GALLUP, NM — Police with the New Mexico Motor Transportation Division found 1,200 pounds of pot packed in cans labeled as spinach during a stop at the Gallup port of entry. An inspector noticed that only a few of the cans were labeled and that the weight printed on the side of the can didn't match the actual weight. A closer look during last Friday's bust revealed the canned drugs, which were worth an estimated $1.5 million. The four pallets of cans were being transported along with fresh produce. The 50-year-old truck driver said he was on his way from California to the East Coast. The driver and the pot were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Commentary by DK
1st: How many 12 oz cans does it take to equal 1200 lbs of Pot? If each can could be stuffed with 12 oz of pot that would equal 1600 cans, right. 12 is 75% of 16 and 12 oz is 75% of a pound. Simple math, right? Not that I’d know this from personal experience, but 12 oz of pot ain’t gonna fit in a “12 oz” can. Maybe 3 oz would, if you used a ramrod. So multiply 1600 by 4. 6400 cans. Next Step: A can has a diameter of 3”. 4 to a foot—which means 256 per layer on an average 4’x4’ shipping pallet. A can has a height of 4”. 3 to a foot—15 layers high on a 4x4x5 pallet. That’s 3840 cans per pallet. No wonder they didn’t label them all. 2nd: Did the figure of 1.5 million figure in the overhead of research and development, facilities costs, canning the drugs, labor, workman’s comp, and transportation costs? 3rd: If these jokers were going to go to the trouble of putting herbs in cans and it was worth 1.5 million, couldn’t they have invested in the software necessary to have mitigated the chance of being caught? A scale and a labeler???
PHILADELPHIA — Employees of a Pennsylvania pet store expecting a shipment of tropical fish and salt water got a man's dead body instead. Mark Arabia owns the Pets Plus store in northeast Philadelphia, where the mix up was discovered Tuesday. He says he learned the body was that of a 65 year old San Diego area man who died of early onset Alzheimer's disease. The body was supposed to go to a research laboratory in Allentown, a 70 mile drive away. US Airways Inc. released a statement saying the air cargo problem was caused by a "verbal miscommunication between a delivery driver and the cargo representative." The Tempe, Ariz. based airline said it's deeply sorry. The fish were shipped in three boxes. The corpse was shipped in a wooden coffin wrapped in cardboard. Arabia said the fish were left at the airport and probably died.
Commentary by DK
1st: The post modern analyst exclaims: “Tropical fish in PA? Why?” A second post modern analyst exclaims “Who would ship fish in boxes, via air?” A third asks “Who would buy a corpse for their fish tank” 2nd: Who was supposed to have driven the corpse to Allenton? Did he take fish instead? 3rd: Mr. Arabia got his 15 minutes because of one hell of a “verbal miscommunication”. Taking everything into consideration, did the unnamed corpse rot before he made it safely to Allentown? Does anyone believe that Tempe AZ is actually sorry? What did the researchers (who should’ve received the corpse) do on the day they should’ve received the corpse? Are they researching Alzheimer’s with tropical fish? Or did they get sent home early? Was it a “Rain day”? And finally, who had to take the 3 boxes of dead fish to the dumpster at the airport?
This story admittedly doesn’t have anything to do with the world-wide warped philosophical perspective of 2009, but it was too good not to include. dk
Ill-fated rest stop retrieval crews pull man from Filer rest area toilet after he tried to retrieve his keys By David Cooper Times-News writer
You could call it a new version of "the road less traveled."
Filer emergency crews retrieved an unidentified Ada County man from a rest area toilet Thursday afternoon, after he climbed into a waste tank and became stuck. The man was found just before noon by another driver that stopped at the U.S. Highway 30 rest area west of town, according to Filer Police Chief Cliff Johnson. Filer police responded to a 911 call, along with the Filer Fire Department, Filer Quick Response and a paramedic from St. Luke's Magic Valley Medical Center.
Johnson said the man, who asked police not to be identified, was unable to find his car keys after using the lavatory. Thinking his keys had fallen in the tank, the man removed a round plastic cover at the base of the toilet and climbed in to find them. Once inside he was unable to pull himself out, and waited until someone else arrived. "He hadn't been there too long, only 10 or 15 minutes," Johnson said.
