reason #2498 i never want to live in florida

Seeing a headline about a one-eyed gator attacking a golfer immediately made me think of my friend Jason.

One-eyed gator pulls golfer into pond
VENICE, Florida (AP) -- A man who lost his ball in a golf course pond nearly lost a limb when a nearly 11-foot alligator latched on to his arm and pulled him in the water, authorities said.

Bruce Burger, 50, was trying to retrieve his ball Monday from a pond on the sixth hole at the Lake Venice Golf Club.

The alligator latched on to Burger's right forearm and pulled him in the pond, said Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Burger used his left arm to beat the reptile until it freed him.

"I saw him reach down to get his ball and he yelled" for help, said Janet Pallo, who was playing the fifth hole and ran over to drive the man to the clubhouse.

Burger, from Lenoir City, Tennessee, was taken to a hospital but was not seriously injured, Morse said Tuesday.

It took seven Fish and Wildlife officers an hour to trap the one-eyed alligator, which measured 10 feet, 11 inches, Morse said.

The pond at the sixth hole has a "Beware of Alligator" sign.

"Unfortunately, that's part of Florida," course general manager Rod Parry said. "There's wildlife in these ponds."

the disturbed are disturbing the rest of us

California man charged with threatening to kill university students
April 20, 2007 - 4:02 am

SAN DIEGO (AP) - A Web designer was charged Thursday with posting on his own site a bogus threat to kill 50 San Diego State University students, then alerting a TV station to try and draw publicity, the FBI said.

Cristobal Fernando Gonzalez, 32, faces one felony count of making a threatening communication through the Internet. He was being held on US$30,000 bail. His parents said outside the federal courthouse that he was remorseful. "I hope it doesn't ruin his future," said his mother, Diana Gomez.

Scores of schools across the United States shut down or evacuated students Thursday and at least a dozen people were arrested or under investigation as the wave of campus threats that started soon after the Virginia Tech shootings spread in the time it takes to make a phone call or post a message on the Internet. At least two students were arrested for bringing guns onto campus.

The overwhelming majority of the threats referred to Monday's massacre in Blacksburg, Va., or the 1999 Columbine high school killings, authorities said. Friday is the eighth anniversary of the Columbine attacks.

A man who allegedly threatened a school attack in Yuba City, Calif., that would dwarf the Virginia Tech attacks, in which gunman Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people and himself, turned himself in to authorities late Thursday, said a dispatcher at the Sutter County Sheriff's Department. It ended a manhunt that prompted school districts in two cities to tighten security.

The man told a pastor Wednesday night "he had some sort of explosive device and he was going to make the incident at Virginia Tech look mild by comparison," Sheriff Jim Denney said.

Officials cancelled classes and activities for Friday at school districts in Yuba and neighbouring Sutter counties, as well as at Yuba College. Classes were expected to resume Monday.

In Michigan, police said they arrested a former Kalamazoo Valley Community College student who posted Internet messages praising the Virginia Tech shooting. Officials closed the college's two campuses through the weekend.

The 26-year-old man "said his intent was just to evoke a response from other people," sheriff's Lt. Terry VanStreain said.

"He got a response from us, I guarantee you that."

Among other arrests and school scares Thursday:

-A high school student in Federal Way, Wash., near Seattle, was arrested after authorities said he brought three loaded guns and extra ammunition.

-A 20-year-old man in Bismarck, N.D., was charged with saying on a blog that the Virginia Tech massacre was funny and he had plans for a school shooting rampage.

-A high school student in Fort Smith, Ark., was arrested after police said he scrawled a message on a classroom desk saying he wanted to "be a hero" like Cho.

-In St. Augustine, Fla., a 14-year-old high school student was charged with threatening in an e-mail between friends to top the Virginia Tech massacre by killing 100 people, a sheriff's spokesman said.

-Two more bomb threats came in by phone to St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, the third straight day since Monday's massacre that the school had received a threat.

-A letter referring to Columbine was posted on a locker room wall at Community R-6 School in Laddonia, Mo. The school was locked down for much of the day. Officials said they would allow parents to keep their children home Friday.

cheesus h. christ

The English are just as crazy about cheese as their cheese-eating surrender monkey cousins across the Channel. And if you know me, you know better than to get between me and my fromage.

But this is just bizarre — the culture that brought us cheese enthusiasts Wallace & Gromit now has a Web site focused on a 44-pound round of cheddar that gets fan mail. Cue Nero ...

Steve Forrest for The New York Times

Tom Calver, of Westcombe, England, has installed a Webcam to allow viewers to watch his cheese mature. Waiting for Gouda? Forget it: it’s all cheddar, all the time.
Paint Drying? Sorry, Wrong Link. This Is Cheddarvision.
By SARAH LYALL
Published: April 17, 2007

WESTCOMBE, England, April 10 — The cruel randomness of celebrity became clear to Tom Calver in February, when the cheese got a romantic Valentine in the mail and he did not.

The home of the celebrity cheese in Westcombe is a working farm.

