Bundy, supporters vow to occupy Mars Rover, New Horizons spacecraft

Ammon Bundy and supporters on the surface of Mars (artist's conception).

BURNS, Ore. – Ammon Bundy and his band of armed supporters vowed Tuesday to take their feud with the federal government into space, promising to seize the Mars Rovers studying the Red Planet as well as journey to and pilot the New Horizons spacecraft, which relayed historic photos of Pluto in July 2015.

“The feds will not do to outer space what they did to the American West,” Bundy stated. “It will be open for business – and for liberty.”

As with other plans and ideas Bundy has floated, details were in short supply. 

For instance, it wasn’t clear how he or his supporters would reach the New Horizons, which as of the New Year was 125 million miles beyond Pluto. It took the unmanned probe nine years to reach the edge of our solar system through the vacuum of space, but Bundy, who previously said God is directing his anti-government campaign, shrugged off the challenge.

“The Lord will provide,” he said. “I’ve prayed, and He has assured me that all I need are my blessed gun and my faith. He will deliver me into outer space.”

So far, the small group of gun-toting men, while occupying an out-of-the-way wildlife refuge headquarters in a part of Oregon most people didn’t know existed, has failed to get the federal government to disband.

When asked for comment, several NASA engineers said, “Yeah, sure, very funny,” and then hung up.

An FBI official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said only, “If they really want to be shot into space, I’m sure we can find a way to help them.”

If he was confident about traveling past Pluto, Bundy was positively giddy about the group’s prospects on Mars. NASA landed two rovers on the planet in 2004 – one, the Spirit, stopped working after six years, but the Opportunity is still active.

Indeed, images sent back by the rovers were part of Bundy’s inspiration. 

“That land looks a lot like parts of the West,” he said. “Could be good cattle country. And just wait ’til we find oil!”

Several reporters noted that Mars’ average distance from the Earth is 140 million miles, and that it would take 162 days to travel that distance in a spaceship. It was also noted that temperatures on the Red Planet average -81 degrees Fahrenheit, and that the atmosphere – mostly carbon dioxide – would be inhospitable to humans, cattle and even oilfield roughnecks.

At the introduction of facts, many of Bundy’s supporters began grumbling aggressively, and some drew their sidearms. But Bundy stayed on point.

“We’re Americans,” he said. “We breathe free wherever we want.”   

NRA unveils 'Pack a Piece for Jesus' initiative

FAIRFAX, Va. – In the aftermath of a shooting that left nine dead at a Charleston, S.C., church, the National Rifle Association announced a “Pack a Piece For Jesus” campaign that the gun rights organization said would “ensure religious liberty is protected the only way that liberty can be protected – with high-caliber ammunition.”

“(Preferably hollow point),” the NRA statement added.

All churchgoers should bring loaded firearms to services this weekend, according to the NRA’s call to arms. 

“Any assault in a church is an assault on Jesus, and since Jesus founded America, we must answer force with force and firearms with firearms,” said NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre at a press conference. 

“Pistol-packing parishioners would do well to buy bullets in bulk while brushing up on the Bible.”

The attack on the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shocked the nation, as a white man with apparently racist views allegedly gunned down people engaged in Bible study.

LaPierre also turned to the Bible in advocating for the NRA’s Jesus-needs-your-guns position.

“I know the Bible says, ‘He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone,’ ” he said. “But that was then. What good is ‘throwing a stone’? That’s just bringing a slingshot to a gunfight!”

Aides to the NRA president acknowledged that the program would be controversial, and a wide spectrum of church leaders immediately condemned it, saying that Christianity preaches forgiveness, understanding and community building, not retribution. 

The NRA, however, stood unbowed.

“Listen,” said LaPierre, “it’s just a fact: If Jesus packed heat, he woulda kicked a lot of Roman ass.”

(Want to see Jesus kick some ass? Yes, you do. Click here.)

(Photo credit.)

