Stupid News Story of The Day

(Maybe he should have stuck with the bicycle.)

Baggy Pants Trip Up Mich. Theft Suspect

FERNDALE, Mich. - A man suspected of stealing discs from a video store was tripped up by his baggy pants, falling twice before police captured him, authorities said.

James Green, 30, of Detroit, took about a half-dozen DVDs on Sunday night, and initially made his getaway on a bicycle, police said.

Officers spotted him in an alley, and he abandoned the bike and ran, but his pants fell to his ankles and he tripped, Ferndale Detective Sgt. Patrick Jones told The Daily Tribune of Royal Oak. "Finally, he kicked off his pants and shoes" and then jumped a fence into the backyard of a house where he was captured, Jones said.

On Monday, Green pleaded guilty to resisting arrest and retail fraud and was ordered jailed for 30 days.

Remember when....

I made a photo slide show that you can see by clicking HERE. It is too funny. Just a bunch of pictures of me, my brother, my dad and grandpa back in the old days. hehe. If nothing else, it is sure to make at least one person laugh - lol.

Funny Stuff From George Carlin

"If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the resume of a supreme being. This is the kind of stuff you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. In any well-managed universe, this guy would have been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago."

Stupid News Story of The Day

(He got the dough, but didn't get his pie.)

Pizza parlor burglar gets away with dough

SAN CLEMENTE, California (Reuters) - A pizza parlor burglar who took the time to bake himself a large pepperoni to go beat it when the overnight crew arrived but still got away with plenty of dough, police said.

Authorities believe that Monday's caper in the coastal Southern California town of San Clemente may have been interrupted by an employee arriving to work at Sonny's Pizza & Pasta, forcing the would-be baker to forgo his predawn snack and flee hastily with only the restaurant's safe.

A surveillance camera captured the entire incident, and the Orange County Sheriff's Department plans on publicizing the videotape to aid their search for the thief.

The suspect entered the restaurant about 2 a.m. and rummaged around for a cook's apron, trying on several until he found one that fit, then began preparing a pepperoni pizza with all the fixings, said sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino.

The employee arrived at about 3 a.m., found the pizza smoldering in the oven and the safe missing with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Funny Stuff From George Carlin

"If everything is really the fault of a politician, where are all the bright, honest, intelligent Americans who are ready to step in and replace them? Where are these people hiding? The truth is, we don't have people like that. Everyone's at the mall, scratching his balls, and buying sneakers with lights in them. And complaining about the politicians."

Stupid News Story of The Day

(There should be a "no biting" rule at wedding receptions.)

Another Wedding Guest Loses Digit in Fight

PERRY TOWNSHIP, Mich. - For the second time in two years, a wedding reception guest in Shiawassee County has lost part of a finger during a fight.

This time, Philip L. Michalek, of Morrice, is accused of biting off the tip of another man's thumb during a scuffle Saturday night outside the Perry Township Hall, police said.

Michalek, 26, was arraigned Monday on a charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm and jailed with bond set at $10,000. He could face 10 years in prison if convicted.

Police said Michalek was scuffling with Ryan Dickey, 23, of Grand Ledge, in the parking lot when the incident occurred.

Dickey was taken to a Lansing hospital, but doctors could not reattach the severed part of his thumb, police and prosecutors said. He has since been released from the hospital.

State police Detective Sgt. Mark Pendergraff said Michalek and Dickey had a dispute and went to the parking lot. "They got into a scuffle, and the victim's thumb ended up in the suspect's mouth," he told The Flint Journal.

In August 2003, a wedding guest was arrested after biting off part of a man's finger, biting the thumb of the bridegroom and knocking down the bridegroom's mother during a fracas involving several people outside a wedding hall in Corunna.

In that case, the guest pleaded no contest to assault and battery and felonious assault and was sentenced to two to four years in prison.

Funny Stuff From George Carlin

"I often hear otherwise intelligent people complaining about drivers who slow down when driving past a traffic accident. They curse them and call them "rubberneckers." I don't understand this at all. I am never in too big a hurry that I can't stop and watch someone else's suffering."

