Articles Posted in Best Of

About 12 years ago, Ocean City, Maryland resident Richard Brueckner disappeared – right when Richard Thelander was “born.” Now these are just the allegations against Brueckner/Thelander (as reported in The Maryland Coast Dispatch), but it sure doesn’t look real good:

The charges against Brueckner … include about half a dozen cases where he forged his ex-wife’s name to obtain credit cards, which he quickly maxed out to their limits. The amounts ranged from around $5,000 on the low side to as high as $14,000 on another with several different amounts obtained in cash and merchandize on credit cards in between.

He also cleared out several of the couple’s other accounts and holdings, leaving his wife facing bankruptcy and a years-long struggle to clear up the financial mess.

I could not make this shit up! [Sorry.] A priest in Morganfield, Kentucky is suing Shithead’s owner and the city for allowing the dog to be buried near a veteran’s memorial. It’s not the name that upsets Father Gerald Baker: “What are we saluting? A flagpole with a monument to the dog? It’s offensive. Any Christian, any American should understand why this is offensive.”

Shithead’s owner, Judy Hagan, (an American, and maybe a Christian too!) feels otherwise: “What right does he have to come to this town and put somebody else down for something they have done that he knows nothing about. It’s not a disgrace. I didn’t do it for a disgrace. If that’s the way people wanna take it, then that’s their problem.”

Said Father Baker: “This woman in her arrogance and her ignorance, demanding she has the right do this? Well we’ll just see.” Yes, we will. You’d think this just happened, right? Nope. Shithead was laid to rest, with the city’s permission, in 1999. You can read more in a FirstCoastNews.com article here.

You’d probably be better off having your palm read than having your x-rays or CT scans read by Oregon and Washington radiologist David Shoemaker. Both states have suspended Dr. Shoemaker’s license. Here are a few of the “Findings of Fact” by the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners:

“On May 18, 2001, Patient I underwent CT scans (with contrast) of the abdomen and pelvis. [Dr. Shoemaker] noted small cysts in the ovaries, and noted a normal uters. The patient did not have ovaries or a uterus.” [Emphasis mine. Can you blame me?]

He x-rayed the foot of a patient complaining of foot and toe pain. He noted a hammertoe deformity, but “failed to note the presence of a metallic foreign body in the toe area.” [!]

What did Canadian elementary school teacher Maria Pantalone do that resulted in her pleading guilty to assaulting a 12-year-old boy? Hint #1: She threw something at him. Hint #2: It was brown. Need another hint? Hint #3: It smells really, really bad. Yes, it was feces! And the kid was not even one of her students! Why did she do it? “I couldn’t take it anymore. It was total, total frustration,” she testified, as reported in the Toronto Star. The punishment? Zippy. No fine or jail time. She was suspended, but with pay. Her future as a teacher remains uncertain. Yes, there are several nagging questions: Where did she get the human feces? What could the kid possibly have done to drive her to do it? We’re unlikely to find out because there is a publication ban to protect the minor’s identity. Damn! Here’s the article.

It’s 2:30 a.m. in Hartman, Arkansas. Do you know where your 12-year-old is? No worries. He’s just drinking your beer, with his 10-year-old friend, then taking the truck out for a spin. Why? Per the AP, to find a girl they met at the rodeo! Here’s what happened:

The boys made it about 10 miles before the 12-year-old lost control of the truck… the truck hit and jumped over a guardrail, sending it careening 50 feet down a steep hill into a forest.

Incredibly, neither boy was seriously hurt. Clark James, who lives near the crash scene, was a little surprised when he heard someone banging on his door.

“I opened the door and the first thing (the 12-year-old) said to me was, ‘I’m drunk and I had a wreck,'” James said. “I looked at him and I thought ‘You’re kind of young to be out drinking. And you sure shouldn’t be driving.'”

The 12-year-old is facing drunk driving, plus a few other charges (like, maybe driving without a license?)

So if you’re a neighbor of 15-year-old Ryan Bowen, you could always move. (One poor family did.) But what do you have to do to get the court to issue an ASBO (Anti-Social Behavior Order) against you? And to take the unusual step of naming you? (The ASBO imposes a curfew, prevents Ryan from associating with certain people, and imposes other restrictions on his behavior.) As reported in The Herald Express, here are some of the allegations the court heard before imposing the ASBO:

Police legal adviser Mr Quinn told the court that Ryan was a ‘complete thug – and that’s putting it mildly’. He added: “He may not yet be 16 years, but in his short life he has terrorised the people of Teignmouth and the surrounding area. He seems to have no redeeming features.

