The Apple Store in Costa Mesa had a sign outside the store advertising a “Ladies’ Night.” It appears to be some kind of “outreach to women” thing. It isn’t clear whether the event itself is going to be useful, but they really could have chosen a better name for it. Really they could.
DEVIL FACIAL TUMOR DISEASE – AUSTRALIA (TASMANIA)(02)
**********************************************
A ProMED-mail post
ProMED-mail, a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
Date: 24 Oct 2006
From: Pablo Nart
Source: ABC [edited]
The Tasmanian Government has acknowledged the outbreak of the devil
facial tumor disease in a wildlife park in the state’s north is a
serious setback to the preservation of the species. The state’s chief
veterinary officer has been sent to the Trowunna Wildlife Park at
Mole Creek to try to determine the cause of the outbreak.
Tests for devil facial tumor disease came back positive late last
week for 2 devils at the park.
It is the first time the disease has been found in a wildlife park.
The animals, a 4-year-old male and a 5-year-old female, were bred at
the park and are now in isolation.
Alex Schaap of the Primary Industries and Water Department says the
intrusion of a wild devil is the most likely explanation for the outbreak.
“The discovery of infected devils in that captive population is a
blow because we have a number of devils in captivity which are now at
risk of the disease. That doesn’t mean that other devils in captivity
are at risk,” he said.
The 4 devils sent to Denmark as a gift to celebrate the birth of
Denmark’s Prince Christian came from Trowunna.
According to the Register, a Mr. Joseph Garcia is currently in jail here on a million dollars bail for rape and sexual assault of at least three women. Mr. Garcia’s M.O. was to go on a date, take her home, and jump her. This is apparently not recommended in that he could get up to 45 years if convicted. And where did he get his dates? One just at the post office, and the others at MillionaireMatch.com!
Don’t worry, gals. Not all of the local real estate millionaires are rapists.
Edit: From the millionaire dating service site itself: “If the site is slow at this moment, come back early morning or late night. It may be due to the recent publicity about a major Hollywood celebrity having found a match here.” Yes, or…
Register story is here:
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1328764.php
After a conversation with the Exploding Aardvark tonight I realize I have accidentally come up with a new holiday.
I haven’t been eating much during the day and then at night recently I’ve been going out for Japanese noodles. A lot. Both frequently and a lot of noodles. Tonight I had the hakata ramen, with extra noodles, chashu, and wonton, at Shinsengumi.
I am celebrating Ramendan. Clearly this is some kind of Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday.
And on the left side of the plane if you’ll look out you can see a sick man, a beggar, and a corpse…
Man shot with taser after alleged carjacking attempts
By KATHERINE NGUYEN
The Orange County Register
Costa Mesa — An unidentified man police say was responsible for three carjacking attempts is in the hospital after being shot with a taser gun by officers.
The bizarre string of events started with a three-car accident at 11 p.m. Friday near the intersection of Newport Boulevard and 19th Street. From witness reports, police said the man who caused the accident got out of his car and attempted to carjack a cab. An altercation broke out and it is believed the cab driver ran over the man with his taxi.
“That apparently didn’t stop the suspect and he then attempted to carjack a second vehicle,” said Costa Mesa Police Lt. Dale Birney. “This guy was a one-man crime wave.”
Police received more reports of carjackings further south on Newport Boulevard. At Newport and 18th Street, the same male suspect reportedly punched a motorcyclist before heading over to Newport and Lido Isle. It is unclear how the suspect got there, but police said they found the suspect jumping on parked cars and pulling the windshield wipers off.
Lt. Birney said Newport Beach police then shot the man with a taser the several times. The man, believed to be in his 20s, became unconscious and was taken to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana. His condition is unknown and the investigation is ongoing. He is likely to be arrested for the attempted carjackings in Costa Mesa and felony vandalism in Newport Beach, police said.
This has been a good weekend, full of unexpected social delights and fatty foods.
I have had totally heterosexual man-dates two nights in a row. Friday, burntcurtis took me for Chinese (and I hardly look it) at China Palace, where I ate round-eye delights like orange spicy chicken. Great conversation with him in a romantic booth. Last night threepunchstuff spirited me off to a G(r)eek restaurant where we ate flaming cheese, etc. Thanks to both of you for being wonderfuli and totally heterosexual man-friends!
I also got to see all sorts of people I never see, and purely by chance, including the reclusive handstil and godforesaken who are rarely observed since their natural habitat is fifty feet underground.
