Weird and/or silly

[Crafty_Dog]

This thread is for the weird:

Crafty
--------------------------

Tomorrow's headlines, today. Better not allow the prisoner internet access to some of our more wacky song sites. Like this lovely database of horrible, uneasy listening. I recommend "My
Bathroom is My Special Place."

http://www.miserablemelodies.com/index.php

==========================
Man killed for singing Sinatra off-key
June 25 2003

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/24/1056449243426.html

A 25-year-old Filipino man has been stabbed dead for singing a Frank Sinatra classic out of tune during a birthday party.  Police officer Noel Albis said the victim, Casimiro Lagugad, was asked to sing Sinatra's popular song My Way during the party in the Manila suburban city of Caloocan on Sunday.

"Witnesses said the suspect, Julio Tugas, 48, one of the guests and a neighbour of the victim, got irked because Lagugad was singing out of tune," Officer Albis said.

"Tugas suddenly attacked the victim and stabbed him in the neck," he added.

Guests rushed Mr Lagugad to the hospital, but he died while being treated.
Tugas later surrendered to village security officials, who turned him over to authorities.  Police are preparing homicide charges against the suspect, who apparently admitted to the crime.

[burnsson]

he must have sung awfully!

[Black Grass]

Pinoys take their karaoke seriously!

[Crafty_Dog]

Man With Sword Kills 2 at Grocery

Three are wounded before police kill the attacker, a bagger at the Irvine supermarket. People grabbed items off the shelves to beat back the assailant.
 
Attacker Had a Long History of Demons
June 30, 2003
by Jack Leonard, Jennifer Mena and Dave McKibben, Times Staff Writers


A man wielding a samurai-style sword killed two people and wounded three others at an Irvine supermarket Sunday before his bloody rampage ended with a fatal volley of police gunfire.

The deadly attack occurred about 9:35 a.m. inside the Albertsons at Culver Drive and Irvine Boulevard, when Joseph Parker, a 30-year-old bagger known for erratic behavior, entered the market where he worked and began slashing employees and customers, witnesses said.  Wearing a green beret and a long, dark coat, the Santa Ana man pulled out a sword with a 3-foot blade and calmly attacked in silence, almost beheading one of his victims. As he roamed the store, employees armed with barbecue utensils, mayonnaise jars and trashcan lids tried to corner him.

"There were trails of blood everywhere. People were running. A lady was screaming," said Javier Ascencio, 38, of Irvine, who was returning a gallon of spoiled milk. "I was yelling for everyone to get out. Things just happened so fast."

Scores of customers, including the wounded, fled from the market in Northwood, an affluent part of one of the state's safest big cities. On Sunday morning, the store and adjacent retail center were filled with shoppers, people walking dogs and boys in baseball uniforms. Forty to 50 people were in the Albertsons.

"It was mass hysteria" outside the store, said Terry Fowler, a nurse who helped staff an impromptu triage center. "Everybody was in shock."

The supermarket "is like my extended family," said Linda Kouri, 65, of Tustin Ranch. "I know everybody, and they know me and my grandson. It is so sad. I just get the chills thinking about what happened here."

Police said two longtime Albertsons employees, Judith Fleming, 55, and John G. Nutting, 60, were killed. Two customers and another employee suffered moderate to serious slash and stab wounds. They were taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where they were scheduled for surgery.  Nutting, who worked five days at a Newport Beach Albertsons and one day a week at the store in Irvine, was about two months from retirement. Co-workers said he had worked in the supermarket business since 1960 and had managed several stores in Orange County.

About 10 minutes after the attack began, Irvine police shot Parker, who was taken to the same hospital as his victims. Doctors pronounced him dead of his wounds.

"The officer was confronted by the suspect, and the officer fired his weapon," said Police Lt. Jeff Love.

Police declined to speculate on a motive for the attack, but store employees and customers who were acquainted with Parker said that he acted distant, talked about religion and often behaved erratically. They said he would talk to himself in gibberish as he walked along the row of checkout counters or smoked outside the store.

"I have always told people that he was going to do something crazy someday," said Karl Wieduwilt, a young bagger at the store, who worked with Parker for more than two years.

Others said Parker was unpleasant to be around and was not the type of person they would want working for them, although some workers said they got along well with him.

"He was a pretty scary-looking dude," said Dave Wessler of Irvine, a regular customer. "I could not believe this guy worked at this store. They were good about hiring handicapped people, but he was a little too over the edge."

A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Parker had been detained at least twice by police for mental health reasons in the last few years. The last, the official said, was Jan. 15 at another store in the same shopping center.  According to an employee and the law enforcement official, Parker had not shown up to work for a few days. He reportedly approached the store manager Sunday, said that a friend had recently died and asked for some time off.  It was unclear what the manager's response was. After walking away from the manager, they said, Parker drew the sword from a sheath beneath his coat.  Witnesses said Parker cornered Nutting near the front of the store and stabbed him in the torso. He slashed Fleming across the throat, nearly beheading her.  Employees then chased Parker around the store, helped by workers from nearby retailers. They armed themselves with items from the store's aisles, including trashcan lids and items from the barbecue section.

"I was yelling at the top of my lungs for everyone to get out of the store," said shopper Ascencio, who armed himself with a metal chair and followed Parker from aisle to aisle. "It looked like he was going after employees and anyone who tried to help the employees."

The hysteria spilled into the parking lot, where nurse Fowler and a doctor treated the wounded, using shirts and belts from passersby as tourniquets and bandages.  The victims suffered deep lacerations to their arms, and one was cut on the back and across the forehead.  Fowler, 45, director of ambulatory care at UCI Medical Center in Orange, was in the toothpaste aisle when she heard a woman screaming that a man had killed one of the workers.

"She was holding her arm and she was bleeding," Fowler said. "I looked up and down the aisle, and I saw a man with a trench coat on and a sword holding it above his head It was just enough for me to say, 'Where's the nearest exit? I need to get out of here.' "

Meanwhile, witnesses said three officers entered the store about nine minutes after the first 911 call. Police reportedly confronted Parker and ordered him to drop his sword. Parker refused, they said, and one officer opened fire with an AR-15, the civilian version of the military's M-16 assault rifle.

"He's a hero," one law enforcement source said of the officer. "He saved a lot of lives today."

That afternoon, the news about Fleming's and Nutting's deaths saddened customers, fellow employees and neighbors. They eulogized them as hard-working, generous people, who were willing to help co-workers.

"If you needed a hand, you could always count on him," said Ralph Hoekstra, a neighbor of the Nutting family on Queen's Park Lane in Huntington Beach. "He liked woodworking. He rebuilt bicycles and motor scooters. He liked garage sales. All I would have to tell him was what I was looking for, and within a month he'd show up with the stuff."

Erik Flores, 23, a produce clerk at the store, learned of Fleming's death when he reported to work at 2 p.m.

"She was always in a good mood. She went out of her way to help you out," Flores said. "[She] loved her job. I would never hear her complain about anything. It is going to take a while to recover from this."

In the aftermath, police took employees and customers to department headquarters for questioning. Officers led groups of hugging, crying witnesses from the store to a a restaurant, where they boarded a bus.  
Outside the Police Department, Adrian Elizondo, 28, of Santa Ana waited anxiously to be questioned.  He said his wife took a job at the store's deli counter about three months ago and he was nervous about her going back to work on Tuesday.

"I don't want her to go back," he said. "Two people just passed away and there is no security in the front of the store."

Earlier at the shopping center, Melissa Shobe, 49, of Irvine was in the middle of a pedicure and a manicure at a nearby day spa when the attack began.

"A kid once called this place 'the Bubble' because it was so safe," she said.  "This is a rude awakening. I guess the bubble burst today. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere."

[Crafty_Dog]

Saudi jail inmate tells of pain and humiliation
July 1 2003
By Martin Daly

Hospital worker Robert Thomas saw six men taken from their cell to be shot during a horrific jail term in Saudi Arabia.

Mr Thomas, 56, said he was handcuffed, shackled, and survived largely on biscuits. He also said he saw fellow prisoners go insane. Mr Thomas was imprisoned on June 20 last year for a crime he said he did not commit.

His only bedding was a blanket near a hole in the ground. The hole was a toilet for 20 men.

He barely slept and was afraid of the violence he saw throughout his time in the prison.

Mr Thomas, now recovering at the home of his daughter, Sarah Munro, in Lynbrook, near Cranbourne in Melbourne's south-east, was sentenced by a Saudi court to 16 months' jail and 300 lashes, along with his wife and two others, for the alleged theft of hospital equipment.


His flogging was described at the time by Prime Minister John Howard as "appallingly inhumane" and "cruelly disproportionate punishment according to the values and understandings of Australia..."

Mr Thomas has given details of the prison conditions in an interview in Woman's Day magazine.

He was held in Al-Arm prison in the village of Bishah in south-western Saudi Arabia and was given 50 lashes every fortnight.

"It was overcrowded, we slept on the floor and the food was inedible. The heat was stifling, day in day out," he told Woman's Day. "Whenever I went anywhere, I was handcuffed and shackled. It was a feeling of humiliation I had never experienced... but I never let them see it.

"I would walk tall - a weak Westerner would be an easy target." At one stage, during a delay in his deportation, he thought he would never get out of cells in Jeddah where he had been transferred. "I thought I was a dead man," he said.

Mr Thomas said in the interview that his marriage of nine years to his Philippine wife Lorna was over after she allegedly failed to confess to the theft of equipment worth $100,000, for which he was sentenced.

