…40 year old man from Georgia posing as a lesbian in Syria.
Dude, that’s just sloppy work.
Lawrence was all over the mass grave that wasn’t in Liberty County, but I wanted to note an update or two.
HouChron interview with the “psychic” who says “she never wanted any attention and fears the worldwide interest in the case will destroy her life if her identity is known publicly.”
She strongly denied telling officers that they needed to search for bodies or that anyone was dead.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a standard fake psychic trick? “Oh, no, I never said {X}. I said {Y}. It’s their fault if they thought I said {X}.”
From the WP: “How the story of dismembered bodies at a Texas farmhouse fell apart”. “dismembered bodies”, “fell apart”. Someone at the WP was having a bit too much fun.
In other news, can we say that this story marks the official start of Silly Season 2011? When are we going to get the next shark attack?
I meant to blog this on Friday, but I got distracted by shiny objects.
“What’s Blippy?” you cry. Blippy was the “social website” that allowed you to “share” your credit card purchases with other people in your “social network”.
There are things that would interest me less than that, but I am hard pressed to think of many.
The shocking thing, at least to me, is that Philip Kaplan (aka “Pud”, aka “the guy behind F—edCompany.com”) apparently thought this was a good idea. I suppose even Homer nods from time to time.
The classic definition is, of course, the guy who murders his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.
I think we may have a new one: the Fiesta Bowl wants their illegal campaign contributions refunded.
First, the Indiana Supreme Court ignores hundreds of years of common law and asserts that there is no right to resist illegal entry by the police. I didn’t write about that decision because it’s been well written about here, here, and here, all by people much smarter than I am.
Next, the United States Supreme Court decides, 8-1 (!), that the police can basically create their own “exigent circumstances” in order to justify entering anyone’s home without a warrant.
And now, the RIAA is pushing for legislation that would allow warrantless searches of CD and DVD manufacturing plants. Apparently, if the police actually had to go to the trouble of getting a warrant, people making bootleg discs would flush them down the toilet…
Say what?
“wholesale fish dealers”?
This is to note that once again, I’ve bet Lawrence $5 even money that the Cubs will win the World Series this year.
Also, my bet with Lawrence on Gonzaga has been paid.
I wanted to show my support for a couple of things linked from Lawrence’s sites.
First off is the effort to make the 1847 Walker Colt the official state gun of Texas. Now, I am an unabashed Smith and Wesson fanboy. I am also a member of the First Church of John Moses Browning, Reformed. (“There is no God but JMB, and Colonel Cooper is his prophet.”) I believe thou shalt honor the 1911, and keep it holy. All of those things said, the Walker Colt is a significant gun in history (and especially in Texas history), predates both the 1911 and S&W, and (if Colonel Cooper’s Guns of the Old West and other sources can be believed) packs one heck of a thump; the Walker Colt was that era’s equivalent of the .44 Magnum. Further, the Uberti Walker Colt replicas look really nice.
In short, I fully support this idea. It makes more sense to me than making the armadillo the state mammal.
Secondly, I also want to throw my support behind Lawrence’s efforts to <mess> up the toenail fungus spammer’s business. I have not gotten hit by the toenail fungus spammers yet, but anything that messes up a spammer’s life is okay with me. So remember, folks: soak your toes in vinegar to kill toenail fungus. Don’t buy expensive crap from spamming scumbags.
Speaking of spamming scumbags, in case anyone was curious, the city commission election in Lawrence, Kansas, doesn’t take place until April 5th, so I won’t have an update on how spamming scumbag Sven Alstrom did until April 6th.
I’ve had a couple of people ask me if I’ll be covering various topics. Short answer: probably not, if you haven’t seen it here. Longer answers:
The Texas Department of Transportation is doing some work this weekend at the intersection of Interstate 35 and Ben White Boulevard (aka Texas 71). Specifically, they’ll be working on some new flyovers in that area. I would embed a Google Maps image here, but apparently WordPress 3.0.4 has a bug with embedding iFrames. You can try clicking here.
Anyway, what does this mean to you, Al Franken? TXDOT is closing the entire freeway from “late Friday evening to early Monday morning”. Yes, you read that right, the entire freeway. They’re diverting traffic onto the access road:
If I lived in the area, I’d stock up on popcorn. This is going to be better than the zoo and the circus combined. As for the rest of us, I think staying far away from I-35 for the duration is the best course of action.
A gun is a gun. It is designed to shoot things.
A gun is not an all purpose tool. A gun is not a club. A gun is not a prybar. A gun is not a bottle opener (the Galil aside). A gun is not a tool for breaking out windows.
Bad things can happen when you use your gun for things other than shooting. For example, if you use your gun to club someone (no matter how deserving) you may mar the finish. Blood does awful things to a gun’s finish, especially the beautiful bluing on older Smith and Wesson revolvers.
Hitting things with your gun can also bend parts. Then your gun won’t go off when you need for it to go off. As the great Peter Hathaway Capstick once said, “The most terrifying sound in nature is not the roar of a charging lion, nor the whistle of a descending bomb; rather it is a click when you expect a bang.”
But the worst thing that can happen is that your gun might go off when you don’t want to go off. (I’d almost be willing to argue with Capstick that the sound of a “bang” when you expect a “click” is even more terrifying. However, I haven’t spent much of my life hunting lion and elephant in Africa, more’s the pity.) For example, when you’re breaking out a car window.
Bad move, space cadet. (Edited to add: Just to make it clear for my readers outside Texas, “Humble” in this case is a city near-ish to Houston, not a description of the police officer.)
By this story in the LAT about the arrest of rapper “40 Glocc” (sp?).
Specifically, we are amused by:
This happened Friday night, but we’re only just now hearing about it:
(Statesman link includes dashcam video.)
It appears that the DWI charge against the horse rider have been dropped, but police are going forward with the DWI charge against the guy on the mule. In addition,
(The horse and mule are apparently being held at an animal hospital in Elgin; ownership of the two animals has not been established.)
John McClain takes a break from defeating Hans Gruber and his minions to let us know:
That post is timestamped at 12:10 AM this morning. This is the kind of brilliant analysis that passes for sportswriting at a major daily newspaper.
At 12:31 PM, McClain (having finished with Gruber and his minions) tells us:
Meanwhile, Pro Football Talk is repeating speculation that Kubiak will stay, but the Texans will hire…Wade Phillips?! as a defensive coordinator.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so let me just put one here:
And the owner of FireGaryKubiak.com is taking the site down “due to unrelenting hate mail and threats”. I didn’t think Gary Kubiak had that big a family.
One HouChron writer says “Fire him now; don’t let him coach the final game.”
Another HouChron writer says “Firing him now is pointless.”
Meanwhile, the fans are restless and organizing a “Fire Kubiak” rally for Sunday.
And in today’s bulletin from a failing chain of restaurants desperately crying out for relevance, T.G.I. Friday’s is apparently lobbying to have their particular style of bartending (which has a name that I will not dignify by giving it here) made an Olympic sport.
Megan McArdle, my favorite Certified NetWare Engineer, has discovered the fun of a game our circle of friends often plays: mocking silly stereo equipment on Amazon, and reading the reviews of same.
“I haven’t laughed so hard since I saw The Room.” Hmmm. We need to discuss scheduling that for a movie night sometime soon.