A Few Follow-Ups

I told you I used to be a member of the Liberal Media, right? If you're new to the show, back when I was in high school, I wrote a weekly column about my small town for the local rag. At the same time, I had an opinion column with the high school paper. I got burnt out pretty quickly doing two gigs like that, which is kind of funny, since one was a weekly column and the other was bi-monthly. Still, I had lots of activities going on, like quiz bowl (what? me? do trivia? never!), basketball, trying to get into college, trying to get laid. You know, the usual shit.

Anyway, what sort of journalistic integrity would I be providing if I didn't do a few follow up stories to those things I've reported here previously? A pretty lousy one, that's what, so to prove that I'm better than Keith Olbermann, I'll do those follow-ups, and you'll like them and not see them as a thinly veiled attempt to hide the fact that I was too lacking in creativity to give you anything new today.

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Remember when I told you about that brutal and savage criminal, Joseph Carnavale? He was the man responsible for inspiring terror during rush hour traffic because he built a barrel monster out of the orange and white barrels lining every fucking street in the Raleigh-Durham area and then set said monster alongside the road. Well, not only did he flash a few moments of brilliant creativity, but he also proved that the Raleigh police department is filled with humorless asshats.

Mr. Carnavale, a student at NC State University, had his day in court yesterday and was given 50 hours of community service. Carnavale said he would like to serve his sentence by working with Habitat for Humanity. Clearly, this is a deranged lunatic prowling our streets...at least according to Raleigh police.

"The law is what we enforce," Raleigh police spokeswoman Laura Hourigan said. "We go out every day and do our job, and the job is enforcement, and that's why we did what we did."

And good for you, Laura Hourigan. God bless the men and women in blue protecting our streets in Raleigh.

Meanwhile, the guy who killed Jenna Nielsen is still at large. Raleigh police have no leads at this time.

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Last Wednesday, I told you of James Waylett--the dude who plays Vincent Crabbe in the Harry Potter movies--and his...advanced studies of herbology. He, too, had his day in court (which apparently was also his 20th birthday). He was sentenced to 120 hours of community service.

He will spend most of it polishing the trophies with Filch. The rest of it will be spent changing Mrs. Norris' litter box.

Since Waylett, who was looking at a possibility of 14 years in prison, was quick to admit the pot was his and cooperated with the police so well, the judge saw fit to give him the community service rather than sending him to the hoosegow. I'm sure Lucius Malfoy had nothing to do with this.

Incidentally...my spell checker is perfectly fine with "hoosegow", but gives me a red underline for "herbology".

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On Monday, I told you of my drunken interactions with a couple of my students in a little afterhours soiree--and by soiree I mean a poorly-judged stumble onto campus.

Curious as to what happened to the students in the story (I never learned Barefoot Girl's name...other than it was Carrie, so no follow up there). Turns out that both of the students are now doctors. Sean is a podiatrist in Chicago. Andrea is a doctor at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis.

Andrea is also married. I only know this because her Facebook profile has a picture of her in a white dress dancing with some guy in a tuxedo. My brilliant powers of deduction have led me to this conclusion. Also, I found a wedding announcement from her local paper.

As soon as I find Sean's email address, I'm going to find out if he wants me to repay him for that burger and fries.

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And finally, the other night my wife and I were lying in bed discussing how limited our childhoods were when it came to music and television. The whole story can be summed up as thus: if it wasn't the Judds or the Beach Boys, she didn't listen to it growing up, and my favorite band when I graduated high school was Simon & Garfunkel.

Television was not much better. She watched a lot of Golden Girls, 227, Amen and Empty Nest, whereas I watched Leave it to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, and the Waltons. I sighed and then said, "Yeah, I spent a lot of time reading when I was a kid."

"And masturbating," she added.

"No, not so much. Don't you remember the Jamie Randol story?"

"Oh yeah. How long would you go in between?"

"Like, weeks. Months, if I could. One of my main reasons, aside from feeling guilty, was that my mom had me terrified that Jesus was retuning at any second!, and I really didn't want to be lying there beating off when the Rapture occurred."

"Wow, so, what, she told you that if you stroked the one-eyed monster, Jesus would come?"

*pregnant silence followed by gales of laughter*

When I composed myself: "I am so blogging about this."

Raleigh Police, Putting Your Tax Dollars to Good Use

Seen that? That's the artwork of one Joseph Carnevale. He's a kid from Indianapolis living in Raleigh who, one day sitting in class, cooked up the idea of taking the traffic barrels that line every fucking street in the Raleigh-Durham area and turn them into this giant piece of barrel art that you see before you.

Here's a bit of extra information for you. North Carolina has the laziest fucking barrel reclamation program that I've ever seen. Years after a road project is done down here, there's still barrels everywhere. So, it's not like you couldn't just go and find some replacements real easy-like.

So, here we go. We've got this barrel sculpture thumbing a ride during morning rush hour, and people are all honking and stuff because they think that shit's funny and creative.

Raleigh police, apparently, weren't as amused as most everyone else. Perhaps they confused it with a giant snow cock or something, because they immediately knocked it down, disassembled it, and released the hounds so that they could find the "criminal" who took approximately $365 worth of barrels and cut, painted and bolted them together.

Warm up the tar and get the feathers ready, we've got some southern justice to mete out. The owners of the traffic barrels, Hamlin Associates, liked the magnum opus canali (translated as "great work of barrels"), going so far as to describe the work as "good". Hamlin Associates have no desire to press charges. Hell, it was like free advertising for them. They've easily recouped the monetary damages.

In fact, they'd like Monsieur Carnevale to reconstruct the Barrel Monster for in the lobby at their headquarters.

So, where's the problem, officer?

Laura Hourigan, who seems to be a barrel of laughs herself, serving as a spokesman for the Raleigh police department went on record as saying, "The police department obviously has a job to do. And, if someone is going to destroy property, we're going to take care of the situation."

No word on whether Sheriff Taylor let her put her bullet in her gun before she made that bold proclamation.

Meanwhile, two years after it happened, the murder of Jenna Nielsen remains unsolved...