now that's just plain stupid

Teenager escapes prison in suitcase
Tue Oct 30, 2007 4:55pm EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 19-year-old German woman has escaped from prison by hiding in a friend's suitcase.

The fugitive hid inside the large case when her 17-year-old fellow inmate was released from the youth prison in northwest Germany on Friday, Lower Saxony ministry spokesman Dennis Weilmann said on Monday.

The girl simply walked out of the building with her friend concealed in her luggage, Weilmann said.

"Our staff are going to make sure they inspect big suitcases more carefully in the future," Weilmann said.

Neither of the teenagers has since been caught. Both had been jailed for theft. The escaped prisoner had less than two weeks left to serve.

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i was completely following up until the very last sentence. the girl didn't want to be in prison, she came up with great escape plan, it worked...but she was only there for two more weeks? come on...that's so ridiculous. it's like getting caught using a fake id the night before your 21st birthday. plain old stupid.

oh what people will do

what would make a grown man duct-tape high heels to his feet? has to be something good, right? say, i don't know, perhaps a free vacation? possibly. or some free money - but would have to be enough to make it worth while - $1,000? maybe. OR what about a pair of tickets to see hannah montana in concert? ABSOLUTELY.

yesterday, local radio station held a high heel derby for men only to compete for two tickets to see hannah montana tonight. clearly, it was well worth buying women's size 20 high heels, missing work, standing in the rain, and running in circles for the chance to see billy ray cyrus' daughter perform.

and even worse, people are paying up to $250 PER TICKET to see this kid in concert. she's outselling bruce springsteen for pete's sake.

i mean seriously, what is the world coming to?!?!?! first of all, little kids are going to concerts. secondly, parents are spending a small fortune to get them there. and lastly, the man who brought us achy breaky heart has procreated.

i can't take it any more than that.

it's finally here...

it seems as thought fall has finally come upon us, and in celebration of the cool weather, i will be spending the weekend eating soup, drinking hot cider and wearing hoodies.

really though, my third-to-last softball game is tonight, we shouldn't have a problem winning, and the mosquitos that were infesting the field the last few weeks should finally have gone underground for the winter. i must say, drinking cold beer during a cold game is less desirable than when it's warm out.

then tomorrow, some friends and i are taking a trip to the apple farm. it doesn't get much more autumnal than apple-picking.

(and of course, we will be watching football before the apples...duh)

so enjoy wearing your jeans and long-sleeve shirts, go rake some leaves or something. have a good one.

pheidippides

in the recent years, i have noticed a large number of people in my generation participating in marathons. seems that it's caught on like slap bracelets in 1993. and every time i read someone's time in their facebook info, or see their myspace pic of them running across the finish line, i can't help but think, "why in the world would you want to run that far?"

but there are quite a few marathons that exist, in fact, over 100 opportunities annually to run one in the us. my hometown is proud of their go! st. louis marathon in april. not sure why they have to have an exclamation point in their title. but apparently, we are a city of exclamation points. no really, we are.

anyways, with all of the marathons, and all of the people running them, i figured there must be something great about finishing one. you've accomplished something extremely difficult, you trained for months to prepare, you dedicated yourself, and you ran a distance that i don't even enjoy driving in my car.

but then i stumbled across the history of the marathon. named for a greek city, the story is that a soldier, pheidippides, ran from athens to marathon to declare that the persians had been defeated in battle. (there are variations of the story - don't ask me to cite my source). according to legend, this young man ran the whole way without stopping...and upon arrival and announcement of his message, he collapsed dead.

so i'm back at my original question, why would you want to run a distance that killed the first man who did it? (note: this is a rhetorical question. please don't post comments about how awesome it is. i will delete them.)

seriously though, to all of you who have attempted or finished a marathon, kudos. i guess.

tv-less life

after a weekend of no tv at the new house, we have stumbled upon the full series of sopranos on dvd to bide the time until saturday morning when directtv comes out to install our sweet dish and choicextra package. after investigating pricing of various cable/dish plans, i feel like i'm totally robbing directtv blind. i got free upgrade to dvr, $200 cash back, $50 referral bonus, AND a free portable dvd player. freaking awesome.

so anyways, back to the sopranos. i only had hbo for a short stint in college when it was a free add on for a few months, but even then, i don't think i ever watched sopranos. just never got into it. but it's a pretty good show, now that i'm starting at the beginning and get what the hell is going on. but i can't help but think of the things that tv shows on dvd do wrong.

#1 fit more episodes on a disc. i mean, four episodes is just not enough. i can't imagine that technology couldn't allow for at least 10 episodes on one disc.

#2 don't play the freaking theme song at the beginning of every episode. people are paying way too much for box sets to have to fast forward through (or listen to - if the remote is too far away or you fall asleep while watching) this for every single show you watch. how hard can it be to edit that out?

#3 don't make me read a synopsis of the episode before it plays. if i wasn't sure what i was watching, i could look at the dvd case.

and to sum up, i have clearly watched too much tv on dvd this weekend.