Breaking News: Hillary Clinton uses telegraph, carrier pigeons

Despite Hillary Clinton's admission that she should've used a government email address instead of a private one while she was secretary of state, controversy continued to dog her with revelations that she routinely uses a telegraph and carrier pigeons in order to get around federal public records rules.

"Oh yeah, she's got a whole squad of retired Navy guys in command centers around the world, manning telegraph machines," said a source who pleaded for anonymity because divulging the information could endanger his testicles. "She can send a message to anywhere, and almost no one has access to it, and even then they'd need to know Morse code."

Stranger still is the use of carrier pigeons by the former First Lady, senator and secretary of state who is poised to be the automatic front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. She apparently commissioned a top-secret aviary on the roof of the State Department in Washington, D.C., which served as headquarters for a pigeon messaging network that stretched from Montreal to Arkansas.

She reportedly had an elite kit of pigeons – nicknamed "Pigeon Force One" – that she took with her on overseas trips to conduct secret diplomacy by strapping coded, handwritten messages to the birds' legs.

"When you think about it, it's [expletive] brilliant," said Quincy B. Arthur Chesterfield III, an Australian diplomat and dilettante who runs the only security consulting company that would return Senseless City's calls. "Who looks at [expletive] pigeons? One more 'rat with wings' flying through the air – I mean, who gives a flying [expletive] [expletive]?

"Except for the pigeons, of course," he added. "I'm sure they flying [expletive] [expletive] all the  [expletive] time."

The revelations stem from a bar bet made by Randall Chowley and Thomas "Neo" Anderson (no, not that one), who used to work at the State Department aviary. They had pictures and video from the top-secret site, and therefore won free drinks for the rest of last Friday night as well as 10 minutes apiece alone in the back booth with waitress and bartender Betty Sue, who reportedly turned both of them down for prom 18 years ago.

According to co-workers and neighbors, neither man has been seen nor heard from in several days.

LIVE BLOG UPDATE: Hillary Clinton has called a hasty press conference to deal with these new revelations. I'll do my best to post as we go.

7 p.m.: There are A LOT of people here. I guess you could say we're "flocking" to the story. Ha ha, LOL.

7:06 p.m.: Mrs. Clinton is speaking, but it's weird. She's not looking at the teleprompter, and she's not looking at us either. She seems to be looking at her Secret Service detail and blinking very rapidly .... hold on, she's communicating! My Morse code is rusty, but I'll give it a whirl.

7:09 p.m.: I'm caught up. I'll type as I go .... O O R S  L O C K E D  H A V E  T H E M  A L L  K I L L E D ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

An interview with Sarah Palin's speechwriter

After Sarah Palin’s jaw-dropping performance at the Iowa Freedom Summit, I reached out to her not-quite-official presidential campaign and scored an interview with her speechwriter, here referred to as SPS – Sarah Palin’s Speechwriter.  (He insisted on anonymity because he said being named would interfere with his career as an Alaskan pipeline performance artist. No, I don’t know what that is.)

AC: How did you become Sarah Palin’s speechwriter?

SPS: Well, like all things good, it started at an all-American freedom gun show. Me and my buddy were at the backlot range with the .50-cal, and the guv and her passel came wanderin’ back. She took a turn with the rifle and dropped the engine block out of a pickup truck on the range, and I said, ‘Any woman who can do that should be president of the United States of America.’ So I showed her my book.

AC: What’s your book?

SPS: Grab Freedom By The Balls. It’s my life story.

AC: So then what happened?

SPS: A job interview. I thought it would be all formal, but it was just me and her and a plate of Rocky Mountain Oysters at this joint called the Dewdrop Inn.

AC: Wow. That’s all of a theme, your book and the oysters.

SPS: Huh?

AC: Please continue. 

SPS: So she said, ‘I need strong words. Grizzly words. Words that stomp all over the lame-stream media with all their canoodlin’ with the Meetup Wall Street activist types that’s corroding our country into jackboots between a rock and a hard place in the frying pan.’

AC: Huh?

