A man in New York has pled guilty to trying to hire someone to kill his ex.  Apparently hiring a friend to do it and make it look like an accident was Plan B.  Plan A was to kill a bear, wear the skin, and use the claws to tear her up.  That way a bear would be blamed for her death, and the man could live out free and happy.

Wow

Just how drunk or high do you have to be to think that it’s easier to kill and skin a bear so that you have an alibi for the death of your ex-wife than to just pay someone to do it?  I’m not admitting anything here, but there have been times when I at least had the thought.  It never occurred to me to kill and skin an apex predator and use their body to off someone.

I’m glad that he changed his mind, tried to get a friend to kill his ex, and the friend went to the police.  Not only is a scumbag is in jail and the woman wasn’t hurt, but an innocent bear isn’t dead and the rest of the bears aren’t under suspicion.  You all have no idea how much hassle we get every time some bruin is suspected of mauling someone.

Ladies and Gentlemen, when reaching into the trunk of your significant other’s automobile to retrieve something, make sure someone else is not trying to close said trunk.

Girlie Bear caught me about a quarter of an inch into my hairline from the forehead with the corner of the trunk lid.  And I thought I had a headache before they came home.

It didn’t break the skin, so I won’t even get a cool scar out of it.  Just a bit of a lump and a bit of pride for not cussing a blue streak afterwards.

Thank God for thick skulls.

When your loving wife is out of sorts all evening, and you finally find out that she’s upset because the grocery store she makes a quick run through to pick things up for dinner has been re-organized and she had to hunt for things, do not, under any circumstances tell her she’s being silly.  Even if she is indeed being silly.  Actually, especially if she is being silly.

Also, when you find yourself in a hole for telling her she’s being silly, do not invest in a good pick and shovel by shrugging your shoulders and saying “I guess you’ll just have to figure it out and change your pattern.”.  She’s not looking for advice, she’s looking for a sympathetic ear.

I really ought to just build my own shun bench for the living room.  Something in a nice walnut would do nicely, I think.

how much marriage is like the Act of Contrition?

What have I done?
What have I failed to do?
In thought, word, and/or deed?

I am wholly sorry, and I humbly repent.

Please stop crying. Please?

Dear Jerks,

I’m glad to hear that you have been released from your confinement in Iran.  I’m sure that your family and friends here in the United States will be happy to see your ignorant butts after so many months away. 

Now that you and the young lady that accompanied you on your little nature hike in the mountains of Northern Iraq are safe, I have a few things to say:

You went for a bit of hiking in a war zone next to the border with a country that distinctly dislikes people from our country, and seemed shocked that you ended up in a jail cell.  What in hell were you thinking, and what were you thinking with?  Northern Iraq is safer than the rest of the country, but that’s like saying that Hollywood is safer than Compton.  Both are a bit scary for skinny little college kids like you. 

Oh, I see from the news report that you all went to the University of California at Berkeley.  That explains a lot.  Now that I know that, I can see why you would have believed that the world outside of the parts controlled by the United States are a great place to go wandering.

I sincerely hope that the government sends you a bill for all of the time and money spent trying to bribe your way out of whatever hellhole you were being held in.  It is my sincere hope that you spend the rest of your life trying to pay off that quite sizeable debt.  Personally, I would have left your ignorant asses to rot in whatever cesspool they threw you in until you were nothing but a memory as an example to whatever other rich hippie-wannabes that think going to the mid-east for a camping trip is a good idea. 

In the future, when a bit of wanderlust comes over you, and you need to head to the mountains, might I suggest the Appalachian Trail, the Wasatch Front, or the Sierra Nevadas as a destination?  Yeah, you won’t  be able to boast that you hiked through the third world, but at least when you do something stupid we can use our own resources to pull your asses out of a crack.

NASA’s wayward satellite is projected to rain fiery death upon the children of Earth this week.  Or not.  Depends.
Overwhelming odds are that this will drop into a big wet blue thing or hit some unused dirt out in the back of someone’s beyond.  Of course, it would be entertaining if a big chunk of it landed in Central Park or on the lawn of the White House. 

Here are some tips for the impending rain of space debris:

• Stay off of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.  Everyone is saying that’s where it will probably land.
• Lightning sometimes strikes twice.  If you’re in Western Australia, look out.
• Make yourself a good protective garment for your head and stand upright to minimize your exposure and protect that which is exposed. Your headgear should be composed of:

Layer 1 – Tin foil – Self Explanatory
Layer 2 – Ball Cap – Comfort and shade for the eyes
Layer 3 – Kevlar – Self explanatory
Layer 4 – Black Duct Tape or a light fighter Cabbage Patch Hat – Break up your outline

• No matter how good a center fielder you were, do not attempt to catch bits of satellite as they fall.  Wait for the first bounce.
• Same goes for you soccer players.  No headers, unless you’ve done a really good job with your headgear.
• You will however gain unheard amounts of street cred of you’re successful in shooting down satellite pieces as they fall with your skeet gun and get it on film.
• Satellite pieces may be dangerous, so let them cool completely before gathering them up and reselling them to the local scrap yard.
• If any of the pieces glow, use them to make designer jewelry.  ThinkGeek would jump on that in a New York minute.
• If after handling pieces of the satellite you are detained by the government, assume that it’s an Andromeda Strain kind of situation and you are doomed.

