A way with words

Peaking over the shoulder of another Underground rider, I saw this quintessentially British headline in this morning's Metro.

He's back!

One of my favorite columnists at America's Finest News Source has been MIA for the better part of two years, but now Herbert Kornfeld has come roaring back with the latest from Midwest Office Supply:

It Wuz Always 'Bout Tha Numbahs

Sleepless hours and dreamless nights and far aways / Ooo ooo ooo, wishing you were here. —Chicago, "Wishing You Were Here"...

Who's your yddad?

By now most of the country is probably familiar with the 9-year old kid who ran away from home and lied his way from Washington to Texas via Southwest Airlines. (I've included below an opinion column that gives a very good recap.) Despite a complete lack of evidence I have an inkling that the kid's father—apparently not a regular part of the kid's life—shares my first name.

Maternal instinct flew off to La-La Land

Robert L. Jamieson Jr., Seattle Post-Intelligencer

It's not every day that people get played by a sweet-faced 9-year-old.

One who has the bravado to steal a car in Tacoma and lead authorities on a dangerous high-speed chase.

One who showed smarts to get past security at Sea-Tac Airport.

One who duped Southwest Airlines to fly away to Texas because he needed to get away -- just like the airline ad says.

For his adventures last week, 4-foot-9 Semaj Booker was charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor.

I wrote that Pierce County prosecutors should take into consideration his tender age before coming down too hard.

They say they have never charged a 9-year-old. Consideration for the age of the thin fourth-grader ought to soften the blow of justice, right? I was on the fence, leaning toward leniency.

Now I'm beginning to be swayed by those hardened law-and-order types, especially after a national TV tabloid picked up the story, then aired an interview Wednesday featuring Semaj and his mother.

Some of the comments aired. Others were released earlier in the day by "Inside Edition."

Semaj came off remorseless. Even stranger, his mom, Sakinah Booker, exuded maternal pride over his exploits. The whole thing leaves you shaking your head.

The interview could have been a lens onto a lesson learned between a mother and child.

But what happened left a thought: When should you be able to revoke someone's parental license?

I figured the mother and son would spend the bulk of their airtime apologizing to the person whose car got stolen; to authorities who pursued Semaj in the chase; to airport security and airline officials who already have their hands full with terror fears.

But, instead we got an "attaboy" topped with a tepid mother-and-son hug, and his mother saying with a smile, "Don't ever do it again!"

Rather than holding her son accountable for actions that could have harmed others, we hear her admiration for his precocity.

In a quote released earlier Wednesday, the mother said her son showed her that "'I'm going to achieve anything I want to do; I'm going to just do it.'"

Family values have just left the building, folks.

"I planned it all out in advance," Semaj said during the interview, although that comment also did not air. But the statement will no doubt interest prosecutors, who want to know if Semaj had the mental capacity to understand what he is accused of doing.

On the air, Semaj said he went to Texas because "it's always sunny."

The day after the car chase ended -- he was found behind the wheel of a stolen Acura that knocked into a tree -- he thoughtfully hopped a bus to the airport.

He said on the air that he scanned the airport monitors and briefly contemplated catching a flight to Tokyo -- where the street-racing movie, "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" is set. Thanks to "Inside Edition," we know he's a fan of the film's high-speed car maneuvers.

"You can drift there," he told the program. "And the cops don't care."

The television show described how Semaj noticed Southwest had the most flights to Texas, then got lucky when he heard the airline page a passenger who had lost his ticket.

He told "Inside Edition" that he walked up to the counter, identified himself as the passenger, Frank, then got a boarding pass, and breezed by a security checkpoint.

(A Southwest Airlines spokeswoman told me Wednesday night the report of the page "is news to us.")

Semaj eventually got caught and was detained in a Texas center for runaways until his mom came and got him a few days ago.

That the pair chose a tabloid television program for their public soapbox speaks volumes.

"Inside Edition" said it paid for Semaj's mother to go to Texas for the blissful reunion.

I put it this way because mother and son seem to be blissfully ignorant of the peeved and aggrieved people -- a car-theft victim, airport officials and prosecutors -- Semaj left behind.

The whole episode sends Semaj the wrong message -- if you do wrong, you land on national TV basking in the glow of mommy love.

The kid needs to be grounded. If his mom won't do it, prosecutors should.

Prosecutors last night said they are going forward with the criminal charges -- including theft and eluding -- against Semaj, who has returned to the area.

"I believe minds are going to differ on this," Prosecutor Fred Wist said of the decision.