At least 10 emergency response personnel responded to the 911 call, according to Johnson and a dispatch supervisor at Southern Idaho Regional Communication Center. Eventually the man was retrieved through an access hole used to pump the waste out of the tank." It took some lifting to get him out, and he had cut himself pretty good trying to get himself out," Johnson said. The man was allowed to wash off with the fire truck hose at the scene, where he made another painful discovery.
"That's when he discovered the keys were still in his back pocket," Johnson said. Both the SIRCOMM supervisor and Johnson said crews didn't ask the man for his name, which wasn't required since no charges or citation were issued. "He didn't want to give it to us, and that was fine with us," said Taylor Hunsaker, a dispatch supervisor at SIRCOMM. "We didn't want to embarrass him any more than that." "It was recommended that he seek some medical treatment and get himself cleaned up," Johnson said.
Commentary by DK
There is a certain term for people like the Hero of this story. Lerf. What a Lerf is exactly cannot be defined. But a Lerf can be defined anecdotally, ad nauseum.
A Lerf will trip over the one single rock in a wide field. He will fall flat on his face and directly onto a large snake. The snake will bite him. The variety of snake will never be poisonous, but it will always bite him.
Another example: A Lerf finds himself at a friends house. The friend offers him a heavy wooden table. The Lerf thanks his friend and before he leaves with the table he accepts a martini from his friend. A 2nd, a 3rd…and before long everyone is shiny-eyed. When the time comes to leave and the table is brought out to the Lerf’s car it becomes apparent to everyone present (except the Lerf) that the table is too big for the car. The Lerf heaves the table onto the luggage rack, tying it down with his shirt and a few plastic bags.
Against everyone’s advice the Lerf (half in the bag) pulls out onto the street, but quickly slams on his breaks because of a cat that crosses the road. The table slides off the roof and smashes the rear window.
He quickly puts the slightly damaged table onto his somewhat damaged car and drives away, bits of glass falling on the road leaving a trail, like bread crumbs, behind him. In the mile to the Lerf’s house he passes four police cars but does not get pulled over. Every nonLerf who found himself intoxicated, driving with a broken table on top of a car with a smashed window would have been pulled over by at least two of those cruisers.
The guy who climbed into the holding tank of a roadside toilet is a Lerf, not because he thought he dropped his keys in a toilet. Not because got stuck in and had to be rescued.
He’s a Lerf because his keys were in his back pocket the whole time.
Humans and farm animals were known to emit harmful greenhouse gases through digestion, but German researchers said Tuesday that aquatic worms and bugs are contributing to climate change by farting laughing gas.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institut and Denmark's AarhusUniversity found that mussels, freshwater snails and other underwater creatures release nitrous oxide – laughing gas – when nitrate is present in water.
"There's nitrate in water that has been polluted by humans, so the more we pollute, the higher the production of this problematic gas will be," Fanni Aspetsberger from the institute told AFP on Tuesday.
Aspetsberger added that no quantitative data were available, but that it could be "seriously detrimental" to the climate if nitrate pollution continues to rise the way it has over recent years.
Laughing gas is one of many greenhouse gasses that has been released into the atmosphere since industrialization. Such gasses act as a blanket around the Earth, causing temperatures to rise worldwide.
Rising temperatures have already had disastrous consequences for mankind – including major disruptions to global weather systems – and problems are expected to become worse in the future.
The main reason for global warming though, is the release of another greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, by the burning of fossil fuels. World leaders aim to strike a new global climate deal in Copenhagen in December.
Commentary by DK
1st: To be slowly cooked to death in our own world by fooolish humans and their dddddreadful SUVs is one thing. But to be subjected to the flatulence of worms and bugs is just intolerable. Maybe Monsanto can create a poison to kill those evil death-farting simple organisms! Better yet Monsanto should just focus their efforts on locating (and mitigating the effects of) the everythingbad gene.
2nd. If I could figure out some way to cut some mean laughing gas cheese I could single handedly (or single sphincterly) destroy the viability of Meth traffiking. GET HIGH OFF ME FARTS!!!
3rd: The germans have too much time on their hands.
