we have reason to believe he may have a nom de guerre, “French Laurence”

I think I realized why this crane is so demented.  Not because the pieces it’s lifting are absurdly heavy (although they probably are), but because the crane has to massively cantilever out over the canal.

Sure, ok, so I switched to my iPod.

Just so happened that the first song up was Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused.”  Oh perfect, I though,  just what he asked for.

After a minute, “Dad, can you change this to rock music, not this?”  Led Zeppelin isn’t rock music anymore?

So I flipped ahead randomly, through Barry White (no),  McKoy Turner (definitely No), and others until I landed on Stevie Ray Vaughn song (“Tightrope”).

“Yes!” announced Luke.  That was proper rock music.

So what does this mean?  Led Zepplin is to Luke as Buddy Holly is to me???

Eulogies included:

“He was the kind of guy who could and did get along with everyone,” said Bill Roper, head of Arkansas-based White Revolution.

I’m terrible with faces and, especially, names.  So I am very surprised that I scored slightly above average on the (slightly creepy) Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Listen with audio off, unless you want to hear the typical tedious North American airline passenger commentary-drivel.

Ten minutes from home, I got a call from Ling, “hey we have an owl in the bathroom.”

“huh?” I asked.

“Yeah, there’s an owl in the bathroom.”

“Well how the hell did it get in there?”   I asked, stupidly.  I’m sure it got in there the same way the bats and other creatures have before.

I told her to turn off the lights and close the door and I’d get home.

So I checked it out, sure enough, there’s a pretty decent sized owl sitting on my laundry basket in the bathroom!

So my idea was to catch it like a bird,  toss a sheet on it, or use sheets to corral it till its best option was to fly out the window (Our windows are those awkward push out windows that aren’t very big. I’ve no idea why it came in in the first place.

So as I was trying to carefully  stalk and corral it, while holding the sheet up, it landed on the bathroom sink.  Our maid, Emily (the country girl), simply walked over and picked he/she up!  It didn’t even put up any fight.  It just looked around a bit (it didn’t rotate its head 180d). We were all amazed.  We grabbed these photos, then Country Girl took it to the big bedroom window and it soared right out.  Everyone was impressed with the owl and Emily!

I must say, a damn cool bird.

My PhD biologist friend in Singapore thinks it was a barn owl.  Here are the owls found in Singapore.

PORTLAND — Safeway officials say they have proof that a local couple stole more than $5 million in merchandise from stores in the Portland Metro area over the past several years.

Ok, wow, that’s a lot of stuff to steal, isn’t it?

Evans told police that the couple stole mostly common items like shampoos, razors, Rogaine, teeth whiteners, conditioners to batteries, DVDs and CDs, according to the affidavit, which also said that Remington stole DVDs on 22 different dates since November.

Hmm. $5mn worth of shampoo?  Ummm, is this believable?  Normally the expensive stuff is behind a counter, or chained up, or something.

Safeway security officer Trent Drucker estimates that Remington stole $400,000 a year in merchandise over several years, totaling $5 million over the span of thefts.

“Trent Drucker” — sounds like a Simpson character.  But gee, there is a lot of extrapolation going on with these figures.  I am guessing Trent is pulling numbers out of his druck-hole.

Imagine they’re stealing expensive things only, so the average price is 50$.  That means they have to steal 100,000 items over several (3) years. That’s 33,000 items per year.  Imagine there are 10 stores on their looting circuit.  That’s 3,300 fifty-dollar items from ten stores for 3 years.  Imagine they’re very diligent, and steal 300 days per year, that’s: one hundred each of fifty-dollar items on 300 days a year at ten different stores for 3 years. And actually, it’s not, that would only net you $4,500,000.

Or go at it a different way, if anything like this volume of looting was going on for “several” years, why does “Security Officer Drucker” still have a job?!

Anyway, these remarks are clearly absurd.  And since they’re absurd, you figure they’re off by a order of magnitude anyway, so $500,000 over three years.  That still sounds astonishingly big.   Thus I bet the real figure is closer to half that:  $250,000.

Anyway, it probably doesn’t even matter, as a lawyer will get them acquitted.

On Nov. 19, Safeway security officials placed a tracking device on a van driven by the couple. Whenever the van was driven to a Safeway, surveillance videos were carefully scrutinized.

How the hell is that ever going to fly?  The signs in the parking lot onlys says that the store has no liability for damage.  If you get banged by a shopping cart, it’s your own problem.  I’ve not been to Safeway in a while, but I don’t think they also include, “parking here subjects you to warrantless, private,  wireless bug tracking.”

Anway, what a low story.  Morons chasing dirtballs. Neat.

I wonder if Security Officer Drucker held a boastful press conference where they showed all the booty they had recovered… $5mn dollars worth of purloined spam, rogaine, and energizer D-cells?

My orange pep pills didn’t work, so it’s another cowboy movie tonight:  3:10 to Yuma.    At least it’s started off a lot better — the 1870′s equivalent of the opening scene from Heat.  The fey cowboy has sure got some cool leather ensembles.