Mr Thomas had been working in Saudi Arabia for 10 years before his arrest - at the time the anaesthetic technician was chief of department at the Prince Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Hospital of Bishah. Earlier he had worked at the Alfred Hospital and Cotham Private Hospital in Kew.

Mr Thomas said that he was sentenced under sharia law because, as Lorna's husband, he was judged by the court as guilty. The court said that as her husband he should have known what Lorna, who was chief nurse in the hospital's operating theatre, was doing.

His wife received a similar sentence and was also released early. She has returned to the Philippines.

The magazine said Mr Thomas would have been freed had his wife confessed, but she repeatedly denied the charges.

[Crafty_Dog]

A-hed
To Have and to Hold: The Key
To Wife Carrying Is Upside Down
By ROGER THUROW
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


VAIKE-MAARJA, Estonia -- Take it from a world champion: The best way for a man to carry a woman is to dangle her upside down over his back, with her thighs squeezing his neck and her arms around his torso.

"That way, your arms are free to help with balance. It's more stable. There's less shifting of the weight," says Margo Uusorg. He has just carried Egle Soll, her pigtails flapping against his back, around a 278-yard oval track that includes a 3-foot-deep water trough and two hurdles of wooden logs. In just over one minute, they won the Estonian championship here, and qualified for this coming weekend's Wife Carrying World Championship in Sonkajarvi, Finland, where Mr. Uusorg is a heavy favorite to win his third world crown.

"When you carry this way," he says, "it's much easier."

Ms. Soll, upright again and flushed by the experience, if not the victory, says, "It's not so bad. But you don't see much."

Estonian men turned up in this little farming village lugging their women upside down five years ago, and the sport of wife carrying hasn't been the same since. Suddenly, gone were the glory days of the piggyback carry, the fireman's carry, the wrap-around-the-shoulders carry. The "Estonian carry," as it was dubbed, was in. And Estonians have won five straight wife-carrying world championships. (Actually, "wife carrying" is a misnomer, for the rules in the freestyle competition allow the man to carry any woman older than 17, his wife or not.)


Margo Uusorg carries his 'wife,' Egle Soll, to the starting line.  
This Estonian dominance doesn't sit well with the Finns, who have been wife-carrying since the late 1800s, when marauding gangs would make off with women from neighboring villages. According to legend, a notorious brigand of the time named Rosvo-Ronkainen recruited only men who had first proved their worth by carrying heavy weight on a challenging track.

Now, it is the neighboring Estonians who are getting the spoils of victory. And a frosty Baltic Sea rivalry is getting fiercer.

"Every year," says Taisto Miettinen, "the newspaper headlines say, 'Once again, Finnish guy doesn't win.'&" That would be him. For the past two years, Mr. Miettinen has finished second at the world championships.

"The Finnish wife carriers are like the Boston Red Sox," says Michael Toohey, a Maine house painter who captured sixth place in last year's world championship after winning the North American Wife Carrying Championship in Sunday River, Maine. "People root for them, but they sort of know they won't win." He figured his own chances were slim when he awoke the day of the race and saw one of his Estonian opponents warming up with an early morning work out. "I saw that and I said, 'Wow, they're serious.'&"

The Finns, on the other hand, apparently just want to have fun. One of their world championship rules, in addition to the one imposing a 15-second penalty for dropping a wife, stipulates that "All the participants must have fun." In past competitions, Finns have awarded winners the woman's weight in beer. The Estonians, at their national championships here on June 21, gave winners the woman's weight in mineral water.

"We take too many things seriously," concedes Indrek Keskyla, the mayor of Vaike-Maarja. He blames the communists who ran this Baltic nation. "In the old Soviet Union days, we had to be serious, gray people," he says. Under communist rule, the village pushed to be the best farm cooperative in Estonia. Now, it produces the best wife carriers.

The mayor himself produced a lot of laughs when, leading off for the municipal team in the wife-carrying relay competition, he stumbled in the water hazard, drenching himself and his "wife," a woman who works for the city. But next year, he knows, it might not be so funny. "My wife wants to do it next year," he says. "I said if we do it, we do it for fun. But she says, 'No, we must be serious, we must train.'&"

There were some other laughs. A man dressed as Santa Claus carried Mrs. Claus. Robin Hood carried Maid Marian. And the several hundred spectators gasped when a woman dressed in a nun's habit assumed the Estonian carry position over the shoulders of a man dressed as a monk.

Despite the rather intimate carrying style, there were no jealous wives or partners fuming at trackside. "I'm happy that he won," says Kaia Laas, Mr. Uusorg's girlfriend. "He was already carrying other women when I met him. So I can't complain."

Tell me a story
Read related excerpts from the anthology "Floating Off the Page: The Best of The Wall Street Journal's 'Middle Column.' "
 
Besides, says Mr. Uusorg, "she's too heavy. Wait, that sounds bad. She's not fat, she's just too heavy for the competition." His girlfriend is nearly six feet tall and weighs about 127 pounds. Ms. Soll, his carrying partner, is barely five feet tall and weighs just 101 pounds.

Which brings us to the touchiest wife-carrying subject of all: weight. As if the Estonian's new carrying method wasn't enough to upset the Finns, they then started showing up in Sonkajarvi with lighter and lighter women. Mr. Uusorg, a 23-year-old administrative officer at the Estonian embassy in Sweden, arrived in 2000 carrying Birgit Ulrich, a college student weighing about 80 pounds. They won in the record time of 55.5 seconds. Then they won again in 2001.

The Sonkajarvi organizers, seeking to slow the Estonians, in 2002 set a weight limit, but not arbitrarily. Forty-nine kilograms, or 108 pounds, is the least a woman can weigh, "the weight of Armi Kuusela more than 50 years ago when she was crowned Miss Universe," the organizers explain.

But even carrying the heftier, 21-year-old Ms. Soll, who wears a weighted vest to bring her up to the weight limit, Mr. Uusorg looks tough to beat. He is tall, muscular and a regular runner. After winning the Estonian title last month in a time of one minute and 34/100ths of second, he said, "That was pretty easy."

Across the Gulf of Finland, in Helsinki, Mr. Miettinen, 38, and nursing a sore back, winced when he heard the time. It is better than his best.

For six years now, he has been trying to catch the Estonians. When the Estonians introduced the upside-down carry, he adopted it the next year, abandoning his old across-the-shoulders method. He improved from fifth place to third.

When the Estonians came with lighter women, he went in search of lighter women, too. In 2001, he found one who weighed 80 pounds. He improved to second place.

With the new weight limit, he has been looking again. Earlier this year, he sized up a co-worker at Finnvera, a corporate financing company. What's your weight, he asked.

"About 48 kilograms," said Eija Stenberg. He asked her to be his "wife." She thought about it overnight and accepted the proposal.

Write to Roger Thurow at roger.thurow@wsj.com

[Crafty_Dog]

Man with knife is arrested after hijacking bus in Redondo

By Larry Altman
DAILY BREEZE


A delusional man hijacked a bus in Redondo Beach, ordered the driver to speed through red lights and called 911, telling a dispatcher someone was going to kill him, officers said Tuesday.

Police learned about the hijacking at 5:30 a.m. Sunday when someone called the police to report an MTA bus near the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach displaying ?CALL THE POLICE? on its destination sign.

No passengers were on the bus.

The driver also had tried to signal the caller to call the police, Redondo Beach police Capt. Joe Leonardi said. The caller lost sight of the bus when it ran a red light, turning onto 182nd Street heading toward Grant Avenue.  Moments later, Redondo Beach police dispatchers received a cellular telephone call from the hijacker.

?He was armed with a knife and he had hijacked MTA bus No. 5484,? Leonardi said. ?The suspect told Communications that he needed the police because someone was trying to kill him.?

Dispatchers kept the man on the line, sometimes speaking with the driver.

?The driver was totally terrified,? Redondo Beach police Sgt. Phil Keenan said.

The hijacker forced the bus operator to run red lights and would not allow him to open the doors.  Dispatchers kept the hijacker on the phone, updating sheriff?s deputies and other police agencies of the location of the bus and its direction.  Sheriff?s deputies caught up to the bus on Vermont Avenue at 245th Street.

?The dispatcher talked to the suspect and said, ?If you need help, you have to pull over,? ? Keenan said.

The hijacker agreed when he noticed a liquor store and said he needed a drink, Keenan said.  

Deputies arrested the man on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping.

?Dispatch did a great job keeping the suspect on the cell phone,? Keenan said.

The suspect?s name was not available.

Publish Date:July 2, 2003

[milt]

Saudi jail inmate tells of pain and humiliation
July 1 2003
By Martin Daly

Hospital worker Robert Thomas saw six men taken from their cell to be shot during a horrific jail term in Saudi Arabia.

Mr Thomas, 56, said he was handcuffed, shackled, and survived largely on biscuits. He also said he saw fellow prisoners go insane. Mr Thomas was imprisoned on June 20 last year for a crime he said he did not commit.

His only bedding was a blanket near a hole in the ground. The hole was a toilet for 20 men.

He barely slept and was afraid of the violence he saw throughout his time in the prison.

[more desciption of prison life deleted]

Aren't these the kinds of conditions conservatives want to see in US prisons?  They're always claiming our prisons aren't tough enough.

I wonder if there's a Saudi Arabian Tossed Salad Man and is the choice still jelly vs. syrup over there...

