Florida Again: Woman Has Gross Way Of Ruining Kid's Birthday Party

Heather Carpenter of Florida, naturally, is accused of spreading
crap all over tables and grills at a park because a school principal
she hates planned a birthday party for her daughter at the
park later that day. 

A now presumably former substitute teacher in, yes, Florida apparently really hates the principal at the school where she worked. 

This idiot, Heather Carpenter showed up at Urfer Park in Sarasota County, Florida at 6:30 a.m. on December 1 and spread feces all over the wooden tables and grills at the pavilion in the park, says Fox 13 News in Tampa. 

The alleged reason: The principal at the school where she worked planned a birthday party for her daughter at the park. All the kids in the class were invited, including Carpenter's kid. But Carpenter was having some sort of dispute with the principal, so she decided to act like the shitty person she is.

The party had to be canceled, and the county had to replace all the tables and grills. They were too far gone to be cleaned. In all this cost the county $2,310, including labor costs. And the principal's poor kid didn't have her birthday party.

Lots of people use parks in a busy place like Sarasota County, and there's people milling about, even at 6:30 in the morning. One of them was a guy named Mike Hutchinson, who caught Carpenter doing this, spreading the crap around while wearing a surgical mask and blue rubber gloves.

She fled, but police later figured out who she, in part because of Hutchinson's description of her, and they arrested her. She faces felony criminal mischief and properth damage charges, Fox 13 says.

On the bright side, of sorts, she upheld Florida's reputation as a place where people go to commit weird, weird, crimes.

Worst Disaster Live TV Interview: No Date With Reporter During Wildfire In California Today

A wildfire is threatening a number of homes east of Los Angeles today. 

Reporter Courtney Friel of KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, was much too
focused on reporting on a wildfire today to accept a date from
a weird shirtless guy holding a dog in the fire zone. 

The intrepid reporters from television station KTLA were on the scene, giving live updates, as TV reporters do.

This unfortunate reporter, Courtney Friel, stopped the wrong person to react to the fire.

She should have known better than to stop a shirtless guy carrying a dog, but as a former reporter, I know you take what you can get while reporting at the scene.

Watch the guy, amid all the smoke, say the stupidest thing a witness has ever said to a reporter on live TV.

"Wow! You're super pretty. Want to go on a date sometime?"

Let this be a lesson on what not to say if a reporter pulls you aside to get your reaction to a breaking news story.

To get the full effect, and Friel's perfect, unflappable reaction to our shirtless guy, you gotta watch:

Crickets Bury Oklahoma! At Least They're Not Locusts

This time of year in the evening, the sound of crickets fills the Vermont air where I live. I really kind of like it.

They make sort of a concert, with a quiet "chirp, chirp, chirp" from some, others are louder and faster, and some varieties interject a loud Zizzizz-ZIT!! into the equation.

There can always be too much of a good thing, however.

Which takes us to Oklahoma, where the right combination of drought, heat, then rain brought on more crickets than anyone can handle, as you can tell by the photos in this post.

They've gotten into everyone's house, businesses, and dead ones pile up everywhere, making the atmosphere stink of rotting bugs. Lovely.

So, I'll hope the crickets here don't get too numerous. It's bad enough I'll be shoveling snow in a few months. I don't want to shovel dead crickets off my deck now.

Cecil Hotel, L.A: A Dead Body in Drinking Water Tank Maybe Almost Par For the Course?

After you read this you'll understand why, for the rest of my life, when I check into a hotel, I will demand to see the inside of their water tank first.

As you might have seen on various news reports, guests at a Los Angeles hotel drank and used the hotel's water for days while a dead body decomposed in the building's water tank.

The ill-fated Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles

 This isn't exactly a public relations coup for the Cecil Hotel.  The place bills itself as a "boutique hotel" after some extensive renovations, but it already had an um, storied past.  It's the site of stays by serial killers, the site of weird deaths, unsolved crimes and all the stuff that is the noirest of the noire genre. It could be a leading candidate for the worst, most star-crossed hotel on the plante.

Just imagine the Yelp reviews for this place. Actually, I found some. Here's one:

"Do not stay here. The water is contaminated by a decomposing corpse in the water tank. This will probably ruin your experience."

Yes, it probably would ruin your experience. Bad weather ruins vacation experiences. Extra, unexpected fees ruin vacations. Decomposing bodies in water tanks really, really ruin vacation experiences.

Here's some other Yelp reviews from the Cecil:

"Any hotel that wouldn't let their staff know a dead body was found in their water tank should be shut down. Nuff said."

Yeah, it would have been nice for the staff to have that piece of information, since they presumably drink the water too.

