- How to make amends for stashing three bodies that were supposed to be cremated in the back of your van, claiming you lost paperwork for the bodies, hiding them in a funeral home refrigerator for several years, moving them to the back of a van, wrapping them in body bags and covering them with cardboard boxes? I’ll be honest, that is quite a pickle. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had to do that, so I can’t exactly remember how I handled it, so I’ll leave it to Donald Short of Fort Worth, Texas to handle this one. As it turns out, Short has a plan for making good on one of the more disgusting, reprehensible crimes of recent memory, and that plan includes a billboard featuring a simple black background with white letters and states what is - in billboard terms - a lengthy message of apology. The billboard reads: "I should treat the deceased in my care with dignity and respect. I utterly failed them, their families and the community. I am remorseful and I apologize. Donald Short." It’s actually the last condition of Short’s court-ordered punishment, and it would seem a lot more sincere if it were of his own accord and didn’t come only after his van was repossessed in 2005 and the badly decomposed bodies were discovered. Surprisingly, abusing a corpse is only a misdemeanor, so short had only to repay the families for the cremations and make a sizable public apology right next to busy Highway 121. For this particular apology, Short will pay $3,000, which will allow him to make a very public apology for 30-days. Yeah, I’m sure this will square everything up with the families who had the remains of their loved ones treated in such repulsive, offensive fashion, no problem. I’m not sure what’s most disturbing, what Short did or the fact that it’s actually not as repulsive as the a-holes who cut up the bodies brought in to funeral homes, sell parts of them and try to pass the bodies off as normal to the grieving families…..
- The lost their title, but the New York Yankees are definitely looking to take it back. No, I’m not referring to the World Series title; the Yankees haven’t had a sniff of that since 2000 and Lord willing, they won't be getting another one any time soon. No, I’m referring to the Bronx Bombers looking to take back their title as team to hate in Major League Baseball and probably in all of sports. After failing to make the playoffs last year and finishing third in the American League East, the Yankees fell slightly behind archrival and equally hateable enemy Boston in the race for the most despised, arrogant franchise in baseball. But with the loud, blowhard Hank Steinbrenner in charge, the Yankees are rallying and have seized back the lead in this race. They have done so in a time-honored Yankee fashion: throwing absurd amounts of money at top free agents and attempting to buy a championship and bully their way to the top. First, they signed the top free agent pitcher, the portly CC Sabathia, to a 7-year, $161 million contract. Then, they vastly overpaid free agent hurler A.J. Burnett, a guy who had one great season after a career of unfulfilled promise and suckered New York into a 5-year, $80 million contract. After that, you might think the Yankees were done doling out ridiculous jack, but no. Now they have signed the top free agent slugger, the uber-greedy Mark Teixeira, to an 8-year, $180 million contract. That adds up to $421 million in contracts and still a roster full of holes that isn’t nearly good enough to overtake last season’s AL East champ, Tampa Bay, or Boston. These signings are exactly the type of arrogant, overbearing, big, bad bully behavior that has made the Yankees a target for loathing and despisal by fans worldwide. It’s a departure from the philosophy of building a franchise from the farm system up, developing that farm system setting your team up for long-term success that New York had embraced for all of one season. Instead, they’re going right back to the very approach that left them with an overpriced, underachieving roster of overrated stars that hasn’t won a world title since 2000. Steinbrenner is showing himself to be a) a loudmouth blowhard, and b) the Daniel Snyder of MLB, a man who thinks money and impulsive actions are the recipe for success. Have fun with that approach, Hank….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Let’s hang out in the city of Srinagar, Kashmir (India) for a while, shall we? It’s not a bad place to be for a riot these days, as anti-election protests erupted Wednesday at more than a dozen locations around Srinagar, with angry youths shouting pro-independence slogans and pelting paramilitary troops with rocks and bricks. Primitive, yes, but these kids are working with what they have handy and I appreciate that. Not everyone has the materials to make a good Molotov cocktail or access to a cache of sophisticated weapons, so rocks and bricks will do just fine here. Yes, it would be nice to have a full-scale, well-armed showdown between police and protestors to appropriately mark an important milestone in an 18-year, bloody separatist campaign that authorities say has left at least 43,000 dead, but this is not an ideal world we live on, folks. These protestors have been doing a pretty solid job so far, staging months of violent protests leading up to regional elections that began in November. The rioters are anti-Indian and fear that state elections will firm up Indian control of the Muslim majority Himalayan state. On the flip side, there are also some riots and protests by Indian nationalists who are fearful that separatist groups will gain control. So you have protests and viewpoints on both sides, but the key for me is that on Wednesday, all of this led to police and protestors throwing down, rocks and bricks flying at the cops and police firing back with tear gas and batons. Additionally, you had separatists had called for an election boycott and march to the historic city center, Lal Chowk, for a sit-in. That precipitated a decision by The Man to have troops sealed off the main thoroughfares with coils of razor wire and pre-fabricated barricades. Razor wire? What is this, an election or a maximum-security prison? But that wasn’t enough for The Man, as he also had to hold down the common man by imposing curfew-like restrictions in Kashmir Tuesday to help prevent protest marches. As a result, the streets of the city were mostly empty and voter turnout was fairly low, especially when compared to other regions. Honestly, I don’t give a crap about the actual election results here, just as long as the riots, protests, dissent and good times keep on rollin’……..
