A Schrade Middle School teacher from Rowlett, Texas wanted to teach lasso techniques used during cattle drives. So he lassoed one of his students and gave him rope burns.
Category Archives: News
Andy Ashkar, Nayel Ashkar, and a Ton of Money
Andy Ashkar and his brother Nayel Ashkar waited six years before cashing their $5 million dollar lottery scratch-off ticket. They had wanted to prepare their lives for the occasion. Wow, that is discipline. A $500,000,000 Extravaganza indeed.
And Sandeep Singh (Sunny Singh) did the opposite of the two brothers.
I Don’t Know What Bothers Me More
John Krenicki
I don’t know what bothers me more, that someone kidnapped Violet Ripken, Cal Ripken Jr’s mom, or that Amtrak lost more than $800 million on cheeseburgers and sodas. Of course, the news that General Electric pays John Krenicki $89,000 a month not to work, is amusing. Little GE wants to keep him away from the competition.
Man Catches an 881-Pound Tuna, Only to Have It Taken Away
Two stories hit the national airwaves, the webwaves, tonight. One concerns a fisherman who caught an enormous bluefin tunafish. And the second is about how walking through doorways causes forgetfulness.
Carlos Rafael and his Fish Story
Let’s mack the fish story first. So the angler angling for the record tuna is named Carlos Rafael and he was dragging nets and snagged a whale-like fish:
A Massachusetts fisherman pulled in an 881-pound tuna this week only to have the federal authorities take it away. It sounds like a libertarian twist on the classic novella by Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, but for Carlos Rafael, the saga is completely true.
Rafael and his crew were using nets to catch bottom-dwellers when they inadvertently snagged the giant tuna. However, federal fishery enforcement agents took control of the behemoth when the boat returned to port.
Dang. I caught a fish, once, nearly that big. And I’ll discuss it and share pictures. In this very blogpost. Promise. First, let’s go to the next story.
Doors of Perception at Notre Dame
So Notre Dame* invested some hard-earned money to answer one of the major existential questions of life. Do folks like you and me tend to be forgetful when we traverse from one room to the next? Does the new space lend to forgetfulness:
New research from University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses.
“Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” Radvansky explains.
Yeah, okay. Let’s test this theory. I am getting up. Still blogging with my laptop. And passing through a doorway. Nothing. I am unaffected. No early onset Alfred Heimers. (I am not quite familiar enough with Alfred to call him Al. Al’z Heimers. You know, Alzheimer’s.)
I am perfectly fine. Okay, back to the first story. Hmmmm, interesting. I seem to have forgotten exactly what happened when I caught that one monster fish. You’ll just have to take my word on it.
* Not sure if you are aware that Notre Dame’s School of Paralegal-ery has a club called the Notary Dames. But it is for women only. And they are trained in all the jurisprudent dark arts: notary, notoriety, filing fu, paralegal-ery duties, paramilitary skillz. Them some shifty dames, ‘dats fer sure.
New York City Snow Storm Scatters Flakes on Wall Street
New York City in Winter: A Cold Lion
New York City weather can be nasty nasty. I know, I worked as a bike messenger through one tough winter.
Take Riverside Drive, 11th or 12th Avenue, any of those streets that hug the Hudson River. The wind is vicious down there, it simply whistles off the water. And there are few buildings to block it.
I learned my lesson the hard way. It was December and I was riding south, midtownish. A gust of wind tickled my side and then pushed. Me. A good ten feet diagonally. As if I was a wind-surfer.
I skidded across a long metal grating and down along the edge of a curbed sidewalk. Shaken, I got off my bike, my heart beating in my ears. Somehow, I locked up my steed and sat in the lobby of an unknown building. No one said anything to me. New York is funny like that.
So when I read this, I think- those Occupy Wall Street clowns (the 99%ers) are in for a rude awakening:
It’s a record!
New York City broke it’s top snow mark with 1.3 inches at 2:11 p.m., the National Weather Service told the Advance.
The old record was 0.8 inches and was set in 1925.
The Weather Service just upgraded its forecast and is now predicting that 8-9 inches of snow will fall here by the time the storm winds down overnight.
Russell Brand, obnoxious British clown
More than 11,690 customers are without power, half of them in the Tottenville (Staten Island) area, according to Con Edison’s Storm Central website.
“We have a new record already,” said meteorologist Joey Picca.”We knew the moisture would be there, but the switch-over was sooner.”
Earlier in the week, annoying comedian Russell Brand even stopped by for a look-see.
Mr. Brand is better known on the these shores as Mr. Katy Perry. (I wonder if he purchased any of those special Occupy Wall Street t-shirts?) He had this to say of the protestors:
“The sense of cohesion and civic duty in the square, which many call Liberty Square, its former title, was something I found appealing. Protesters took the time to educate me on the matters that had brought them to the square.”
The first flakes:
Occupy Wall Street Snow Storm, Zuccotti Park
The above picture is from the NY Post. My favorite quote from the article:
“I got my blanket, I got my sleeping bag and I got my girl,” said 25-year-old protestor Rene, who came from Occupy Miami to Occupy Wall Street, “so it’s not hard to stay warm.”
Somewhere, somehow, George Gershwin is turning in his grave. . .
Update: I received a nasty comment which I am not approving for publication, but rather posting partially here. I cut out the insulting sections of it, aimed at another commenter. Dissension I understand; heck it is patriotic, right? But I leave my blog for stretches of the day and I can’t police squabbles. The part I can post:
“Spoiled Brats” and “Entitlement” ≠ “Sleeping on City Concrete in Snow”
Personally, I am not in agreement. This is how I see it:
“Spoiled Brats” and “Entitlement” = “Snoozing in sleeping bags on mattress pads in tents, with bathrooms around the corner. Not to mention the donated food or the shady $500,000 in the evil bank. Or the lack of a job. And the demand of free student loans. Or whatever it is that this movement demands.”
Or, how about this:
“Spoiled Brats” and “Entitlement” ≠ “Al Anbar, Argonne, any battle the US military has fought. . .”
Update II: Ah, nothing like the OWS folks to bring out a little unity. I also received the below comment, again aimed at another commenter. As per usual, I will not approve it, but post it here for your guffawing pleasure:
Your ignorance is astounding.
Here is the funny thing, the above commenter was only on the site for two minutes before posting the above screed. (I happen to be on-line at the same time, thus the successful sleuthing.) Usually it takes me a full ten minutes to be able to determine someone is astoundingly ignorant. Perhaps this genius has special powers?
Murder by Hot Grease
The English language, it was murdered. By whom? Try this headline:
Woman faces murder charges in Texas after hiding 41 years
Where did the woman hide the 41 years? In her bathroom? Fixed it for you:
Woman faces murder charges in Texas after hiding for 41 years
You’re welcome, Reuters. Since they chose to cover two murders, first the real murder and now the English language, let’s read what they had to say:
Mary Ann Rivera, Charged in Houston, Texas
More than four decades after she was charged with murder for dousing her husband with a pot of hot grease, 76-year-old Mary Ann Rivera was brought to court in Houston on Friday to face the charges.
“She was a fugitive from a murder case and now she’s a fugitive no longer,” said Chuck Lowery, an investigator with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
On Wednesday, Rivera was extradited back to Texas from Lake Park, Georgia, where she had fled with her children after the death of her husband, Cruz Rivera, in the fall of 1970. In the small town near the Florida border, she had evaded the law for 41 years. Rivera had no criminal history in Georgia, Lowery said.
I myself hid 7 years, if I could only remember where. What do they always say. . . What were you doing the last time you remember seeing that which was lost? Hmmm, blogging?