The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for August 2004

How drunk was he

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Man Drives Home with Headless Friend

ATLANTA (Reuters) – A Georgia man who drove home with a friend’s headless body after a truck accident then went to bed while the remains dangled out the window faces charges including vehicular homicide and drunk driving, police said on Monday.

John Hutcherson, covered in blood and visibly inebriated, was arrested in bed on Sunday morning after a local resident out on a stroll observed a headless, bloody body hanging out of the 21-year-old man’s truck, Cobb County police said.

Hutcherson was due to make an initial court appearance on Monday.

Police said that Hutcherson and his friend, identified as Francis Brohm, 23, were returning from a bar outside Atlanta early Sunday morning when their black 1992 Chevrolet Z-71 pickup hit a curb near a telephone pole.

Brohm, partially outside the window at the time, was decapitated by a guide wire on the telephone pole, according to police, who recovered his head at the crash site. “Alcohol is believed to be a contributing factor,” police said.

American Airlines Flight 587- Was it terrorism

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Daniel Pipes revisits this topic fresh off of the recent “revelations” of a Canadian Security Intelligence Service report written in May 2002 and made public on Aug. 27, 2004 by Stewart Bell in Canada’s National Post.

Essentially this says that American Airlines Flight 587 did not crash but was taken down by Al Qaeda with the terrorist using a shoe bomb. Every time I read “shoe bomb” I can’t help but think of “Get Smart.” Someone bring down the “Cone of Silence” while I finish this.

I am not an expert on these affairs and certainly this is possible, but I would think that it is just as likely that Al Qaeda would like to claim responsibility for as many incidents like this as possible. If you want to promulgate terror you want people to view you as being omnipotent.

Certainly if I was OBL I would want people to think that I can get to them any time I want. Being able to claim something like this helps to add to this myth..

However I do agree with Pipes that this should be thoroughly investigated. It would be wrong to simply brush this off as that type of behavior is what permitted the terrorists to successfully execute their plans on 911.

So much for Security at the Olympics

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“Man gets one-year suspended sentence for grabbing marathoner

August 30, 2004

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A defrocked Irish priest with a history of disrupting sports events was given a one-year suspended sentence and fined $3,600 Monday for grabbing a runner who was leading the Olympic marathon with three miles to go.”

I feel badly for the runner, so close to a gold medal and you get accosted by some meshugehneh.

MTV and VH1- I am old and who are these people

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Spent some time this evening trying to get my daughter to calm down and go to sleep. I shouldn’t mischaracterize it as trying to get her to calm down, she was calm. The problem was that my little 5 week old girl was wide awake at 10:30 and I was ready for some down time.

So I turned on the boob tube to zone out as I walked her around the living room. Flipped on VH1 and found that they had some special on regarding the 50 worst songs. It was mildly interesting, but it made me wonder a little. They had commentary about each song. It was given by people who I cannot place, that is, I haven’t the foggiest idea who they are. And without that identification it made me wonder how they got on to the show.

They were all trying to be witty, profound and or biting and misfiring on all three accounts. It eventually got to be quite irritating listening to amateur hour so I flipped over to MTV. I used to really enjoy watching it when they played videos. And I have to admit for a period of time I enjoyed watching the Real World. But that got old about the time I turned 29 or so. Since then I have rarely turned it on.

But tonight was a new night and I was getting desperate in my search for something that would make the little girl go to sleep. I had tried turning out the lights and playing classical music. I loved it and in moments I was almost out, but this time it had no impact on her. She squirmed and I realized that it wasn’t working.

So I turned on MTV and found the video music awards where I watched an audience that looked like it had been filled with recent junior high graduates and talent that I couldn’t appreciate. Jessica Simpson may be nice, but I find her voice to be average and the few times I have heard her sing she has done covers of other artists, poorly.

Have I gotten old overnight? What happened and when did it occur? I am reading this and wondering how did it come to pass that I have gotten to be so curmudgeonly about so many things. More importantly, is any of this really that significant and should I care. Oh bother.

Things I should be doing instead of blogging

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Here is a short list of things I should be working on instead of typing away at the computer:

1) Thank you notes for gifts for my daughter. If I could email you all a general thank you and have you find it to be personal and meaningful I’d do it.

2) Fixing the side gate on my house. I have to go to Home Depot and buy a gate, some anchors, a 2×4 and a couple of hinges so that I can repair the soon to be completely broken gate. I like working with my hands and enjoy these kinds of projects. However something like this is going to take a while and at 7 PM it is way too late to start. For that matter I am one of those people who once I start a project will continue doggedly until it is completed or completely broken into so many pieces it can never be reassembled. So I’ll take this on next weekend or earlier in the day during the week.

3) Clean up around the house. Pretty self-explanatory really. The house is not ridiculously dirty or messy, but two young kids and 230 pounds of me running around have their impact on things.

4) Develop new technology we need. That is a very important task, one of the more crucial is determining how to build a tool/filter that automatically kills offensive odors. The elevator at the office needs this so that I can climb into it and not pass out.

There are three specific smells that I want to mention here, smoke, perfume and gas. Sometimes I enter the elevator and I feel like I am taking an impossible journey through a cigarette or some tired casino. It smells like someone smoked an entire pack in there and I hate it.

Perfume is really directed at women who haven’t the olfactory capacity to recognize that pouring a bottle of perfume on your body is not a good way to win friends and influence people. I don’t know if you are in dire need of bathing and trying to hide it. I don’t know if you have CP or MS and have such poor motor skills that you cannot help it. And I am not sure if you did so much coke in the ’80s that you cannot smell it.

What I do know is that you stink and I find it hard to breathe around you. Cut back on the bottle, put it down slowly and back away. It can be done and you may even find that you get dates with people, not just grungy men in dire need of their first blow job of the past 15 years.

And gas, well that does hit close to home. I have a a “healthy” digestive disorder that gives me the ability to compete with methane output of large factories. I try hard not to force the others in the elevator to breathe this, it is common courtesy. And I ask that others try to do so too.

If not I am happy to follow you into your office, close the door and fumigate it for you. It is a free service that I am happy to provide.

Ok, I have managed to waste another 15 minutes or so. I suppose that it is time to bear down and do some of the less enjoyable things around the house. I hate being responsible. Sometimes I’d like to stop being dad for a few minutes and be the bachelor again. There is nothing like living by yourself to give you some additional free time. If the underwear on the couch still bends you know that it must be clean.

Paper plates are all that you need, but a paper towel is even better. That ring around the tub is something to be proud of. It is like the rings you use to estimate the age of a tree. So many good things to say. But the truth is that I love being a father more.

My son and daughter haven’t any clue just how much dad loves to dote on them. I wonder if my parents got as much pleasure just watching me as I do with my children. My son is taking gymnastics. One of his coaches is named “Al,” but my little boy calls him “Owl.” I don’t know if it is because he thinks that it is funny or if he cannot say “Al.”

I do know that he calls my Aunt Rhoda “soda” because he thinks that is funny. Anyway, I like watching him show me the tricks that Coach “Owl” teaches them. And now, I am off to work for a bit. Back soon.