You Want Fries With Your Burglar?

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fri. Mar 18, 2011 3:32pm EDT

Police answering cries for help on Friday found a screaming burglar dangling from a ceiling air vent over a hot fat fryer at an upstate New York restaurant.
"He said he thought he was going to die," said Lt. Michael Brown, spokesman for the police in Rotterdam, New York.
A grease-covered Timothy Cipriani, 46, of nearby Schenectady was pleading for help when he was discovered wedged into the ventilation duct at Paesan's Pizza in the early hours of the morning.
He had climbed a tree to the roof, where he broke into an air duct to enter the restaurant after it closed, police said.
He was trapped where the vent opened over the fryer, and he became extremely distraught, Brown said.
"The fryer had been used all day, so it may have been generating some heat," Brown said.
Cipriani was arraigned on charges of burglary, criminal mischief and possession of burglary tools and was held in lieu of $20,000 bail at the Schenectady County Jail, police said.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by
Ellen Wulfhorst and Greg McCune)

Electric Drag Racing?

John Wayland's electric car, the White Zombie leaves high-powered gas cars in the dust. John claims that his car is the world's fastest accelerating street legal electric car. Watch this 1972 Datsun take advantage of the electric motor's full torque and break world records.

OASIS UNDER THE ICE

(Reuters) - For 15 million years, an icebound lake has remained sealed deep beneath Antarctica's frozen crust, possibly hiding prehistoric or unknown life. Now Russian scientists are on the brink of piercing through to its secrets.

Lake Vostok, about the size of Lake Baikal in Siberia, is the largest, deepest and most isolated of Antarctica's 150 subglacial lakes. It is supersaturated with oxygen, resembling no other known environment on Earth.
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"There's only a bit left to go," Alexei Turkeyev, chief of the Russian polar Vostok Station, told Reuters by satellite phone. His team has drilled for weeks in a race to reach the lake, 3,750 meters (12,000 ft) beneath the polar ice cap, before the end of the brief Antarctic summer.

Scientists suspect the lake's depths will reveal new life forms, show how the planet was before the ice age and how life evolved. It could offer a glimpse at what conditions for life exist in the similar extremes of Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa.

"It's like exploring an alien planet where no one has been before. We don't know what we'll find," said Valery Lukin of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St. Petersburg, which oversees the expedition.

"I feel very excited but once we do it there is no going back," Alexei Ekaikin, a scientist with the expedition said from Vostok Station. "Once you touch it, it will be touched forever."

See the full article here:http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/08/us-russia-antarctica-lake-idUSTRE7135MB20110208?feedType=RSS&feedName=scienceNews

Heads Up!

Around 1 o'clock in the morning, on a highway near Tulsa, Oklahoma, police discover what used to be a Kawasaki motorcycle. 


But where’s the rider?

Up the road, another patrol car pulls up behind a stopped tractor-trailer rig. 

What's that guy doing at the back of the trailer? 

He's not just at the back of the trailer; his head and helmet are in the trailer! 

Police estimate that he had to be traveling close to 120 mph when he took a header into the lift gate.

The good news is that the rider survived! 

I imagine his head and feet probably hurt for a while. 

Izzy Santa, James O'Keefe, Abbie Boudreau and "Veritas"

A Note of Thanks and Nomination for Decency Award goes to Izzy Santa

Izzy Santa stepped in to head off a disastrous, sophomoric prank planned by her colleagues in the organization known as "Veritas".

The plan involved the faux seduction of CNN investigative correspondent, Abbie Boudreau, by James O’Keefe.

The encounter was to have been recorded on video and released publicly with the intent to embarrass Boudreau and CNN.

Ms. Santa approached Ms. Boudreau before the meeting took place, informing her of the scheme.

Izzy Santa deserves praise and thanks for her action. She has shown that there are still some decent people in the world and should be rewarded for it.

Thank you, Izzy!
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An Open Letter to James O’Keefe:

James, you jumped onto the stage with your Acorn exposé and seemed to be ready for prime time. But your latest stunt of planning to seduce a TV personality suggests you should be in "time out" instead.

First of all, James, your "script" assumes that your mark, Ms. Boudreau, would be attracted to you and your nautical-nookie-nest. (News flash, James - the "horny schoolboy" ploy only works on morally deficient adults who should know better.)

Secondly, "Punk'd" only works for Ashton Kutcher. You should change the name of your organization from "Veritas" to "Scams-R-Us".

I’m sure you envisioned yourself as a master of temptation, delivering an award winning performance. But all you qualified for is third-rate guttersnipe.

Take a good look at yourself in the mirror, James. You look like you’re still in high school.

Maybe you should be.

(Chimney) Sliders

Dead Woman Found Stuck In Chimney  -  The Associated Press - Aug 31, 2010
A doctor involved in an "on-again, off-again" relationship apparently tried to force her way into her boyfriend's Bakersfield, Calif., home by sliding down the chimney, police said Tuesday. Her decomposing body was found there three days later.
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Public Service Announcement # 17133:

“I’ll slide down the chimney” solution not viable

To be filed with previous Announcement #17132: “I can out-run the cops”

Well folks, it’s happened again. Someone thought they could gain access to the inside of a building by sliding down the chimney. Apparently some people assume that a chimney is exactly the same dimension at the bottom as it is at the top … it ain’t necessarily so.

Most modern masonry chimneys are built with a smoke shelf just above the fireplace opening. This forms a smaller opening for the damper, which restricts the air passage considerably, and is in no way big enough for a person to pass through.

The top opening of a masonry chimney is typically either a 13-inch square or a 13-inch by 18-inch rectangle. It would take a very small human body to slide down the square opening, but the rectangle looks “do-able” to the average, logically challenged chimney slider.

If you have an ample posterior, you won’t go too far; the same with wide shoulders. In that case (if you’re lucky) your calls for help might actually be heard since your head will probably be just above the top of the chimney.

For the chimney slider who can go all the way, the mother-of-all-wedgies is found at the bottom. Maybe you won’t break your legs as your feet jam into the damper opening, dangling in view to anyone who walks past the fireplace.

The best you can hope for is that your feet land on the smoke shelf, leaving you in a standing position. But that will be small comfort when you realize you can’t bend over or even squat, and your arms, either in the up or down position, will be totally useless.

At this point you can assume that you are fully f**ked. Maybe your next life will be a smarter one.