Intestinal Fortitude

The other day we learned about a woman in Scranton, PA who was arrested with something like 51 packages of heroin, 30-some odd drug baggies, 8-1/2 prescription pills and fifty-two dollars and twenty two cents, all conveniently packaged within the warmth and comfort of her own vagina. Well, if she's looking for a date or something, I think I have found the perfect person to hook her up with.

Meet Neil Lansing. Mr. Lansing resides in Sarasota County, Florida. According to the blog Jonathan Turley (Mr. Turley is a "...nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law." I find his blog to be very interesting.), when Mr. Lansing was being booked into jail, a "virtual Cornucopia" turned up during the cavity search. In case you're unfamiliar with a cavity search, let me just say that those doing the searching were not dentists. I'll let you noodle the rest of that through.

Inside of his rectum (for those of you still noodling, you can probably stop now, as I'm sure you can figure out which cavity we are referring to here) they found some contraband. Let me take this opportunity to mention that I am really glad that my career path has taken me in directions so that I will never have to be in the position of discovering items that someone has shoved up their bodily cavities that are supposed to be "Out Only". But I digress. They found the following items:

17 Oxycodone pills

1 cigarette (Really? Up...there? You can't tell me that thing was still in tact after all of the...inserting and...removing. Cigarettes are kind of fragile. They're certainly not meant for deep drilling purposes.)


6 matches (It doesn't specify what kind of matches. I'm hoping that they were waterproof.)

1 flint (A flint?!?! Was he expecting to be participating in some sort of Boy Scout Jamboree? Having a flint up your ass is probably the epitome of the slogan "Be prepared".)

1 empty syringe with eraser over needle (Of course. An eraser. For protection. Safety first! What, pray tell, what he planning on injecting with said syringe? Never mind. I don't want to know.)

1 lip balm container (It doesn't say if there was any lip balm actually in the container. I could see not wanting chapped lips, but considering where the balm would be coming from, I think I'd tough it out.)

1 condom (Again, safety first! I certainly hope that he was planning on removing all of his supplies before he would be taking one for the team. I'm guessing that there's not much room in there for anything else, let alone Bubba's penis.)

1 CVS receipt (For tax purposes. Sure. That makes sense. It's either that or he was planning on returning something. Please, sir. For the love of all that is good and has not been up your rear end, please don't try to return any of that. )

And finally, one...coupon? (What the what? OK, I understand being frugal and thrifty, but in jail? What's he planning to save a dollar on? Is that where he normally keeps his coupons? What's that like when he goes to check out? "Just a minute. I have a coupon for that. Where is it?...Let's see...I know I brought it with me...Oh! That's right! I have inserted it into my rectum!"

Mr. Lansing was subsequently charged with being a dumbass. OK, that wasn't the official charge, but do you have a better name for it?

Those Don't Go In There

Just because you can do something with your body, that certainly doesn't mean that you should. In fact, I'm going to come out against most things that you can do with your body. I'm going to come out vehemently against using your body as some sort of a storage unit/hidey hole for foreign objects in a last ditch effort to avoid getting in even more trouble.

You can tell where this is going, right? According to the news source for lovely Scranton, Pennsylvania, thetimes-tribune.com tells us the story of a one 27-year old (and old enough to know better) Karin Mackaliunas. She was apparently at the scene of some sort of automobile crash when the car was being towed. (It is unclear to me if she owned the vehicle or had anything to do with the vehicle because the media sucks and this is a poorly written article that I'm attempting to work off of here. Bear with me. These really aren't overly important details to the gist of the tale, but it does irritate the crap out of me that they're not there.) And for some reason, an officer asked for Ms. Mackaliunas "...to be detained because she was suspected of stealing items from the inn." What inn, you ask? How the heck should I know? The media sucks, remember?

She was detained and the cop found three bags of heroin in her pocket. (That gives me a pretty good idea of why she was suspected of wrongdoing in the first place. Folks that go around with heroin in their pockets are the type of folks who you would think stole everything from the inn, including the manger out back.) She gets arrested and gets driven back to the police station. It was on that ride back that the officer noticed that our heroin enthusiast was a little fidgety.

They get back to headquarters and some sort of a struggle ensues between this young lady and the arresting officer. It's unclear as to why there was a struggle. What is clear is that at some point "...Ms. Mackaliunas asked to speak with Sergeant Michael Mayer and told him she had hidden more heroin in her vagina." Of course.

