Born stupid

Rabid Skunk Bites Bergen County Woman
(1010 WINS) (WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J.) Officials say a skunk that bit a woman in Bergen County tested positive for rabies.The woman had tried to comfort the animal after it had an altercation with a dog in Woodcliff Lake.Officials say the woman, whose name was not released, had to seek treatment.It's the third animal diagnosed with rabies in the county this year.

Why would you even try to comfort a stressed out skunk? Frankly, she should be glad she only got bit.

Find This Footage! or Hot Chef on Waitress Action!!!!

Teenagers, lonely men, and New York gossip mongers are going crazy at the though of this footage being out in public somewhere, I'm sure.

http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix.htm
AN after-hours orgy erupted at celebrity chef Mario Batali's Bistro Du Vent last week, resulting in the firing of four staffers, PAGE SIX has learned.
The randy sex romp between an openly bisexual waitress, a male chef, a female manager and a waiter was captured on the West 42nd Street restaurant's surveillance cameras, which feed to a monitor right next to the host's stand.
We're told that the oversexed staffers were boozing it up at the bar after closing when things got physical.
Our snitch, who saw the steamy surveillance footage, says the X-rated action took place "on the bar top, down to the floor, on top of the banquettes — chef on waitress, manager on waiter, waiter on waitress, all four tangled up in one bunch."

as seen from http://www.gawker.com/

trivia

Thanks to my teammates' abnormal knowledge of celebrity tattoos we placed second in trivia last night and qualified for the championship. Perseverance has paid off at last. And we were only a half point out of a first place tie.

If I go, I'm going to take you with me....

Another argument against obesity:

Report: Heart attack victim falls on, suffocates daughter
A Hollywood producer who was found dead in a car with his young daughter had apparently suffered a heart attack and fallen on top of the girl, suffocating her, according to a coroner's report.

But the story has another little twist:
Carr's wife, Chikako Carr, 50, said she still has no idea why her husband took off while she was in a grocery store restroom. He also dumped a box of belongings, including important personal papers and photos, in a pasture on the outskirts of Ashland a few days before he disappeared. Authorities also don't know why Carr drove to Clearlake Oaks. His brother, John, lives there but said he had not heard from Carr, Perdock said.

So the guy mysteriously runs off with (abducts?) his daughter, and then while she is laying down "sleeping" in the rear of the vehicle, the guy "standing over" her or something has a heart attack and falls on her. Doesn't that just sound a little suspicious?

And in local news:
Newark Motorist Shot After Motorcycle Accident
This is interesting, a guy makes an illegal U-turn, a motorcyclist hits him broadside, is thrown off his bike and dies. The guy, instead of fleeing, responsibly gets out of his car to help the cyclist and is approached and shot by a third person who then flees the scene on foot. This is like a random convergence of criminals. For some reason I'm reminded of the jewelry heist getaway from Reservoir Dogs.

And 100wins like their humorous headlines:
More Proof SUVs, Eye Surgery Don't Mix
A sport utility vehicle rammed into the operating room toward the end of a cataract procedure.No one was injured, but Dr. Bernard Spier said that if the accident had happened moments earlier, it could have hurt the patient's eye.Spier had removed the cataract and had just used a plunger to implant a silicone lens when the crash threw him onto the partially sedated patient.``The plunger could have done some damage,'' he told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Wednesday's newspapers.

I'm sure the plunger could have done some damage, but let's not forget the SUV, those can do some damage too.

Dangerous world

A really terrible ethical crisis:
Queens Man In Wheelchair Killed By Truck
A 67-year-old man was killed when an out-of-control truck veered to avoid hitting a young boy and went onto the sidewalk where the man was sitting in a wheelchair in Queens.

Do you hit the boy? Or the cripple? Which sends you to hell faster?

And wild animals aren't just dangerous, they're pretty too!

Tiger kills Kansas teen during photo pose
MOUND VALLEY, Kansas (AP) -- A Siberian tiger attacked and killed a teenage girl who was posing for photos at a family-run animal sanctuary Thursday in southeast Kansas, authorities said,

What a cute mauling! can I get a picture of that?


~A

The new sex education

Harvard to explore origins of life
Scientists hope to answer long standing questions with this first peek into coed dorms and the sex life of undergrads.


