Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
We're known as the MOTley Crew and you can find us here every morning at 6:30 Eastern. Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanently or every now and again. With the auto-publish feature you can set it and forget it. Sometimes the diarist du jour shows up much later, that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Just let us know in the comments.
Welcome to Casual Friday where we wake you up with the overlooked news stories of the week. The offbeat, strange and sometimes downright weird news items that mainstream media tends to ignore, all wrapped up with a few funnies, all designed to get your face in smiling shape for the weekend.
The Valentine Bandit Over the last 37 years an anonymous group in Portland, Maine sneak about in the dead of night and tape red paper hearts on windows, statues, light posts and practically anything that doesn't move. Here are some notable years:
1976 The first Valentine’s Phantom strikes in Portland, and garners reports in the Evening Express and Maine Sunday Telegram newspapers.
1977 Printing the flyers cost $22 at Colonial Offset Printing on Forest Avenue; a Portland Press Herald effort to discover the Bandit’s identity fails.
1978 Hearts went up a day late, and bore a note: “It’s not only ONE day!”
1979 The weather was 8 degrees and windy, according to notes made by one of the six bandits.
1984 Massive heart banners, roughly 20 feet by 35 feet, hang from the Cumberland County Civic Center and the Portland Museum of Art.
1986 A heart banner is hung on Fort Gorges in the middle of Casco Bay.
1991 Down East magazine imagines that “the phantoms roam the city in a pack, dressed in red or white capes emblazoned with huge hearts.”
2001 A heart flag flies from the roof of Portland’s Central Fire Station; a fire lieutenant denies any knowledge.
2005 A heart banner hangs from the roof of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute on Commercial Street.
2008 – The bandit tapes hearts all through the town on local stores and businesses.
NOTE: This piece was shamelessly, although confessed to, stolen from yesterday's
Cheers and Jeers. I must add BiPM's take on the Valentine Bandit:
"It's sweet. It's cute. And, truth be told, it takes our mind off yesterday's visit by the Colorectal Screening Day Bandits. "
Stella! Ornery dog leads to $1M Idaho lottery win A group of 33 University of Utah workers have been making a monthly 1 1/2 hour drive to Malad, Idaho to buy a lottery ticket (Utah has no lottery) since 2001 and have always played the same numbers. Steve Hughes, one of the members was on his way to Idaho to buy the tickets for the month and stopped at a gas station. He left his truck running to keep his dog "Stella" warm while he went inside. When he returned he found the miniature pinscher had locked him out by hitting the lock button with her paw.
Hughes was forced to call his girlfriend and send her on to buy the tickets while he worked to get the door open. He finally got Stella to put her paws on the button in the back seat.
What seemed like an annoying delay that day turned out to be serendipitous when the group discovered Wednesday night that they had won second prize in the Idaho Powerball. They announced the great news during a morning meeting Thursday morning at the HVAC shop at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Hughes thought it was a joke - looking for the camera filming the prank.
Captain Cook's pistol fetches $227,000 at auction
A pistol owned by British explorer Captain James Cook, who first claimed Australia for Britain nearly two and half centuries ago, sold on Thursday for A$219,600 ($227,100), above the top estimate set by auctioneers. ($1 = 0.9669 Australian dollars)
The brass pistol was an early 18th century Continental Flintlock. It was one of a precious few personal effects remaining from the explorer and was purchased by a private buyer in Victoria, Australia.
Cook reached the coast of Australia in April 1770, the first recorded European to encounter the continent's eastern coast, after mapping the coastline of New Zealand. In August, he planted the British flag on Possession Island in northern Queensland.
It is not known if Cook was carrying the pistol when he first stepped on Australian soil.
Cook made two later exploratory expeditions to the Pacific and was killed in Hawaii in 1779.
The pistol remained in the Cook family for more than two centuries before being purchased by former Melbourne Lord Mayor Ron Walker at an auction in Edinburgh in 2003.
Bicycle, jogging path through Everglades planned; what possibly could go wrong?
A paved 75-mile path through the Everglades is being planned that would allow cyclists, joggers and pedestrians to encounter alligators without dodging automobiles.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that the River of Grass Greenway would parallel Tamiami Trail most of the way, starting at Krome Avenue in Miami-Dade County and running through Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve and other wilderness lands that are home to Florida panthers, black bears, alligators and other wildlife.
Pitchers and Catchers Report To Spring Training For Delousing
In preparation for the fast approaching 2013 MLB preseason, the league’s pitchers and catchers reported to spring training for their annual delousing, sources confirmed Friday. “Every spring, we make sure to give these guys a lice shampoo treatment, a rigorous once-over with a steel comb to get at any nits, and destroy their infected uniforms and caps,” Milwaukee Brewers head athletic trainer Dan Wright told reporters while applying a thick, full-body lather to reliever John Axford and battery-mate Jonathan Lucroy. “It’s a long offseason, and sometimes our pitchers and catchers pick up a little something that you don’t want them bringing into the clubhouse. This procedure ensures that they start spring training clean, happy, and healthy.” According to league sources, the MLB has required all ball clubs to thoroughly delouse their pitchers and catchers since 2006, when Oakland A’s backstop Jason Kendall was responsible for an outbreak of pubic lice that spread like wildfire throughout the American League.
Okay, it was from the Onion. Just trying to discern who actually reads this stuff.
"Supporters of Hillary Clinton have already started a 2016 super PAC on her behalf called 'Ready for Hillary.' And more cautious Democratic supporters have started another super PAC called 'Bracing for Biden.'" –Jimmy Fallon
"This is crazy. The justice department is saying that President Obama can order drone strikes on American citizens, that he can do that. In a related story, this is the last Obama joke I'm ever doing on this show." –Conan O'Brien
"When asked about gay marriage, Donald Trump said, 'It's not my thing.' Trump went on to say marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman he will replace in six years." –Conan O'Brien
"The Republican Party has its own line of clothing. The problem is it keeps coming apart at the seams." –David Letterman
"Monopoly is getting a big makeover. They want to make the Monopoly game more modern and bring it up to date to reflect our current culture. Like, in the new version of Monopoly, the banker never goes to jail." –Jay Leno
"It was just revealed that the Federal Reserve was hacked on Sunday. It's pretty serious. In fact, they say the hackers could've made off with as much as negative $14 trillion." –Jimmy Fallon