Gunning for promotion, rugby players to eat each other, couple report stolen pot to police, how not to open a bag of cash, and grannies - go mad

Sadly no news this week on whether plumbers are as keen on golf as black cab drivers, but considering I seem to be the only person I know who doesn't either consume music like air and write music reviews and suchlike (no really, I seem to be the only one), I feel doubtful about the following "... New Black" statement that "jive is the new jazz". I'm thinking of looking for a poll of what is the new rock'n'roll. I reckon that rock'n'roll is the new rock'n'roll. I'm willing to put money on it.

Featured product

This week: OfficeGunners!
Get some.



"This was the first advanced gun and was constructed by Geir. It is made by assembling several Mauly clips and a thick rubberband and has tremendous firepower. With a regular pencil as projectile it can penetrate thick cardboard and empty soda cans. Never point this gun at anyone!"



"This gun is not practical for random battles, but more of a gun for the determined assassin. This gun IS dangerous!"

I have built this gun (with admittedly larger Maulys for greater stopping power) and can confirm that it is possible to put a ballpoint through most things softer than a can. I don't have the full power laccy bands, however... probably a good thing.

Mom Pleads Guilty to Hosting Sex Parties

AP

Dateline: Golden, Colo. - A woman who told police she wanted to be a "cool mom" pleaded guilty to sexual assault charges Monday for having sex with high school boys at parties where authorities said she supplied drugs and alcohol.

Silvia Johnson, 40, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of sexual assault and nine felony counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors dropped two counts of distribution of methamphetamine.

"She described herself as a `cool mom,'" Detective R.J. Vander Veen wrote in the affidavit. He said Johnson told investigators "she was never popular with classmates in high school and now began `feeling like one of the group.'"

Prosecutors did not recommend a sentence, but each sexual assault count carries up to two years in prison, and each count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor carries up to six years, district attorney's spokeswoman Pam Russell said.

Johnson, who is free on bail, held parties for the boys almost weekly between October 2003 and October 2004, authorities said. She was accused of providing drugs and alcohol to eight boys and having sex with five of them.

Police said the investigation began after one of the boys told his mother about the encounters, and she reported it to authorities. (:/)

Martin Apologises For Jerusalem Message

ContactMusic.com

Ricky Martin has issued an apology, after he donned a traditional Arab kaffiyeh headscarf with the slogan "Jerusalem Is Ours" written in Arabic on it.

The LIVIN' LA VIDA LOCA singer was in Jordan yesterday (25JUL05), where he attended the silver jubilee of the Arab Children's Congress, which was set up 25 years ago by the country's QUEEN NOUR to promote creativity, peace, cross-cultural understanding and tolerance.

And at one point while posing for photographs with fans, he draped the kaffiyeh over his shoulders, without being able to understand the statement it carried.

Martin says in a statement, "I had no idea that the kaffiyeh scarf presented to me contained language referring to Jerusalem, and I apologise to anyone who might think I was endorsing its message.

"My role is entirely humanitarian, and I will continue to promote the elimination of stereotyping anyone - be they from Latin America, the Middle East, or anywhere across the globe."

Late yesterday, Martin travelled to Thailand where his organisation, the Ricky Martin Foundation, has built 225 homes to protect children orphaned by 26 December's (04) Indian Ocean tsunami. (:/)

Victim in trouble after reporting stolen pot

KENS 5 Eyewitness News

He was the victim of a home invasion, but he's the one who's in trouble with the law this morning.

That's because of the marijuana that the robbery suspects were after last night in the 3900 block of Fredericksburg Road.

Police say the victim and his girlfriend waited 30 to 40 minutes before calling police about their stolen pot.

According to police, the invaders knocked on the front door. When the victim opened it, they pulled a gun and started demanding the marijuana.

When the girlfriend returned, she found the victim tied up in the bedroom.

"When our officers first arrived here, they weren't cooperative in the beginning," said SAPD Sgt. Curtis Coolidge. " We didn't even get the basic description until about 15 or 20 minutes here at the scene to get the victim to cooperate with the investigation."

Police say they have a vague description of the robbers, who are described as three Hispanic males, 18 to 20 years old. The trio will face aggravated robbery charges.

