Dancing too close?

Stephen Chang, a New York City NY securities trader, evidently was enjoying a night away from his wife at the Hot Lap Dance Club when he suffered an injury. He has now filed suit because of that injury at the club near Madison Square Garden in Manhattan's Supreme Court.

A man who identified himself as the club manager stated that he was unaware of the accident or the lawsuit and the club's lawyer, Stephen Ateshoglou, didn't return a call for comment. Chang though, stated that he was injured by one of the dancers in the club while she was giving him a lap dance.

Before you bust out laughing when you imagine what his injury could be, please be advised that it isn't ...... that. He claims that when the stripper was giving him a paid lap dance, she swiveled and smacked him in the face with one of her heels. The heel of her shoe hit him in the eye and caused him serious injuries at approximately 1 am on November 2 2007.

The club describes itself on it's own Web site as the "Playboy Mansion of Manhattan party lofts" and is located at 38th and Nineth Ave. The cost of admission is a "paltry" $50 plus a $10 one-time newcomers fee. They also list the cost of lap dances as being around $40 but it isn't clear what type of dance Chang had purchased. What could be telling is the description of it's dancers on the site...... they are described as being hand picked and have killer bodies and are 18 to 29 years old.

One has to wonder though.... what exactly was the dancer doing that involved both Mr. Cang's lap and his eye and will Mrs. Chang also have to sue for any loss of life because of her husband's injuries.

Cute as a button.....

The sound of you firing up the 3-cylinder, 70 horsepower engine won't cause anyone to jerk their head around to stare at a driver. It's ever so cute look though, seems to cause both pedestrians and drivers to give it a second look or at the very least, right of way most times.

The "SmartforTwo" car has entered the "elite" gang of miniature cars now being offered in an attempt to save gas. One recent review of it's ride though left me wondering what were they thinking when they developed this teeny weeny shoebox of a car.

It seems that when the car is driven in automatic, it can't decide what gear it really wants to stay in but it does manage to tell you which one it has chosen with a very noticable jerk. The driver can choose to use a clutchless manual mode with paddle shifts on the steering wheel to convince the car of which gear you wish, though somehow, I can't really see why paddle shift technology would be a good choice for 3 cylinders. The driver reported that he usually left it in second gear for a tiny bit more power even though the engine screamed it's protest.

The other major issue mentioned was the less than comfortable ride it offered, though it was roomy enough to make you forget that you were driving a shoebox. Every bump, crack and pothole is more than announced to anyone inside and you either take to swerving your way along the road or settle for "bump, ow, bump, ow" for your whole trip.

There are some advantages to the "Smart" car such as it's ability to squeeze into small holes in traffic and for parking curbside. No one will take it seriously if you think you can try and drive it aggressively in traffic but around town, it gets quite a lot of goodwill. There is even a convertible model, to give you a breath of fresh air while driving your tuna can.

One can choose to save money, ease congestion in the world and save on fuel usage with the "Smart" car or one could always just take to driving one of those tiny cars in the circus as well. The "Smart" car is priced at $16,000, far more than the Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris and isn't anywhere as well built as those two entries in the tiny sardine car class.


For a related post, go here.

What a fine mess Yogi

"It attacked the beehives again," stated Zoran Kiseloski.

That attack in Bitola, Macedonia came after the generator failed for Kiseloski and he filed a complaint with the courts there. He evidently was running lights and was playing Serbian turbo-folk music loudly in hopes of thwarting the attacks.

Kiseloski's generator ran out of power and the music stopped though and that is when he stated, his beehives were attacked again....... by a bear. Easy to add up really, beehives + honey + bear equals a loss of income for the beekeeper. what isn't so easy to understand is that the courts brought the bear up on the theft charges.

Zoran Kiseloski told the court how he attempted to prevent the bear from attacking his hives to steal the honey and how he had failed. More difficult to even understand is that the court found the un-named bear guilty of the honey thefts. They also determined that the bear had no owner and it is a protected species, so they ordered the state to pay 140,000 denars ( USD 3,545 ) for the damage to Kiseloski's hives.

It seems that the bear may also be unaware of his guilt, since it was excused from appearing in court and at last report, it's location is unknown. I do understand the need to have the funds to repair the hives but to bring an unknown bear into court to face the music for what comes naturally..... it's probably a good that Yogi and Boo Boo don't live there.

Contraband?

For years we have been fighting a war on drugs, trying to keep our children from the lure of gangs and the dangers of the streets. Now I see that there is even more proof that we may not be doing enough to keep them from the dangers that lurk in darkened hallways in their schools.