-milt

[Crafty_Dog]

What caught my attention in the piece was the notion of the guy going to prison for what his wife did.  No wonder they want to keep their women locked up!  

[Crafty_Dog]

The Associated Press
Thursday, July 10, 2003; 8:23 AM

PHOENIX - Jenny Lopez's home is a pile of rubble after a demolition crew mistakenly tore down the wrong house.

The house that was supposed to be demolished Wednesday was across the street from Lopez's, where she had lived for 30 years. Although the home was vacant, the family stored household items there and had hoped to sell it.

House numbers in the southwest Phoenix neighborhood are not well-marked and all the mailboxes sit on one side of the street, making identification difficult.

Foresight Investment Group of Phoenix hired contractors to tear down the house across the street from Lopez's. It was vacant, boarded up and fenced in.

"We were either going to sell the property or build a new house," said Joe Uruquart, one of the company's owners.

One of Lopez's old neighbors spotted the heavy construction equipment in her yard and alerted family members. But when they arrived, the house had already been torn down.

Demolition man David Gomez declined to comment about the incident but told a television station that he would probably lose his job.

[Crafty_Dog]

'Game' of punches kills S.J. boy, 16
FRIEND JAILED IN INVOLUNTARY-MANSLAUGHTER PROBE
By Lisa M. Krieger
Mercury News
Mon, Jul. 28, 2003

A test of manhood between friends turned tragic early Sunday morning
when a blow to the chest killed Jacob Salas, 16, at his home in San Jose.

Jacob and Richard Jimenez, 19, were playing what youths and police say
is a popular game among some teens called ``open chest,'' in which
friends take turns exchanging blows to each other's chest to see who is
toughest.

``It's viewed as a test of manhood,'' said San Jose police Sgt. Steve
Dixon. ``It's assumed that nobody will get hurt.''

A punch felled Jacob, who instantly lost consciousness. Jimenez and
friends tried to revive him, without success.

``He stopped breathing and his pulse stopped,'' said Jacob's 14-year-old
sister, Anita. ``Then his pulse came back a couple seconds, then went
away. Then he turned blue. We were yelling at him, `Jacob! We love you!
We love you, don't do this!' ''

Jimenez, of San Jose, became frightened and fled before paramedics
arrived. He sought refuge at the family home of his girlfriend, Alma
Barragan, 16, of East San Jose.

``I woke up and heard him wailing in our bathroom, just crying and
crying,'' said Eliza Barragan, Alma's mother. ``He was hyperventilating
and couldn't talk, couldn't tell me what was the matter. I prayed with
him and he calmed down. He was so scared.''

Police found Jimenez at 5:30 a.m. Sunday, hiding in a closet. He was
booked into Santa Clara County Jail for investigation of involuntary
manslaughter and is being held in lieu of $200,000 bail. He is expected
to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.

Heart rhythm

Sudden death from a blunt blow to the chest is rare, but not unheard of,
according to research by pediatric cardiologist Steven M. Yabek of
Pediatric Cardiology Associates of New Mexico. Although no cause of
death has yet been declared for Jacob, similar symptoms are linked to a
condition called ``commotio cordis.'' It most commonly involves impact
to the chest wall from a baseball, hockey puck, softball, lacrosse ball
or karate chop, according to Yabek.

Although the injury is not well-understood, it is thought that a strong
impact to the chest causes the heart to lose rhythm.

Jacob, the family's eldest child, had just completed summer school at
Andrew Hill High School and had plans for a career as a rap musician,
said his father, also named Jacob.

``He had CDs of all kinds with a lot of beat,'' said the father, who is
a musician.

The teenager's mother, Rebecca Salas, said her son had been placed on
probation for fighting in school last year, spent some time in juvenile
hall and was taking court-ordered classes on anger management. She said he spent time with older men whom she called ``a bad influence'' on her son; sometimes, she said, they supplied him with cigarettes.

But things were looking up, Rebecca Salas said. ``He had goals. He
wanted to change. He was ready to change.''

His friend's life also seemed to be taking a turn for the better, said
Eliza Barragan of Jimenez.

``I can't say a single bad thing about Richard,'' said Barragan. ``He
helps us vacuum, wash dishes, clean the rooms. I'm like a second mother
to him because he has nobody.'' She said Jimenez's father is in prison,
and his mother has not been located since the incident.

Jimenez suffered a severe head injury at age 2, Barragan said, and has
some mental disability. She said he did not graduate from high school
and works intermittently at a Cupertino moving company.

Jail spokesman Mark Cursi said Jimenez was interviewed by medical
personnel at the jail and they decided to place him in the mental health
unit with orders for someone to check on him every 15 minutes.

It was not an angry fight that killed her brother, said Anita Salas.

Around midnight, the two young men were home alone with a handful of
friends at the Salas' tidy Senter Road home. They were drinking beer.
Jacob's father, who works two jobs to support the family, was playing
bass guitar with his band Grupo Fuerza Unida at a nearby nightclub.
Rebecca Salas, divorced from Jacob's father, lives and works in Merced
County.

``They said, `Want to go out and do `body shots?' '' recalled his
sister. The game ``body shots,'' like ``open chest,'' involves youths
taking turns punching each other.

Physically, the two friends were a good match. Jacob, who stood 5 feet 3
inches tall and weighed 150 pounds, was strong and healthy, said his
sister. Jimenez, she said, is about the same size.

Second punch

Out in the front yard, Jacob and Jimenez exchanged at least one blow
each. Jimenez told Barragan that Jacob collapsed after being struck in
the chest the second time.

``He was saying, `I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Jacob, don't do this,' '' said
Anita Salas of the scene she witnessed. ``They were friends.''

Jacob's girlfriend, Angelina Alcala, 17, knows cardiopulmonary resuscitation and tried to revive him. Anita Salas called 911, then her father.

``They put him on a stretcher,'' said Anita Salas. ``But I knew it was
bad because they didn't put the siren on.''

By the time the victim's father arrived home, his son already had been
taken to Santa Teresa Kaiser Hospital, where he was declared dead.

Jacob's teenage friends aren't mad at Jimenez.

