Even as early as August I started to see a trickle in my mailbox.  A trickle that served as a distant early warning of things to come.  Yet I understood that with print catalogs that there’s a lot of lead time, and they’re fairly easy to ignore.

Today, however, we have a winner for the earliest jumping of the Christmas TV gun.  Specifically, those knuckleheads at Expedia nearly made me go all Elvis on my TV just now.  It’s too frakin’ early for “holiday” commercials and jingling bells.

What is it going to take to get a moratorium on Christmas commercials before Thanksgiving?  Who do I have to beat to a bloody pulp to make the madness stop?  (I’m looking at you, Expedia marketdroids).

I frequently hear radio ads for an area steakhouse in the mornings, and they’ve been running one recently that makes me laugh and gives me a great mental image every time I hear it.

At the end of the commercial they make a statement about how their beef is the best in the country and that it’s “raised by proud American cows.” 

The last part doesn’t quite make sense but it’s a great mental image.

I was following the comments in a Slashdot discussion about good and bad rack cabling which led me to a link to a particularly bad example on WayStupid.com:

WayStupid link

On the bottom of the page they have links to “random stupids.”  I clicked one which had just some police lights showing and stumbled across this:

WayStupid link

What caught my eye was that the caption said, “New Keller, TX Police Vehicles” and below the picture it said, “The Chevrolet Tahoes just weren’t holding up.”  At first I thought maybe the site was using some kind of advertising cookie or geo-IP tracking to figure out my location and customize the page, but I SSH’d into a system in California and used curl to fetch the page and it still said Keller, TX.  So the page content is definitely correct and intended to be for Keller, TX.

It just seems strange that without even trying that I’d stumble across something that referenced Keller on a site I’d never heard of until today.

(On a random tangent… check out this example of the incorrect method to use when stopping your vehicle from 178mph.)

I’d been waiting for a verdict in the Lindsey Crumpton trial as I was on the witness list due to some comments from the defendant via my feedback form in response to something I originally wrote about the case.  Ultimately I didn’t have to testify, but I was still curious about the verdict.

The Dallas Morning News has an article with the outcome:

A 20-year-old Waxahachie woman who tried to commit suicide in her SUV but instead killed another motorist was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday.

The jury’s maximum sentence stunned Lindsey Crumpton and her supporters, who had pleaded for probation. The punishment verdict came as Ms. Crumpton was having an emotional meeting behind closed doors with the 18-year-old daughter of Kristina Kelly Bartlett, who was killed in the November 2004 crash.

In testimony during her trial, Ms. Crumpton described a history of severe depression and drug use. The one-time Waxahachie High School homecoming queen, cheerleader and college soccer player said she had run out of medication when she decided to kill herself by yanking the steering wheel of her Ford Explorer as she drove south on Interstate 35E.

However, it appears that Ms. Crumpton is still not willing to take responsibility for her actions, even though it appears she knew they were dangerous.

But under cross-examination by prosecutor Trey Crutcher, Ms. Crumpton acknowledged that she knew her actions were dangerous because she purposely left her puppy at home. “I didn’t want my puppy to be killed,” she said.

Mr. Crutcher also questioned why Ms. Crumpton had not jerked the steering wheel to the right, which would have prevented any chance of colliding with another car. She responded that she did not know why she turned her car toward oncoming traffic.

Ms. Crumpton denied that she was directly responsible for the death of Ms. Bartlett, 47, saying that she only set in motion a chain of events that resulted in her death.

The jury of 10 women and two men convicted her of criminally negligent homicide, concluding that a “reasonable person” would have known that her actions were dangerous.

A chain of events?  If she was a butterfly causing a hurricane across the ocean I might buy it.  But her chain only had one link:  the yank of the wheel.  It’s kind of hard to claim you couldn’t forsee the outcome from that particular chain.  Worse, it sounds like she’s trying to claim that she just decided at the last moment, but that is contradicted by leaving the puppy at home, which means that it wasn’t spontaneous.

