Taking a bite out of crime

The stupidity of criminals never ceases to amaze. And when you throw in weird state laws to prosecute idiotic crooks, you’ve got a doozy of a tale.

Like the guy in Florida who tried to steal a ferret by shoving it in his pants and running out of the pet store.

Needless to say, the dumbass got bitten. In parts of the body where you don’t want to get bitten.

Uh, what did he expect? This has to be the worst possible combination of A) the animal chosen to be stolen, and B) the place to put it.

(A close second would be putting a boa constrictor around your neck and running out of the pet store.)

But wait, there’s more.

When a witness confronted said thief, he whipped out the ferret and shoved it in his face.

Which under Florida law, is classified as using the ferret as a “special weapon.” So he gets a shoplifting charge and a battery charge.

Can it get worse for this moron? You betcha!

You know he’s going to hear over and over in jail, “Hey, dude, is that a ferret in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?”

Serves him right. … Hope he gets community service at the animal shelter and has to clean out dozens of stinky dog cages. And maybe a ferret pen or two.

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Food fight

Is there no end to the problems from the obesity epidemic that threatens to bury our fair nation beneath a mountain of blubber?

Now an accused killer in New Jersey (where else?) is claiming he was too fat to do the deed.

It’s true, calorie-counters.

Ed Ates (don’t you love that last name?) claims he was too tubby to run up a flight of stairs, pump a bunch of bullets into his son-in-law, bend over to pick up the shell casings, run back down the stairs and drive for 21 straight hours to his mom’s home in Louisiana!

For the record, he was packing 285 pounds of beef (and some flab) on his 5 foot 8 inch frame.

His lawyer claims Ates’ weight and other health problems should rule him out as Suspect No. 1.

"You look at Ed and you don't need to hear it from a doctor," the attorney said.

I dunno. When a person – even a fat person – is motivated enough, he can do some amazing things.

The judge ought to order a little test on big Eddie:

Make sure he misses a few meals in jail. Then let it casually slip out that three or four Big Macs, a couple of orders of fries and a large Coke are available on the second floor.

If fatso stays put and salivates, he just might be innocent.

But if he bounds up the stairs like an NFL lineman chasing Brett Favre, I say fry him.

… After sautéing him in a light butter sauce, of course.

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Hoax busters

The Heenes of “Balloon Boy” fame are sweatin’ it out.

They are, of course, the Colorado clan that believes, “The family that fakes together stays together.”

Prosecutors are still trying to decide whether to indict the Mom & Pop Balloon Shop for that little distraction they caused recently.

Felony or misdemeanor? Multiple counts or one? The nation’s legal system – and “Larry King Live” – are waiting anxiously.

My inside sources say the charges could include any of the following:

1) Having weird names. “Heenes” rhymes with wienies. ‘Nuff said there. And the 6 year old who was supposedly floating up, up and away is named “Falcon.” Uh, are his brothers “Eagle” and “Hawk”?

2) Spilling the beans too quickly. If they had milked the scam a little longer, they could have pushed the World Series to the background and we wouldn’t have had to watch the Yankees gloat.

3) Failing to ask if they could go into some silly rehab program like all the other celebrity losers to beat the rap.

On the plus side, they have introduced the odd term “Balloon Boy” to the national lexicon and provided lots of kids with nifty ideas for Halloween costumes.

I say the judge should sentence them to 100 hours of community service and order them to make TV commercials warning impressionable youngsters not to do stupid things.

… Wait, the whole thing was designed to get them a reality show, wasn’t it? OK, then drop the TV commercials and assign them to litter pickup along a desolate stretch of highway.

And double the sentence if they claim to see Bigfoot while they are out there.

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Silent partner

I guess you could call it reverse embezzlement.

A guy in New Jersey drew a paycheck for five years from a company he never worked for.

Sounds hard to believe, but apparently one Anthony Armatys, 35, of Palatine, Ill., benefited from some very sloppy bookkeeping.

