Posts from — June 2007

VIENNA, VA – Hugging, touching, even high-fiving is now a punishable offense at one Fairfax County, Va., school.

Kids at Kilmer Middle School in suburban Washington, D.C., are under a zero-tolerance touching policy – they’re banned from poking, prodding, hugging, or any other kind of touching.

Seventh-grader Hal Beaulieu, 13, almost ended up with detention when he put his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulder. He was let off with a warning.

But the telling-off was enough to prompt the teen and his parents to write a letter asking the county school board to review the rule. School officials said that at the overcrowded school, pokes can lead to fights and handshakes can be gang-related.

Kilmer Principal Deborah Hernandez said the no-touching rule is meant to ensure that all students are comfortable and crowded hallways and lunchrooms stay safe. She said school officials are allowed to use their judgment in enforcing the rule.

Typically, only repeat offenders are reprimanded.

Hal and his parents want the school board to have the school reconsider the policy. They say there’s a wide margin between a hug and touching that is inappropriate.

JOKESTARTERS:

• In a related development, DC- area administrators and teachers who haven’t been touched enough are making bad decisions.
• And everyone wonders why there’s violence in our schools? Sheesh…

SOURCE:

• The Pittsburgh Channel

SOMERSET, PA — Someone kicked in the door of a man’s apartment, stuck a knife in the door and took a chilled salad from his refrigerator.

Somerset police said the man reported the bizarre burglary on Monday.

He told investigators someone broke into his apartment while he went to a nearby tavern.

Nothing but the salad was missing, police said.

Police said they have a suspect and expect to file charges once they finish their investigation.

JOKESTARTERS:

• This story takes me back to another recent landmark news event: 9/11. I find myself still in shock, depressed, with an uncontrollable urge to eat lettuce. Stolen lettuce.
• This isn’t the first time this man has had thieves break in and take obscure things from his house. Last year, a mysterious burglar snuck in one night and stole his brain.
• Police just released a composite sketch of the main suspect and are asking citizens to be on the lookout:

  

SOURCE:

• WRAL

SANTA FE, NM – A surveillance camera at the First Judicial District courthouse downtown captured a strange image Friday morning that left sheriff’s deputies, lawyers, clerks and judges scratching their heads as to what it might have been.

Some thought it was the ghost of a man killed at the courthouse more than 20 years ago after bringing a rifle to the building and taking several people hostage. Others felt it had to be a reflection from a passing car or a piece of cottonwood tree fluff. Still others threw their hands in the air, but somehow liked the image anyway or at least the hullabaloo it prompted.

“I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s neat that it showed up on a Friday,” said Sally Saunders, assistant to District Judge Stephen Pfeffer. “Now we have something to talk about.”

Deputy Alfred Arana first noticed the image when he arrived at the courthouse early Friday morning and began reviewing the surveillance video from the night before, said Sgt. Vanessa Pacheco of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department. Pacheco arrived half an hour later, and Arana said he’d seen something he couldn’t explain on the digital video and asked Pacheco to rewind it, she said.

When she watched the video, Pacheco was stunned. “It’s something unexplainable,” said Pacheco, who watched the 12-second clip over and over Friday. “I don’t believe in ghosts so I don’t think that’s what it is.”

The image, which starts at 7:27:11 a.m., shows a bright spot of light that comes from either the roof or near the courthouse’s back door on Catron Street — which is used only by law enforcement personnel. The light flits with buglike movements toward the west, appears to move across the front bumper of a parked police car and then traces a small semicircle in a gravel area in the frame’s foreground before leaving the frame at 7:27:23.

“To me, it looks like a person walking, but I don’t know why they have this neon light on their head,” said Steve Aarons, a lawyer.

The light looked a bit like a crab and seemed to crawl like a bug, though Pacheco and others who regularly look at the video said they’ve seen bugs on the lens before, and they don’t look like Friday’s image.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the image is that it appears to cast shadows that look a bit like the movements of the invisible movie monster in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Predator. Many who watched the video said the shadows looked like legs. Mary Marlowe, another lawyer, said she saw hands in the image.

Courthouse employees debated whether it might have been a reflection. However, the angle of the sun didn’t fit with the image, and a large tree outside the door shaded most of the area from above.

“It looks like a reflection of something but the angle of the sun is all wrong,” said Juanita Sena-Shannon, a court clerk.

District Judge Michael Vigil said he, too, thought it was a reflection at first, perhaps from a passing car. But when he looked closer, he realized a reflection would have moved in a straight line, which the light did not. “It doesn’t make sense,” the judge said. “It is bizarre.”

Arana said the footage was clearer when he first watched it than when it was replayed over and over Friday. During that first viewing, he said, it looked as if the light had stars in the shape of a diamond that were each spinning clockwise. Arana said he had no idea what the cameras might have captured.

“But after I saw it, I even went to the door to see if anything was there,” he said.

