Sweet Dreams

Ignore the Christmas tree, and the snow in the background through the window. Just dig the understated cool and relax...

I apologize in advance

I was looking through my clown collection for something disturbing to kick off the weekend. This is what I came up with:

Ten Friday Randoms

Sentimental Journey—Esquivel

Love Will Tear Us Apart—Nouvelle Vague

Eat My Words—Marti Brom

La Julie Jolie—Edith Piaf

What Keeps Mankind Alive—William Burroughs

Fade Together—Franz Ferdinand

Sunglasses After Dark—Dwight Pullen

I Ain't Got Nobody—Fats Waller

Parque Industrial—Caetano Veloso

The Winner Takes it All—Abba

And you thought you had a bad day at work...

Yes indeedy, no matter how bad your day at work might be, it could probably be worse:

Man's penis caught in saw mill

TOM ZED, POLICE REPORTER

March 29, 2007 03:00pm

Article from:

A WORKER was injured this afternoon when his penis became caught in machinery at a northern suburbs saw mill.

The man, 30, was working at the Parafield Gardens Saw Mill at about 1.50pm when his crotch and penis became caught in the chain of a piece of machinery.

He was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It is believed his injuries are not life threatening but he initially suffered uncontrollable bleeding.

A company spokesman said the man's injuries were not serious.

"He got caught in the log moving mechanism on one of the saws," he said.

Freak of the week

This week's Freak of the Week goes to 24 year old Garth M. Flaherty.

Mr. Flaherty was caught with 93 pounds of women's panties and bras, and was charged with multiple counts of burglary and theft. Police were able to link Mr. Flaherty to specific items of underwear "based on the unique descriptions from a couple of women" according to the story. The police are unsure if the stolen undies will be returned when the case is disposed of; here's a quote from Commander Tennant:

"Would you really want them back?" he asked. "I would say not."

First runner-up goes to an unknown Michigan woman, identified only as "Melissa", who walked into a frat house during dinner, stripped naked and masturbated. She left before the police arrived, presumably to return home to feed her pet caimans and ferrets.

Melissa didn't win first place because, according to the article, she appeared to be under the influence of drugs. Award-winning freak behavior should be the result of dark compulsions only dimly understood by the freak, not the result of some cheap high.

And now it begins

What a difference a little congressional oversight makes. Fresh from the Bloomberg.com website:

Gonzales Aide to Take Fifth About Prosecutor Firings

By James Rowley

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- An aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will invoke her constitutional right to refuse to testify before a Senate panel investigating the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, her lawyer told the committee.

Monica Goodling, who helped coordinate the dismissals as the attorney general's White House liaison, will invoke her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. She will refuse to be interviewed by committee lawyers and decline an invitation to testify at a public hearing, said attorney John M. Dowd, citing the ``legally perilous'' environment of congressional probes.

The Future, the way it used to be!

This is the first installment of a new feature here at the compound:

The Future, the way it used to be!

Today we feature the Ampex home videotape recording unit, featured in a 1966 newspaper story. Ampex also had a fancy model that came as part of a massive console television. The console model came with a pert blonde who would sit and stare longingly at the screen for hours on end.

The portable home model shown above was a huge improvement over the 1956 model pictured here.

Sunday morning coffee

The big news is that we spent the better part of Saturday afternoon dealing with dog fur.

Rio is a wonderful Shepherd/Husky/Rottweiller mix; we adopted her from some of MizBubs' family who couldn't keep her any more. I love having a big dog around again (our standard poodle Dougal MacDuff died a year ago in February) and she gets along great with our two terriers.

Anyway, now that spring is here Rio is in full shed. We've never owned a big shedding dog and I'm amazed at how much the fur flies. The good news is that our house is, oddly enough, cleaner since we've had her, because we have to vacuum and dust more often. The plucky and industrious MizBubs has taken on the majority of the grooming chores and she's got a heck of a way with that metal comb. Here's the output of a half hour of grooming:


Nature and human frailty continue to vex us. Tuesday was a beautiful day in the Chicagoland area, and my day started great. MizBubs and I both had the day off, we got to laze in bed like people on the welfare, and then I ran 3 miles and exorcised a week's worth of tension. Late that afternoon a nagging little cough started, and by early Wednesday morning I was doing my best Doc Holiday impersonation, feverish and hacking. Damned illness used up the rest of my days off. (Side note: I watched Gunfight at the OK Corral on cable while recuperating, which explains the Doc Holiday reference. Kirk Douglas looked damn good as a gunslinger dying of tuberculosis, but what really struck me was the fine quality of his pomade. I've got some good hair, but I would not have looked nearly as good as Kirk Douglas if I'd had to get in a gunfight this week.)

