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Having almost certainly been hired by Wendy's (and named by his parents) solely for the humor value, Ronald MacDonald was arrested early Monday for stealing money out of the safe at the Wendy's restaurant where he worked.
Unfortunately, he was not actually dressed as Ronald McDonald the clown (or the Hamburglar), but "Ronald MacDonald stealing from Wendy's" is still worth a mention.
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Last Monday, a sparrow flew into an exposition center in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, not knowing that humans inside were in the process of setting up 4.1 million dominoes in an attempt to break a world record. (Humans do things like that, and animals have never understood it.) The sparrow hit one of the dominoes, and about 23,000 of the dominoes fell over before built-in "firebreaks" kicked in to stop all 4 million going down. Apparently furious that the bird had interfered, the humans called in an exterminator, who chased the bird down and executed it with an air rifle.
He apparently did not know that the common house sparrow is on the Dutch list of endangered species. The next day, the Dutch animal protection agency demanded prosecution for the bird's killers. "Under Dutch law, you need a permit to kill this kind of bird," said a spokesman, "and a permit can only be granted when there's a danger to public health or a crop. That was not the case. I might add: Is it really necessary to kill a bird that knocked over a few dominoes for a game?" But the organizers of the domino fest defended their actions, saying that the bird had actually knocked over "a lot" of dominoes, and pointing out that "more than 100 people from 12 countries had worked for more than a month setting them up."
Evidently, none of those 100 people, representing an international cross-section of the dominant species on the planet, ever realized during that month that if you are going to be setting up 4 million dominoes in a room, maybe you should CLOSE THE F***ING WINDOWS!
The organizers said they were aware of public outrage over the killing -- more than 5,000 people had signed a condolence book on a website honoring the bird, and the bird's killer has received death threats -- and said they were considering "some kind of memorial or mention for the dead bird" during the TV broadcast of the domino event on Friday.
That event went off without a hitch, or any more hitches, anyway, and the Dutch dropped 4,155,476 dominoes, beating their own record of 3.9 million, which they set last year, and which apparently was not enough. There does not seem to have been a moment of silence or other memorial for the dead bird, but the event's creator admitted that the glory of the new record was somewhat dimmed by the shadow of the killing. The record generated "mixed emotions," he said. "We all feel terrible about what happened."
The Dutch somehow manage to go on with Domino Days
despite their deep remorse over the bird's death.
Photo by Jaap Schaaf/EPA via Sipa Press
The Netherlands Bird Protection Agency "appealed for calm" on Friday, but other groups said they would continue to call for prosecution.
Thanks to Lisa Lukaszewski for keeping me up to date on this one.
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Earlier this week, the Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan threatened to sue Sacha Baron Cohen, who stars in "Da Ali G Show" on HBO. Cohen specializes in tricking famous people into giving "interviews" to his Ali G character, who pretends to be a "hip-hop journalist." Many of his targets, such as former Secretary of State George Schultz, have no clue who Cohen is and so struggle to answer what they think are odd questions from an actual reporter.
Another of Cohen's characters is "Borat Sagdiyev," supposedly a TV journalist from Kazakhstan, who has a very poor understanding of American customs. In one show, Borat went to a wine-tasting in Texas, gulped each glass of wine and ended up passing around nude pictures of his "sister." In January, he crashed a rodeo in Roanoke, Virginia, after requesting and receiving approval to sing the Kazakh and U.S. national anthems. According to local media, which still appeared to be somewhat mystified by what had happened, police had to rush Borat out of the area to prevent a riot.
What finally made the Kazakhs really mad was Borat's appearance as host of the MTV Europe Music Awards, in Lisbon. Borat arrived in an Air Kazakh propeller plane flown by a one-eyed pilot holding a vodka bottle, and continued to make strange statements about Kazakh culture. On Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev threatened legal action.
"We view Mr. Cohen's behavior at the MTV Europe Music Awards as utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with ethics and civilized behavior," he said. To which I have two responses: (1) what's your point? and (2) maybe you should return a few of those calls you've been getting from Human Rights Watch before you get indignant about ethics, Yerzhan.
The Kazakhs seem to think a conspiracy is behind Borat's actions. "We do not rule out that Mr. Cohen is serving someone's political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way," said Yerzhan Ashykbayev at a press briefing. He did not specify who he thought might be trying to undermine Kazakhstan via HBO and the MTV Music Awards. "We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind."
Reuters via MyWay.com
ABC News
A Baffled Reporter at Roanoke.com
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Heather is 28 years old, with light brown hair and pretty blue-gray eyes. She is 5'4" and weighs 125 pounds. She likes motorcycles, fast cars, and crystal meth.
Tasha is a Virgo. She's warm-hearted, passionate, and sincere. She did make one "bad choice" as a teen, but hopes you will be able to see past that one premeditated murder and love her for who she really is.
These are two of the women who were sued this week by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon. Nixon sued Tasha and 32 other prisoners, seeking to recover almost $300,000 that they have apparently received from "pen pals" they met through personal ads posted on websites. For those of you who may be interested in corresponding, two of the listed sites are writeaprisoner.com and pamperedprisoner.com. (Who hasn't asked themselves, "I want to write a prisoner, but I just don't know where to find the address of a convicted pen pal who's right for me"? Well, that problem has now been solved.)
The AG points out that it has cost the state about $2.7 million so far to keep the women incarcerated, and a state law allows the government to take prisoner assets to help pay for those costs. "Missouri prisons are intended as institutions to punish criminals and protect society," Nixon said, "not as places of business at taxpayers' expense." A local defense attorney, on the other hand, said that the ads were legal and doing no harm. He argued that the state should be "encouraging contact with the outside world and [allowing the women to] work[] toward having people to support [them] when [they] get out," rather than taking their money. The article did not say whether this attorney was representing any of the women involved, and given the number of brackets I had to use to make that sentence even close to grammatical, maybe he should not be.