SPS: So I said, ‘Guv, I got rogue grizzly words. No rules with my words. You can maverick the shit out of them, pardon my Swahili.’ She liked that. ‘Pardon my Swahili.’ I’m surprised she hasn’t whipped that one out on the trail.

AC: Well, people pretty much think she stepped in it at the Iowa Freedom Summit. Did you write that speech?

SPS: Darn tootin’. And she didn’t step in it – she stepped on it. She stomped her boots down on all comers and floored that NASCAR attack through the glass ceiling.

AC: That doesn’t make any –

SPS: Listen, to the conservative real Americans, all the guv has to do is remind ’em of her family values and the mama bear instincts and handlin’ a moose when she finds one, and remember, the man will try to ride you like a Saul Alinsky trick from his Black Friday anarchist’s cookbook, but don’t buy any retreads – the truth is in the American pie. And Sarah Palin has the birthday cake for America.

AC: She has cake, but no pie?

SPS: Exactly. It’s birthday cake in America. Let’s blow some candles.

News executives infected with bullshit virus, officials say

A virulent and aggressive strain of brain fungus has infected American newspaper executives, causing them to say and believe fantastical things while expecting those statements to be taken seriously, health officials confirmed this week.

The fungus — encephalagic locos deleriumus, or "bullshit virus" — was once thought to be limited to low-level politicians and vacation timeshare salesmen. However, this week's announcement of drastic changes to the New Orleans Times-Picayune and other Advance Publications papers was the final evidence officials needed that the bullshit virus had infected a new population.

"We've suspected this for a long time," said Earnest Chambers, an epidemiologist with the National Institutes of Health. "When executives began cutting costs and trimming staff, they would talk as though they're boosting the fortunes of their papers. That flies in the face of reality, and yet it seemed they genuinely believed their ridiculous statements."

A memo from T-P publisher Ashton Phelps Jr. provides the best example.

In it, he says the now-daily paper will switch to publishing only three days a week, but that the newspaper will be "more robust." He also wrote that to "accelerate the digital growth of NOLA media group," there will be "a reduction in the size of the workforce."

Lisa Kanahi, who leads a quarantine strike team for the Centers for Disease Control, said she started preparing for a massive quarantine of newsroom leaders when the leaked memo hit the Internet Thursday.

"He's clearly delusional, and he's not alone," Kanahi said. "If you publish less, how is that more robust? How can you grow a media group while cutting staff?"

"It takes a team of bullshit-infected people to come up with something that big. We're worried this could take down the entire news industry."

A quarantine site hasn't been selected yet, she said.

This week's newspaper news wasn't the first time health officials saw evidence of the bullshit virus.

When the Las Vegas Review-Journal laid off nearly two dozen journalists in August 2011, Publisher Bob Brown stated that the cuts were "about growing this enterprise." He promised that "our advertisers and readers will see absolutely no impact at all," a statement that managed to be crazy and insulting at the same time.

The key is that the executives were not "spinning" the announcement, said Chambers. They actually believed that gutting an operation would help it grow. A mind free of the bullshit virus would be able to say something as simple as, "This is a tough move, but our troubled balance sheet demands it."

As for how they became infected, researchers think that the bullshit virus has lain dormant at newspapers for decades.

Journalists, after all, spend a lot of time around low-level politicians and could easily pick up the fungus from them. Due to the toxic levels of bullshit flowing through newsrooms, however — from phone calls, faxes, e-mails, reader comments and upper management — rank-and-file newshounds have developed a powerful immunity to bullshit.

News executives, however, have been away from that bullshit stew for a long time, and many never spent time in a newsroom, advancing instead from advertising or other sections. Without that built-up immunity, it was only a matter of time before they fell prey to the bullshit virus.

There is no known cure. A possible solution, at least temporarily, is to put more journalists in senior positions.

"They are infected," cautioned Kanahi. "But they know bullshit when they see it."

Paul backers run amok in Sparks, Reno

Caffeine- and adrenaline-fueled Ron Paul supporters took to the streets of Reno and Sparks following their surprise convention success this weekend, looking for more rooms to stack and contests to rig — with decidedly mixed results.