As for the young couple, no one was injured, but police believe that possession of marijuana charges are very likely. (:/)

Erm, yeah.

Britons fear dognapping spate - survey

Reuters

London - More than a third of British dog owners are worried their pet will be stolen while one in 20 who have lost their four-legged friend think they were victims of thieves, according to a survey Wednesday.

Almost half of owners have now had their dog fitted with a microchip because of fears that thieves will strike, the research by Direct Line insurance found.

Fears may have been inflamed by the recent high-profile disappearances of singer Engelbert Humperdinck's German Shepherd puppy and actress Liz Hurley's black Labrador.

"There have been a few cases of dognapping reported recently and this type of crime appears to be on the increase," said Chris Price of Direct Line Pet Insurance.

The survey found that dog owners are prepared to offer an average rewards of more than 450 pounds to get their stolen dog back while almost four percent said they would hire a private detective. (:/)

Attentive TAR readers (there are other kinds?? Surely not) will recall several stories in the past about people 'seeing' 'images' related to their pet religion in everyday places and objects, such as under flyovers and in fruit and so forth. This definitely takes the biscuit for now, however...

Pilgrims flock to image of Jesus on Bosnian tree

Reuters

Sarajevo - Christians are flocking to a northwestern Bosnian town to view an image of Jesus Christ that allegedly appeared in a section of a cut tree branch two days ago, Bosnian media reported on Friday.

The image resembling Jesus' face cannot be seen from a close distance but only from a few metres away. The branch in the town of Bijeljina was cut about a year ago, said Oslobodjenje daily.

Sceptics have dismissed the image as a freak of nature, but pilgrims have been streaming to the tree, kneeling before it to pray, lighting candles, leaving money and cutting off bark to take home.

The region's Serb Orthodox bishop Vasilije visited the site and said church officials would discuss the phenomenon and advise believers how to behave. He appealed to visitors not to destroy the tree and not to leave money at the site. (:/)

Unless, of course, you want to know about thousands more sightings of 'our lord'... doo-weeep!

Visions of Jesus Christ

A car crash of a different kind...

Ananova

Dateline: Santiago, Chile - A newly opened restaurant called Car Crash had to close down - after a car crashed into the building.

The car lost control in wet weather and smashed into the entrace of the restaurant in Santiago.

Owner Nancy Araya says she named the restaurant Car Crash because the area was an accident blackspot.

She told Las Ultimas Noticias: "It is unbelievable, it is black humour that a car crashes into Car Crash. The restaurant is now a joke."

Nobody was hurt in the accident. The restaurant is expected to reopen within a week. (:/)

Celebrity skin

Cruise tops 'celebrity meltdown' poll

Stuff.co.nz

Tom Cruise has been judged to have had the wildest celebrity meltdown in a new American poll.

Cruise's antics on the Oprah Winfrey show, on which he jumped up and down on a sofa and declared his love for his new girlfriend, Katie Holmes, has been judged the "Wildest Celebrity Meltdown" by American TV Guide readers.

Cruise beat Mariah Carey's MTV breakdown, Michael Jackson's baby-dangling incident, Whitney Houston's startling drug admissions and Farrah Fawcett's spaced out interview on David Letterman's chat show to claim the top spot.

The top 5 Celebrity Meltdown Moments judged by US TV Guide readers are:

1. Tom Cruise loses control on The Oprah Winfrey Show (2005). Tom, when questioned by Oprah about his new relationship, jumped up and down on his couch, got down on one knee and repeatedly pumped his fist before declaring his love for Katie Holmes.

2. Michael Jackson dangles his baby from a hotel balcony in Berlin (2002). Screaming fans waiting outside Jackson's hotel window were astonished to see the popstar bring his baby son out to the balcony, then briefly dangle him over the edge. The incident drew worldwide condemnation.

3. Farrah Fawcett's "space out" on David Letterman's The Late Show (1997). Upon entering the stage, Farrah required Letterman's help to sit down, repeatedly lost her train of thought and became entranced by the fake skyline behind Letterman's desk. She was supposed to be promoting her new Playboy pictorial.

4. Mariah Carey's impromptu appearance on MTV's Total Request Live show (2001). Mariah appeared unnanounced on TRL, attempted to strip while wearing only a T-shirt and gave out ice cream to the audience. Citing mental exhaustion, she checked herself into a hospital just a week later.

