Randomness Corner: Did you steal three tons of chickpeas recently?

Thieves are on the run with three tons of chickpeas, it what can only be defined as the Great Hummus Theft of 2020.

A small, two-location Middle Eastern chain restaurant in Washington, DC, called Little Sesame is in a lot of trouble, as a recent UPS delivery of 6,150 pounds of chickpeas has gone missing, according to the Washington City Paper.

Little Sesame purchases the chickpeas from a grower in Montana, who typically sends quarterly shipments year-round of three pallets, or one ton each, per pallet.

Tracking records from UPS show the purloined 'peas at a distribution warehouse in Landover, MD, on February 10th. The delivery was supposedly made in an alley out behind one of the two restaurant locations two weeks later on February 24th, in what is apparently the slowest and most casual Big Brown drop-off ever.

Little Sesame's co-owner, Nick Wiseman, tells the Washington City Paper that they're working with other farmers for an emergency shipment of chickpeas before they run out. He notes that three tons of chickpeas roughly equals the weight of an African elephant. That's not necessarily the visual you had mingling with thoughts of hummus, but let it simmer.

In the meantime, clearly someone needs to keep an eye out on a ton of shipped tahini, too. If you happen to see a galore of garbanzos in your local neighborhood, you're urged to contact police.

Famous Writers Arrested: Ring Lardner, Jr.

Here we'll occasionally dive into mugshots of the criminally-inclined writers who found themselves in the big house. Crime doesn't pay, although literature sometimes does.


Today:  Ring Lardner, Jr.

Ring Lardner, Jr's. mugshot

Ring Lardner, Jr., was renowned in Hollywood circles in the 1940s, making more money for his screenwriting than most actors earned as the face of the movie. His success led to winning an Academy Award in 1942 for his script for the Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey-led Woman of the Year.

But amidst all the fame, amidst all the glamour, amidst all the awards, Lardner's career spiraled onto a blacklist for a time as he went to jail for not participating in a congressional witch hunt.

So, why?

In the heady days leading up to World War II, the United States fell under a veil of panic, a precursor of sorts of the 1950's "red scare" of Communists from the Soviet Union.

By 1938, as Adolf Hitler gained power in Europe, the United States established the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which acted as an investigative arm of Congress that looked into any citizen--private or public--deemed subversive in their behavior. This was especially true of groups having affiliations with Fascist or Communist organizations.

Congressman Martin Dies, Jr., the first chairman of the HUAC from 1938-1945.

Congressional members picked their targets randomly. The HUAC went after the Federal Theater Project and Federal Writers Project, questioning if Communists had infiltrated the rash of actors and writers. They went after Japanese-Americans during World War II, creating an argument for their internment. And yet the HUAC chose not to go after the Ku Klux Klan because, as Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi said, "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."

As 1947 rolled along, and America began the early stages of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the HUAC targeted members of Hollywood for their left-leaning views. Over forty individuals testified, many naming names of others they claimed held Communist sympathies. It was a modern-day Salem Witch Trial, where no proof was needed, only allegations. But ten other witnesses chose not to cooperate with the congressional investigation--one of those ten being Ring Lardner, Jr.

The Hollywood Ten, with two others.

The group--later called "The Hollywood Ten"--included another Oscar-winning screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo. Both men, along with their eight fellow witnesses, claimed they had protections and privileges granted by the First Amendment that allowed them to not cooperate with the HUAC. Congress and the court system disagreed. Despite a number of appeals lasting until 1950, all ten men were sent to prison for contempt of Congress, with Lardner sentenced to one year at the Danbury (CT) Federal Prison.

Not the headline you want associated with yourself.

Hollywood blacklisted Ring Lardner Jr., Dalton Trumbo, and the eight other witnesses for a few years after their prison sentences, turning incredibly successful screenwriters and directors into jobless individuals looking for a break. But because Hollywood operates off of money, and money talks, circumstances slowly ebbed in Lardner's favor. By the mid-1950s, Lardner began writing under a pseudonym with fellow blacklistee Ian McLellan Hunter, scriptwriting for television shows like The Adventures of Robin Hood in Great Britain. The blacklist ended in 1965, when director Norman Jewison and producer Martin Ransohoff gave Lardner full screenwriting credit for the Steve McQueen movie The Cincinnati Kid, with Lardner's full name, his full respect, his full due.

By 1970, Lardner won a second Academy Award for his screenplay of the movie adaption of M*A*S*H.

