Burning Love
From the AP: “Make-Believe Elvis Free on Bail for Made-Up Fire Story.” According to the Tampa Tribune, friends of Elvis wannabe Frederick Denmark collected clothes, appliances, and more than $2,000 in cash after Denmark told them his house had burned down.
“Sadly,” according to the Tribune, “as Presley himself crooned, ‘that was just a lie,’ and now the Good Samaritans are saying Denmark ‘ain’t no friend’ of theirs.”
The fire, like the Elvis, was fake. Sadder still, the Tribune‘s quirky “hound dog” allusions were real.
9 to 5 (thirty)
Last Thursday, West Memphis leaders reviewed an ordinance requiring all real-looking toy guns to have an orange tip and restricting the use of orange-tipped guns to the hours between 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. The ban, prompted by last year’s accidental shooting of 12-year-old DeAunta Farrow, is being considered to keep adults with real guns from drawing down on children with toy guns and shooting the seemingly dangerous tykes in self-defense. The ordinance would also ban toy knives in the school district but would not impact real guns with orange tips or the toy IEDs that have become popular among patriotic children playing cowboys and suicide bombers.
Golden Years
Nashville Scene recently quoted a representative from National Healthcare ($500 million in profits in 2006) who suggested that without caps on lawsuits more Tennessee nursing homes might close. In other words, a profitable industry is suggesting that costly lawsuits over patient abuse and neglect may be responsible for the abuse and neglect. Besides, those maggots found in the wound of a Memphis patient were actually eating dangerous bacteria. And a lawyer probably put them there. So there.