The vagina is not a reasonable method of transporting drugs. It's also not a reasonable method of transporting other items as well. After a search by a doctor at Community Medical Center, it was discovered that this woman was also storing "54 bags of heroin, 31 empty bags used to package heroin, 8.5 prescription pills and $51.22." Wait. What now?

That's right. She practically had an entire freaking CVS Pharmacy up her hoo-ha. What. The. Hell. And look, I can sort of understand the drugs. And I can sort of understand the drug bags. (You have to be prepared to bag up the new drugs that you get. And what better receptacle to put your drugs in than a bag that has been sitting in a woman's vagina for God knows how long. Ewww. Don't do drugs, kids. And for God's sake, don't do any that came out of someone's vagina.) And I guess I can understand the 8.5 prescription pills. But for the love of all that is rational, I cannot fathom why she would shove fifty one dollars and change up there! Why the change?! What were you afraid of, cupcake? My God! Do you realize how much stuff that IS? If you don't, I have prepared this handy graphic to help you visualize this scenario. Behold!

Shocking, is it not? And as surprised as I am that she shoved all of that up there, I'm also surprised that it stayed up there. I mean, seriously. Without going into overtly graphic detail, if you have the square footage to cram all of those wares in there, I'm guessing that the front door isn't all that secure. You follow me? Good, because I don't want to have to explain that it must be like those swinging doors you see in the old timey saloons. Flappin' back and forth after a patron enters the bar. Wow. I think I just grossed myself out with that visual I just provided. Yep. I certainly did.

One final note here. If you're someone who enjoys doing drugs, any drugs, and someone offers you drugs that she has just pulled out of her vagina, you need to take a good hard look at your priorities in life if you're going to consider doing those drugs. Seriously. And take your time.

What Gives?

A couple of days ago (I think it was last week) Christina Aguilera was being driven home by her boyfriend down in LA when the car was stopped by the police. Turns out, both her and her boyfriend were drunk as could be. He ended up getting arrested because he was drunk and he was driving. She ended up getting arrested because she was drunk and...well, they said it was because she "couldn't take care of herself" and she needed to be in some sort of protective custody. But as soon as she sobered up enough to do the walk of shame out the back door of the police station, they let her go. They explained that this is their procedure and that they never had any intention of prosecuting the offense. What the offense was is still a bit murky to me. Regardless, she was drunk and really not hurting anyone and was arrested.

Fast forward a few days to yesterday and welcome a one complete crackpot, Mr. Carlos Irwin Estevez, aka Charlie Sheen. Yesterday, Mr. Sheen learned that he had been fired from his money making factory otherwise known as "Two And A Half Men". He didn't seem to take the news very well. No, he ended up on top of a building which houses something called Live Nation (which is apparently a concert promotion endeavor). While he was up there, he was drinking some sort of a liquid out of a bottle which had the words "Tiger Blood" scrawled on the side with a marker. He was also brandishing a machete. And while he was up there, he yelled, "Free at last! Free at last!" Sure. That seems like a completely reasonable reaction to learning that you've just been fired. Yeah. Totally reasonable.

And really, if you think that I'm going to be all delving into what the problem is with Charlie Sheen, I'm not. (If you were wondering though, he's a narcissist. Plain and simple. Maybe he's on drugs. Maybe he's not. It doesn't really matter, though, as his behavior would be the same because he is so narcissistic.) I can't devote much more time to this winning loser. But seeing as how I've laid out two separate, yet kind of similar scenarios involving erratic behavior in public, I do have a question. How is it that Christina Aguilera gets arrested for being driven home drunk and Charlie Sheen can be on top of a building wielding and waving a very large knife with a container labeled "Blood" and nothing happens? Nothing. Actually, I take that back. There were plenty of things going on. Several members of the press were photographing this insanity. But was there law enforcement anywhere to be found? Apparently not. And if there was, they certainly weren't interested in arresting anyone. And really, if I had to choose who I'd rather see off of the streets, Charlie Sheen or Christina Aguilera, I'm going to pick Charlie Sheen and I'm going to pick him now.

So what gives? I have no idea. All I know is that if the picture above is Charlie Sheen "winning", I'd really hate to see what losing looks like.

Then What WAS The Motivation?

If you're on a quest to find who is possibly the world's worst psychiatrist (or minimally, the least observant psychiatrist), stop right now. Have I got a lead for you.

