C’est Rire category archive

Last night, I woke up dreaming I was a friend of John McCain.

It could have been worse. In the dream, I was telling him that, however much I liked him, I still couldn’t vote for him.

Jim Hoagland:

An election system built on private donations to buy enormous blocks of television time long ago became elitist. The innovation this election offers is that if Hillary Clinton fails, for the first time in 20 years someone who did not go to Yale will be elected president. At last, Harvard Law again has a fighting chance. Elitist? Who, us?

I went into church to do treasurer stuff after coming back from the cooling tower place today (the pay period ended Tuesday). The pastor dropped by (the parsonage is right next to the church and my little yellow truck kind of stands out–like a tuxedo at the beach).

Pastor: How are you doing?

Me: Better. But this thing doesn’t want to go away.

Pastor: I can tell.

Me: You should have heard me teaching a class with no voice a week ago Wednesday.

Pastor: That’s rough. I’ve had to give sermons like that.

Me: Don’t worry. I wasn’t listening.

Pastor (who, by the way, is also a Linux geek): (. . . . . .)

Oh, well. You had to be there.

I was in the security business for eight years. It is truly amazing what little tiny cameras and computer controls can do.

But I thought this kind of stuff happened only in 9 1/2 Weeks and bad pr0n0.

But this Republican has taken clandestine spying to new levels (Via just about everybody):

On March 31st, police, investigating the allegation of rape by the 20-year old Marshall McCurdy, obtained a warrant to search Barclay’s home. They didn’t find evidence of rape. But they did find videotapes of hundreds of sexual encounters with men that Barclay had filmed on high-tech surveillance cameras. The cameras were hidden inside AM/FM radios, motion detectors and intercom speaker systems, among other places. There was also one at his business office.

None of the subjects were aware they were being filmed and no permission had been obtained, Barclay admitted. According to a second warrant issued on April 9th, Barclay also admitted to hiring prostitutes on a weekly basis from the now-defunct website harrisburgfratboys.com.

There’s those right-wing family values again.

Picture via Phillybits. Go over to his place to see some more great visual satire.

Joe Namath was from this part of the world. No wonder he worked so hard to get away from there:

A Beaver County woman who was seven months pregnant when she smashed a beer bottle and glass against a bartender’s head after being refused another drink has been sentenced to probation for three years.

Oh, my.

A businessman claims in a lawsuit that he was injured when a stripper giving him a lap dance swiveled and smacked him in the face with the heel of her shoe.

(snip)

According to the lawsuit, as the dancer swung around, the heel of her shoe hit him in the eye, causing him “serious injuries.”

They do!

I bought three of them six months ago, and I haven’t had an incandescent bulb burn out since!

Put down that Transformer and back away slowly:

Jessie Vigil’s black-and-white car sports a red-and-blue emergency bar across the top and the word “police” painted on the doors. Vigil, however, isn’t a cop. Law enforcement agencies say what he’s done with his car isn’t illegal as long as he doesn’t act like a police officer.

He started decorating his 2007 Ford Mustang last summer to look like the police cruiser in the “Transformers” movie because his 7-year-old son, Thomas, was fond of the film.

“My intent was to re-create the movie car,” said Vigil, a 35-year-old disabled veteran from the war in Iraq. “When I came back from Iraq, I tried to spoil him. I wasn’t the best dad before.”

He said he called the district attorney’s office beforehand and spoke to Chief Deputy District Attorney Joe Ulibarri, who tried to discourage his decorating scheme but couldn’t find anything in the law that would stop Vigil as long as he didn’t impersonate an officer.

Words fail me.

A Boulder woman facing a $1,000 fine for dyeing her poodle pink has hired a lawyer to fight the charge in court.

Joy Douglas says she dyed Cici, her white miniature poodle, to call attention to breast cancer. She says she used beet juice and Kool-Aid.

She was ticketed March 1 under a Boulder ordinance that makes it illegal to dye animals. The ordinance is designed discourage people from dyeing rabbits and chicks for Easter.

