Popehat

Wayne Gibbs, of Georgia, has been punished to the tune of $150,000 because he didn’t marry RoseMary Shell after he discovered that she is a vampiric leech.

RoseMary Shell said she moved to Hall County from Florida, leaving behind a high-paying job, to join Wayne Gibbs. She also said that she has suffered emotionally and financially since their break-up in 2007.

Gibbs said he paid off $30,000 of Shell’s debt during their engagement and also took her on trips. When he found out Shell had even more debt, he canceled the wedding. He notified her by leaving a note in their bathroom.

Cruel and crass without a doubt. Gibbs should have confronted Shell like a man rather than running away like a coward. But he also shouldn’t have married her. With that level of debt, the marriage would be on a fast track to failure anyway. But, but, but again, she also was better off not married to Gibbs, who (duh!!!) didn’t love her after discovering that she was a vampiric leech.

Presumably the jury would have preferred Gibbs to have married Shell, then separated and initiated divorce proceedings the next day, before they could accumulate marital assets, property, and debts.

Whatever the wrongs and the rights, God will balance it all out in the end.

written by Patrick \\ tags: Marriage

Russia is on the verge of criminalizing emo.   All emo kids in Russia will now face the heavy hand of the country’s notoriously harsh justice system.

Clearly I’ve misjudged this Putin chap.  Here is a statesman for the world to emulate.

written by Patrick \\ tags: Russia

I’d better choose my words carefully here, or Andrew Giuliani, son of New York City mayor Rudolf Giuliani, may sue me for calling him a washout golfer who couldn’t hack it on the Duke University golf team. So I won’t say that.

But Giuliani’s suing Duke University and his coach, Orrin Vincent, in the United States District Court (MDNC) for saying essentially the same thing. As I read the Complaint, Giuliani seems to be alleging that his golf scholarship (though it’s difficult to say whether he actually had one, as he refers to paying $200,000 as “consideration” for coming) at Duke is a contract, requiring the University to provide four years’ tuition, room and board, not terminable at the will of Duke. For things like, say, being a subpar golf player. As a consequence, little Andrew will have to forego the lucrative PGA career that surely awaited him, in favor of, I dunno, law school.

As a public service, I have downloaded the 29 page complaint from the Federal District Court ’s website, so that everyone can know how poorly Andrew Giuliani has been treated by Duke (Go Carolina!), in some of the purplest legal prose I’ve read in a dog’s age.

giuliani-v-duke-university

A few quick thoughts:

We can take this as confirmation that Rudy Giuliani will not be McCain’s VP nominee, and that perhaps McCain told him so when they met on Sunday. The famously volatile mayor surely approved this suit, but would never have done so if he’d been planning to run. Or could this be the doing of Donna Hanover? I recall reading that hizzoner had reconciled with his kids after the pain of the divorce, but that was when the man was campaigning for himself rather than John McCain.

Andrew Giuliani is suing based on promises allegedly made by his former (deceased) coach Rod Myers during recruitment. Are such promises binding on future coaches, or the University, especially when not reduced to writing? Is a scholarship offer not revocable for bad behavior and subpar (12th out of 14 on the team according to ESPN) play?

Also, Duke is notorious (even among top universities) for its aggressive pursuit of the children of the rich and famous, who can help to increase the University’s standing and endowment. The school is well-known for lowering academic entrance standards for such kids, admitting them in preference to kids who are better qualified but poorer or not famous, using intangibles such as “leadership” as justification. Surely the son of a mayor is a proven leader. Was Andrew Giuliani given a golf scholarship, or allowed to walk on, because he’s a great leader rather than a great golfer? Only Rod Myers can say, and he’s not telling.

We’ll have more on this story as it develops.

written by Patrick \\ tags: Golf

Well, if it was always your dream to move to New Zealand, have a baby, and legally name your child Choad Spawn, this recent legal decision may cause you to rethink your plan.

A family court judge in New Zealand has had enough with parents giving their children bizarre names here, and did something about it.

Just ask Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. He had her renamed.

Judge Rob Murfitt made the 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name could be changed, he said in a ruling made public Thursday. The girl was involved in a custody battle, he said.

I suppose one could ponder the nanny-state ramifications of judges subverting the will of free citizens of a democracy to overrule, perhaps on personal whim, one of the fundamental incidents of parenthood (i.e., creating an identity for your child).

That would be less fun, however, than focusing on the mouth breathers running around amusing themselves by giving their kids horrific, un-name-like names.  I can’t even fathom the thinking behind some of these names, other than perhaps I was on meth when I made her, I might as well be on meth when I name her. The linked article also gives some examples of unusual names that had been rejected by Kiwi registration officials, including “Fish and Chips,” “Yeah Detroit,” “Keenan Got Lucy” and “Sex Fruit.”  Perhaps even more shocking, though, were some of the names that have previously been issued, including “and tragically, Violence” and “Number 16 Bus Shelter.”

If your folks name you Number 16 Bus Shelter, do you shorten it and go by Bus?  Perhaps you go the Chad Johnson route and ask people to call you Diez y Seis.  Or perhaps you start obsessing about knives at an early age and turn your folks (wait, who am I kidding?, I mean your mom, since dad surely cut out a long time ago) into coleslaw in the middle of the night.