Although near the end of his life, Lardner had one last laugh left. He confessed to fellow writer Miklós Vámos that he won yet another Academy Award under a pseudonym while blacklisted.

Lardner refused to say which pseudonym specifically, as another fellow writer allowed Lardner to use his name and did a favor during a very dark time. To this day, no one knows which famous movie it is exactly that Lardner wrote.

A short addition to this story that brings it all together:
The chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 was a Republican Congressman from New Jersey named J. Parnell Thomas.

In 1948, Thomas' secretary sent newspaper columnist Drew Pearson information regarding how Thomas was placing people on his staff payroll as clerks (although they were clerks in name only), and then these individuals would turn their income back over the Thomas. This increased his salary and allowed Thomas to avoid a higher tax bracket.

Rep. J. Parnell Thomas

A grand jury was convened and Thomas was called to testify. He claimed he had First Amendment rights that absolved him from cooperating, just as "The Hollywood Ten" had claimed in 1947 when Thomas was chairman--a right he denied them.

The courts disagreed he had that right as well, and Thomas was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 18-months in a federal prison.

The prison? The same Danbury (CT) Federal Prison Ring Lardner, Jr. received his sentence. Their sentences overlapped. Lardner and Thomas, the accused and the accuser, became prison mates.

Beer drinker cracks open a cold one, watches porn at local library.

A Sandusky, OH, man decided to spend a Tuesday night relaxing with a few cold beers while watching porn on a computer.

There was a small problem, though. He was at the local library.

According to the Sandusky Register newspaper, at 7:15pm on February 4th, a resident alerted a police officer that they witnessed a man swigging back some beer and watching XXX material. Sure enough, after the office checked on the boozy book-lover, he found opened and unopened cans of Budweiser around the computer--with some extra cans stashed under the desk. Because you never want to run out once the party's started.

In the end, the man was charged with a minor misdemeanor count of having an open container in a public place and banned from the library for 60-days.

That's right. You, too, can go on a quick porn binge at the library and they'll invite you back in a couple months' time.

Famous Writers Arrested: Nelson Algren (with bonus Frank Sinatra!)

Here we'll occasionally dive into mugshots of the criminally-inclined writers who found themselves in the big house. Crime doesn't pay, although literature does sometimes.

Today:  Nelson Algren

Someone had a tough night.

The name might not be as famous as Ernest Hemingway or Virginia Woolf, but Nelson Algren's literary star burned brightly for a while. His most famous work was his 1949 novel The Man with the Golden Arm, about a man spiraling into morphine addiction, which won the 1950 National Book Award and was later made into a 1955 movie starring Frank Sinatra.

If the image of Frank Sinatra as a junkie is throwing you off, so might the idea of a writer getting caught up with the police. But Nelson Algren went to the slammer...twice. Because if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

The first dalliance with crime occurred when Algren was a wannabe drifter after college in the 1930s. Struggling for a career as a writer, he moved to Texas, where he held a series of odd jobs, including pumping gas and a salesman. From there, the facts of the story are vague, but in either 1933 or '34, Algren stole a typewriter and was promptly arrested. Listen, those National Book Awards aren't going to just write themselves.

Being Texas in the 1930s, Algren either spent four months behind bars awaiting trial or was sentenced to five months in jail. No one seemingly quite knows the facts, but, regardless, Texas told Algren never to come back.

In 1967, Algren went to the cooler again. This time it was for marijuana possession. Shockingly, people in the late 1960s smoked a bit of the devil's lettuce. Ever the criminal mastermind, Algren somehow was caught. This time, charges were dropped quickly and all we have left of the incident is Algren's mugshot, which channels all the mystique of someone outside of a 7-11 convenience store at 3am.

Oh, by the way, while we're on the topic. Frank Sinatra? He was once arrested, too. His crime? Seduction.

That's the face of seduction, baby!

Yes, that's actually the crime, which was once illegal. In 1938, a 23-year old Frank Sinatra was arrested in Bergen County, NJ, for seduction of a single woman. The 1930s were a heady time of hedonism, and Old Blue Eyes apparently wooed someone he shouldn't have. The crime of seduction involved sexual intercourse with a single woman with the promise of marriage and then reneging on the deal.

Sinatra was quickly released after police determined the woman was actually married. Small mistake! Yet, that led to Sinatra being arrested again, this time after the first charges were revised and he was charged with adultery. No one ever said New Jersey made sense.

Like Algren, charges were eventually dropped against Sinatra.