Filled with coffee and hubris, Ron Paul Revolution faithful took on a lounge act, a bingo parlor and some blackjack tables, convinced that the tide of fate was breaking their way. Earlier, Paul backers claimed an outsize number of delegates to the Republican National Convention at the Nevada convention meeting this weekend, just as they have at other recent state-level gatherings. 

The Nevada RonPaulios went on a celebration jag, first taking over Trader Dick's Lounge at the Sparks Nugget. All live music was limited to Elvis, Sinatra and Dean Martin.

When the band tried to compromise by playing Hall & Oates, Paul supporters shouted, "We don't need no Adult Education!" and peppered the stage with martini olives and lemon and lime drink garnishes.

Paul's backers next hit the Sparks Bingo Bonus Bongo Bar, where they figured there were so many of them that one of them had to win. But the prize - $1,000 and a pair of bongo drums - was won by June Blythely, a retiree from Sacramento who said she hadn't voted since 1972. 

"They kept telling me that my prize money was only worth $400 because of fiat money," said Blythely. "I told them, 'I own a Buick, and I wouldn't drive a Fiat if you paid me.' "

The Paul group then ventured to the blackjack tables at Harrah's Reno casino, scheming that if they worked together and occupied multiple tables they could beat the house.

Given the Paul supporters' penchant for betting long shots, though, too many kept hitting on 16 and 17. They were broke within an hour.

"Was very strange," said one of the blackjack dealers, Iliana Svetmonivich, a Ukranian-born nuclear physicist who emigrated to Reno in order to find a living-wage job. "They keep saying, 'Audit the Fed. Audit the Fed. No! Audit the deck!' "

Svetmonivich didn't know who Ron Paul is, but she grasped that her fervent blackjack players were politically motivated.

"If they want crazy person as president, they should make move to Russia," she said. "All politicians very crazy there."

Media flap turns into all-out war

A Twitter-driven feud between rival Las Vegas news organizations escalated into a full-blown terror campaign this week when journalists decided to put down their pens and take up swords — specifically, homemade explosives and high-caliber firearms.

The dispute between reporters at the Las Vegas Review-Journal and KLAS-TV star George Knapp started when the R-J scooped everyone in town on the arrest of a suspect who allegedly committed several brutal murders and sexual assaults.

Knapp initially Tweeted that the report was "greatly exaggerated" and insisted that "No one has been arrested for the double murders." After police confirmed that an arrest had been made, Knapp followed with a piece asserting that the paper's stories had endangered the investigation, a charge the R-J vigorously disputed.

Then, in the words of Anchorman Ron Burgundy, things "really got out of hand fast."

It started with the detonation of an improvised explosive device intended to take out Knapp on his drive to work. As a longtime investigative reporter, though, Knapp is insanely paranoid, and he drives a double-armored Cadillac Escalade with a swivel-mounted .50-caliber machine gun on the roof. 

The bomb did no damage and no one was injured.

A group called the RJL took credit for the attack. RJL purportedly means "Righteous Justice League." But seriously, that's not going to fool anyone.

Knapp allegedly retaliated by strafing the R-J's offices with his machine gun. The bunker-like building absorbed the rounds without incident, although the luxury automobile that Publisher Bob Brown flaunts to his cash-strapped employees exploded, most likely from a bullet that pierced the gas tank.

Finally, members of the rival news teams gathered on the site of the demolished Moulin Rouge casino for a brawl to settle it all, just like in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy":

Handicapping the match was tough. The R-J has superior numbers, but KLAS cameramen, like television cameramen everywhere, are roughly the size of midget Bigfoots and have calves as big as turkey breasts. They're tough to stop once they get momentum.

Instead of fighting, though, the sides took turns quoting lines from "Anchorman." 

"No commercials - no mercy!" got a big laugh, and they decided to skip to the part of the movie where everyone has a Miller High Life. Also, no one had a trident.

Both groups decamped to Larry's Villa, where they drank cheap beer but did not eat the food, because that place is kinda nasty.