And now for another instance of unlucky death:

Worker Falls Into Vat Of Molten Lead
"Orange County Coroner Tom Murray says death was probably instantaneous. He says the lead was nine thousand degrees Fahrenheit."
Probably instantaneous, but not certain. I suppose there is a small chance he was actually transformed into some kind of evil supervillain.

~A

a new advance in wireless capability

Man Fatally Stabbed In Fight Over Phone
I guess after video and pictures can be sent over the phone, then the next logical step is sharp objects (does this mean they've skipped over blunt objects? I hope not.) This must be what 3G is all about.


~A

But storms don't have brains...

Surely they can't learn! Well, in a stunning development, it appears that maybe they can:

Tropical Storm Irene stronger, better organized
Yes, hurricanes and tropical storms seem to be learning from their mistakes. They are starting to make better use of their time out over the atlantic, training, exercizing, drilling. They are choosing their attacks on American soil more strategically and soon we may find different storms cooperating, working in concert to deliver a knockout blow. If that ever happens, gentleman, the American way of life will be at an end.


~A

Stupid people doing stupid things

Truck with 35,500 pounds of explosives detonates
There's just so much sheer pleasure in this article:

The truck driver, a passenger in the cab, a motorist and a motorcycle rider were hospitalized after the truck "pretty much vaporized," Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Todd Royce said.

Witnesses said the truck's driver appeared to lose control of the vehicle after taking a curve at high speed, Highway Patrol Lt. Doug McCleve said.
You would think that if someone were driving a load of 35,000 pounds of explosives, maybe they would moderate their speed just a tad. Maybe.

Witnesses rushed to help the driver and his passenger, freeing the pair from their safety belts, McCleve said. The dazed driver was just coherent enough to say the word "explosive," giving rescuers a sense of the danger, he said.
Rosebud.

He looked up to see "a mushroom cloud of fire, and shrapnel just starts falling down," he told KUTV of Salt Lake City. "The shrapnel is hitting the forest, and crackling like bacon."
Mmm, bacon.

The truck was headed to Oklahoma, company officials said. They wouldn't say what type of explosives the truck was carrying.
Big explosives...big, big explosives. Y'know, the kind that explode.


And in other news:
Dog tick found to spread spotted fever
This makes sense, next they'll identify the carriers of fido fever and rexirrhosis.



~A

Annals of medicine

Mutant mice helping cure diseases
Finally, our efforts to create super smart mice have begun to pay off. The difficult part is not making them smart, but only in making them so smart as to still want to help us. Too many brain cells and the mice figure to hell with us and run off to Reno to make a million at the tables before plotting their world conquest...

Headlines sent in by friends:

The flip side of zoophilia
This is a little late as the story is now "internet famous". I hear the farm is all booked up for the coming vacation season.

A new twist to the Lock and Key party
But why did he wait two weeks to seek assistance?

Local news outlets love stories like this:
MORON TAKES A HEADER
Apparently this was an intentional stunt to see ig the net would hold him. One wishes it hadn't. And though he was only 18, what are the odds that alcohol was involved?


~A

While we're on the subject...

Here is a list of words I like:

caterwaul
psychopomp
fascicle
palimpsest
fuchsia
tmesis
particolored
antediluvian
prelapsarian
flibbertigibbet
manikin
termagant
defenestrate
cathexis
pellucid
perfervid
doxy
sesquipedalian (my all time fave)
phiz

Lots more of course. If I think too hard, all the words start to sound good.


~A

The Spelling bee?

It was good and not so good. Firstly I tied for first. There was a big crowd and so many good spellers they didn't have time to break the tie. I can't complain as my prize bar tab was still large enough to have a margaritea and a couple of beer.

The downside was that I had volunteered to write the live blog during the event. And while this seemed like a fun, carefree opportunity to express myself in a lighthearted newscaster style, it was actually a marathn of typing in the near dark while trying to listen and describe stuff. I was drenched in sweat by the end and hadn't even had time to order a beer or have a cigarette. I can't even remember the words I spelled, and I think I spelled more correctly (and more that I didn't know and had to guess correctly) than ever before. I was in a certified daze.

I posted a prelude. Then posted the first update after the first round. But suddenly at the end of the second round, before I posted, I mistyped (something like a back command or a close window) and lost the whole post except for a quick paragraph I typed up in word before the round actually ended. Oops.