“What has he done?” Mr. Calver asked of the cheese in question, a 44-pound round of cheddar currently maturing on his farm in this Somerset hamlet. (Mr. Calver’s farm, not the cheese’s.) “He’s just sat there and got moldy.”

But in common with other instant media sensations and members of the world’s ditzerati, the cheddar has not been impeded in its rise to fame by the modest nature of its accomplishments. As the star of Cheddar-vision TV, a Web site that carries live images of its life on a shelf (www.cheddarvision.tv), the cheese has been viewed so far more than 900,000 times.

“It seems to have engaged many people who might not otherwise have bothered to engage with cheesemaking,” said Dom Lane, a spokesman for West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers, of which Mr. Calver is a member.

Mr. Lane helped set up the Webcam in December, when the cheese was made, beginning as milk from Mr. Calver’s herd of Friesian-Holstein cows and then progressing through the standard curds (and whey) phase on its path to becoming a hunk of cheddar. It is to remain on the shelf until December, when, fully mature, it is to be sold for charity.

“We were thinking, ‘How can we demonstrate to people just how long it takes to make a really good cheddar?’ ” Mr. Lane said. “And then we thought: ‘Let’s film it from start to finish. That’s really funny because there’s nothing to see.’ ”

Quite. The cheddar is not busy. It just sits there in a dank, climate-and-humidity controlled cheese-ripening warehouse, subtly aging with hundreds of other cheeses. Once a week a man named Gary, Mr. Calver’s cheese-turner, comes in and turns it to redistribute the moisture within. Compared with the cheese-cam, the old Yule Log on television was a roiling hotbed of nonstop commotion.

As befits an inert object of obsession, the cheese has become a blank slate upon which admirers can express their passions and idiosyncrasies. Poems and songs have been written about it. It has been invited to a wedding. At Easter, it received an anonymous gift of chocolate and decorative chicks.

E-mail correspondents have engaged in a lively debate about the metaphysical significance of the cheese’s mold patterns. From the United States, a teacher announced that his class had set up a wall of cheese, where students could post photographs of the cheese “in various states of rotation.”

Cheddarvision is only the latest boring Internet Webcam to randomly seize the public’s imagination, here in a country with an apparently unparalleled ability to produce them.

The ur-site was probably the one that showed a coffee pot in a Cambridge University computer lab in 1991. First displayed on the internal network as a way to show lab workers when the coffee was ready so they would not have to make fruitless journeys to the coffee machine, the site went global in 1993. It had more than two million visitors before being switched off in 2001.

Other dull British sites, helpfully compiled by Oliver Burkeman in a recent article in The Guardian, include one that shows nothing happening on a side street of Neilston, a suburban village near Glasgow. Another one (now defunct) showed a pile of compost in Sussex.

“It’s possible that you watched the compost decompose with a deep appreciation for the never-ending natural cycles of life and death,” Mr. Burkeman wrote. “Then again, maybe you were just bored.”

Back here in Westcombe, Mr. Calver denies that his cheese is boring. “The mold is growing,” he said. “Microscopically, you would see a lot of action.”

In fact, a time-release film of the cheese shows the effects of age on its person, as it progresses inexorably from young and smooth to old, veiny and mottled. Seeing the film is a poignant reminder of the ravages of time, similar in effect to watching, say, all the movies of Robert Redford or Nick Nolte in quick chronological succession.

Mr. Calver tasted the cheese in March, on the same day he graded it. (It will be graded twice more, at three-month intervals.) He has high hopes for it, but it is not the only cheese in his life.

“Obviously, I feel quite a lot for all the cheeses,” he said. “It’s like having lots of children. You can’t show one more affection than the others.”

The Web site is taking submissions for its name-the-cheese contest. Mr. Calver’s suggestion is “Tom’s Cheese,” but other possibilities include “Wedginald” and “Cheesus.”

As befitting a celebrity, the cheese has its own page on MySpace.com, where we learn that it is a Capricorn, that it is not interested in having children and that it has 521 friends.

Mr. Calver is not quite sure why anyone would want to watch his cheese, although he said it might have something to do with the frenetic and provisional nature of life today.

“It’s a security,” he said. “It’s something that’s there 24 hours a day. I heard of someone who said they looked at it before bed and found it a nice, comforting thing. You should really talk to a psychologist.”

some people are just SOL

How funny. Leo, Ash and I were talking about this (toilet cleanliness, not crazy Japanese fads) last night.

Superstition sparks toilet cleaning craze
Thu Mar 1, 2007 2:34 PM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Cleanliness has long been next to godliness for the hygiene-conscious Japanese, but fortune-tellers are now advising those who want to succeed in life to start by scrubbing the smallest room.

"Cleaning the toilet to attract luck" published this month is the latest in a series of books advising readers on how to attract good fortune using a brush and an array of cleaning fluids.

"Don't just wipe the floor, polish it," the book instructs. "It's important to maintain a positive mood while cleaning."

