Moderator:Æron
I get them for free at workI figure if you're paying a dollar a bottle for f'ing water, you're pretty much throwing your money away anyway. Doesn't matter if it comes from a city's water supply, a mountain spring, or God's own tears -- it's still water.
. I'd never pay for one.
Height of Obscenity: Nepal's mountaineering authorities are calling for a ban on nudity and attempts to set obscene records on Mount Everest. Last year, a climber claimed the world's highest display of nudity when he disrobed while standing on the 29,035-foot summit.
And then he got frostbite in very inconvenient places.
Sep 26, 11:21 PM EDT
Lab Tech Bites Boy, 3, During Blood Test
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- A laboratory technician was fired after the parents of a 3-year-old boy claimed she bit his shoulder during a blood test, a hospital spokesman said.
Faith Buntin took her son Victor to St. Vincent Hospital on Friday to have blood drawn because of recent recalls of toys involving lead. She said she saw the worker put her mouth on Victor's shoulder as she restrained him so another lab worker could draw the blood.
"I looked at her like that was the craziest thing that I'd ever seen," Faith Buntin said Tuesday. "She looked at me and smiled and said, 'Oh, it was just a play bite. He's not hurt.'"
Buntin said she saw teeth marks on the boy's left shoulder after they went home, and her husband drove the child back to the hospital, where he was prescribed antibiotics.
"Taking a bite out of him like he's an apple, this is heinous," said James Buntin, the boy's father.
St. Vincent is "reviewing the capabilities" of the employees of the subcontractor that does its blood work, hospital spokesman Johnny Smith said.
No charges have been filed.
Sep 26, 10:18 PM EDT
Dead? You Still Have to Pay Library Fine
HARRISON, N.Y. (AP) -- Even the dead apparently have to pay the fines on their overdue books at one Westchester County library. Elizabeth Schaper said she was charged a 50-cent late fee while turning in a book that her late mother had checked out of a Harrison Public Library branch.
"I was in shock," Schaper said. "This has rocked me to my core."
Schaper's mother, Ethel Schaper, died at the age of 87 on Sept. 16 after suffering a massive stroke. A few days later, Schaper said she found a library book, "The Price of Silence," by Camilla Trinchieri, that her mother had checked out from the library.
"My mother was an avid reader - she read an average of two books a week," Schaper said. "She was a frequent patron of the library."
Schaper said she returned the book last week, and was stunned when the man behind the library counter told her of the 50-cent fee.
"I told him that maybe he didn't hear me right, that my mother had just died, otherwise I'm sure that she would have returned it on time," Schaper said. "His only reply was that, 'That will be 50 cents.'"
Connie Perrotta, a secretary for the director of the Harrison Public Library, confirmed the incident occurred but said that the library would have no comment.
Schaper said a couple days after the incident another library employee called to apologize and offered to return the fine she had paid.
Taking a Whack Against Comcast
Mona Shaw Reached Her Breaking Point, Then for Her Hammer
By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 18, 2007; C01
Sometimes truly American virtues arise in outlaws who -- by dint of heroic but questionable endeavors -- display the mettle of the national character.
For instance: The Dillinger Gang, robbing banks (and destroying mortgages) when banks were foreclosing on the poor. Stephanie St. Clair, matron of the numbers racket during the Harlem Renaissance, striking a (dubious) blow for both gender and racial equality. Junior Johnson bootlegging liquor during Prohibition (the benefits of which were self-evident).
Fear not, fellow Americans! In these dark days of war, pestilence and Paris Hilton, a new hero has arisen. She is none other than 75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw, who took the aforementioned implement to her local Comcast office in Manassas to settle a score, and boy, did she!
This was after the company had scheduled installation of its much ballyhooed "Triple Play" service, which combines phone, cable and Internet services, in Shaw's brick home in nearby Bristow. But Shaw said they failed to show up on the appointed day, Monday, Aug. 13. They came two days later but left with the job half done. On Friday morning, they cut off all service.
This was the company that has had consumer service problems serious enough to prompt the trade magazine Advertising Age to editorialize that Comcast and other cable providers should spend less on advertising and more on customer service. And has spawned a blog called ComcastMustDie.com that's filled with posts from angry customers.
So on that Friday, Mona Shaw and her husband, Don, went to the local call center office to complain.
Let's pick it up, mid-action, according to Shaw:
Mona demands to speak to a manager. A customer service representative says someone will be right with them. Directs them to a bench, outside. (Remember, it's mid-August.) Mona and Don sit.
Tick, tick, tick, goes the clock. Sit, sit, sit, go Mona and Don.
For. Two. Hours.
And then -- this is the best part -- the customer rep leans out the door and says the manager has left for the day. Thanks for coming!
Oh, the sputtering outrage!
The insulting idea that, as Shaw puts it, "they thought just because we're old enough to get Social Security that we lack both brains and backbone."
So, after stewing over it all weekend, on the following Monday, she went downstairs, got Don's claw hammer and said: "C'mon, honey, we're going to Comcast."
Did you try to stop her, Mr. Shaw?
"Oh no, no," he says.
Hammer time: Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!
"They cuffed me right then," she says.
Her take on Comcast: "What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles."
Being a responsible newspaper, we must note that this is a misdemeanor, a crime, a completely inappropriate way of handling a business dispute.
Noted.
Who among us has not longed for a hammer in this age of incompetent "customer service representatives," of nimrods reading from a script at some 800-number location, of crumbs-in-their-beards plumbing installation people who tell you they'll grace you with their presence between 12 and 3, only never to show? And you'll call and call and finally some outsourced representative slings a dart at a calendar and tells you another guy will come back between 10 and 2 next Thursday? And when this guy comes, pants halfway down his behind, he'll tell you he brought the wrong part?