My mother, who is almost as cynical as I am, thought she would only end up serving a couple of years, but it appears that the law has tightened that loophole a little.  According to the article Ms. Crumpton will have to serve at least five years before being eligible for parole.

I don’t know whether that’s enough time.  Unless Ms. Crumpton does a lot of growing up in that time, I don’t know that it’ll help.  She’s obviously not ready to take responsiblity for her actions.  I hope the parole board asks some pointed questions in this area when she comes up for eligibility.

Yesterday and today I eschewed my normal hiking/cargo pants-o-many-pockets and loud shirts in favor of more respectable attire that included a dress shirt and tie.  And then I sat around, doing a little bit of work, and waited.  I was on standby should I be called to testify as a prosecution witness at the Dallas County Criminal Court in State of Texas v Lindsey Alyn Crumpton (for Manslaughter).  About an hour ago I got an email informing me that my services wouldn’t be needed, as the defendant admitted to the issue about which I would have testified.

Some of my long time readers may remember my previous postings about Lindsey Crumpton.  For those who don’t, here’s a brief refresher/timeline, along with some events that I didn’t detail at the time:

1. November, 2004:  I wrote a short post with my take on a case where a young woman (Ms. Crumpton), while attempting suicide, ended up killing an innocent woman on I-35 by driving across the median.  That post, entitled Deadly Stupidity attracted a couple of comments, including one from the outraged daughter of the woman who was killed.
2. January, 2006: (approximately 13 months after the original posting)  I received an angry, insulting, and vaguely threatening message via my Contact Form from someone who appeared to be Ms. Crumpton herself.  I posted her message, along with my response, in a post entitled You Have Mail!.
3. April, 2006:  I received a message from an Assistant District Attorney with Dallas County, who had found my posts and was very interested in them, as he thought they would be material to the trial.  I went ahead and forwarded him the messages I’d exchanged with Ms. Crumpton.
4. May, 2006:  A relative of Ms. Crumpton (or someone claiming to be) found this site through Google and proceeded to leave a nastygram in the comments to an unrelated post.  I moved the comment and added my reply in More Deadly Stupidity.
5. July, 2006:  The Dallas County ADA called me again to say that the trial was going forward (starting Monday, August 21, 2006) and that he wanted me to testify.  Shortly after that I received a letter and was served with a subpoena to appear as a witness.

I think it can be safely said that the old advice about shutting up still holds in the digital age.  DA’s are now routinely checking online search engines to try to find information about defendants.  I was told by this ADA that he often found incriminating information by looking at a defendant’s MySpace page.

As they say, “anything can be used against you,” and that includes online, provided it can be proven to have come from the defendant.  In this case, I couldn’t say with 100% certainty that it was Ms. Crumpton, since anyone can enter any old email address in the contact form.  However, I responded to the email address that was given and got a reply back.  Further, the email address was of the form her_name -at- hotmail.com.  Taken together, I felt safe in assuming I was dealing with her at the time.

Anyhow, the moral of the story is to shut the hell up if you’re facing a criminal trial.  No matter where you say it, someone will eventually find it and use it against you.

Update: (5:50pm, 8/25/2006)  I just received word that Lindsey Crumpton was convicted.  I am waiting to get confirmation of that, as well as what sentence she may receive.

Update 2: (11:30am, 8/26/2006)  More on the verdict here.

I’m about ready to strangle Christine Cook over her obnoxious “Christmas in July” commercials for Sleep Experts.  Just a year ago, I would have only been annoyed by her.  The year before that I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.  But it’s her own damn fault, along with the rest of her compatriots in the retail business.

I’m so fed up after the extra-super-extended Christmas season we endured starting last October that I just can’t handle any more right now.

At the rate the damn retailers are going, we’ll be getting Christmas sales starting in January if they think they can get away with it.

I guess your tolerance for weird crap is higher if it’s something that’s just been part of the family forever.  Still, it seems like it’d be kind of hard to accept a mummified baby as just something that belonged to a great-uncle.

A family heirloom is not going over well with police.

The mummified body of a baby kept by a Concord, N.H., family has drawn attention from investigators.