``It was a `homie' game,'' said Bernadette Alcala, 14, of San Jose.
```We were friends. We all kicked back together. We miss them. There's
nothing worse than losing a homie.''

But they want him to apologize to Jacob's parents.

``He needs to say he's sorry,'' said Bernadette.

Said a grieving Anita Salas: ``People should think before they act. Be
careful. Think about it.''

[Crafty_Dog]

Bacon mask is a concept too far for thief

David Ward
Tuesday August 19, 2003


 
Morrison: 'It's obviously a very macabre piece of work, but I never expected it to get this reaction.' Photo: PA
 
 
If only an artist with a video camera had been labouring in Liverpool at the time, the result could have turned up in Tate Modern as a conceptual work about a conceptual work inspired by conceptual work.

The video might have been hailed as a biting comment on the attitude of authority to art.

Or, more likely, as one of the dottiest records of police activity since the Keystone Kops.

It would have shown a posse of Merseyside's finest officers armed with a warrant and bursting into the Wavertree flat of local artist Richard Morrison, who is a fan of Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst and describes himself as a naive conceptualist.

They had been alerted by a public-spirited burglar who, after breaking into Mr Morrison's flat and stealing hundreds of pounds' worth of electronic items, had fled in terror when he stumbled on what he thought was a human head floating in a large jar.

He was so frightened that he ran home to confess all his crimes to his mother.

When later picked up on another matter, the burglar confided his fears to detectives, who sent the boys round to kick Mr Morrison's front door down. Again.

There they found the evidence that had sent shivers down the spine of the intruder: a large jar with a head in it.

But not a human head; more of a mask - a wire frame moulded on Mr Morrison's own face.

And covered in bacon. And dunked in formaldehyde.

"It's obviously a very macabre piece of work, but I never expected it to get this reaction," said Mr Morrison yesterday.

"I made the mask when I was on an art foundation course two years ago. It just seemed like an interesting concept. I was quite proud of the result, although it's sagging a bit now."

The piece was intended to be a comment on the folly of consumerism.

Merseyside police said they had to act on what was clearly "a very serious allegation" but have now apologised to Mr Morrison and arranged to give him a new front door.

"It would have been a dereliction of duty if we had not followed up this allegation," said Chief Inspector Stephen Naylor. "It was vitally important that we investigated."

[Crafty_Dog]

Infuriating game.  

http://www.davidope.hu/33/33.html

[Crafty_Dog]

Jackass warning after horrific firecracker accident

Doctors in Australia have urged people to not to attempt Jackass style stunts after a man burnt his genitals in a firecracker accident.

The 26-year-old Australian man suffered a fractured pelvis and severe burns when a firecracker exploded between the cheeks of his buttocks.

The incident has left the man, from Illawarra, New South Wales, incontinent and unable to have sex and he is expected to remain in hospital for several months.

Dr Robert McCurdie, who operated on the man when he was taken to Wollongong Hospital, likened the man's condition to "a war injury".

Dr McCurdie said he believed the man had stumbled while the firecracker was in his buttocks, and fell down on it.

"By virtue of the fact that the explosion was confined in an upward direction, it went up into his pelvis, blasted a great hole in the pelvis, ruptured the urethra, injured muscles in the floor of the pelvis which rendered him incontinent. His pelvis was also fractured."

It is not known whether the man was imitating the cult prankster film Jackass in which men place firecrackers in their buttocks and shoot them into the air.

Acting Senior Sergeant John Klepczarek said the danger with movies like Jackass was that some people were tempted to try the stunts at home.

"They're putting themselves at risk, and other people. We do caution people strongly against following these acts," he said.

[Crafty_Dog]

Exclusive: Saudi Govt Bans "Jewish" Barbie Dolls
by SIA News

(Washington) September 8, 2003 - SIA News  The Saudi government has announced that Barbie dolls are Jewish tools promoting the lewd behavior of what it calls the perverted Western world, according to a government poster distributed to Saudi schools, mosques and hospitals which has been obtained and translated by SIA news.

The poster, titled "The Jewish Doll", is printed and distributed by the powerful Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, otherwise known as the religious police. This is a government agency headed by a Wahhabi cleric with ministerial rank appointed by King Fahd.

The poster includes photos of Barbie dolls that have been confiscated by religious police from local retail outlets, displayed in a special exhibition of goods which are deemed to have violated official religious teachings.

The Permanent Exhibition for Religious Contraventions is located at the headquarters of the religious police in Madina. It displays confiscated goods such as photographs, perfumes, and dolls among other confiscated items.

Saudi spokesman in Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir, refused to comment when SIA news asked him about the poster and the official propagation of religious hatred against Jews, Christians, Hindus and non-Wahhabi Muslims by government agencies and officials.

The power of the religious police emanates from the support of King Fahd and the powerful Interior Minister Prince Naif, who fund it generously.

In addition to their large annual budget, the religious police receive millions of dollars from the king in form of cash infusions, and new SUV?s, on annual bases.

On June 30, 2002 Al-Riyadh newspaper reported that King Fahd donated $1.25 million from his private covers to support the religious police?s work.

On May 18, Naif reiterated his support for the religious police in a press conference attended by western reporters. ?The religious police are part of the government and are here to stay,? said Naif, who was angered by a Saudi journalist?s question regarding the possibility of it being dismantled.

The Barbie doll and similar posters are distributed to school children, worshipers at mosques, and hospital patients.

The agency's official website uses 'gov' net extension displays the government seal also found on the poster. To access the poster from the government website: http://www.hesbah.gov.sa/images/wrongdone/m04.jpg

Other confiscated items can be seen at: http://www.hesbah.gov.sa/contravention.asp

[Crafty_Dog]

Updated: 10-06-2003 12:39:05 PM

Backfire Ignites Dog, Dog Sets Grass Fire in Idaho

CULDESAC, Idaho (AP) -- This dog was having a bad fur day. The dog, whose coat caught fire when the owner's vehicle backfired, ignited a grass fire just off U.S. Highway 95.

Firefighters doused the grass fire and reported the dog was unhurt, only smelling of burnt hair.

``I have been in firefighting for many years, but I have never seen anything like this happen,'' Culdesac Fire Chief Gary Gilliam said.

It happened Saturday when a motorist who ran out of fuel put gas in the tank and then primed the carburetor. On restarting, the van backfired, throwing sparks into the cab and igniting the dog's fur.

A passenger let the dog out, and it rolled in dry grass, putting out the flames on its coat but setting the grass afire.

[dogfighter]

This thread is for the weird:

Crafty
--------------------------

Tomorrow's headlines, today. Better not allow the prisoner internet access to some of our more wacky song sites. Like this lovely database of horrible, uneasy listening. I recommend "My
Bathroom is My Special Place."

http://www.miserablemelodies.com/index.php

==========================
Man killed for singing Sinatra off-key
June 25 2003

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/24/1056449243426.html

A 25-year-old Filipino man has been stabbed dead for singing a Frank Sinatra classic out of tune during a birthday party.  Police officer Noel Albis said the victim, Casimiro Lagugad, was asked to sing Sinatra's popular song My Way during the party in the Manila suburban city of Caloocan on Sunday.

"Witnesses said the suspect, Julio Tugas, 48, one of the guests and a neighbour of the victim, got irked because Lagugad was singing out of tune," Officer Albis said.

"Tugas suddenly attacked the victim and stabbed him in the neck," he added.

Guests rushed Mr Lagugad to the hospital, but he died while being treated.
Tugas later surrendered to village security officials, who turned him over to authorities.  Police are preparing homicide charges against the suspect, who apparently admitted to the crime.

                                        If you ever need a good laugh I sugest Leonard Nimoy's, Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. It's kooky in a disturbing way. (pure gold)

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.legeros.com/art/men-and-talk.pdf

[dogfighter]

http://www.legeros.com/art/men-and-talk.pdf

 One of those simple mind boggles?  Hmmmmmm.

[Crafty_Dog]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAW OF THE LAND
Court flips middle-finger verdict
Man found guilty for 'shooting the bird' has conviction overturned

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 16, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern



? 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

A Texas man feels like he's No. 1 now that his conviction for "shooting the bird" has been flipped.

Robert Coggin, 34, had been found guilty of disorderly conduct for making an obscene gesture with his middle finger in a road-rage style incident in the town of Lockhart two years ago.

But an appeals court has overturned the verdict, saying while the gesture may be rude, it does not necessarily rise to the level of disorderly conduct.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Coggin flashed his lights to pass a slow-moving vehicle driven by John Pastrano, a Caldwell County jailer.

Thinking he was being pulled over by a police officer, Pastrano moved to the right lane. As Coggin then passed Pastrano, he allegedly used the finger gesture many consider obscene.

Pastrano called 9-1-1, and Coggin was subsequently issued a citation for a Class C misdemeanor.

The Chronicle reports Coggin was charged under an obscure law that says "a person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly makes an offensive gesture or display in a public place, and the gesture or display tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

Coggin denied he ever flipped the bird, but was fined $250 upon his conviction. He also spent $15,000 fighting the charge.

The 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin not only ordered Coggin's acquittal, but it offered some historical context, quoting a Merriam-Webster definition of the "bird" as "an obscene gesture of contempt made by pointing the middle finger up while keeping the other fingers down."

According to the Chronicle, jurists further explained that "the middle finger jerk was so popular among the Romans that they even gave a special name to the middle digit, calling it the impudent finger: digitus impudicus.

"It was also known as the obscene finger, or the infamous finger, and there are a number of references to its use in the writings of classical authors. ... " the jurists continued. "The middle-finger jerk has survived for over 2,000 years and is still current in many parts of the world, especially in the United States."

[Crafty_Dog]

Man Burns Life Savings, Fails Suicide Bid
Tue December 2, 2003 10:31 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - A Frenchman who burned his life savings to a cinder before swallowing two bottles of pills is facing life with an empty bank account after neighbors foiled his suicide attempt.