Yes. But this bright youth needs to learn that life is neither a video game, nor a movie, nor a tabloid TV show.

There are real consequences for reckless actions. It's not child's play. Better learn it now, not later.

(As a high school student I would have my American Mathematics Competition public score posting attributed to Iksokopeh Semaj.)

...or are you just burning to see me?

Fire in man's pants not started by phone

The Associated Press

VALLEJO, Calif. – A fire that started in a man's pants pocket, critically injuring him and destroying his hotel room, was not ignited by a cell phone as authorities suspected, phone technicians said.

Nokia Corp. engineers found that the charred device still worked Wednesday and convinced fire department investigators that it had not spontaneously ignited in Luis Picaso's pocket.

"He could have been smoking a cigarette, the cigarette fell into his pocket, and it started on fire," Vallejo fire inspector Bill Tweedy said. "We don't know that. We weren't there."

The fire caused about $75,000 in damage to the residential hotel and a ground-floor business. Picaso, 59, was in critical condition Thursday with second- and third-degree burns to his upper body, right arm and right leg.

The fire apparently started in Picaso's pants pocket while he slept on a plastic lawn chair in his room, authorities said. Picaso is under heavy sedation and doesn't seem to remember what happened, Tweedy said.

Poll worker charged with assaulting voter

By Jessie Halladay, The Courier-Journal

LOUSIVILLE &ndsh; A poll worker at the United Auto Workers hall on Fern Valley Road was arrested after he was accused of assaulting a voter Tuesday, said Lt. Col. Carl Yates, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriffs’ Office.

Jeffery Steitz, 42, was charged with interfering with an election and fourth-degree assault, said Yates.

The incident happened about 10:30 a.m. when the poll worker wouldn’t process the voter’s ballot because he had not cast votes for the judge elections, Yates said.

The voter, William Miller, apparently cast a ballot that did not go through the voting machine, Yates said.

When Steitz, who was being paid to work the election and assist voters, looked at the rejected ballot, he told Miller it didn’t go through because he’d left all the judge elections blank.

After Miller insisted that he did not have to vote for the judges, Steitz allegedly assaulted him, Yates said. (Voters can cast ballots in any or all of the races, as they see fit.)

Steitz is accused of choking Miller and then pushing him out of the polling place, said Paula McCraney, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Clerk.

Another worker at the location called the main election office to report the incident and election officials sent sheriffs’ deputies to relieve Steitz of his duties, McCraney said.

When deputies arrived, Miller came back inside the polling place and asked that charges be filed against Steitz, McCraney said.

Yates said once the charges were filed Miller was allowed to cast a new ballot.

A Pose By Any Other Name

After an afternoon at the beach we took a dinnertime siesta and then regrouped at Carousel Mall to see Little Miss Sunshine at the Regal Theater on the third floor. Chris, who's been my angel-of-transportation this week, drove me, and we arrived with enough time to head into Victoria's secret to find a pair of underwear that would satisfy the requirements of a coupon she'd had in her purse. I hung back for the first couple of minutes she was checking tags, figuring I'd be more in the way than anything. Eventually I did jump in, digging through the disorganized piles (in an ultimately fruitless search), but while I was waiting during those first two minutes I noted a rather prominently displayed add featuring model Heidi Klum. Black and white photos of Ms. Klum posing in a smooth black brazier were completed with the following quote, attributed to the model herself.

"Now I have a bra named after me."

Which got me to wondering: what's the bra called? The 'Klum'? The 'Heidi'? Sadly the 'Klumcupper' seemed out of the question. 'Heid' & Chic'? No. Then I joined in the search for panties (solid color; pink, white, or black; $5; and, of course, a size and cut to suit Chris's tastes), and bras had to be forgotten.

But not for long. Thumbing through the newest edition of The Week when I got home, I found a tidbit lifted from this bit in New York's Daily News:

Elle's shock over 'Body' double Klum

Is Heidi Klum a 'Body' snatcher?

Fellow supermodel Elle Macpherson, who's been known as "The Body" ever since Time magazine dubbed her that in a 1986 cover story, has every reason to think so.

This week, Klum has been claiming the title for herself in a saturation Victoria's Secret ad campaign for The Body bra. "They call me The Body—and now I have a bra named after me," the German hottie claims in TV commercials.

But not so fast, Fräulein Klum!

"We saw that and were like, Oh my god!" Elle Macpherson Intimates spokeswoman Melissa Edwards told Lowdown yesterday. "We were initially flabbergasted."