Thus, this ends the lamest crime log you'll ever read.

The Scottsdale, AZ, library was a little short on DVDs for awhile.

A Scottsdale, AZ, mother of two is facing criminal charges after she tried to pawn 90 DVDs that belonged to the local library. And how did she collect all those DVDs? Like any good parent, she had her children borrow them. You can never start 'em too young!

According to AZCental, Joanna Marie Alvarez had DVDs worth $2,872--suggesting she wasn't pawning PBS documentary specials that retail for $2.99 at the local Family Dollar store.

Alvarez went to SuperPawn in Mesa ("Super" lends an air of sophistication to all of this) with her haul. An employee asked where she got the DVDs, to which Alvarez said at a Scottsdale library yard sale. Considering the DVDs all had the library's name on them, the SuperPawn associate called the library to confirm the priced-to-move yard sale action.

In a police filing, Alvarez said she didn't know pawning the items was illegal, and that she intended to get them back.

Authorities were only able to recoup 77 of the 90 DVDs in the end. After all, those Weekend at Bernie's director's cut DVDs are a hot commodity and don't stick around too long.

British book thieves are abundant, quirky.

Some people steal cars, others jewelry. But the inner geek in some thieves has them gravitate toward their local bookstore for a little bit of Freddy Fast Fingers action.

According to The Guardian, British bookstores report that theft hasn't abated despite security measures, but yet they also accept book loss as a way of life. "[The thieves are] simply reselling them on eBay," says James Daunt, the chief executive officer of Waterstones.

Daunt believes Waterstones kleptomaniac clientele tends to be the high-minded, intellectual type, as they tend to steal the textual works of philosophers. "Whenever I’d go past Kierkegaard I’d make sure they and Wittgenstein were all there, but often the odd one or two would be gone and it always made me smile."

Elsewhere in the country, tastes vary. In the small industrial town of Walsall at Southcart Books, it's Anton LeVey's Satanic Bible being pinched as some light reading. In Oxford at Blackwell's, it's J.R.R. Tolkien (he taught at Oxford University after all) and George R.R. Martin's works going out the door unpaid. And at The Beckenham Bookshop in Beckenham along with City Books in Hove, both notice Beatrix Potter is a favorite freebie to be snatched.

But John Clepp of the London Review Bookshop recounts one thief who asked for some understanding for their thieving ways:

"We caught a gent last Christmas with £400-worth of stolen books in his trousers and elsewhere. We grabbed all of the bags back, but he returned about half an hour later to reclaim a half-bottle of whisky and his dream journal, which had been at the bottom of one of the bags of stolen books. As we showed him the door he told us: 'I hope you’ll consider this in the Žižekian spirit, as a radical reappropriation of knowledge.'"

If it was quality whisky, can you blame him?

When Writers Go Weird: That time William S. Burroughs accidentally killed his wife.

Are writers ever normal? No, otherwise they'd be productive members of society. When Writers Go Weird is when we remember writers acting strange, odd, off, or--yeah--just plain weird. Also known as Tuesday to them.

Today: That time William S. Burroughs played a gun game with his wife. It didn't end well.


Sometimes you see it coming from a mile away. Sometimes someone has enough quirks, enough peculiarities, enough moments of random behavior to know something will go wrong at some point. William S. Burroughs had enough of those sometimes over the years.

Born into a wealthy family, Burroughs grew up torn over his sexuality. Some stories have him losing his virginity as a 16-year old to a fellow male in the next bunk bed at a prestigious boarding school they attended together, while other stories have Burroughs losing his virginity at a brothel he frequented with a particular female prostitute he favored. Regardless, either option is good for a potential memoir.

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While at Harvard University, he...stayed in his room with a ferret and a .32 revolver.

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While at Harvard University, he gained a reputation for being a loner who stayed in his room, all the while with a ferret and a .32 revolver. After graduating, he visited Europe and randomly married a Jewish woman, Ilse von Klapper, so she could escape the German occupation. It was an entirely noble act, if completely unexpected and unplanned. They divorced nine years later after she was allowed to remain in the United States.

At the age of 25, Burroughs randomly cut off his pinky finger at the top joint, then casually brought it to his psychiatrist. The psychiatrist immediately admitted Burroughs into a mental hospital.

The snowball-down-a-mountain effect kept building. In his thirties, Burroughs was arrested for forging narcotics prescriptions, moved to Texas with his then common-in-law wife, Joan Vollmer, grew marijuana, and then was arrested one again in New Orleans for drugs. Shortly thereafter, Burroughs moved with his family to Mexico City.

