Archive for the ‘oddities’ Category

Question: How would a “Wise Latina” describe a man who on the Stand wears a Hitler Moustache, gives a Nazi Salute and says he will kill again and names his victims?

Posted: October 14, 2009 by datechguy in oddities, opinion/news
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Answer: Apparently as a man who has “ineffective assistance of counsel.”

Maybe it’s just me but if I have a defendant who takes the stand with a Hitler mustache and says he’s glad for what he’s done and he will do it again I’d say that a closing Argument by Clarance Darrow or even Perry Mason wouldn’t make a difference.

As Althouse notes Scalia asked:

“What would you have done? It makes sense logically to say he has the worst defendant he has ever seen. He’s murdered lots of people in cold blood. He gets up on the stand and says, ‘I’m going to kill a lot more.’ He sounds totally bonkers.”

but Sotomayor saw it differently:

remarking on the lawyer’s strategy of using the crimes themselves as evidence of mental illness”: “At some point you can have a strategy and execute it so poorly, so incompetently, that you’re providing ineffective assistance of counsel.”

If this is a “wise Latina” I’m afraid to see what a blithering idiot would be like.

Captain Lou Albano is dead…

Posted: October 14, 2009 by datechguy in oddities, personal
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…at the age of 76.

My kid knew him from the Mario Brothers TV show but people of my age remember his as the tag team manager back in those days when Wrestling was still pretending to be real (and was to the 10 year olds watching it) but was not campy enough to be mocked nor violent enough to be just turned off.

The wrestlers were working class guys the managers were funny and good guys and bad guys were clearly defined.

Captain Lou was a bad guy but he was always fun.

Sure it wasn’t the business or the profit generator it is today but it was better.

So dies another piece of my youth.

A great example of what I’m talking about…

Posted: October 14, 2009 by datechguy in local stuff, oddities
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…happened here in town about 20 years ago.

A pal of mine before he re-trained as a systems guy used to work in a French Restaurant that used to be next door to City Hall. (The food wasn’t bad but it wasn’t really my cup of tea).

There is an open air park there now, but at the time there was a very long wide staircase as the restaurant was on the top floor and these were the days before mandatory access laws so that staircase was the way in. People would make their fortunes falling down those stairs and suing the owners insurance.

Finally the owner had enough. He dropped the insurance and put a sign to that effect on the staircase saying that anyone who wanted to sue was welcome to the restaurant if they won.

I’m sure it was a coincidence that those steps, steep though they were, were suddenly navigable by the people who climbed them.

If you want to understand the Zachary Christie case and many others like them, this is what you really need to know.

Question: What is the sad thing about Lady Gaga saying “I know you are listening” to the president?

Posted: October 12, 2009 by datechguy in oddities, opinion/news
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A: Answer the fact that he likely IS listening to Lady Gaga.

Any society that bases it’s decisions on any important issue based on the opinion of Lady Gaga deserves the end result.

It’s at moments like this when the fact that my life is almost certainly more than half over (2/3’s if I only live as long as my father) is not necessarily a bad thing.

Update: Then again is Glenn is right I may have even less time since I live in Massachusetts home of the “life panels”

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