Deputy Anthony Maes, however, had no problem venturing a guess. “I say it’s a ghost,” he said. “What makes us think we’re the only beings on this planet? It’s too weird.”

Maes said he thought it might be the ghost of convicted murderer Andy Lopez, who took nine people hostage at the courthouse in February 1985 after killing the wife of his original victim. Lopez, who had a rifle at the time, was shot by a sheriff’s deputy when he peaked his head out the back door, said Judge Vigil. Deputies originally thought the incident might have taken place in June, and the alleged ghost was making an appearance on the anniversary of Lopez’s death, though that proved false.

Joanna Salazar, a victim’s advocate for the District Attorney’s Office, said she believed the image was of a spirit. “It’s a little girl, and she can’t find where she needs to be,” Salazar said. “Somebody disturbed her.”

Candy Sisneros, a clerk, said she thought it might have been a ghost disturbed by the construction of the city’s new convention center across the street. She said her husband, a sheriff’s deputy, used to work in the courthouse at night when the county’s dispatch center was located there, and he used to hear footsteps, doors opening and closing and elevators going up and down.

Jude Torres, 29, has worked at the court house as a janitor for four years and said he sometimes hears noises at night in the building.

“You sometimes hear the cells — like the doors closing.” he said.

He also hears the sound of water around the building but figured the Judge Steven Herrera Courthouse is an old building. However, the noises mainly originate from the same side of the building where the light was seen, Torres said.

To Torres, the image looked like an insect or a spider. He said he’s puzzled by what he saw on the video and would dismiss it outright if it wasn’t for the Predator-like shadow. “There’s just no explanation for that,” he said.

Earl Rhoads, a public defender, had a different take. “I think what you have is a piece of material from a cottonwood tree,” Rhoads said. “I’m not willing to say it’s proof of paranormal activity. I think it’s totally explainable.”

JOKESTARTERS:

SOURCE:

• FreeNewMexican.com

SYDNEY, Australia — Usually when one thinks of garden gnomes, thoughts drift to a) that weird old neighbor lady who thinks they’re seriously cute b) the college kids who stole one from her and took it on a Flickr photo safari around the US or c) some lame travel site using them as their “mascot.”

Australian officials are probably choosing d) none of the above after they found more than a dozen snakes and lizards stuffed inside garden gnomes and similar pottery figures during a recent international mail check, customs officials said Tuesday.

A customs official found two snakes and three lizards wriggling inside the ceramic garden statues during a routine postal inspection in Sydney on June 10.

“When the package was opened, the officer spotted several snakes moving about. The package was immediately resealed,” Australian customs said in a statement.

A day later, officials at the same facility found another package filled with five snakes and five lizards stuffed inside pottery figures and other ornaments.

Both packages had been sent from Britain and had been declared as gifts.

It is illegal to bring live reptiles into Australia without a license. No one was arrested over the incident, but Customs said its investigation was continuing.

The reptiles had to be euthanized due to quarantine regulations.

It was not immediately clear what types of snakes and lizards were in the shipments.

JOKESTARTERS:

• Sadly, while the reptiles had to be euthanized, the Garden Gnomes all survived.
• The last time smugglers got this creative was when some New Zealanders tried to smuggle tics inside some plastic pink flamingoes…

SOURCE:

• WRAL

ANTIOCH, CA — In the nation’s continuing war on sippy cups, a two-year old boy was accidentally given a margarita in a sippy cup at an Applebee’s here last week.

Kim Mayorga was confused when her two-year old started making funny faces and pushing away the apple juice he had ordered.

The explanation came when she opened the lid of the sippy cup and was hit by the smell of tequila and Triple Sec.

The restaurant staff accidentally gave Julian Mayorga a margarita Monday.

He grew drowsy and started vomiting a few hours later and was rushed to the hospital.

“I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it,” the mother told the Contra Costa Times on Thursday, “but then he got sick.”

The apple juice and margarita mix were stored in identical plastic bottles, and the manager mistakenly grabbed the margarita container to pour the boy’s drink, said Randy Tei, vice president for Apple Bay East Inc., which owns the franchise restaurant and nine other Applebee’s in the San Francisco Bay area.

The Mayorgas will be reimbursed for their medical bills, and Tei said the franchise group’s restaurants will no longer serve apple juice and margaritas in similar containers.

“We absolutely believe it was an honest mistake,” Tei said.

The serving appeared to have been accidental, Antioch police Lt. Pat Welch said. Mayorga said her son is now doing fine.

She said the company has been very apologetic and offered free meals, but she added, “If they think I’m going back there, they’re ridiculous.”

JOKESTARTERS:

• In a related development, the father of the toddler was accidentally given breast milk while eating at a nearby Hooter’s.
• To quickly quell the expected negative reaction to this incident, all Applebee’s will now giveaway free sippy cups full of “mystery drinks” to anyone who cries loudly and vomits in their restaurant.

SOURCE:

• WRAL