Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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...and I will frickin' kill you in your sleep. Dear.
On Saturday, they were exchanging their wedding vows. But soon, they were exchanging blows -- with each other as well as with members of another wedding party. [...] Dr. David M. Wielechowski, 32, of Shaler, a dentist, and his bride, the former Christa Vattimo, 25, each were charged with simple assault, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. She also was charged with public drunkenness.
According to a criminal complaint, the Wielechowskis had just checked into the Holiday Inn-McKnight Road in Ross and were ready to enter their room on the seventh floor when they began arguing. Dr. Wielechowski "then used a karate-style kick with his leg to kick Christa, knocking her to the floor," the complaint reads.
Upon hearing her screams, two guests of the hotel who had been attending another wedding reception ran to Mrs. Wielechowski's aid. But when they attempted to restrain Dr. Wielechowski, he began fighting the would-be rescuers only to have Mrs. Wielechowski "turn against [them] and also begin to assault them," according to the complaint.
The fight moved from the hallway into an elevator, then spilled out onto the floor of the lobby, where Dr. and Mrs. Wielechowski picked up metal planters containing live plants and threw them into the elevator at the two rescuers, the complaint says. Police said both Dr. and Mrs. Wielechowski punched and wrestled with the rescuers, who were left with injuries that included cuts, a tooth knocked out and a possibly broken thumb. [...] The complaint noted that when police officers arrived, Dr. Wielechowski was lying on the floor of the lobby and Mrs. Wielechowski was "yelling loudly and was apparently highly intoxicated."
Neither Mrs. Wielechowski nor her husband would comment following their separate preliminary arraignments yesterday. Mrs. Wielechowski, still dressed in her wedding gown, was picked up by her father and taken home. No one was awaiting Dr. Wielechowski, whose left eye was blackened and swollen shut. He was arraigned wearing tuxedo pants, a bloodied T-shirt and one shoe.
Ah, young love. Off to a promising start!
If anybody can come up with another explanation of why the Republicans would want to kill this bill, I'm all ears.
A woman is accused of chasing her boyfriend with a knife after thinking he was an actor in a pornographic movie they were watching together. The victim says it all started when he and his girlfriend were inside his southwest Albuquerque home watching a pornographic move at 10:30 Wednesday morning. That's when the victim called 911 saying his girlfriend, 20-year-old Amanda Montoya, had a knife.
"She almost shanked me and everything. She put the (expletive) knife right under my throat," the victim told a 911 operator.
The victim, wearing only a pair of shorts took off down Five Points, begging the 911 dispatcher for help. He said Moya had already stabbed him in the face and bitten him on his chest.
"She already has battery charges against her. She's not even supposed to be around me," the victim said. The dispatcher told the victim to keep running and try to get inside a store. The victim made it to a business parking lot at Bridge and Sunset with Moya still on his trail when he was able to flag down a deputy who was headed to the victim's residence.
Deputies arrested Moya and charged her with aggravated assault and aggravated battery. She was also charged with child abuse because deputies say she left her eight-month-old boy alone in the home while she chased her boyfriend down the road.
If this were one of those "Can This Relationship Be Saved" columns, you'd probably get a unanimous "No" answer. And yet, the smart money says this isn't the last time these two will be in the newspaper.
I am stuck on Camels, 'cause Camels are stuck on me.
Never mind nicotine patches - a DIY patient is using cigarette packets to cover up a gaping hole in his chest. Rao Jiacang plastered the packets over himself after running out of money for crucial heart surgery. Somehow he has survived for ten years, despite his beating heart being gruesomely visible through the paper folds. But he is now desperate for a donor to come forward to pay for proper treatment to cover over the wound measuring seven by three inches. [...] Local doctor Wan Fi said: "It's a miracle that Rao could have lived so many years with such a massive opening in his chest."
And yes, there are pictures at the link.
The name Al Wilson may or may not be familiar to you, but I put tracks by him on Unfunkked 2 and Unfunkked 4, and he's a long-time favorite of mine. And he died on Monday of kidney failure at the age of 68. There's a pretty extensive bio of Wilson at Soul Express.
