking up meth in a homemade lab isn't fooling the public about what he's peddling. Maybe if he did his work wearing a tie he'd get community service too.
More Florida kids enjoying the water on a hot day.
Some of my sister's grandkids in the aquifer-fed pond in her backyard.
Actually, with the exception of the closing which is quite rude, this letter from a city councilman to, well, a crack-dealing piece of trash, is though rather maladroit, not really anything for the recipient to squawk about if he is being the best crack-dealing piece of trash he can possibly be. As long as he's happy and does work he enjoys, that's all that really matters.
As this pic shows, good looks are really an asset
Good thing that organ player wasn't in the way.
Wail on, Skydog!
Isn't this sort of like complaining the food is terrible and the portions so small?:
During a heated argument, Roosevelt ''Pookie'' Jones told police, his girlfriend accused him of infidelity and an inability to satisfy her in bed.
That's even worse than telling a guy he doesn't know how to run the washer, and we know how badly that can turn out. Will Pookie rise above? Naah:
He responded by beating her to death, Miami-Dade police said.
These items fall into categories for both famous last word and retarded reasons people beat other people to death.
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice.)
I saw a wonderful movie last week that I'm still pondering. It's called Navigator: a Medieval Odyssey. The lead character is a very intense young boy dealing with the pressures of life -- in his case having until dawn to try to save his village from the Black Death. Wait 'til he finds out that his favorite band of traveling minstrels have broken up. The straw that broke the camel's back, my friends.
The story and how the director told it, the acting, the cinematography, the soundtrack -- it was all primo. The movie's a little gem.
The film's OOP and hard to find. I rented my copy through Netflix.
Heather Mills is getting a $140 million settlement for less than four years of marriage. It's always been my opinion that one-legged women are trouble, and here's my spot-on intuition being played out on the world stage for all to see.
To further illustrate my point, here's the story of a fellow monopod who didn't seem to fare quite as well as Miss Mills, although in the end she was all the better for it.
Meanwhile, didn't Paul McCartney's band give a tight performance here? I know it's to be expected given his experience, but oftentimes concert performances sound like hell to me.
Love the horn section opening.
If the mayor of St. Louis were a woman, Ike Turner would kick the living shit out of her for this:
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has turned down a request to honor Ike Turner, the legendary musician who has publicly admitted to hitting his ex-wife, entertainer Tina Turner.Slay was asked to make Sept. 2 “Ike Turner Day” in St. Louis, the same day the award-winning performer is scheduled to play the Big Muddy Blues Festival at Laclede's Landing.
The request was made by Dawne Massey, the director of the music festival, who says that the mayor's office has bestowed a similar honor each year for the headline act at the concert event.
“He helped put St. Louis rhythm and blues on the map,” Massey said about Turner. “We were only looking to celebrate his contributions to the music industry. Many entertainers have checkered pasts.”
When asked why he refused to proclaim a day in the famous musician's honor, the mayor said he wouldn't be "comfortable" doing so. That's generally the kind of whiny, womanly response that would particularly get on Ike's nerves, so the mayor should consider himself doubly lucky he's not making proclamations with a fat lip.
This poster for one of Duane's last shows has the strangest drawing of Duane I've seen thus far.
What is that they have him wearing? A barber's bib? Oh, no! Not the 'chops!
Wail on, Skydog!
Today a Missouri man finds himself longing for those olden, golden days of an iron skillet to the head:
A Lincoln County woman was arrested Saturday after she doused her boyfriend with lighter fluid and tried to set him on fire, deputies said.Jessica Bressie, 30, of the 200 block of Burr Oak, was charged with felony first-degree assault and was being held Monday in the Lincoln County Jail on $50,000 bond.
Authorities said Bressie was arguing with Damon Akers about their children's behavior. When Akers attempted to leave in his vehicle, Bressie smashed the rear driver's side window with a baseball bat.
Akers tried to get out of the vehicle and was struck several times with the bat causing contusions, bruising and swelling around his body, deputies said.
Bressie then went to the couple's home and got a can of lighter fluid and doused Akers, soaking his clothing, authorities said.
Bressie then chased him around the yard with a cigarette lighter, threatening to burn him to death.
When a Lincoln County Sheriff's deputy arrived, Bressie attempted to retrieve a weapon from the kitchen, deputies said. The deputy was allegedly struck several times by Bressie before taking her into custody.
Sometimes you've got to get these things out of your system.
Lilly enjoys a snooze with the soft-rumped Shiloh.
I -Phone photo.
From a series of slides in Central Park.
Duane looks to be getting down (literally) in that fourth one.
Wail on, Skydog!
There's some leftover family if anybody wants it:
A Belgian man appeared in court on Friday after a woman at his dinner party found the bodies of his wife and stepson in the freezer as she put away the leftovers, prosecutors said.The woman went to the police after discovering the 46-year-old woman and her 11-year-old son and officers arrested the man in the town of Verviers, near Liege in east Belgium, on Wednesday.
"She went to the freezer and that is what she saw. She then alerted the police," said Georges Lahaye of the local public prosecutors' office. Prosecutors want the suspect, aged 43, to be remanded in custody to allow more time for an investigation into the deaths.
Lahaye said the suspect had not made a confession. He added that the couple argued a lot.
