Evel Knievel, the daredevil motorcyclist who jumped Snake River Canyon died today at the age of 69. His death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He has been in poor health for several years, suffering from diabetes as well as pulmonary fibrosis.
Here is the failed jump that made him truly ‘America’s Daredevil’
Back in the seventies Evel was my hero, failed jumps and all, simply because he kept trying to win and wouldn’t give up.
Martins is a full-service Toronto florist that is celebrating 110 years of being open on December 1st with an open house. It’s not often anymore to find great businesses that are family operated any more, particularly one that has been operating for five generations as Martins, The Flower People have.
The current owner is Lynn Martin and is helped by her son Ryan Martin. Having been in business so long they know exactly what they are doing and how to give folks the products that they want, when they want them.
The open house will take place from 12pm – 6pm and you will be able to view Martin’s exclusive flower designs and enjoy special discounts for attending as well as homemade treats while you are there. If you are interested in going, here’s the map:
With a proven history of delivering on-time quality arrangements using innovative products they are able to offer world-wide delivery with same day service to Canada as well as the United States.
Here is a centerpiece from Martins’…
I love plants and flowers and anyone that hangs out here every once in awhile gets to see photos I have taken. I am not particularly knowledgeable about any kind of flora but I know what I like and that’s a beautiful centerpiece.
The Martins Exclusives that you can have delivered for any occasion are just as wonderful if not more so, and with delivery available across North America there is no reason not to get the best.
One of the things that keeps the floral designs from Martins so fresh and up to date is the fact that they follow decorating trends and keep up with the latest and greatest. In addition to being able to order them online you can also visit their web site to obtain decorating tips and great information. With the month of December being so imminent everyone is looking for Christmas floral designs and Martins is the place to look.
I guess today is just the day to catch up on all of the shit I have been meaning to do for quite some time. Twice a year I have to get my blood drawn and then visit my doctor so that she can tell me to eat right an quit smoking and then renew my prescriptions for Vytorin (Cholesterol) and Protonix (either an ulcer or some other gastric nastiness). I ran out of medicine about two weeks ago and have not had the free time to go get it done. The only morning I have been off up until now I was so damned tired from the previous 10 days of work that I slept in.
I would have loved to sleep in today but the wife and girls made sure that I got up and took care of business. I arrived a couple of minutes after eight and the nurse tried to get it out of one arm and then the other, sticking me four or five times in the process. No go. I guess I must be dehydrated or something. Possibly my diet of garbage and coffee combined with 18 hour days has something to do with it.
After sitting for an hour and drinking so much water I wanted to puke, the other nurse tried to get it out of my arm with no success. She finally got a bit of blood drawn from my hand. I breathed a sigh of relief when it finally started flowing, although a bit slow) because I thought I had woke up dead and somebody forgot to tell me. Now I will have to wait a few more days for the doctor to call and set up an appointment for after the first of the year. I am going to have to deal with heartburn and this crappy prevacid until that point.
Prior to coming home I stopped at one of our stores (the one in my little town) for a much needed cup of coffee and breakfast. I actually had a point in stopping there. The manager is fairly new and she is a pretty nice lady, a single mom. It is hard enough to run our restaurants but being a single mom is pretty damned tough. She gave her two week notice a couple of days ago, and I know that several of the big cheese dudes have been down to talk with her, but they won’t do anything but lie and promise her the moon anyway, so I thought it might do a bit of good to go give her a bit of honesty and try to keep her from leaving in the process. As a store manager it can be hard at times, but certainly not impossible, and she would be making a mistake leaving. Hell, I bitch about holidays and weekends, but for the most part I worked a 40 hour week as a store manager and was home by 3PM most days. Not a bad fucking job to have. That’s one of the reasons it took me so long to decide that I wanted to take this promotion. I knew that I would literally be doubling my money but only taking about a $20-30k pay increase.
I think that maybe she is going to stay but hopefully my bosses will continue to visit and reassure her daily for awhile.
