Brilliant … reporter closes case for city
Things are finally settling down at the office in our new building and are almost back up to full staff after some of our young tallent went off to other jobs … always the bane of small papers (Though we also take pride we are one of the few newspapers willing to give journalists a chance right out of school. We have had some amazing talent walk through our doors that way).
So, at last we have time to really get caught up on our police reports. This one does not so much fall into the category of stupid criminal — though that, as usual, plays a part in it.
One of our city beat reporters was working on a pile of incident and offense reports this morning and came across one where the suspect was nabbed with drug paraphernalia — in this case a crack pipe. A seemingly minor report.
Later today, the reporter was in the police chief’s office going over anything of interest. The chief said things had mostly been quiet, but they were working a missing person case. The individual in question was the same guy busted Sunday with the pipe. The reporter pointed out to the chief that the suspect/missing dipshit, might have not wanted to share with his family he had been busted with a crack pipe and, therefore, would not have been able to make bond.
Reporter: So, he may still be downstairs in the jail.
Chief: Surely the investigators would have checked that.
But … no. The guy was still in jail. Our reporter not only closed the case, he got to sit in on the conversation between the chief and the investigator.
Chief to investigator: You still working that missing person case?
Investigator: Yeah.
Chief: Getting anywhere with it?
Investigator: Not much so far. We have some pictures and are going to go around town and see if anyone has seen this guy. His family has not seen him since Sunday.
Chief: Well, before you do that, you probably want to walk across the hall. In the jail. I think you will probably find him there.
Small-town journalism does have its perks.
On the Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, front we have several new t-shirt designers. Our list of contributors is slowly creeping towards 100. Jules has some fantastic new designs of a darkly humorous nature. And, amazingly, the Juggernaut, Bitch shirts continue to sell well. Got to love underground Internet fads. So, check out the site … Do it, do it.
This ink infusion press is making all the difference for us. It uses technology similar to an ink jet printer. This lets us do single or multiple runs. Having worked with this and systems using seperations (like printing a newspaper or screen printing), I highly recommend these new printers for anyone looking to do any sort of fabric printing. As far as the Art Life Collective crew can tell, the printing is just as durable as screen methods, though there is something of a learning curve with the technology.
As for Freebording … or anything else, thanks to a nasty fall I’m off the boards for a bit. X-rays came back clean, but I have one hell of a sprain on my foot — it looks like I have been playing soccer with bowling balls. After breaking my wrist into very small pieces earlier this year, I’m running kind of low on working appendages.
Though it’s probably kind of karmic, since, if I had not screwed up my foot Friday, I probably would have tried some of the bigger hills this weekend. That’s great, except the trees have covered the roads with acorns and other fall plant crud, greatly increasing my chances of becoming a quivering mound of red paste and exposed bone in the gutter, and I have so had my fill of that for the year.
I’ll give it a week to let myself heal. Once my foot looks a little less leprous and can take my weight better I need to practice riding switch. Still don’t have it down very well. Can 180 into it, and occassionally spin back out, but usually end up bailing. It just feels wrong. I may have to make myself content with just doing beautiful soul carves on long hills.
Criminal likes pepper spray
This is one for the books. Police responding to a simple disturbance call arrest one suspect. Normally this would be the end of things. But not for our dude, who is apparently missing most of his front lobes.
After his arrest, the suspect was placed in the rear of a patrol car. He then proceeded to kick out the car’s rear door window.
So, the officers at the scene hit him with pepper spray … twice. The suspect then responded, “That spray aint sh*t. Spray me again, mother f**ker.”
So the officers oblidged.
Dumbass.
Uh … duh
Why should something this self evident be a headline?
“Former teacher: Sex with pupil really bad choice”
You know, there are a couple of wars on and a bunch of other things that should be grabbing our attention. So, why is this headline on CNN.com.
And, again, Duh. The statement is so obvious, it’s like saying “Snorting a rail of drain cleaner not a good idea.”
No boarding, but stupid criminal of the day a beaut
Ok, so we go for most of the summer dry as a bone, with the occassional thunderstorm on the weekend … usually right when I am grabbing my board or the tools to go work on the VW … and especially if there is no rain forecast.
So drout conditions across most of our areas … at least until this week when I am back on a semi-normal work schedule and just might have some afternoon time to Freeboard, Flowboard, longboard or cut a new hole for the stereo in the Westy. So it rains for a day and a half. Not just kind of rains, but flash-flood-fun kind of rains.
Pisser.
Still, could be doing it on a Saturday afternoon. I am hoping for some clear sky tomorrow afternoon.
Big news on the Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, front. We finally have the site searchable by shirt designer and are working on getting keyword searches in place. Coders working over time.