It was during this time in Mexico City that Burroughs went from a fairly anonymous wealthy expatriate with somewhat erratic behavior patterns into having his face plastered in newspapers in both Mexico and the United States.

Vollmer and Burroughs had an unhappy marriage, especially after they moved south of the border. Burroughs began having regular male partners on the side, all while still using drugs. Meanwhile, Vollmer started drinking heavily and allegedly mocked her husband for abandoning her sexually and his behavior.

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Alas, Burroughs was drunk and not a folk hero with cunning skill. Booze and bullets do not mix.

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One night in 1951, the couple were drinking heavily with friends at the Bounty Bar in Mexico City. Inebriated, Burroughs brandished a handgun he was carrying and told his wife they were going to play a William Tell game. In case you can't place a name with the narrative, William Tell was a folk hero in old European tales that recounted his heroics that involved shooting an arrow through an apple placed on someone's head.

Alas, Burroughs was drunk and not a folk hero with cunning skill. Booze and bullets do not mix. His wife, Joan, placed a whiskey glass on top of her head at some distance from her husband. She closed her eyes, joking to others she couldn't stand the sight of blood. Burroughs took aim--and just as rapidly as the game started, it ended. Burroughs aimed too low, shooting his wife in the head. She died almost instantly. William Tell's reputation was safe.

Our William Tell impersonator and the dearly departed.

Mexican authorities arrested Burroughs, who told investigators about the William Tell game, but then recounted it almost as quickly. He changed his story to say the gun accidentally went off. The investigation continued, but after being in jail for just shy of two weeks, Burroughs's brother went to Mexico, bribed local authorities, and sprung his brother on bail.

The high-priced lawyer representing Burroughs ran into his own legal troubles (a car accident and scuffle with a local government official's son) and fled Mexico. With his case being delayed repeatedly, Burroughs had enough of the situation and soon followed in his former lawyer's footsteps by leaving Mexico.

In his absence, Mexican authorities found Burroughs guilty of culpable homicide and gave him a two year suspended sentence.

The final twist to all of this was that Burroughs--while wealthy from his parents' money--was not yet a famous writer of any note. (As the Associated Press recount above labels him an "heir," not an author.) The killing of Vollmer is what seemed to spark Burroughs, as Junkie, Queer, and Naked Lunch were all written in the first handful of years after the shooting. Burroughs spoke as much in the introduction to Queer (which he sat on for thirty years, finally publishing it in 1985):

"I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing."

Lest you think that Burroughs changed his view toward guns after killing his wife, he spent most of his remaining days armed. He often enjoyed posing for photos with his guns, too, for various media publications:

Bullet Bill Burroughs #1

Bullet Bill Burroughs #2

Bullet Bill Burroughs #3

In the fifty odd (in more ways than one) years that Burroughs lived after killing his wife, he became a cult hero of sorts. He appeared on the famous cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club album (that's Burroughs beside Marilyn Monroe in the middle), worked with bands like R.E.M. and U2 on songs or videos, while a dildo from Burroughs's Naked Lunch inspired the band Steely Dan's name.

Likewise, he made numerous appearances in movies and television shows, as well as a fictionalized version of himself in books by Jack Kerouac and J.G. Ballard.

In 1981, Burroughs randomly moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and spent the rest of his sixteen years there. He spent the rest of those years still enjoying guns, too, telling the Wichita Eagle newspaper once, "The thing I like about Kansas is that it's not nearly as violent, and it's a helluva lot cheaper. And I can get out in the country and fish and shoot and whatnot."

Luckily the shooting in Kansas never involved another round of playing William Tell.

Randomness Corner: Grilled cheese has killed lesser people.

Baltimore's Daniel Brian Blackwell is very protective of his grilled cheese.

According to Baltimore Police, It seems the other day Blackwell's wife made him a grilled cheese and took a bite out of the sandwich. Admittedly, a quality grilled cheese sandwich can be irresistible--and Blackwell's wife fell under the powerful allure of said sandwich.

However, Blackwell wasn't thrilled with his wife's predilection for exquisitely melted cheese products. While his wife continued cooking upstairs in the kitchen, Blackwell allegedly fired off a gun while in a rage in the basement.

His wife went downstairs to check on him and alleges she saw him surrounded by his stash of revolvers, rifles, and shotguns.

