Target Centermass

Category: WTF?!!

  • Five Dead in Wisc. Hunting Dispute

    I’m not a hunter. I have nothing against it, and many in my family have been hunters. Luckily, none of them have every seen story like this, just another of the kind that drove my creation of a “WTF?!!” category.

    A dispute among deer hunters over a tree stand in northwestern Wisconsin erupted Sunday in a series of shootings that left five people dead and three injured, officials said.

    The alleged gunman, a man from the Twin Cities area, was arrested Sunday afternoon at the line between Rusk and Sawyer counties, according to Sawyer County sheriff’s officials.

    The violence began shortly after a hunting party saw a hunter occupying their tree stand, Sawyer County Chief Deputy Tim Zeigle told KSTP-TV of St. Paul, Minn. A confrontation and shooting followed.

    One of the shooting victims radioed back to the deer shack for help, he said. When more hunters came to the scene, they also were shot, Zeigle said.

    The shootings happened in the town of Meteor in southwestern Sawyer County, County Sheriff James Meier said in a news release. Three people were taken to a local hospital, Meier said.

    The three wounded were taken to hospitals in Marshfield and Rice Lake, where officials said one was in critical condition, one was serious and one was fair.

    Wisconsin’s deer gun hunting season started Saturday and lasts for nine days.

    Bill Wagner, 72, of Oshkosh, was about two miles away near Deer Lake with a party of about 20 other hunters.

    After they got word of a shooting, it took him and others about three hours to round up the rest of their party. He said they heard sirens, planes and helicopters and noticed the surrounding roads blocked off.

    “When you’re hunting you don’t expect somebody to try to shoot you and murder you,” he said. “You have no idea who is coming up to you.”

    The incident won’t stop their hunt, Wagner said.

    “We’re all old, dyed-in-wool hunters,” he said. “We wouldn’t go home because of this but we will keep it in our minds.”

    In other news, there’s still plenty of meat available at my local grocery store.

  • UK: Got Lard?

    If not, Brits, you can apparently blame the E.U.

    Bakers of mince pies, Christmas puddings and other traditional British treats have been warned that they might be facing a lard-free Christmas this year.

    Supermarkets say stocks of the shortening, made from rendered pig fat, were running low due to surging demand from pork-loving new members of the European Union.

    Jamie Sitzia, spokeswoman for the Somerfield supermarket chain, said this week that the admission of 10 new EU countries in May had been followed by “unprecedented demand from Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary for the cheapest cuts of pork to meet their demand for sausages, salamis and pies.”

    The countries are buying EU-bred pork to avoid tariffs on imports from outside the union. The result, Sitzia said, was “a serious shortfall in lard production throughout the European Union.”

    A spokeswoman for Sainsbury’s, another large supermarket chain, said the company had seen a reduced supply of lard in stores and was advising customers to switch to butter or margarine where possible.

    Despite Britain’s reputation for stodgy food, lard is increasingly shunned by health-conscious cooks. Consumption fell from 2 ounces per person per week in 1971 to 0.3 ounces per person per week in 1998, according to government statistics.

    But many still swear by it as the secret to light, flaky pie crust and delicious roast potatoes.

    Somerfield spokeswoman Sitzia advised lard lovers not to panic.

    “We are now getting more volume through from suppliers and if customers do not panic buy we should have enough for everyone,” she said.

    I’m dreaming of a rendered-pig-fat Christmas….

  • Man Sets Self Afire Outside White House

    Hey, buddy, you got a light?

    A man set himself on fire about 2 p.m. Monday on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House.

    The man, whose identity and condition have not been released, was taken to a hospital for treatment.

    “Members of the uniformed Secret Service responded and administered first aid to the individual until D.C. fire and EMS arrived,” said Secret Service public relations spokesman Jonathan Cherry. “The individual has been transported to the burn unit at Medstar at the Washington Hospital Center. An investigation is currently under way.”

    The investigation is being conducted by U.S. Park Police, whose jurisdiction includes the property directly outside the fence surrounding the White House.

    President Bush went about his regular schedule during and after the incident, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

    One witness said the man approached a security checkpoint building at the northwest gate of the White House and showed a writing pad with the word “urgent” written on it. When a uniformed Secret Service guard asked if he could help him, the man began walking along the fence toward the guard.

    Another witness near the scene heard the unidentified man yelling in Arabic, “God is great,” several times. And several witnesses said a bag the man was carrying started burning, pouring out thick black smoke that enveloped him.

    The man appeared to fall face forward on the ground in front of the gate security building, the witnesses said, and uniformed Secret Service agents rushed to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher.

    The section of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was cordoned off. Secret Service agents evacuated the immediate area in front of the White House, including the North Lawn area used by television organizations and other journalists, while initial examinations of the man and his bag were conducted.

    Some may say this is tragic. Some may say this is funny. I say it is a precursor of things to come.

    Terrorism will happen here. Bombings will happen here.

    So many of us sleep still, thinking that an offensive campaign is all that is needed, or that an offensive campaign is the last thing that is needed. Both views are wrong, though the latter is pathetically so. An offensive war against Islamist terror allows us to choose the battlefield and hopefully reshape the social terrain of the Islamist world. It gives an area of focus for the terrorists, for they cannot allow us to successfully build an alternative hope for the Arab world, but it does not prevent them from always seeking to attack us here to try to sap our will.

    My first thought upon hearing this news was of the Buddhist monks who ritualistically took their own lives with fire in Viet Nam. Upon quick reflection, I think the comparison is absolutely empty. The Islamists may welcome death and think it brings rewards, but I know of no instances where they went into that good night without trying to take others with them. I’ll admit I may be ignorant on this, but I still feel the Viet Nam flashback uncalled for in this instance.