5. Whitney Houston's "crack is whack" speech (2002). During an interview with Diane Sawyer in which she appeared withdrawn and extremely thin, Whitney Houston had this to say about her drug use: "First of all, let's get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let's get that straight. Okay? We don't do crack. We don't do that. Crack is whack." (:/)

In the grand tradition of I Want To Do That, Too! that saw a man releasing snakes into his bank, a Serb goes that one step further. Give it up for...

Tax office terror

Reuters

Dateline: Belgrade - After twice receiving a tax bill, an enraged Serb stormed the tax office, started shooting and tried to set the tax chief and the building on fire, Serb media reported on Friday.

Nebojsa Miladinovic, a saw-mill owner in his fifties, tried for days to convince tax officials in the central town of Gornji Milanovac he had paid his 192,200 dinar (1,576 pound) bill. They said he had not, sent the bill again and blocked his bank account.

After arguing his case on Thursday, Miladinovic returned, doused tax chief Gojko Stefanovic and the office files with petrol, shot at computers and yelled "I was ripped off".

Two people were injured in the melee and parts of the office caught fire, with panicked staff escaping through the windows.

Police arrested Miladinovic, who neighbours described as a hard worker who never made trouble. Witnesses said he even paid for parking his car in front of the tax office before the rampage. (:/)

Sport

If you can add two and two, you can make the connection between Ricky Williams's behaviour, and what he claims to have given up...

RB apologizes to fans, teammates after first practice

AP

Ricky Williams lines up in the Dolphins backfield as new coach Nick Saban watches.

Ricky Williams: "There's no way anyone could understand me. ... I have friends that I've known my whole life that don't understand me. I mean, I just started to understand myself."

Dateline: Davie, Fla. -- With an apology to fans and teammates, running back Ricky Williams returned from retirement and joined the Miami Dolphins for their first training camp practice Monday.

Lining up for his first play since the 2003 season, Williams took a handoff from Gus Frerotte and ran 20 yards to the end zone. But there was no defense on the field, and Williams is sure to meet stiffer resistance in the weeks to come as he tries to regain favor and reclaim a starting job.

At a team meeting Sunday after players reported for camp, Williams spoke briefly and apologized for the impact caused by his retirement a year ago. The Dolphins went on to finish 4-12, their worst season since the 1960s.

Williams reiterated his comments at a news conference after the first practice.

"There were things about life that I wanted to explore outside of football, and I had never had the chance," he said. "I realize by making that decision, I affected the team in a negative way and upset a lot of fans. I'm very regretful that people were hurt in the process of me doing that. I do realize that to a lot of people it comes off as being very selfish. So I do offer an apology to all the people who were negatively impacted."

Williams said he no longer smokes marijuana but declined to discuss the subject further. He faces a four-game suspension at the start of the season for violating the NFL substance abuse policy. (:/)

Now they want to eat each other

RugbyHeaven

Dateline: Cape Town - The Wallabies are eating humble pie again after another embarrassing revelation on their disastrous tour of South Africa.



The Australians had a bonding session this week in which players were asked which teammate they would eat if their plane crashed.

News of this latest gaffe appeared in the Cape Times newspaper, which led its front page on Thursday with a bizarre account of the team meeting at a cocktail bar where players were asked how they would survive if stranded in the middle of nowhere after a plane crash.

The report said the players were presented with "The Alive Scenario - who to cook?", an exercise based on the Uruguayan club rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972. Several players ate dead teammates' bodies to survive, inspiring the 1993 film Alive.

At the meeting on Tuesday night, players were asked to nominate a teammate to be "sacrificed in the name of culinary delights". The Cape Times said the Wallabies "left their questionnaires lying on the tables at the restaurant".

The instructions included: "You must nominate a player for each dish and how you would prepare them. Ways to present them include on a spit, marinated, skewered, boiled, in dumplings etc. Be creative."

It seems Matt Dunning was popular with teammates, several of whom put the tight-head prop on their menu. Lote Tuqiri reportedly wanted to prepare him for starters in a sweet and sour sauce, while George Gregan said Dunning would be part of his main dish of "sweet pork, slowly roasted". Tuqiri was keen on Morgan Turinui for dessert, explaining: "The amount of sweets he puts in, it's got to rub off in his meat somewhere."