Seeing that her husband needed some alone time, she went back upstairs to cooking. Within minutes, Blackwell allegedly fired three more rounds into the basement ceiling, nearly taking out his wife in the kitchen above him.

His wife immediately fled the house with their teenage children and called the police. Blackwell barricaded himself in the house for a few hours before eventually surrendering to police.

The moral of this story?

Nobody becomes this upset over tuna salad.

Famous Writers Arrested: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Much like the Famous Writers Shirtless posts, here we'll occasionally dive into mugshots of the criminally-inclined writers who found themselves in the big house.

Mugshots? Yes, please.

Today:  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The 1970 Nobel Prize winner, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, found himself on the wrong side of Soviet authorities in 1945 after some of his private letters were found by the KGB to be critical of Joseph Stalin. How critical? Statements like calling Stalin "the boss" and "the master of the house." Those are potentially the most nuanced and subtle insults in the history of insults, but it was apparently inflammatory to the Soviets.

That sort of behavior got you eight years in the Soviet gulags. To say Solzhenitsyn went to the cooler is putting it mildly. Most prison camps were in remote and bitterly cold regions of the USSR.

As Solzhenitsyn's lack of enthusiasm shows in his prison photo above, it was not a weekend in the Bahamas, and he was not cut any slack. Solzhenitsyn served a full eight year prison sentence, worked and froze in various gulags, and saw his wife divorce him in order for her not to be marked as a traitor to the country. (They'd later remarry and divorce again after he was released. Admittedly, they should have quit while they were ahead.)

Solzhenitsyn was released in 1953 and had some success with releasing some works, including a 1960 novel based on his experiences in the gulags called One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The Soviet leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, encouraged its publication as a tool for de-Stalinzation of the country.

Alas, hard line leaders took over power from Khrushchev, and that hard line mentality led to Solzhenitsyn being expelled from the USSR in 1974 for his works being too critical of the nation. It would be two decades until he was allowed to visit his homeland again, after the Soviet Union crumbled.

In the end, the USSR wanted to break Solzhenitsyn, but Solzhenitsyn's critical works were a small part in breaking the USSR.

Half naked men toss crocodiles into a school office in a town called Humpty Doo.

In what sounds like the plot to a Shel Silverstein poem being written on an LSD bender, five half naked men were caught on surveillance video tossing three crocodiles into a school administration office at 5am in the Australian Northern Territories town of Humpty Doo. In other words, another average day in the Outback.

The men ransacked the office, apparently grabbed nothing at all except a computer screen, and ran off, but not before locking the crocodiles in the office so they would greet employees later that morning.





This happened at Taminmin College, a small secondary school that serves grades 7-12 in the tiny, rural, desert community of 8,700. Their website is currently making no mention of the shenanigans or worldwide fame, as apparently viral marketing isn't taught at the school.

Police have no concrete motivation behind the crime, because sometimes there is no motivation. Sometimes there's just Australia.




In case you're wondering, no one has any solid proof how the town got its name. Some claim its from World War One slang, others from Aboriginal language terms, and yet others say it's based on a colloquialism. No one knows for certain, not even the town officials.

How does that even happen? I assume everyone in the desert oasis town is huffing bath salts or in the throes of heat stroke. At some point you just have to accept crazy happens.

When Writers Go Weird: That time Samuel Beckett wanted to sue over...well...God knows what.

Are writers ever normal? No, otherwise they'd be productive members of society. 'When Writers Go Weird' is when we remember writers acting strange, odd, off, or--yeah--just plain weird. Also known as Tuesday to them.


Today:  That time Samuel Beckett wanted to sue over some water, Phillip Glass, and black people.


Samuel Beckett always had the resting grouch face of a moody human being. But unlike some innocent people with such an issue, Beckett actually followed through with such petulant behavior.

Everyone loves a good ego stroke. Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington wouldn't exist if ego stroking wasn't a critical part to the process. But before the tender sensibilities of a real Donald Trump or a fake Gordon Gecko, there was the infallibility of pride in the form of Nobel Prize winners such as Samuel Beckett.

That's the face of unabashed enthusiasm right there.

Lawsuits (or the threat of one) from Beckett almost became a midweek pastime, a hobby with the frequency and randomness he doled them out. Not for some egregious action, like plagiarism, profit, or libel regarding him or his work--but threats simply because Beckett didn't like the way something in a play of his was going to be interpreted.