The current keeper of the baby, Charles Peavey, said the tiny mummy has been passed down in his family for many years. Concord police recently got word of the remains and they took them in for testing. A forensic anthropologist will examine the tiny corpse.

Peavey said the mummy belonged to his great-great uncle, who was born in Ashland in 1850. The family estimated that the mummy is 90 years old.

It was discovered among the uncle’s possessions in 1947 in Manchester, N.H.

Police said the testing on the corpse could take a month or more.

Freaky.

Since comments are closed on my original postings about Lindsey Crumpton (Deadly Stupidity and You Have Mail!), someone calling themselves “upset family member” came along and left a comment on my TenTenTwelveCorp post (see #6).

Since it’s way off topic for the given thread, I’ve decided to respond here and link to it from the comments on that article. 

Here’s what “upset family member” had to say:

i was very upset to read about what you called “Deadly Stupidty” because you called my family member stupid. Lindsey is not stupid she is very smart. she is mentally not capable of handleing depression. did you ever stop to think that maybe just maybe that because of her actions it hurts everyone in her family every single second of every day. if you knew how much pain Lindsey is going through right now you never would have rubbed it in her face. i HATE people like you who think they can just judge everyone without knowing shit. and as for the Bartletts im sorry and Lindsey has told me how much she regrets what she did to your family. but you know your family isnt the only ones going through tough times because we are also dealing with losing a family member not physically but mentally you may not think that its the same but really it is i will never know that cheerleader, and happy fun loving person ever again because of what happened. and i understand why you want to hurt her emotionally but i serioslly dont think that she could handle that but what your going to do youll do i cant really stop you. because everyday when she leaves the house she gets stares and its just awfull how mean this world is. again im sorry for what happened to the Bartletts ,but please dont call my family member stupid because you dont have any right judgeing my family member the only person that has a right judge others is God and you sure as hell aint him so back the f*** off.

Aside from what appears to be a genetic inability to use capitalization and punctuation, it appears that I’ve struck a nerve.  So allow me to respond to each point in turn:

i was very upset to read about what you called “Deadly Stupidty” because you called my family member stupid. Lindsey is not stupid she is very smart. she is mentally not capable of handleing depression.

Not to be overly pedantic, but the second definition of stupid, at least according to Dictionary.com is “Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.”

It seems to me that intentionally trying to flip your vehicle in order to kill yourself is, at a minimum, a pretty poor decision, especially as we see that an innocent woman was killed.  As for her ability to handle depression?  That sounds like an excuse to me.  Try telling that to the dead woman.  Oh.  That’s right.  You can’t.

Lindsey’s actions were criminally irresponsible, selfish, and reprehensible. 

did you ever stop to think that maybe just maybe that because of her actions it hurts everyone in her family every single second of every day. if you knew how much pain Lindsey is going through right now you never would have rubbed it in her face.

I didn’t set out to rub anything in anyone’s face.  I simply commented with my take on what I thought of the situation as reported by The Fort Worth Star Telegram.  As for her pain, I really don’t care that much.  She did deadly damage to another family.  That can’t be taken back and it can’t be apoligized away. 

i HATE people like you who think they can just judge everyone without knowing shit.

Tough.  Get used to it, because she’s now a public figure, so everyone is going to have an opinion.  As for judgement?  Each of us judges thousands of things every day.  That’s not going to stop because it offends you.  As for “knowing shit”, what else is there to know except that her selfish and stupid suicide attempt cost the life of an innocent woman?  The reasons are irrelevant!  Her choice of action is all that matters.

and as for the Bartletts im sorry and Lindsey has told me how much she regrets what she did to your family. but you know your family isnt the only ones going through tough times because we are also dealing with losing a family member not physically but mentally you may not think that its the same but really it is i will never know that cheerleader, and happy fun loving person ever again because of what happened. and i understand why you want to hurt her emotionally but i serioslly dont think that she could handle that but what your going to do youll do i cant really stop you. because everyday when she leaves the house she gets stares and its just awfull how mean this world is.