And! Other people had sent me books recently so I read a pile of them, including two graphic novels about hellholes. Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang details his time in North Korea working on animation projects, and Ted Rall’s half-graphic Silk Road To Ruin is a combination “comic book” about his travels there and history/backgrounder on Central Asia. Both good. Rall’s is particularly useful and full of the sort of black humor that only places like Turkmenistan provide.
I’m enjoying the Halloween season this year for the first time in forever. I managed to recapture that childhood sensation of anticipation about costumes and haunted houses and candy skulls. I was never big into candy, although acquisition itself was a huge high on the actual night, but I loved the way neighbors did up their houses into “scary” haunts. People around here really get into that, and there are some dark and creepy strobed-out houses with hands reaching out the windows, etc. already. I like that way better than the adult beer-bash version.
Speaking of which, the costumes for kids are turning me into Old Conservative Guy. Nick and Nicole found a set of wrist-and-ankle bondage cuffs in the Halloween store, complete with unambiguous drawing of bound hussy, that included the instruction they were not for children under six. Meanwhile, a young teenager was being urged into a Slutty Nurse Outfit by her mother, as Junior complained “Mom, they won’t allow this at school!” No.
The Santa Ana winds make my eyes and throat dry and are kind of a pain in the ass, but it’s so BEAUTIFUL here right now with that very clear light we never get. I took a load of pics in Santa Ana yesterday and maybe some of of them are salvageable. The “camera out the window at 40 mph” style isn’t conducive to great art.
Maybe I’ll drive out to the desert tomorrow.
But this job ad in “Squeeze OC” is convincing. Speaking of Squeeze OC, they were having a fashion show in the strip-mall denim store next to Kean as I left there tonight. It was just starting to roll as I fled. They were blasting “Lust for Life” and the DJ was instructing everyone to “gather round the runway.” Bro and ho types were sipping wine from plastic cups and gazing across the street at… the other strip mall. I left before America’s Next Medium To Low Models began striding about in $500 jeans.
Espresso over ice, a little sugar, a little half and half.
I shouldn’t expect too much from the free weekly paper in a rich flat right-wing suburb fifty miles south of Los Angeles, but I’m very disappointed in the Orange County Weekly’s “Best of O.C.” issue. It’s an unreadable mess of office in-jokes, arch post-ironic snark, inaccuracies, logrolling, and delusions of grandeur. It is, in short, the Waiting for Guffman issue.
It begins with a bizarrely academic leader which is precious as hell but probably the best-written thing in the issue. It belongs in a painfully literary college humor magazine.
Almost all of the rest of the issue is devoted to an in-group of 25ish partyers. This leads to “My Favorite Things” spreads for a fundraiser party organizer who like Lhasa Apsos and those old 90s records, some random community college student with one of the new-fangled “blogs” who is therefore a social critic, an activist stereotype straight from the pages of The Onion, and a Chapman prof who is claimed to be a novelist but appears to be Adam Sandler playing one in a bad movie. Oh, and an apparently very nice guy who is a computer dude and DJ and stuff but is oddly described as a Renaissance man. Maybe he buys drinks for them a lot. He does seem pretty cool.
About a third of the items are in Long Beach, which is not in Orange County. However the 25ish partyers all live and hang out there and this issue is for and about them, not about their readers.
Clearly the ad salesmen did way too good a job. The issue is big and fat, and even with the high ad-to-editorial ratio they run, that was a lot of inches to fill. But they do have two or three good writers. Arellano and Moxley are of national quality, and Nick Schou is capable and talented. But instead of letting some people with skill work on this thing they just dumped in a load of garbage they could giggle to each other over. They compound the problem by adding on a few “I beg to differ!” items to the end of each “best of” item. This gives you the charming sensation of being next to their group as they pass in-jokes back and forth. I fail to understand why anyone would care which El Pollo Loco these people prefer, much less be present at a cute little fake argument about the choices available.
I suppose it doesn’t matter that my local weekly paper blows so hard. People read it for the listings and the ads, the same way they read the L.A. Weekly. The good writing goes as unnoticed as the bad by almost everyone, and this particular crowd of drunk scenesters is fooling themselves about their importance as much as I did 20 years ago at a free weekly paper, myself. But it could be good, and I wish it was. There are a lot of great things to write about here, enough to fill a Best Of issue with, some Worst Of, and with a lot more cultural and political substance and way more actual fun.
I sincerely wish these people saw their opportunity and took it.
As they say in their own post-everything bad-is-good ode to cosmetic surgery, truly it is another nail in the rational coffin.
P.S. No one thinks you’re badass for hanging out in Santa Ana at night except your mom. They’re all going to laugh at you! They’re all going to laugh at you!
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