The report said five-eighth Stephen Larkham would like Drew Mitchell's testicles for dessert. Chris Whitaker's starter was Rocky Elsom's private parts "fried in butter, garlic, chilli and parsley".

Wallabies team management said the questionnaire wasn't meant for public consumption, but it has created further humiliation on this tour from hell.

Coach Eddie Jones laughed off the incident on Thursday.

"It was a bit of fun," he said. "The guys had a backs and forwards dinner ... they were at a restaurant eating.

"Apparently, the previous week when we split up into smaller groups, one of the convers- ations was just this fun topic. "We asked for the papers, which were left behind to be given back, and the restaurant wouldn't give them back. So it's pretty disappointing it has gone into the local newspapers because it's just an internal thing revolving around a bit of fun. No harm intended."

Thursday's Cape Argus, with the headline "Wallaby Tour Woes Get Worse", devoted nearly its entire back page to listing the misdemeanours of Australian players in recent seasons - including ACT's Cape Town taxi affair in 2000; Mat Rogers's altercation outside a Edinburgh nightclub; Justin Harrison's racial slurs; Cameron Shepherd being described as a disgrace by a magistrate for attacking a parked car; and the player survey that revealed widely held concerns about peers' alcohol and gambling habits.

The report also highlighted the management cover-up of why halfback Matt Henjak had become the first Wallaby in almost 40 years to be sent home in disgrace after an incident at a Cape Town nightclub last week, where he threw a drink and then had an argument with teammate Tuqiri.

On the front page of the Argus, a strapline read: "Wallabies In Turmoil." The paper wrote that "in recent years the image of Australian rugby has been tarnished by controversies". Other South African media have complained the Wallabies are "uncooperative".

Local journalists also targeted Jones during Thursday's media conference, where he admitted management had probably taken the wrong approach to public relations since the team arrived in Cape Town two weeks ago.

"We've taken an approach on this tour to really focus on ourselves," Jones said. "On other tours we've been very open, and that's our normal policy. We understand we have got very strong commitments and responsibility to make sure that we help promote the game of rugby. We've probably been a little selfish on this tour but certainly it's not going to be the normal policy."

Jones partly won over the home media by offering them another Nelson Mandela story. He suggested that in the Tri Nations opener in Pretoria on Saturday, the Springboks might struggle without Mandela in the main grandstand.

"It was interesting how the Springboks used their meeting with Mr Mandela [in the previous Test in Johannesburg]," he said. "We went back from the pre-match warm-up and couldn't get in our dressing room for about three or four minutes because Mr Mandela was being presented with a Springbok cap.

"So they used that situation to their advantage, and that's the advantage of being the home side."

Asked why the Wallabies "didn't barge through the Springboks", Jones said: "Mr Mandela is 87 years old. So I didn't think it would be a good idea.

"Maybe we might do the same thing when we play them in Perth, by standing outside the dressing room after the warm-up and present John Howard with George's [Gregan] jumper. I heard Bob Carr has just resigned, so maybe he'll do it." (:/)

Sprinter's plaque spells shame for council

The Scotsman

IT was supposed to be the Capital's chance to honour one of its most famous sportsmen.

Olympic champion Allan Wells was to be given a hero's welcome when he returned to his birthplace to be honoured by city and sporting leaders as one of Edinburgh's only gold medallists.

But the city chiefs' pride in their famous son soon turned to embarrassment when Wells unveiled the plaque to mark his success - only to reveal two glaring errors.

Not only was Wells' first name misspelt as Alan, but the word "achievement" was written as "achivement".



The sign, commissioned by Edinburgh City Council and Scottishathletics and placed in the foyer of Meadowbank Stadium, was taken down after the ceremony amid profuse apologies and much embarrassment.

Edinburgh City Council today said the engraver, whose identity they refused to reveal, had taken full responsibility for the mistake and the plaque is now to be replaced.

Deputy Lord Provost Steve Cardownie, who was at the event, admitted that the misspellings were a "bloomer" and said he was embarrassed.

