Coping a feel
I mean, why not, right? If there are still people out there gullible enough to fall for this kind of thing, I guess you have to give the old coot a little credit for effort.
Thanks to AO for flagging this one.Sorry you feel victim to this diabolical scheme. It's very touching.
Fake Breast Doc Busted
Florida man, 76, fingered in door-to-door free screen scheme
APRIL 19–Meet Philip Winikoff. The 76-year-old Florida man was arrested this morning and charged with sexual battery after he posed as a doctor and went door-to-door–black doctor's bag in hand–offering women free breast exams. According to a Broward County Sheriff's Office report, two women–ages 33 and 36–fell for the scam, which Winikoff allegedly ran in Lauderdale Lakes. Charged with several felonies, Winikoff was booked into the sheriff's lockup, where the below mug shot was snapped. Police are now investigating whether other women may have been tricked into impromptu examinations.
Gift ideas for the clinically insane
Christmas is four months gone and eight months away. Valentines Day came and went with its usual Hallmark gaudiness. The spring months are relatively stress free when it comes to shopping for that special someone. Still, you might have a wedding or birthday coming up and you haven't 
gotten around to finding the perfect gift. Not to fear, slackasses. I have been diligently at work preparing the perfect list for last minute shoppers.
I'm an expert in last minute shopping. You'll find me at the Big Apple year after year, begging a store clerk to sell me a window display. Or a slightly used ashtray. Or a mop bucket. Man, anything will do when the hours are ticking down and your standing in life depends on coming up with something unique.
Unique is what it's all about. Spencer's was a great place to shop until everyone discovered it. Now whoopie cushions, leg lamps and Foreplay: the board game are passé gifts. And so, the list. Unfortunately, I was unable to copy it so you'll have to use the link. A small price to pay for such a masterful compilation of ideas that will endear you to your kids, spouse or grandparents. Also a good place to find a special gift for your mailman, paperboy or proctologist.
Word play
Clearly today, we should have long and well argued debate over the common sense definition of this mysterious word. Sure. We'll probably have to go through an acclimation period during which we'll all make sophomoric jokes about other words it rhymes with. After that, we'll be clear headed enough to tackle the issue and analyze the legal decision on its merits.
I really have no idea how big the Christian Averill story will be in the eyes and souls of the readership. To recap, the convicted rapist successfully argued that his 24 year sentence was too long because the crime did not rise (or sink) to the level of heinous. He skulked onto the Bates College campus, like a cancer invading healthy flesh, and forced a young lady into a bathroom stall. To quote from an earlier story on the attack:
Averill snapped off the lights, spun the teen around, locked his arm around her neck and clamped his hand over her mouth, a prosecutor said in her opening arguments.
When the freshman girl later asked what he wanted, Averill said, "Sex." He shoved her into a stall and bent her over, her hands against the wall. He pulled down her pants and raped her.
The prosecutor was right to rub the jury's nose in the step-by-step element of the crime. Unfortunately the jurors, perhaps recalling uglier headlines from national news where people are maimed, burned, eaten, tortured and killed, decided that the defense was right. What Averill did was bad, they said in essence, but not particularly vile. To reach the level of heinous, they decided, the crime must be committed in a manner befitting a horror move. Rape itself, was their conclusion, is not horrific enough.
In an effort to keep my opinions out of this, I'll stop short of saying it's a damn shame the jurors didn't get a chance to personally experience what the victim endured in all its sudden fury and horror. I'll cut myself off before suggesting that perhaps they might have been better informed had they sat with the girl through countless nightmares following the invasion; or lived for a time with the rage and helplessness surely experienced 
by the mother, father, sisters, brothers and friends of the girl who was violated in a place where she should have been protected.
There are those who would say this argument for a lighter sentence should never have reached the ears of the jury. The prosecution deftly proved its case the first time and yet had to be compelled back to the courtroom to emphasize again that rape is vile and vicious and ugly by nature. There are those too, I imagine, who will insist that the ruling in the Averill case is appropriate, because distinctions have to be drawn sometime.