Seems he was temporarily hired by a telecommunications company in the Garden State in 2002. But then he changed his mind and quit.

However, the company computer had his name in the system, so being a dumb computer, it kept sending paychecks to his bank account. To the tune of $470,000 over the years!

Sort of direct deposit-plus. Ca-ching!

Incredibly, the scheme went on for five years until “auditors” at the company wised up. I put “auditors” in quotation marks there because it took them five years to figure out they were paying a guy who never showed up. (And you thought some folks at your job were bad.)

If I was head of this company, I’d be too embarrassed to admit that I let something that dumb go on for that long.

And was it right that Absentee Andy had to plead guilty to one count of theft as part of a plea bargain?

He had a sweet deal drop into his lap, and all he said was nothin’.

At least they should have let him keep part of the loot.

For all anyone knew, he was a “consultant.”

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Clean 'n' mean

Hugo Chavez really is a tyrant.

Now he wants Venezuelans to take showers in 3 minutes.

Clearly, he’s all wet. He says if Venezuelans cut out the singing, they can get hosed down in 180 seconds.

“Three minutes is more than enough. I've counted, three minutes, and I don't stink," he claimed.

Well, on something like that, you can’t trust your own nose. You have to ask the person standing next to you. He or she might have a different opinion about your B.O. factor.

For most people, 3 minutes is just the warm-up phase of a shower. That’s barely enough time to get wet, find the shampoo and curse somebody for taking the loofa and not putting it back.

All of this is just another reason to be against commies and dictators, not to mention commie dictators, of which Chavez is both.

Remember that this moron dissed President Bush at the U.N. a few years ago, saying he could smell the devil’s sulfur after Bush spoke.

Hugo, there was a different fragrance in the air, and it came from you.

Maybe for his next bathing experience, ol’ Hugo could take a dip in a deep part of the Gulf of Mexico.

If he ended up as shark supper, everybody would be happy.

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Cloudy future

Is nothing sacred?

Now the Weather Channel is going to show movies!

That’s right, barometer-breath. The Weather Channel wants to boost its ratings, so it is going Hollywood.

First up, of course, is “The Perfect Storm,” starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. I would guess that would soon be followed by “Twister” starring Helen Hunt and “Purple Rain” starring Prince.

OK, maybe not that last one, but you know the list is endless.

This is not right. When I want to watch a movie, I flip to the American Movie Channel.

When I want to know what the weather is, I turn to the Weather Channel. (Sure, I could stick my head out the door and see if it’s raining, but sometimes that’s too much effort.)

If the Weather Channel is going to show movies, pretty soon it will be like all the other channels with sports, news, commercials and even reality shows. Which pretty much destroys the logic of a Weather Channel.

Granted, I never thought you could fill 24 hours with endless reports about weather, but the Weather Channel did – though lately more filler has been creeping in.

All I know is that the next time a hurricane is threatening, I don’t want to turn to the Weather Channel and see a message at the bottom of the screen that reads, “Stay tuned for reports on the killer storm that is homing in on you like a guided missile after this special broadcast of ‘A River Runs Through It’.”

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Curb your enthusiasm

I guess Evan Schuler’s dream of being a police officer has been stomped flatter ’n a pancake.

Like the opossum he took care of the other night.

You see, Eager Evan was on a “ride along” with a cop in Danville, Va. That is where a civilian sits alongside a cop or deputy to see the drama and glory of law enforcement up close and personal.

That’s what ol’ Evan was doing when he saw a possum on a fence. Faster than you could say “Miranda rights,” he got out of the car and proceeded to stomp the critter into a lifeless, mushy pulp.

Why, no one knows. This is like whipping out an Uzi to scare off a door-to-door salesman. Basically what the dictionary defines as “overkill.” Or “acting like an idiot.”

In fact, not only did the ride-along end abruptly for Evan, he was charged with animal cruelty.

Tsk, tsk. Any dreams he had of a career in law enforcement are pretty much crushed (like the possum's skull). I guess he could also rule out any jobs with the local zoo or animal shelter.