Heather writes, "Hello gentlemen," which is already unlikely, and says she is "in search of a man who can rescue this captive angel. If you want to get to know me," she continues, "I'm just a letter away and looking forward to hearing from you [and sampling your meth]."
Officials said the web sites also carry ads by male inmates, but that they don't make any money.
Kansas City Star (free registration required)
Thanks to Carole DeWald for spotting this story.
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Yamahile Ortiz, 18, was sentenced to probation last week after pleading guilty to charging over $1000 on a stolen credit card. And away she went.
But back she came not long afterwards, with her identical twin sister Yaricza, and an embarrassed public defender. Yamahile explained that she had not actually been at the hearing. Rather, her twin sister had stood in for her, because "I had a final today."
I remember this sort of twin-swap happening in some Disney movie, or several Disney movies, but I don't recall it ever happening at a sentencing hearing.
Apparently, the wacky twins thought this was funny, and I base that on the judge being quoted as telling them "Do you think this is funny? I don't know why you think it's funny." If they did think it was funny, they found it less funny after the judge rejected the plea bargain and instead ordered Yamahile taken into custody. "[W]hen I put you on probation and expect you to be potentially rehabilitated, that certainly is not the first step toward that," he told her.
He also raised her bail to $50,000, which prompted her sister to complain, "using an obscenity," about having to help raise the bail money. Whereupon the judge raised the bail to $250,000, and ordered the state attorney general to review the case to determine whether Yaricza, who is on probation herself for another charge, had violated any state laws.
It will be so cute and funny when they try this game with the warden.
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An Iowa judge ruled this week that a former security guard could not be denied unemployment benefits after being fired on the grounds that he saw ghosts.
Wade Gallegos was working for a security company in September when he called his supervisor to warn him that ghosts were haunting a neighborhood he was guarding. The supervisor went to the scene and, surprisingly, did not see the ghosts. To Wade's credit, he did not do the usual they-were-just-here-a-minute-ago copout, but rather insisted the ghosts were still there and showed the supervisor right where they were standing. Despite his integrity, and his conscientious ghost-protection service, he was fired the same day.
When he applied for unemployment benefits, the company challenged the application saying that he was guilty of "misconduct." This week, however, a judge ruled that while seeing "ghosts and apparitions" did render a claimant unfit to act as a security guard, apparently because it had and would result in false alarms, it was not "misconduct" in the sense that would justify a denial of benefits.
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Bob Dougherty, the man who made national news last week with a lawsuit claiming Home Depot employees ignored him when he was glued to a toilet seat, passed a polygraph test on Wednesday about the allegations. Dougherty took the test after a town official claimed he had heard Dougherty make a similar allegation before about a different toilet seat. (Another resident supported the official's story, referring to Dougherty as "Sticky Bob.")
Dougherty denied that, and a local news station paid for him to take the polygraph test. Feeling vindicated, he demanded an apology from the government. "I'm not going to be putting up with crackpots," he said, although since he was the one alleged to be the crackpot, it was unclear who he was referring to. Dougherty said he was now focused on "saving face" and preserving his honor, dignity, and integrity.
Which explains why he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week. You see, there's no better way to get your dignity back than to go on Jimmy Kimmel Live with a story about having your ass stuck to a toilet seat.
Meanwhile, MSNBC reported "a possible copycat situation" in Bakersfield, California. Details were sketchy, but according to the report, an unidentified man was taken to a local hospital on Wednesday, "still attached to a toilet seat."
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Senator Rick Santorum has called medical lawsuit abuse the "number one health care crisis in his state (Pennsylvania), and has repeatedly called for caps on damages for pain and suffering. He has twice sponsored legislation that would have capped such damages at $250,000. Demands for more than that would evidently constitute medical lawsuit abuse.
But according to an ABC News report, in 1999 Santorum testified in support of his wife's malpractice claim against a chiropractor, which sought almost $500,000 for pain and suffering. The medical bills resulting from the alleged negligence were only $18,800. Santorum testified, among other things, that after his wife's injury he had to carry the laundry upstairs for her, and that she had lost the confidence necessary to help him on the campaign trail because she gained weight from inactivity. The jury awarded them $350,000.
Santorum told ABC's "Primetime" show, after they snuck up on him at a book signing, that he had two explanations for the alleged inconsistency. First, he said that while he's supported caps in general, "I've been very clear that I am not wedded at all to a $250,000 cap [although that was the figure in the litigation he sponsored] . . . and that we need to look at what I think is a cap that is a little bit higher than that." How about, say, $331,200? That sound about right?
Second, his wife made him do it. "Of course I'm going to support my wife in her endeavors," he said. "That doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with everything she does."
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The jury in the Super-Glue case I wrote about last week returned a verdict on Friday. Rejecting the girlfriend's consent defense, it awarded the gluee $43,200, for pain & suffering and emotional distress.
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On Tuesday, the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld a ruling that a hockey player injured in a fight during a game was entitled to workers' compensation, on the grounds that "fighting is an integral part of the game of hockey." The team had argued that the fight was "willful misconduct" that would have precluded compensation for the injury.
Ty Jones was officially a power forward for the minor-league Norfolk Admirals, but the court found that he was acting in the course of his employment as an "enforcer" for the team. Jones claimed that the fight in which he injured his shoulder started after his coach told him to "go get" an opposing player. The injury required seven months of rehabilitation, and the court battle has been over who has to pay for that.
L. Steven Emmert, described by the Associated Press as "a leading Virginia appellate attorney and hockey fan with no connection to the case," said that the finding was obviously correct. "This court finds that fighting is an integral part of hockey," Emmert said. "Thirty million Canadians could have told you that."
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