Save the planet, kill yourself …
Not much crime lately …
But we are never short on stupid. Lets file this one away under our low-expectation criminals — like the guy who shoplifted 50 bucks worth of crap from a dollar store and then went out in the parking lot and jacked a Geo Metro. Go for the gold, baby.
Today’s toadstool can’t really be classified as a criminal, since he broke no laws.
Police got a report that a local man was going to kill himself. In a fit of despair, the man in question flung himself from a brick building, trying to end it all.
Sadly, the building was only 10 feet tall. When police arrived, he was walking around the parking lot crying because his head hurt from where he banged it on the pavement.
Of course, I’m glad the guy survived; 13 years of journalism has not made me that misanthropic as yet. Still, it’s a shame he will probably go on to father fourteen or so mouth breathers over the next couple of years. The gene pool is getting mighty shallow these days. Natural selection seems to be on vacation.
On another note, we had a shooting a couple of weeks ago. Turns out the victim was not the intended target. That is such a common occurence that one of our reporters has remarked the safest thing to be in our county is an “intended target.”
Go figure.
Wear your damn pads; new Juggernaut shirt at Art Life Collective
Ok, proof positive, wearing your protective gear — full-body prophylactics for boarders — make the difference, sometimes between getting back up and riding or laying on your back getting tube fed until they come to harvest your organs.
Got back on the Freebord for the first time in weeks — ever since eating it catching a downhill edge on a mouth-breather-level-easy run. Felt like a nube. Serously, just a few weeks, four actually, and it took me half a day to where I could comfortably link slides. Back to the old practice, practice thing. Started out carving on the old Sector 9 longboard to loosen up, then graduated to the Freebord once the frontal lobes realized I wasn’t going to eat it too bad.
Still, looking back on the last bail where I sprained my foot, if I had not been wearing elbow and wrist guards, plus helmet, I probably would have gotten another ride in an ambulance and more casts, plus surgery. Not to mention, looking at the gash in the helmet, if that had been my head, I might have added incontinence and drooling to my list of talents. Especially since I landed on the arm that I shattered a six months ago — wrist guards did the job. No reinjury. Not even a twitch.
I keep seeing youtube videos and folks posting on the Freebord and other skateboard sites about how they never wear their helmets or pads. That’s just retarded folks. Stupid.
Sorry if you don’t think its cool, but both from personal experience and covering such stuff as a journalist, pads can help keep you from getting turned into hamburger or taking a dirt nap. I was wearing my knee pads and helmet, but not my wrist guards when I broke my arm — which I now only have about 70 percent use of forever now, the joint is mostly synthetic, plust ran up more than $40,000 in medical bills, no lie. Those guards would have prevented the break.
Just about all the old school skaters I see at Ride in Alabaster wear helmets and pads and I have seen them eat it hard with no injury. I also see the veteran riders on the Freebord forum telling people to wear their protective gear, especially the helmet. It makes me all warm and tingly inside. They are absolutely right. Doctors can fix just about every part of the body — except the brain. Unless you like pissing yourself and eating baby food, wear your helmet, always.
Now, getting down off my soap box.
Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, in addition to passing the 100th artist mark, has been graced with a new I’m the Juggernaut, Bitch shirt from Mr. E.
Pay attention here: Art shirts are great, but if you want to sell lots and lots of them online, at least have one commercially popular, read pop-culture-icon stuff, design to draw traffic to your page. The Juggernaut shirts have proven to be a huge draw for Ed Ferrusquia, and a few of our other artists have learned from this.
It’s great to have so many different designs — from photo art to simple line drawings — but getting traffic to your page can get a real boost from one piece of commercial art that has keywords that will show up in the search engines. Once people are there for one design, the tend to at least browse — and sometimes buy — your other work.
So, just something to keep in mind.