I went back to work Friday, God knows why, and after making it through the day decided to use some comp time and take this weekend off. Now our youngest is sick, sicker than I was, and having one sick kid and a semi-sick grownup alters reality to the point that you can feel like you've really accomplished something, as a household, because you cleaned up the dog fur.

There's always an upside, though--sometimes you're even lucky enough to see it. We got to catch up on some movie watching this weekend, a rare treat for all of us to be in one place for so long. We watched Idiocracy (it had its moments, but was no Office Space), The Prestige, Stranger Than Fiction, and The Devil's Backbone. I thought Stranger Than Fiction was surprisingly good, and really sweet, which was nice. Really enjoyed The Prestige, made extra-interesting by the presence of ultra-cool Michael Caine and an odd David Bowie as Nicola Tesla. Finally, The Devil's Backbone. What a good movie. Best ghost story set during the Spanish civil war I've ever seen.

Another benefit of being relatively house-bound is having the opportunity to catch up on some organizing and household paperwork, and boy did I benefit. The thrifty, thoughtful and selfless MizBubs realized, while going through her stuff, that she's racked up some serious thank you points on her credit card, and she's never redeemed any of them. She also told me I needed some new clothes (it's so sweet how she wants me to look nice). The end result? Yours truly is the lucky recipient of a couple of Macy's gift cards. Woot! Yes, I know I said I'd never patronize that store since those New York bastards killed Marshall Field, but I figure it's poor form to refuse a gift from my bride just because I'm angry at corporate America. And I finally had time to fill out the rebate forms for our cell phones, which, at some hopefully not too distant point in the future, will put $200 in our pockets.

Ah, cell phones. I finally have my own cell phone (not the electronic leash provided me by work) and all the girls got rid of their Virgin Mobile service. It had been years since I'd done any cell phone shopping, and back then I found the process of comparing various service plans to be maddening. That's really how MizBubs and the girls ended up with the Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go phones: none of them were big talkers, and they just needed phones for emergencies. Now we're all busier, and the girls are older, and it was time to look again.

I found this place on the interwebs. Pay attention, because if you ever want to switch services or get a new phone, this place is GREAT:

LetsTalk.com

You enter your zipcode and up pops a list of all the plans available in your area. You're able to go through and compare them side-by-side, without having to bounce around through all the individual carrier's websites. We ended up with a plan from T-Mobile (whose service has been fantastic) and 4 Motorola Razr phones. The phones were free, and after the rebates I'll make money from the deal, and they threw in two Bluetooth headsets for free. And, if it matters to you, LetsTalk.com is an American company, and their call center and customer service is all right here in the US of A.

Good news!

Strindberg and Helium is back! Strindberg and Helium has been around for several years, but most of the site had been inaccessible for the past year or so because of some arrangement with Comedy Central. Now there's no longer any Comedy Central link on the page, and you can once again view all four films.

The films chronicle the interaction between grim Swedish playwright August Strindberg (here's a quote: "When they say Christ descended into Hell, they mean that he descended to earth, this penitentiary, this madhouse and morgue of a world") and a cheerful pink balloon sidekick named Helium.


I think my favorite is Absinthe and Women.

For many are called, but few are chosen.

"For many are called, but few are chosen."
-Matthew 22:14

And some who are chosen, it seems, become clowns.

A few weeks ago I put up a clown training video, and it opened a door for me into a world I knew nothing about: the world of Christian Clowning.

The door opened while I was looking through some of the YouTube links to try and find out more about that clown training video. I found out, for instance, that there is a website called GodTube (the "t" in tube is a big cross) that has many, many inspiring videos. I found websites where you can get clown ministry skits to use for free. Skits like "Beating Hearts", described as "an unashamedly pro-life skit for 6 clowns." You can find all that, and more, on the website Clown Ministry.

There are websites devoted to Christian Clowning Resources; there are websites for individual performers like Kingdom Karactors (if clowns aren't your thing, they also make and sell puppets!)

But it's not all yucks and poignancy in the world of Christian clowning. There is controversy.

In January, the Milwaukee Catholic Herald featured a cover story about a Pallottine priest named Fr. Greg Serwa. Fr. Serwa, in addition to his regular duties, also appears and ministers as Stripes the Clown. Here's Fr. Serwa on his ministry:

"As a priest, you’re always dealing with things that are important to people’s lives. You have to be real gentle with people. The same can be said for clowning; little kids can be quite frightened of clowns.”

