Floriduh Man! and Floriduh! Woman: Been a Busy Few Days in Pinellas County…

by 9:20 pm. It has 107 Comments.

It’s been a while since we checked in with Floriduh! Man, or at least Floriduh! Man not trying to blow up a couple of dozen people, so let’s see what we’ve got cooking. Er, um…

Take it away Tampa Bay Times!

ST. PETERSBURG — It started with chicken wings, a beer and a burglar.

It went downhill from there.

A St. Petersburg police officer was investigating a Nov. 6 break-in at The Chattaway restaurant, reviewing surveillance video that shows the burglar devouring a plate of chicken wings and enjoying a beer inside the kitchen. But then the officer stumbled across another incident from the night before.

The video shows a man riding his bike up to the restaurant at 358 22nd Ave S, pedaling around the parking lot for 10 minutes, then slipping in through the back gate. After wandering around for a bit, he opens the door to a shed for storing odds and ends, and removes them one by one.

Then the man gains access to a restaurant bathroom. And exits without his clothes.

He proceeds to sit naked at one of the restaurant’s picnic tables and digs into a meal he brought with him — Maruchan Instant Lunch ramen. The video also shows him playing the bongos, also naked.

“He came in with pants on but he rode off on the bike without pants,” Chattaway server Chad Pearson said. “I’m not sure if he took his pants with him but we didn’t find them. We still don’t know where his pants are.”

He spray-painted a few chairs, the bongos and a pickle jar, but his handiwork was barely noticeable, manager Amanda Kitto said. Everything was put back so neatly, in fact, it was four hours before anyone noticed he had been there.

“We would not have known about the naked guy without the cop finding that video,” Kitto said.

Police identified the man, who is homeless, but did not release his name publicly. Kitto declined to give his name and said the restaurant will not press charges because he caused no harm.

“His goal was to not break in, his goal was to just hang out at The Chattaway.”

What about the first guy?

Police still are trying to catch him.

He enjoyed the plate of chicken wings and some beer, and stole an estimated $500 worth of stuff, including cash tips, a laptop, a tablet, and a grocery bag he filled with beer.

“He made himself at home,” Kitto said. “He spent over an hour just milling around going room to room and eating and drinking while he did it.”

The man also tried unsuccessfully to access the safe using his hands, a pot handle and tongs.

Kitto is confident that even though the two incidents happened back-to-back, they are not connected.

“I used to always joke and say that if you were going to break into The Chattaway to make sure to grab a beer. And it finally happened.”

I was hot, and I was hungry. Okay?

Also, given the Real Genius reference, this cannot be unseen!

Floriduh! Woman, however, also put in a strong showing.

Once again The Tampa Bay Times has got this story well in hand…

The lobster never saw it coming.

One second it was floating listlessly in a glass tank, vying against endless shrimp, the smell of Cheddar Bay Biscuits hanging hauntingly in the air. Then, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said, an apparently intoxicated St. Petersburg woman snatched the lobster from its crustaceous purgatory and ran.

The lobster was never seen again.

Kimberly Gabel was arrested Saturday on charges of disorderly intoxication and petit theft for causing a disturbance in the Red Lobster at 6151 34th St N . The restaurant had barely been open two hours.

It was just after 1:15 p.m., deputies said, when a manager at the restaurant asked Gabel to leave. The manager said she was disturbing customers and shouted obscenities as she made her way to the door. Before she could leave, though, the 42-year-old woman reached into the oft-familiar entryway lobster tank, grabbed a live lobster and bolted.

Deputies said they caught up with Gabel a “short distance later.” They said she smelled of alcohol and slurred her words as she continued cursing, telling deputies she didn’t know what she did with the lobster because she was “blacked out drunk” and that she “did not care because she did not do anything wrong.”

Deputies described Gabel as a homeless woman. According to Pinellas County Jail records, she has been arrested numerous times for charges ranging from public intoxication to multiple counts of burglary and theft. She is currently awaiting trial in Pinellas County Jail.

Stay hungry!

Open thread!


Speaking of “let us savor….”

by 4:33 pm. It has 136 Comments.

Tom MacArthur, Republican Congressman of the New Jersey 3rd, has lost his reelection bid:

The AP called the race today, which came as a surprise to MacArthur. Per TPM:

The Associated Press may have called his tight race for his Democratic opponent, but Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) isn’t quite ready to concede.

MacArthur seemed surprised when TPM asked him about the Wednesday AP call as he walked to the House shortly before 3 p.m. ET.

“I hadn’t even seen the AP call,” he told TPM when asked about the news. “I have no reaction because I haven’t seen it.”

Thanks, Angry Dad in Scrubs.


Schadenfreude Open Thread: Don’t Go Away Mad…

by 1:57 pm. It has 217 Comments.

“Trump, stung by midterms and nervous about Mueller, retreats from traditional presidential duties” —

For weeks this fall, an ebullient President Trump traveled relentlessly to hold raise-the-rafters campaign rallies — sometimes three a day — in states where his presence was likely to help Republicans on the ballot.