Stupid criminal of the day: This one is another that falls into that category of special kind of stupid. The, well not a suspect, since he was conviceted today … the criminal was convicted of possession of crack cocaine and, as an added bonus, paraphernalia. That’s not all that funny, except for the fact that he was busted because he called 911, saying, “You need to go down and bust J——, she sold me bad crack. She selling bad crack,” or something along those lines. So, police had no trouble busting dipshit criminal of the day.
The grand jury is still pending on the lady selling the “bad crack.” Fun for everyone
Freebord vs. Flowboard … both have their place
Not much to report on the Art Life Collective t-shirt design front — been too busy moving the newspaper into our new building, a real contemporary/deco facility: It makes me so proud.
Also, continue to nail the slopes on the Freebord. I may never go back to traditional longboarding again. Naw, there are still some places my Sector 9 works better than the Freebord, but still, when it comes to carving long hills and controlling speed, being able to link slides and ride into switch is the best way to go. For someone who has a buch of experience on things like wake boards and an early verison of wakeskates — standing on a hydroslide — but no experience snowboarding, learning to Freebord is a ton of work.
Until you master it — and the guys at Freebord.com are right, it takes loads of practice — it is much more dangerous than a regular long board. But, once you get it down, being able to stop and control speed makes it a much safer way to carve up a hill — that’s especially true since I shattered my arm in a fall four months ago and there is no way in hell my hand will ever take enough weight again to slow my longboard with slide gloves.
That being said, we also got our Flowboard last week, a 36-incher, so my kids could do some serious carving. They want to ride the hills with me but don’t have the experience or the weight to manage a Freebord or safely carve on the Sector 9. Because of the Deep Carve System is based on the angle of the board and does not need weight to push the bushings to one side or the other, even my 6-year-old can carve the steepest hills with me. Lots of fun. The board turns on a dime but because of the multi-wheel design, it keeps speeds reasonable and carving easy.
Also of note, the Flowboard is much easier to ride — almost like a regular skateboard — than some of the other hybrids like the Freebord. I still prefer the Freebord ride, but having both boards in our quiver is a blast.
No stupid criminals to report — I have been way too busy to go through the police reports the reporters bring in.
Victim twice
This one does not so much involve a dumb criminal; it does not even involve a dumb victim. Simple assault case: Guy got beat up by his neighbor wielding a wooden pole. What is surprising is that he was not the suspect under arrest for taking a baseball bat to his parents — they named him Devious. Poor bastard.
Though, it seems a lot of people involved in the police reports have seriously screwed names — like the guys said in Feakanomics, goofy names tend to be a fairly solid indicator of social status and, I suspect, future involvement in criminal activity. So far to date, the winner for the worst name is some poor tool whose folks named him, no lie, Fartavious. Runner up is a lady named Neutrogenia. Mom and Dad would be taking a dirt nap if I was dealing with that. Oh, and we also had one named Placentia. WTF
We have the dumbest criminals here
As promised, an update on yesterday’s story about the young woman run over by two idiots fleeing paying for a Chinese buffet, about $22.
First off, what’s really important here: The waitress, who was in front of the car and intentionally run over — as in thrown up on the hood, then off, then run over, has been upgraded from ICU to trauma care. The doctors are still not sure of the extend of her injuries, and she is not out of the woods, but it looks like she has a chance.
Now, for the good part: You know, if you are going to commit felony vehicular assult, possibly murder, you should not have a personalized tag. Took the local PD no time to track the suspect to her home and arrest her. She is 19, and at best is looking at a year in prison, at worst … decades. One moment of dazzling stupidity and her life is over. They still have not caught the passenger, but they will.
On another note: Lets give a big round of applause for Katherine Harris. The whole seperation of church and state is a lie thing seems to have killed what is left of her campaign. Even W won’t support her. Proof it is not only Democrats who show such skill at committing political suicide. Wonder if they paid her to run.
Some criminals are evil
Dammit all to hell. People often ask me why so many journalists are cynical – even mysanthropic – well there is a fantastic reason for this. So often — though we also see the opposite side of humanity too — we are dealing day in and day out with the dregs of humanity.
I know I often make light of some of our stupid criminals here. In fact, it’s a huge reason I created this blog. As a journalist, when I write, I am trained to be objective about my subject, regardless of my own feelings on the matter. However, it is a common public falacy that reporters, editors and the like don’t have feelings or strong opinions. To the contrary, we tend to be the most opinionated people on the planet — we are just trained to be objective in our work and save personal views for the editorial page.
Back to the point, as funny as our stupid criminals are — and there is no shortage of them, here or anywhere else — that stupidity sometimes gets other people hurt or killed. This past weekend, two women tried to skip out on a cheap dinner tab at a local Chinese buffet. When the waitress walked out to the parking lot, they ran her down in their car. As of now, I don’t know if the young woman who is always so nice to her customers is even still alive — they took her to the hospital by Lifesaver Helicopter.
