Roadkill Cafe Found Not Appetizing

A Kentucky Chinese restaurant is apparently in trouble because its employees brought in roadkill for to satisfy their appetite.

Restaurant personnel insist the roadkill wasn't meant for customers. It was meant for familyt.  But some customers were alarmed by what appeared to be a bloody carcass being brought into the kitchen in a bin, dripping blood on the floor behind it.

Health officials say there will be no roadkill
on this restaurant's menu

The name of the eatery is "Red Flower Chinese Restaurant." I wonder if they should change the name to "Red, Icky Smears on the Kitchen Floor Restaurant."

Meat is expensive these days, and one way to save money, I suppose, is to see what's been run over out on the highway.

The people who run the restaurant say they didn't know they were doing anything illegal.

Still, didn't they worry about getting sick off the meat? How long had the animal been out there, squished by a truck or something and baking on the pavement in the sun?

What else are they finding out there they consider "edible?"  I hope they don't make dinner out of whatever the dog finds in the woods and drags home.

I always hear of people feasting on road kill, or donating it to somebody who needs food. I suppose it might be OK if the meat is immediately refrigerated upon the animal's death. Then thoroughly cooked afterward.

I really hope this is an isolated incident, and we're not eating roadkill at our favorite diner.

Health officials said the Red Flower could reopen after a thorough sanitizing. Several patrons said they wouldn't eat there, though. I guess they weren't enthused by daily special, "Smeared Bambi with Car Tire Glaze."

Just kidding, people.

Two of the Latest, Greatest Stupid Criminals

I got wind of two more stupid criminals today. This is certainly a growth industry isn't it?  An endess supply.

The first guy punched the heck out of his public defender in South Carolina, according to television station WCNC. . I guess the puncher, Lamarcus Williamson, 30, was displeased that he'd just been sentenced to 15 years behind bars. Apparently, Williamson has a pretty long rap sheet. Which just got longer, with that punch. defense attorney.

Larmarcus Williamson, channeling his inner
boxer, seen here lengthening his prison term.

They tacked on another six months to his sentence, and he might face assault charges, which would lengthen his prison term even more. But, I'm sure it felt good in the moment, even if it was that wrong.  I dunno. A minute of feeling good gets you at least six additional months in prison? Not sure that's so hot.

The second guy case is even more stupid, since it wasn't just one moment of idiocy but apparnetly a lifestyle of dumb.

Peter Rosello made a 35 second piece of cinema for YouTube called "Hobo gets NutChecked!!!!"

In it, you see the loser sneak up on an apparently homeless guy and punch him in the balls. That's all over in a few seconds. Then you just have blurry images of the pavement as Rosello runs to his car to get away. It's cinematic history folks.

Or not.

Maybe film school would help.

Of course, it was pretty easy for the police to figure out who Rosello hit, get a statement and figure out Rosello was the guy who did it.  Asked via Facebook why he punched the guy in the nuts, Rosello replied, "it's funnyyyyyyyy"

Rosello really likes his extra exclamation points and letters, doesn't he?

He want on to say he was just screwing around, wants to help the homeless yada yada yada.

Peter Rosello likes punching guys in the nuts, apparently. 

Rosello is the son of one of the Real Housewives of Miami. Oh great.  Maybe we can add a spinoff. "Real Housewives of Miami, or At Least Their Kids, Assault People and Think it's Funnyyyyyyyy"

Meanwhile, his stepfather, Herman Eschevarria said, "It's an unfortunate thing. But it just looks like kids playing. It's not really violent."

No, sucker punching unsuspecting people in the balls is sweet and light and innocent, like a morning kiss. Or something.

The guy who was assaulted isn't amused. He'll press charges, police are investigating and Rosello could be arrested at any time. Arresting officers killed the video star, maybe?

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?

Low Test Scores in Your School? El Paso Just Got Rid of Bad Students

There's a lot of pressure on schools these days to improve test scores and ensure students are learning well.

We'll leave for another day the question of whether or not all these tests are accomplishing the goal of ensuring kids are smarter.