Once I got home a little while ago I did what you always do on Friday afternoon four days before your birthday, renewed my car tags and driver’s license. Nothing like waiting until the last fucking minute! I did renew my license for ten years though, which is cool because it means that the picture that’s on my license from 2000 will still be on there when I turn 52. Sweet. Hell, I even have a moustache and goatee in the picture. Sooner or later someone is going to say ‘that’s not you’ and call the law on my ass.
I had originally planned on doing a bit of Christmas and grocery shopping today but my damn head is pounding from lack of caffeine and I am pretty beat. Maybe tomorrow after the Christmas parade I can get it done. I have managed to get a bunch of Christmas lights and stuff like lighted deer and trees on clearance recently so I will most likely decorate the yard as well tomorrow afternoon and then post photos. We did get the tree set up and the girls and I decorated it Wednesday evening, so it’s starting to feel a bit like Christmas even if I do live with the Grinch.
Authorities in North Georgia arrested a woman and her boyfriend on child cruelty charges after the woman’s 9-year-old son was found bound and gagged with duct tape in a closet.
I figured she must have seen my video for Duck Buddies 🙂 Her mistake was in putting the child in the closet. Just put the little shit out on the back porch where he can get some fresh air, or lock him somewhere he can breathe but can’t be heard by inspectors, like the basement…
Thank goodness. I am physically exhausted. I feel like it anyway. My last day off was the Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving and this has just been one long-assed week. I wish I could say it was going to be a short day but with my weekly meetings and the fact that I have an interview and orientation session with a new girl this afternoon it looks to be about a fifteen hour day.
I am taking off tomorrow as well as at least half a day Saturday. I would have taken the entire day off but both of the other District Managers are off this weekend and we are not supposed to overlap. I am not sure if my boss just doesn’t look at the itineraries that we turn in or if he just doesn’t want to antagonize the ladies. Either way I will show up for work on Saturday and make sure everyone is staffed. I will most likely get out of there by nine or ten.
We are also participating in the Temple Christmas Parade and I think I will take the girls down to ride with me. I know they will have a pretty good time. The wife doesn’t seem to have an interest in going, so it will give her a break away from the girls anyway. She doesn’t get into the Christmas spirit very much anyway. It’s funny because I do and love it, yet I’m the one that has to work his ass off through the holidays while she’s on vacation.
Got my new idiot, er…manager yesterday. The guy just ain’t too bright but as long as he can cook and treats his employees better than the last two we will do just fine. I can be patient and teach him the rest over time. If they would just let me pick my own managers we would be so much better off but I would be hiring them out of the ranks of our hourly employees which seems to be something they are frowning on. They prefer folks with at least a four year degree and if they went to Tech, that much the better. Most of them are a bunch of damn pansies that are scared of hard work.
Johnny Depp just about has to be the most eccentric actor in Hollywood that you can find and it shows in the roles that he chooses to play. Several of the movies that he has been in number among my favorites, including the animated stuff that he has done as well. I would guess that my two favorite roles that he has done would have to be Edward Scissorhands and Ichabod Crane and Sleepy Hollow. The Pirates of the Caribbean are pretty good but I think that those are more about him having fun rather than any serious acting, although I could be wrong.
I can’t decided if I like Edward Scissorhands because Winona Ryder is just plain hot or because of Edward (Depp). Although the movie was release 17 years ago I still laugh when I think about it. My favorite line of the movie has got to be when the police officer is talking to the psychologist:
Officer Allen: Will he be OK, Doc?
Psychologist: The years spent in isolation have not equipped him with the tools necessary to judge right from wrong. He’s had no context. He’s been completely without guidance. Furthermore, his work – the garden sculptures, hairstyles and so forth – indicate that he’s a highly imaginative… uh… character. It seems clear that his awareness of what we call reality is radically underdeveloped.
Officer Allen: But will he be all right out there?
Psychologist: Oh yeah, he’ll be fine.
Just like a shrink 
In Sleepy Hollow Depp plays young policeman Ichabod Crane who has been sent to Sleepy Hollow back in 1799 to investigate the decapitations of three locals.