So his beef was the wife. I guess that makes the kid an innocent side dish.
After six months I'm glad to see that former kidnapping victim Shawn Hornbeck is out and about. Too bad that in this instance it's because some cretins trashed his family's memorial. On a much brighter note, here's a detailed write-up on the excellent progress that he's made heading up to his 16th birthday.
You can leave a birthday wish for him and/or a donation to his foundation here. For all the Duane Allman fans here, I've got a special pic in the offing for any of y'all who go on over and part with the bread.
Guys should never despair that they can't get a girl:
John Mark Karr, who made what turned out to be bogus claims of killing JonBenet Ramsey, was jailed Saturday in a domestic argument at his father's house in suburban Atlanta.Officers received a 911 call late Friday from the house about an argument between Karr, his girlfriend and his father, Sandy Springs Police Lt. Steve Rose said.
If you're creepy, unattractive, and a walking bundle of pathologies, turn that into an asset. Being positive's the thing.
So take heart, INDC Bill, and others.
A moth to the flame.
It was an intricate and clever scheme foiled by their mommy:
Detectives arrested a 12-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister for allegedly abducting their neighbor's 1-year-old son and demanding $200,000 for his return.Brandon Wells was safe back at home Thursday night, hours after intruders broke into his family's residence and took him while his mother, Sheila Wells, slept, police said.
"I've been doing this 18 1/2 years, and this is the first time I know of when a 10- and a 12-year-old kidnapped a 1-year-old," said police Capt. Dean Grassino. "It definitely ranks up there with the unusual crimes."
The siblings, who were not identified because of their ages, are accused of sneaking into Wells' home at about 5:30 a.m., taking Brandon and leaving a ransom note.
"If you want to see your son again then you won't call police and report him missing and you will leave $200,000 on the sofa tonight and we will return your son back safe," the note read, according to police.
The note was signed, "the kidnappers."
The plan began to unravel when the girls' mother saw them with the child, police said. They told their mother they had found the boy on the corner, police said.
I'm expecting big things from that 10-year old. I know you're probably thinking she peaked early and will descend into mediocrity, but I can see her becoming Oklahoma's most famous cat burglar. She'll burgle real cats, stealing the collars right off their necks as they sleep, because that's how stealthy she'll be.
Here's a guy who doesn't know how to get things done. You don't make requests to your bosses for a bigger budget through the pages of the Miami Herald. Bill Proenza's tenure as director of the National Hurricane Center may be the briefest in that institution's history:
Nearly half the employees of the National Hurricane Center urged the federal government to replace their director, saying they needed to return their focus to protecting people from dangerous tropical weather.A growing number of staffers believe that center Director Bill Proenza has damaged public confidence in their ability to forecast storms. Proenza has repeatedly and publicly criticized the government for failing to provide enough funding and to replace an aging weather satellite.
"The effective functioning of the National Hurricane Center is at stake," the 23 staffers said in a letter. "The staff of the National Hurricane Center would like nothing more than to return its focus to its primary mission of protecting life and property from hazardous tropical weather, and leave the political arena it now finds itself in."
He's been in a state of open hysteria since his first day on the job. Coming in on the heels of the recently retired ultra-calm and professional "When Max Whispers, Everybody Listens" Mayfield, Proenza's scenery-chewing freakouts have been seen akin to palm trees waving wildly in a stiff breeze. Of course his meltdowns might lose their comic edge once hurricane season actually starts and the public fully realizes the decision to put millions of people on the move rests with Don Knotts' Mr. Chicken. On second thought, if his google-eyes pop out on springs and twirl around when seeing a hurricane on the radar it might be worth keeping him around.
In an inexplicable moment caught on camera, Duane was not front and center.
Wail on, Skydog!
This video on master gun-jumper and mass dedigitizer William Messenger's outing on the Wynoochie River in Washington state is just adorable. The verbal eye roll given by the grizzled good Samaritan who had to retrieve the riparian ripper's severed fingers after the latter found it unbearable to wait for him to get them unpinched from between a boat and a tree is precious. Do you think that if he'd been taking a leak and got his willy pinched instead, he'd have waited for someone to bring a crowbar?
An Arkansas man has struck a blow for Boo Radley, Mr. Wilson, and all other homeowners terrorized by tykes:
A man irritated by children throwing rocks at his house shot and killed a 9-year-old boy, police said Tuesday.Officers were called shortly Monday afternoon and found Demotric Moore with a gunshot wound to the neck. The boy was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Officers saw Jonathan Watts, 50, inside his home, ordered him to the ground and arrested him.
"I've had it with these kids and the rock throwing," Watts said as he was being handcuffed, El Dorado police Capt. David Smith said.
Watts told officers that he'd thrown the gun away. Initial calls reported a man with a BB gun, Smith said.
The weapon was a shotgun, according to a police report.
Smith said police had been called to Watts' home on a number of occasions.
"Apparently, rock throwing had been an ongoing problem," Smith said. "Even on one occasion Watts had thrown a brick at a small child ... in retaliation for a child throwing rocks."
Looks like you can make anyone come out of their bag if you try hard enough. He ratcheted it up a little too high though - - he completely missed the step where you sic the dogs on them. Will these children never know the exhilaration of running flat-out while anticipating that first nip from the toothy predator on their heels? It's what childhoods are made of.