Now it's a battle of the supermodel moguls—Macpherson, the 42-year-old, 6-foot Aussie mother of two, against Klum, the 33-year-old, 5-foot-9 mother of two (with one on the way).

Elle's flack, Edwards, invoked the 1986 Time cover and added: "We have numerous press clippings in the office referring to her as 'The Body.' Everything from Harper's Bazaar to Vogue to the recent Sports Illustrated calls her that. In terms of public record, that name belongs to Elle."

Macpherson markets her own skin-care line, "Elle Macpherson The Body," along with a lingerie brand and a fitness video titled "The Body Workout." Klum—who was once called "The Body Two," in deference to Elle—is a relative Heidi-come-lately, and didn't hit the United States until the late 1990s. Both Klum and Macpherson have been favorites of the Sports Illustrated annual swimsuit issue, and both appeared in the mag's latest.

But what's up with "The Body" doubling? A spokeswoman for Klum and Victoria's Secret didn't respond by deadline to detailed messages.

This had me really confused, because I was absolutely certain that "The Body" referred to retired Navy SEAL, ex-professional wrestler, and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura! This led me to recall his expressed desire to be reincarnated as a 38-DD bra. I momentarily panicked, but Wikipedia says he's still alive. Whew. I need sleep. I never thought a trip to Victoria's Secret would have me in such a tizzy.

Orange closer to yellow than Cardinal

Two years at the University of Wisconsin – Madison have spoiled me. The campus has not one, but two major student newspapers of reasonably high quality. I was always a fan of The Daily Cardinal, but my preference stemmed primarily from the presence of the fabulously funny comic "Everyone Drunk But Me" by Laura Beth Brandt and the slightly smaller size of the paper. Both it and its major competitor, The Badger Herald had a good selection of news, sports, and human interest stories. (Though not a constant reader I liked the Herald enough to apply for a position on its staff.)

Syracuse University isn't nearly so fortunate. Only one major student paper can be found here, and I suspect this lack of competition is a contributing factor to the overall trashiness of The Daily Orange. The articles are often little more than thinly veiled complaints, the comics are only funny if you are stuck by their randomness, and the sports section is monstrously overgrown (although I realize that this is probably not a bad thing given the readership). As for "human interest" stories - well let's say they take that a little too literally. You can see what I mean in this bit from yesterday's piece "Strap Tease" by Erin Hendricks and Katie Walsh:

Bra Unhooking 101:
- Check to make sure she's actually wearing a bra
- Ease her shirt off
- Feel her up to check on the clasp location

If it's on the back:
- Keep making out while moving your hand to the middle of the back of her bra
- Put your thumb on one side of the clasp, and your fingers on the other
- Pull together, and the bra will unhook easily

If it's on the front:
- Keep making out and move your hand to the front of her bra
- Squeeze the clasp together with your thumb and forefinger
- Twist clasp and lift up on the hook
- The bra will open and leave you with an eyeful of breasts

[...]

What the experts say...
"Whenever I'm drunk and can't speak, let alone get a bra off, I just push it up over the prize."
- Matt Smith, sophomore computer engineering major

"One time I was hanging out with a lady, kind of drunk, and I was looking around for a solid 30-40 seconds for a clasp before I realized it was a sports bra."
- Mike McQueeny, sophomore political science major

"If you're fooling around with a girl who's wearing a black bra and took her own shirt off, take the bra off one-handed. But if you're with a girl who's wearing a white bra and you have to do it all, go with two hands - it'll make you seem like you don't have as much sex."
- Ryan Donnelly, sophomore accounting major

I wish I could say this was anomalous.

Meanwhile back in the Madtown

I saw that the Wisconsin State Journal has an update on my former professor Keith Cohen today. I wrote about Prof. Cohen back in March.

Cohen, 60, pleaded no contest on July 28 in Milwaukee County Circuit Court to one count of exposing a child to harmful materials. He was sentenced to two years' probation and 30 days in jail, with work-release privileges.

His jail sentence started Aug. 26 and ends Sunday. Starting Aug. 29, Cohen had been serving part of his work release on campus. He wasn't teaching classes, but he commuted to Madison to work at Van Hise Hall, where his office is located....

"Our goal throughout all of this was to find productive work for Cohen - since we are required by law to pay him - that would keep him away from students as well as staff and faculty," [UW- Madison Provost Peter] Spear said. "Now that our investigation is complete and we have determined that he should be terminated, we have decided to remove him from campus immediately."