The man, in his 40s, has been recovering in a psychiatric hospital since late October when neighbors in the southwestern town of Bordeaux saw smoke coming from his house and called the emergency services, the daily Liberation reported on Tuesday.

The man, who lived alone, had cleared out his bank balance of 240,000 euros ($288,500) and set fire to the pile of 500 euro notes in his bath before swallowing the pills, hoping to leave nothing behind after his death.

However, he was now eager to start a new life, his lawyer Dominique Remy told the newspaper. "He is not dangerous. It's just that he's destroyed all his worth," he said.

[Crafty_Dog]

Cannibal Confesses in Shocking Trial
Wed Dec 3, 3:06 PM ET  Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!
 

By David Crossland

KASSEL, Germany (Reuters) - A German confessed on Wednesday to killing and eating a willing victim in a case that could make legal history, telling a shocked courtroom the experience was "like taking communion" in a religious service.


At the start of his murder trial in Kassel, central Germany, Armin Meiwes, 42, offered a full account of the killing that has gained him worldwide notoriety as "The Cannibal of Rotenburg" after the town where he lived.


Meiwes said there were "hundreds, thousands" of people seeking to fulfil their desires to eat humans or be eaten via Internet advertisements in forums called "Cannibal Cafe," "Guy Cannibals" and "Torturenet."


In testimony so frank it drew gasps from the public gallery, Meiwes said he had kept his victim's skull and plastic bags of flesh in his freezer. He ate about 44 pounds of the flesh, defrosting it bit by bit.


"With every piece of flesh I ate I remembered him," Meiwes, a self-assured and well-spoken computer repair man, told the judge. "It was like taking communion."


The killing took place in March 2001. Meiwes was arrested in December 2002 after police received a tip-off from someone who had seen one of his Internet adverts seeking a slaughter victim.


The trial is expected to last until the end of January and some 40 witnesses will be called, including some of Meiwes's Internet contacts.


The gaunt, bespectacled defendant said that during his upbringing alone with a dominant mother he had longed for a little brother he could make "part of me."


He told how he made contact online with a 43-year-old Berlin computer specialist identified only as Bernd-Juergen B.


He invited him to his elegant half-timbered home near Kassel and killed him with a kitchen knife in a "slaughtering room" he had built containing meat hooks, a cage and a butcher's table.


"He told me he had had the desire since he was a child to be slaughtered and eaten," Meiwes said. "He was very intelligent and I didn't see any sign that he was disturbed." Meiwes filmed the killing and the video tape may be shown to the court.


Defense lawyers have said the film shows Meiwes cutting off the victim's penis at the latter's request.


"It was important to him that his member be cut off and that he witness it," Meiwes said.


"He screamed terribly and jumped around the table but after a while he said he was surprised it didn't hurt and was very pleased that the wound bled so strongly," he added.


"It gave him pleasure."


MURDER OR EUTHANASIA?


Eventually the victim lost consciousness and Meiwes killed him with a knife. He hung up the corpse and cut it up, filming the process.

   



Prosecutors, who charged Meiwes with murder after a psychiatrist declared him fit to stand trial, are seeking a life sentence.

They concede the victim wanted to be killed but argue he was incapable of rational thought.

Meiwes's lawyer has pleaded for him to be convicted of "killing on request," a form of illegal euthanasia which carries a maximum five years sentence.

Legal experts say the charge of full murder may not stick given that the video film shows the victim to be willing. The case could reach the Federal Constitutional Court, Arthur Kreuzer of Giessen University's Institute for Criminology said this week.

Meiwes said he became obsessed with wanting a younger brother -- "someone to be part of me."

Using the pseudonym "Franky," he posted Internet ads saying: "If you are 18-25 you are my boy" or "Come to me I'll eat your delicious flesh."

Some 430 people responded to his e-mails within a year.

[Crafty_Dog]

Dog robs gas station

A hungry bull terrier with a sweet tooth left his home to make a night raid on a gas station. The Statoil outlet's security cameras recorded the dog's stealthy hunt for his favorite type of chocolate, and a security guard busted the pooch without incident, newspaper Adressavisen reports.


 
Conan arrives around dawn, looking for something to satisfy his habit.

PHOTO: Adresseavisen
 
Conan makes a thorough search - he won't settle for just anything.

PHOTO: Adresseavisen
 
Is that the chocolate covered rice crisp?

PHOTO: Adresseavisen
Terrier Conan, aged 7, ended up behind bars and according to his owner the dog is a repeat offender.

"He is incredibly fond of food in general and sweets in particular. He has run off a few times before, and he always heads for food stores," owner Liss-Hege Jeremiassen told Adresseavisen.

Conan sneaked out the door Wednesday night and headed straight for only place open, a nearby Statoil station. The cameras picked him up sniffing around the candy shelves, poking his nose into the containers of sweets sold by loose weight, and snubbing all of these treats in search of his personal favorite, chocolate covered rice crisp. Here he stopped and devoured the contents of the container.

"When he was finished he let out this enormous burp," said Elisabeth Roel, who had the night shift at the station.

She tried to chase Conan out but the dog growled at this attempt to interrupt his chocolate raid. Roel then called the police, who turned the job over to Falken security.

"He's really a nice dog, but he doesn't have looks on his side. He spent the night next to a pit bull, but that went well. He's calm and friendly," said security guard Otto Olsen, who apprehended the hound.

Roel said she wouldn't have been worried if she had recognized Conan, but since he had escaped without his collar, she wasn't sure and wasn't about to take chances.

[Crafty_Dog]

The challenge of the 'cannibal consensus'
 
By Clare Murphy

Armin Meiwes is, on the surface of things, an attractive, well-dressed, and seemingly amiable 42-year-old German.

He is also, by his own admission, a cannibal, who three years ago ate an engineer he had found through the internet. On Friday, a court will decide whether Mr Meiwes should spend just a couple of months behind bars or much of the rest of his life for this.

At stake is whether a person can be tried and imprisoned for murder when his victim had consented to be slaughtered.

'No death wish'

In March 2001, Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, 43, answered an advert Mr Meiwes had posted on the internet for a well-built male who was prepared to be slaughtered and then consumed. They met, and Mr Meiwes allegedly took Mr Brandes back to his home in Rotenburg, where the victim agreed to the removal of his penis, which Mr Meiwes then flamb?ed and served up to eat together.

Mr Brandes was then killed, cut up, and put in the freezer.

The act of cannibalism is not in itself a crime in Germany, meaning that particular legal avenue was closed to prosecutors. Instead they opted for a charge of sexually-driven murder, combined with a charge of "disturbing the peace of the dead" - despite the apparently consensual nature of the act. They are seeking a life sentence for the cannibal, whom they argue poses a danger to society.

The defence, for its part, says Mr Meiwes is guilty of nothing more than "killing by request" - an offence which carries a maximum sentence of five years incarceration. The defence team has sought to prove to the court that not one of the men who met the cannibal was made to go through with anything they were uncertain about.

London-based hotel worker Dirk Moller - one of dozens who allegedly replied to Mr Meiwes' adverts - was called to testify that he had even got as far as being chained to the bed and marked out for butchery before changing his mind and being released. The prosecution has conceded that Mr Brandes was an apparently willing victim. But they insist he was not of a sound mind when he accepted the offer, and moreover, they allege, Mr Meiwes was aware of this.

Mr Brandes' boyfriend has told the court that Mr Brandes, with whom he said he enjoyed a normal sex life, had no apparent desire to die.

Time for contracts

German experts say that while there may be hundreds of people with "cannibalistic tendencies" in Germany, only a tiny proportion of those would be willing to see their fantasies through to their fatal conclusion as Mr Brandes apparently did.

The kind of internet message boards where Mr Meiwes placed his own request still exist, but the real cannibals on these sites appear to be hard to find. Messages which request people for slaughter are often written off as jokes by other participants, many of whom are keen to stress that their interest in cannibalism is only a fantasy.

While Mr Meiwes received dozens of responses to his postings, he is believed to have only met four other men beside Mr Brandes, none of whom went through with the act. There are fears that should the court punish Mr Meiwes lightly in Friday's ruling, they will unwittingly encourage real cannibals. Yet if Mr Meiwes is put away for life after Friday's ruling, his defence lawyer has argued, the true horror of murder will be belittled.

Harald Ermel has said that murder "always happens against somebody's will". Should his client be convicted of little more than killing on request, Mr Ermel advises those planning similar forays into the world of cannibalism to ensure both parties draw up a contract before the act takes place.

[Crafty_Dog]

Marshal leaves gun in airport bathroom
 
In Cleveland, passenger discovers what a forgetful air marshal left behind.
April 13, 2004: 8:36 AM EDT
 


CHICAGO (Reuters) - A federal air marshal accidentally left her gun in a restroom beyond the security checkpoints at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, officials say.

 
The weapon was discovered by a passenger who alerted an airline employee.

The marshal remained on the job after Thursday's incident when she visited an airport restroom and inadvertently left her gun behind, Dave Adams, spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service in Washington, said Saturday.

The restroom was beyond security checkpoints, airport spokeswoman Pat Smith said. So the risk was that someone could have discovered the gun and taken it on a flight.

"Right now we're still doing the investigation," Adams said. "It will determine what disciplinary action will be appropriate."

He declined to identify the marshal for security reasons, but said her work in the past had been "outstanding."

The United States deploys armed air marshals disguised as passengers on thousands of flights each week as part of security measures implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks that killed about 3,000 people.
 
Smith said the incident occurred about 4 p.m. on Thursday when the air marshal went to the restroom. While washing her hands, she placed her gun on a shelf, but forgot to take it with her when she left the room.

Soon afterward, a passenger found the gun and informed an airline employee, who removed it and told police. The gun later was returned to the marshal.

[Crafty_Dog]

PRIMER FOR EXPAT DRIVERS IN JAKARTA

One of the first and most interesting things noted by new arrivals is that Indonesian drivers are often to be found travelling on the wrong side of the street. There is no need to be alarmed. It is quite normal. In fact, every square inch of the street surface is considered useable, including the sidewalks, in any direction. The painted lines are considered basically as attractive municipal decorations, nice to have, but of no real importance.

