Not feeling my best today, probably because of a lack of sleep... Playing around with assorted code to pass the time. Before that I wrote a little bit, did some research, dabbled in my current popcorn book, and fooled a bit with my web page, played with the Newtster, and did just about everything but go outside or take a nap. I looked on kazaa for last nights Justice League, but no luck yet. It'll be out there within a week... I've already picked up the eclipso episode and a few others that had fallen through the cracks.

Just finished a case of a missing disabled woman... some parts of Ohio are just amazingly spread out. I dropped a blanket about five miles in width and height over her region, and only about 300 names popped up. She was on a bicycle, and missing since 9am, so I may have to do some "followup chasing" if I get any trail information on her. It's frightening.. getting cold out there, and the woman's in her thirties, but mentally still a youngster. With the region spread out like that, chances of witnesses are going to be difficult, but hopefully someone noticed something.

---

Here's a reason to be glad if you're a villain and just got beaten up by Batman or Spidey. It could be worse.... a whole lot worse.At least you didn't come up against the Spectre, who's a great deal less forgiving than the most frightening vigilante. (Doesn't waste any time, either... I hope the butler was guilty of murder or something, rather than badly arranging the little soaps in the guest bathroom.)

---

Radio Heroes... classic comic book and record sets. I had this Superman and the Deadly Rains as a kid, and yes, I thought it was horribly bad even as a six year old. The commentary goes from very funny to really lame, but the biggest draw for me is just seeing all of these things again. Very Nostalgic.

---

Wynonna Judd Mug shot.

---

Eyewitness Quiz, D'oh, I got one wrong.

---

Good commentary heard recently - "Robert, you are so wrong, philosophers weep at the sound of your voice." (via )

[update: having a heck of a time getting the client to post this entry. I tried about 10 times before giving up and using the web.]

Ok, I called up the landlord today and gave him the lowdown on what happened last night with Frankie, and he confirmed that the place is being sold... and that he's not evicting Frankie for some reason, but is instead moving him to another property of his. The mooch will never be able to honestly say folks didn't give him another chance. He's had more chances with the landlord and police than seems fair or just.

In other news, I feel hungrier lately... is it because winter is approaching? Is my body hearkening back to a storage phase? I notice I'm sleeping a bit longer lately, too, but I chalk that up to my healing phase.. my body always gets a bit more sleepy when it's undergoing repairs. Perhaps the body's craving more food as building material, too?

The archive link below reminded me that they're currently reworking the galleria mall... the middle is gutted, and they're redoing the facades out front a little at a time. It looks like a bomb hit it in the middle, but the outskirt-stores are still open and take customers.

Dr. Fate on Justice League... pretty keen. Teaming up with Aquaman and Solomon Grundy to banish Cthulhu. Not too shabby a job on Inza Nelson, either. I'm really impressed with the quality of writing and storylines with the run so far. It was a good message about faith, too. Something fairly strange... they really amped up Hawkgirl, and apparently Thanagarians get a lot of their energies (as well as agriculture and mathematics) from Cthulhu.. Up until now, I thought she was just the "Angry Warrior Gal" on the show... Hopefully they'll play up her detective skills and other abilities over time later. It's nice to see Grundy as a rampaging beast and sympathetic monster seeking the return of his soul, too. The closure there was well treated, too.

I've always had a real soft spot for Solomon Grundy. What's not to like? He's a reanimated corpse... strength and persistence a force of nature with the mind of a child. In the 60's "Earth 2.1" game, we cured ol' Cyrus, reuniting his soul to his body. The Dr. Mid-Nite / Green Lantern "Brave and the Bold" issues were certainly my favorite ones of that run.

---

The NRA wants to stop the police form tracking pawned guns?

TALLAHASSEE - The National Rifle Association has an enemies list. One way or another, you're probably on it.

By name? No. Fewer than 300 celebrities, national figures and journalists rate individual billing on its Web site. (Having failed to make Nixon's list, I am chagrined at not being on the NRA's either. Maybe this will fix that.)

But the likelihood is high that you, like me, belong to or support at least one of the 142 organizations that the NRA faults as "anti-gun."

Among them: The AARP. The AFL-CIO. The American Medical Association. The American Bar Association. Common Cause. The League of Women Voters of the United States. The National Education Association. The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. The National Council of La Raza. The National Council of Negro Women. The National Council of Jewish Women. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Unitarian Universalist Association. The U.S. Catholic Conference. The YMCA of the U.S.A.