But Wells, who unveiled the plaque yesterday - 25 years to the day that he won his gold medal in the 100m in the Moscow Olympics - was unperturbed by the blunder, laughing it off.

Councillor Tom Ponton said that there was no excuse for such an "obvious and outrageous" mistake. He said: "A proof always comes back for approval when something is engraved or printed and this must have happened in this case.

"The person who approved it must be held accountable. It is a bad show. If they took the trouble to honour somebody, then they should have got their name right." (:/)

Right, bugger the sport - we're off to Amish country!

Amish Teen Charged With Stealing Numbers

AP

Dateline: Huntsburg, Ohio - Callers complaining about loud music coming from a buggy led deputies to charge a 19-year-old Amish man with stealing house numbers and flower pots. David Byler was charged with theft and underage consumption of alcohol, both misdemeanors.Callers to the Geauga County sheriff's office told dispatchers early Sunday about a buggy playing loud music and stealing items from outside houses in a rural area of northeast Ohio.

"When our officer caught up with him in the middle of the road, there were flower pots and house numbers in the buggy," sheriff's spokesman John Hiscox said. (:/)

Weird.

Swearing parrot banned

AFP

A FOUL-mouthed parrot previously owned by a lorry driver has been banished from public areas in a British animal sanctuary after repeatedly embarrassing his keepers.



Barney, a five-year-old Macaw, is now kept indoors at Warwickshire Animal Sanctuary in Nuneaton, central England, when outsiders visit after abusing dignitaries with swearword-littered insults.

"He's told a lady mayoress to f--- off and he told a lady vicar: 'And you can f--- off as well'," sanctuary worker Stacey Clark said.

Nor did the forces of law and order escape, she added.

"Two policemen came to have a look at the centre. He told them: 'And you can f--- off you two w---ers'."

Clark said sanctuary workers believed Barney either picked up the phrases from television or was taught them by his previous owner, a lorry driver who emigrated to Spain.

Advertisement:
"He does say 'Hello, big boy' and 'Thank you' when you give him a biscuit," she added.

"But it's mainly naughty words and always to the wrong people. We're trying to teach him not to swear. Macaws are very intelligent birds." (:/)

"Fowl-mouthed", surely??

SCITECH

Rap Marketing Comes to Nerdcore

Wired

Tupac and Biggie, move over. A new hip-hop feud is brewing that glamorizes not guns and 'hos but Java and secure encryption algorithms.

While gangsta rap is seen as celebrating the violence and aggression that claimed two of its brightest stars, "geeksta" rap is a hip-hop genre celebrating coding skills and school grades.

Also dubbed "nerdcore," this branch of hip-hop is for geeks, by geeks. Geeksta rappers adopt the same combative verbal-assault stylings of their forerunners, but bust rhymes about elite script compiling and dope machine code.

The term was first coined in 2000 by nerdy New York rapper MC Frontalot in a track of the same name. Nerdcore now refers to artists waxing lyrical about topics as disparate as engineering and Lord of the Rings.

In recent months, the field has seen a growing number of releases from computer science labs, where egocentric grad students show off their Ph.D. credentials in tracks like "Have to Code" and "End of File."

"The stigma that was once attached to computer geeks and role-playing nerds is diminishing incredibly fast," said "digital gangster" Bryce Case Jr., aka ytcracker. "It has almost become trendy to have skills on a computer. Rather than guns and 'hos, I speak about DDOS attacks and camgirls."

The self-proclaimed "#1 greatest computer science gangsta rapper ever" is MC Plus+, a geeksta leading light whose moniker comes from the C++ programming language.

The Purdue University, Indiana, Ph.D. candidate and "CS pimp," whose album Algorhythms was recorded with pirated software, calls himself "the Tupac of the computer science world."

MC Plus+ rattles off lines like: "I'm encrypting shit like every single day; sending it across a network in a safe way; protecting messages to make my pay; if you hack me you're guilty under DMCA."

But Plus+'s flow is dissed on the opposite coast by geeksta peers like Dan Maynes-Aminzade, aka Monzy, a 25-year-old Minnesota-born Stanford grad student who recorded a dis track specifically to insult his rap rival.

"Our raps are filled with braggadocio, but instead of boasting about our bitches, blunts, Benzes or Benjamins, maybe we talk about our math skills or the efficiency of our code," Monzy said.