Me, I keep coming back to the cancer analogy. And I seem to think cancer is heinous no matter where or who or when it strikes. You don't soften your attack on a loathsome disease because it appeared in one way rather than another. You make every effort to oust the malignancy and try to ensure that it will never return.
Mmm mmm good
I've eaten shark. I've tried alligator, kangaroo and something blubbery that might have been whale fat. It's all good. Anything that can be washed down with beer isn't too tough to swallow if you've been double dog dared. Can't say I've tried placenta, though. I mean, how would you even prepare it? Chop it up and toss it in a salad? Maybe drape the slimey matter over a mound of meatballs? 
Tom Cruise has really turned into a special person since his days overthrowing an evil law firm, sucking necks and flying airplanes. Now he's eating birthing broth and picking on Brooke Sheilds. Ah, lifestyles of the rich and shameless.
Bon apetit!
Tom Cruise says he plans to eat the placenta of his new-born child. The Hollywood star, whose fiancee Katie Holmes has just given birth, told a US magazine that he expects it to be 'very nutritious'. 
"I'm gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good," he added.
But what is the placenta for and why is the Hollywood actor considering eating it?
The term 'placenta' originates from the Latin word for 'flat cake'. It is also referred to as the afterbirth.
The placenta is an organ within the uterus which acts as an exchange system between the mother and the baby.
In 1998, chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall cooked a placenta on his Channel 4 programme and served it at a dinner party. 
He devised the recipe with mother Rosie Clear for a party to celebrate the birth of her daughter Indi-Mo Krebbs. The placenta was fried with shallots and garlic, flambéed, puréed and served as a pate on focaccia bread.
Buzz
Ah, coffee. I could write an ode to it. Dark brown gold so piping hot you can barely tolerate it against your lip. Steaming java with the first light of day reflecting swimming circles on its muddy surface. Sweet, rejuvenating coffee, so simple and yet so powerful as to make dead men rise. Whether you wake at dawn or noon, where would you be without the faithful comfort of Joe?
And I'm not talking about those sally versions of coffee available now at even the dankest of gas stations. Spare me your lattes, you Blueberry Bohemian blend, your foaming cup of coffee mutation. Trying to improve on coffee is like trying to better a pizza. It can't be done. The result of such improvement is nothing more than a malformed hybrid of something that was perfect to begin with. The real joy of coffee is its simplicity, it's consistency, it's I-will-always-be-here-for-you promise.
Simple yes, and yet adaptable. You can drink it bright mornings on the French Riviera, with poets and romantics. You can drink it on the park bench on which you slept just beyond the perimeter of the ghetto. You can drink it in a hotel suite with butt kissing servants, you can drink it under the bleachers with a $40 whore you rented for an hour. 
Sweet, life-saving coffee. I'll never understand those who stumble into their days without its resuscitative powers. I mourn those who get by with colas or water, heroin or cocaine from tiny spoons. Coffee is rebirth. It is a thousand springs poured scalding hot into a mug that fits just right in the hand's embrace. Ah, coffee. The biggest shame is that we cannot make love to it…
So, I have to be up at 8 a.m. for an interview and this is my pre-lamenting stage. Eight-friggin-o'clock. The coffee is ready to go. It's cheap stuff, maybe Folgers or Maxwell House. None of that Starbucks pretension for me. Coffee should be swilled with a cigarette over the dismal morning news. It should be placed in a cup and gripped between the legs on the zig zagging, high speed drive to the menace of the daily routine. It should…
But I've said too much. I'll let you be about your morning. By the time you see me again, I'll be wide-eyed, grinning manically and shaking like an old washing machine. Totally wired. Hey ho, let's go!
WANTED
The following personnel are considered absent without leave from the blog. Penalties for chronic absenteeism range from elaborate rumors about personal affairs to beat downs. None of you want that. Right?
Chunder
Herb
Slet Vartish
Jesse
Richie
Martha
Treehugger
Cats in Pajamas
If you have information about the wherabouts of these bloggers, don't try to apprehend them, as they are likely drunk. Contact blog security (Bulldog) instead. And remember what happened to the last blogger who tried to slip away in October. It's like the mafia around here. You try to get out, they keep pulling you back in.