... Wonder if this guy eats roadkill or something?

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Boomerang

So after several decades of sponsoring terrorism across the globe, Iran is suddenly ticked off that a few of its own crazies got taken out by a suicide bomber.

Pardon me if I don’t shed any tears. In fact, it’s hard to keep from jumping up and cheering.

The carnage in question occurred last week in an Iranian town near the Pakistani border. A dissident group of Sunnis is suspected, but whoever did it studied the Iranian playbook well.

The suicide bomber struck a high-level delegation of Revolutionary Guard commanders. Those are the real haters who run the country and make sure to crush anyone who might get uppity ideas about freedom.

The bomber hit the jackpot. He killed at least 42 people, including five senior Revolutionary Guard officers.

Yeah, I know, you’re not supposed to do the wave at times like this. But the Revolutionary Guard in Iran is responsible for thousands of deaths just like this via the terrorist groups it arms from Afghanistan to Algeria.

Finally, they got a taste of their own medicine.

Hope they choked on it.

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Trust but verify

I haven’t been this stunned since I learned the truth about the Easter Bunny. Brace yourselves:

Tabloid newspapers print all kinds of crap that isn’t true.

You read that right. A British filmmaker has admitted duping tabloids by planting all kinds of fake stories.

He and his cohorts would phone in some nonsense — like Amy Winehouse’s beehive hairdo catching fire — and it would be in print the next morning.

Again and again they lobbed false information like grenades of deception over the walls of truth. Again and again it was printed and taken as gospel by the people who buy tabloids at checkout stands.

I feel violated. I’ve gone my whole life believing that Elvis appears now and then, that aliens abduct night fishermen, that secret machines are still being discovered in the pyramids and that Marilyn Monroe was killed by the CIA because she was in on a plot to kill JFK.

Now, apparently none of that is true. … Maybe the part about Marilyn Monroe, but not the rest.

What a sad day. Next you’ll be telling me that half the crap on the Internet is bogus too.

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Mr. Big

This guy was a big criminal. Literally.

Stephon Turo, a drug dealer being sentenced in Auburn, N.Y., weighed about 600 pounds.

He was hauled to court on the back of a pickup truck. He was sentenced near the loading dock. Then he was loaded into an ambulance with the help of 10 people and shipped to prison.

Talk about your scales of justice. I think the judge was just happy to get rid of him before lunch.

The real question is, how could tubby Turo commit any crimes?

The news story said he “suffers from various staph and strep infections, kidney failure and can walk only a few feet, even with the assistance of other people.”

Still, prosecutors said he was selling prescription drugs from his home for nearly 10 years.

I’m guessing he didn’t mess with diet drugs.

The next question is, what do you do with a lump of lawbreakin' like that?

I don’t think he could share a cell with anyone. And you’d have to keep him on the ground floor.

On the plus side, if the prison had a football team he could play “offensive line.”

And I don’t think you’d have to worry about him tunneling to freedom.

Since he’s got a two-year sentence, the prison shouldn’t feed him until he gets out. That would get him down to normal size by his release date, and save taxpayers a few bucks too.

Just call it “weight management” if the ACLU squawks.

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Pouting Polanski

Poor, poor Roman Polanski.

The brilliant director is said to be glum about his continued incarceration in Switzerland for that little incident way back in ’77 (the rape of a 13-year-old girl).

“I found him to be tired and depressed,” his lawyer said. He added that the Artistic Genius “was in an unsettled state of mind.”

That is, of course, unfortunate. No matter how much other Artistic Geniuses in Hollywood and Paris demand his immediate release, the petty Swiss seem determined to keep Polanski in the slammer.

Moreover, they will probably — gasp, horrors! — stick him on a plane for the states, where he will spend many, many more days behind bars.

They’re not even buying his solemn promises to stay in Switzerland if they let him out on bail!

Is that any way to treat an Artistic Genius!

