Hello, I’m still here.

Yeah, I know it seems like the last time I posted was shortly after Al Gore invented the Internet. But, honestly, do you all think I got nothing else to do all day but sit around on my computer coming up with stuff to amuse people who surf the Internet? No, contrary to what my family thinks, I have a life.

“I have a life”- when you think about it, it’s kind of a useless phrase. If you can say it, isn’t that proof that you have one? Our society today is really great at coming up with meaninless phrases like this. Doesn’t anybody these days ever have anything important to say? Like, something along the lines of, “excuse me, sir, but a pile of bricks just fell from the top of that building, and you’re standing right under them.” Now that would be important, but you rarely hear people saying things like that these days.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that I don’t actually have a life. I could just be a computer endowed with artificial intelligence, or, in the case of this column, artificial stupidity.

A corrolary to “I have a life” is “Get a life.” People always seem to be telling each other to get a life. I get that all the time.

What you never hear people tell each other is to “Take a life”. Of course, “taking a life” has an entirely different meaning now than “getting a life”. But that is really odd when you think about it. The difference in meaning between the words “take” and “get” is really quite subtle, isn’t it? So how come there’s such a big difference in meaning when you put the words “a life” after them?  It doesn’t really seem to make sense, does it?

This is why I make it a point to never tell anybody to “get a life”. How do I know that the person that I say that to won’t misinterpret my suggestion and promptly go out and brutally murder some innocent shopkeeper somewhere? This is a real possibility considering the types of people you usually say “get a life” to. They’re usually a little bit shakey to begin with. You never say that to somebody who’s got his shit together.

No, I would not want to have that blood on my hands. Furthermore, it could leagally make me an accessory to the murder. Can you imagine- the cops haul this guy in, who is probably a few deuces short of a full deck in the first place, and when they ask him why he did it he answers, “well, Mike McHugh told me to, that’s why!”

So I get hauled into court, and my only chance at a successful defense is to be able to explain to the judge the grammatical difference between the words “take” and “get”. I don’t think that even Johnny Cochran if he were still alive would be able to get me out of that one.

No, I’d most likely rot in prison, right along there with Charles Manson, just another madman who enticed folks to go around killing people.

More insanity around the state in the week just passed:

• A lot of people are up in arms about a closed door meeting that a grop of state legislators have scheduled in Alexandria on the subject of redistricting based on the results of the 2010 census. Organizers defend the move as legal, claiming that it is “educational” in nature.

  Okay, so they’re going to get some schooling. But what are they afraid of having us, their tuition payers, monitor the class? That we’ll see them as a bunch of dunces? Hell, we already know that.

• A minister in Plaquemines parish was arrested for stealing money from a fund he established for members of his flock to acquire FEMA trailers for them following Hurricane Katrina.

  Before you rush to judgment on this guy, consider. Maybe he’d gotten some divine enlightenment about the heatlh hazards that would eventually be discovered with those trailers, and so he was really tring to defend his parishoners from danger. OK, so what if he did spend the money he took on the drugs the cops found? Perhaps he was only killing two birds with one stone and buying it all up himself to deliver them from temptation, as well.

• A modular home contractor was extradited to Louisiana from Florida on charges that he defrauded Road Home Grant recipients of money. He promised them modular homes that never got delivered. My question is why these victims had to turn to a Florida man to get ripped off when there’s plenty of contractors in this state who are perfectly capable of doing the same thing?
• The LSU Data Center released a report that reveals, although Louisiana is gaining population, it is losing college graduates and replacing them with people of lower educational levels. At this rate, before you know it, anybody with one of those new dumbed-down Career High School Diplomas will be considered a bonafide genius.

  It’s just like solving your weight problem by hanging around with only fat people. What’s wrong with that?

• The Saints are now 3-0. Was that a hint of a cool Brees that was felt down there in Hades?
• LSU is 4-0 and 4th in the polls. A win is a win, they say. And a $2 scratch-off prize is a also a winning lottery ticket.

C-Murder Mug Shot

Jury selection began Monday in a Jefferson Parish courtroom in the trial of a rapper who goes by the moniker of “C-Murder”. Can you guess what crime he is charged with?

As someone who considers the term “rap music” to be oxymoron, I had never heard of this C-Murder guy before I came across this news story.

The thing that really freaked me out about this story is that the sixteen-year-old kid he’s accused of killing happened to be a huge fan of his. Geez, of that’s how her treats his fans, I’d hate to see what he does to his critics. I think that a dog in Michael Vick’s kennel would fare better than a critic who happens to get in this guy’s face.