But his mood apparently has changed as he has taken measure of the electoral backlash that voters delivered Nov. 6. With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources.

Behind the scenes, they say, the president has lashed out at several aides, from junior press assistants to senior officials. “He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory…

As Peggy Noonan once said: Let us savor. From the Washington Post, “Five days of fury: Inside Trump’s Paris temper, election woes and staff upheaval”:

… During his 43-hour stay in Paris, Trump brooded over the Florida recounts and sulked over key races being called for Democrats in the midterm elections that he had claimed as a “big victory.” He erupted at his staff over media coverage of his decision to skip a ceremony honoring the military sacrifice of World War I.

The president also was angry and resentful over French President Emmanuel Macron’s public rebuke of rising nationalism, which Trump considered a personal attack. And that was after his difficult meeting with Macron, where officials said little progress was made as Trump again brought up his frustrations over trade and Iran…

First lady Melania Trump shared her husband’s irritation and impatience with some of the staff. On Tuesday, amid reports that the president had decided to oust deputy national security adviser Mira R. Ricardel over tensions between her and other administration officials, the first lady’s office issued an extraordinary statement to reporters calling for her firing…

Melania Trump said in an October interview with ABC News that the president had people working for him whom she did not trust and that she has let her husband know. “Some people, they don’t work there anymore,” the first lady said…

First Lady Hillary Clinton channeled Eleanor Roosevelt; First Lady Melania Trump channels Edith Wilson.

…“Trump needs adulation, so heading into the midterms, holding these rallies, he was cheered and it became narcissistic fuel to his engine,” Brinkley said. “After the midterm, it’s the sober dawn of the morning.”…

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On the Road and In Your Backyard

by 5:00 am. It has 10 Comments.

Good Morning All,

On The Road and In Your Backyard is a weekday feature spotlighting reader submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, please share your part of the world, whether you’re traveling or just in your locality. Share some photos and a narrative, let us see through your pictures and words. We’re so lucky each and every day to see and appreciate the world around us!

Submissions from commenters are welcome at tools.balloon-juice.com

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

 

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Wednesday Morning: What I wouldn’t give for a large sock with horse manure in it. …

by 4:55 am. It has 193 Comments.


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You Say You Want A Revolution: Meet Ruth Buffalo

by 1:09 am. It has 23 Comments.

This was just too sweet:

One of the most striking results of the night, though, came far from the reservations: in a normally Republican district in the Fargo area, where Ruth Buffalo became the first Native American Democratic woman elected to the North Dakota Legislature. She did it by unseating State Representative Randy Boehning, the primary sponsor of the very voter ID law Native Americans had feared would disenfranchise them.

When you try and suppress the vote:

…galvanized by anger over the state’s voter ID law and aided by the intensive efforts of tribal leaders and advocacy groups, they turned out for last week’s election in numbers unprecedented even for a presidential election, much less a midterm.

In Sioux County, where the Standing Rock Indian Reservation is, turnout was up 105 percent from the last midterm elections in 2014 and 17 percent from the 2016 presidential election, according to data from the North Dakota secretary of state’s office. In Rolette County, home to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, it was up 62 percent from 2014 and 33 percent from 2016. In Benson County, home to the Spirit Lake Nation, it was up 52 percent from 2014 and 10 percent from 2016.

To read the full interview with her, click here (warning NYT). She is well qualified.





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Ingrid Bergman Will Play Part Of Hypotenuse

by 7:26 pm. It has 92 Comments.

I’ve got a bunch of sad and/or angry posts waiting to be written, but I’ve got enough melancholy and rage to fill a Liberty Ship* and I just want to take a break from my inner madness for a bit.  So back to the American Grotesque tomorrow, and for now, here’s something purely fun.

In order not to do a bit of academic admin that fell to my plate today, I browsed over to an interesting interview with Valeria Pettorino, a cosmologist who works on problems raised by the mysterious status of dark matter and dark energy.

As the introduction to the Quanta conversation explains, back in 2004, Pettorino was doing her doctoral research, and found time, and perhaps the mental need, to pursue another pleasure as well:

As a side project, she translated the opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy into a geometry problem.

“I felt there was mathematics already within Dante’s writing,” Pettorino said recently.

Here’s an English version of the original Pettorino set out to rewrite:

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

And here’s Pettorino’s take:

Given a line segment AB of size equal to our life path, consider its midpoint M. If D is a man called Dante, D shall be coincident with M.
The segment AB shall be contained in a dark field DF.
Assuming that a circumference C exists, circumscribed to the dark field DF, verify that the straight line r is external to such circumference.

Proof positive that there is poetry in mathematics, but that, perhaps, not all poems map to the math.

Oh — and if you want to know what the post title has to do with all this, have a listen.

Any literary exuberances y’all want to share in what is otherwise an open thread?

*Go visit. And marvel at its three cylinder, triple expansion marine engine — still operational!

Image: William Blake, The Ancient of Days, frontspiece to Europe a Prophecy, 1794





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