Category Archives: Travel

dumb crime daily: have you seen this man?

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Camera ThiefStupido here is possibly the world’s dumbest crook. Along with a gang of pals, he posed as a member of a Portugese camera crew, and helped out a team filming in Hong Kong. They worked steadily, and apparently professionally, as a camera crew for two full days before pulling a disappearing act with all the gear that belonged to the independent television company they’d been assisting.

From BoingBoing:

“We’re a small, independent television production company in Hong Kong… last week, a group of con men ripped off a load of very expensive professional tv gear from us… cameras, tripods, a recording deck, wireless microphones… lots of stuff. They were posing as a Portuguese production company… very professional-seeming. They even shot footage of Hong Kong with our crew for two days before they did a runner with the gear! At any rate, we got a photograph of one of them, who for some reason thought it would be okay to pose for a tourist snapshot CARRYING THE CAMERA HE WAS ABOUT TO STEAL.”

UPDATE: they seem to be Brazilian rather than Portugese, and there is VIDEO of them here.

My Summer Vacation: A Narrow Escape

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It’s still to painful to blog about. Go to Metro‘s blog and read the comment I posted.

God, I need a drink. Will be back after the hangover and the memories abate…

my summer vacation 3.0

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Come on, he said. Get in the car, he said. It’ll be great, he said. You’ll like it, he said.

You see this coming a mile away, don’t you?

“I’ll take you on a nice, scenic drive through the wine country, raincoaster,” said Metro. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Sure did. So into the car hopped one unsuspecting Vancouverite.

I should have suspected something when I spotted the sign that said we were on the road to the dump. “Sanitary landfill,” excuse me.

Eventually we toured quite a slice of the back country, the kind of mountains where the Akeleys and Whatleys confer on strangely bald mountaintops, between huge menhirs placed there by unknown beings long before the Poquassetts settled the land in the tenth century BC.

We passed the dump at about minute fifteen. I should have jumped. The raccoons would have been swift and merciful.

Instead, we did not turn around until well past the dump, well past the reservoir, well past the…fucking pavement’s end. Eventually the gravel turned to rocks and boulders, and Metro was persuaded to give up or sacrifice the undercarriage of the non-off-road-equipped Ford.

We turned around, actually, just past the sign that said we had reached Cowpat Farm.

We had left Lovecraft territory entirely, and entered Shirley Jackson‘s godforsaken lands.

a saw, a subway, and a poignant teddy bear rescue: YouTube is there

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From Gawker. 

Because You Demanded It — deranged man attacks subway rider with industrial tools, then absconds with teddy bear on continued crimewave. The Today Show has the goods above. Shocking, as even with the trials and tribulations of a normal New York subway commute, one rarely expects an assault from a pair of cordless reciprocating saws. And there’s some question about whether or not MTA workers at the scene fled and/or observed the carnage with bored disinterest. See zone-flooding repetitive linkfest after the jump for full details, but the upshot is that the alleged saw-wielding maniac has been apprehended, and the victim is recovering from his wounds in the hospital. Plus, as Newsday notes, subway officials don’t think this will make customers feel unsafe, and they’re right — an interviewed straphanger says of the saw attack, “It doesn’t happen that often.” [emph. added]

Link roundup and more here.

Okay people, what was I just saying about do-it-yourselfers? These people should be stopped before they attempt to teddy rustle again.

Surely Canadian Tire sells some kind of DIY-er-proof fencing. Like, for when they have doorcrasher sales on Motomaster batteries and shit. Round ’em up and let God sort ’em out. As long as the corral “needs work” they’ll be content. They may not even notice; perhaps we could send them to Gitmo to put in a pool and squash court.

Does anyone have before/after pix of Alderson?

Special Guest

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In case you haven’t heard, I’m guest blogging over at Metroblog. If the posts are not funny enough, or political enough, they lock me under the stairs and beat me with bicycle chains. Well okay, they make me drink Chardonnay instead of Sauvignon Blanc, and they don’t introduce me to any nice single men. Cruel either way.