I know that most school administrators everywhere genuinely want students to do well. But an El Paso school administrator found an, um, novel idea to boost test scores, thereby winning more federal education money and nice pats on his back.

Lorenzo Garcia was jailed for essentially
getting rid of poor performing students
to boost school test scores

Apparently, former superintendent Lorenzo Garcia just got rid of kids who might drag down average test scores by encouraging them, strongly, to drop out of school.

Well, that's one way to improve average scores. The kids that need the most help learning, the ones who are learning English, who have a learning disability, who have an abysmal home life. Just chuck them to the curb and deny them any kind of education.

Hey, money talks right?  Maybe he justified it all by thinking the kids wouldn't amount to much no matter what he did. Although I fear he might have thrown out some kids who would have made a big difference in the world had they gotten some help from educators.

Luckily, a lot of people aren't thrilled by Garcia's solution to school funding shortages.  Garcia has been convicted of fraud and was sentenced Friday, according to the El Paso Times.  He has to serve 3.5 years in prison, pay $180,000 in restitution and $56,000 in fines.    Some people around El Paso wished he wa sentenced to much more than that.  some people are calling for a harsher sentence than that.

By the way, major kudos to the El Paso Times because had their reporters not started nosing around and filing Freedom of Information demands, this might have continued to go on, unnoticed. As it was, Garcia was reportedly screwing over students from February, 2006 until about August, 2011.

This guy Garcia must now be the most unpopular guy in El Paso. But I wonder how many other school administrators are doing similar nasty stuff to gain federal education money, and are not being caught.

Yes, most school administrators have the kids' best interest at heart, but every group has a few bad apples. And even one bad apple can really shortchange a kid, and society as a whole, the benefits of that education.

 

Don't Ride the Manatees!

A crisis hit Florida the other day when a woman was caught happily riding a manatee near a Florida coastline, so says the Tampa Bay Times.

Apparently, riding manatees is the ultimate faux pas in Florida. Manatees are beloved creatures in that part of the world, and why not? They're peaceful, odd, but incredibly endearing sea animals. So I can see why people would take offense at someone bothering a manatee.

In this photo released by the Pinellas County, Florida
Sheriff's Department, a woman illegally rides
a manatee. Only in Florida.

It's also illegal to bother said manatees. Says the Tampa Bay Times: "Under the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act, sea cow molestation constitutes a second-degree misdemeanor, an offense punishable by a $500 fine or a term of up to 60 days in the county jail."

Somebody snapped a picture of the woman riding the manatee and a manhunt was on to find the offender. Police held a press conference. The pic was distributed far and wide, like those images you get after a bank robbery of somebody pointing a gun at a teller.

This picture, though, was of a gleeful middle aged woman in a black bikini top seemingly enjoying herself atop the manatee. It was unclear if the manatee was gleeful, annoyed, or under the spell of some other mood.

With all the publicity, the jig was up. Several after the photo was distributed, one Ann Gloria Garcia Gutierez of St. Petersburg, Fla. owned up the ride. She said she didn't know going for a ride astride a manatee as if she was a cowboy atop a steer was legally problematic.

No word yet if Gutierez will face any charges.

As I said manatees are pretty docile, but they are wild animals. I'm continually amazed that many people don't understand that, and think anything out there in the wild or the ocean is part of one gigantic petting zoo, meant just for them.

Several years ago, I was stopped at a Vermont gas station when a moose came up to the edge of the parking lot. As always in these cases, people gawked, took pictures. Moose are cool.

But then, a mother got her young daughter, maybe three years old, out of her car, and carried her toward the moose. "Go ahead, pet it," the mother said.  Yes, mom was either incredibly stupid or incredibly homicidal toward her little girl.

Luckily, others intervened and guided mom and dad away from the perplexed looking moose.

Animals must think us humans are pretty stupid, huh?

When Adorable Muppets Turn Nasty

Almost everybody loves the Muppet named Elmo. He comes off as just such a sweetheart. He's kind, curious, compassionate, funny. What's not to like?