If you wish to plunge into the mechanical maelstrom that constitutes traffic in Jakarta, you must adopt the simple and elegant Indonesian philosophy that "Mine is the only car on the road, and I am the only driver". Operating a vehicle under this philosophy is simplicity itself. One simply proceeds as if the streets were deserted, looking neither left nor right and CERTAINLY not in the rear view mirror.

The screeching of brakes and blaring of horns are not your concern. They relate entirely to some other dimension. If, on occasion, the Jakarta driver is forced to acknowledge the presence of others, for instance, while immobilised in the Indonesian version of a Mexican stand-off, then the second phase of the Traffic Philosophy comes into play: "I am a person of consequence, therefore, I shall go first".

It should always be remembered that for a Jakarta driver the only other traffic that exists anywhere on the planet is that directly ahead of the driver's peripheral vision. If it cannot be seen, it cannot possibly exist. Obviously, one strives to see as little as possible. This leads to the next most obvious characteristic of the Battle of Batavia, or, brinkmanship Jakarta style. The key is to convince the other driver that you don't see him, while he tries equally hard to convince you that he can't see you either. Both vehicles leap for the same opening, both carefully ignoring the other. The first to give way is clearly the lesser man and has lost face entirely.

Never drive a new car in Jakarta. The normal decadent Western compulsion to avoid dents will fatally weaken your driving technique, leaving you trembling in terror at intersections, waiting for a tiny break in the traffic so you can go home. The break - if it occurs at all - will come at about 4.30 in the morning, between the end of the evening rush and the beginning of the morning rush, which starts around 4.31. The wisest course is to buy a large, heavy, ugly old bomb, do up the engine and put in a nice interior with stereo and air conditioning, but do nothing to the exterior, unless it is to roughen up any remaining smooth spots with a sledge hammer.

Do not mess with Metro Minis or larger buses. They are in a completely different league to the rest of us and serve the same purpose as sharks in the sea, that is to ravage the slow, weak and hesitant. The drivers of these battle wagons are the "black belts" of the street, as verified by the physical condition of their vehicles. Just watch the effortless ease of such a bus, if you can see it through its own smoke, casually turning without the slightest warning straight across four lanes of fast moving traffic. Always remember that any such manouvre however insane is considered completely legal provided that the conductor is hanging out of the left-hand door and waving his arm downwards.

Concentration is critical. On main streets such as Jalan Sudirman, you will encounter twenty thousand assorted vehicles happily travelling no more than half a metre apart, at not less than 80km an hour. A lapse in concentration of any more than a microsecond will have you wedged completely off the road by a Kijang diving into the space between you and the vehicle ahead, even if that space not quite big enough. To avoid this, disregard everything you learned in driving school and always tailgate the car in front. An allowance of more than half a metre is viewed by local drivers as a fatal weakness and exploited without mercy.

During rush hour, there are policemen directing traffic - in much the same manner as one channels a stampede of wild buffalo between outriders. It is extremely hazardous duty, and while it may appear that they are co-ordinating their operations via walkie-talkie, in truth they are comforting and consoling each other with the hope that some day they may get a safer assignment, perhaps on the Bomb Squad.

It is important to pay close attention to the roadworthiness of your vehicle. Where you come from this would mean the brakes, tyres, the stoplights and so on. In Indonesia it means that your horn must work. Without it, don't even THINK of taking the vehicle on the road. Horn technique, too is all-important. One doesn't "toot" the horn in Jakarta. Apart from the fact that it would be lost in the din, timidity in motor-horn management is seen by all levels of Indonesian society as a sign of sexual inadequacy.

Take hold of the horn ring in your fist, place the weight of your upper body behind the thrust, now BLOW the horn! A full-on, truly authoritative blast! Really accomplished horn blowers can vaporise whole lines of cars with a single blast. If your car is a new one, (one strike against you already, see above) one fingered operation of the little horn buttons on the steering wheel is regarded as a toot. One uses the entire palm of the hand against the button, and the arm and shoulder as well. The result is not as satisfying as a horn ring, but it is acceptable.

The Indonesian Government, as part of its commitment to population control, encourages motorcycle usage. Motorcycles may be treated as moving targets in traffic with a possible score of 100 points upon taking one out without actual physical contact. This is not difficult, as most riders are instinctively suicidal. A creative imagination can produce really spectacular results. For instance, while stopped in bumper to bumper traffic, you will notice bikes zooming between the cars at speeds approaching mach 3.

Simply opening a car door at the appropriate time will produce highly satisfactory results, as the rider, eyes bulging, mouth agape, attempts to fly his Honda. Slamming the door closed at the last possible moment maintains your eligibility for the 100 points, as no physical contact was made. The rider, with any luck, will go on to make a fresh dent in a Metro Mini, and become a statistic. Collect 100 points and pass Go. It is considered good form to tip the driver of the Metro Mini 10 points.

On many of the newer highways the Government has thoughtfully provided clearly marked 'right turn' lanes. Expats new to Jakarta often mistake these for right turn lanes, which is extremely dangerous. Their proper function in Jakarta is to allow enterprising drivers to get ahead of the through traffic. With correct timing, they can sneak up to the head of the waiting traffic column and on the green light leap out ahead of them, cutting back to the left lane in what looks like the start of a LeMans race. This manoeuvre is always executed by three or four cars moving nose to tail at full throttle and is normally quite successful except in the rare cases where some fool tries to use the lane to turn right. This takes everybody completely by surprise, since they naturally expect right turns to be initiated in the usual way, from the far left lane.

Hand-carts, like motorcycles, are moving targets. The vegetable salesman, the breadman, the bakso man, all are most often encountered attempting to wedge an overloaded cart across six lanes of traffic at the height of the morning rush. Mind you, this is six lanes of traffic travelling at warp speed on a road intended for three lanes. The breadman, with a bike-mounted cart, is considerably more mobile and is usually encountered in your lane on the freeway, late at night, going the wrong way. Without reflectors, and, of course, wearing black clothing.
As you flash by, perilously balanced on two wheels, he glares at you in contempt muttering under his breath about the damn stupid bulehs on the road at this hour of the night.

In the same vein, any Jakarta resident considers it perfectly normal to load his Vespa with his wife, three children, four grandchildren, grandmother, two chickens (live, with their feet tied together and hooked over the rear-view mirror bracket) and two large plastic shopping baskets of vegetables, and set out at four o'clock in the morning in the pouring rain. He sees nothing remotely odd about parking broadside in the centre lane of Jalan Sudirman, debating the advisability of continuing on to grandmother's. Naturally the engine and the lights are switched off to save fuel, everyone will be wearing dark clothing and the Vespa, of course, will be painted dark blue.

On the subject of night driving, prudence dictates that all the lights on the vehicle be functioning. Correct? No! Your foreign preconceptions are showing again. Headlights, commonly used in the West to illuminate the road ahead, have a quite different function in Indonesia. At night the high beam does the same job as the horn does in the daytime.

It is imperative to remember this. After dark, high beam is used as a high-powered laser beam death-ray, capable of evaporating whole lines of slow, incompetent drivers who have the audacity to be ahead of you. Accomplished light-flashers can produce the same results as their daytime compatriots, completely dissolving several vehicles at a time.

Many late-model cars have a high-beam flasher switch developed specifically for Indonesian drivers. Properly handled, it produces an effect not unlike the muzzle flash of a 30mm cannon. The overall impression received from the rear view mirror (if you forget yourself and look) is that some kind of WWII fighter has descended to an altitude of two feet above the road surface behind you, and has the gun button pushed down hard . The only defence against such an attack is hard acceleration, whilst weaving in and out of the traffic, in order to place some other hapless victim between you and the enemy, or hard braking while swerving sharply to one side, hoping the enemy will over-run, in which case you fly in behind him under full throttle, flashing YOUR lights.

In all cases, the message is the same; "I am a person of consequence, therefore I should go first". If in doubt, get out of his way, unless you are successful with the evasion tactics mentioned, in which case he is supposed to get out of yours.

Not that he will, of course. Foreigners are expected to weaken first, having neither the hardened nerves nor the simple faith of the local drivers. Also, most of us know a little about Indonesian hospitals.

For those wishing to go further the Advanced Driver Bulletin is also available. This deals with driving outside Jakarta and includes the following essential sections:

- Intercity Buses: multiple overtaking habits on blind corners
- Angkots: what they are and why they do it so often
- Children, Buffaloes, and lesser domestic animals: which one to hit if you have a choice
- Traffic Policemen: how to meet them and what they cost
- Navigation: navigating from mosque to mosque by the noise they make
- Brain Death: its relation to Indonesian Truck Drivers
- High Beams: how to keep oncoming traffic blind and guessing.

[Beginner]

Hate to admit it but it's definitely the same in the Philippines (if not worse)!  Nice article!

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/catchfish.asp


============================

And in a separate matter, I move over "Danny Boy's post to here:

================

Judge suspected of masturbating in court
June 25, 2004

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - An Oklahoma state judge frequently masturbated and used a device for enhancing erections while his court was in session, charges a petition by the state's attorney general seeking his removal.

ADVERTISEMENT

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson filed the petition on Wednesday with state judicial authorities seeking the ouster of Sapulpa District Judge Donald Thompson, 57, for "conduct constituting an offense involving moral turpitude in violation of the Oklahoma Constitution," Edmondson's spokesman said on Thursday.

The judge flatly denies the charges made in the petition, his lawyer, Clark Brewster, said on Thursday. He said the judge received a penis pump for his 50th birthday as a gag gift, which became a source of a running joke in the courthouse.

"The allegations are bizarre and preposterous," Brewster said. "Recently, some members of local law enforcement that are upset with a number of his rulings, used this situation to embarrass and attack him."

The judge, who was first elected to the bench more than 20 years ago in the state's nonpartisan judicial elections, is based about 80 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.