Queer eye for the straight aquatic bird
You know? I always suspected. That funny little bird never dated, he was neat freak and there were plants all over his house. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. But the little guy had a cat too, and… well, come on. We all know that single males who keep cats clearly enjoy alternate lifestyles. Plus, he's so tall and thin and what a snappy dresser! Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Gay old time over a little fairy bird
By ADRIAN TAME
15apr06
PHILLIP Island's iconic fairy penguins have been renamed "little penguins" in Queensland to avoid offending the gay community.
In an act of political correctness gone overboard, Sea World theme park operators on the Gold Coast changed the name of their star attraction to avoid being "offensive".
Rebecca Smith, spokeswoman for Sea World, confirmed: "We didn't want to upset the gay community.
"We didn't have any complaints about the name of the penguins, but someone thought it could be seen as offensive so we decided to change it to little penguin instead.
"The name is more politically correct. We're not treating it as a big issue."
There’s a killer on the road
A killer goes on a rampage and cleans out two men who happen to be registered sex offenders. Fearing a serial killer may be targeting molesters, the state shuts down the big list of all such offenders registered in the state. It sounds quite a lot like a made-for-tv movie, or an episode of Law & Order. 
It remains to be seen if the gunman was planning a systematic attack on all the convicted sexual fiends he could find. That's certainly the tempting way to think. It's lurid and it has the elements of lone justice and revenge. Those details will emerge in due time. In the meantime, the important question becomes: How do we feel about it?
***
I had a friend who was sexually molested as a child. My best friend, in fact. I was 14, she a few years younger when she told me about it. It had happened years before and my friend related this tale with a sort of detachment.
I don't believe kids really grasp the severity of that kind of violation unless they are the victim of it. To me, hearing about the atrocity was like listening to a boogie man story around a campfire.
The fiend was big and dark and snarling. The victim was small, shy and frightened. Dreadful things were done to her in a dark and dreadful place.
There were screams and threats and horrible deeds. There were tears and whimpers and pleas for release. There was shame and guilt and confusion.
I was 14 and nodding a lot, astounded by the story but high above it. All I knew was it was an appalling revelation and I was glad my friend had survived.
It was like she took a really bad wipe out on her bike, or escaped from a house fire.
It happened, she lived and that was that. A gruesome experience and an unfortunate one. Yet she had walked away to tell me about it years after the fact.
I knew a kid once who rode his bike down the steep face of a hill and skidded the last 60 feet or so on his face. He wore scars into his teen years and had to answer questions about them every time he met someone new.
My friend didn't have those kinds of scars. In fact, her face was round and pretty and flawless. Wide eyes, smooth skin and cheeks like apples.
Tough girl, too. Physically strong to a freakish degree. I'd seen her thrash older girls out there in the projects where she lived. I'd seen her wrestle guys and leave them tapping out in embarrassed astonishment.
Tough as nails, this friend of mine. Only she was emotionally brittle.
Sad movies made her cry. The plights of stray cats would leave her gloomy for days. And her mother, well… Her mother was divorced and dating. Many strange men came to my friend's home and she despised them all. They were all big and powerful and threatening to her.
Without so much as an unkind word or a raised voice, these intimidating men would leave my friend shaking and sobbing and dashing away from her home.
I'd find her trembling in the woods, pounding her fist against her knees and crying the kind of tears that seem to burn down her cheeks.
I tell you, kids don't understand the kind of trauma that comes with that kind of violation. I thought maybe my friend was maladjusted or having trouble toddling into her teen years. I used to scoff at her and chide the dramatics.
She'd shove me away and go on crying and I'd wander off to find a pickup baseball game somewhere.
She was my best friend then. But I had no idea that something inflicted on her years ago was still drawing blood.
I've had the miserable experience here of seeing admitted child molesters sent away with teeny tiny jail sentences or none at all. Don't get me started on the 81-year-old man who admitted to sexually abusing four girls he babysat.