Most notable of all cases occurred in 1984, when Boston's American Repertory Theatre (ART) decided to put on a version of Beckett's 'Endgame.' The play, directed by award winning JoAnne Akalaitis, kept the play's dialogue verbatim, but simply tweaked other areas, like the set and music. Beckett's original play had a plain room with two windows as the setting--nothing else. Akalaitis moved the play into a derelict, abandoned subway tunnel. She added some water (Why? It's a Beckett play--everything's a why?), and had an orchestral movement by famed composer Philip Glass included before the play started.

And Beckett was not happy.

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"Beckett believes the version..."totally distorts" his play by...casting black actors."

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"He doesn't like it. He's disgusted by it," said Beckett's attorney, Martin Garbus, at the time. "But he doesn't have funds to take on [...] all the other people at the American Repertory Theatre. He feels he doesn't have any choice."

The Associated Press added, "Beckett believes the version by the highly acclaimed theater company "totally distorts" his play by changing the locale, adding music and casting black actors in key roles, Garbus said."

That's right. The scourge of skin pigment. Samuel Beckett lost perspective enough to think that a play where characters sit in trash cans (seriously--if you haven't read/watched his work--two characters channel their inner Oscar the Grouch and live entirely in a trash can) couldn't have someone other than a white actor participate.

"I have never heard him so angry," said another acquaintance of Beckett's to the AP.

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"Anybody who cares for the work couldn't fail to be disgusted by this."

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Beckett initially attempted legal action against ART, yet stopped at some point. Whether it was common sense that he'd lose in a court of law or ART's desire to sweep the matter under the rug, one wonders. Both sides agreed to a disclaimer being added to the play's program, and both agreed to allow Beckett a direct response to the attendee:

"Any production of Endgame which ignores my stage directions is completely unacceptable to me. My play requires an empty room and two small windows. The American Repertory Theater production which dismisses my directions is a complete parody of the play as conceived by me. Anybody who cares for the work couldn't fail to be disgusted by this."

Perspective in life requires a sort of intellectual nuance, something Beckett clearly struggled to gather. Once you've lost your two windows, you might have lost your two cents. Beckett never mentioned the water or black actors matter again, for reasons unknown. The brouhaha over Beckett versus the ART in Boston was such a sensation at the time it led The New York Times theater critic Mel Gussow to review the play in 1984. Aside from the aforementioned music and scenery, Gussow said "the alterations are minimal."

"The director has not only respected the meaning of the dialogue," wrote Gussow, but "she has been attentive to the author's pauses, silences and intonations." Moreover, he said, "[T]his is a valid representation of the spirit of the original work."

Was it really a matter of two windows? The mellifluous music of Philip Glass? Black actors being used? In the end, no one quite understood Beckett's fuss, but it was quite clear no one had a reason to be disgusted. That is, perhaps, except Beckett in himself.

Parents throw DOWN at Brooklyn kindergarten graduation ceremony.

There are times in any small child's life where certain things need to be learned. Like counting, ABCs, and momma's secret ability at dropping 'bows.

When the tiny tots at Brooklyn's P.S./I.S. 178 in Crown Heights prepped to walk the stage for their graduation, things became tense between mothers who jockeyed for position to take photos. Pushing beget shoving...beget yelling...beget left hooks landing...beget cops being called...beget little Bobby and Suzy learning all about the nuances of the justice system.

According to The New York Post, although a school aide who only was known by Mrs. Nelson was clocked while trying to break up the fracas, no charges were pressed after police threw the unruly parents out.

Who owns a language? Better yet, who owns the Klingon language?

"Waaait, people don't think we sound sexy?"

To speak Klingon, the language of Star Trek's most notable villain alien species, you need a deep supply of mucus in the throat and a total lack of shame for speaking it in public.

You might also need to go to court to fight over the copyright.

Currently being battled out in federal court is the matter of who exactly owns a language for a fictional alien species, an esoteric mind bender of a geek debate if there ever was one. Does the corporation (Paramount) that owns the artistic rights to the fictional alien species' likeness also own the language, too? Do the fans own it, since they expanded a previously 2,000 word vocabulary into an expansive language numbering in the tens of thousands of words? Or can anything or anyone really own any language in the first place--especially one for a species that doesn't exist?

"This argument is absurd since a language is only useful if it can be used to communicate with people, and there are no Klingons with whom to communicate," stated a brief authored by David Grossman, a lawyer for Paramount, who's adding even more opaque layers to the debate. The old question "If a tree falls in the forest..." has met its match. If no Klingon exists to speak it, does that mean it's not useful? How would the ancient Greeks feel knowing they no longer exist, but people still know and use their language? Who judges worth of use?