Fridigaire:

Police discovered the body of a woman packed in a large container with dry ice in a hotel room as they were serving a search warrant in a cocaine investigation, authorities said Friday.

Detectives found the fully clothed and “well preserved” body late Thursday after arresting a guest at the Fairmont Newport Beach for investigation of selling and possessing cocaine on the hotel grounds, police Sgt. Evan Sailor said.

If you look really really closely, you can see that what he is burying is a piece of bread.

Yep. Found a slice with a little bit of mold on it, so I tore it up and tossed it outside for the squirrels and other varmints. This varmint found it.

Boy, will he be disappointed if it rains tonight. . . .

And, no, it doesn’t interest me as anything other than a cleaning appliance. From El Reg:

A Polish building contractor working at London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital was given his marching orders after a security guard caught him having sex with a Henry Hoover, the Sun reports.

. . . why persons transporting illegal substances don’t obey traffic laws:

A rookie state trooper making a routine traffic stop near Harrington uncovered 140 pounds of marijuana Thursday stashed in three laundry bags hidden in the vehicle.

State police spokesman Cpl. Gary Fournier said the trooper, who had been on patrol for less than a week, was driving south on U.S. 13 with his field training officer about 9:35 a.m. when he saw a 1999 Chevrolet blazer bearing the registration belonging to a 1988 Mazda.

(snip)

On Tuesday night, Laurel police stopped a New Jersey man on U.S. 13 in Laurel for running a red light and discovered 105 pounds of bundled marijuana worth an estimated $85,000 in two cardboard boxes in the rear of his van.

Of course, it’s not always that simple. Some years ago, there was a run of busts on the Jersey Turnpike in Carneys Point township. A cop–actually, he was a Captain in the APD–I was working with at the time told me what was happening:

The smugglers would send the mules north. They would then call the cops and turn them in. The cops would pick the mules up, and the smugglers would collect the reward.

At El Reg.

I’ve known some bikers. By that, I don’t mean persons who ride bikes and pin false ponytails to the back of their balding heads.

I mean perosns who would break your kneecaps for a dime.

No hard feelings, of course. Just business. They want the dime.

These perps picked the wrong crowd with which to mess:

The Southern Cross Cruiser Club was enjoying its get-together at the Regents Park Sporting and Community Club last Wednesday when the masked pair, bearing blades and machetes, burst in and “yelled at patrons to drop to the floor as they emptied cash registers at the bar”, as CNN puts it.

The bikers quickly entered from an adjacent room and laid into the master crims with tables and chairs and “pretty much anything that wasn’t bolted down”.

Why do I think of Con Air when I see Con-Way?

And what did the Conair people think of that movie, anyway?

Anything that’s not nailed down . . .

The trees around George and Agnes Spaulding’s 170-year-old farmhouse are as good as money in the bank, many old-growth maples valuable not only for the quality of their wood but also for the sweet sap boiled into syrup each spring.

Having been born on the farm, George Spaulding, 78, loves the trees the way only someone who grew up with them could. And he counts on syrup sales to supplement the family income, which comes mainly from the twice-a-day milking of three dozen cows.

So when a neighboring farmer crossed onto the Spauldings’ land and chopped down 30 or so of their best trees, the couple was devastated.

(snip)

Across the country, trees are disappearing in cases that are often small in scale but largely unsettling, probably prompted by the rise in timber value and the increase in worldwide demand for American hardwood — particularly from builders in Europe and China.

The total value of the American log export market has more than doubled since 2000, industry experts said, and it continues to grow.

In the United States, forests are not being illegally logged on a systemic scale, as is the case in Indonesia, Malawi and Brazil, where unauthorized harvesting has led to serious deforestation and attendant environmental problems. Here, the issue is scattered and intimate, and often affects homeowners, parks and public forests.

(Not to make light of this, but, actually, I have a tree in my yard they can have for free.)