As 15 minutes of fame go, this one pretty much sucks.
The 34-year-old New York production manager was working late one Friday night in October when he went outside for a smoke. He was returning to his office on the 39th floor when the elevator stopped abruptly between floors. White pressed the alarm, letting it ring and ring. But at 11 p.m. the building was deserted, and it would be nearly two days before White was rescued. He paced around the elevator like a bug trapped in a box, fighting claustrophobia every minute of his 41-hour ordeal, which was captured on a video surveillance camera.
More details are at the link but it's the video, all 41 hours sped up into 3 minutes, that's fascinating.
Actual text from press release: "The Penis Diet offers something they can really sink their teeth into."
Every once in a while I find a description of a complicated problem eye-rollingly over simplified but still particularly insightful. Annie Leonard's "The Story of Stuff" almost loses me with her reference to "Government is supposed to take care of us; that's their job." But if you take a step back and look at even the most basic of government functions (e.g. police, fire, and yes, sanitation) the need for and provision of that service is (yes, my libertarian friends) exactly that. I don't like it either but its true.
I digress. The video linked above is 20 minutes. And she bugs me again with praise for those who "stop landfills." But it's worth watching.
Update: Lots more excellent and eclectic mixes At The Mineshaft.
Unfunkked 5: The Unfunkkening
(141MB .zip, 78:17)
01 Bunny Sigler - Shake Your Booty
02 The Sweet Inspirations - Dirty Tricks
03 Cyril Neville - Gossip
04 King Floyd - Do Your Feeling
05 Onyx - Evasive Action
06 East Bay Rhythm - Boogie Children
07 Instant Funk - I'll Be Doggone
08 Supreme Creme - Superfunky
09 Undisputed Truth - Got to Get My Hands on Some Lovin'
10 Commodores - Gonna Blow Your Mind
11 Walter Wolfman Washington - Nobody's Fault But Mine
12 Floyd Taylor - Hit It Right
13 The Jones Girls - Taster of the Honey
14 Marie "Queenie" Lyons - Your Thing Ain't No Good Without My Thing
15 Hidden Strength - Hustle On Up (to the Bump)
16 Paul Jackson - A Little Love'll Help
17 Roy Ayers Ubiquity - Spirit of Doo Do
18 Ramsey Lewis - Aufu Oodu
19 Family Stand - Plantation Radio
20 Baby Huey - Mighty Mighty
And just so I've got these all in one convenient location:
Each of the mixes fit on a blank audio CD, though a couple only do if you set the gap between tracks to zero seconds. You should do that anyhow.
We the Robots has both my long-ago childhood and my middle kid's current one completely pegged. But then the photos of ham him probably made that clear already.
Just some person named Mako's photoblog about Japan, but I'm very much in favor of whatever translation software they're using. Especially because it seems to substitute "It" for "I," creating entries like It Went To Kyoto.
It went to Kyoto in March. It is " in Kiyomizu-dera " that it is the most flagrant if saying Kyoto.
The God crawls there in the shrine of the marriage.When requesting, it advocates by " a good match be linked " and the mind.Then, even if it supposes that it parts if good match well, it is not even if there is a person who comes now each other and that it seems that it compares, say that it is possible to encounter a person with the good match which is.The duck!! which connects with the marriage if the partner in now is a good match.
There were a lot of foreigner excursionists in Kyoto.Kyoto will be because it is Japan and is the place where the seeming of doing Japanese being can be most felt.
A lot of attachments which seem to be Japan, too, are sold.
It ate thick bean-meal soup and a Japanese confection.It was to do being of the place where the TV coverage came with the furniture in the flagrant store.
As for " Arashiyama", the time cherry tree in now becomes in full bloom and a lot of flower viewing visitors come.It is running at the traditional jinricksha, too.
When visiting Japan, attempt to go to Kyoto by all means.The heart calms down.
I don't have any idea what a flagrant store is, but I want one in town anyhow.