The full article is here. I hope the thirty days knocked some sense into the man, but I also hope that he's okay and that his friends among the faculty can forgive him.

Like pistons fans, but with style

Fans throw flares, soccer match ends early

By The Associated Press and Bloomberg News

MILAN, Italy - AC Milan goalkeeper Dida was hit by a flare thrown from the stands, and yesterday's UEFA Champions League quarterfinal match against crosstown rival Internazionale was halted with about 15 minutes to play.

AC Milan was ahead 1-0 in the match and set to advance to the semifinals on a 3-0 aggregate score when Dida was struck on his left shoulder by the flare in the 73rd minute.

The match was stopped. As many as 20 flares were burning in the penalty area.

When referee Markus Merk tried to restart play 10 minutes later, more bottles and lighted flares were thrown. Merk abandoned the match in the 75th minute.

"Tonight's episode doesn't just hurt Inter, but the entire city of Milan," AC Milan manager Carlo Ancelotti said. "The reaction of the Inter fans was surprising. I've played and coached in Milan for 10 years and I've never seen anything like it."

Inter fans in the crowd of about 80,000 were upset that when Esteban Cambiasso put the ball in the net in the 71st minute, the goal was disallowed because of a foul.

"After the goal was annulled, the fans' anger was understandable, although the reaction of throwing objects onto the field is not justified," Inter defender Ivan Cordoba said.

Almost Infamous

Dear readers, please let me introduce to you Mr. Gary Arthur Medrow through these two extracts from Chuck Shepherd's weekly column "News of the Weird."

From a 2004 "best of" column:

In Milwaukee in 1997, Gary Arthur Medrow, 53, was charged with 24 counts of impersonating a police officer in connection with his unique obsession. What Medrow does, according to police (who have arrested him various times over the last 30 years for the same thing), is telephone a woman and try to convince her to lift another person in the room and carry her or him a short distance, sometimes telling the woman that he's a police officer and that it's an official request. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10-7-97]

From a November 2004 column:

UPDATE
Gary Arthur Medrow, 60, first made News of the Weird in our inaugural year, 1988, but his criminal record (mostly for impersonating police officers) goes back at least 10 years before that. Medrow's preferred scene is to call someone (usually a woman) on the telephone, pretend to be a police officer on an investigation, and ask her to try to lift up another person in the room and carry him or her into another room. He was charged again in New Berlin, Wis., in September. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 9-20-04]

Now let me recall for you from my 15 February post this photo of my friend Sarah Linwick that appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:



It seems that Mr. Medrow saw this picture and was intrigued. In the past week, he called Mr. and Mrs. Linwick, impersonated an officer, and told the couple a story involving Sarah and a carcrash. Apparently the story he told wasn't sufficiently convincing and he never got to his usual request. I suppose he's been unsuccessful many times before, and he'll probably be unsuccessful many times again. Poor guy.

Now that we can be reasonably certain that no one is in danger I must say that I'm tickled to no end that I managed to, in some small way, interact with this man with whom I have been most amused for many a year.

Troublemakers

One of the themes of my Environmental Conservation class that I'm hoping we'll investigate more is the rift between the academic elite and the working class that often occurs when the environment is concerned. Based on comments I hear in discussion, I think that many of the students have little grasp of how their proposed environmental policies will appear to those affected. Still, sometimes you just want to side with the academic elite outright. This is an extract from "Fear In The Fields" by Duff Wilson, originally published in the 3 July 1997 edition of the Seattle Times:

[Mayor] Patty Martin is not a popular politician in parts of Grant County these days.

Since she began raising the alarm about the use of toxic waste as fertilizer, she has been threatened with a lawsuit by a local farmer, been verbally attacked in town meetings and seen the City Council - led by a son-in-law of the local manager of the Cenex fertilizer company - pressure her to shut up or quit.

Many farmers in and around Quincy, a town of 4,030, say they're doing very well, thank you, with the fertilizer and the help and advice they've received from Cenex Supply and Marketing, which sells expertise, financing and farm supplies in the West and Midwest.

They call Martin a troublemaker and fear she's fomenting a scare akin to the Alar alarm that nearly ruined Washington's apple industry in 1989.

In that case, the CBS television show "60 Minutes" reported that a substance sprayed on Washington apples to preserve them in packing was dangerous to consumers. CBS later admitted it had made some mistakes in the story, and the Washington apple growers sued the network. But the suit was dismissed, and in the end, Alar was classified by EPA as a carcinogen and banned for all food uses.