[Crafty_Dog]

Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out at campground
Thursday, August 19, 2004 Posted: 9:32 AM EDT (1332 GMT)

The bear used his claws and teeth to open the beer cans.
 

 
 
SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.

"We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around," said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.

The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers' coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds.

It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge.

Wildlife agents chased the bear away, but it returned the next day, said Broxson.

They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation.

[Crafty_Dog]

Dog Bites Off N.M. Man's Genitals
 
 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A man whose genitals were bitten
off by a pit bull remained in serious condition
Tuesday, and the dog remained on the loose.
 
The man, who has not been identified, was attacked
Monday while walking the dog. When police arrived to
help, the man appeared disoriented and fled on foot
but police tracked him to a nearby park, said
Detective Jeff Arbogast of the Albuquerque Police
Department.
 
 The man was naked when found at the park, but it was
unclear at what point he had taken off his clothes.
Neighbors had seen him playing with the dog earlier
in the day.
 
 Arbogast said investigators do not know why the man
was naked, and remain uncertain about some
circumstances surrounding the attack.
 
 The brown pit bull remained missing Tuesday, and
police warned people who see it to stay away and
call animal control.
 
 A nearby elementary school was locked down following
the incident and parents were called to pick up
students who usually walk home.
 
 Shortly after the attack Monday, Gov. Bill
Richardson released a statement saying he would proposed
legislation next year aimed at holding owners of
dangerous dogs accountable for their pets.

[Guard Dog]

Haha!

[Crafty_Dog]

Newark, NJ:

A father's attempt to teach his daughter a lesson about drinking backfired when the teen led police to a stash of drugs and weapons inside their home.  

KW, 46, called police at 0205 Friday after his 16 year old daughter came home drunk and unruly.  When police arrived however, the girl told them she fear for her safety because her father stored drugs and weapons in the home.

The girl led officers to a crawl space above the ceiling where they found four semi-auto guns and more than 600 vials of crack.

The father was charged with numerous weapons charges and the daughter placed in the custody of a relative.

[buzwardo]

Tue Dec 7, 5:50 PM ET

Strange News - AP

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - A Virginia man admitted Monday to smearing 14 jars of petroleum jelly all over an upstate New York motel room.

Robert F. Chamberlain, 45, of McLean, gave no reason for his actions when he appeared in court to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief.

A Broome County judge sentenced Chamberlain to three years of probation and ordered him to pay $3,886 in damages to the Motel 6 in Chenango.

Authorities said Chamberlain coated every object of the motel room with petroleum jelly in May. A cleaning crew discovered the mess after he checked out, and he was arrested at another motel covered in the greasy stuff.

Chamberlain declined comment after the proceedings.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=816&ncid=816&e=10&u=/ap/20041207/ap_on_fe_st/brf_vaseline_vandalism

[Crafty_Dog]

Good one Buz- now try this!

======

The names/religion of the 2 men have been withheld...This is how holy wars start..

Two men tie up cow, rape, stab it
ROHIT WADHWANEY

INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 08, 2004 03:28:18 PM ]
 
NEW DELHI: In a bizarre incident that smacks of sheer desperation and sadism, two men in south Delhi's Tughlaqabad area allegedly raped a cow early on Tuesday morning.

If that wasn't enough, the two also repeatedly stabbed the cow - an animal considered holy in the country - after the assault.

One of the accused has been arrested, says Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Praveer Ranjan, while the other is absconding.

"The one who has been arrested owned an STD phone booth in the area and the other was his employee," Ranjan told Timesofindia.com.

The incident occurred at about 4 am on Tuesday, when the two accused, in inebriated state, were walking back home.

The two reportedly tied the cow's legs to a tractor. They also tied up its snout and after sexually assaulting the animal, stabbed it repeatedly.

About an hour later, Amar Singh, the owner of the cow, saw the animal tied up and bleeding profusely. He immediately raised an alarm.

The whole neighbourhood awoke to the shocking scene, and in anger began disrupting traffic on the highway nearby.

Singh went to the police station, but he says the police were hesitant initially to lodge a complaint. It was only when the crowd turned violent they registered a complaint.

The cow was rushed to a veterinary hospital and is said to be in a "critical condition".

The police fear an "outburst among the people" and aren't disclosing the names of the offenders.

In 2002, angry mob lynched 5 dalit youth in Haryana after they tried to skin a dead cow for its hide.

[buzwardo]

This doesn't quite rise to the level of bovine bondage, but is pretty silly nonetheless:


Festive cheer and goodwill was in short supply in Newtown when people dressed as Santa were involved in a mass street brawl, say police.

Officers used CS spray and batons to break up trouble amongst up to 30 people, following Newtown's annual charity Santa run.

There were five arrests hours after around 4,000 Santas finished racing.

Race organisers said if any official participants had been involved in the trouble, they would be banned in 2005.

Those arrested have all been released on police bail while further inquiries are carried out, Dyfed-Powys Police said on Thursday.

A number of others have been interviewed about their alleged involvement in the incident in the town's Severn Street on Sunday, which happened shortly after 2230 GMT.

There's no way people can link the Santa run to the drunkenness and violence that ensued after the race,
AM Mick Bates

Four officers suffered minor injuries during the scuffle and a total of eight were used to quell the disturbance, said police.

Pc Gareth Slaymaker, community safety officer for north Powys, confirmed that many of those involved in the alleged brawl were still wearing their Santa outfits.

"This is the sort of behaviour that gives a well-organised event a bad name, leading to the belief that it is just becoming a beer festival as mentioned in the press a few weeks ago," he said.

"Behaviour like this justifies the reluctance by the police to extend the licensing hours for public houses and bars for this type of event."

Dougie Bancroft, spokesman for the festive run's organisers Dial-a-Ride, said: "The trouble occurred seven hours after the Santa Run and I understand some people involved were dressed as Santa.

"But I'm not sure if they actually took part in the race because Santa suits were left by many in the town's park.

"If we find that people connected with the run, be it marshals, stewards or anyone else, were involved in the incident we will not tolerate them and they will not be involved in the race next year.

"We don't want anything to tarnish the reputation of the event or the charities which benefit from the Santa Run. We support the police in their action."

Montgomeryshire AM Mick Bates, who took part in the run, denied claims that it was turning into a beer festival.

"There's no way people can link the Santa run to the drunkenness and violence that ensued after the race," he said.

"I understand 200 charities will benefit from this year's run and the organisers do a wonderful job planning the event to make sure Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Dial-a-Ride and the charities get the most out of it.

"The problem with excessive drinking is not the responsibility of the Santa run but of pub landlords and individuals."

Last year, runners raised ?80,000 for charities and it is hoped the 2004 total will be higher.

Organisers are still waiting to hear if they have broken the world record for having the most number of Santas in the same place.



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/wales/mid/4081415.stm

Published: 2004/12/09 12:56:35 GMT

[Crafty_Dog]

Jokester in Bin Laden Mask Shot
Tuesday, December 14, 2004

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Usama bin Laden (search <http://search.foxnews.com/info.foxnws/redirs_all.htm?pgtarg=wbsdogpile&qcat=web&qkw=Usama%20bin%20Laden> ) take note: You wouldn't be safe in Costa Rica. A startled taxi driver shot and wounded a jokester wearing a plastic mask of the Al Qaeda (search <http://search.foxnews.com/info.foxnws/redirs_all.htm?pgtarg=wbsdogpile&qcat=web&qkw=Al%20Qaeda> ) leader, police said Tuesday.

Leonel Arias, 47, told police he was playing a practical joke by donning the Bin Laden mask, toting his pellet rifle and jumping out to scare drivers on a narrow street in his hometown, Carrizal de Alajuela (search <http://search.foxnews.com/info.foxnws/redirs_all.htm?pgtarg=wbsdogpile&qcat=web&qkw=Carrizal%20de%20Alajuela> ), about 20 miles north of San Jose.

Arias had startled several drivers that way on Monday afternoon. But when he jumped out in front of taxi driver Juan Pablo Sandoval, the motorist reached for a gun and shot him twice in the stomach. He was hospitalized in stable condition.

"For me and I think for anybody else at a time like that one thinks the worst and so I fired my gun," Sandoval told Channel 7 television.
Police declined to detain Sandoval, saying he had believed he was acting in self-defense.

[bedens]

http://tennessean.com/local/archives/04/11/61338680.shtml?Element_ID=61338680

COLUMBIA - Maury County Jail officials certainly don't want to incur the wrath of the Vatican, especially over fingernails.

But they were standing on firm ground religiously and legally when they confined a female inmate to her cell for not cutting her long, claw-like fingernails, which they say could be used as a weapon.

The inmate's mother says her daughter's refusal may be due to her Catholic upbringing.

''Her mother called us and said that she was raised by her grandmother, who said you're not supposed to cut your toenails or fingernails on Sunday,'' Sheriff's Lt. Brenda Thomason said.

Church leaders rolled their eyes at that.

''She's more devout than I am,'' chuckled the Rev. Patrick Conner of Columbia's St. Catherine's Catholic Church. ''There are no such mandates.''

Rick Musacchio, spokesman for the Nashville Diocese of the Catholic Church, agreed.

''I've never heard of anything like that,'' he said. ''Catholics aren't prohibited from working or anything on Sundays.

''In fact, although it's over now, our Catholic cross-country meets were held on Sunday afternoons.''

''It's just an excuse,'' Maury Chief Deputy Ashley Brown said. ''She was asked to cut those nails on Friday, and she refused, then again on Saturday. We can't have her in the jail with those long nails,'' Brown said. ''They use them as a weapon.''

So Nadean Swarthout, 37, of Williamsport, who is in jail on a string of charges, including facilitating an aggravated burglary, is confined to her cell, with only a 15-minute-a-day shower break, until she cuts her nails.

Because of that, she was unavailable for comment

[buzwardo]

EL PASO, TX. - Five people are arrested in connection with a shooting in Socorro (TX)?-- including the alleged shooter's mother. Socorro Police say 18-year-old Daniel Villela fired a shotgun at two people in a car on Sunday night.

They believe?Daniel's mother, 46-year old Socorro Villela was driving. Three other men were also arrested because they were riding in the same vehcile. They are 18-year old Luis Rosales, 18-year old Jesus Yescas and 18-year old Robert Murillo.