Art Life Collective font help
As official PR gerbil for Art Life Collective, both in recruiting artists to put together our custom t-shirts and in promoting the actual t-shirt designers’ work, I am always working hard and heavy with fonts. With something just more than a decade in the newspaper business, I have been working with fonts and stuff for years. The nice thing about working for a paper, though, is your company supplies you with insanely vast resorces when it comes to typesetting.
In my private life, my ALC alterego so to speak, I don’t have so many resources at hand. I am currently working on a text project for www.artlifecollective.com and am getting huge quantities of help from one of the Art Life Collectife forum administrators who has pointed me towards several online font resources that are turning out to be must haves for anyone doing design work.
That goes for everything from commercial art to simple custom t-shirt designs.
Kudos, Jules
So, check out these resources
http://betterfonts.com/
http://www.dafont.com/
Also, a fontbrowser:
http://www.stcassociates.com/lab/fontbrowser.html
Again,
Thanks Jules.
Rules for court appearances
If you ever have to go to court, no matter how small the infraction
Just a hint …
Don’t be high
It’s been docket week here and, for the most part, toll the bell, all has been quiet. One minor case of note. One of the defendents came in today to enter his plea visibly baked out of his head. Apparently the judge could smell the cloud of pot smoke surrounding the suspect. Right after he plead not guilty, the judge said, “Thank you. Officers, would you take this young man up stairs and drug test him please.”
What’s strange, is this is not an uncommon occurrence. We had a case where a man was on trial for DUI murder. One of the witnesses said he had been drinking with the suspect early the morning of the accident, but his testimony was called into question after an exchange something like this:
Attorney: Had you been drinking that morning?
Witness (not completely steady): Yes, a lot
Attorney, somewhat concerned: Um, have you been drinking this morning?
Witness: A bit.
It’s things like that which tend to undermine a case.
We also had one guy on trial who had been in custody until his trial date. Someone saw a friend of the suspect enter the courthouse bathroom with a package and come out empty handed. Fearing a bomb had been placed in the bathroom, the witness notified the nearest deputy.
Turns out, the bag contained a buch of pot. The friend was stashing it in the bathroom so the suspect could pick it up and take it back to jail with him. No lie
Everybody goes to jail.
Also, it appears that most criminals have gone crazy here in the past few months. There were at least 50 cases delayed for mental evaluations on the suspects. “Not guilty by reason of mental defect/deficiency, it’s not just for murderers any more.”
Switching tracks a bit, took the Westy on its first road trip this weekend — 300 miles round trip up into the mountains. Few glitches with getting the camping arrangements all made. The new canvas top and cot work great, but oldest son forgot to mention he would not be comfortable on the top bunk because of the height. And someone washed and dried the front cot canvas, so it did not fit and has to be restretched.
Still and all, from a mechanical standpoint, the bus ran great, no problems crusising at 70 on the highway and went up the mountains just fine. Also, happy to note, burned very little to no oil on the road and had no mechanical difficulties.
It’s always something of a crap shoot any time you take an old air-cooled VW on its first trip.
I figure I can stretch the cot canvas before the next trip, and the wife has come up with a way to make the top bunk child safe. We are going to sew strips of cloth to some wood slats that can be unrolled across the opening once the kid is in the bunk so there is no way he can fall through the hole. He mentioned how much safer he will feel with it set up that way.
When working with old VWs, being creative and adaptable is an absolute must.
No getting out of court
Can’t really call this guy a criminal yet because so far, he has avoided going to court.
Earlier in the week, he was scheduled for trial, but called his lawyer saying he was going to miss is day before the judge because he was in the ER for complications from Type 2 diabetes.
Of course, records show he was in the hospital for just a couple of hours and some change. Any complication from diabetes requiring hospitalization would have taken much longer than that. Hell, getting a splinter out would have taken longer than that.
Still, the judge gave him the benefit of the doubt and rescheduled his trial for the next day.
The suspect was, once again, a no-show. So the judge sent a couple of officers to round him up. When the arrived at his residence, he was complaining of respiratory distress. Then he fainted — or gave some reasonable facimilie there of.