Monzy said competition between universities and academic departments is nothing new, and rivalries are a big part of the hip-hop tradition.

Plus+, who writes most of his rhymes in class, said he is about to release an insult track written in response to the Monzy's opening salvo.

"I saw two of my favorite rappers, Tupac and Biggie, get killed for no reason," he said. "But it's like this, man -- when you're at the top, there is jealousy and, needless to say, haters are coming at you. I'm gonna tell Monzy: 'You ain't even on my level' -- you got to know me and only me."

The aggression also mirrors 1998's war of words between LL Cool J and Canibus, a computer science major and tech-centric rhymester who fabricated a feud to generate publicity, according to Journal of Hip-Hop editor Andrew Ryan, who teaches both computers and hip-hop culture at George Mason University, Virginia.

"Computer scientists, by training, use divide and conquer in almost any task," said Ryan. "Rap music, with all its complexities, provides (them with) the perfect conundrum.

"I don't think this new subculture will really stick, though," Ryan added. "If the genre is to succeed, you're going to need some females." (:/)

The Arts

Bottle of water artwork stolen, presumed drunk

AFP

London - An artist appealed for the return of an artwork that consisted of a bottle of water on a plinth, saying he feared it had been stolen and then drunk.

US artist Wayne Hill, had devised the artwork, a two-litre (3.5-pint) clear plastic bottle filled with melted ice from the Antarctic, to highlight the dangers of global warming.

Entitled "Weapon of Mass Destruction" it was on show at an arts festival in Devon, southwest England.

"It looked like an ordinary bottle of water, but it was on a plinth, labelled, described and in the programme of the whole festival," Hill said.

"It was very, very clear what it was -- a work of art."

The purpose of the piece was to bring people in direct contact with the rapidly-diminishing West Antarctic ice sheet, the artist said.

"The concept is to take something as dangerous as that and to bring it immediately into somebody's presence," he said.

"Nobody has any idea what has happened to it. It was there and then it was gone," he added. (:/)

Criminal Negligence

Escaped convict thumbs lift back to Israeli jail

AFP

Jerusalem - An escaped Israeli convict experienced firsthand the perils of hitchhiking after he thumbed a lift only to be picked up by a prison warden who drove him straight back to jail.

"I didn't recognise him at first but when he leant over to ask which direction we were heading, I saw he was the prisoner we had been looking for for nine months," the officer told reporters on Sunday.

"I whispered to one of my friends that he was an escaped prisoner. After he sat down and shut the door, I called the police," added the off-duty warden who had been out day-tripping with friends to the beach.

Last week, police tried to re-arrest the escaped jailbird as he laid low at his mother's house in Tiberias, before he dodged the cops and ran off.

The prisoner, who is serving a nine-year sentence for assault and drug trafficking, had given his jailers the slip nine months ago after being granted a few hours' parole. (:/)

Go, Granny, Go!

'Raging Grannies'

AP

Dateline: Tucson, Ariz. - Five older women known as the "Tucson Raging Grannies" pleaded innocent Monday to misdemeanor trespassing charges lodged when they tried to enlist at a military recruitment center.

A judge set an Aug. 19 pretrial hearing for the women, who range from 55 to 81 years old - decades older than the maximum allowable age for recruits.

The women are "pretty thoroughly anti-war; we're concerned about the environment and what's happening to civil liberties," said Patricia Birnie, a spokeswoman for the group.

Birnie was with the women when they entered a recruiting center on July 13, but was not cited.

She said two recruiters told the group not to enter, but the women said they had come to enlist, read a statement and sang two protest songs. By the time they returned to the sidewalk outside, police had arrived.

The Raging Grannies have protested outside the recruitment center on Wednesdays for the past three years, and contend that recruits have been lied to, Birnie said.

The women were serious about enlisting, she added. "We feel that our lives are pretty well used up and that the young people so many times are killed in battle or come home traumatized," she said. (:/)

Tasered Mo. Grandmother Gets Probation

AP

Dateline: Kansas City, Mo. - A 67-year-old grandmother who was shocked with a Taser stun gun after she honked her car horn at a police cruiser has been given a year's probation for sparking a quarrel with officers.