Let's go to Waterloo, Iowa and learn from the fine, fine reporting of KCRG. That's how we learn about the misdoings of a one fifty-three year-old (and obviously old enough to know better) Larry Twigg. Mr. Twigg, who is a former teacher, was arrested in February 2010 after being accused "...of having a 17-year-old student shower in chocolate syrup and play strip video games". Let's just stop right there for a minute, shall we?

I don't even think that I know what the majority of that sentence even means. You can "shower" in chocolate syrup? Like...through a shower head? A squirt bottle? It's a rather thick substance. How do you shower in it? Is that just a metaphor and they really meant just "pouring"? I don't know, but I can't spend too much time on that because I'm really scratching my head over "strip video games". What the what? I fancy myself a video game enthusiast. A connoisseur if you will. But I am rather unfamiliar with the strip video game arena. And really, while I thoroughly enjoy video games and I thoroughly enjoy what can come from stripping, the two really don't go together. How can you concentrate on both of them at the same time? You can't! They both deserve your utmost attention and probably should not even be combined.

But back to the issue at hand. So, this guy gets arrested for, in short, being a weirdo. Now he's trying to have the case dismissed because in Iowa the "...law says the offense requires that the act is done to arouse or satisfy a sexual desire." No problem, right? Wrong. See, that's because "...the psychiatrist hired by the state will offer an opinion that Twigg's acts weren't sexually motivated." Wait. What now?

Correct. You have as much information as I do. Showering at 17-year old with chocolate syrup and playing strip video games is not motivated by the need to satisfy a sexual desire. To which I must ask the seemingly obvious question: How so? That seems to be the only thing that would be motivating this sort of activity. What else could it be? A love for chocolate syrup? A fondness for the suspense filled moments of who is going to have to remove an article of clothing following a loss after an exhilarating round of Mario Kart? Could it be either of those things? Technically? Yes. Was it either of those things? Hell no.

This psychiatrist hired by the state...is on glue? I'm dying to know what in the world he thinks was the motivation behind this very, very odd, odd behavior. I would expect this sort of lunacy from a psychiatrist hired by the defense, but this guy was hired by the state. I don't get it. I really don't. But I'm open to hearing an explanation. In fact, I look forward to it. In the meantime, I'm going to go play some video games with all of my clothes on and without a drop of chocolate syrup in sight. Boring, perhaps. But legal and totally explainable.

The Internet Lies

I really don't understand a lot of stuff. That's kind of why I'm here. To figure stuff out. But I am convinced that there are some things that I will just never understand. Crimes where the victim needs to play an extremely crucial role in the wrongdoings are some of the things that I don't understand. And I'm not talking about scams where people are bilked out of their life savings. While I don't profess to say that I totally understand how those can happen (and I tend to subscribe to the "A fool and his money are soon parted" explanation for most of them), they sometimes (rarely) have a (microscopic) shred of plausibility to them. (I don't really think that. I'm just trying to be nice. Really, I don't get how they ever happen, but that's probably just me.) But when the crime involves having to coerce the mother to engage in sexual acts with her child, it really boggles the mind. Wait. When they...what now?

Yeah, I'm still trying to noodle this one through. According to an AP story which appeared over yonder at the Huffington Post, the individual that we're describing here is a one Steven DeMink. The article starts off confusing me, as it reads "Online...he presented himself as Dalton St. Clair, an attractive single father and psychologist". Now, I don't know if he included a picture of himself online, but this is the perv we're talking about. Behold!

Yeah, not so much in the attractive category if you're asking me. It also doesn't seem like he would have much going on in the smarts category either, but his little ruse seemed to work. I'm going to tell you what he did and then you tell me if these mothers, who were unthinkably somehow unknowingly complicit in his little scheme, should really be parenting at all, OK? My answer is a massive NO. Maybe they could be good parents one day, but clearly right now is not that day. Perhaps give them something to practice taking care of first before moving up to actual humans. I'm thinking of a perhaps a houseplant. Not much can go wrong there...unless you're the plant.

