Keep It Down Up There!

Man mistook porn movie scream for rape

OCONOMOWOC, Wis. (AP) – A Wisconsin man said he broke into an apartment with a cavalry sword because he thought he heard a woman being raped but the sound was from a pornographic movie his upstairs neighbour was watching.

“Now I feel stupid,” said James Van Iveren, who has been charged in the case. “This really is nothing, nothing but a mistake.”

A criminal complaint said the neighbour told police Van Iveren pounded on the door and kicked it open without warning Feb. 12, damaging the frame and lock.

“Where is she?” Van Iveren demanded, thrusting the sword at the neighbour, the complaint said.

“Where is she?”

The neighbour told police Van Iveren became increasingly aggressive as he repeated the question, insisting he had heard a woman being raped. The complaint said, with the sword pointed at him, the neighbour led Van Iveren through the apartment, opening closet doors to prove he was alone.

The neighbour later played for police the part of the DVD he believed Van Iveren heard downstairs.

Van Iveren, 39, of Oconomowoc, was charged with criminal trespass, criminal damage and disorderly conduct, all while using a dangerous weapon, and is due in court March 5. Together, the misdemeanour counts carry a maximum sentence of 33 months in jail.

Van Iveren said Tuesday he heard a woman “screaming for help,” grabbed the sword, bounded up the stairs, kicked in the apartment door and confronted the man who lived there.

“I intended to hold it behind my back and knock. But I froze and instead, what happened happened,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper.

Contesting his neighbour’s account, Van Iveren said he didn’t look anywhere in the apartment except the front room and he never threatened the neighbour with the sword.

“I had the sword extended. But that was all,” he said.

Van Iveren, who lives with his mother in the downstairs apartment, said he did not call police when he heard the noises because he does not have a telephone. He said he barely knew the upstairs tenant.

Police seized Van Iveren’s sword, which he said was a family heirloom.

That story reminds me a lot of
this one from 2004 about a guy who planned a fantasy rape with a woman in a chat room but then broke into the wrong house.
The only real difference between the 2 is that Van Iveren only wound up menacing a stranger because he thought he honestly needed to help somebody. So while he should definitely feel like an idiot, at least he had guts enough to react to what could have been a bad situation.

Cover Letters From Hell

I should have written this up a few months ago when I found out about it, but since I’m a lazy hack, I just never got around to it.

Advertising agency Killian & Company has a hilarious section on its website called Cover Letters from Hell that features, well, cover letters from hell.

The link above will take you to a complete explanation of what’s going on, as well as to a whole mess of greatness known as the Cover Letter Hall of Shame.

This link will take you to the newest batch of submissions, which is full of gems such as the following:

I recently seen your job posting on craiglists.com I have a very extensive background in Marketing Communications … I have wrote traditional copy for print catalogs Hammacher Schlemmer and Spiegel …

I have to commend you on your superfluous and otherwise over-the-top website.

During my student teaching, I touched many of the students, especially the boys.

I feel that a companies sucsess depends on customer satifation and each employees dedication to meet that goal. I also attached my resume online. I will be very excited to hearing from you.

“Hello! My name is _________. I spoke with the woman in charge of your hiring the other day, and she suggested I send in this resume. While it goes against my personal, cultural, and religious beliefs to take any sort of orders from a woman, I decided to send this on in for your consideration. I would be a very good asset to your company, and I know that I can advance quickly enough so that I would never need to take orders from your girl again.”

Go read the whole thing, and weep for humanity.

The Timing Sucks, But If You’re Going To Fight, The Hospital Is A Good Place To Do It

A routine appendix operation in Belgrade went horribly wrong when two surgeons started fighting and stormed from the operating room to settle their dispute outside.

according to a recent
report,
surgeon Spasoje Radulovic was operating when fellow doctor Dragan Vukanic entered and made a remark that started a quarrel.

“At one moment Vukanic pulled the ear of the operating doctor, slapped him in the face and walked out,” the on duty anaesthesiologist said when describing the fight for a local newspaper.

Doctor Radulovic followed him out and an all-out fight ensued, resulting in bruises, a split lip, loose teeth and a fractured finger.

In spite of the chaos, the operation was thankfully completed successfully by an attending assistant doctor.

I am, Slowly, Going, Crazy, 1 2, 3 4, 5 6, Switch!

I’m ancy. Every day, I’m ancy. Some days, I can’t focus on anything, because I’m so ancy! I’m sure I’m driving Steve absolutely, positively nuts some days because I’m constantly looking at the clock wondering if I’m going to get a call. You wanna know why? Because I still don’t know when I’m going away for my new guide dog!