The old creature stood in court and admitted to violating girls 3, 8, 12 and 15-years old over the course of a year. Two or three times a week, this ogre engaged in fiendish sex acts too horrible to describe here.
Yet Androscoggin County prosecutors sent the old man home to serve probation instead of jail time. They cited his age and ill health as reasons for the sentence.
What you didn't see in court at that particular hearing was the family of the victims to express outrage. The mother of the girls, in fact, was charged with allowing the nastiness to continue. She was accused of encouraging the behavior and sent to jail.
They sent the old man home though, while the kids he mistreated have gone on to various foster homes and various emotional problems.
That one is documented. You can look it up in the court records. Call me and I'll give you the names and dates.
I could list numerous cases beyond that where admitted child molesters were sent free because there was no outrage in the courtroom. The family was not present and the press was looking the other way. Prosecutors took the path of least resistance and called it a day. Probably saved tax payers a few bucks.
Kids who are molested are not like kids who get punched or kicked by bullies on the playground, who then walk way laughing. These victims don't scream in pain and then shake it off.
My friend… She went on mistrusting grown men and hating her life in general. She was sent away to another state to live with a man who yelled at her and dominated her at least emotionally.
I was maybe 16 years old when I got the phone call. My friend had pulled a rifle from her macho step-dad's gun rack while the house was otherwise empty. She loaded a slug, hooked a toe around the trigger and aimed the barrel at her face.
With a bang she likely never heard, her pain was over. The whole time I'd known her, she was dying from the kind of anguish I can't ever imagine. The kind of anguish I didn't even think about until the first fistful of dirt thumped down upon her coffin.
Boogie nights
Okay, listen up people. For this year's Lost Sole talent show we'll be singing the following hits. Please remember your bell bottom pants and don't forget to get your hair permed. Weasel, yours is fine the way it is.
I think when we get to "Undercover Angel" it would be a good time for that suicide pact we've been mulling. If only others had been so committed back in the 70's.
No, really. This is a fine list. Until you get to 1976. Then it gets ugly.
PS: Disco sucks.
Corpus delicti
So, I was reading the story about the kid who killed his family and hid the bodies in the basement. Not bad for a 21 year old, but not real inspired. Body disposal is an art. It requires logic, planning and 
consideration of every angle the gendarmes will certainly explore. Poe was a master of body disposal. His characters, however, sucked. In the Tell Tale Heart, the killer freaks out and confesses that the corpse was under the floorboards. In the Black Cat, the idiot bricks up the cat along with his dead wife and the kitty starts howling at the worst time. Fools, the lot of them.
I once wrote a story about a man who killed his wife and sort of seized up when it was time to dispose of the body. It wasn't that there weren't enough options; rather there were too many. There was the abandoned well out in the woods. There was the river on the other side of the mountain. There was the quarry on the other side of town and the lime pit a county over. There was the incinerator to consider, the wood chipper, the bog. There was dismemberment to think about and outlandish ideas like mailing the body to another country. The poor, hapless murderer. He didn't fare too well.
Of course, we all know about the various bodies stashed in boxsprings at hotels. Great for that quick get away after you've offed a hooker. The body won't be discovered until decomposition begins and the smell 
becomes overwhelming. Think of that the next time you and your honey are crashed at the Hyatt. What's that smell? Is it your wife's feet? No! It's a dead smack dealer just a few inches from your sleeping face.
According to Snopes, the final judge on urban legends, this kind of thing happens all the time. One hundred percent true. It sort of makes you want to poke your boxspring with a sharp stick the next time you're away on that second honeymoon. Because I don't think having sex with a corpse beneath you counts as a threesome.
On 10 July 2003, a man checked into the Capri Motel, just east of downtown Kansas City, and began complaining about a foul odor in his room. Management told him nothing could be done about the problem, and he spent three nights in his room before checking out because he could no longer stand the smell. When the cleaning staff came in to make up the room on 13 July, they lifted the mattress and underneath found a man's body in an advanced stage of decomposition.
More of this delicious topic here: Gruesome discoveries
