Was Mr. Pink orbiting the earth at relativistic speeds, unaware that he has been gone for a long time according us earthlings?
for your reading since you have missed so much:
MAN ACCUSED OF ASSAULTING COOKIE MONSTER IN PICTURE DISPUTE: A man's plan to
have his young daughter meet the Cookie Monster crumbled when he was arrested
for allegedly assaulting the furry blue Sesame Street character.
Police say Lee P. McPhatter, upset that the Cookie Monster would not pose
for a picture at the Sesame Place theme park, shoved and kicked the employee
inside the costume. McPhatter, 22, of Waldorf, Md., denies the allegations.
"People started yelling at me that I should be ashamed of myself for
hitting Cookie Monster. I did not kick or punch Cookie Monster. The cop did not
want to hear my side of the story, and I got arrested," said McPhatter, who
described the character as his 3-year-old daughter Mina's favorite.
Middletown police said that 21-year-old Jennie McNelis suffered bruised
ribs and a cervical sprain when McPhatter shoved her to the ground, then kicked
her in the head and back.
McPhatter said his daughter was getting pushed around by others waiting to
talk to the Cookie Monster. McPhatter said he asked twice for the character to
pose with his daughter, but McNelis "aggressively" put a big blue paw on his
daughter's head and pushed her.
McNelis, who is back at work, said she is not permitted to discuss the
incident. Sesame Street spokeswoman Audrey Shapiro confirmed that the incident
took place, but called it a rare event. "Our characters do not act the way this
man said," she continued. "It is an honor to be Cookie Monster."
McPhatter is free on $20,000 unsecured bail following the June 9 incident.
He said he would fight the charges, which include simple assault, harassment
and disorderly conduct. "Why would someone take their 3-year-old daughter to
the park and attack Cookie Monster?" he asked. "I would never do that in front
of my daughter."
GRUNTY THE TV PIG SPARED FROM FOOT-AND-MOUTH SLAUGHTER BY JUDGE: Grunty the pig
was saved from slaughter Thursday when a judge ruled that the TV star sow did
not pose a threat to Britain's efforts to end a livestock epidemic.
The 6-year-old pig, kept as a pet on a farm in southwest England, was
condemned for slaughter after a nearby farm visited by her owner was found to
be infected with foot-and-mouth disease.
High Court Justice Michael Harrison denied a government request for an
injunction that would have forced Grunty's owner, Rosemary Upton, to allow
slaughtermen onto her property. "I am so jubilant I just can't describe it, it
is wonderful news," Upton said from her farm in Wellington. "Grunty is
blissfully unaware of everything that goes on in the human world, but she seems
very happy."
The case stirred international attention following mistaken reports that
Grunty, a New Zealand Kune Kune pig, had played the lead role in the U.S. film
"Babe."
The pig did achieve a measure of British television fame after being
selected by Channel 5 to become a "My Fair Lady" of swine.
Like the heroine of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," Grunty underwent
intensive etiquette training for "Pig at the Ritz," a program about a pig so
well-mannered it could daintily eat at one of London's finest restaurants.
A lawyer for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
Christopher Vadja, argued that the decision to kill Grunty was in line with
Britain's Animal Health Act, which calls for the slaughter of "any animal which
appears to be in any way exposed to the infection of foot-and-mouth."
But Harrison ruled there was no evidence that Grunty or 11 rare sheep on
Upton's farm had been infected. The pig had not displayed any symptoms of the
disease nine days after the suspected contamination, he said. Foot-and-mouth
has a maximum incubation period of five days.
More than 4 million pigs, sheep and cattle have been culled in a
three-month effort to contain Britain's outbreak. While not fatal,
foot-and-mouth causes wasting in cloven-hoofed animals.
CHOCOLATE KILLS SEAGULLS GORGING AT VANCOUVER LANDFILL: The verdict is in:
Death by chocolate. Lab tests into the death of a flock of gulls near the
Vancouver landfill in Delta point to acute toxicity caused by gorging on milk
chocolate.
"These guys gobbled it," Dr. Victoria Bowes, avian pathologist for the
British Columbia Agriculture ministry in Abbotsford, confirmed in an interview
Wednesday.
The source of the gulls' fatal attraction is believed to have been a load
of chocolate dumped at the landfill after Valentine's Day. Because the
Abbotsford office is not set up to test for chocolate's toxic components, the
stimulants caffeine and theobromine, Wyoming State University performed the
test.
Reports at the time described at least 17 dead gulls, some having literally
fallen from the sky, found in a field near Highway 99 and Burns Drive beside
the Burns Bog landfill.
In an e-mail to a local birding Internet site, Langley resident Brian Scott
wrote: "A flock of about 500 gulls rested very close to my truck and showed no
obvious signs of physical stress other than a [few] that constantly bobbed
their heads up and down as if having trouble with swallowing or keeping air
passages clear. At one point, the flock flushed, and when about 75 feet in the
air, four plummeted to the ground dead. One crashed about five feet from my
truck. It was like a silent gunner was blasting them from the sky. Very
surreal, indeed."
Bowes said the chocolate acted like a neuro-toxin on the gulls. Despite our
insatiable appetite for chocolate, humans are far more tolerant of it than
other species. Dogs left alone at family picnics have been known to die from
eating entire chocolate cakes, though gull mortalities would seem to be less
known.
"The interesting thing is that the best chocolate ... contains the highest
[toxicity]," Bowes said.
Bald eagles were observed gorging themselves on the gull carcasses before
federal officials with the Canadian Wildlife Service arriving to claim them,
but apparently displayed no ill effects. Bowes said she never did learn exactly
where the chocolate came from.
Dave Rudberg, manager of engineering services for Vancouver, was unaware of
the deaths. He said chocolate would not be considered ordinary landfill waste
and would require a special permit, requiring immediate burial. If the
chocolate simply was dumped along with other waste, it probably would not have
been covered over until the end of the day.
Rudberg said he finds it hard to believe that gulls would go after
chocolate when there are so many other putrescent provisions on site, but he
conceded they might be attracted for the same reason humans are. "I'm sort of
surprised," he said. "I didn't know they were so sophisticated."
Shelin Adam, director of operations for the Death by Chocolate retail
stores in Vancouver, also had not heard of the incident. "We're outraged that
something like this could happen," she said over giggles. "Really? Oh my God!"
Adam added that although too much of a good thing might indeed kill your
dog, pets do like to indulge when they get a chance. "Maybe not a whole cake,
but those crumbs are eaten up very avidly, I must say."
As for dumping a batch of chocolate, Adam can't understand why anyone would
do that, especially around Valentine's Day, the biggest day of the year for
chocolate lovers. "I cannot imagine ever having too much chocolate, sir." |