Man offers $69 for Klondike bar after shoplifting, Fort Pierce police say By Will Greenlee
Originally published 08:09 a.m., March 5, 2009 Updated 08:09 a.m., March 5, 2009 FORT PIERCE — What would you do for a Klondike bar?
Offer $69? Go to jail? Richard Cram, 65, did both in a Tuesday night caper involving the popular ice cream snack, police said. A store owner said the man with the munchies also pocketed 99 cents worth of Raman noodle soup and 49 cents worth of Famous Amos cookies. The owner of the Fort Pierce Food Mart/Texaco in the 2000 block of Seaway Drive told police he watched Cram walking “suspiciously” in the establishment.
Cram crammed a package of Raman noodle soup and some Famous Amos cookies in his pocket, police said. When the owner approached Cram, of the 2400 block of South Ocean Drive, he reportedly removed the goods and tossed them on a shelf. Next, Cram selected something at the ice cream cooler and tried to leave, police said.“(The owner) stopped him before he reached the door,” the report states. “Cram then removed a Klondike ice cream bar in his rear pants pocket and offered to pay $69 for it.”
Police noted the $1.29 Klondike bar looked “flattened.”
A witness said he saw the owner approaching and yelling at Cram and saw Cram appear to pull things from his pants and throw them on a shelf.Cram was held Thursday in the St. Lucie County jail on retail theft and violation of probation charges. His vehicle was towed.
Commentary by DK
1st: It was destiny that Richard was born to folks with the last name of Cram.
2nd: If the owner of the convenience store had been asked about Richard Cram’s gait before he started stealing things would the owner still have said he walked “suspiciously”? The answer is probably yes. A guy who could potentially stick ramen in his pants just has to emit a suspicious aura—maybe not criminally suspicious, but suspicious none-the-less.
3rd: The observational abilities of the Police do astound me. Hmmm. …flattened
Edible Excretions: Taiwan's Toilet Restaurant By Natalie Tso / Taipei Monday, Mar. 02, 2009
"There's poop everywhere! Y-u-c-k," says 6-year-old Jordan Lien as he and his family dine at the Modern Toilet, a popular Taiwanese restaurant chain that's expanding into China and other parts of Asia. The boy was looking at the poop-shaped lights and dish covers and the curry on toilet-shaped plates. Diarrhea for dinner? That's the point. "It's supposed to shock and confuse the senses," says Modern Toilet manager Chen Min-kuang. But as Jennifer Finch, an American who was dining there, described it, "They do it tastefully. It's all very clean." (See the top 10 food trends of 2008.)
Every customer sits on a stylish acrylic toilet (lid down) designed with images of roses, seashells or Renaissance paintings. Everyone dines at a glass table with a sink underneath. The servers bring your meal atop a mini toilet bowl (quite convenient, as it brings the food closer to your mouth), you sip drinks from your own plastic urinal (a souvenir), and soft-swirl ice cream arrives for dessert atop a dish shaped like a squat toilet. I went there on a Wednesday evening, and the place was packed with students and families who were having a jolly time eating out of the john.
"It's very progressive and irreverent, like a practical joke," says junior high school teacher Chen Kin-hsiang, who went because her students raved about it. "It's a little gross when you see other people eat," she says, "but when you're eating, you don't notice it, 'cause you're hungry and the aroma is appetizing." Smell is one poop-like quality the chef does without. (See pictures of China on the wild side.) The reasonably priced food includes curries, pasta, fried chicken and Mongolian hot pot, as well as elaborate shaved-ice desserts with names like "diarrhea with dried droppings" (chocolate), "bloody poop" (strawberry) and "green dysentery" (kiwi). Despite the disturbing descriptions, the desserts were great. But after seeing curry drip down a mini-toilet, I may never have that sauce again. The Chinese can take this, Finch muses, because they are more nonchalant about bodily functions, such as burping, farting or even going to the bathroom — an act performed squatting sans doors in some places in China.
