God.

From The Smoking Gun:

Cop Hit In Gas Attack
West Virginia DUI arrestee charged with farting in officer's face

Will F*ck 4 Fuel

One of the reasons I love Brian so madly is that he finds these little things and shares them with me.

From the Smoking Gun:

A Kentucky woman is facing prostitution charges for allegedly trading sex for gasoline. Angela Eversole, 34, was nabbed last weekend during a police stakeout at a Days Inn...Nowak admitted paying for Eversole's services, in part, with a $100 Speedway gas card. Eversole was hit with a prostitution rap and also charged with doing business without an occupational license.

For a slightly different take, go here.

No...Really?

You know it's gonna be a long night when the first person you talk to is a woman who says :
"Hi. I'm Pork Chop. How you doin' this evenin'?"

The Week that Was

Oy. Vey. Shmir.

Here's a quick recap of the week:

Monday: Bad mail day. Rejection packets. Completed application for a summer retreat went into the mail.

Tuesday: Normalish day off. Fletcher brought a large mole-like thing to the welcome mat. Mucked out the beds a little bit. Worked on revisions. Attempted to track my Amazon.com order.

Wednesday: Got to work, discovered there had been a drug bust in the hotel the day before. Arrests in the parking lot. Attempts to escape, then the dumbass local criminals return only to be arrested in and near the parking lot. Stupid employee fired. Discover that my schedule for the rest of the week is changed and that goes double for the rest of the month.

Thursday: Training new person. INSANITY from the get-go. I didn't stop moving for the first three hours. The rest of the time was just sort of slow and off-kilter. I like her though. She repeatedly called someone I loathe a douchebag. I never feel closer to someone than when we hate the same people. Missed a poetry reading on campus that I'd been looking forward to for a couple of weeks. Repeatedly sang the "Numa Numa" song because of the previous night's South Park episode. Hotel drug bust hits the local media: tv and print. Yay.

Friday: Slept til after 1 pm. Loved it. Played a little with the plants outside. The fire red tulips are blooming like crazy and I snipped a few daffodils to put in an old jelly jar on my desk. I can't remember what half of the plants coming up are right now or when certain ones come up again. I fear I killed several last year when I tried separating and transplanting. Napped a bit after dinner.

Next week looks better. There are several things I'm anticipating. But we'll just have to see how that goes.

Blargh!

The last four or five days have been crazy as far as work goes: people quitting with no notice, a vicious stomach bug that knocked people out for a few days, etc. It's been hectic. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I felt like I was getting kicked in the head. Over and over and over.

And then there was the missing food. That I think is what really set me off and made me overly emotional. It was nothing big. Just a frozen dinner I had in the office fridge for lunch. Three dollars max. I show up Friday morning and look in the freezer for something and it's gone. I asked the person who was about to leave if he'd eaten it. He said no, so I knew who it was. And I was livid. Matter of principle stuff, basic up-bringing: if it's not yours don't eat it.

The manager comes in about 8 am to pick up deposits and paperwork for the accounting. I say something to her about it. She cocks her head, much the way a cocker spaniel would if it was waiting for some bit of food to fall off the table. She nods repeatedly, her way of showing "I hear what you're saying, I care," and says: "Well, RJ. Remember, it's Easter. Jesus died for our sins." Seriously. No irony. Nothin. "I didn't ask for anyone to die for my sins. I just want my lunch back." Again she nods like a hyper bobble. "So you don't think much about the eternal." "I'm very much a here-and-now kind of guy. And here and now? I want my lunch back."

Skanks on a Train

These are the ugliest shoes I've seen in a while. The picture doesn't do justice to the particular shade of nipple pink faux leather that accents the faux leopard skin. Or the nipple pink cord bow on the toe.

They belong to a trout-mouthed woman who was on our train from NY to Baltimore Sunday morning. At first, her shoes were the most offensive thing about her. Then somewhere around Philly she gets on her phone and starts talking, loudly.

It's 10ish on a Sunday. I'm on my second full day of this cold and a bit hungover. I am not light and love and puppies (ask Brian for confirmation.) I am raw and bitchy and on the verge of crying because I just want to be somewhere away from people. I can't get a bagel on the train because the oven doesn't work. I really really want a bagel.

She's directly across the aisle from me. Going on and on at the top of her healthy lungs about black dresses cut down to there, sleepy hugs and everything is punctuated by this doltish laugh. The train chugs on and so does she. Five minutes in I loathe her. I lean to Brian and whisper "I wish someone would kick her in her fucking head." She's still going on and I'm trying to read Outside the Lines but I can't really concentrate on either...something about plans and later and what was it that DA Powell said about burying things in poems? Back up the page and read it again.

She's still going on, laughing that dolt laugh and it seems impossible that she's laughing at what the other person says because she never seems to stop making noise long enough for someone else to respond.