The officers tried to bring him around by waiving an ammonia strip under his nose. Didn’t work — because, the police noted, this “unconscious” man was holding his breath. Neat trick, that.
So, one of the cops takes the strip and lays it across the suspects upper lip and then waits. Takes just a couple of seconds before he “comes around” coughing and sputtering. Again, the judge gives him the benefit of the doubt — the police methods used here should be classified as unorthodox, even if they were a creative necessity.
However, the judge also said the suspect would be in court tomorrow “if you have to wheel him in in a chair.”
Be interesting to see how this thing resolves its self.
On another note, anyone who is using Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, whether to sell custom designer t-shirts or just to post their work on needs to check the Art Life Collective forum. We have added another section to the search features and you need to inter keywords with your art, even if it is already up on the site, so people can find your work.
Also, we have several, many actually, of our artists who are linking from our site to other sites outside Art Life Collective to direct traffic to more of their work. We highly encourage this because it means ALC’s contributors are actually using the site as it is intended — to promote their work.
VW Westy pop top replacement
Since I am still too banged up to Freebord — or longboard or Flowboard, hell I can kind of walk, sort of — the Wife and I have turned our attention to my 73 Westfalia.
We have the interior almost complete, which gives me a warm, tingly sensation. The outside of the bus is a patchwork of body repairs and other work that will take a little longer, so right now, as it lumbers down the road, the camper looks more like it was sneezed into existence that the fine piece of German engineering it was ment to be.
This weekend, though, we managed to replace the crummy cloth someone had stapled up on the pop top with real canvas — thanks to the people at gowesty.com who have a huge online selection of Volkswagon camper gear for sale, from split windows all the way to vanagons.
The top, including hinges and tiedowns, needed a buch of work, not to mention a sound cleaning … so we took it off.
To do this, I highly recommend having a couple of tall helpers in good health on hand. The Wife and her gimp husband managed somehow to get the top off … and much more difficult, especially when it comes to lining up the front hinges, back on again.
Getting the top cleaned — it was growing penicilin and something that looked like leprosy on top — and new seals, also from gowesty.com, all the way around were much easier tasks with the top completely off. Also, the two-piece pop-top seals are very simple to put on. I understand from some of the online guides that the single-piece gaskets can be difficult to the point of having to trim the fiberglass where it goes around the corners to seal with the luggage rack. Use the two-piece sets.
Also, with the top off, stapling in the tent was a breeze, no sweat. Again, this is a two-person job. With a minimal stretching, the canvas fit perfectly, though the Wife found out good, strong wood clamps to hold the fabric in place right where you want it are almost a must. Also, we used an electric staple gun which also made quick work of the task. Be careful when using one of those, though, because they can damage the wood if you are too close to an edge. Also, make sure the staples are the right lenght.
Putting the top back on the van sucked. Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, sucked. We really needed those tall, healthy — without a sprained foot — helpers to get things in place. They would have been especially helpful holding the top at the right angle, in the right place, while we put in the first bolts holding the front of the top down. Still, we managed — after teaching anyone with in earshot exactly how many cuss words a newspaper editor picks up over the years — to get it back on and lined up right.
Also replaced the fold out top cot. A no-brainer, four bolts on and off and that job is done.
One point of advice here, aside from having help, check the front hinge bolts for rust and the wood under the top they mount to. We found ours had rusted and the rubber washers shot, so the wood on one side was completely gone … powder. While you have the roof off is a good time to deal with such repairs.
It’s also a good time to clean under pop-top and around the roof of the bus in those areas that are impossible to reach with the fiberglass in place.
Expect to spend between six and eight hours on this.
New stuff coming to Art Life Collective
We have listened to the custom t-shirt designers who contribute to Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, and have made a few changes. First off, the site is in the process of expanding the search engine to search our artist t-shirts by design keyword. The site is already searchable by artist.
Also, after much debate and input from contributing artists and customers, ALC is adding some more color choices from our American Apparel lineup. We have narrowed it down to two colors and are letting our artists vote on which one they want on the Art Life Collective forum.