But many Westerners enjoy the novelty of toilet dining too. Chris and Julia Harris took their visiting mother, who they say is obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness, to "freak her out," but she had a great time (though she refused to drink out of a urinal). The only people who have a hard time, says Chen, are the elderly who have exclaimed, "I will not eat on the toilet!" (Folding chairs and normal dishware are available for the faint of heart.) (Read "The Science of Appetite.) Toilet creations aren't new to China. The ancient Chinese may have been the first to use the throne — a flush toilet was found in a tomb of a Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 24) king — and they invented toilet paper in the 6th century. Modern Toilet owner Wang Zi-wei, 29, an ex-banker, got his idea from the Japanese robot cartoon character Jichiwawa, who loves to play with poop and swirl it on a stick. Inspired by that image, Wang began selling chocolate ice cream swirls on paper squat toilets. Customers loved them and wanted more edible excretion experiences, so he opened Modern Toilet in 2004. The theme-restaurant chain now has seven outlets in Taiwan, one in Hong Kong and one opening in Shenzhen, China, this week. Plans for other cities in China, Macau, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia are also under way. Dinner à la latrine, anyone?
Commentary by DK
1st:Why are people griping about global warming? After you read a story like this you realize that living has become too easy for humanity. This world needs to be purified by hurricane, tidal wave, starvation or something else. I'm hopeful that Mother Earth will start with the poo eaters.
2nd: One student said "It's very progressive and irreverent, like a practical joke,". Stop. Somebody please explain why this progressive? Chimps hurl wads of their crap as an expression of negative emotions. The only people who throw poo get the Haldol Regression packaged as progression--classic Post modernism.
3rd: "Modern Toilet owner...got his idea from the Japanese robot cartoon character Jichiwawa, who loves to play with poop and swirl it on a stick." How delightful! Such creativity! Such innovation! Saturday mornings have never been so much fun! I think I'll order the DVD box set right now! I don't know, maybe Jichiwawa is a metaphor: Humanity has advanced greatly because of the Industrial Revolution and the Silicon Revolution but what are we doing with this progression? We can't escape the foolish of our species. We are robots playing with poo. Cheery outlook, eh?
20-year-old facing charges says feline would ‘act like a stoned person’
OMAHA, Neb. - A man who stuffed his girlfriend's cat into a makeshift bong and smoked marijuana through it said Tuesday that he had done it on other occasions and that it calmed the cat down. Acea Schomaker of Lincoln said he never intended to hurt the 6-month-old cat, Shadow. Lancaster County sheriff's deputies responding to a domestic disturbance at the residence ticketed the 20-year-old Schomaker on suspicion of misdemeanor animal cruelty Sunday after catching him smoking marijuana from a boxlike contraption that had the cat stuffed inside its 12-inch by 6-inch base. Schomaker's girlfriend, Marissa Vieux, also was ticketed for animal cruelty because she didn't try to stop Schomaker, Sgt. Andy Stebbing said. Vieux, 22, said she took in the cat about two months ago from friends who abused it. Schomaker said the cat would bite and scratch them but he didn't want to discipline it by swatting or squirting water at it. He said they didn't bring it to an animal shelter because they feared it would be put down.
‘I'm just the first one to get caught’ So Schomaker said he decided to use the makeshift bong because he had heard about people calming their pets by blowing marijuana smoke in their faces. "I know for sure this isn't the first time someone has done this," he said. "I'm just the first one to get caught." He said he put the cat in the bong a total of three times and it seemed to calm the cat.
1st: Somebody tell me why. What would make this seem like a good idea? I understand talking about the idea, as a joke. "Hey, you know what we should do?..." But to actually follow through? Oh Dear...
2nd: There are too many unanswered questions here. The cops "responding to a domestic disturbance" , ticketed the guy. Um... You have to wonder if this guy was rolling down the street on his skateboard, kittenbong under the left arm, head boppin to a Chili Pepper’s Tape. Even I might have dialed up the authorities. HOW DID HE GET CAUGHT? You have to wonder.
3rd: I'm glad we have Policemen to uphold the law, but I have to ask: Did the police make LancasterCountyNE a better, safer place by ticketing this guy? (the answer could be a hearty YES.) Did the $400 dollars (watch the video) exceed the cost of processing him through the legal system? (It costs the government a lot to process anything) A cost/benefit analysis would be enlightening.