Well, this feature provoked a somewhat angry response in the "Off The Record" section of Catholic World News:

Putting aside the fact that many people are creeped out by clowns, it's hard to see the point of foregrounding this kind of story as part of vocation promotion. ... After all, do we want to entice into the priesthood the kind of 22-year-old male that would be attracted by Stripes?

Finally, I stumbled onto an organization called Clowning 4 Christ. Clowning for Christ hosts a series of 2-day conferences around the country. The next one will be in Cincinnatti, Ohio, in April. There's a clowning competition, and workshops on hospital clowning, marketing your clown show, and "mime juggling."

Now, I don't know, personally, if a Clowning for Christ Clown Conference would be as much fun as Jesus Camp or Hell House, but I'd like to find out.

You park like an a$$hole

My friend Dena turned me on to this site a couple weeks ago. Consider this a public service announcement, a small attempt to encourage more considerate behavior in others:

You Park Like an A$$hole

YPLAA encourages readers to send in photos of egregious parking, and they thoughtfully include a sample citation here. Print out a few of them and start your own politeness campaign.

OK, another musical interlude

When it's time to snap out of it, what better way to do it than shaking your ass to the fine musical stylings of Sir Tom Jones?

And now, a brief musical interlude

Courtesy of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:

I believe the children are our future

Meet Andrew Riley. He's 13 years old, has a bowl haircut, likes playing basketball, and, according to Athens County, Ohio prosecutors, has committed 128 crimes, mostly felonies. Here's the response from one of his neighbors:

“When we did find out who it was, it sure didn’t surprise me any,” said Tammy Glick, who said neighbors had suspected the 13-year-old of breaking garage windows and stealing bicycles in recent years.

This link features a video that includes a brief interview with Andrew's "stepfather" James Blake. Mr. Blake expresses his bafflement, and seems to blame birth order for Andrew's problems:

"He's our oldest, you know. He's our first born and he's been through a lot."

Please remove me from your mailing list.

This was a strange weekend. I don't do a lot of hands-on work with bodies much any more, but I got involved in two death investigations this weekend. The guy in the car yesterday, and today was an 80 year old man who shot himself while his girlfriend was in the next room.

The place my victim and his girlfriend lived in was a clean little one-bedroom condo with a balcony. The place is newer construction, and had nice oatmeal carpeting throughout. The walls were still bright landlord white, but covered with artwork.

You get a vivid picture, sometimes, just standing in someone's home and looking around at their stuff. The guy today had served in 3 wars--WWII, Korea and Vietnam. They had bookshelves along one entire wall of the living room, full of interesting volumes, and you could tell he'd traveled. He had shadow boxes on the wall showcasing his military achievements, and had several antique pistols in another. I liked this guy, and I respected him.

He had Alzheimer's and was failing physically as well. We recovered 11 different prescription medications. Not only did he need a walker, but his equilibrium had gone to the point that someone needed to practically hold him by his belt to keep him upright while he used it. Everyone described him as being a very proud man, and he'd grown increasingly frustrated at his physical weakening and at his failing memory. According to his girlfriend, he was trying to find something and was looking through paperwork and books. As he looked for whatever it was he was looking for, and couldn't remember, he became more and more upset.

While we were there we noticed books removed from the bookshelves; some were placed on the floor in small stacks, and some were placed in a brown paper Trader Joe's bag. There were 15 or 20 envelopes, some open, of junk mail on the floor in front of the sofa. It looked like someone had been going through them and tossed them there.

The girlfriend told us that he suddenly walked into the bedroom, and then she heard the gunshot. She looked up and saw him on the floor, and she called 911. There was no doubt he was dead.

After we finished with the scene, and his body had been removed, I did one more walk-through of the condo. I hadn't noticed this before, but there it was, a note in a typewriter on a table between the living room and the kitchen. It wasn't a suicide note, but I thought that, given the scattered mail on the floor and girlfriend's account of my man's agitation, it was an indicator of just how angry and frustrated he was.

There was only one line typed near the top of this page. I can't replicate the exact typos and improper capitalization, but it read:

pLEASE Remove ME from YOUR mailing liST.

What I learned today...