Michael Sheridan, an honors student in New Haven CT has been stripped of his title of class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended from school after his violation of school policy. It seems that he had been caught buying contraband from a fellow student, something parents may fear their children may be enticed to do in some situations.

School spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo stated that his purchase violated a 2003 ban set in place within the New Haven school system as part of a districtwide school wellness policy. Sheridan though didn't get caught purchasing drugs, steroids or even stolen property....... he was caught buying a package of Skittles candy on February 26 2008, from another student. The New Haven schools it seems, have banned candy sales as part of wellness policy.

The eighth grader Sheridan stated that he hadn't realized that his buying the candy was against school policy but he noted that the student selling it was a bit "secretive" in offering it up for sale to him. Sheridan has had his suspension reduced from three days to one day and in what may be a response to public knowledge of his case, he will be reinstated as class vice president and his record will be expunged of the suspension. The "candy dealing" fellow student will also have their record expunged of their suspension.

I understand the need for rules and penalties for violating them but in comparison to the crimes that take place in and around our nation's schools....... three days suspension for a bag of candy? That almost makes me afraid to ask what the penalty there would be for something serious.

Now that's warm

It may have been the call of nature or the outside temperatures on Feb 27 2008 that led a Yorktown NY man to order coffee as he did. John Greco, 46, of Croton-on-Hudson, used the drive-through lane at a local Dunkin Donuts shop that day and an employee there saw more than they wanted to.

Police state that they aren't sure how he took his coffee that day but they do know that he didn't have his pants on when he took his order from the window. The worker there saw Greco's exposed genitals and made a note of the make of his car and his license number for police.

Greco is now charged with misdemeanor public lewdness after his arrest last week and he is due in court on March 27. Greco stated by telephone that he had no comment about the police report.

I am only going to take a guess here but the temps in late Feb in NY would have to be somewhere around the range that he certainly would have noticed that he had run out of the house pantless accidently. Of course, that may be why he needed a coffee to warm up a certain area of his anatomy.

Pretty in pink......

"Cici will be pink until they kick us out of the city of Boulder," stated Joy Douglas.

The officials at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley CO, issued Joy Douglas, owner of the Zing Salon, a ticket on March 1 2008 for violating Section 6-1-14 of Boulder's city code. She is now facing a $1,000 fine for dying her miniature poodle Cici, pink.

That code titled "Dyeing fowl and rabbits" is the center of her court battle now, since she claims that she didn't break that law. She colored her dog with beet juice and occasionally used Kool-Aid and therefore, only stained her dog. She stated that she has done this to raise awareness for breast cancer and makes for a good opportunity to talk to people about it.

Douglas has had her day in court postponed now that she has hired an attorney to help her fight the charge. She had brought Cici to court with her but was forced to leave her outside the Boulder County Justice Center. Douglas has a new court date of April 7 and she plans to take her fight to the end since she believes that her staining has done nothing to harm or abuse her pet.

With all the abuses being heaped on abandoned pets and involving dog fighting out there.... I would think that the Humane Society can find better uses for it's money than fighting pink poodles.

We won't pay!

There seems to be a small revolt forming in Rockville MD these days. In at least eight months of 2007, motorists haven't been paying the $40 speeding tickets that are due from being caught on camera speeding.

The motorists who haven't bothered to pay their tickets are police officers who were clocked going more than 10 mph over the speed limit. Supervisors have dismissed 76 of the 224 tickets issued to officers after it was determined that those officers were responding to calls or had valid reasons for speeding.

With a bit of simple math though, that leaves 148 who didn't have an excuse and two thirds of those haven't been paid yet. The police union claims that the owner of the vehicles should be paying the ticket and that would be the county. I wonder why they think that the officers should be allowed to use that excuse when I am sure that owners of civilian vehicles probably have already unsuccessfully tried that path in court to escape a ticket they didn't incur.

Police Chief Thomas Manger has stated that he doesn't buy that argument and that officers aren't above the law. It's nice to hear someone take that stand but Manger added, those officers who continue to not pay "might" be disciplined. They might be disciplined? I would expect that they should face the same penelties that any other driver faces for not paying their fines because they aren't above the law.... they should be an example of following the law if they think they are going to arrest civilians for the same crimes.

Two posts that aim for my funnybone.....

A thank you to Mike at the Lamplighter for digging up a few posts that travel the same path as my choices at times.......... kind of makes me wonder what the world would do without these people.

Check out these posts, here and here.