NYTimes - SEATTLE — After spending $5 million on its five automated public toilets, Seattle is calling it quits.

In the end, the restrooms, installed in early 2004, had become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them.

[…]

“I’m not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there,” said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. “But I won’t even go inside that thing now. It’s disgusting.”

Entire article

rob: $1MM a pop is quite a sum for a porta-potty that’s too nasty to smoke crack in. And now they’re selling the things for just under 9¢ on the dollar. Nice work, Seattle City Council!

Danville, Calif. (AP) — Police in the San Francisco Bay area say a woman set fires in the restrooms of two gas stations and a coffee house and told them she did it to protest high gas prices.

No structural damage was reported at the Arco station, the Chevron station and the Starbucks in Danville where fires were set Wednesday using fireplace logs and a lighter.

Police say they later found 64-year-old Diane Craig at a nearby fast food restaurant with eight fireplace logs with her. Authorities say she told officers that she was behind the fires and that she woke up that morning wanting to do something about high gas prices.

Craig was arrested on suspicion of premeditated arson and burglary.

Police say they don’t know why the Starbucks was targeted.

jay: leave it to a cop to not understand why starbucks was targeted. i mean, they can’t even fathom a guess? and diane, you don’t have to explain your actions, we understand.

AP - NEW YORK - Rapper Foxy Brown is out of jail. Family and fans greeted Brown Friday outside Rikers Island as she was released from the jail after serving an eight-month sentence.

“The first place I want to go is church. I’ve got to get on my knees,” said Brown.

Instead, Brown went shopping in Harlem, had some soul food and was driven to her childhood home in Brooklyn in a white Rolls Royce Phantom.

jay: zing!

Her mother, Judith Marchand, presented her with smiley-face balloons and the two hugged outside the family’s home in the Prospect Heights neighborhood. A VH1 crew captured the reunion for an upcoming reality show.

“I did almost a year in prison, a year in prison, just because my name is Foxy Brown,” she said.

Brown, whose real name is Ingrid Marchand…

jay: zing! zing!

was sentenced in September 2007 to a year in jail for violating the terms of her probation after she was accused of hitting a woman with a cell phone. She was on probation for an August 2004 attack on two manicurists at a Manhattan nail salon.

jay: nice job on the subtle editorial, ap.

AP — DRIGGS, Idaho — Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island,” is serving six months’ unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car.

She was sentenced Feb. 29 to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving.

…

On Oct. 18, Teton County sheriff’s Deputy Joseph Gutierrez arrested Wells as she was driving home from a surprise birthday party that was held for her. According to the sheriff’s office report, Gutierrez pulled Wells over after noticing her swerve and repeatedly speed up and slow down. When Gutierrez asked about a marijuana smell, Wells said she’d just given a ride to three hitchhikers and had dropped them off when they began smoking something. Gutierrez found half-smoked joints and two small cases used to store marijuana.

jay: i guess this answers the ginger vs mary ann question…

By Vanessa Miller
Daily Camera — Boulder, CO — A certified nurse’s assistant has been arrested on suspicion of indecent exposure after “mooning” two co-workers while on the job at the Frasier Meadows Assisted Living Center, according to Boulder police.

Two nurses told police that Suzanne Mueffelmann, 42, of Longmont, flashed her buttocks outside the room of a Frasier Meadows resident, according to an arrest report.

…

Since her arrest, Mueffelmann has lost her job with the senior care facility, said Dean Price, who owns the Boulder-Broomfield franchise.

…

The mooning incident occurred about 8 p.m. Feb. 27 while Mueffelmann was talking with the two nurses, Jessica Jarvis and Cleyfi Alvarado, in a common area outside her patient’s room, according to police.

Mueffelmann asked Jarvis and Alvarado if they knew what mooning was and told them, “I’ll make your night,” according to the report.

After she mooned them for a few seconds, Mueffelmann told police, “Jessica and Cleyfi appeared very startled and alarmed, and she immediately felt bad and felt that she may have crossed the line.”

When officers asked Jarvis and Alvarado about the incident, Alvarado said she was “very alarmed and scared.” Jarvis said she “felt uncomfortable with the incident” and “felt it was ‘weird and random,’” according to police.

Mueffelmann told another staff member that night that she had mooned their co-workers “to make them happier,” police said.

An officer reported that Mueffelmann later said it was a “strong misunderstanding,” and, “She hasn’t mooned since college, and she doesn’t plan on doing it again.”

jay: i’ll make your night? with mooning? those poor people. all three of them.

brought to my attention by jon

AP - RIVERDALE, Utah - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. apologized to a Muslim woman who said she was mocked because of her face veil.

“Please don’t stick me up,” a cashier told the shopper on Feb. 2, according to The Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Wal-Mart apologized Monday in a letter signed by Rolando Rodriquez, a vice president and regional general manager. It was released Tuesday by the council’s Nevada chapter.

jay: wait, larry david is a cashier at a wal*mart in utah?

AP - BAGHDAD - Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars Friday, Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital last spring.

jay: can someone please tell me how low were we planning on going as a species? we can’t get any lower than this, right? fuhk.

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish driver who collided with a cyclist is suing the dead youth’s family $29,300 for the damage the impact of his body did to his luxury car, a Spanish newspaper reported on Friday.

Businessman Tomas Delgado says 17-year-old Enaitz Iriondo caused $20,500 of damage to his Audi A8 in the fatal 2004 crash in La Rioja region, the El Pais newspaper reported.

Delgado, who has faced no criminal charges for the incident, wants a further 6,000 euros to cover the cost of hiring another vehicle while his car was being repaired, El Pais said.

The youth had been cycling alone at night without reflective clothing or a helmet, according to a police report cited by El Pais.