Personally, I was pushing for “clear” but sadly my creative genius was crushed under the unbearable weight of main stream fashion sense and the sheer impracticality of printing shirts on transparent plastic. Maybe next time.
Gotta love race fans
Race week here in Talladega never ceases to leave us with a shortage of notable police reports. Don’t get me wrong, having covered NASCAR races in some form or fashion for more than a decade now, I can say race fans are great. It’s always fun to go into the campgrounds before the event and talk to the enthusiasts. They are good interviews and, almost without exception, go out of their way to make our reporters feel welcome. If you ever get the chance to do one of the big races, especially here at Talladega, take it — Race Weekend is loads of fun.
That being said, though, there are always those folks who feel it is their duty to make things interesting for local law enforcement. I remember one night a couple of days before the race — the fans start arriving weeks before the actual races — hearing a report on the scanner of two trucks booking it down Alabama 21 … backwards … on the wrong side of the road.
Then there was the mouth-breather who called the sheriff’s office to see about getting some security out to the track because he was setting up a portable club so he could film some footage for the “girls gone wild — you’ve got herpes” video collection. The chief deputy informed the would-be movie producer that not only would he not get any security, if he set up shop and there was any nudity, deputies would pay him a visit, not to help, but to arrest him. Remember, this is the buckle of the Bible belt and we have some pretty strict decency laws here.
After being warned not to try enticing young women to pop their tops here, most people would take the hint. Not this guy. He went ahead with his ill-advised filming and was almost immediately arrested and his equipment — much of which turned out to be rented — was confiscated. He got caught because, dipshit that he is, he set up his club, complete with arc lamps, at the end of the runway for the Talladega airport, which is right next to the superspeedway. The police were called in by pilots trying to land who were being blinded by the arc lamps. So, not only was this crew in trouble for having nuditiy where it is verboten, they were also busted for interfering with airport flight operations — which gets you into federal charges territory.
Then there are always the — now late — campers who during the fall race decide that bringing a produces-carbon-monoxide-in-huge-quantities gas grill or camp stove into their tent or camper and end up taking a dirt nap. We usually get one of those every year or two.
Not this year, though. There were a bunch of fights at the end of the race because this is definately DEI country and fans felt Junior was robbed in that wreck on the last lap. Same thing happened a couple of years ago when Gordon beat Little E out under caution.
Still, the crowning report — so far, we are still getting reports here and there — is the guy who went drinking with a couple of his buddies and woke up the next morning duck-taped naked to a power pole in the middle of one of the campgrounds. His drinking companions at least had the decency to cover his jimmy — they taped a flip-flop over it.
But wait, there’s more. He declined to file charges — the police were the ones who found him — because the guys who stripped him and tied him up were his father and grandfather.
Gotta love race weekend.
Shooting cows is dumb, mmmkay
These guys are stupid on so many levels.
Local police are investigating a the fact that a group (all clearly members of the cork-on-a-fork club) of teens have been going around shooting cows.
First off, where’s the sport in shooting cows? At night? If a cow was any dumber, it would be a plant, for god’s sake. Not to mention, at night, they are about as mobile as a highway overpass. Again, not that I hunt, but there is not much more sport in shooting cows than there is shooting the ground at your feet.
Also, in Alabama, it is very illegal — as in get to spend a year or so living as someone’s bitch in the county lock-up if you are caught.
And these poor retards are going to get caught. Aside from the fact the police already have a good idea who is responsible, they are putting a little extra effort into this one because …
THE COWS IN QUESTION BELONG TO THE LOCAL SHERIFF.
Once again proving that criminals here are that special kind of stupid.
These slobs will probably end up in a cell next to the local college kids who stole our senator’s credit card numbers or the ladies who were forging checks written on the account of one of our circuit judges’ mother.
You know, if you are going to steal from someone, people need to be real careful about picking their victims.