So there you are!  Good luck, and I’ll see you all at the Lord Humongus costume party after all the excitement.

Wing over at On A Wing and A Whim has landed herself a job!

She’s having quite a year.  She started it off by returning to Alaska and finishing the work to restore and shake down her airplane, then flew it solo from Alaska to her home in the middle of the continental USA, and now she’s back to being a regular taxpayer and supporter of our benevolent welfare state.

Go on over and congratulate a lady who’s found herself a job in this economy!

A kindergartener in Missouri really wowed his teacher at show and tell the other day.  When told to bring in something that’s important to the family, he brought in his mother’s crack pipe and her stash.

Of course, that pipe may be the most important thing in his mom’s life, but she probably ought to have kept it out of the kids’ reach.

Things like this make me wonder if we deserve to be at the top of the food chain.  Here’s hoping the little tyke is an only child.

Fire them all.

Teachers in Tacoma have decided it’s a good idea to go on strike over things like pay, reassignments, and the size of classes.   Apparently, school administration has gotten a judge to tell the teachers’ union that their walkout is illegal under state law and to order them back to work.  Teachers then held a vote, and decided it was better to flout the orders of a judge with precedent behind him, so they continue to picket instead of teach.

This reminds me of a rather similar situation from my childhood.  In 1981, the union representing air traffic controllers, another group of public employees, declared a strike.  They were told to return to work by someone with the authority of precedent and the law behind him. When they didn’t, almost 13,000 people were fired.

The law says, and is affirmed by the judge’s order, that the teachers in Tacoma do not have the right to walk out.  Don’t like it?  Get a lawyer and sue to have the law declared unconstitutional.  Either that, or work with the legislature in Washington to get the law changed.  Until then, failure to follow the law or the order of a judge runs the risk of consequences.

The leadership of the schools in Tacoma should tell the union and the press that any teacher that doesn’t come in on Monday and start teaching can expect to have their personal items mailed to them along with their last check.  Period. Dot.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again:  Employment is not a right.  It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re working for a too-big-to-fail corporation, the corner grocery run by a little old lady, or the government.  No-one promises you a job.  You have to earn your continued employment every minute of every day. 

You have to have at least some college education to be a teacher, so by definition someone who can teach at a public school should have some skill that they could trade for money in the open market.  Teachers’ unions like to spout off about how talented its members are, and what a sacrifice they are making in taking low paying teaching jobs because they put the education of children before they put their own economic well-being.  It’s time for the teachers of Tacoma to put their money where their mouths are.  They should take their dismissal for participating in an illegal strike, wear it as a badge of honor, and start looking for other employment.  Either that, or go back to the classroom and continue to negotiate through their union to get what they want.

That being said, if the law is unconstitutional, or the law is changed to allow strikes by teachers, then have at it.  Stay out of the workplace as long as you want to.  No-one says you have to work anywhere you don’t want to.  Eventually either you’ll come to some agreement with the administration or the administration will find someone else who wants to teach for what they’re offering and hire them as a ‘temporary’ replacement.  Just don’t look for a lot of sympathy from me the next time you complain about how little you get from strike pay. 

Don’t take this as a condemnation of all unions and all strikes.  Unions do have a valid role in the marketplace.  I believe, however, that a lot of unions and their members lose sight of the fact that sucking more and more out of the company kills the golden goose, and can eventually kill the entire flock.  Ask the unions for steelworkers and automotive assemblers whether the lucrative contracts they got in the 1960’s, coupled with union intransigence in the 1970’s and 1980’s, did anything to keep the companies that employed them viable once they had to compete with companies that could crank out quality goods and services at a much lower price.

The administration shouldn’t use the threat of firings as a club to silence the union, but the union shouldn’t walk out when it doesn’t have the right to and not expect something adverse to happen to its members. 

Looks like the courthouse here in Louisville messed up another magical protection spell when it issued an Emergency Protection Order (EPO) to a young lady recently.

Her ex-boyfriend is alleged to have overcome the cone of safety provided by the EPO, hung out near the ladies apartment, took her keys from her and drug her into her apartment, then took her phone away when she tried to call the police. He then allegedly menaced her with an aluminum baseball bat before taking off. All it would have taken was a few inches of difference in one of those swings of the bat to change this into a murder investigation.

Luckily for her, this jerk was more interested in causing psychological harm and fear than he was in beating her with the bat.  But that’s all she had going for her was luck.  The EPO didn’t work, there wasn’t a policeman or knight in shining armor around to help her, and all she could do was curl up in a ball and hope to live to see sunset.  And like someone once told me:  Hope isn’t a plan.

Ladies, please take control of your own safety, especially if you fear for your life enough to get the state involved.  Don’t rely on luck and hope to keep you from harm when some jerk, whether you know him or not, decides that it’s time to either take your life, your dignity, or your body.