I think about it all the time. I dream about it. It’s causing me to put my life on hold because I can’t look for work not knowing what block of time I’m going to be gone for, and it really wouldn’t be smart to get a job and, during that fragile 3 months of probation, say “Gee, boss, I’m going to be gone for a month.” I’ve gotten mixed opinions about how it would go over if I told them right up front. Some say if it was a year off in the future, they could see no problem, some say even if it was right now, it wouldn’t be a problem as long as you told them right at the time they offered you a job, and some go “Why do you need one right now? That’s going to so screw you up.” So, since finding a job is hard enough with the whole blink factor, I’m waiting until after I come back with fido in tow. Anyway, I’m rambling.

Because I just couldn’t take the ancy feelings anymore, last week, I called the school. Plus I wanted to know because I have things that have to be taken care of, I.E. tax crap, student loan crap, at a certain time, and I wanted to find out if I have to make other arrangements. I’m so anal about deadlines that unless I know if it’s going to be done, it bugs and bugs and bugs and bugs me!

It took me so long to dial the number because I was so nervous. The phone rang, and I held my breath. I asked to speak to Admissions. They put me through. I asked them the status of my case, I.E. if they have any new information, and said that my email has been a bit weird and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. It hasn’t really been that weird, but I had to come up with a reason to not seem like a neurotic freak who was asking what was up, even though they said they’d give me 4-6 weeks’ warning. Time slowed down to a crawl, and I received…exactly no new information!

Raaaar!

All she could say was, “We’re looking for a match. We didn’t want you to have to come home in the snow. We’ll tell you as soon as we know.” Not even a remote idea about the chances of getting in in April, or May, or what.

I hung up the phone, and could feel the energy flowing out of me, like I was a balloon and someone had just done that thing where it makes that sputtering noise and flies across the room and lands flat on the floor, deflated. I lay on the bed, so sad. I know I shouldn’t have been sad, I wasn’t rejected or anything. But it was so disappointing to get no new information, no date to shoot for. I was suddenly afraid I could be going in June, or July, or August! Who the hell knows? I could be waiting for another year if they can’t find a match before the snow is flying again. They said something about a smaller, more manageable dog. My first thought was, how small? I can’t handle a giant, but Babs was a 50-pounder and she was a challenge but she was fine. Are they limiting their search too much? How long could my life be on hold, waiting, wondering, hoping, praying, thinking maybe now would be the time?

Let’s recap this little journey. I got the application packages from a couple schools, decided to go to the Ottawa school, came home with my beautiful Babs, had to retire her way too soon, had another interview way too soon, bombed it, said I’d try again when the spring came, then moved in the spring, had a second interview and aced it, and finally heard the news that I was accepted! I have invested so much time and hope and energy, it has to come true soon! It just has to!

So for now, I’ve started counting down to the day when Barbie goes for hers. 13 weeks and 6 days baby! That has given me something to look forward to, even though it’s not my own class date. I’ve been a geek and found the pages where the class dates are listed. I could be going in 6 weeks and 6 days, or 8 weeks and 6 days, or 10 weeks and 6 days, or 13 weeks and 6 days, or later, although hopefully not. I’m! still! ancy! God! damn! It!

Don’t Drink and Drive People Nuts

When there’s a problem, people seem to find a need to pin the blame on someone, don’t they? It would be nice if they could figure out who the right person is to pin it on.

There’s a neighbourhood of…what should we call them…outraged area residents? Sure. Sounds good. They’re mad because they live near the main office of a cab company, and on a regular basis after the bars have closed, drunken hooligans come by, bang on the cab company’s window and demand a cab. Of course, this wakes up sleeping neighbours, and I understand why they’re pissed if it happens all the damn time. Apparently, it’s been happening for years, and they’ve tried to call the police, work with the cab company, come up with solutions, but nothing’s working.

But here’s where I part ways with our sleep-deprived neighbours. They’re trying to blame the problem on the cab company and put the onus on them to fix it! Ok? And how do they propose they do that? Pay the city to keep the buses running? Have lines of cabs at the bars to pick people up like at the train station? turn down the drunks and risk their cars getting smashed and cabbies getting hurt? How is the cab company going to stop drunks from being toolchests? At least these people are asking for cabs, not driving home and killing some poor area resident who happens to be out on the street. Then the rest of them would be really outraged. Would they tell the bar to pay for the person’s funeral?

They’re Going to Get it Done, Come Hell or High Water

This just creeps me out. Does it creepyou out?

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is prepared to take “extraordinary measures” to boost the ranks of women candidates in the next election, including barring men from seeking nominations in some ridings.

During last year’s leadership race, Dion promised that under his watch at least a third of the party’s candidates in the next election would be women.

But campaign organizers have concluded that the ambitious goal will be impossible to reach without some intervention to secure nominations for female candidates.