Police: Lethal force "only option" against fact-wielder

Las Vegas police shot and killed a downtown arts district leader Friday who was allegedly waving an inconvenient fact at police officers and city officials.

Westley Myles Isbutt, who owned the Arts Factory and Bar+Bistro, had spoken publicly about police officers being paid $66 an hour to provide security at special events. He had also stored opinions about that fact on a laptop computer he was carrying when police approached him outside his Charleston Avenue businesses Friday morning.

"He was ordered to drop the laptop, turn around and bend over, and to smile when he did it," said police Sgt. Chester P. Buzzworth. "He did not comply within 15 seconds, and in those situations lethal force is the only option."

It is unclear how many rounds were fired because homeless people immediately descended on the scene to collect bullets and bullet casings for recycling. So far this month, Las Vegas police have shot at least 632 people.

Isbutt was an Arts District pioneer who had grown increasingly frustrated with government regulations covering zoning and licensing. He was known around town as Wes Myles because ... well, because his last name was Isbutt.

He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was thinking about leaving town, with the $66-an-hour required expenditure for off-duty police officers chief among the reasons why.

Several city officials visited police headquarters to ask about Isbutt's complaints this week. However, when they emerged from the building, they were pale as ghosts and trembling with what appeared to be abject fear. They refused to talk to reporters.

Buzzworth said the conversation with city officials was productive: "The public can sleep easily knowing that heavily armed men will be guarding all cultural events downtown. The streets, and our paychecks, are secure."

Some were worried that Benjamin Spillman, the R-J reporter who wrote the story that contained the $66-an-hour fact, might also be the target of several dozen police-issued firearms. But a confidential police source said Spillman did not need to worry.

"Fuck, that Mower kid's still alive, right?" he said, referring to Lawrence Mower, who wrote an in-depth investigative series about how Las Vegas police frequently shoot innocent, unarmed people or violate department shooting policies but face no consequences.

"Sure, people still read the newspaper sometimes, but it doesn't have the impact it used to," said the source.

Meanwhile, he said, Isbutt's various social media accounts had as many as 3,000 followers. Add that to a dangerous fact and there's no telling how much damage Isbutt could've done, the source said.

"Good God," he said. "What if that arts guy had Tweeted something?"

The worst street names in the world

An errand yesterday took me to a subdivision I'd never seen before where the streets were named for qualities the houses lacked. There was Captivating Avenue and Entrancing Avenue. Lively Court. Novel Court. Pleasing Court. It was ghastly.

But I guess honest names — McMansion Way, Cookie Cutter Lane, Cheap Stucco Boulevard — were simply out of the question. I'd still take any of those over Alluring Avenue. Hell, I'd even prefer to live on Cheap Chinese Drywall Circle.

It was the subdivision next door, though, that really set a new low.

They drew names from decorative touches you might find on a house. Niche Avenue. Column Court. Balcony Trellis Avenue. Yes, Balcony Trellis Avenue.  It's a real street.

Put yourself in the shoes of a homeowner there. Your house has plummeted in value. You're way upside down on the mortgage. You're in a neighborhood of cloned stucco shoeboxes, many of which are empty, perhaps foreclosed. You're way out on the edge of town where all the growth used to be, but those days may be gone for good.

And you live on a street called "Musical Mantle."

Give up, dude.

Clustercluck

Stories about this topic — a Senate candidate who championed bartering as a means of controlling health care costs  — led to this story, which is about people wearing chicken suits when they vote.

Requisite warning label: Bad jokes abound. However, I quite liked this line: "It seems Secretary of State Ross Miller's ban did not stop some peeps from flocking to vote Wednesday."

It's fair to say there are some significant First Amendment issues to drill into here, so naturally the first thing I did was look for places to get a chicken costume. Tip: Don't type "chicken suit" into Google, because all you get are a bunch of tuxedo rental stores.

I didn't have much luck, but I did find this.