The third round, as I said rather stressful from a spelling point of view, I typed a gigantic paragraph describing the goings on in quite good detail, though I think I repeated too many verbs. I mean, how many ways can you describe someone spelling a word correctly or missing it? I started running out of metaphors.

Now, keep in mind my computer had been running on battery power for about two hours at this point. But no worries, becasue I have a Dell and had swapped out my CD-Rom drive for a spare battery giving me a theoretical battery life of 6 hours or more (and I had made sure that they were both fully charged). Nonetheless, at this moment, as the bee came to an end, my computer inexplicably went into hibernation due to low battery power. When it woke up my browser window was closed and the whole third round text was gone. Since I was on autopilot while typing, I had no possible way to reconstruct what I had written.



This was very embarassing. And I felt great exerting all that effort only to have it disappear into the ether. Them's the break.


~A

news today:

Man holding baby shot dead in apparent road rage
So a 60 year old fat, balding, white guy felt threatened by a 26 year-old hispanic man with a baby. And the "road rage" lasted long enough for him to drop his wife off and come back. God Bless America.

Police: Woman tries to open door during flight
Good quote: "other passengers stayed belted in their seats in case she did manage to open the door." That is really a hard decision: stop her from opening the door, or keep yourself belted in in case she opens the door. I think everyone in the plane (excepting the old people and mothers with children) should be sternly rebuked for cowardice.

"The woman was arrested for investigation of malicious mischief when the plane landed. Police were investigating whether alcohol and prescription medication were involved."

The must be charging her only with malicious mischief because it's so fun to say.


Man Whose Crime Led to DWI Reform Apologizes at Sentencing
"I am sorry for having caused a reform of the DWI (sic) laws; I will regret this for the rest of my life."


~A

And the boy scouts keep dying...

Lightning kills Utah Boy Scout

Last year, shark attacks were all the rage, now God sems to be turing his eyes towards kids wearing neckerchiefs.


~A

Ahhh, the blessed naivete of youth

Rape Case Puts Spotlight On Modeling Industry
This is a sick story, really. I hope the guy gets raped in prison. But the story is fairly incredible. "So, where did you go to get your abortion?" "I didn't have to go anywhere, my agent did it for me. He keeps the tools in his pants." (Cue spit take).

And the line about the agent "convincing another that sex with him would give her a model's distinctive walk". I am actually impressed that line worked. Maybe it's because the teens were from Norwalk.


Other top stories today:

Gas Blast At Ocean County Retirement Home
1010 WINS) WHITING, N.J. A gas explosion seriously injured one person at an Ocean County retirement community late last night.

Someone wasn't taking his Beano.

And in related news:
Big Stink In Catskills, Kosher Egg Factory Smells


~A

An odd mood this morning.

I can't explain it, but as I sat outside before work this morning, drinking my iced coffee, I was reading a book on the history of radio, entitled Empire of the Air, and it was making me tear up.


I must sure be some sap geek.

~A

Obituaries...

Hildegarde, Influential Cabaret Headliner, Is Dead at 99
Hildegarde, whose career as an international cabaret chanteuse spanned almost seven decades, was credited with starting the single-name vogue among entertainers.

Madonna, Sade and Enya thank you. I am waiting for the obituary of the person credited with killing the single-name vogue among entertainers.

Willem F. Duisenberg, First European Bank President, Dies at 70
BERLIN, July 31 - Willem F. Duisenberg, the blunt-spoken Dutch central banker who oversaw the introduction of the euro as the first president of the European Central Bank, was found dead on Sunday in a swimming pool at his villa in the south of France, the French government said. He was 70....As president of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Mr. Duisenberg steered the euro through its first unsteady years - a time when it plummeted to record low levels against the dollar.

It's funny, he could float a currency but apparently not float himself.

Arthur Zankel, Concert-Hall Benefactor, Dies at 73
Arthur Zankel, a financier who oversaw the Carnegie Hall endowment fund and made a $10 million donation that led to the construction of a new concert space there named for him, died in a fall from his Upper East Side apartment building on Thursday.

Millionaires who throw themselves from windows amuse me. Watch out! He's defenestrating!

~A