So-called green-light committees, set up to run the party’s nomination process in each province, have been empowered to ensure the 33 per cent target is met. Among other things, the committees can set dates for nomination meetings and approve or reject nomination papers from those seeking to carry the Liberal colours.

Where necessary, the committees will be able to simply refuse to allow men to run for nominations in some ridings.

“We’re trying to find the techniques that are consistent with our democratic processes to the greatest extent possible,” said Gerard Kennedy, Dion’s special adviser on election readiness.

Local riding associations are being encouraged as much as possible to find women to seek nominations. But, with an election possible as early as next month, Kennedy said the party simply doesn’t have the luxury of a lengthy recruitment drive.

Consequently, he said the party will have to use more drastic measures to ensure a sufficient number of women wind up on the Liberal election roster.

“We’re still studying and discussing some of the techniques that we might use, such as women-only contests or what have you. But I think those measures will be somewhat exceptional,” he said.

The leader retains the power to simply appoint women candidates, bypassing the nomination process altogether, but insiders say Dion wants to use that power sparingly, if at all. Appointments have in the past set off controversy, particularly from would-be candidates who frequently had spent months preparing to fight a contested nomination.

Dion’s campaign strategists contend that declaring certain ridings off-limits to men at the outset will ultimately be fairer to all concerned. Still, they acknowledge that the measure is bound to be controversial.

“We’re going to pay some price,” Kennedy said. “We’d like it to be a relatively small price . . . but the price we’re paying is because we didn’t quite make as much success as we should have (recruiting women in the past) and everyone has come to the realization that we have to take extraordinary measures, that the Liberal party has to become a political organization that reflects the face of Canada.”

In last winter’s election, only 26 per cent of Liberal candidates were women, although women make up slightly more than half the Canadian population. The challenge of reaching 33 per cent next time is all the greater because Dion has promised to protect all incumbent MPs from nomination challenges.

Chew on that for a while. That whole thing makes me feel sick. I can’t even put into words the level of dread that gives me. Sometimes it already feels like democracy is a fraud. Now people are trying to fix the system so the numbers fit some kind of quota.

I’d love for there to be more women in politics. But this isn’t the way to do it. It would make me sick and angry if a guy who I knew would fight for my interests was prevented altogether from even running and the only alternative was a woman who I knew didn’t care. And don’t you just love the element of panic in that article? Damn those commercials from the Conservative party. All I can think is, We didn’t get it done!

And here’s something I don’t get. They say they want the party to better reflect the face of Canada. Women make up over half of that face. But 33% of his members have to be women, and that’s the figure he’s sticking with? That doesn’t make any sense if he was truly trying to make the party match the face of Canada. What is the real motive?

Man I hate politics. And I hate the direction this is going.

Lost in Spaces.

Ok, this is just weird. I never noticed this until today, and now I want to know the answer.

Ever since I could type, I was always told to put two spaces after the end of a sentence. I was never told exactly why, except, “It looks good on paper.” They told me not to do it in braille, because braille took up more space on a page anyway, so having an extra space was just wasteful. But I was always told to put two spaces in in print. So I did. It became a habit. Steve was taught the same thing, and given just as much explanation, I think anyway.

Today, Steve was picking through his most recent post. For some reason, he’d had a super hard time getting it right. So he was scrutinizing it, letter by letter, and let out a shriek of “What the hell?” He had noticed that at the end of his sentences, there was only one space!

At first, we thought there were blogger demons afoot. We thought that someone at google had decided that there should *not* be two spaces, and was removing them automatically. This was annoying, since if they decided to think for us on that count, what was next?

Then I wondered if this was some kind of html standard. So I made a very small page with a few sentences on it, because I’m just that geeky, and holy crap, there was only one space after each sentence!

I’d noticed that in a few places,people only separated their sentences with one space, but I just thought they were weird, and sometimes sites where I’d see it were peppered with wonderful pearls of wisdom like Im so cule cuzz Ive got mad sk1llz. So I just thought they didn’t know how to write, period.

This leads me to my question. When did the standard change, and how did I miss the memmo? If I put two spaces after my sentences when I write someone a letter or an email, would they look at what I write and go “Oh, my god, you are like sooo stuck in the early 90’s!” and laugh at me? Or do they even notice? Is this one space thing happening because of the way things look on the screen? Does anybody know?

Now I look like a complete geek. But I’m a puzzled geek. I guess you miss stuff like that changing when you listen to your computer instead of reading the screen with your eyes.

I Don’t Care What Anyone Says, People Really Do Listen To Me

I’ve been saying for years that we should get rid of the penny, and finally, hopefully, the idea is gaining some steam. All it took was for some group with a fancy name to take my idea and not credit me to make things happen, but hey, that’s nothing new. That sort of thing comes with the territory when you’re brilliant.