All five are charged with 2 counts of Criminal Attempted Murder and one count of Engaging in Organized Criminal Activity. Socorro Police believe the shooting was gang-related.?

No one was hit by gunfire, but the passenger of the car was slighly injured by flying glass.?

[buzwardo]

Something about this story resists analysis. . . .

Robber's gun a deductible expense
By David Rennie in Brussels
(Filed: 26/01/2005)

A bank robber has been allowed to claim the ?1,400 cost of the gun he used as a legitimate business expense.

The 46-year-old criminal was able to set the price of the pistol against his gross proceeds of ?4,700, which he stole in the southern Dutch town of Chaam.

Jailing him for four years, the judge at Breda criminal court reduced his fine by that amount.

The Dutch prosecutors' service said yesterday that the judge had followed sound legal precedents.

Leendert De Lange, a spokesman, said: "You can compare criminal acts to normal business activities, where you must invest to make profits, and thus you have costs."

Therefore drug dealers would be within their rights to claim the cost of a car used to ferry the drugs around, he said.

However, Mr De Lange scoffed at the hypothetical example of a drugs dealer claiming his Ferrari against the proceeds of his crimes.

"No, he would have to prove that he needed the car to transport the drugs and I hardly think he would transport them in a Ferrari."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/26/wexp26.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/01/26/ixnewstop.html

[Crafty_Dog]

Not eligible for the Darwin awards.  LOL  

 Ananova:  
 
Man peed way out of avalanche

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.

He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out.

But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: "I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there."

Parts of Europe have this week been hit by the heaviest snowfalls since 1941, with some places registering more than ten feet of snow in 24 hours.

[buzwardo]

Looks like it's time to ban enema bags. . . .


Police: Woman kills husband with Sherry Enema
KHOU - Houston ^  | February 2, 2005 | 11 News Staff Reports

Police: Woman kills husband with sherry enema

12:54 PM CST on Wednesday, February 2, 2005

From 11 News Staff Reports

LAKE JACKSON -- A Lake Jackson woman has been charged with criminally negligent homicide in the bizarre death of her husband.

Michael Warner, 58, died last May but his wife wasn't indicted until last week.

Tammy Jean Warner, 42, turned herself in to Lake Jackson police on Monday.

Police say Warner gave her husband a sherry enema before his death. An autopsy showed he had a blood alcohol level of .47 percent.

Neighbors say Michael Warner had been seriously ill with liver problems and wasn't supposed to have alcohol.

Relatives say the victim had been told that even small amounts of alcohol could kill him.

His widow is also charged with fraudulent destruction of a document. She's accused of burning her husband's will a month before his death.

Warner was released from jail Monday after posting a $30,000 bond.

[Crafty_Dog]

Thu Feb 10, 9:56 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman was sentenced to two and a half years in jail Thursday for ripping off her ex-lover's testicle with her bare hands during a drunken brawl after he refused her sex.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage in May last year after Geoffrey Jones, 37, who had ended their long-term relationship, rejected her advances.

She grabbed him by the genitals, tearing off his left testicle, then hid it in her mouth before a friend of Jones handed it back to him saying "that's yours."

Monti, of Birkenhead, near Liverpool, pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding at an earlier hearing.

[alex]

Thu Feb 10, 9:56 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman was sentenced to two and a half years in jail Thursday for ripping off her ex-lover's testicle with her bare hands during a drunken brawl after he refused her sex.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage in May last year after Geoffrey Jones, 37, who had ended their long-term relationship, rejected her advances.

She grabbed him by the genitals, tearing off his left testicle, then hid it in her mouth before a friend of Jones handed it back to him saying "that's yours."

Monti, of Birkenhead, near Liverpool, pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding at an earlier hearing.

That's gonna hurt in the morning

[alex]

Ummm. I have no words to describe this.



http://www.topsecrettraining.com/index1.html

"The Shocking Story of How The
U.S. Military, The Feds, and Every Martial Art School On The Planet Is Trying To Prevent You From Getting This
Elite Combat Training."

How would you like to be able to master any fighting style or martial art in only 3 weeks, instead of 30 years?and be fully qualified to teach it to others- just like our Green Berets train foreign freedom fighters?

[Crafty_Dog]

POSTED: 5:35 pm EST February 7, 2005

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Four sniper rifles, scopes and ammunition were stolen from an FBI SWAT van parked outside a Baymeadows Road hotel before dawn Sunday.

The FBI said the guns belonged to a team from Atlanta in Jacksonville to provide extra security for the Super Bowl.

A spokesman for the FBI said authorities are concerned these weapons are out on the street and are doing everything possible to try and find whoever took them.

Four high-powered rifles with scopes and 80 rounds of 308 ammunition were taken from the unmarked, locked van parked outside the Holiday Inn at Baymeadows and Interstate 95. An agent parked the van at 3:45 a.m. and discovered a few hours later the padlock cut and van burglarized.

An internal investigation is under way.

The FBI asks anyone with information that could help recover the rifles to call their Jacksonville office at (904) 721-1211.  


http://www.news4jax.com/news/4173456/detail.html

[Guard Dog]

Ummm. I have no words to describe this.



http://www.topsecrettraining.com/index1.html

"The Shocking Story of How The
U.S. Military, The Feds, and Every Martial Art School On The Planet Is Trying To Prevent You From Getting This
Elite Combat Training."

How would you like to be able to master any fighting style or martial art in only 3 weeks, instead of 30 years?and be fully qualified to teach it to others- just like our Green Berets train foreign freedom fighters?

It?s called creative marketing.  People will do anything to make a buck these days.  Check out the newest one I have found:

http://savetoby.com/

Gruhn

[buzwardo]

In a related vein I encountered this link the other day. For reasons I haven't fully identified it had me belly laughing at the computer. Check out some of the t-shirts.

http://www.realultimatepower.net/index4.htm

[Guard Dog]

In a related vein I encountered this link the other day. For reasons I haven't fully identified it had me belly laughing at the computer. Check out some of the t-shirts.

http://www.realultimatepower.net/index4.htm

Haha!
  I have had a couple people tell me about this site and its great to finaly see it!  Ninjas are sweet!  

Gruhn

[buzwardo]

Sheesh . . . when will the folly associated with Tony Martin's ordeal ever end?

March 04, 2005

BBC attacked for paying burglar shot by Martin
By Adam Sherwin, Media Reporter

CRITICISM was mounting on the BBC last night when it was revealed that a burglar was being paid ?4,500 for speaking on a television documentary about the fatal 1999 break-in at the farmhouse of Tony Martin.

Brendon Fearon, who has convictions for burglary and drug offences, was wounded by Mr Martin in the raid on Bleak House, in Norfolk. His accom- plice, Fred Barras, 16, was shot dead.

BBC One was attacked the day after the BBC was told to improve its public service performance in return for renewal of the licence fee. Its guidelines state that convicted criminals should not be paid unless they offer a ?contribution of remarkable importance with a clear public interest that could not be obtained without payment?.

Friends of the farmer said that he had refused to take part in the programme after learning that the producers intended to engineer an on-camera confrontation with Mr Fearon.

Mr Martin was jailed for murdering the teenage intruder but his conviction was later reduced to one of manslaughter.

Mr Fearon was given ?5,000 to sue the 57-year-old farmer but backed down from taking legal action.

Malcolm Starr, a friend of Mr Martin, said that Channel 4 had pulled out of making a similar documentary because the farmer refused to participate.

He said: ?Tony Martin refused any money or to meet his tormentor in a face-to face confrontation. It is utterly disgraceful that the BBC is handing over our hard-earned money to someone who has been in and out of prison his whole life.?

BBC Television said that it planned to go ahead with the documentary next month. A spokesman insisted that the Fearon interview met the strict criteria on payment to criminals. ?It is extremely important that the public hears the fullest possible account of the event that led to the death of a 16-year-old boy and the imprisonment of Tony Martin,? he said.

?Mr Fearon is the only person, apart from Tony Martin, who is alive and a witness to what happened. There is public controversy about householders? rights to protect their homes from intruders.? Mr Fearon?s contribution would ensure that the programme was balanced, the spokesman said.

The BBC has promised to inform viewers when any interviewee has been paid more than ?10,000 for a contribution. Although the sum is less, viewers will be told during the documentary that Mr Fearon had been paid.

Peter Horrocks, the BBC?s head of current affairs, promised last year that the corporation would withdraw from ?chequebook journalism?. He said the BBC had made errors when offering large sums to celebrities such as George Best, who was paid ?25,000 to talk about his alcoholism.

Henry Bellingham, the Tory MP for North West Norfolk, described the BBC?s explanation as ?the most pathetic excuse I have ever heard?.

He added: ?It is grossly insensitive for an organisation that is meant to show complete balance.?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1510372,00.html

[buzwardo]

I'm trying to figure out if this story should make me laugh or groan:


Hell is other people removing your cigarette
By Henry Samuel in Paris
(Filed: 10/03/2005)

France's National Library has airbrushed Jean-Paul Sartre's trademark cigarette out of a poster of the chain-smoking philosopher to avoid prosecution under an anti-tobacco law.

"Smoking," the Left-wing existentialist wrote, is "the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world."

And yet in its poster for an exhibition to mark the hundredth anniversary of Sartre's birth the Biblioth?que Nationale de France decided, destructively or not, to edit out the philosopher's Gauloise.

The library's president, Jean-No?l Jeanneney, confirmed that the cigarette had been discreetly smudged to comply with the 1991 loi Evin - a law banning tobacco advertising - but also so as not to frighten away potential sponsors from the exhibition, which opened yesterday.

Sartre's love of tobacco is well documented: he reportedly smoked his way through two packets and several pipes a day.

Indeed, all the best-known photographs of the author of La Naus?e, such as his portrait by Henri Cartier-Bresson on the Pont des Arts in Paris, depict him with a cigarette or pipe in hand.

So organisers homed in on a photo taken by the artist Lipnitzki in 1946 during a rehearsal of Sartre's play La Putain Respectueuse, (The Respectful Prostitute), from which Sartre's cigarette could easily be removed.

The doctoring of the photo was first spotted by Lib?ration, fittingly enough the Left-wing newspaper founded by Sartre.

The exhibition, which runs until Aug 21, shows previously unseen letters and manuscripts by the prolific writer and author of the immortal line: "Hell is other people."