Archive for May, 2012

Art (Acevedo) damn it, Art! watch (#P of a series).

Monday, May 21st, 2012

I apologize. I think I may have missed a firing or two along the way. I plead the pressures of various things and throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Today’s APD firing is a doozy.

Det. Richard Munoz worked in the burglary division. Apparently, back in December, someone brought up concerns about how he was handing their case. In the ensuing investigation:

Interestingly, former Det. Munoz (who can still appeal his firing) had been suspended six times since he started with APD (in 1995) and was actually fired in 2006 “for policy violations related to his honesty, use of force and documentation of incidents”. He was reinstated by an arbitrator, and suspended in 2008 for public intoxication. After that suspension, Chief Acevedo apparently told him “one more, and you’re out”.

Also:

Munoz was a member of a unit formed last year after an Austin Public Safety Commission meeting where city leaders discussed the low rate of burglaries being solved. Acevedo said in April that the burglary unit has seen several successes, including a rise in the burglary clearance rate.

Pardoning Porter.

Friday, May 18th, 2012

Over at Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson has announced an interesting project: obtaining a pardon for William Sydney Porter, also known as “O. Henry”.

The project has a separate website: Pardon O. Henry.

I thought this blog entry, in particular, was interesting: Is it possible O. Henry was actually innocent? I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the short answer is that Porter was very probably a victim of shockingly poor banking practices and, had he not fled the country and returned, he probably would have walked. There’s an even more astonishing piece of information contained in Henson’s blog entry, but I encourage you to go read it for yourself.

Noted.

Thursday, May 17th, 2012

I can get Wired for a buck an issue if I use the blow-in cards that come with the print edition. (I can also frequently get Wired for a buck an issue if I purchase it at Half-Price Books.)

If I go to their website to subscribe, the combined print/tablet issue costs $1.67 an issue. The tablet or print issues by themselves cost $1.25 an issue.

If I get the Wired app from Amazon for the Fire, yep, $1.67 an issue if I do an in-app purchase. And the app gets mixed reviews.

(Current print subscribers apparently get the content for free. Which means that it makes more sense to go to Wired‘s web site and subscribe than it does to do an in-app purchase: $15 vs. $19.99. It makes even more sense to subscribe using the cards, but then I have to deal with the print editions.)

Look, Conde Nasties, I’d be happy to subscribe to the Kindle edition of Wired. But I want at least as good a deal as you give on those blow-in cards. One dollar an issue or bust!

Administrative note.

Thursday, May 17th, 2012

Graduation is over. Back on your heads.

More seriously, the time for introspection has passed. (Also the time for action.) Expect a return to snark, guns, snark, cops, snark, pop culture, snark, art, and snark.

I still have a few things to finish up: thank you notes are being written and mailed, and I need to go through the photos and pull some out for posting.

In the meantime, frankly, things have been kind of slow. I’m not finding a lot of blog fodder; FARK has picked up most of the good stuff, including some “Art, damn it, art!” fodder.

Lawrence did send me an intriguing link yesterday about Rielle Hunter, equestrian, and how her father paid a hit man to kill one of her horses. That William Nack story rings a bell with me, like I’ve read it before, but I don’t remember where. Setting aside the John Edwards angle, it is a fascinating crime story. It reminds me of Skip Hollandsworth’s “The Killing of Alydar”, which was anthologized in one of the The Best American Crime Writing volumes, and which I also commend to your attention. (I believe the BugMeNot link on the side will let you read the full version of the story online, but BugMeNot is blocked at the office, so I can’t verify that.)

I would also like to add one final note, for the record: I will put my family, friends, and coworkers up against any other group of people for sheer concentrated awesomeness. Thanks, gang.

Obit watch: Naked came the reporter.

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

Mike McGrady, reporter for Newsday.

Mr. McGrady was also somewhat famous for being one of the instigators behind the legendary Naked Came the Stranger:

…the Village Voice rapturously described the book as being “of such perfectly realized awfulness that it will suck your soul right out of your brainpan and through your mouth, and you will happily let it go.”

The book is attributed to “Penelope Ashe” but was actually written by a group of 25 Newsday reporters, with McGrady and Harvey Aronson editing their work.

And there’s a punchline at the end of the obit which I won’t spoil for you.

It was perfectly innocent. Really. I swear.

Monday, May 14th, 2012

I went over to Amazon because I wanted to see if S.W.A.T Magazine was available in a Kindle edition.

The answer is “No”, but I discovered something else.

S.W.A.T. themed romances. There appear to be two authors in this genre: Denise A. Agnew whose works include

and J.C. Wilder, author of:

(I can’t tell for sure, but the latter two appear to be longer works in the “Men of S.W.A.T.” series. The first two are 70 and 79 pages long, the last two 100 and 96. The Agnew books appear to be closer to full on novels, coming in at about 250 pages. Except for Within His Sight, which clocks in at 81 pages.)

A little night music.

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Continuing with our theme of musical interludes, how about a little sherbet as a palate cleanser?