Talk about living up to your name. And this isn’t his given name, mind you; it’s one he made up for himself. Perhaps he would have been wiser to have picked a stage name that reflected a less serious infraction, like maybe, “J-walking”. At least that way he wouldn’t be facing a life term, that is, as long as his concert tours avoid Iran and North Korea. Of course, the lyrics to his so-called songs might not be as interesting. For example, how about this:

Hey, man I see dat’ the light is red
But I gotta cross now and get home to my bed
Gotta’ get in that door before half past nine
Or my momma gonna’ whoop my big behind

Now I don’t know diddly-squat about rap, but somehow I don’t think lyrics like these would cut it in that particular genre.

Now that I’ve publicly ridiculed this guy, please pray for me if he ever gets out of jail.

According to a story reported by KLFY TV in Lafayette, the sheriff of Iberia Parish has come up with an inventive way to deal with unruly prisoners. He simply has them trade in their normal orange coverall for a pretty pink one and then transfers them to a special cell block with pink-painted walls. His hope, of course, is that the embarrassment suffered by these hardened criminals will discourage unacceptable behavior.

The strategy is a gamble, for sure, but the sheriff has a backup plan. “If, after being subjected to this humiliation, they continue to violate the rules, then we have no choice but to resort to more extreme measures.” The sheriff refused to elaborate on what these further measures are, but a source inside the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported that these included making up the inmates’ beds with Barbie-printed sheets and making them watch Hannah Montana videos.

Some prisoner-rights advocates are protesting these policies as “cruel and unusual punishment”. Some are suggesting that the moves may backfire and possibly even incite a riot. When pressed about this, the Sheriff admitted, “Well, we did have to break up a couple of pillow fights last week.”

I came across a video from WBRZ News in Baton Rouge that the FBI did indeed pick up a man featured in the “Thuggin’ it and Lovin it” video that I mentioned earlier today. He was held for several hours of questioning. It seems that law enforcement is indeed watching the film with keen interest

In the segment, this guy goes on a tirade and complains that the cops should not be going around picking up these punks who have been filmed breaking the law because they are, well, on film. So, according to this logic, next time you want to go rob somebody at knifepoint, just bring along a video camera and you can rest easy.

I wonder if that would mean all you folks who have fallen victim to the speed vans and red light cameras can claim immunity.

I like to read the crime articles in the newspapers.  You know something?  It makes me think that if so many people who violate the law weren’t so stupid, we’d have total anarchy, as opposed to the near-anarchy that we currently have in certain parts of the state.

 Let me give you a few examples. 

One-   In Baton Rouge, a new DVD called “Thuggin’ it and Lovin’ it”, is apparently flying off the shelves of local retailers.  I haven’t seen the video (nor do I think I care to), but the apparent theme is one of glorifying crime on the streets.  This is done by through footage of real crimes as they are being committed. 

Now these are not candid shots, mind you.  No, the perpetrators actually know they are being filmed.  They gyrate before the cameras like an NFL receiver who’d just scored a touchdown.  They say “Hi!” to their mothers and wave a finger in the air in victory.

 Now, as hot an item as these videos are on the streets, I’m sure they enjoy even greater popularity among the boys down at the precinct house.  I only wonder if these idiots will be dancing with such flair in the sequel- “Doin’ Time and Lovin’ on Bubba “.

 Two-  Earlier this week,  a cargo ship captain pleaded guilty to charges associated with an incident you may recall from a while back where a ship leaked fuel into the Mississippi River.  And we are not talking about some little carburetor leak here.  No, this amount of fuel could have sent the Space Shuttle to the planet Venus.

 What was the captain thinking here?  “Oh, well, this is the Mississippi River after all; who would notice?”

Or maybe he thought, “Hey, some hurricane is bound to pass through here before too long; that’ll cover out tracks.”

 I’m only glad that the ship was not coming here from China with its tanks full of melamine-tainted baby formula.  They’d have had to evacuate the entire New Orleans Metropolitan Area.  We all know how things went the last time they tried that.

 And finally-  There’s this story from DeRidder.  Police were called to a house at about 1:30 AM on a weeknight in response to complaints of loud music.  Now maybe this is just me, but if the cops showed up at my door late one night and asked me to turn down my music, I would go out of my way to make sure I got off with just a warning.  “I’m so sorry, officer,” I’d apologize, “I promise I’ll sell my stereo on E-bay, and I’ll even hit the mute button on my I-pod if it’ll help.”

So, did this guy do the intelligent thing and just suck it up?  Ohhh, noooooo.  He had to turn the music up even louder and get belligerent with the officer.  That earned him free accommodations for the night in a nice cell.

Keep it up, pal.  You and Bubba are going to become very well acquainted.

I’m following with great interest all of the drama in the William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson bribery trial. In recent days, former staffers and business associates outlined in testimony the former congressman’s complicated business dealings.

Seems like Jefferson was involved in all kinds of ventures throughout the African continent- satellite radio (seems like they’re hungry for Howard Stern), oil, sugar, stuffed armadillos, kinky sex toys, you name it.

I frankly don’t know how any member of a jury can follow all of this. After all, it’s a well known fact that the lawyers don’t allow PhD’s in business and administration to serve on juries in these kind of proceedings.

For the Jefferson trial, the two sides eventually agreed to seat a group of students from Miss Matson’s 3rd grade class at Robert E. Lee Elementary in Manassas, Va, plus a turnip, which was chosen as foreman. Each signed a sworn statement that they had never operated a lemonade stand.

The proceedings revealed that Jefferson’s business dealings were indeed complex. They literally involving dozens of companies, many incorporated in countries that exist only in Middle Earth. No one really knew how it all was connected together. The only sure thing was that Jefferson’s relatives kept getting checks in the mail.

Prosecutors allege that Jefferson’s business dealings in Africa were, in fact, so complex that there is no way he couldn’t have violated at least “some law of some sort”.

“We have attempted to connect all of the dots,” claimed a prosecution attorney, “but the final picture just looks like a hairball that my cat coughed up.”

Reams of data were generated by a Justice Department supercomputer that is specially programmed to analyze hairballs. The analysis led to a firm conclusion that that Jefferson had indeed violated no less than sixteen different federal statutes.

The defense, on the other hand, painted a completely different image. They claim to have indeed connected all the dots, without a computer, and they even even colored it with Crayola crayons. The resulting picture, they say, was a duck.

After objections by the prosecution, the judge refused to allow the duck picture to be entered as evidence. This was on the grounds that, If the duck picture were admitted, then in all fairness the hairball would have to be admitted as well. This would have certainly caused severe prejudice among the jury, who would only have considered the hairball to be “yucky”.

Yesterday’s proceedings were adjourned upon the jury members’ requests for a box of crayons.

Got to do some catching up on the news here. Late last month, four inmates escaped from the St. Tammany Parish Jail. This wouldn’t be so strange in and of itself, but the means of escape made this particular story quite notable.

As you may know, local governments throughout the state have been strapped for cash for quite some time now, so when it came to building a jail, the officials in St. Tammany, knowing quite well the increasing trend toward obesity among Americans, decided they could save some money by spacing the bars in the jail farther apart.

Well, that move apparently set a light bulb (or maybe a dimly lit candle) off in the heads of four of the prison’s inmates. Like most Americans, while they were enjoying a big bowl of Blue Bell Ice Cream and watching “The Biggest Loser”, they got an idea. By going on a crash diet, they could shrink themselves down to the size of Frenchmen and slip away through the widened space between the bars. So, for almost a year (these were big boys, mind you), they literally starved themselves to reduce thier massive girths.

The guards have only themselves to blame. They really should have noticed these guys religiously counting their Weight Watcher points in the mess hall.

The big day came on Thursday, June 18. Prison officials quicky put two and two together when the noticed the K-Y Jelly (which is known to be a commodity in correctional ceners) on the cell bars. Warnings were immediately issued to the public, alerting them that the escapees were “armed and famished”. They organized the largest manhunt ever in St. Tammany parish, with hundreds of deputies staking out every all-you-can-eat buffet within a fifty-mile radius.

Three of the escapees were recaptured within hours, found hiding in the woods outide the prison behind an oak sapling.

The fourth, Timothy Murray, eluded capture until the following Sunday. Murray found refuge by breaking into an unoccupied vacation home a few miles away. The homeowner returned late Saturday and became immediately suspicious when he noticed barbecue sauce stains on the patio table. He never saw Murray, as the inmate fled into the woods surrounding the residence. The only thing reported stolen was a couple racks of baby back ribs, a baked potato, and two 24-packs of peanut butter cups. “At least he did clean the grill before he left,” said the resident.

Deputies searched the woods and were led straight to Murray after they discovered footprints and a trail of peanut butter cup wrappers.