Here's what I learned today:

If you have a body slumped over in the front seat of a car, and rigor mortis has set in, it can be pretty difficult to remove that body from the car. Specifically, it can be difficult to remove the body without banging the head against the steering wheel, causing the horn to sound repeatedly. And watching a corpse head repeatedly sounding a car horn, while the air fills with the smell of dead body poop, is, at once, tragic, embarrassing and pretty hilarious.

Return of the Random Ten

James Bond Theme—Monty Norman Orchestra

Pasties and a G String—Tom Waits

Walking on the Sun—Smashmouth

Red Hot—Billy Emerson

Flat Tire—Johnny London

Bourbon Street Jump—Raymond Hill

Blues Waltz—Ripley Cotton Choppers

Your Time Now—Fats Waller

Your Southern Can is Mine—White Stripes

Green, Green Grass of Home—Tom Jones

Welcome to Eau Claire, Wisconsin!

Welcome to Eau Claire, Wisconsin--one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People!

And, according to this story, one of the 100 best communities to set your johnson on fire with lighter fluid when you're drunk!

Oh, and yes my friends--alcohol was involved.

Best search phrase yet

Someone from Canada found us by typing "baptists bourbon snakes"

That is awesome. I'm a very proud blogger right now.

Implosions, rubble piles and progress

This is a picture of what's left of the Stardust, one day after the implosion. You can see the little slice of white trash hell on earth that is Circus Circus in the background.

See the McDonalds in the upper right corner? Part of the vacant lot next to that is the site of the former Westward Ho, home of the 99 cent, 3/4 pound MEGA DOG, the 99 cent margarita, and a 5 cent cup of coffee. In addition to being the place in Las Vegas that I've most often been mistaken for security, it was the scene of the first badly-rendered version of George Harrison's "Something" experienced by me and MizBubs. Ultimately we would experience many, many badly-rendered versions of "Something", but none was as magical as that first time at the Ho. Oh, yeah--it was sung by an Elvis impersonator who was partly out of uniform.

I got the picture of the rubble pile from Vegas Today and Tomorrow. If you click on this page you can see all the new projects either proposed or under construction. There are plans for a new Maxim casino, a Harrods-themed casino, and expansions of the Tropicana and Caesars Palace. The mind reels.

I've started going through my Las Vegas files again. I have a bidness trip planned in May, and the nerves are starting. Slowly, but surely--I'll be in full twitch by late April. There are new places I have to find out about, and sadly there are places I've had to scratch off my list because they no longer exist: the million dollar horseshoe at Binions, the Sky Lounge at the top of Polo Towers, the tragically short-lived Taboo Cove at the Venetian. I could go on, and if you get a few drinks in me I will.

I'll sign off with a little video clip, because if there's one thing we love at the compound, it's fireworks:

R.I.P. Stardust

Another piece of old Las Vegas disappeared this morning with the implosion of the fabulous Stardust Resort & Casino.

Back in the day the Stardust was BIG, baby: biggest hotel in Las Vegas, biggest pool, a huge drive in movie screen...no fancy lawns or sweeping circular drives like other casino hotels at the time--no. Just a big-ass parking lot full of cars with tail fins. In 1960 the Aku Aku Polynesian restaurant and tiki bar opened, and the space-age Stardust was graced by a big stone tiki head out front.

Siegfried and Roy started at the Dust. Wayne Newton played the showroom in the declining years but bailed and let George Carlin take over toward the end.

The Stardust was a famously mobbed-up casino, run by Frank Rosenthal and Tony "The Ant" Spilotro. While it was referred to in the movie Casino as "The Tangiers", the Stardust appeared in all its glory, as itself, in the classic "Showgirls". It also appears in "Swingers".

MizBubs and I have only one Stardust story. On our last trip, in August 2006, we stopped in one afternoon after visiting Elvisarama, and had a drink while a karaoke competition was going in the lounge. There we saw one of the coolest old men we'd ever seen doing the most hep version of Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." This guy wore a sky blue baseball cap and some high-waisted jeans, and when he was done he sat down at a table with a couple of boozed-up young pretties. What a guy.

Two months later, in October 2006, the place was closed. And now I'm sad, even though I never stayed there or gambled a dime in the casino. I just liked knowing it was there, a bit of old-school class, surrounded by vacant lots, porn slappers and tacky souvenir shops, in what my brothers referred to as the "bitch end" of the Strip. It was a good place to catch a cab after leaving the Peppermill Fireside Lounge (which is perhaps the swankiest place in all of America.)

I've only been going to Las Vegas since 1998, and I'm amazed at how many places have been torn down and replaced in 9 short years:

The Aladdin was torn down and replaced by...The Aladdin. Which is now Planet Hollywood.