This is another song that I was listening to a lot in 2006 (along with “The Walls Came Down”: “It’s a song of assassins ringing in your ears/We got terrorist thinking playing on fears”). It still has a lot of resonance with me as a song about hope and faith and belief. Not necessarily in a religious sense; there’s not a whole lot of religion in this song, but the message is still clear.

“For people like us, in places like this, need all the hope that we can get…”

A long overdue thank you note.

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

I want to write about someone I don’t know personally, but yet I feel an obligation to them.

This is hard to do. If you don’t carry it off right, you come across as a creepy stalker. Of course, I am not a creepy stalker. At least, not of this person; my creepy stalker exploits are reserved for Kate Winslet (I have been a proud member of the “Kate Winslet Creepy Obsessed Stalker Web Ring” since 1994). I also do hire out my services as a stalker to certain people I know personally. Writing about Marc Randazza made me feel strange and kind of stalkerish, but in his case I had some public accomplishments that I could point to.

More seriously, I’m not saying anything profound by pointing out that electronic interaction is weird. I can have friends I see rarely, and who I communicate with only through the Internet. (There’s a person I know who I would jump in front of a bullet for without hesitation. She lives in London, and the last time I saw her in person was in 1997. Much of our friendship has been mediated through electronic interaction; email, chats on the old Delphi network, and things of that ilk.) There are people I’ve come in contact with since I started this blog who I consider friends, but haven’t met – yet. (But the NRA convention is in Houston next year. Just saying.)

So. Anyway.

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Obit watch: special “and his hair was…perfect” edition.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Vidal Sassoon.

Hog update.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

A few weeks ago, we asked the musical question:

…how bad was the damage to Petrino’s Harley Davidson Road King?

By way of FARK, we have an answer. The Harley is for sale on a site called copart.com. It looks to be in pretty bad shape; as both the Mobile Press-Register and copart note, the Harley is estimated to have suffered $18,000 worth of damage, but is only valued at $16,000.

En Fuego.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Some folks may have noticed that I haven’t written much about my experiences with the Kindle I purchased a while back.

Well…the screen went south on that one and it is unusable.

I’d held off on replacing it because I have the Kindle reader on my phone, so there wasn’t a compelling argument for me to have a stand-alone Kindle.

At least until Amazon had their sale last week offering refurbed Kindle Fires for $139.

Mine arrived yesterday. I’m still messing around with it trying to get things set up the way I want then, but expect some thoughts on the Fire in the nearish future.

(I actually do still agree with John Siracusa’s summary of the Kindle Fire: “a magical, colorful window through which you can give money to Amazon“. But my plans for the device mostly do not involve giving a lot of money to Amazon; rather, I’ve been loading it up with O’Reilly ebooks and public domain/free content.)

Edited to add: Interestingly enough, the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson 3rd Edition is available on the Kindle, and probably works much better on the Fire than it does on the regular Kindles. I’m willing to give Amazon $15.39 for that; Supica and Nahas are essential, but also an awful lot to lug around.

This is intended to enrage you. (#3 in an irregular series)

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

The lawyer for one of the Fullerton policemen charged in the beating of a mentally ill homeless man suggested Tuesday that it was medical professionals –- not police officers -– who are to blame for the death of Kelly Thomas.

Following the jump is a graphic and disturbing image.

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Random notes: May 9, 2012.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Notoriously anti-gun RINO Richard Lugar went down in flames like a tax-fattened hyena last night. Tam and Roberta X have more.

For the record: NYT obit for Maurice Sendak.

“It’s Baltimore, gentlemen. The gods will not save you.”

Nelson.

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

Keenan Alex stole a Cadillac Escalade.

Mr. Alex did not know that the car was actually a “bait car” being used by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to bust car thieves.

Mr. Alex also did not know that the “bait car” sting was being filmed by TruTV for their series “Bait Car”.

Mr. Alex was stopped and arrested by LACSD.

In court, Det. Anthony Shapiro said under oath that he read Alex each of his Miranda rights from a card in his notebook before the suspect made incriminating statements, a transcript shows.

But unedited video for the program shows the detective never read the suspect his constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent and have an attorney present during questioning.

Ooopsie. The case against Mr. Alex has been dropped. Detective Shapiro is being investigated by LACSD.

Snark snark aborted snark.

Monday, May 7th, 2012

Prosecutors also showed a Taser allegedly used by Cpl. Jay Cicinelli in the beating of Thomas on a video screen visibly covered in blood.

You’d think that they could at least wipe off that video screen first. But this is California; they do things differently there.

I was going to make a snarky comment that this NYT article on what killed Vladimir Ilyich Lenin didn’t include my own favorite theory. Except that it does:

Dr. Lurie concurred on Friday, telling the conference that poison was in his opinion the most likely immediate cause of Lenin’s death. The most likely perpetrator? Stalin, who saw Lenin as his main obstacle to taking over the Soviet Union and wanted to get rid of him.
Communist Russia in the early 1920s, Dr. Lurie told the conference, was a place of “Mafia-like intrigue.”