She's the type of girl you'd see at a Young Republicans meeting or out somewhere protesting a Planned Parenthood Clinic and promoting Abstinence only education. She's still talking and I lean in Brian's direction and say, not so quietly this time, "I wish someone would shut her the fuck up." A couple of minutes later she's off the phone and she sits there, furiously texting until we get to Baltimore. I hope that was my fault.

Jesus Returns

From WZZM13.com (the link leads you to one of the most atrociously banner-ad heavy sites of all time.):

Hijacked Jesus statue returned to owner

A Kent County woman says a treasured family heirloom has been returned after it was hijacked amid allegations she doesn't clean up after her dogs.

Jean Mansel says her 80 pound cement Jesus statue was taken from a pedestal in her front yard, and a ransom note was left in her mailbox.
[snip]

Mansel says she cherishes her statue as a memento from late uncle. Last Thursday she found the statue missing.

"There were footprints behind it, and footprints in front of it," she says, pointing out where the statue used to be. My husband got a phone call and a real raspy voice over the phone said 'check your mailbox'."

In the mailbox was a ransom note.

[snip]

The note reads: “We are holding Jesus ransom until you clean up the poopie from your wieners and trust us we see you take your wieners for long walks w/out picking up their poopie in our yards. This has upset us dearly so please clean up all the weiner poopie, if you want to see Jesus unharmed. Sincerely, Lindy Lane Residents.”

"It has to be a young person because they put these lines around Jesus, no adult is going to waste their time doing that," says Mansel. "And referring to weiner poopie…my gosh."

[snip, emphasis mine]

I take my dogs for walks; I carry a plastic bag with me and pick up anything that they do. I thought something like that would be safe in our yard, it wasn't, it wasn't."

Sunday night, Jean told WZZM 13 News the statue had been returned, taken not by neighbors but by a family member. She declined to explain further, only that this has now become a family situation.

Yesterday's Horoscope was wrong.

No bingo. No dollars. No toilet paper cozy. Though there were plenty of people on-site last night who probably thought they'd be good gifts.

Karaoke filtering downstairs into my right ear (the worst karaoke you can imagine... I've committed my fair share of karaoke karnage and have heard a good bit too. But what I heard last night coming from the upstairs party--wowza.) Live music from back in the bar filtering up into my left ear (his set included a Roy Orbison medley, that didn't suit his range; a Johnny Cash medley, that didn't suit his range...etc etc. Plus Neil Young, the Beatles and Van Morrison. It's hard to be a man and not sing tenor nor bass). It was stereo hell.

The upstairs party had a great time. Hokey pokey and everything (structural integrity of the floor be damned). Stunningly, it was a dry event.

On the upside, I had poetry in the mail when I finally woke this afternoon.

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

I should be blogging about getting to see Brian for the last four days: about dinner with friends Saturday and Monday night; about our cat-sitting and how sweet speckly Nina loves him and drools on him in bed; about insane amounts of shopping over two days and how I've come (back) in touch with my inner Imelda Marcos (the shoe part, not the lacy black panties); about how he brought me Radish King and reading it in bed with him and how much I lovelovelove and envy parts of it so much my gums tingle. But that's all got to wait.

See, part of my job involves handling money. I account for it, I fill out forms, I do it up for deposit. Not being the most mathy boy in the free world, I tend to be meticulous about this, counting it three or four times before settling in to finish the forms. Anyway, I get home today and find a message that I need to call work. Seems that one of my deposits came up short, $250.00 short, in fact. So it's been stressfull today--how does one (dis)prove a negative? Even after getting the verdict from one of the owners that I'm still employed, I feel like I'm scooped out; I'm headachey, I'm still nauseous. I'm determined to not get down...but right now...well...it's hard....And this is not what I wanted to put out here....

But Think of the Chiiiiildren

Even though it means I'd have to go to Kentucky, I'd like to shake this restaurant manager's hand.
From WAVE-3 in Louisville.

Woman says restaurant kicked her out because of crying child

It seems to happen all the time: an unhappy child causing a scene in a public place. But one Louisville mom says a Springhurst restaurant went too far, throwing her and her family out of the restaurant. WAVE 3 Investigator Lindsay English spoke with the mom and the restaurant's representatives to sort out what happened.

Amanda Williams says her lunch at O'Charley's in Springhurst ended before it began, with her and her family being shown the door.

"I was so upset," Williams said. "I cried. I was devastated. I was embarrassed. Everybody was looking at me."

Williams says her tears came, after the restaurant's general manager asked her, her three sons and her sister to get out.

"He told me that if I could not hush my son, that he was going to have to ask us to leave," Williams recalled. She says her 20-month old son continued to cry, despite efforts to calm him. She claims that's why General Manager Joe Houle gave them the boot.

"He stood there with a very serious look on his face, and he says 'if you can't control your child, then we'll have to ask you to dine at another establishment," Williams said.