    This may have been one lone nut, or it may have been an Islamist who hoped to do damage and looked forward to meeting 72 virgins as a charcoal briquet. Either way, there will be future attempts to harm us and to shake our conviction to fight the radical cancer that torments much of the Moslem world. In facing this, we cannot waver, we cannot cower and hope the danger passes, and we cannot lose focus that this is a great conflict between a dark yesterday and a bright tomorrow.

    Such conflicts do seem to give rise to the occasional loon.

  • Call for Constitutional Amendment

    November 7.

    It’s only freakin’ Nov. 7.

    Hey, I dig Christmas as much as the next guy, but a local DFW radio station has already switched to all-Xmas music.

    Selling decorations, fine. I’ll live with that. Putting up decorations or continuously playing the music, wrong. Oh, so very wrong. Wait ’til at least the weekend following Turkey Day.

  • Were Al-Qaqaa Pics Doctored?

    Looks like Scott, a.k.a. the Fat Guy, has found one of the originals.

    Scott claims he found it in the shower.

  • Ags Lose 35-34

    … to freakin’ Baylor! Ain’t that just crapfreakingtastic!

    Just an incredible choke job by a young team. On the road, you can’t make the mistakes the Ags did, giving up turnovers, a big return and a blocked punt. You can’t surrender three second-half leads. You can’t lose in the first overtime just four plays after scoring a go-ahead OT touchdown. Well, obviously you can, but it ain’t a recipe for success.

  • Dutch Farmers Use Tabasco Sauce to Stop Rabbits

    I don’t know that this is news, but it does support something I strongly believe.

    Dutch farmers have found a hot new way to keep rabbits, birds and rodents away from their crops. Tabasco sauce. The new initiative seems to be making everyone happy.

    Everyone that is, except for the rabbits, who farmers say jump a meter in the air and run for cover after tasting the spicy American sauce. But farmers say its working. And animal protection spokesman Niels Doorlandt calls it a wonderful alternative to the shotgun.

    What, you may ask, is my belief that this tidbit supports? Simply this: rabbits are stupid. Tabasco is good.

    Let me say that again. Tabasco is good. Use it on W Ketchup for your fries, put it on eggs, mix it in your hamburgers, splash it on your red beans and rice — heck, try it with anything, even rabbit stew. This stuff is so good that Frodo and Sam carried a vial of it with them on their adventure into Mordor.

  • Amarillo Sues Prostitute to Get HIV Treatment

    I’ll put this story in the “What the hell is in the water in west Texas?!!” file.

    In an attempt to get an HIV-positive prostitute to seek treatment and stop spreading the infection, Amarillo officials have filed a lawsuit.

    “The Public Health Department assists many people with AIDS, and this single case is the very rare exception where a person who is HIV contagious is noncompliant with the health authority,” Amarillo City Attorney Marcus Norris, whose office filed the civil action in Potter County on Wednesday, told the Amarillo Globe-News for its Saturday online editions.

    “We believe that by her conduct, she poses a health threat to the community, and so we’re going to have to try to get the court to intervene and help.”

    The woman, identified in court papers only by the initials T.T., has infected at least one person with HIV by engaging in prostitution and has refused efforts by local health officials to get her to act responsibly and seek treatment, according to court documents.

    “This is a very last-ditch effort,” said Dr. J. Rush Pierce, public health authority for the Bi-City-County Health Department. “We would not be doing this if we had been able to get this woman to behave responsibly with regard to sexual activity any other way.”

    According to documents included in the suit, the woman was diagnosed with HIV in January 2000 and was counseled at the Department of Health on ways to prevent spread of the virus. But in 2001 a case of HIV was traced back to T.T., and the patient informed officials that T.T. had not disclosed her HIV status prior to sexual contact.

    In early 2003, Health Department officials discovered that T.T. was engaged in prostitution to support a cocaine habit, so the department issued a warning letter ordering her to enroll in treatment, according to documents in the lawsuit.

    But after attending counseling for several months, she dropped out in 2004 and reverted to prostitution again, the documents say.

    Okay, let me get this straight. T.T. is a lethal, cocaine-addled whore, so we slap a lawsuit on her ass? I’m wagering she isn’t the brightest porchlight on the block; it should be pretty easy to catch her in any number of illegal activities and lock her $5 dollar (estimated) ass away from the society she is choosing to endanger.

  • Sharon Stone: Bush a Problem for Lesbian Kissing

    From “The Headline Writes Itself” Department, we get this interesting political statement:

    Sharon Stone blames US President George W Bush for the absence of a lesbian kissing scene in Catwoman – because of the current conservative climate in America.

    Basic Instinct star Stone, 46, was keen to enjoy an intimate moment with Oscar-winning co-star Halle Berry, but believes a puritanical streak running through the country put an end to any potential girl-on-girl action.

    Stone says: “Halle’s so beautiful and I wanted to kiss her. I said, ‘How can you have us in the movie and not have us kiss? That’s such a waste.’

    “That’s what you get for having George Bush as president.”

  • Local News: Man Found Dead Inside Portable Restroom

    The Dallas Morning News is reporting a body showing up in an unusual location.

    Irving police are investigating the death of a man found inside a portable restroom near the 5100 block of Riverside Drive, officials said Wednesday.

    An Irving Parks and Recreation Department employee discovered the man shortly after 3 a.m. during a routine check near a parking lot inside Campion Trails, police said.

    The unidentified man is described as a white male in his 40s. Police said they are investigating the death as a possible homicide due to signs of trauma to the body.

    Investigators are also looking at the possibility that the man’s injuries occurred at another location.

    Police said they were still investigating the man’s identity, time and cause of death pending autopsy results.

    Anyone with information can call the Irving Police Department at (972) 721-2518.