The books are inspired by Buddhist teachings and feng shui, a traditional Chinese belief that people's fortunes are determined by their surroundings.

The idea that Lady Luck may be hiding in the lavatory has been taken up by magazines and television programs.

"I won the lottery! I married my ideal person! I got pregnant!" read some of the claims on the cover of another book on the topic, published last year.

The idea that a clean toilet can bring good fortune, or even make you more beautiful, has existed in Japan for many years, according to Yuka Soma of Makino Publishing in Tokyo, editor of one of the toilet books.

But she is still waiting for a big stroke of luck.

"I've always cleaned my toilet every day, so it never really gets dirty," she said. "At least it's easy that way and it probably helps keep my family healthy," she said.

only in america

I've always thought that TV sucked the life out of you ...

Mummified body found in front of blaring TV
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Police called to a Long Island man's house discovered the mummified remains of the resident, dead for more than a year, sitting in front of a blaring television set.

The 70-year-old Hampton Bays, New York, resident, identified as Vincenzo Ricardo, appeared to have died of natural causes. Police said on Saturday his body was discovered on Thursday when they went to the house to investigate a report of a burst water pipe.

"You could see his face. He still had hair on his head," Newsday quoted morgue assistant Jeff Bacchus as saying. The home's low humidity had preserved the body. (Watch for views inside the house and why no one ever bothered to check on himVideo)

Officials could not explain why the electricity had not been turned off, considering Ricardo had not been heard from since December 2005.

Neighbors said when they had not seen Ricardo, who was diabetic and had been blind for years, they assumed he was in the hospital or a long-term care facility.

rogue sea lion terrorizes swimmers

I can't help but think of the principal in "The Breakfast Club" right about now. (If you mess with the bull, you get the horns.)

Move over Jaws, chomping sea lion terrorizes swimmers
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Tourists flock to Fisherman's Wharf for the seafood and the stunning views of San Francisco Bay, but for many visitors, the real stars are the dozens of playful, whiskered sea lions that lounge by the water's edge, gulping down fish.

Now a series of sea-lion attacks on people in recent months has led experts to warn that the animals are not as cute and cuddly as they appear.

"People should understand these animals are out there not to attack people or humans. But they're out there to survive for themselves," said Jim Oswald, a spokesman for the Marine Mammal Center across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. (Watch wary swimmers on alert for 'whiskers on feet' Video)

In the most frightening of the recent episodes, a rogue sea lion bit 14 swimmers this month and chased 10 more out of the water at San Francisco's Aquatic Park, a sheltered lagoon near the bay. At least one victim suffered puncture wounds.

Some scientists speculate that the animals' aggressive behavior is being caused by eating fish contaminated by toxic algae, or by a shortage of food off the coast. But wildlife experts say even healthy sea lions are best left alone.

In Southern California in June, a sea lion charged several people on Manhattan Beach and bit a man before waddling into the water and swimming away. In Berkeley, a woman was hospitalized last spring after a sea lion took a chunk out of her leg.

Last year, a group of sea lions took over a Newport Beach marina and caused a vintage 50-foot yacht to capsize when they boarded it. And a lifeguard in Santa Barbara was bitten three times while swimming off El Capitan State Beach.

In Alaska, a huge sea lion jumped onto a fisherman's boat in 2004, knocked him overboard and pulled him underwater; he escaped without serious injury.

Sea lions, which can reach 1,000 pounds, typically bite only if they feel threatened or cornered. And they are more likely to flee than fight if they can escape. Researchers have described the most recent attacks, in which some swimmers were chased through open water, as abnormal behavior.

Still, with a population numbering about 200,000 and growing, these playful, social creatures are increasingly likely to cross paths with humans.

Sea lions accustomed to the easy pickings of seafood scraps in popular fishing areas can become aggressive toward people if they fear their food is about to be taken away, Oswald said.

The Berkeley attack, for example, was at a marina where fishermen dock their boats and feed fish scraps to sea lions. After they ran out of scraps, the sea lion turned aggressive and bit a crew member.

At the same time, a food shortage off the Southern California coast could be driving more hungry sea lions than usual to San Francisco Bay, said Lynn Cullivan, a spokesman for San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

Humans could also be contributing to aggression in sea lions in another way: Toxic algae blooms fed by agricultural runoff and other pollution can lead to the poisoning of marine mammals by a chemical called domoic acid, which can cause brain damage. The Marine Mammal Center treated more than 200 sea lions for domoic acid poisoning last year.

Veterinarians at the center believe the brain damage caused by the poison could have led to the marauding animal's erratic behavior in Aquatic Park, Oswald said, though they cannot be sure without actually examining the sea lion.

So far park rangers have not been able to track the attacker down. Nevertheless, the lagoon where the attacks occurred has been reopened to swimmers, though with new signs warning people to stay away from sea lions.

"People who swim with the lions -- though I'm sure that's nice -- it's probably not the best thing to do," Oswald said. "It's a wild animal. And you want to keep them wild."