He targeted vulnerable neighbours, subjecting them to obscene and racial abuse, threatening their children and attacking their cars and homes.

Ryan went to one woman neighbour’s workplace and subjected her to an abusive attack there.

Ryan fired a BB gun at people, pushed used condoms through their doors, walked over their cars, and jumped up and down on them.

One family had finally moved because they could no longer take the abuse and intimidation meted out by Ryan and his friends – only to be subjected to more abuse when they ran into the teenager in a Tesco store. “He was not satisfied to drive them out of their home. He still approached them and abused them,” said PC Colley.

Ryan would ride a mini motorbike around the area until 11.30pm and midnight – kicking out at parked cars as he went.

Hoochiemama. It’s no wonder that “Devon and Cornwall Police’s legal adviser Peter Quinn told magistrates …: ‘Police and the authorities have become increasingly aware of what a force for evil this boy is.'”

Is f-bombing on TV okay in Australia? Hell yes. Chef Gordon Ramsay, of “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” in Australia (and “Hell’s Kitchen” in the U.S.) drops some serious f-bombs. Per The Daily Telegraph,

… celebrity chef Ramsay slipp[ed] in the f-word more than 80 times in one episode.

Shazam! Should the government get involved?

[Australian] Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi said the dropping of the “c-bomb” during a recent 9.30pm episode had gone too far.

Do not mess with a man with a bunch of knives, or the network that broadcasts his show.

Channel 9 hit back yesterday, saying 1.5 million viewers would know better than “one person in Parliament” about what they wanted to watch on TV.

So what does Senator Bernardi want? ” … a study of the effectiveness of the broadcasting code of conduct.” Good luck with that, considering chef Ramsay’s other program “The F-Word,” was reviewed by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification, and received just an “M” for moderate coarse language. For more, click here.

Maybe Wayne Simpson should have just called the customer who he said gave him her cell phone number. Said Wayne:

I honestly thought she fancied me. I certainly fancied her. She was gorgeous. She pulled up a chair very close to me and sat there staring into my eyes and fluttering her lashes.

Wayne then took a picture of himself in his bathtub, holding a glass of bourbon, surrounded by bubbles. He sent it to the customer’s phone, with the message “Hi, do you fancy going out for a drink sometime?”
Apparently not. She called the cops, who did not charge Wayne. Then she called his job, and they canned him. Unfortunately for Wayne, he can’t file an unemployment claim because he was with the company less than a year. He is going to sue them, though, for his lost earnings. If you want to read more, click here.

At least they can in Lake County, Florida. I was just kidding about Jackass. It was Jackass Number Two that a kid who appeared to be about 11 rented! And the issue was born.

The library board voted 9-0 against a policy that would prohibit kids under 17 from renting R-rated movies. Lake County commissioners are set to discuss the board’s recommendation today.

So what’s the reasoning behind the unanimous vote? Movie ratings are set by a private group, the Motion Picture Association of America. According to Assistant County Attorney Kimberly Williams, “It’s an unconstitutional delegation of authority for the county to use those MPAA ratings as a guideline for obscenity.” Her opinion is supported by several court decisions, including one by a federal judge in Minnesota last year.

Clearly they have not seen “Footloose,” one of the best Kevin Bacon movies of all time. People, people, people. You can’t stop dancing, as Kevin Bacon proved beyond any reasonable doubt. So who dares to question the lessons of “Footloose?” Well sir, the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, that’s who. Why? To stop obscene dancing. This is sounding very familiar… Just swap out preacher John Lithgow for Home Minister K. Jana Reddy.

What does the new law do? It bans “dancing in clubs, bars and pubs.” Not to worry though. Per Mr. Reddy, “orchestra and singing accompanied by eating and drinking, however, [is] permitted at these places if the managements obtained amusement licences.”

Look, I’ve seen “Footloose” several times (please, please, don’t tell anyone), so let me tell you how this is going to end. The leaders will realize that dancing is not really a problem, and Kevin Bacon will dance off into the Andhra Pradesh sunset. (You can read a little more here.)