Weekend at Bernie’s Returns to Manhattan

The defendantsPolice arrested two men, David J. Dalaia and James O’Hare, Wednesday attempting to cash their dead friend’s $355 Social Security check. I’m sure this happens all of the time, but these guys brought the corpse with them… on an office chair. NYP and onlookers originally assumed the body awkwardly sitting on the chair was a mannequin. How wrong they were!

These two geniuses tried to cash the check, but they were told by the clerk at the check-cashing store that Virgilio Cintron had to be present to cash his check. Undeterred, they went back to the apartment they shared with Bernie… I mean Cintron… and dressed his naked body and began wheeling him to the store on the office chair. Having him there but sitting outside wasn’t good enough for the clerk, only when they went to wheel in (stop and think now – dead man sitting on a chair outside a store in Manhattan in broad daylight) their closest friend in the world, the cops were there.

They told them to step away from the body and the paramedics arriving on scene declared Cintron dead.

“Oh my God, he’s gone?” came the reply to that obviously shocking announcement. They are scheduled for court.

What is an appropriate punishment for this vile of a petty crime?

[story from the Miami Herald]

Man Spots His Wife… at a Local Brothel

A Polish man (please, no Pollock jokes around the ladies) took a trip to a nearby brothel in. I guess he wasn’t getting attention at home and was getting some “take out.” He got more than he bargained for when, among the establishment’s employees, he saw his wife of 14 years [ahem] working the crowd.

14 years is all they will be associated with each other, as they are seeking a divorce.

She said she told him she was working on the side (and probably a few other ways) to earn some extra money. Who knows what he’s claiming, except that he doesn’t want to be married to her any more.

My question is, who is in more trouble here?

Clearly, she was commiting adultery long before him, so I put this on her. She wasn’t doing it for lack of working it out. In fact, I’m going to stand on my soapbox and say that she pushed him to a brothel because she was probably “too tired” for weeks or months leading up to his shocking discovery.

I can just imagine the meet-up there.

Man: What are you doing here?
Woman: What are you doing here?

or maybe it was like this:

Woman: What are you doing here?
Man: What are you doing here?

[story from Reuters]

British Literature Is a Relief, After All

oldbooks.jpgI think I’ve struck a goldmine of a professor with my Brit Lit instructor. She is a Ph.D. with a care and concern about keeping people interested in reading. One of her emphases is that we understand the works that we read (which is almost all poetry [gag] and one novella [Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]) and concentrate on the historical significance of the Romanic “proper” and Victorian periods with heavy emphasis on biographical information on the authors themselves.

It appears that there won’t be all too much reading after all, and the exams will be deeper material that builds upon the weekly quizzes about the biographical information from our trusty copies of the Norton Anthology. We’ll see how tomorrow’s Expository Writing class goes.

Spring 2008 Semester Begins Today

USF Bulls LogoClasses begin for me today. Campus opened back up Monday, but I’m only taking a course on Wednesday nights and Thursday nights. It looks like a 17 week semester, with a week off for Spring Break. I have my syllubi for both courses and have several things to dread… but I’m still optimistic, or trying to be, at least.

  • I despise literature courses in general. I’m a slower reader than I should be for how much reading I do. I’m more of a scanner and skimmer and only enjoy reading what interests me because I’m slower at it. I’m pretty much a 60-page per hour fun reader, and it drops like a rock if it’s complicated or I’m not enjoying it.
  • There are no out of class writing assignments for my literature class, which happens to be British Literature 1780-1900. /scream Everything is in-class quizzes and exams and participation.

Ok, that list wasn’t so bad, but it’s daunting to me, nonetheless. My Expository Writing course will be mostly fun because I love to write, but it appears that the text is one of those typical liberal arts devices to mind flay the last remaining shred of one’s youth and optimism about our wonderful culture and country. It’s about (seriously) “unraveling the myths that make up American Culture today:” Freedom, Family, Equality, Opportunity.

That’s disgusting! In order to write what I believe rather that spew the view of the textbook, I’ll have to cover all of my bases and not sound like an idealistic floosie. Who doesn’t like a challenge?