Stupid News Story of The Day

(The spell must have worked.)

Dutch Witches Get Tax Break for Studies

APPELSCHA, Netherlands - Dutch witches are getting a tax break. A court has ruled that the cost of witchcraft lessons can be taken as a tax deduction.

Learning to cast spells and brew potions doesn't come cheap. Margarita Rongen runs the "Witches Homestead" in a northern province. Her witchcraft workshops cost more than $200 a weekend or more than $2,600 for a full course.

Rongen says she been a witch for 38 years and has a duty to pass along her knowledge. She notes her black cauldron and crystal ball stand at the ready for the next full moon.

Cobwebs cling from the wooden rafters. Dusty shelves are cluttered with glass jars of home-brewed potions, dried herbs and stone amulets. An oil cooker and a black cauldron sit in the corner, ready for the next full moon. This isn't a Halloween party, it's Margarita Rongen's year-round workshop and she is a witch — according to her tax return.

Dutch witches were guaranteed a financial treat when the Leeuwarden District Court reaffirmed their legal right to write off the costs of schooling — including in witchcraft — against their tax bills. Those costs run to thousands of dollars.

The court found on Sept. 23 that a witch can declare schooling costs if it increases the likelihood of employment and personal income.

Rongen, a mother of two grown children, runs a school for witches, the "Witches Homestead," in the northern Friesland province of the Netherlands. She has trained more than 160 disciples over the past four decades in "a religion that is older than Christianity," she said.

Courses are held 13 weekends a year closest to a full moon when outdoor rituals are practiced and potions boiled. Participants learn healing with herbs and stones, divination and fortunetelling with crystal balls and hieroglyphs, and how to make potions.

The cost is $206 per weekend, including reading material, lodgings and the tools needed for witchcraft. The full course of 13 weekends runs $2,678 and is open to women and men over 18.

"Once you have become a witch ... you can pass along the things you have learned," said Rongen. "I have been a witch for 38 years and learned it from my father."

Lawmaker Pieter Omtzigt was astounded to hear that the state was funding witchcraft and asked for clarification.

He got an answer to his question last week in a letter from Junior Finance Minister Joop Wijn, saying that "Under the circumstances, the cost of a course to become a witch qualifies as school fees."

Rongen invited Omtzigt to visit her.

"If he would come here and try the divination rod and see how important it is to find things, see that it isn't pleasant to have earth radiation in your house, feel the forces of the earth, that would be magnificent."

I've been riding on the railroad...

I went for a train ride this weekend. It was my first time ever riding on a train. It was awesome! I posted pics on my other blog, which you can go to by clicking HERE.

Blast From The Past

I don't know if anyone remembers Chinese Jacks, but I do. It was one of those 80's fads. What you did was to buy a package of colored rings, which you would hook together to a central ring. I don't really remember how to play though, but it seemed to me that you would put one jack in the palm of your hand and toss it up and try to cath it on the back of your hand. If you did that, then you went to two, then three, etc. I remember being quite good at it though. I wish I still knew how to play! lol.

Stupid News Story of The Day

(...oh yeah...and about my gas line...)

Pa. Gas Company Callers Get Sex-Talk Line

WASHINGTON, Pa. - Instead of information about a utility bill, callers to phone numbers listed for a local gas company get an offer for a different kind of service.

Colombia Gas customers in Washington found that two numbers listed in the Yellow Book USA don't go to the utility, but instead reach a message directing them to a sex-talk line.

"I mean, how can this happen?" said Helen George, an Amity resident who tried to call Columbia's office in Washington but reached the Intimate Encounters line.

Officials from Columbia Gas said the numbers were from a former office and should have been changed.

Intimate Encounters makes a habit of using well-known numbers and in the past has bought the use of an old Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission number set up to report injured or dead manatees and toll-free numbers that used to belong to the Policy Review journal, the World Wildlife Fund and rape crisis lines in Maine and Arizona.