If you buy Hallmark Cards, shop at a 7-Eleven store, have Blue Cross health insurance, eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream or Sara Lee cakes, wear Levi's jeans or use a Sprint telephone, you're favoring your business on one of 44 national corporations whose gun control politics significantly perturb the NRA.

The NRA is, of course, entirely within its rights to have its lists.

However, the organization's attitude toward lists is somewhat inconsistent.

The NRA's Florida arm is asking the Legislature for a law that would make a felon of anyone and everyone - private citizens as well as police or other government workers - who makes and keeps any list of privately owned firearms or their owners.

The bill (HB 155) provides for exceptions, such as the NRA's own membership lists, the state's list of people licensed to carry concealed weapons, and records pertaining to stolen guns - but for no more than 30 days after the weapon is recovered.

What's left? Mainly, to stop local police from keeping records of guns that make their way through pawn shops. Everything else that goes through a pawn shop goes, by law, into a state database in Tallahassee. Two years ago, however, the gun lobby cowed the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into erasing guns from that database after 48 hours. Now they're out to hobble local law enforcement as well.

When my colleague Steve Bousquet asked the NRA's Marion Hammer two years ago why police should track pawned TV sets but not guns, she answered, "Televisions don't have constitutional protections."

I don't recall ever hearing of a television set being used to rob, rape or kill someone, as firearms frequently are. But to the gun lobby, the greater danger lies in letting the government know which citizens own what guns. It harbors a paranoid fear of confiscation, one of the classic paranoias in American history.

A little touch of paranoia is not necessarily a bad thing. As James Madison put it,"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties." But I think the NRA is barking up the wrong tree. Gun confiscation would be such a fool's errand as to be the most remote of dangers. The so-called Patriot Act is a very clear and very present "experiment on our liberties." If John Ashcroft has his way there's more to follow. (To their credit, many NRA members oppose the Patriot Act.)

Democracies aren't subverted overnight. They die of the cumulative effect of a thousand cuts. Always, some external danger is the pretext for the destruction within.

What is most troubling about HB 155 is the phony history the "whereas" clauses cite as a pretext for criminalizing the keeping of lists. Supposedly, Fidel Castro and Adolf Hitler both used gun registration "to confiscate firearms and render the disarmed population helpless. . . ."

Historians whom I consulted scoff at this. According to Dr. Cristoph Strupp of the German Historical Institute in Washington, Hitler actually liberalized Germany's gun laws, except for Jews and other "enemies of the state." But, he added, it would be "basically naive" and "a-historical" to think that owning guns "would have made any difference in their fate."

"There was virtually no resistance in Germany not because there weren't guns but because there was no will to resist," explained Dr. Nathan Stolzfus, an associate professor of history at Florida State University. "The clear majority in Germany received Hitler as he presented himself. . . ."

Dr. Louis A. Perez, a University of North Carolina professor of history who formerly taught at the University of South Florida, said that upon seizing power Castro actually distributed guns to the Cuban population, reversing course only when street crime became a problem.

If guns are ever confiscated in America, it will happen only long after we have surrendered other freedoms, as willingly as the Germans did, on some false altar of national security. And once again, it would be too late for guns to make a difference.

---

a year ago - green banana moon, taho commercial, Trapezoid vs rhombus, other fun words.

2 years ago - caption picture poll, turtle-butt breathing, big brain's 2nd incarnation

3 years ago - memories added to lj, strip mall of sin, mall of the dead (pompano fashion square), Hunter Thompson on ESPN (still writing), moment of Louis Armstrong

Holy crap on a crap cracker. Looks like ol' Frankie the Mooch has been sponging off of the wrong people.

Just a wee bit past midnight, I was just half asleep,watching SNL and I hear raised voices. Just two doors down, yells and pleadings to the tune of "I'll get it, I'll get it!" and then the sound of a man being beaten up. After taking a second to I called 911, because I'm certainly not up to stepping outside and breaking things up. After calling the police, I called the landlord, and notified him of the latest shenanigans in apartment #1. LL assured me that Frankie's going to be out in a few days... hardee har har. I'd like to hope so, but I'll only believe that when I see it.

A pair of policemen have since come by, and I gave my name and approximation as to what happened. The combatants have since left, and mooch-boy isn't answering his door, so there's little else I can do but keep an ear open and be ready to call again, if need be.

I really can't help but think that Frankie brought this onto himself, but I still feel pity. He's a pathetic, sad creature, for all of his moochy, creepy ways... and doesn't deserve a punch in the mouth for being a toad.