Uh … yes.

Polanski has dodged justice on this one for 32 years. But the old man stupidly went to a country that will extradite him. So now he’s basically screwed, blued and tattooed.

How sweet it is.

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Buffaloed

It was a truly senseless crime.

That would be, of course, the theft of a statue of Thurman Thomas.

You see, for some reason a wood carver in New York created a huge statue of the former Buffalo Bills running back. No one seems to know why.

The Bill and Thomas are only known, to the extent they are known at all, for losing four Super Bowls.

This is not the sort of thing one tends to memorialize. I mean, when was the last time you were in the William Jennings Bryan presidential library?

Even more absurd is that then someone stole the thing. And it was not easy, as it stood 8½ feet tall and weighed over half a ton.

And they took it the day after it was unveiled! Were they worried that another gang of thieves would beat them to it?

If that is the only thing worth stealing in Orchard Park, N.Y., that town is in serious trouble.

The only logical answer here is that someone wanted to stock up on firewood for the coming brutal winter in upstate New York.

Even then, if I was the owner and I got a ransom call, I'd tell the crooks, “We can discuss a price … but only if you pay me to take it off your hands?”

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Three-time loser

If you’re gonna fiddle with homemade explosives, you really should be careful.

A crook named Ben Kuzelka wasn’t, but that’s no surprise. He already had a pot-growing operation at a home that was licensed by the state as a day care center.

Kuzelka’s hat trick of foolishness was uncovered this week in California when he blew off most of one hand. He told the emergency room doctors it was a gunshot wound, but they were suspicious.

To them, and anyone who didn’t have the benefit of medical school, it looked waaay more like the whole thing was darn near blown off.

So they called the cops, the cops searched his house, and they found the indoor pot farm right by the day care.

Maybe Kuzelka though it would be a selling point for hip parents: Drop off the kid, pick up a lid.

At any rate, he will now have a lot of time to think about the error of his ways … and why many idiots who fiddle with homemade explosives are often nicknamed “Stumpy.”

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Northern exposure

Like many of you, I was shocked at the news that the guy who almost married Sarah Palin’s daughter was going to pose nude for Playgirl magazine.

Who knew that Playgirl was still around? I though it fizzled out in the ’80s with other tacky rags like “Oui.”

Wait, there’s more; this story is disturbing on other levels as well.

Who on God’s earth wants to see Levi Johnston in the buff? His sole claim to fame is knocking up Palin’s daughter.

He couldn’t even complete the second half of the double play; he didn’t even get hitched to Bristol, whom I believe is named after a city in Connecticut. For that matter, I believe the father of her child is named after a brand of blue jeans.

Can this tale get worse? As Sarah would say, “You betcha!”

The news story said that “To get ready for his close-up, Johnston is training three hours a day, six nights a week at an Anchorage gym with a local body builder.”

In other words, instead of looking like the pudgy, untoned kid he is, he will look sort-of hunky for the photo shoot. Whatever happened to truth in advertising?

You know the day after the pics, he will go back to Ding Dongs and Dr Pepper.

Yet he will carry around copies of Playgirl and show them to impressionable girls in dingy Anchorage bars (yes, I know that is redundant), who will think they are getting the chance of a lifetime with Someone Glamorous.

Sad. Very sad.

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Buccaneer’s luck

There must be a worldwide outbreak of stupid this week.

Now we have Somali pirates who attacked a French warship in the Indian Ocean because they thought it was an unarmed cargo vessel.

Not smart.

On one side, we have a handful of lightly armed pirates on two skiffs.

On the other side, we have an 525-foot naval vessel filled with dozens of French sailors.

You make the call.

Maybe the Somalis believed all that talk about the French being more inclined to surrender rather than fight.

As it is, one skiff got away in the skirmish and it took the French an hour to run down the other one.

Or maybe the French warship didn’t look like a warship because of that café on deck with a bunch of guys wearing berets and a bunch of gals in tight skirts drinking wine.