He falls in love with the character of Katrina Van Tassel, played by Christina Ricci and has to brave the perils of the nearby woods as well as the Ghost of the Hessian killed during the revolutionary war.
“Reverend Steenwyck: Their heads weren’t found severed. Their heads were not found at all.
Ichabod Crane: The heads are… gone?
Notary James Hardenbrook: Taken. Taken by the Headless Horseman. Taken back to hell.”
While I have seen Edward Scissorhands several times I have only had the opportunity to watch Sleep Hollow, which was released in 1999, once. Between the two I think I like it the most out of all his movies so far. The scene toward the end where the headless horseman goes back to hell through the tree has to be one of my favorite parts of the movie.
Johnny Depp is in a movie that’s due to be released this Christmas, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. While I will be working about 20 hours on Christmas and it’s not very likely that I will get to see it anytime during the month of December, I will see it even if I have to wait for the DVD. That’s one of the downfalls of what I do for a living, no time off at all or at least very little.
Anyway, Sweeney Todd is a bit different. It’s the screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical thriller by the same name. Sweet. That pretty much means I will be watching it by myself since the wife doesn’t seem to like musicals very much. That’s OK, I love them. Everything from the Disney musicals in the sixties and seventies to Oklahoma and all of the other big name musicals from the forties through the sixties. I don’t know what it is, but they are all just great fun. Growing up my father enjoyed watching them on television and I suppose that’s where I get it from. Visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site for wallpapers and you can check out the gallery as well as a synopsis of the movie. You can also join in the fun and visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace.
Johnny Depp plays Sweeney Todd, a man who has been unjustly sent to prison and vows revenge for that as well as for what happens to his wife and daughter. Sweeney Todd, a.k.a. Benjamin Barker teams up with Mrs Lovett and her sinister meat pie shop to rid himself of the people that did him wrong. The setting is in Victorian England it looks to be a pretty cool movie.
My ten year old loves the Bratz dolls. She wants to see the DVD that was just released but I just don’t see that happening any time soon. I did come across this video a few minutes ago and knew I needed to post it. I’m sure that the wife will see it when she wakes up in the morning. She pretty much agrees with me on the Bratz and thinks that they are certainly not the kind of message we need to be sending to our kids. Trailer Trash Barbie would be a better play toy than the darned Bratz (says the guy that bought a Bratz play set for Christmas last year. Not happening this year though).
Completely off the subject of the post at hand, I checked a new manager in to my problem store today. Thank goodness. The last couple of weeks have been pretty darn rough and although I would have preferred it to the last manager I had, I was not looking forward to running the place through the rest of the holiday season.
Here’s to hoping that this guy lasts longer than the last two. He’s my third manager since I took the district back at the beginning of May.
Better late than never I guess. I normally get this posted early in the day but was pretty busy at work.
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your blog, you can go here.
Updated – The body of Emily Sander has been found.
Maybe not a ‘star’ but it looks as if she’s been in some movies and is all over the Internet. I was reading a couple of articles yesterday or the day before on missing Kansas college student Emily Sander, who may or may not be the victim of foul play. I was going to post a bit about it, as well as scumbags like Israel Mireles whom they are looking for in connection with the disappearance of Ms. Sander.
Why’s he a scumbag? How about the fact that he’s in his twenties and his girlfriend who they are also looking for is only sixteen. That tells volumes in itself.
There’s a new twist in the case though. Friends of Emily say she lived a double life and was known as Zoey Zane on the Internet. According to her friend Nikki Watson,
Police in El Dorado, where she was last seen, say that they are aware of the web site but would not confirm one way or the other if Emily Sander is Zoey Zane or whether the site was in any way connected with her disappearance.
Apparently she had told her parents over Thanksgiving about being involved in Pornography but nobody else knew except for her closest friends. It came as a surprise to the rest of her family. I suppose everyone that surfs the web knows now.
Damn sure looks like her to me but then again who the hell knows for sure. I guess she does, if she’s found. Police suspect foul play in her disappearance and there was apparently blood found in the hotel room where Mireles lived and worked.