This guy would go into chat rooms on the Internet and somehow convince "...single mothers...to sexually assault their children as a form of therapy." And he did this for (wait for it) more than a year! That he was able to do it even once is astonishing to me. What kind of mother would go along with this sort of advice? Well, in some cases, this perv "...promised the women a date if they followed through with his directions." A date? In exchange for sexually assaulting your own child? THAT was a relevant factor for some of these idiots? Are you dry shaving me?! How is that possible? Who ARE these people?! I guess they're people like this woman: Apparently, "In one case, Demink started online chats with an Oregon woman about the sexual development of her 8-year-old autistic son...He told her to engage in sexually explicit conduct with her son as a way to teach him about sex...and she did so while Demink watched on a web camera." Excuse me for a moment while I find a wall to bang my head against.

They were on the freaking Internet! Don't they know that the Internet lies?! He said he was a psychologist, so that was good enough for them?! Have they also recently lost a lot of money to a Nigerian prince? Are these women being allowed to continue caring for their children? I don't think that it's an overreaction to ask that question, nor do I think it's an overreaction for someone else to be in charge of these particular children. What kind of person are you who has some guy on the Internet tell you to engage in some form of sex with your autistic son and you think it's a good idea and you do it?! WITH a webcam running?!

Well, the answer to that is right there in the police report. See, "Demink intimated to these women that the result of the therapy would be healthier children." Oh. OK, then. I didn't know that he told them that it would help their children. That makes all of the difference. Totally understandable now. Of course. I should have known that there was a reasonable explanation for all of this insane lunacy. Sweet fancy Moses, what is going on here?!

Oh, look! Here's some information about one of the women! This might help us. OK, it says that this particular individual met this guy on "....an online dating site called singleparentmeet.com." All right. Nothing wrong with making friends online. But then, "She told police she performed sex acts on her young son as directed by her online male friend." All right. There's absolutely something wrong with that! As directed by?! The direction I can fully comprehend. It's the following through with it that still boggles me! Maybe her mother (who was inexplicably interviewed for this story) can help shed some insight on what her daughter was thinking. She said that "...her daughter was "depressed and lonesome" after her divorce." Uh-huh. I'm going to need more than that. "I don't know how he wrangled her in...She could have turned off the computer and gone the other way. He must have had a power over her." Oh, for cryin' out loud!

A power over her?! How about just admitting that your daughter is a complete dumbass?! Power? What kind of power? I've read this story several times (in hopes that I read it wrong at least once) and it makes no mention of him being overly tricky or magic or anything like that. He's just a big, perverted dope who managed to convince not one, not two, but at least seven women from all over the country to sexually assault their children because it would "help" them.

Seven. I have just lost all faith in humanity. I have nothing left. Seven. Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, Oregon New Hampshire, Idaho and Florida (of course). Those folks are spread all across the country. If it was contained to a particular region (like Florida, as I had expected), maybe I would have some faith left. But it's not. It's from one coast to another and everywhere in between. I don't really know what else to do with that other than to completely abandon any shred of hope that I may have ever had. For cryin' out loud, "Because the Internet told me to" is about the worst excuse I have ever heard in my life and it happened in this instance at least seven times. Yeah, I give up. Good Lord...

Step Away From The Chicken

I think that it's safe to say that most of us here have been drunk at one point or another. Like Thursday, for example. But timelines aside, I think that for those of us who have been overserved (by ourselves or by the kindness of others), we've all done things that we weren't exactly overly proud of the next day. And while I might have had some...interesting antics, I've gotta say that I have never been so drunk that I defiled the poultry section of a Kroger. Wait. You never...what now?

You heard me. I never defiled the poultry section of a Kroger. Then again, I am not a one 58-year old (and old enough to know better) Jerry Patterson of North Little Rock, Arkansas. According to MSNBC, "Police were called to the (Kroger) to investigate a report of a drunk man who was being verbally aggressive with store workers." You know, the being aggressive with other folks really isn't compulsory drunken behavior. Why must so many people behave as if it is? Be happy drunks! Don't be mean. Mean behavior only results in the cops being called and you likely going to jail.

When the cops got there, they found what many would consider to be your typical drunken symptoms. The unsteadiness on one's feet. The reeking of alcohol. The incredibly bloodshot eyes. And in this case, they also found an individual with a recently emptied bladder and ham breath. You see, it would appear that Mr. Patterson had allegedly "...urinated on $500 worth of chicken". Five hundred dollars worth? That's an awful lot of chicken. If it weren't so disgusting, I'd be pretty impressed.