"We had a woman starting that one, too, and a lot of people got hurt by it," Bill Weber, an apple and potato farmer, said at one council meeting, bringing nods and laughter.

I suspect that Mr. Weber is one of the many people who believe that women and apples have had troubled history (pretty much right from the start, I mean), but this kind of comment still gets me.

Lutherans and Sexuality

Don't, unless you do

Garrison Keillor, Star Tribune

The ELCA had the good sense to issue its report on sexuality the week before a major snowstorm and so the church's new guidelines on blessing same-sex relationships and ordaining people in an SSR didn't arouse the storm and fury one might have expected. People were thinking about shoveling their sidewalks, a life-and-death issue for those of us in the coronary stage of life. And when you imagine toppling over into a snowbank with chest pains and your last thought before expiring is "Boy, she was right, I shouldn't have," then the whole issue of whether Pastor Sandvik should bless the union of Bruce and Kent -- it's just not that big a deal. Up in Stearns County, you've got Catholic priests blessing snowmobiles, for crying out loud, and on the Feast Day of St. Francis the Episcopalians are bringing cats and dogs and hamsters and newts and amoeba in to be blessed, so what's the harm in blessing two young guys, even if maybe they do fuss over their hair more than a person should?

The report was a lovely example of muddling through, which Lutherans are good at. They are people of great modesty and even greater compassion. And also bravery. The question of SSRs is one that firebrands on both sides are up in arms about and ready to burn villages and blow up bridges. The Task Force was given the assignment three years ago, long before the wave of gay marriages, and it proceeded to hold hundreds of elaborately patient and painfully respectful meetings and discuss the thing to (yawn) death and finally write a report that restated the question in terms you wouldn't understand and took 40 pages to avoid answering it and affirm a policy of Don't ask, don't tell, never mind.

In 1996, the church had said, "Marriage is a lifelong covenant of faithfulness between a man and a woman." It was willing to ordain gay people who were in a chaste, or unconsummated, relationship, a USSR, but not in a sexy one. After due study, the Task Force acknowledged the deep divisions over the whole SSR question, reaffirmed the 1996 position while accepting that people in good conscience might choose to challenge it and asking them to be careful if they do and not make a big show of it but saying that if they do do what they will, probably nobody would give them a hard time about it.

In other words: Nothing has changed essentially, we don't approve, though in a sense we do but probably not, but if you go ahead and do it, don't feel bad about it, we understand.

This is the beauty of bureaucracy. It absorbs and deflects violence and anger by causing confusion and annoyance and writing a lovely amorphous mishmash of sentences like extruded marshmallows and thus the peace is kept. Militants on either side are outraged, but they enjoy outrage, that is their art form. The rest of us are grateful to be spared the sound and the fury and to be able to attend church on Sunday morning without having to wear a badge. As important as sexuality may be, it surely isn't any more important than snow, and if you feel, in good conscience, that God didn't intend snow to be part of your life, then you may want to head for Arizona, which is OK, though we will miss you and I do beseech you to return my shovel before you go, it is hanging in your garage, not that I want to go ask you for it, I don't want to put you on the spot and make you feel bad, though it's hard to understand how you could forget about a thing like that but if you do and you go off to Phoenix, don't beat yourself up over it, we will get along somehow as best we can. This is the Lutheran way.

Octopus Cannon Hits McDonalds

Sete, France - Armed with a high-pressure hose and a bucket of octopi, hundreds of protestors in this Mediterranean town on Saturday pelted a McDonalds restaurant due to open this week with the slimy seafood.

Up to 500 people gathered on the banks of the Sete canal, across from the fast-food outlet, playing music and yelling anti-junk-food slogans across the water, as police barred them from reaching the restaurant itself.

Aiming the hose across the water, they catapulted fresh octopi - a local delicacy, known here as the "pouffre" - towards the town's first McDonalds, which had been set to open on Saturday.

The crowd held up slogans slamming junk food, dubbed "malbouffe" in French, as well as work conditions in the fast-food industry.

Driving home their point, the protestors were serving up traditional Setois dishes - one of which is the tielle, a fragrant octopus, tomato and onion pie prized by locals and tourists alike.

The demonstration caused the opening of the restaurant, the first fast-food outlet in the port town following years of resistance by the former communist mayor, to be put off until next week.

A group led by French militant farmer Jose Bove pulled down a McDonalds outlet that was under construction in the southern town of Millau in 1999, earning Bove a jail sentence, although the restaurant was later rebuilt.