All I know is Judge Murfitt needs to move to the states.

written by Jesse

The line, that is. You know which one I’m talking about. Cue the song “Love Child”.

You can read all of the sordid details at the Enquirer, and you should, because the man still matters. While Edwards is not going to be your president, he is reportedly on one candidate’s short list to be your vice president, or attorney general. Or he was. Barack Obama has thrown so many people under the bus since he began running that if he were an actual bus driver Edwards would sue him into oblivion.

That is if the whole bus thing wasn’t merely a metaphor for disassociating oneself from inconvenient people. Tortious Shunning Inflicting Severe Emotional Distress is still not a valid cause of action, even for a lawyer as creative as Edwards.

Without going into explicit detail, Edwards’s behavior at the Beverly Hilton, hiding in the men’s room for fifteen minutes while summoning security, reportedly witnessed by ten people, is the behavior of a guilty man. A 2am visit to the hotel room of Rielle Hunter, with whom Edwards had already been linked in this tabloid as having an affair and a “love child,” is the behavior of a stupid or monumentally self-destructive man.

This is not a private matter between Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards, Hunter, and the “love child.” It is a public matter, because in his campaigns Edwards has made his marriage to Mrs. Edwards, with all of the nauseating stories of anniversary dinners at Wendy’s, the Norman Rockwell kids, continually bringing up his son’s death, etc., a centerpiece of his message: this is a man women should trust, or something. Not to mention the media overhype of Mrs. Edwards’s cancer, to which I believe there was a political component.

But even if big media isn’t reporting on Edwards’s misdeeds, it’s news because this man wants to run your life, and he’s a colossal hypocrite. He wants to be your president, vice president, or AG. And now he won’t be.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

written by Patrick

Let’s suppose you’re just walking along, minding your own business, when a man in a white lab coat staggers out of an office building, gasping and moaning.  As you help him to a nearby bench, you put your hand on his back, only to find the handle of a knife sticking out of him.  The man hands you a bloodstained file, murmurs the cryptic words, “They came for us … from behind,” then expires.

By the time a dozen tall, identical-looking white men in black suits and sunglasses emerge from the office, you’re reading the  contents of the file, which could end life as we know it, in the Starbuck’s down the street.

Do you:

A) Frantically attempt to alert the President and the United Nations;

B) Burn the file and try to enjoy what time remains to you;

C) Send signals to obscure experts who may have knowledge to deal with the threat; or

D) Scan its contents and post them on your blog?

written by Patrick \\ tags: Hermetica

So you may have noticed that I’m not blogging this week.  I’m at the wife’s family reunion in Estes Park, Colorado.  Perpetually exhausted from merciless hordes of kids and from enhanced hangover impact of altitude, lack of sleep.   See you next week.

written by Ken

My 14 year old cousin mentioned last night that her dream job is owning a brothel in Amsterdam. I’m sort of glad I don’t have daughters right now.

written by Ezra \\ tags: Amsterdam, Brothels

I think they’ll get everything right but the point.

written by Derrick

The Britich Broadcasting Corporation sends word that it has located hundreds of hours of tapes recorded by the late Delia Derbyshire, one of the pioneers of electronic music and sound effects. For anyone with a wide-ranging interest in the music of the past twenty years this would be akin to finding lost tapes of Miles Davis or Hank Williams. For those interested in the history of advanced electronic sound, particularly movie and television sound effects, it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Recording with the BBC’s radiophonic workshop from the 1960s to the late 1970s, Ms. Derbyshire, a graduate of Cambridge in “maths” and music, is best known as the actual performer (not the writer - that’s Ron Grainer) of the science fiction television show Doctor Who, but her influence goes far beyond that, as the theme itself and her work of the same period, most created without and before the commonplace appearance of the synthesizer, has been a huge influence on the course of contemporary dance music and what came before, including techno, house, trip hop, and the work of the more adventurous pure “scratch” DJs. Contemporary sci-fi and television theme music, not much advanced beyond the theremin wailing of Alexander Courage, has yet to catch up to what Delia Derbyshire created in the 1960s, with lamp shades and tape recorders.

This is amply demonstrated by the second sonic piece on the linked BBC story, which could be played in a modern club without any changes if extended, and would have people dancing.

I look forward to owning some of this, if the BBC intends, as it says, to release it commercially soon. Anyone interested in modern music more advanced than pop should read these stories.

written by Patrick \\ tags: music

Well, this and because I’d hate to see a comment from you, one of our valued readers, go down into the tubes.

I have removed all hyperlinks from the following, because some of them would be bad for your computer.

Continue reading »

written by Patrick \\ tags: Ukraine

Nothing happened, so this is what passed for news:

• Dozens sickened by unknown substance in New Jersey.

• Florida maintains lead over Russia as world’s worst government.

• Cows mistreated in Virginia.

• Weirdos found in San Francisco.

• Pervert treated as important person in Los Angeles.

• Washington man bloviates about something, as though anyone cares.
  

Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

written by Patrick