Microsoft Bing even has an English-to-Klingon translation tool. Over 250,000 Klingon dictionaries have been sold. There's even a Klingon Language Institute. In the end, can Paramount own the words they sort of never created? Can anyone?

No court in American history has ever ruled the copyrightedness of a language--any language--before. Song lyrics? Poems? Words on a page? They've been touched on by courts. By comparison, the copyright over language as a whole, and the Klingon language specifically, is, well, the final frontier.

When Writers Go Weird: That time Ken Kesey faked his suicide.

Are writers ever normal? No, otherwise they'd be productive members of society. 'When Writers Go Weird' is when we remember writers acting strange, odd, off, or--yeah--just plain weird. Also known as Tuesday to them.

Today: That time Ken Kesey faked his suicide.

Contrary to what Hollywood would make you believe, faking your own death to get out of something isn't a common occurrence. This is because faking your death is hard work with you still being alive and all.

Kesey thinking up ways to not kill himself.

This brings us to Ken Kesey. Kesey--who looked like a middle-aged patron in a South Boston back alley bar--is in that group of one-hit wonder authors, but with only a fraction of the fame of your J.D. Salingers and Harper Lees. He wrote more, it's just that none of it was memorable. His most notable work was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a massive hit made even more popular with its 1975 film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson.

Kesey sprung to critical and commercial success in his mid-twenties for Cuckoo, which was partly inspired by his time spent in an illegal medical trial run by the CIA for psychoactive drugs run. The trial tested drugs like LSD, cocaine, and mescaline, creating all of the allure of a club scene but without the great dance beats, which Kesey detailed in his writings. Not surprisingly, Kesey continued the medical trial long after the medical trial ended. Drugs are funny that way.

After Cuckoo garnered success, Kesey moved to a ranch in La Honda, CA, south of San Francisco. There, Kesey and a large gathering of acquaintances and friends dabbled in then-legal psychedelic drugs like LSD (notice a pattern yet?), and held parties dubbed "Acid Tests." The group came to call itself The Merry Pranksters and criss-crossed the country in a bus painted for a bad trip--a trip on acid, not Interstate 95--for no other apparent reason than they could.

There's probably at least three dozen
illegal things going on with this bus.

By 1965, Kesey was arrested for marijuana possession, one of the few illegal drugs at the time. Then he found himself busted a second time for the same crime. For reasons unknown--paranoia? fright? looking for a thrill? a history of bad decision making?--Kesey decided to create a faked suicide to escape pending jail time.

Driving up to northern California, outside Eureka, Kesey parked a truck near a seaside cliff and left an elaborate suicide note with the line "Ocean, Ocean, I'll beat you in the end." Suicide never sounded more poetic or romantic. Then, through the help of his friends and luxurious trunk space to hide, Kesey snuck over the border into Mexico to hide from the FBI for his marijuana arrests.

Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, then Manzanillo all received a visit from Kesey, his friends, his family, and even the bus. The FBI didn't buy the supposed suicide, although the media reported Kesey's death as fact. U.S. authorities tracked the author to Mexico, enrolling the help of the Mexican Federales, but Kesey remained largely hidden, even escaping undercover stings a couple of times. For eight months he hid in plain sight in the town with friends. As the New York Times later recounted, a former hotel owner in Manzanillo, Bart Varelmann, wrote in a memoir that "[t]he interior of Ken's bus was a cornucopia of strange pills, exotic herbs, magic mushrooms, peyote buttons, LSD, uppers, downers, poppers, and of course marijuana." Varelmann also noted that "[o]n a windless day one could get stoned just strolling past the bus." If you think this sounds ideal, clearly you were alive for the 1960s.

Then, as randomly as he faked a suicide, as abruptly as the hijinks began, and as if the vacation was over, Kesey headed back to the United States and accepted five months in jail for his prior arrests. The ruse of a suicide was over.

Can you fake a rebirth? If so, Kesey tried his best version of it. The general absurdity of the previous two years faded as Kesey, out of prison, moved to rural Oregon and wrote largely forgettable material for books and magazines, including a memoir and tour in a new version of the psychedelic bus. He remained largely uninteresting--dare say, normal--until his death in 2001.

The weirdest thing Kesey did at the end of his life was that he became boring. And that was maybe the most criminal thing of all.