His family won 33,000 euros compensation from Delgado’s insurance company after the firm acknowledged he had been driving at excessive speed and this could have contributed to the incident, El Pais reported.

“I’m also a victim in all of this, you can’t fix the lad’s problems, but you can fix mine,” Delgado told the newspaper, ahead of a January 30 legal decision on his suit.

The family said they had previously pitied Delgado for the guilt he must feel at killing their son but were now disgusted that his greatest concern appeared to be money.

“This was the final straw, a kick in the teeth,” the youth’s mother Rosa Trinidad told El Pais.

jay: uh, i got nothing here.

Des Moines, Iowa (AP) — Pig fetuses believed stolen from a biology lab at a Des Moines high school were found impaled on car antennas at a rival school’s parking lot in West Des Moines. The incident was discovered on Tuesday at Dowling Catholic High School.

The pig fetuses were believed stolen from Roosevelt High School. They were on about 15 cars, along with a pound of biology-class crawfish that were smeared on hoods and windshields.

“You could smell the formaldehyde from a block away,” Dowling Assistant Principal Ron Meyers said.

Roosevelt Principal Kathie Danielson said science teachers “can’t be sure” the pigs came from Roosevelt. She said the pig fetuses aren’t labeled and the school doesn’t keep inventory.

jay: this is pretty gross, even for des moines.

AP — HAYDEN, Idaho — A man who believed he bore the “mark of the beast” used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.

The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies arrived Saturday in this northern Idaho town. He was in protective custody in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.

“It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived,” sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. “He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he didn’t bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad.”

[…]

The book of Matthew also contains the passage: “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for you whole body to do into hell.”

Wolfinger said he didn’t know which hand was amputated.

jay is it in the AP styleguide that all stories which quote law enforcement officials are required to have an incredibly dry punchline? it would seem that the answer is ‘yes.’

Fairburn, S.D. (AP) — Acting to protect her dog, 80-year-old Martha Smith killed a mountain lion at her home along French Creek near Fairburn. She missed with her first shot, went into the house to call 911, then went back outside with a .22-caliber rifle.

“And he was a spittin’ and a growlin’,” said Smith. “All I saw was flashing eyes and teeth. And I knew I was gonna have to kill him if I could.”

Smith, who lives alone, said she’d like to have the lion mounted, but doubts the state Department of Game, Fish & Parks will return the carcass to her.

jay: i’m with you martha. in fact, i’m so with you that i think i’m gonna make ‘return the carcass’ tshirts and sell them on etsy.

AP — TUALATIN, Ore. — Police say Ryan Osbrink was getting ready for a job at the sheriff’s department and practicing his draw when his .45-caliber pistol discharged, killing his wife.

Tualatin police say 23-year-old Kimberly Osbrink was entering the room Sunday night when the bullet struck her in the abdomen.

The Clark County, Washington, sheriff’s department has delayed hiring the 24-year-old Osbrink until the investigation is complete. He was to report for duty on Wednesday.

The police say the shooting was unintentional, and the weapon was Osbrink’s.

jay: delayed? delayed! maybe he’s not for hiring, re: wife killing/poor gun habits?

By MARTIGA LOHN, Associated Press Writer

AP - ST. PAUL, Minn. - On the slaughterhouse floor at Quality Pork Processors Inc. is an area known as the “head table,” but not because it is the place of honor. It is where workers cut up pigs’ heads and then shoot compressed air into the skulls until the brains come spilling out.

But now the grisly practice has come under suspicion from health authorities.

Over eight months from last December through July, 11 workers at the plant in Austin, Minn. — all of them employed at the head table — developed numbness, tingling or other neurological symptoms, and some scientists suspect inhaled airborne brain matter may have somehow triggered the illnesses.

The use of compressed air to remove pig brains was suspended at Quality Pork earlier this week while authorities try to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Quality Pork has not said what it does with the pork brains. Sold fresh and in cans, pork brains are fried and eaten in sandwiches or gravy in some parts of the country. But it is a small market, and the American Meat Institute, which represents most of the nation’s pork processors, does not even track sales.

In a rapid-fire process that is noisy, smelly and bloody, severed pigs’ heads are cut up at the head table at a rate of more than 1,100 an hour. Workers slice off the cheek and snout meat, then insert a nozzle in the head and blast air inside until the light pink mush that is the brain tissue squirts out from the base of the skull.

jay: am i being a sensitive hippie vegan here or is this pretty gnarly to the rest of you, too? sometimes i lose perspective.

Waupaca, Wis. (AP) — A man who was upset with his wife for not buying beer took vengeance by shooting one of the family’s two pet goats, prosecutors say.

Peter W. Mischler, 48, was charged this week in Circuit Court with mistreatment of animals, possession of a firearm while intoxicated and disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon.

The complaint said Mischler came home Saturday from hunting and became angry with his 22-year-old daughter for letting the goats out and making a mess. While she was talking on the phone to her mother, authorities said, he told her to tell his wife to bring home some beer, but his wife refused.

He then threatened to shoot the goats, according to the complaint.

After his wife arrived home, she and the daughter heard four gunshots and went outside and found one of the two goats with its entrails hanging out, authorities said. They said that goat had to be killed later by a sheriff’s deputy.

Mischler posted a $1,000 cash bond set by Circuit Judge Raymond Huber and was released.

A hearing was scheduled for Dec. 4.

jay: part of me hopes that really bad things happen to this guy right now, but the rest of me thinks that his life is already an incredibly slow painful grind into some form of hell anyway, and i wouldn’t want anything to hasten his descent.

GAUHATI, India (AP) — In a Nov. 13 story, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that Paris Hilton was praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India. Lori Berk, a publicist for Hilton, said she never made any comments about helping drunken elephants in India.

jay: i’m with you, paris. the man helps you when you help yourself. take that, drunken elephants.