So, for these two less-than-worthless human beings, the price of a couple of plates of sweet-and-sour chicken was worth killing someone for. Just to kick the stupidity level up a notch, there were plenty of witnesses and the two suspects were driving a car with personalized tags. I will let you know tomorrow if the police have caught them yet.
OK, venting over. Still, it’s no wonder so many of the people who work in the media become cynics.
In some positive news, I just read in National Geographic — still one of the finest operations in my business — where a company building a shopping center in Florida paid more that $100,000 to have a 120-year-old oak tree relocated. Maybe there is hope for the human race yet. If you ever want to see true dedication to preserving natural resources, even in a densly populated nation, go to Japan some time. What they do to protect their forrests is truely amazing – $100,000 per tree per year in some forrests.
On another note, from Art Life Collective, my brother Blair, aka Disco Super Chocolate, has added Web radio to the list of projects. Custom t-shirts are still the focus, but this is just another creative outlet for us.
Jules has the update on our forum:
“Our man with the plan, ALC President Blair Hadley a.k.a. DJ Disco Super Chocolate, streaming the freshest of tunes to the internet airwaves ’cause he’s just that f*ing cool.
Featuring a wide variety of music that will make you sing, move, remember, sigh, gasp and *sometimes* wish you were deaf.
Where else but Radio ALC can one listen to New York Dolls, Massive Attack, Paul Simon and the theme song from The Love Boat all in one day? No where.
He’s so multi-talented it will make you sick.
Radio ALC can be found streaming though WINAMP on your SHOUTcast radio dial.
Search: WALC
If you are using itunes or another mp3 program, you can listen to the stream by pacing the url, “www.blairsworld.mine.nu:8000” in the field where you select radio stations. For example, on itunes, it is under the “advanced” tab at the top. Click “advanced” then “open stream” then paste the above referenced web address into the field.
This ain’t no Cafepress corporate marketplace, baby.
Welcome to the Underground.“
So check it out, though I do have to admit, it is a bit disconcerting when “Power in the Blood” by A3 fades into the theme from “Dallas”
Peace
Creative abuse
Not much on either the art or the board sports today. Mother nature has been against me — any free time from my work at the paper it has been raining. I am still working out how to ride my new Freebord … I can link carves and slides, mostly without having to bail. But, according to all the guys at the Freebord site, it takes practice, lots of it, especially for people like me who have wakeboarded, surfed and skateboarded, but don’t regularly snowboard — not much of that in the Deep South. Should be back on the day shift soon, so I will have afternoons free to practice. It seems to be entirely a matter of balancing and learning when to weight and unweight your uphill edge. Getting there.
On another note, we don’t so much have a stupid criminal this week as an unsusal one: According to a police I&O, a woman was charged with felony domestic battery for slicing up her husband with a samauri sword. The stab wound to the back may hurt her self defense claim.
In a statewide dumb criminal case, some human defect was arrested for breaking into jail. According to wire reports, this guy scaled a security fence so inmates could hoist a bag full of part favors like MDMA and pot into the county jail. The whole thing was being watched by guards who, after a brief foot chase, caught the guy and charged him with everything from possession to bringing contraband to prisoners. He should be joining them soon. Again, what kind of idiot breaks into jail? Has it become so difficult for people to sell drugs on the street?
Traded the crown jewels for my art
Boo, yah.
QE the second bought one of my designer shirts from Art Life Collective, don’t believe me?
http://artlifecollective.com/bb/index.php?topic=24.0
That is some more of Jules work. Again, the girl earns some props.
Still, if the Queen of England is going to buy my products, she should have gone a couple of sizes smaller to show off her bust more. Just a little tip from the what not to wear collection.
Incident and offense report of the day: Actually, got two today. Local police stopped a car driving around a residential section of town this morning with three underage young women, all pretty tanked. Oh, and they were also all naked – go figure. The three were initially charged with underage drinking and one DUI. However, at the station, it was later discovered that one of the women also had a stash of nose candy on her. Now, if she was not wearing any clothes at the time of her arrest, where did she initially hide it from the police? Best guess is that piece of evidence is was handled by officers wearing surgical gloves.
OK, now for stupid criminal No. 2: We have a couple of men here who have spent most of their adult lives in one of our city jails. This takes work, since it essentially means a continuing stream of minor crimes. One such tool was out of jail, but had a pile of warrants for failure to appear and other petty stuff. An officer sees him walking down the street – all local police know the guy on site by now – and hollers out: “Hey, when you were a trusty, you did a great job washing our cruisers … would you take a few minutes and wash my car for me now?” Suspect was more than willing to accommodate the request. He actually walked over to the car, washed it, then was arrested on the spot. It’s nice when the criminals come to the police.