They won't utter Yuri Gagarin's famous phrase "Let's go!" But the monkeys of Sochi have already proven their worth as trailblazers in space - and now they are being groomed for a trip to Mars. The macaques will be the first to experience the radiation that poses a big risk to astronauts - or Russian cosmonauts - on any flight to the Red Planet. [...]
The institute will select macaques that may eventually fly to Mars before humans do. After two years of experiments the most suitable 40 monkeys will be sent to the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, where scientists study aerospace biomedicine. Experiments on the monkeys will be carried out at the same time as the Mars-500 project. That project - due to start early next year - is aimed at simulating the conditions of interplanetary flight. Volunteers will have to spend 17 months in a mock-up "spaceship" in Moscow. In addition to the effects of radiation, space scientists want to see how the monkeys react to prolonged weightless conditions, isolation and a special diet of juices and pureed food.
Mars-500 director Viktor Baranov says 520 days "are enough for the flight to Mars - 250 days to fly there, 250 days to come back and a month for the landing on Mars".
Twelve macaques have flown in Russian spacecraft previously. One monkey named Dryoma spent two weeks in orbit in 1987, then was given to Fidel Castro as a gift after he returned. I'm not quite understanding that exactly.
"Here's a gift, Fidel, as a token of the enduring brotherhood between our nations. Yes, it's a monkey, but it's not just any monkey! This monkey has been *in space*."
"Ummm, thanks. I guess. Raul, can you put this monkey, uh, somewhere?"
The Republican commissioner of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, had been accused of rape -- by a man, no less -- and the police were bearing down. Barclay's lawyer issued a strong denial ("This accusation of rape is ludicrous It will be defended forever and is wrong."). But it was clear things were looking pretty dicey. Until... vindication! Well, sort of.
On March 31st, police, investigating the allegation of rape by the 20-year old Marshall McCurdy, obtained a warrant to search Barclay's home. They didn't find evidence of rape. But they did find videotapes of hundreds of sexual encounters with men that Barclay had filmed on high-tech surveillance cameras. The cameras were hidden inside AM/FM radios, motion detectors and intercom speaker systems, among other places. There was also one at his business office.
None of the subjects were aware they were being filmed and no permission had been obtained, Barclay admitted. According to a second warrant issued on April 9th, Barclay also admitted to hiring prostitutes on a weekly basis from the now-defunct website harrisburgfratboys.com.
On April 10th, the rape charges were dropped.
Via fantasygoat, who also gets credit for these two breathtaking portraits of young love.
Charting presidential approval ratings since WWII.
Interesting that not only was Bill Clinton the only president to leave office with an approval rating above 60%, he's the only one to have left with a higher approval rating than when he took office.
Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'
Marc Ambinder is correct that "it remains one of those hidden secrets in Washington that a Democratic Justice Department is going to be very interested in figuring out whether there's a case to be made that senior Bush Administration officials were guilty of war crimes." In any fair universe, they'd end up in The Hague.
Update: To be perfectly clear, of course it won't happen, but it should.
A baby with two faces was born in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said Tuesday. The baby, Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Except for her ears, all of Lali's facial features are duplicated -- she has two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes. [...]
Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms. Up to 100 people have been visiting Lali at her home every day to touch her feet out of respect, offer money and receive blessings, Singh told AP.
Wikipedia's entries on Durga, Janus, and diprosopus.
h/t: Gaijin Biker
The Washington Post notes that last year, the "Mortgage Bankers Association was thrilled to sign a contract to buy a fancy new headquarters building in downtown Washington." Since then, however, the group "has fallen on tough times as many of the subprime mortgages dispensed by some of its members proved dicey." The result is that the group is now finding it "harder than it imagined to pay its own mortgage":
Scheduled to close on the building in the coming weeks, the association will have to pay millions of dollars more than it would have a year ago when it contracted to buy the 160,000-square-foot structure — millions of dollars it is now less able to afford. […]
Critics also see irony — and some justice — in this predicament. "They are certainly getting what they deserve," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research group. "Mortgage bankers encouraged people to take out mortgages that were very risky, and the result of that was a large number of the mortgages went bad and caused mortgage interest rates to soar. Now they are the victims of high mortgage rates and chaos in the market more generally."
(via)