Here's another Yelp comment:

"There was poop on the walls in the bathroom. Well, that's OK, at least it was dried so I just avoided it. There was a sharp pointy towel rack broken in the bathroom that cut me as I recoiled after discovering the poop. The hallway was pretty creepy like out of a horror movie."  

This reviewer had me at "poop" If your standards are low enought that dried poop on the bathroom wall of your hotel room is "OK" more power to you, but you really could do better.

Once word got out about the dead body in the water tank, the Yelp reviews took on a bit of gallows humor.:

"Whenever I'm feeling dead tired, I like to give my bones a saok in this hotels's famous water tank."

Ouch!

Another:

"I'd rather stay in the Bates motel"

Yeah, in the Bates motel, the water pressure in the shower is fine and the water is clean, at least when it first comes out of the shower head. That's better than the Cecil.


According to BNO News,  here's how guests described their less than idea experience drinking water at the hotel

"It tasted horrible. It had a funny, sweetening, disgusting taste. It's a very strange taste. I can barely describe it," British tourist Sabina Baugh, who had been using the water for eight days, told CNN. "We never thought anything of it. We thought it was just the way it was here."

"Besides low water pressure, guests at the hotel also described the water turning black at times. "The shower was awful. When you turned the tap on, the water was coming black for the first two seconds, then it was going back to normal," added Bough. "It made me feel really sick ysterday until now, known that we've been drinking this water for eight days."

L.A. health officials have been performing tests to see how big a health risk the guests might have faced.

Firefighters carry material out of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles
after a body was found in the building's drinking water tank.  

And of course police want to know how the body got into the tank in the first place.

I'm sure the owners of the hotel will be facing lawsuits, especially if this report from CNN is true:

"New guests continued to check into the Cecil after firefightyers removed Lam's body from the water tank. But each guest was asked to sign a waiver releasing the hotel from liability if they become ill. 'You do so at your own risk and peril,' the hotel's release said. Guests who already paid for their rooms would  not get refunds if they move out,  it said.

There's your first clue that you oughta find another hotel. When was the last time you checked into a hotel and a release made it clear they were very, very worried you'd get sick there, and were trying to shield themselves from lawsuits?

As I mentioned, the Cecil has quite a complicated history.  According to Slate, the Hotel Cecil has quite a bit of a past anyway.  Here's part of the Cecil Hotel's highlight or blooper reel, whatever you want to call it.

In 1962, a woman leaped to her death from the hotel, and landed on a woman on the sidewalk below, killing her, too.

In 1964, ther Pershing Square "Pigeon Lady" was raped and killed in her Cecil Hotel room. The case has never been solved.

In 1985, Richard Ramirez, the infamous "Night Stalker" serial killer who murdered 14 people, stayed for a time on the 14th floor of the Cecil Hotel.

In 1991, Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger stayed at the hotel for a time while spending his days murdering prostitutes.

So, if you're taking a last minute trip to L.A. this weekend to check out the Oscars, you might want to see if something besides the Cecil is available.  Because whether it's the Bates or the Cecil, dead bodies on vacation are not the recipe for golden Kodak moments.

The World's Scariest Bakery Forced to Close

This was probably the easiest decision any heatlh office could make.

In Britain, the health office has closed a Meads Bakery Ltd.  for picky little details, like dead mice on the floor, lots of fruit flies, thick spider webs, paint chipping off walls and ceilings onto prep areas, and, of course, black mold that covered all the walls.

The lovely scene inside the now closed bakery
in Britain

At least the bakery was able to save money on interior signs. Rather than buy a sign saying "Office" for the office door, somebody just scratched that word into the black mold covering the door. Problem solved!

And they were into recycling. They kept "mopping:" the floor, according to authorities, with the same dirty water. They were saving on water and detergent. How environmentally friendly!

You wonder how they got away with being such a mess for so long. But I suppose excuses and little lies got them through

Why are the sesame seeds on my muffins moving?
It's a new treat. They're Mexican jumping sesame seeds.

Why are the walls in this bakery black and fuzzy?
Sound proofing. The neighbors were annoyed by the noise from the bakery equipment and so we installed the sound proofing.

Why is there a dead rat on the floor?
That's a new breed of cat. He's just sleeping.

Then why are there flies all over "the cat?"
The cat attracts them for us, and swats them dead. Keeps things clean.

Why all the paint chips on everything.
Don't worry. It's decorative.

I'm OK with the itsy bitsy spider thing going on, but isn't 9,482,345,190 spider webs hanging from the ceiling too much?
Naw. It's shoplifting prevention. If somebody tries to hurry out with stolen goods, they get tangled up in the webs.

In any event, if you're planning a trip to Britain, stay away from Meads Bakery. Even if it is closed.