I’m not sure if you’ve mistaken me for a member of the lady’s family or you’re responding to a comment from a family member.  But it seems a bit whiny to me to be comparing your family’s “pain” to that of the lady who was killed. 

again im sorry for what happened to the Bartletts ,but please dont call my family member stupid because you dont have any right judgeing my family member the only person that has a right judge others is God and you sure as hell aint him so back the f*** off.

Since I don’t believe in your God, you’ll understand that I don’t buy into any of that nonsense about “Him” being the only one who has the right to judge.  As a sentient being with the right of free speech I have an absolute right to judge any person or thing that I care to. 

Finally, you need to know one more thing:  I am not going to be moved from my judgement of this case.  You and the rest of Lindsey’s family are not going to change one thing I’ve written.  Everything you say or send to me will be documented on this site along with my response for all of the Internet to read should they decide to search Google on her name.  Do you really want to add to the documentation trail? 

So I’m out walking Boots this afternoon when she sees a squirrel and begins her stalking routine.  I moved off to the side of the trail to get out of the way of passers-by (and to avoid being run over by psycho-biker*, should he appear).  While standing there I see two women on bicycles approaching.  The one is front is older and the one is back is about 21.  My guess is that it’s a mother and her daughter.  As they ride by me, I can’t help but hear the younger one say, “I couldn’t stop staring at her boobs.”

That certainly got my attention, and I caught “she was sitting at the bar,” and something about “unnaturally huge” before they rode out of earshot.  At least that little bit helped quell my curiosity, as I can surmise (from her words and tone) that she was a bit disgusted by the woman with abnormally large (and likely fake) breasts, rather than that the younger woman was lasciviously staring at another woman’s breasts…

* I call this guy psycho-biker since he rides like a possessed mad-man.  He’s always dressed in sweats (even if it’s 90°F) and he always seems to be at least one gear too high for the terrain.  I think he does it to make his ride into a harder work-out.  Regardless, due to his gearing he’s moving far too fast to safely ride on the Bear Creek hike/bike trail.  He also doesn’t seem to like to properly give right-of-way (i.e. that whole “keep right, pass left” thing escapes him), so he’ll zoom by just inches from you. 

If I ever encounter this kind of crap, I think we’re going to have to invent a new adjective to describe super-white-hot pissed-off.

If a new idea from Philips catches on, the company may not be very popular with TV viewers. The company’s labs in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, has been cooking up a way to stop people changing channels to avoid adverts or fast forwarding through ads they have recorded along with their target programme.

The secret, according to a new patent filing, is to take advantage of Multimedia Home Platform – the technology behind interactive television in many countries around the world. MHP software now comes built into most modern digital TV receivers and recorders. It looks for digital flags buried in a broadcast, and displays messages on screen that let the viewer call up extra features, such as additional footage or information about a programme.

Philips suggests adding flags to commercial breaks to stop a viewer from changing channels until the adverts are over. The flags could also be recognised by digital video recorders, which would then disable the fast forward control while the ads are playing.

Philips’ patent acknowledges that this may be “greatly resented by viewers” who could initially think their equipment has gone wrong. So it suggests the new system could throw up a warning on screen when it is enforcing advert viewing. The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts.

I predict many Elvis moments in the future of Philips products, should this crap make it to the market.  Heck, I was sorely tempted to shred my copy of Shrek 2 and send the pieces back to Dreamworks because of the damn unskippable advertisement at the beginning.  Listen carefully, marketdroids!  People are sick and tired of losing control over their own DVDs as it is.  We will not tolerate being forced to watch your asinine commercials or previews.  If I encounter such a device, I will be returning it with prejudice through your front window!

On a more serious note, a couple of interesting points came up in the Slashdot discussion about this article.  First, if you can rip a DVD (or otherwise “pirate” the content), you can often disable this sort of nonsense.  So if the controls become too obnoxious or onerous, it may likely encourage people to go around the content providers to get the content through “alternate” channels.  Second, adding these sorts of flags to advertisements might make it easier for home-brew/open-source DVR software to skip commercials.  A “this is a commercial” flag would be a major bonus for something like MythTV.