A charge of improper use of the horn against Louise Jones was dismissed Wednesday in Kansas City Municipal Court. Her husband, Fred, 76, who became involved in the fray last year, also got one year of probation for the same charges — resisting arrest and attempting to inflict injury on an officer.

The only condition of the probation is that the couple obey all laws.

The incident, which resulted in a change in department policy and the disciplining of two officers, happened in June 2004 as police were responding to a disturbance call across the street from the couple's home. Officers said they approached Louise Jones after she honked her horn, thinking she had reported the disturbance or perhaps was in trouble. A defense witness testified the honk was accidental.

"She immediately became hostile to us," Officer Ryan VanDeusen testified. He said that she continued the verbal assault when the officers returned to their squad car.

"It was very loudy, it was antagonistic, it was very derogatory toward my partner and I," he testified.

Officer Cory LeMoine said he told Jones he could give her a ticket for honking the horn, and that a physical confrontation began after she wouldn't show him her driver's license. He said he and his partner struggled with Jones both inside and outside her house. The officers said that while VanDeusen was trying to handcuff her, Fred Jones came down the stairs and leveled his shoulder into him.

VanDeusen said he used the Taser on Louise Jones when his partner couldn't get her under control.

The Jones disputed the officers' account. Louise Jones and other defense witnesses said she wasn't confrontational and that the comments she made were directed to a friend, not to the officers.

"She says something to the neighbor across the street and the officer didn't like that," said defense attorney Basil North. "He decided he was going to teach her a lesson."

Louise Jones said she pulled away from the police when one of the officers grabbed her arm, and her husband said one of the officers had his knee on his wife's chest.

Municipal Judge Marcia K. Walsh told the couple they should fulfill their sentence easily, pointing out that Fred Jones' criminal history was perfect except for a traffic ticket.

"Your record is even better," she told Louise Jones. "You don't even have a ticket."

The couple's attorney said they plan to appeal the decision. North moved for dismissal of the horn-honking charges on grounds that the ordinance involved was worded vaguely, and the prosecutor agreed to drop it. (:/)

Get some. Not sure what AP's got with grannies this week, though.

Man Stabbed During Fight With Wife

AP

(or, Man's argument with wife escalates to "just get the sword, bitch." Hilarity ensues - Fark.com's headline)

Dateline: Jacksonville, Fla. - When taunting over the death of a dog escalated into an argument, a woman said her husband dared her to take a decorative sword above the fireplace to settle things, a police report said.

That resulted in John A. Kurceba, 53, being stabbed Monday though his right bicep and into his right side. His injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.

Priscilla L. Kurceba, 52, was charged with aggravated domestic battery and booked into the Duval County Jail. She was freed on bond, but no information was available bond amount. Records do not show if she has legal representation.

According to a police report, Priscilla Kurceba told officers her husband taunted her when he came home about 7:30 p.m. and learned the family dog had been euthanized earlier in the day.

As the argument escalated, John Kurceba told her to "just get the sword bitch," she told police. She lunged at her husband and stuck him.

The couple is getting a divorce, authorities said. (:/)

The words "No" and "Shit" do spring to mind...

Brie Fly

Christmas comes but twice a year, Santas decree

AFP

Dateline: Copenhagen - Some 80 Santas from around the world, backed by their elves, have agreed to establish a second Christmas in July to ease their heavy workload each December, their spokeswoman said.

"At the special request of the Japanese Santa Claus, the congress decided to approve two Christmases, one on July 24-25 for the southern hemisphere and another one on December 24-25 for the northern hemisphere," spokeswoman Tina Baungaard told AFP Wednesday.

The decision was approved at their 42nd annual convention in Denmark by Santas from Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States who have been meeting since Monday at the world's oldest theme park, Bakken, north of Copenhagen.

"The Santa Clauses and other Father Christmases are too stressed with too much work to do at the end of the year," since they up until now have had to travel around the entire world in a race against the clock to deliver all their presents in time, Baungaard said.

"They're exhausted, so they agreed to a proposal from the Japanese Santa Claus which greatly improves their working conditions," she said.

On Wednesday, the Santas and their little helpers handed out gifts to delighted children at Bakken, after holding a parade in the streets of Copenhagen Tuesday.