Butt Chugging Scandal Delights Lawsuit-Threatened Journalists

Oh, this is a reporter's dream.

A lawyer for a fraternity brother held a press conference recently to address a "butt chugging" scandal at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University of Tennessee.

The lawyer and the frat bros. look grim at this press
conference, but the hilarious topic here was something
called "butt chugging"

The world had never  heard of "butt chugging" until recently, but now almost everybody, to their dismay, seems to know what it is.

For the uninitiated, butt chugging is the pasttime of taking a funnel, connecting it to a tube, inserting said tube up one's butt, and pouring beer or some other alcohol in.

Apparently, in some circles, this is a fun, entertaining way to get drunk fast. Why go the boring route through just drinking a beverage of your choice.  When you can stick it up your ass, literally.

Aren't you glad you now know what butt chugging is? Thought so.

The University of Tennessee butt chugging would probably have never come to light, so to speak,  had not one Alexander Price "Xander Broughton, 20, showed up at a hospital emergency room with a red swollen anus and so drunk he was this close to being dead, according to Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tenn.   

The University of Tennessee shut down the fraternity.  I guess this fine institution didn't want to be recognized as the Butt Chugging Capital of the World.

Can't blame them.

Members of the fraternity, and their lawyer, hotly contest the university's and the media's account of what  happened.  They accused everybody of sensationalizing this. Yes, it is sensationalized. How could it not be?

This whole episode led to one of the unintentionally funny news conferences I have ever seen.  How, oh how, did the gathered reporters not burst out laughing. There is no way I could have made it through this.



There are so many precious things to note from this video.

Notice how the fraternity members are standing around, grim faced, as if at a funeral. And the lawyer is taking things so seriously.   This isn't Brown vs. Board of Education, folks.

Some of the quotes from this press conference are too wonderful not to highlight:

The lawyer, David McGehee  said he visited our Xander after the incident:  "I asked him if he was butt chugging. He asked what in the world is that?"

The attorney goes on to say:  "That is the first time we ever heard of the two words, butt chugging. The words have now become two famous words around the United States and the world."

When McGehee was in law school, I bet he never thought he would utter those words. Butt chugging. Maybe he dreamed that sometime in the future, he would he argue a momentous case before the U.S. Supreme Court? No. He would end up discussing butt chugging with a group of reporters he hates.

Xander speaks to the reporters:   "I nor any members of my fraternity have never been involved in butt chugging or the use of alcohol enemas."

Reporter: "Can you clarify what happened?"
Xander: "It's a long story."

Oh, I bet it's a very long story.

It was also made clear by McGehee that Xander is not, repeat NOT, gay. Because I guess only gay people butt chug. Or something.

The press conference continues.

A reporter, really trying to get to the bottom, so to speak, of this important news story, asks McGehee,    "Can you give us details of what happened that night?"
Lawyer: "They had a Tour de Franzia."

Another new term for us. Whoopee!! A Tour de Franzia  Apparently, this somehow involves a box of cheap wine. Or several boxes. I can't imagine chasing all over town for the opportunity to drink Franzia, of all things, but to each his own.

Xander and the frat are suing. They've been slandered, falsely accused, or maybe just embarrassed by this weird attention. Which means all kinds of awkward affidavits and documents will come out. Is this worth it?

Commercial Appeal columnist Sam Venable gives us a few helpful examples of some of these documents and statements.

One affidavit from the hospital states: "His rectum was greatly expanded and inflamed and the trauma staff suspected he had been sodomized."

Xander says his injuries were because his "drunken body was lifted by his belt. causing my shorts to be my crotch area at which time I was told that I defecated on myself."

Was that last detail necessarily, Xander?

Crappy Subway Escalator Sad Commentary on Society

Gross news out of San Francisco gives us a new example of the problems associated with homelessness.

An escalator broke at a BART station in San Francisco. BART is the city's subway system.  Repair crews ended up having to call in a Hazmat team when they discovered the escalator broke because it was clogged with A LOT of human excrement, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

A broken BART escalator in San Francisco

I'm sure the zillions of people who use the escalators each day were thrilled to hear this news.

It turns out late at night, homeless people find the bottom of the escalators a relatively private area to relieve themselves. So they do it into the holes in the escalator. 

This is certainly one more reason why we need to work to end homelessness, if we didn't have enough reasons already. 

You can't arrest somebody for crapping in the escalators unless their caught brown handed, so to speak, or they admit to doing it. Who would admit to doing that? And there are few public restrooms open late at night in San Francisco, so what's a homeless person going to do?

I've only heard of this problem in San Francisco, but it must be an issue in other cities. 

Makes me glad I'm not a public transit director.