Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Royalty Tenenbaums


Joel Tenenbaum, a 25-year old grad student at Boston University, was ordered to pay four record companies $675,000 for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs between 1997 and 2000. The jury showed admirable restraint in not awarding the $4.5 million the record companies were seeking. Still, that's $22,500 per song which makes a $1 i-tune seem like quite the bargain. Even at that low standard, a similar jury verdict against TCG would put a very painful $180,000,000 (give or take a few $10,000,000 or so) dent in the old wallet.


And folks wonder why I'm headed for the border.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Sugar, I Wish I Knew How To Quit You


Rodell, meet Sugar. Sugar, this is Rodell. Perhaps you've met. "Rodell" is Rodell Vereen, a 50-year old guy from South Carolina. Sugar--probably not her real name--is a 21-year old mare, from Longs, SC. That's MARE, as in a female horse, of a certain age. As reported by AP:

A South Carolina man was charged with having sex with a horse after the animal's owner caught the act on videotape, then staked out the stable and caught him at shotgun point, authorities said Wednesday.
But this wasn't the first time Rodell Vereen has been charged with buggery. He pleaded guilty last year to having sex with the same horse after owner Barbara Kenley found him in the same stable and was sentenced to probation and placed on the state's sex offender list.
Kenley said she noticed several weeks ago her 21-year-old horse Sugar was acting strange and getting infections again. She noticed things in the barn had been moved around — dirt piled up and bales of hay stacked near the horse's stall at her Lazy B Stables in Longs, about 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach.
"Police kept telling me it couldn't be the same guy," Kenley said Wednesday. "I couldn't believe that there were two guys going around doing this to the same horse."
She spent several nights at the stables, which are about four miles from her home, but didn't find anything. So she installed surveillance cameras, and when she reviewed the footage from July 19, she couldn't believe she was seeing the same man doing the same thing to her horse.
Kenley didn't call police because she was certain the man would come back to the stable, and she wanted to make sure he was arrested. So she staked out the barn and caught Vereen inside Monday night, chasing him to his truck and holding him with her shotgun until police came.

According to his mother, Rodell generally "does pretty good, as long as he takes his medicine." Hey, Mom, something ain't workin.

The victim is currently being treated for "infections." Ewwwwwwww.