Meet Juicy Lucy

After almost three years in Vegas, I assumed you just get a little more jaded about these things, but I was driving down Tropicana the other day and HOLY CRAP! Is that a woman diagrammed as a piece of meat?

Yep. Sure is. That's Juicy Lucy, the mascot for Grind Burger Bar and Lounge. Yes, that's her real name.

So score some points for being attention-grabbing (hey, I'm writing about it, right?). But this is probably how cannibalistic serial killers look at their victims — and you make it the public face of your restaurant?

There's been a bit of an outcry, such as this commentary in the UNLV paper. The R-J turned it into a debate on free speech, calling those who don't like the mascot "prudes." And it gets a mention in a restaurant review that says the burgers are pretty darn good.

The points have already been made about objectifying women and viewing women solely as sources of pleasure and meeters of a man's needs (in this case, his need for tasty meat, apparently). I'll add another criticism: It's lazy.

It seems people here think the only way to attract attention is to show a scantily clad woman. Some examples are here (the slutty cop at the bail shop will always be my favorite). And then there's this billboard:

Think about the money that goes into putting up a billboard advertisement. They went to all that trouble, and all anyone could come with as a concept is, "Looky here! Tits!"

Naturally, Grind House has an online store, but there's one critical difference — on the merchandise, Lucy's actually naked. I guess someone figured that a giant balloon depicting a woman headed for the butcher's knife might be offensive if she wasn't at least wearing a thong.

Okay, so I took a year off

Seems longer. But this city is still as senseless as ever, so I'll take a stab at being more consistent.

For some reason, I'm reminded of the rock star in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe who was spending a year dead for tax reasons. Funny guy, that Douglas Adams.

Vegas defined

So I was chatting with a friend the other day about bad places to raise your kids. Our list included Las Vegas, Rio and New Orleans, but I wasn't thrilled about the Big Easy being on the list because there's at least good music and food there. Then I mentioned that I'd been hungering for some red beans and rice.

HER: No one really likes red beans and rice.
ME: Watch your mouth, missy.
HER: Or else what?
ME: Or else I'll say, "You ain't got no brains, anyhow."
HER: Who needs brains when you have a nice rack?

Some people were born for Vegas. They just haven't made it here yet.

Hooray for new words

Dan Savage has done it again, this time to "honor" Rick Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church who caused so much of a stir when Obama invited him to the swearing-in party.

Go here for the new definition of "saddleback."

Grabby grabby!

Some of the most fascinating moments before the Las Vegas City Council never get reported because they're about individual work cards — permission slips, essentially, to work in certain industries here, like serving alcohol or dancing naked for tips.The idea is to keep out people with shady backgrounds, and it makes for some fine theater when an applicant tries to convince the council to grant a second chance.

There's a silly part, too. Council members go to great, euphemistic lengths not to mention what the applicant's crime actually was, because the reports they receive are "confidential." Never mind that the person's name is printed on a public agenda and it's as easy as pie to look up a public court record.

Anyway, the other day a woman who needed a card to cashier at a grocery store came up, and pretty much blurted out she'd had a drug problem but was clean now. Then came a guy who didn't reveal his crimes except that he'd done something stupid before he had the guidance of a good woman in his life and he needed to keep his restaurant job. (I guessed right: Theft.)

These cases are usually touching because the employer knows about the person's background and is backing the employee anyway. Second chances, not being defined by the past, all that — and, usually, the council says yes, although the person's on notice not to screw it up.

But some don't get that second chance.

The last guy on the agenda wanted to keep working at a 7-11, but he had a felony on his record. He admitted he was at fault for his crime, and talked about the alcohol dependency program he completed and the fact that his relationship with God got him through his prison term. The drinking had nothing to do with his crime, though, he said, which was big of him, because the reason he did time involved having sex with a pre-teen. (He's in his 40s.) It took me about 50 seconds in the records room to look that up, and I wish I hadn't.

Kids go into 7-11s, and cashiers there are frequently on their own. So the council turned him down.