Randomness Corner: The scourge of illicit delectable meats and cheeses!

Grandma's ham cartel strikes again.

Over a nearly seven month period at Manchester Airport, the U.K.'s third largest, highly trained drug-sniffing dogs never found a single source of class-A drugs like cocaine and heroin, but they found a delightful array of artisanal meats and cheeses brought back by local Brits on holiday.

Does this mean an elderly British grandmother is a hardened criminal if she's hauling back some jamón ibérico in her carry-on from a week in the south of Spain? Fido seems to think so, and would like to take it off her hands.

The dogs cost the airport £1.25 million to train and house, but authorities claim the dogs also detected over 40,000 smuggled cigarettes.

Cheese. Meat. Cigarettes.

Add a full-bodied red wine and candles to this list and Fido will have created a sophisticated romantic evening.

Thirteen Detroit principals charged with bribery in alleged kickback scheme.

A vendor named Arthur Shy allegedly paid bribes to over a dozen principals in the Detroit school system in order to charge the district for school supplies they never received.

According to the charges, Shy paid the principals $900,000. In return, Shy allegedly charged the district over $5 million for supplies, of which over $2.7 million was fraudulent.

Now, you might be thinking, "Isn't Detroit desperately broke? Aren't many of Detroit's schools crumbling and badly in need of repair? Are people really this corrupt to shaft children?"

Yes.

Yes.

And yes.

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: Straight up, dealing drugs never sounded so good.

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.

Today:  Dealing drugs makes for a catchy jingle.





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  Worst Bell Biv Devoe tribute song ever.
2.)  "Yeah, you make a lot of money and you make it fast." Wait, wait, wait--I think my arm was just twisted to begin a life of crime.
3.)  Only the most respected PSAs include the running man.
4.)  Did they just narc on their friends to the cops? Well, that was bold of them.
5.)  It's really cute when we pretend cops would ever hang out with local youth in a friendly way. It's adorable!
6.)  A song repeats "straight up" and there's no Paula Abdul crossover? Such a lost opportunity.

UConn student allegedly steals professor's password and changes a variety of grades.

High-five! You're being arraigned!

Eighteen-year-old Omar Faraj, of Mystic, CT, was charged with allegedly stealing his University of Connecticut chemistry professor's password, accessing a grading database, and changing his own grade from a C to an A-.

Faraj also changed four fellow students' grades for the better as well, and--really pushing all his chips into the center of the table--he changed four more students' grades for the worse.

This took some time, apparently, as authorities claim he accessed his professor's account on a couple of occasions, and all the alleged grade-changing led to triggering an automatic email warning to the professor, who then notified officials.

Faraj gets an A for effort! (((rim-shot)))

No?

No. Faraj was expelled from the school, and charged with forgery and computer crime complaints, which he was to be arraigned for in New London, CT, court.

Prison is a great time to dive into self-help books, which is what El Chapo is doing these days.

Oh, no! El Chapo is in prison again!

When in prison a year ago, Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was granted weekly four hour conjugal visits, complete with prison-supplied Viagra. Guzman's long been labeled as highly sexually driven.

But after a brief escape--which included a male-enhancement surgery in Tijuana--and inevitable return to prison, El Chapo is being stimulated in different ways these days behind bars: He's reading books.

Now with his schedule cleared from exhausting, ahem, visits, El Chapo has reportedly read Cervantes' Don Quixote, as well as American evangelical pastor Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Oooh, ooh, I know! I know! You're really terrible at evading capture!

One of Rick Warren's quotes from the book really rings true for El Chapo, specifically, "We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it."

Well, clearly, in some cases that's not true.

But I'm guessing evangelical American pastors and lusty Mexican drug lords don't always run in the same circles.






Why a kitten? Because.

23-year old Russian pretends to be high school honors student.

Artur Samarin came to America four years ago and, for reasons unknown, decided to pretend to be a Pennsylvania high school student by the name of Asher Potts, which he did successfully. Very successfully. According to CBS News:


[Samarin was] a member of the National Honor Society. Samarin was actively involved at the school, working with a student advisory group on a food bank, and he was a member of the school's ROTC and Naval Sea Cadet programs.


Samarin was arrested and charged with, among other things, identity theft, even though he didn't steal anyone's identity. He simply created one.

The real crime here is he decided to go with Asher as a name. That's only acceptable if you want to sing bad pop music or be a reality TV star--not if you want to be a stellar high school student.