- Here’s a life rule I live by: never go out grocery shopping during the middle of a blizzard in the process of dumping several feet of snow and unleashing near gale-force winds on the area where I live. This rule would serve people like Donna Molnar, a resident of the brutal backcountry of Hamilton, Ontario, well. Molnar decided that she just couldn’t wait for the storm to abate and needed to go out in the midst of it to get her groceries. She left her home and not surprisingly, never made it to the store or back home. Instead, she was gone for three days and ended up beneath a 3-foot-deep mound of snow from which she was plucked by rescuers after search-and-rescue dog Ace and Ace’s owner Ray Lau discovered her Monday. Molnar was discovered in an area congested by the thick, ice-covered brush of a farmer's field, not far from where her van had been found a day earlier. Fortunately, Ace, a Dutch shepherd, was able to use his talents to find Molnar before she turned into a human popsicle. "All of a sudden, Ace bolted off," said Lau. "He stooped and looked down at the snow and just barked, barked, barked. There she was, there was Donna, her face was almost totally covered except for one eye staring back at me!" he said. "That was, 'Wow!' There was a thousand thoughts going through my head. It was over the top." And what’s an appropriate outfit to wear when one is being rescued from a three-foot-deep snow drift after three days? Well, Molnar was dressed in a leather coat, sweater, slacks and winter boots, which I’m guessing was under-dressing a bit when going out in the type of blizzard that a sane, mildly intelligent person wouldn’t venture out in. Look Canadians, I know you all think you’re freaking badasses when it comes to fighting winter weather since you live in that crap pretty much 24/7/365, but even you need to know when do dial it down. If you don’t, you too could end up being rushed to a hospital and immediately sedated to begin the agonizing steps of hypothermia treatment, just like Donna Molnar - good times! Thankfully, late in the day on Wednesday Molnar’s condition was upgraded Wednesday from critical to serious, so it appears she’s going to survive this. Hopefully, she’ll do so having learned a valuable lesson about not being an idiot……..
- Give it up for the elderly in Japan, proving that petty crime isn’t just for those darned kids anymore. Yes, shoplifting and other such crimes are on the rise among Japan’s elderly, a trend researchers and officials attribute to economic worries and loneliness. The belief is that these factors are spurring elderly Japanese to petty crime in increasing numbers, with the nation's Justice Ministry reporting that in 2007, 48,605 persons age 65 and older were arrested in crimes other than traffic violations. That’s more than double the number for those same offenses five years earlier, with thefts such as shoplifting and pick-pocketing the main offenses. "The main reasons they shoplift are poverty and loneliness," said Kazuo Kawakami, a former federal prosecutor. "The traditional Japanese family is gone, and now our elderly live alone." So they go out and pick someone’s pocket or try to thieve a shirt from Wal-Mart? I’m no sociologist, but I’m fairly sure that there are other ways to alleviate loneliness. Go to the park, play chess, join a gym, go to the mall and do non-criminal things, etc. What, are elderly Japanese out there forming street gangs for a sense of belonging and rolling up on their local pharmacy to steal some Geritol and Centrum Silver? Another curious aspect of this report is the fact that these petty crime issues become more acute during New Year holidays, traditionally a time for family gatherings in Japan. I’m less inclined to believe that line of reasoning than I am to go along with the theory that economics also plays a role in the rise of elderly pick pocketing and shoplifting. Just like the United States, Japan's economy went into recession this year, and as such, the country's national pension system has been bogged down with mismanagement and corruption. Thus, old people are worried that their pensions will dry up and that they won't have money to live on. One private security firm was able to stage a real-life demonstration of the elderly crime wave phenomenon by nabbing a 69-year-old woman, allegedly trying to steal food worth about $10 and an 80-year-old man trying to leave the store without paying for medicine for an upset stomach despite having more than enough money to pay for all of his items. All of this becomes a bigger problem when you consider that 20 percent of Japan's population is older than 65, the largest percentage of elderly of any country in the world. You can see the ramifications clearly in places like Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, where more elderly than teenagers -- by a 3 to 2 ratio -- were arrested in 2006. So come on, Japanese teens, don’t let these old timers show you up; get out there and start shoplifting, you are the future of your nation’s petty crime industry…..
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