Bruner Blog

AP reports:

A woman has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery, admitting she attacked a stripper who failed to meet expectations during her daughter’s bachelorette party.

. . .

The 28-year-old man suffered head injuries, bruises and scratches when he was punched, kicked and hit over the head with a bottle after his July 2002 performance at a hotel in Crystal Lake.

I see this was first reported elsewhere in May, but it just caught my eye in the Atlantic:

The Victorian naturalist Thomas Huxley, arguing for the organizing power of random chance, allegedly advanced the conceit that an infinite number of monkeys banging away at typewriters over the course of infinity would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. The Plymouth researchers set out to explore this proposition, giving six Sulawesi crested macaques the use of a computer for four weeks. In the end the monkeys produced not a single word, and showed little interest in any key but S. “Another thing they were interested in,” a spokesman for the project said, “was defecating and urinating all over the keyboard.”

Ah, science. Sounds like some bloggers I know.

I got the story from Adrienne, who’s vacationing back in Budapest at the moment. A bomb blew up in Budapest on Monday outside of the Nyugati (Western) train station. Jihadists wreaking terror in Hungary’s capital for that country’s participation in the war on Iraq? (Thousands of Iraqi police officers are being trained at Hungary’s Taszar Air Base.)

Well, not exactly. Turns out it was what Hungarians call a “bunko” (rough translation: “moron”). A 20-year-old Hungarian fellow was afraid that someone was out to get him (gambling debt, I believe Adi said). So, he went on the Internet and figured out how to make a home-made bomb, which he then proceeded to carry around in his backpack as self-defense. That’s right, a bomb in his backpack as self-defense.

Apparently, he had set the backpack down, then when his tram was about to leave the stop, he lifted it up with a jerk and it exploded. Thankfully no one was killed.

Budapest Sun reports most of it.

Last month, CNN reported:

SANTA MONICA, California — An 86-year-old man who drove his mid-size Buick through a crowded farmers’ market Wednesday told police he couldn’t stop and may have hit the accelerator instead of the brake, Santa Monica Police Chief James T. Butts Jr. said.

Nine people were killed, including a 3-year-old girl, authorities said. The more than 54 hurt include 14 people with critical injuries, they said. Two of those critically injured are under the age of 2.

Today, the New York Times reports:

A 9-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy, left alone yesterday in the girl’s home in Little Ferry, N.J., climbed into the family sport utility vehicle and drove it almost a mile to Hackensack, where it crashed into four parked cars in a supermarket parking lot and struck a pedestrian.

… The pedestrian, an 84-year-old man whom the police would not identify, was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center. The police said he had suffered bruises and scratches that were not life-threatening and was in stable condition late yesterday.

• Frontman and the Backup Band
• The Orgasm-Faced Blues Band
• The Funky Honkies
• The Dingleberries
• Disaffected Youth
• Petulant Teenagers
• The Wannabes
• Cat Food
• The Dog’s Breakfast
• Trucker Hat
• Reality Band
• The Ego Strokers
• The Hipster Sellouts
• Joe Jones and the Jones Tones
• So Last Year

UPDATE: I found another! Really, what is up with this?

Wetumpka. It’s just fun to say. Ain’t her mama proud now?

Cat tree for sale. Good condition, slightly used.

Email: rickbruner@mailblocks.com (NOTE: this is a spam-filtering service; you must confirm with a reply after you send your email)

SOLD!!

A new blog called Riverbend purports to be written by a 24-year-old Iraqi woman in Baghdad. Her English is curiously perfect (better than Salam’s), but I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt, as the perspective seems really true.

I recommend this article in the Observer about “the four Moms,” crusading widows and mothers of victims of 9/11 who have refused to stop asking questions of the government’s official version of events on and around that fateful date.

Adrienne and I watched Wide Angle on PBS Thursday about Berlusconi and what a manipulative, anti-Democratic SOB he is, re-writing the laws to favor his business interests, silencing criticism in the media, having two members of Parliament as his personal lawyers, having himself granted immunity to prosecution while in office. Later, over drinks, we were talking about how thankfully something like that couldn’t happen here. Then we thought about the stolen presidential election, censored pages from Congressional investigative report, secret arrests of hundreds without due process, the EPA lying about the safety of air around Ground Zero after the attacks under pressure from the White House, the Patriot Act, Haliburton and, my personal favorite, still no leads in the anthrax murders.

I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, it really is strange that the NY Times et al have never adequately investigated that gaping discrepancy that from the time of the first hijacking till the last plane crashed was well over an hour and yet the Air Force never got off the ground to intervene…

The shock of the thing has finally worn off enough that I’m ready to start being a cranky liberal again. I think I’m going to celebrate the two-year anniversary by subscribing the The Nation.

This is great news: Internet cafes in Iraq. Just what I was hoping for in March.

I am so happy about this: manufactured diamonds indistinguishable from those created by thousands of years by Mother Nature. Genuine alchemy. I hate diamonds. One of the biggest marketing scams every perpetrated on the American public. No one deserves a kick in the mouth more than those bastards at De Beers. Talk about conspiracy theories come true.

Funny, funny stuff.

This guy is just nuts.

KTVU TV reports:

A 200-foot-tall giant sequoia tree fell along Sequoia National Park’s main road, crushing [an SUV] into a several-foot high pile of crumpled metal, park officials said Monday.

No one was hurt.