A large group of co-workers and his manager were there to support him, and they all walked out together, him bitching the whole time. "Do I pay for this the rest of my life?" he was muttering. As they walked out the door, he put his hand on a woman's shoulder, then let his hand slide down her back to her waist, and then the top of her butt.

And I'm thinking:

1. A child molester has a girlfriend and I don't?

and,

2. You couldn't wait until you're outside the chamber before grabbing your girlfriend's ass?

Only in Vegas

I started the evening last night at a wedding chapel. A new one, a big, fancy one that was having its official grand opening reception. They had two — two! — Elvis impersonators. The dedication was moving, with the owners displaying a plaque memorializing the long marriages of their parents and their own 40-year union. There was a lot of talk about love and commitment and people building a future together.

Then I got invited to a porn party.

The annual Adult Video News trade show starts today, where porn purveyors from all over flock to Vegas to "meet" and "greet" and show off their products and give each other awards for screwing on camera. An old roommate from when I first moved here knows people who know people in that world, and she periodically calls me up when she has some of them over. I don't know why. Maybe she's trying to impress me.

Just about everyone had their clothes on, and there were few people there that you would want to see with their clothes off. One fat guy was walking around in a tiny leather thong and a bow tie. Other than that it looked like a normal mixer. But it was awful. Everyone was practically shouting while talking to each other. It was supposed to be BYOB, but almost nobody did, so all that was available was the hostess' box-o-wine and a rapidly dwindling case of Heineken that somebody brought. While people were talking at the top of their voices, they bopped and flounced around like teenagers trying to be naughty for the first time — but these people were all middle-aged and up.

Still, it was worth it just to hear what bullshit my old roommate was spewing this time around:

1. She's starting a nudist bed and breakfast in her house. Except, it's not her house. She's buying it from one of her partners in the business. (It's a damn nice house, by the way. Big yard. Pool. Tennis court.) It's valued at $370,000 in county records. And she has a lot of partners in the venture, but she's fired a few, and she's planning on firing the guy who's allegedly selling her the house.

Yes, talking to this woman frequently makes your head spin.

2. Her ex-husband and his new girlfriend have a hit out on them from the Mob. They ripped off someone's drugs and now there's a contract on their lives. "How can you know that?" I said. "Those aren't exactly advertised." She said her "bouncer" told her, and he knows because he knows "everyone" in town. No one at the party was acting even remotely like a bouncer.

3. There's another business in the works — a nudist resort on 10 acres outside of town. Then the house would be set up for swing parties. Or maybe it was the other way around. The property is really nice, she said, with a race track, and horse exercise yard, and really good stables .... "Um," I said, "is it a good idea to ride a horse naked?" She then told me that the house on the property is the one used in the movie "Casino." Problem: While that house exists, it is not out of town. It's well inside town, actually. Also, it doesn't sit on 10 acres, and it's on a freakin' golf course.

So it was fun. But I'm going to ignore her calls from now on.

We Hoovered up the water in Lake Mead ...

"Well," the astute gentleman said upon surveying this scene, "that's a lot of water that isn't there."


Still, this ain't gonna stop me from taking a long, hot and totally pointless shower tonight.

... and winners never — die?

There was a hearse parked in front of one of the crappy weekly apartment places on Sixth Street the other night — not one there on official business, although that wouldn't have been surprising. It was old, something from the 1970s, maybe, with the paint blasted off the hood by years of sunlight and frayed curtains in the back windows.

Still, the owner went the extra mile and got a vanity license plate.

Which was this: QUITTRS.

It really said that.

See: Redundant

The second one bothers me more because somebody paid a professional to make it. That means nobody involved took the time to say, "Uh, dude?"


Full disclosure: I've been walking past this sign almost every day for most of a year and only noticed the goof last week. So, overall, not a lot of attention to detail on this block.

Mr. Helpful

He had a smile on his face as he sat on the street corner, feasting on takeout noodles and laughing a henchman's laugh to himself.

As I walked by, he said, "How far is it to Memphis from here?"

"A long way," I said.

And he thanked me.