Let's see... Searching for Frankie in past entries - numerous mooches and attempted mooches left out.

• 5/11/03 - first mooch


• 5/14/03 - first chastising


• 7/7/03 - spinach roll


• 8/15/03 - knockers (maybe the same guy(s) as tonight?


• 8/27/03 - phone mooch


• 9/8/03 - "fix my wank machine?"


• 9/11/03 - begs for money/food. I foolishly give.


• 9/13/03 - last feeding time


• 9/14/03 - he's got cigs and beer, breaks my sleep, tries to mooch more


• 9/21/03 - mooch, use being on call to deny phone


• 10/15/03 - Sammy and Frankie have an argument


• 10/27/03 - Frankie Served notice, supposedly evicted within 5 days.


• 10/31/03 - 5 days later, He's still here.


• 11/08/03 - attempted mooching


• 11/10/03 - Mailbox Mess


• 11/16/03 - Today.


• 11/19/03 - Moved out by LL?

[update - 1:32am - more fighting outside. I called the police back, waiting for arrival. 1:35-same cops as before swung by and Frankie's not coming out, though his light is on now. I got a glimpse of the other guy, though, a skinny Spanish guy, mustache, white t-shirt, dark shorts, red backpack. Apparently in the scuffle, a pair of sunglasses dropped and a can of beer were spilled in the courtyard. I suspect Frankie's not coming to the door because he's fearing either eviction or being jailed by the cops.]

[update2 - 1:51am - raised voices again, and glass breaking. This is my third call to the police. I hope they get here before they disperse and run off again.]

[update3 - 2:48am - Cops just finished interrogating Frankie, and I'm amazed that they didn't take him to jail. They found it was his window that had been broken, and he opened the door after a long knocking session...they saw him and movement inside, and so persisted. Once they got him outside, he claimed to have no identification, and gave the name "Stephen" or "Steve", and a birthday in September of '65... and didn't remember his social security number. They immediately figured he was full of it because I referred to him as Frankie earlier and that's the name on the mailbox.

While he was talking to the Policemen, he tried a few times to head back into the house.... It was at that point that one of the cops looked more closely inside, and saw a crack pipe on the table beside his TV remote. They pressured him some more, and it turns out that he gave his brother's name. He eventually admitted to his real name of Francis, and suddenly could remember his social and birthday in January of '63. The police gave him moderate hell for being a liar... he claimed that there was a girl over, and that the crack and paraphernalia was hers. (That's *very unlikely*... the cops said as much. "Why should we believe some guy that lied to us about his name, his social and his window breaking?" Frankie then claimed that he lied because he was worried about his "new boss" getting wind of it.... they went in circles back and forth up and down for about an hour... I'm *amazed* that the resolution was that after three calls out, admitted lies, and possession of drugs... they let him off. They had him destroy the pipe, stomp on it, and throw the remainder on the roof... but when he asked if he should destroy the drugs, the dark haired cop told him to keep it... that he can hang on to that small amount of pleasure because his life is pretty much in the toilet, now. They did say that if they got a fourth call, for whatever reason, that they'd give him a break of a different sort, because they were far too tired of the time wasted already (three hours, off and on).

What kind of cops allow a con like Frankie to stay at home after all of that stuff? My only guess is that they didn't want to have to deal with the paperwork... I heard via the police radio that he had priors of petty theft but no drug charges, so that might've been a factor... but what I see is that they let a drug-using guy with a criminal record stay home from jail time, even though he gave false identification, obstructed justice, was in possession of drug paraphernalia and the drugs to be used inside. I suspect that they let him keep the crack because they couldn't take it with them without having to deal with some sort of paperwork as well.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be calling the landlord back, and fill him in on the details above. It's a pity, I think that all parties involved (including Frankie) would be better off with Mr Crackhead - Broken Window - Lies to the Cops - Would Rather Incriminate His Own Brother To Cover His Ass - Has Dubious Fights - Supposedly Being Evicted - Mooch - Dumbass Bad Neighbor in the clink, negotiating with cigarettes on the best way to avoid frequent anal rape. He needs to be off of the street... not for rehabilitation... I don't believe that's an option.. but instead to protect society before he gets bolder than stealing stuff and smoking up with his ill-gotten gain.] Other Note... the non-Frankie hoodlums left before the cops came back. I suspect the police would have been angry with me, if there wasn't a broken window for them to investigate.