And there is nothing, nothing you can do.
Until there! On the horizon! It's Hammer Woman, avenger of oppressed cable subscribers everywhere! (Cue galloping "Lone Ranger" theme.)
"I scared the tar out of some people, at least," she says. "It had never occurred to me to take a hammer to a phone company before, but I was just so upset. . . . After I hit the keyboard, I turned to this blonde who had been there the previous Friday, the one who told me to wait for the manager, and I said, ' Now do I have your attention?' "
It wasn't all fun.
"My blood pressure went up around my ears. I started hyperventilating. They had to call the rescue squad and put me on a litter."
By the time it was over, she recalls, there were an ambulance, two police cruisers and a sergeant's car in the parking lot. Shaw received a three-month suspended sentence for disorderly conduct, a $345 fine in restitution and a year-long restraining order barring her from the Comcast office.
"Truly a unique and inappropriate situation," says Beth Bacha, a vice president for Comcast. She says company policy forbids disclosure of clients' records, but did say their files note that the service record wasn't exactly what Shaw has indicated. Besides, "nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior."
Bacha noted that Comcast has more than 25 million customers, the overwhelming majority of which are very satistified with their service.
Manassas police spokesman Sgt. Tim Neumann says there have been other police calls to that Comcast office, but he doesn't know what prompted them.
Bob Garfield, who runs ComcastMustDie.com, wrote last week he was happy the site had become an outlet for "so much deep-seated rage," but hoped customers would "keep the hammer assaults down to a bare minimum."
From what we can tell, Mona Shaw is not, actually, a raving lunatic armed with construction tools.
She is a nice lady who lives in a nice house. She and Don are both retired from the Air Force (she was a registered nurse). They have been married 45 years. She is secretary of the local AARP, secretary of a square-dancing club and takes in strays for the local animal shelter (they have seven dogs at the moment). She has a heart condition. She lifts weights at a local gym. The couple attend a Unitarian Universalist church.
Police gave her the hammer back, though she swears she's content to ride off into the sunset of True Crime Stories in America, never again to go Com-smash-tic on her local cable provider.
She does, however, finally, have phone service.
On Verizon.
Officials find bag that fell from jet near Midway
By Jon Hilkevitch
Tribune transportation reporter
2:27 PM CDT, October 22, 2007
Giving a new meaning to "baggage claim," authorities today recovered one of two pieces of luggage that spilled out of the cargo hold of an airliner that had departed from Midway Airport on Sunday.
The bag, described as either a garment carrier or a duffel bag, was found about a half-mile from Midway, said a spokeswoman for Atlantic Southeast Airlines, which was operating the flight for Delta Airlines.
The airline was in the process of trying to reunite the luggage with its owner. The condition of the bag, which may have fallen several thousand feet from an open cargo bay door, was not known, the airline said.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating how the cargo door opened in midair, apparently sending two pieces of luggage to the ground and prompting the plane's return to the airport.
Delta Flight No. 4718 took off about 9:40 a.m. and was forced to circle back to Midway shortly after takeoff when a pressure problem in the cabin was detected and instruments showed a cargo door had opened during flight, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
After the plane landed safely and taxied to the gate, a crew inspecting the plane found one of the two cargo doors ajar, said Kate Modolo, a spokeswoman for Atlantic Southeast. A baggage inventory determined two pieces of luggage were gone. The FAA had earlier said the door was missing.
Modolo said the airline is attempting to track down the bags. Chicago police today said they have not received any calls about the lost baggage.
"If somebody finds it and says there's a suitcase in my back yard," officers will take a look, Police Officer John Henry said.
The Atlanta-bound CRJ 700 jet was carrying a full load of 70 passengers, who were put on another flight to Atlanta later Sunday, said Modolo.
The airline is still gathering details about the incident and working with passengers who lost luggage, which had been checked in at the gate.
The FAA said it has contacted the National Transportation Safety Board about the incident, but a spokesman for that agency had yet to return a call seeking comment.
Nov 1, 11:16 PM EDT
Prank Leaves 75 Gnomes Without Homes
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. (AP) -- A number of gnomes have taken sanctuary at the Springfield police station. Somebody apparently collected 75 lawn ornaments from around town and then, on the night of Oct. 17, placed them meticulously on and around the lawn of one house.
Among the plastic and porcelain geese, deer and frogs are gnomes, such as a weather gnome outfitted with a rain gauge.
Police want to find the rightful owners.
"We need to get them out of here," Capt. Richard Harrison said. "Every time I leave my office they're sitting in my chair, working on my computer. I can't seem to get rid of the darn things."
There will be a public viewing Tuesday.
"If they come here and they can identify it," Harrison said, "we're more than happy to let the gnome go home."
After that the gnomes, and any other ornaments, will be sold at auction.
Sermon Prompts Tips That Leads to Arrest
BUFFALO, N.Y. —
What man taketh away, modern technology helps giveth back. The Subway sandwich shop at the True Bethel Baptist Church in Buffalo was robbed at gunpoint on Friday night, but the crime was recorded on the store's surveillance video.
During Sunday church services, Rev. Darius Pridgen gave a sermon about the harm people do to one another. Pridgen included footage from the robbery and it was showed on two large video screens. His sermon also offered a $3,000 reward for the arrest of the suspect.
Within minutes after the service ended, four anonymous tips identifying the robber were received. A few hours later, police arrested David Glass, 45, and charged him with robbery and petit larceny.
Pridgen said he offered the reward because he wants to show his community that crime pays, but not for the criminal. (Associated Press)
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