The Desert Inn (the first place I ever stayed in LV, and the best-smelling hotel lobby ever) is now the site of the Wynn.

The Boardwalk, formerly home of Purple Reign, and one of the most horrible clown facades in history, is gone.

The Westward Ho, where I was frequently mistaken for security, is about to become luxury condos for rich assholes from California.

Mandalay Bay, The Aladdin, Bellagio, Paris, The Venetian, and Wynn have all come online since my first visit. The San Remo is now Hooters. The Treasure Island, which used to have the coolest sign in the world, is now "TI", with the pirate show replaced by some buccaneering showgirl atrocity. I know I'm forgetting stuff, but you get the picture. Imagine how this all looks to someone who pulled up at the Stardust back in 1959, eager to check in to his $6 room.



You can read about the final days of the Stardust, with some really cool pictures, here. You can find a good chronology of Las Vegas implosions here at Vegas Today and Tomorrow.

So long, and thanks for all the no-bid contracts

Halliburton to move headquarters to Dubai

Where do you start with this? You can start with a nice, angry overview of Halliburton here at Halliburton Watch. You can read an editorial here, a Salon piece on Halliburton in Iraq here, and a nice little piece from that left-wing rag Business Week here. If you've got some time to kill, you can Google "Halliburton Profiteering", "Halliburton wrongdoing", or "Halliburton greed".

*Note: the facility pictured above is not the new Halliburton HQ in Dubai. It's a picture of the Khalifa Resort in Kuwait ,where Halliburton subsidiary KBR set up shop in 2002 to prepare "support" for American troops about to invade Iraq. KBR ran a hotel tab of about $1.5 million per month while they subcontracted (and overcharged) billions of dollars worth of that "support."

How long, Lord?

Cops 1, Killer Weasel 0

A killer weasel attacked a Glenville, NY woman as she took out the garbage. The woman, thinking fast, beat the weasel off with a fire extinguisher after it sank its inch-long fangs into her foot.

Two intrepid cops responded to the scene as the weasel fled, resulting in a half-mile long chase through the snow. The weasel was shot and killed when he refused to show his hands.

Today in Clown History

On March 12, 1980, Pogo the Clown, noted Democratic Party precinct captain and independent contractor, was convicted of murder.

One would think that John Gacy would have pretty much killed the use of "Pogo" as a clown name for decades after, but no. This freak has assumed the Pogo the Clown identity and is now getting his clown on in the U.K.

Can I retire yet?

Swing, baby!

News from Pennsylvania:

A woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to swinging her four-week-old son like a bat to hit her boyfriend...

This may come as a surprise to some of you--alcohol was involved.

Scaling new heights in depravity

See, here's the nice thing about Site Meter: when you're sitting around, burned out as thoroughly as a failed Greek restaurant, nothing to say, you can still come up with material by going through your Site Meter results.

So that's what I did. And Site Meter paid off.

An inquisitive Hoosier in Chester, Indiana Googled for "scab photo." I'm proud to say that Sprawling Ramshackle Compound is the first result, ahead of the entry titled "oral herpes picture information."

Even better, someone in Baltimore found us by looking for "quadruple amputee" +nude +girl +picture"

Finally, on French Google, we are a leading source for "video horrible."

Make mine FREEDOM

Yeah, yeah, a lot of things might suck: snow and ice all over the back stairs and driveway, a March that seems up to this point to be a wretched extension of a shitty February, work, my poor record keeping that resulted in not keeping track of all my expenses during the year which resulted in a much lower than expected tax refund, a stupid allergy attack at one in the morning right before going to bed that is only marginally helped by bourbon and inhalers...well, like I said, a lot of things. A lot of things.

But listen up, here's the deal. If this blog is dedicated to anything, it's dedicated to the creation of a deeper understanding of what has made America the finest place in the world to live. Honest to God, folks--sometimes my sense of duty to humanity is the only thing that keeps me going.

So watch, learn, and be grateful:

Table leg? I thought you said human head...

DHL Import Express: One Invoice, One Currency, One Company, One Liver and Part of a Human Head.

There's plenty of Chianti and fava bean jokes to be had after DHL accidentally delivered a human liver and part of a human head to a couple in Michigan who were expecting parts of a table.

Best part of the story? This:

Authorities believe 28 more bubble-wrapped human organs and body parts could be dispersed across the country, the newspaper said. Two of five packages headed to the northern Michigan lab broke open, scattering their contents.