On Tuesday, the owner of Bella Casa, the restaurant that employed Mireles, told KAKE News that on Saturday he saw what he thought was blood in the motel room where Mireles stayed. Joe Terziu says he’d been called by the manager of the El Dorado Motel over concerns of damage in the room.
Major Rick Kennedy said they are looking for a white bedspread with a floral pattern that could be connected to Emily’s disappearance. He displayed a photo of the bedspread – it will be available on line shortly. Police would not say whether the bedspread was from the motel.
Kennedy said they are searching the roadside of Hwy 54 to Ft Scott and Hwy 69 south to Baxter Springs for clues. They also ask the public in those areas to be on the lookout.
Authorities in Vernon, Texas located the 2007 Ford Taurus rental car that Mireles was believed to be using. Vernon is just south of the Oklahoma/Texas border on Hwy 283, northwest of Wichita Falls.
Terziu described Mireles as a hard worker who’d worked on and off for him for the last three years. He said Mireles lived in the motel room with Victoria Martens, the 16-year-old girl from Hays who is suspected of being with Mireles now. Police say they hope to talk to Mireles ASAP in order to determine where Emily is.
Terziu said that on Friday, he gave Mireles $600 after the 24-year-old told him that his grandmother had cancer.
During a news conference Monday afternoon, police say that they believe she was the victim of violence. Although they wouldn’t elaborate, they say evidence has led them to that belief.
Police don’t believe Emily is still with Mireles. Mireles and Martens have connections in Hays and Baxter Springs, as well as in Oklahoma and Texas. Emily also attended high school in Bandera, Texas – not far from San Antonio.
Emily Sander is 5′ 3″ and weighs 105 pounds. She has brown hair and blue eyes. If you have any information, please call El Dorado Police at 316-321-9120.
From what I can tell, this is Emily Sander’s MySpace page and I am assuming that the dude in the picture is the boyfriend that broke up with her due to her new line of work. According to a couple of other links I found this is Victoria Martens’ page, although if that is the case then she must be just about ready to pop.
This is a picture of the two suspects in the case.
Police are also interested in anyone in the vicinity of El Dorado along U.S. 54 to Fort Scott and U.S. 69 to Baxter Springs that may see or have seen a white bedspread with a floral design on it. It may be connected to the room where whatever altercation took place happened. Since they are looking for it I would have to assume that the hotel manager reported it as missing when the authorities searched the motel.
I did just come across this FOX News story, and according to it Emily Sander’s brother Jacob has confirmed that she is the girl pictured at ZoeyZane.com, which is apparently offline along with her blog and several other related sites. Not that I was looking for porn or anything 🙂 No, really…
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Here is the AP video from a press conference held by authorities concerning her disappearance.
Police think that Mireles and his girlfriend may be headed for Mexico and want to catch him before he crosses the border. Being as how it’s been two days I would think that he’s long gone unless he stayed in this country. That brings another question to mind that I have not been able to find an answer to yet. Is Mireles a United States citizen? If not, is he here legally. If so, then that would explain his restaurant job and the rental car but if he’s here illegally then whatever asshole hired him in the first place needs to be charged with something since that would have made this entirely preventable.
I am not one of those people that automatically think that anyone of Latin descent must be here illegally but if the authorities think he is headed to Mexico they must have a darned good reason for it.
Elisson wrote this entry about Human Hairballs, or Trichobezoars and even had a catchy looking spokesman to keep people from eating their own hair and developing their very own hairballs. I don’t know, maybe it’s just the space I’m in, but I got to wondering (and even asked) if you could develop a Bezoar from cunnilingus. Talk about a fur burger. Damn.
Since the Internet is a great and loving animal I decided to see if I could find out a bit more information on Bezoars.
“Human Hairball” get’s quite a few hits, but not exactly what I am looking for. Sure, there is a bit of information at the World Almanac and some more links, but it’s still not there.
Damn, I have searched Google and Yahoo and still haven’t found anything yet? I want to see a picture of THAT bad boy…