Volume 13, Number 29, July 20, 2008

     (Check out my blog at: http://jpdave.blogspot.com/ and feel free to leave a comment (even a few comments will encourage me to blog more)! Please take a look and see what’s happening; there’s no telling what you might find. Go on; take a look; go! Now – this’ll still be here.)

Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, a two-fer – one of the sites I frequent had a post that explained how the US has dropped from 2^nd to 12^th in the best places in the world to live (or something like that [and it’s all under Bush’s watch]). Perhaps contributing to the decline are people like the following as presented in the following Bit from News of the Weird: (a) A 30-year-old “man” was recently arrested in Bartlesville, Okla., after his 8-year-old son just happened to let slip to police that his dad regularly shoots him (and his younger sister) in the leg with a BB gun if they misbehave (a good candidate for Father of the Year). Also, keeping to the theme, (b) taking a lesson from the playbook of Tonya Harding, a 46-year-old “man” was arrested last month in Medford, Ore., after (according to a report from the police) he hit his teenage daughter in the ankle with a hammer to simulate a "skating" injury, for which she could get a prescription for pain medication, which he then took from her and presumably used for himself. (Gee, another candidate for Father of the Year!)

Next, from the Seattle Times, a son wants his mom's estate, even though it is made up of the money awarded to it because he killed her. Joshua Hoge, a schizophrenic confined to Washington's Western State Hospital, is claiming at least part of his late mother's estate even though he's the one who killed her in 1999. Washington law prevents profiting from the "unlawful" and "willful" taking of another's life, but Hoge was found "not guilty by reason of insanity," and the legal issue is still unsettled. Furthermore, according to a report from earlier this year, it appears that the mother's estate consists almost totally of the $800,000 the estate won in a lawsuit against a county health clinic because it was negligent in delaying Joshua's medications, which probably led to his killing her. The complexities of law – ya gotta love it.

Finally, from Yahoo News, be careful if you wear saggy-baggy pants in the south Chicago suburb of Lynwood. Village leaders have passed an ordinance that would levy $25 fines against anyone showing three inches or more of their underwear in public. Eugene Williams, the mayor of Lynwood, says young men walk around town half-dressed, keeping major retailers and economic development away. He calls the new law a hot topic. The American Civil Liberties Union says the ordinance targets young men of color. Young adults in the village, like 21-year-old Joe Klomes, say the new law infringes on their personal style (I didn’t think “adults” dressed that). He says leaders should instead spend money on making the area look nicer. You know, if you ask me, the law does just that.

Lest you believe such ridiculousness resides only here in the US, consider the following as reported in the BBC News (given the subject matter, it might as well be in the US!) An eight-year-old boy has sparked an outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party. The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.  The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination (kinda like the Valentine’s Day rule here – if all don’t get them, no one does). The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.  He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one. The boy handed out his birthday invitations during class-time and when the teacher spotted that two children had not received one the invitations were confiscated.  "My son has taken it pretty hard," the boy's father told the newspaper Sydsvenskan.  "No one has the right to confiscate someone's property in this way; it's like taking someone's post," he added.  A verdict on the matter is likely to be reached in September, in time for the next school year.

In a case of life imitating art (sort of), Ananova reported that US police solved a mysterious death after discovering uncanny similarities to an episode of TV's CSI. When Thomas Hickman was found dead in a remote part of New Mexico, with a gunshot wound to the back of his head and duct tape covering his mouth, it looked like an execution-style murder. But then police found a bunch of balloons tangled in a nearby cactus with a gun tied to the ribbons. Fans of CSI recalled a similar scenario from a 2003 episode of the series in which balloons were used to make a gun float away after a suicide and urged the police to take a look. "We weren't aware of the CSI episode," said Lt. Rick Anglada, of New Mexico state police. "But the lead investigator continually heard stories that there was an episode similar to that and about a month later he actually rented the episode and viewed it." It led officers to suspect that Mr Hickman had committed suicide but tried to make it look like murder by letting the gun float away. "However, it was very windy that night so we believe the wind kept the balloons down, dragging across the ground and they began popping and eventually the ribbons became tangled up in a cactus," added Lt Anglada. There were other signals the 55-year-old has taken his own life. Police spotted no signs of struggle in the field where he was found and his car remained untouched. At his home in Texas they found metal shavings in his garage where he had used a hack saw to remove the gun's trigger guard, presumably to make it lighter. Police were able to verify he had bought the balloons and the gun and they found notes left for his family telling them what to do in case anything happened to him. They also found a life insurance policy that would pay his wife around $400,000 dollars or double that if his death was accidental. Investigators this week officially ruled the death a suicide and closed the case.

From The Stella Awards, a true lawsuit (the kind that makes my blood boil)! A man named Robert Hornbeck volunteered for the Army and served a tour in Iraq. After getting home, he got drunk, wandered into a hotel's service area (walking [or staggering] past "DANGER" warning signs), crawled into an air conditioning unit, and was severely cut when the machinery turned on. Unable to care for himself due to his drunkenness, he bled to death. A tragedy, to be sure, but one solely caused by a supposedly responsible adult with military training. Despite his irresponsible behavior -- and his perhaps criminal trespassing -- Hornbeck's family sued the hotel for $10 million, as if it's reasonably foreseeable that some drunk fool would ignore warning signs and climb into its heavy duty machinery to sleep off his bender. Arrrgh!

A couple of years ago, another lawsuit was initiated, but surprisingly didn’t get too far. Even though a man named Allen Ray Heckard is inches shorter, about 25 pounds lighter, and fully 8 years older than former basketball star Michael Jordan, the Portland, Oregon, man says he looks a lot like Jordan, and is often confused for him -- and thus he deserves $52 million "for defamation and permanent injury" -- plus $364 million in "punitive damage for emotional pain and suffering", plus the SAME amount from Nike co-founder Phil Knight, for a grand total of $832 million. Here’s the surprise: he dropped the suit after Nike's lawyers chatted with him, where they presumably explained how they'd counter-sue if he continued with his legal efforts.

Finally, a small collection of thematically-related quotes to wrap up this week’s offering: (1) “’I must do something’ always solves more problems than ‘Something must be done.’" Author Unknown. (2) “We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty.  It is the other side of rights.” Pearl Buck. (3) “We have the Bill of Rights.  What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.” Bill Maher. (4) “You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood.  However, as an adult, you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it.” Ken Keyes, Jr. (5) “Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” Posted in the Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C.

Later.