Well, when somebody with questionable mental stability starts dressing up as Elmo and spouts creepy anti-Semitic rants at unsuspecting families, it gets ugly.

The guy in New York who dresses
up like Elmo and spouts awful stuff
Photo from the N.Y. Times

That's the problem people are facing in New York City. Apparently, people dress up as beloved children-centric characters in Central Park to entertain families, pose for pictures and maybe get some cash as a reward.

Most of the time, this works. The characters are charming, the children are delighted, some people make a little money and smiles rule the day.

Except when you've got the ranting Elmo, the scary Elmo, the unstable Elmo, which creates an awful collision of free speech rights, the rights of families to protect children from hate speech, not to mention the question of who has the rights to the Elmo image.

For their part, the Sesame Workshop, the educational nonprofit behind beloved Sesame Street characters like Elmo,  says it doesn't condone any unauthorized representations of its characters from anybody, well intentioned or not.

New York City's scary Elmo, who identifies himself as Adam Sandler, doesn't seem too worried about the niceties of copwrite and image. By the way, Sandler is not that Sandler. He's not the popular, and apparently stable comedian.

The Sandler Elmo was detained earlier this summer after going off on a scary rant in Central Park, according to media reports There's a few YouTube videos out there of him squawking about Jews in his Elmo outfit, which quite understandably is incredibly unsettling for kids and their parents.

Here's one of the videos of Scary, anti-semitic Elmo. Warning: language is kinda harsh:



Scary Elmo was released soon afterwards and was back in Central Park. According to the New York Times account, Sandler has a pretty sketchy past, which would give any parent pause.

The June New York Times story about Sandler alleges he once ran a pornographic Web site in Cambodia called "Welcome to Rape Camp" and there were insinuations that Sandler might have been involved in the sexual assault of underaged girls, though no charges have ever been brought.

Scary Elmo is apparently back, and persistent. Sandler was arrested last month around Times Square for another anti-Semitic rant while in his Elmo outfit.

It appears New York might not get rid of its Scary Elmo anytime soon. You can't just make people shut up. If somebody doesn't want mental health couseling, which Sandler apparently does not want, you usually can't make him

People can pretty much say what they want, under the First Amendment.  You can pretty much dress up as a cartoon character and spout all kinds of nonsense. I suppose the Sesame Workshop could go after Sandler, but the associated litigation and unpleasant media attention would distract from their family friendly reputation, even if they are legally and ethically right.

So, this is not an easy problem to solve.

It's sad that families have to be afraid, or at least wary of people dressed up as fun childrens' characters. The frightening thing is most people are blissfully unaware of Sandler's ickiness.

That point was amply illustrated in The Times June article. It quoted a mother thinking kindly of her daughter and meeting Sandler in his Elmo costume. The mom says:  "Will you be here tomorrow? She loves Elmo."

Shaming Bad Customers On Line?

We've all heard of consumer web sites like Yelp and Angie's List, that provide a forum on how good or bad a particular business is.

Now we have a site for business owners for reviewing bad customers.

You have to become a member of BadConsumers.com, to join the fun, and once you're in, you can tell everyone about a particular customer that won't pay you, or does something else egregious.

I dunno. Yelp and Angie's List can be helpful, but those sites can be abused, too.Some people post fake business reviews on sites like Yelp to either unfairly hurt or help a business.  I'd think BadConsumer members can just attack a member of the public they don't like.

What if a BadConsumers member just doesn't happen to like someone and calls him a deadbeat, when he's not?  How does the individual get back his or her reputation?

Information on BadConsumers.com assures potential members they can't get in trouble for saying something bad about somebody. But I would hope libel laws help.  You probably can't win a libel suit against someone if they genuine believe what they said about you is true. But as I understand it, you can win such a suit if somebody deliberately lies about you to hurt your reputatiuon.

I see these review Web sites become a great job creator for trial lawyers.

The bottom line is, I  the old rules apply: Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.  And not everybody is honest, so let's be careful out there, folks.