The police report also indicted that Mr. Patterson "...also ate a large package of ham". OK, see, the chicken peeing? That I don't get. Being famished when drunk? I totally get that. There's something about all of the drunkenness that makes feel as if they are absolutely starving. And that's when everything sounds good. Hershey bars dipped in marinara sauce? Delicious. Frozen fish stick sliders (with the fish sticks still slightly frozen)? Awesome. Low-fat potato chips dipped in a jar of pre-made gravy? Breakfast! The behavior itself is totally understandable and acceptable. The arena in which this chap chose to practice this behavior, while still understandable, is not quite as acceptable as when you're doing it in the comfort of your own drunken palace.

Mr. Patterson was arrested and charged with a variety of offensive offenses, including "...public intoxication, theft of property, and criminal mischief." Criminal mischief? Geez, I'd say! I wonder when he ate the ham? Do you think he was peeing at the time of the ingestion of one of the tastiest of all of the cured and salted meats? Sometimes when you're drunk you get really obsessed with multi-tasking. Maybe he thought that he'd just go to the store, get something to eat and relieve himself all at the same time. And it worked, but it got him arrested in the process. Always thinking ahead. Always. And never pee on the chicken in the grocery store. Once you get home with your chicken, you can do whatever you'd like to it. Just don't get caught and don't be telling me about it. Weirdo.

You Didn't Search Her Well Enough

It was just a month or so ago that I brought you the charming tale of a couple of super-sized women who were arrested for shoplifting many, many items by concealing the items 'neath their rolls of fat. Oh, and I can tell by the gagging sounds you just emitted that you remember said story all too well. So I guess you'd better brace yourself for this one, as it is quite similar in method to the previous story. I'm still trying to figure out some of the finer points to this story, but maybe you can help me out with some of them. Let's find out!

What we have is a story from the fine folks at CBS Minnesota (that's in Minnesota). It would seem that our "hero", a one Stephanie Moreland, was arrested on New Year's Eve under suspicion of stealing a $6,500 "short mink coat" from the Alaskan Fur Company. Now, when they say a "short mink coat", is that supposed to imply that the coat is not very long or that it was made from rather diminutive minks? I'm not sure, either.

Ms. Moreland was confronted in the store, but denied having taken said coat of mink. When she left the store, the clerk wrote down her license plate number and called police. The police tracked down the car and found a hanger from the store in the car. The article claims that "They searched her for weapons and booked her into their jail for the weekend on theft charges." Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm not quite so sure that she was really "searched'. I'm pretty sure that she was not "searched" sufficiently.

OK, so she's been in jail for a couple of days when "Three days later, a detective interviewed Moreland who admitted she stole the coat but claim she had already sold it." It's unclear to me why she admitted to the theft at that point. Maybe she thought they were going to let her go or something. I don't know, but she had carried on her little scheme to this point, I don't see why she didn't just keep going with it a little bit longer. Wait. What?

That's right. I said "her scheme". You weren't really buying any of that stuff that she was spewing out, were you? Oh, come on! She stole the coat all right. But she didn't sell it. I kind of wish that she had though. That's because (wait for it) "When the investigator informed Moreland he would be sending her to the Hennepin County Jail downtown, he was shocked when she lifted up her dress and pulled out the mink coat from her underwear." Oh. My. God.

Pulled the mink coat from her underwear?! What the what?! How big is this ol' gal again? Let's see...it says that she's 270 pounds. It does not list a height. I'm guessing that if she can conceal an entire mink coat, short or not, inside of her underwear, she can't be more than four feet tall. Good Lord, woman. And it was in there for three days?! How is that possible? What is going on over there at the jail in Minnesota? Clearly whatever it is, it does not involve thorough body searches at all.

The Bloomington Police Commander, a one Mark Stehlik, explained that “She had modified her underwear. She actually cut the rear of the underwear out so that from the back it appeared she was not wearing underwear and then stuffed it down the front.” What does that even mean? Cut out the rear of her underwear? I get that, but what does that have to do with it being able to appear that she's not wearing underwear? How does not appearing to wear underwear from the rear make it so it doesn't appear that you have a $6,500 short mink coat shoved down your front? Why does it matter if someone else thinks that she is wearing underwear or not? Is that some sort of a "thing" in the shoplifting community? I'm so confused. Three days of underwear mink?! (No, that is not a euphemism.) I hope they burned that thing after she pulled it out of...there.

There are really a lot of unanswered questions here. I realize that. But there's only so much I can do. If you know anything about this apparent underwear altering which is seemingly conducive to shoplifting, let me know.