The Santas have been meeting in Denmark every summer since 1963.

One noticeable absentee, however, is the Finnish Santa, who has boycotted the event for years over his refusal to acknowledge that the one true Santa is the one from Greenland, who lives in a secret location. (:/)

From the Metro Pulse, Knoxville:

Mark Nuckols, a business student at Dartmouth, has begun selling a tofu-like food, Hufu, that is flavored to resemble what he believes is the taste of human flesh. His target audience is those who already enjoy cooking with tofu, as well as any actual cannibals who might settle for artificiality in order to avoid legal problems and logistical hassles. Nuckols said he has never tasted human flesh but based his recipe on cannibals’ reported descriptions of the flavor.

In April, according to a New York Times story, when a Japanese art collector sought to choose between Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses to handle a sale (which ultimately brought in $17.8 million) and quixotically asked the two houses to play rock-paper-scissors for the privilege, Sotheby’s lost out on the eventual $2.3 million commission by choosing paper. (A Christie’s executive quoted one of his 11-year-old daughters: “Everybody knows you always start with scissors.”)

Coke's Calorie-Burning Enviga Slated for 2006 Debut

ADWEEK

Dateline: New York - Coca-Cola is planning to launch Enviga, a soda that is said to burn 50 to 100 calories just by drinking a 12-oz. serving, next year, per one executive.

Enviga, a green tea-based, caffeinated, carbonated drink, is in clinical testing and is said to speed up the user's metabolism. The beverage will target active lifestyle consumers. A Coke rep said, "Some [of our projects] may find their way to market and some may not." Studies have shown that drinking green tea may promote weight loss by stimulating the body to burn calories.

My. Arse.

Supermarket cash box sends 19 to hospital

Birmingham Post

Nineteen people were treated in hospital after a cash-box security device was accidentally activated inside a supermarket yesterday.

Warwickshire Police said the casualties suffered temporary breathing difficulties and eye irritation after the device spewed out a cloud of purple dye inside an office at the Morrisons store in Alcester Road, Stratford upon Avon.

Emergency services were alerted shortly after 11.30am and the supermarket was evacuated. A police spokesman said: "It's believed that a security device on a cash-box accidentally activated, causing a cloud of purple dye to be discharged into the accounts department office, where staff were working.

"It is unclear why the security device activated but police are not investigating any crime or treating the incident as suspicious."

Nineteen people - thought to be staff members - suffered temporary breathing difficulties and eye irritation and were taken by ambulance for precautionary treatment at hospitals in Warwick and Redditch. (:/)

Hahahaha.

And Finally

Carburetor breast fantasy wins bad writing contest

Reuters

Dateline: Los Angeles - A Microsoft analyst has won an annual contest celebrating bad writing by comparing fixing carburetors to fondling a woman's breasts.

"As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual," went Dan McKay's winning entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

McKay, 43, of North Dakota was said by organizers on Thursday to be visiting China "perhaps to escape notoriety for his dubious literary achievement." He wins $250 (142 pounds).

The California San Jose State University contest challenges entrants to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels and has attracted entries from around the world for 23 years.

It was inspired by 19th century novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who opened his 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" with the now immortal words, "It was a dark and stormy night."

San Jose State English Professor Scott Rice said that judging the contest "is a hoot."

"By and large the entries are submitted by serious readers who have a notion about what is good and bad writing. That is what is heartening," Rice said.

In a contest that now has several sub categories, the winner in the children's literature section was sent in by Shelby Leung of New South Wales, Australia.

"The woods were all a-twitter with rumors that the Seven Dwarves were planning a live reunion after their attempted solo careers had dismally sputtered into Z-list oblivion and it was all just a matter of meeting a ten-page list of outlandish demands (including 700-threadcount Egyptian cotton bedsheets, lots of white lilies and a separate trailer for the magic talking mirror) to get the Princess Formerly Known As Snow White on board." (:/)

Indeed. Send your dreadful beginnings to thepitcanary@hotmail.com

Until next time...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Like TAR? We'd love to hear from you. Feel free to forward TAR on to your friends, but we're always looking for more email addresses to target. No one will get spammed or salesed by TAR. More than they already do.

Contact TAR: Click here or just mail thepitcanary@hotmail.com