Silflay Hraka

Fla. Man Kills Roommate Over Toilet Paper

Matthews was beaten so badly he had to be identified through his fingerprints, detectives said.

lost camera: camera unlost, but not quite found.

I think it must some kind of universal law that all neighbors must have a top-of-the-line surround sound stereo system. I think there must be some kind of corollary that all neighbors must also be hard of hearing.

This, at least, is my experience. First there was the guy who lived above me in my old apartment. I couldn’t figure him out. At first glance, I thought he was just another white-trash, redneck loser, but his parents were really nice and had some money. I suspect they’d been a little too lenient on him and he’d gone sour and had gotten involved with the Wrong Sort of People.

read more »

Cleric Announces $1M Bounty for Cartoonist.

I read this article expecting something. I read the article above expecting to read that said Cleric had been arrested for threatening the life of another individual. I mean, basically he’s advertising murder for hire.

If the text of the article is the entirety of the matter, this hasn’t happened. The questionable cleric is still at large and apparently planning to fork over a million dollars to whoever brings him the head of a cartoonist.

Are you kidding me? I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of Pakistani law or sharia or whatever is being practiced, but it seems that offering money for someone to be killed should get you locked off at the very least. It’s a non-starter.

Okay, I knew the Ayatollah Khomeni offered money to have Salman Rushdie murdered. But he was kind of, um, you know, the head of Iran, a country that is mostly well-known for its fundamentalist brand of government. But it had been my understanding that Pakistan, minus the territories along the Afghan border, was largely living in the 21st century.

I guess I was wrong. Apparently you can offer large sums of money for the deaths of law-abiding citizens with impunity.

And these guys are our allies? I guess that means it could get worse.

I can see how easy it is to subscribe to the particular line of thinking exhibited by this particular Cleric. I personally believe that he and all his ilk should be lined up and shot.

Too bad I don’t have the kind of money it would take to accomplish such a thing.

Missouri firefighters watch man’s garage go up in flames because he didn’t pay

Not sure how to feel about this. I understand that rural fire departments have to pay their bills just like anyone else, but to sit and watch while a man’s house burns seems to violate the moral equivalent of a doctor’s Hypocratic oath. Sure, they aren’t actually doing harm, but isn’t there some kind of ethical obligation to do what you can to help?

It just smacks of spitefullness to sit and watch while this guys is trying to save his home. The kicker is that his insurance company will probably withold payment due to negligence on the homeowner’s part, negligence being not paying your rural fire department membership dues.

Of course, this all reminds me that the Fraternal Order of Firefighters has been calling me for a donation lately. I guess I better write that check, huh?

The nesting of clauses that lay in the sentence that Cheney said.

Mildly entertaining…

I’ve decided that this space shall be used to extract vengeance on companies that have managed to piss me off. This week’s installment of “The Wrath of Kehaar” comes courtesy of FTD.com.

Being Valentine’s Day week, I found it appropriate to order flowers for…someone who shall remain unnamed. (Some readers may know her as “That Girl”. Some readers being “That Guy”. As in “That Guy that basically called me a whore on last year’s ski trip”. You know who you are.)

Since ordering flowers is one of the killer applications of the Internet and because it is the Valentine’s holiday season, you can’t cyber-spit without hitting a banner advertising some floral delivery service or other. The one that caught my eye and earned my business was one for FTD.com. For one, FTD is a fairly well-known brand and I know FTD uses local floral shops for delivery. This was a plus to me because I didn’t want to send boxed flowers and I placed the order a little late in game.

In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t actually get around to placing my order until Monday morning. Another reason I chose FTD.com is because they offer same day delivery if you order before 2:00 p.m. I reasoned that if FTD can offer same day delivery, they should certainly be able to put my order together for delivery the next day. The site does say that they cannot offer specific delivery times and that delivery on holidays may be as late as 9:00 p.m. This was all fine by me.

Unfortuntely, Valentine’s Day came and went with no floral delivery for “That Girl”. I realize that Valentine’s Day is the busiest floral delivery day of the year and I did place my order a little late in the game , but a guy does earn brownie points for being thoughtful on Valentine’s Day. Order flowers that do not arrive does not carry quite the same cachet as order flowers that do arrive. I was miffed, but not totally pissed. The thought was there and it had been communicated and, though I didn’t earn full brownie points, I did earn some.

So the flowers didn’t arrive on Valentine’s Day, but I did assume they would be delivered on the 15th without fail.

Wrong.

read more »

Am I the only one who thinks that the Vice President accidentally shooting a hunting buddy, while being news and joke-worthy, is being massively overplayed in the press and on the blogosphere?

Okay, so the VP accidentally shot someone. Okay, so maybe the press wasn’t informed quickly enough. So maybe he didn’t have a hunting license. So the victim had a heart attack because of birdshot in the lining of his heart. So maybe the VP had a few drinks beforehand. The reason for delaying the press release may even have been to shuttle Cheney’s extramarital affair out of the picture.

But it still doesn’t deserve the kind of continuous coverage it’s been getting. It was an honest accident involving two Americans exercising their constitutional rights to bear arms. The Press and the Left seems to have its collective panties in a wad because the Veep had a few brews with a few hunting buddies before shooting his friend in the face and chest.

If you really want to go after Cheney, at least go after him for something worth shining some light on.

How about the fact that Cheney feels he has the power to declassify secrets in order to discredit political opponents? That seems to be a thousand times more important than the hunting incident, but my favorite blog indexer seems to be strangely quiet over the fact that the VP may have declassified information (something he probably has the legal ability to do) in order to out a CIA agent (something that is illegal according to our code of laws, at least to my limited understanding).

Or how about that the fact that Congress, especially the weak-willed, poll-following Democrats, once again appears to be rolling over to the administration by refusing to closely investigate the NSA spy scandal? (How’s that for representing the populace for you? Can we get a third second party over here, please? One that doesn’t pander for a living? Geez.)

Or how about the fact that our government has sullied each of us and destroyed our image around the world by using torture as the method of choice for dealing with prisoners?

If you want to be righteously indignant about something, at least make sure it’s something worth fighting about. Cheney’s quail hunt is newsworthy, surely, but only for about twenty-four hours. It seem that the excessive zeal displayed by those digging into this case is just misplace glee at someone’s misfortune. Get over it and let’s move on to discussing the real issues.

The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed.