My Sick Mind

LOS ANGELES – Three executives at a stuffed toy manufacturer were arrested Friday on suspicion of laundering millions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers, authorities said. The arrests followed a two-year, multi-agency probe into the Angel Toy Corp., located in a downtown warehouse. "It's no small irony that a multimillion-dollar company which promoted itself as retailer of cuddly stuffed animals was allegedly acting as a financial linchpin for drug trafficking operatives," said John Morton, director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two co-owners of the business, Meichun Cheng Huang, 57, and Ling Yu, 52, were arrested, along with chief executive officer Xiaoxin Ju, 48. Is there any other use for these 1- inch square baggies than this? I mean, seriously. Somewhere there is a little baggie factory (probably in China) turning out these tiny things. There's even an adorable little plastic strip to seal it up nice and air tight, away from ...

Thermostat now displaying "WTF?" Not even sure how that's possible. - from Howard 's Twitter and/or Facebook page. We're a funny bunch, us humans. There are certain places where we hate to perspire and other places where we love to. That's where we call it sweat, in the places we love to. The temperature around these parts rose to over a hundred degrees (102 at 4:54pm, when you'd figure it would be starting to cool off) and according to the weather guys, it "feels like" 102. That's great, but do you know what it really feels like? It feels like I got stuck in a big plastic bag and somebody turned on a huge sun lamp...for 8 hours. Doesn't it feel differently in the sun and the shade? Of course it does. They measure the temperature in the shade, so how can being in the sun "feel like" the same temperature? That's where these scientists come down to Earth for me. When it is this hot, I lose all interest in outdoor activiti...

Sports and entertainment are funny businesses. They don't behave like real life businesses and the people involved aren't treated like real life people. Take, for instance, the Tiger Woods affair. Or affairs. Our area just finished hosting the AT&T tournament at Aronomink just outside Philadelphia. The local papers were full of coverage on the event, since big time golf doesn't come to our area often. Those of us who follow the game have gotten used to headlines like "Tiger 12 shots off the pace" or "Tiger third going into final round" where there is little or no mention of who is leading the tournament. Tiger got the ink. Since his ignominious fall from grace, not much has changed. The first two days, when he was in danger of missing the cut, the paper lead with that story. Who is leading the tournament? See paragraph three. It seems that no amount of personal shame or degradation could keep his name out of the headlines or his followers from t...

I had some idea what I was going to write about today, but in between that and turning the computer on, I've lost track. The Independence Day weekend is winding down, and I'm one of the fortunate few to have Monday off, so I can spend a few minutes in quiet contemplation. Showing fireworks on television is one of our stranger customs. Most of the lure of fireworks is the expanse of the explosion over your head and the shock of the explosion when the boom rattles your stomach a little. I don't sense any of that on TV. Television compresses the event to a screen-wide view, and the accompanying music is always louder than the explosions - not that it would help much. My TV sound isn't going to rattle anything. The other big event around here is traffic. One of the reasons I'm up at 3:45 working on this mess is that I made a late-night trip home from a friend's and wound up in shore traffic at 2:30am. 2:30am. am. I was in traffic at 2:30am on the Atlantic City ...