... OK, I made up that last part, but with the French, you never know.

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Take the money and run II

In yesterday’s contribution to blogitude, we lamented the poor state of modern robbery.

After reading the tale of woe of a certain Susan Stanford, we can add that the art of divorce isn’t what it used to be either.

Susan is the former wife of disgraced billionaire R. Allen Stanford, who is facing many years in a small room with iron bars for a $7 billion (!) Ponzi scheme.

Because of that little problem with the law, R. Allen Stanford is now so broke he needs a court-appointed attorney.

Serves him right — and the same goes for Susie. You see, she stopped living with R. Allen 15 years ago. For some reason, she never got around to divorcing him. It could be because he agreed to keep writing laarrrge checks each month from the proceeds of his, uh, business venture.

Anyhoo, now that R. Allen is a non-billionaire, Susan is mighty cheesed off. She realizes she should have taken the money and run when R. Allen still had money to take.

In fact, she is now suing her former divorce lawyer for not telling her about an alleged $200 million offer that R. Allen dangled a few years ago.

Frankly, they deserve each other. The news account says that before the feds looked at the books, R. Allen “lived in the Caribbean with a series of younger women with whom he has fathered several children.”

Now, of course, both of them have pretty much nothin’. I think that’s what English teachers call “poetic justice.”

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Take the money and run

Once again we return to a common theme of this blog:

Robbers or robbery victims who just can’t seem to get it right.

Previously, we have discussed robbers who are too lazy to get out of their cars in the drive-through lane — and use a knife! Or young robbers who get beat up by old victims.

The latest affront to Robbery Etiquette comes from Waterloo, Iowa. A crazy-looking man stumbled into a convenience store and started rambling as he held his hand in his pocket.

The jumpy clerks, having been knocked off twice in recent months, didn’t fool around. They knew it was another heist, so they started giving cash to the thug. In fact, they threw a bag of money at him.

One small problem. It wasn’t a robbery. The friendly neighborhood creep was just another drunk.

To prove it, he didn’t take the money and run. He just walked out, whereupon he was promptly arrested for “public intoxication, disorderly conduct and interference.”

I didn’t know that interference was a crime in Iowa. I know it’s a defensive foul in football that causes a first down, but a crime, no.

At any rate, this whole sordid mess just reinforces a lingering problem we have in this country these days: We can’t even have a proper robbery without one party or the other goofing up. What happened to the good ol’ days, when stickup men were men and frightened clerks were glad of it?

... I just hope Osama bin Laden isn’t watching.

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Comrades not welcome at glorious people’s parade

The Red Chinese held a big ol’ parade on Thursday through the heart of Beijing. It was the 60th anniversary of the founding of their glorious people’s republic.

But there was a curious thing about the huge spectacle; no spectators were allowed.

That’s right, proletarian breath. As the AP said, “Most people in the capital could only watch the elaborate ceremony for the founding of the People’s Republic unfold on national television, as tight security excluded ordinary people from getting near the parade route through Tiananmen Square.”

Now whether you’re in Buna or Beaumont, you’re probably thinking, “What the heck is wrong with them darned Chinese? What good is a parade without parade-watchers?”

Well, my friend, the answer is that the one thing the commissars fear most in the people’s republic … is the people!

The Chi-Coms know full well that if they let average citizens assemble and speak out, they could have a nasty replay of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when the ungrateful people started clamoring for freedom, democracy and other dangerous Western notions.

Even though the Chinese government is relatively loosey-goosey for your average commie dictatorship, it doesn’t want the people getting a bunch of uppity ideas. Public gatherings are tightly monitored and few organizations are allowed to exist outside the loving embrace of the Big Red Machine.

Hence the non-crowd at the big parade. I guess it's what you'd call a Communist party.

… On the bright side, if you were one of the few carefully screened guests allowed curbside, you probably got a whole bunch of candy from the nice lady throwing handfuls of it from the Tribute to Collective Farming float.

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