He's been at it since April:

a lyric a week for a year.

And sure enough, every week, there it is in my inbox.
It's a fund-raiser, of course, and a challenge for a writer.
For me it's been just lovely having these drop into my email every week.

It's not too late.
The subscription is $25.
(That's .50 a poem; I mean, really, where are you going to do better than that?)
At this point, they'll send along the first 26 in a batch to catch you up.
And I think there is some final project you get later.

You can sign up for it here.

Also known as - Virginia is for Loonies.

Naked Coffee Drinker Arrested in a World Gone Mad

A man from Springfield, Virginia (Eric Williamson, 29) was making some coffee in his kitchen whilst naked, and faces a possible chage of indecent exposure and a year in prison.

It was 5:30am and he had the house to himself. he decided to go into the kitchen to make a coffee. Like many other millions on the planet, he felt there was nothing wrong in being naked in his own house, especially at that time of the day.

Mr. WIlliamson claims he did not purposely intend to expose himself to anyone outside of the house, but at that moment a woman and her seven-year-old son happened to pass by his kitchen window.

After seeing Mr. Williamson's naked body, she called the police.

What many reports fail to mention, is that the woman was in a hurry and cut across Mr. Williamson's garden to save time.  Apart from the fact that she was tresspassing, why on earth was she out so early with her son?

Had she not taken the "short-cut" she probably would not have seen Mr. Williamson, and if she was in such a hurry, what was she doing looking in any windows at all?

from here.
and here.

And updated  here.

The woman who called the police says the time of the incident was 8:40 am, not 5:30 am as Williamson says. She also says Williamson was first standing in an open doorway, then moved in front of a window, still in her view. Given that she was apparently on his property (that part of the story hasn't yet been disputed), and he was in his home the entire time, I'm not sure his exact position in his own home matters, unless he was otherwise in plain view of someone using the public sidewalk. Even then, it seems more like tacky behavior than behavior that should be criminal. And you'd think the guy would get a warning before you arrest him for nudity in his own house.

Williamson told Fox News today that after the report, 5-6 police officers came into his home unannounced, entered his bedroom, and arrested him.

The guy does seem strange. A roommate says he was acting oddly, walking around all morning wearing nothing but a construction hat. But again, strange behavior needn't be a crime punishable by a year in jail (if the roommate had reported unwanted nudity, that might be a different matter).

What none of these reports have managed to make clear is whether she'd have seen anything if she hadn't been intruding on his privacy in the first place.
Regardless of the time, which may be a matter of 1) when he made coffee, 2) when she called, and 3) when the cops turned up, this just seems like exceedingly poor judgement on the part of the cops.
Though one of the stories says she's an officer's wife.
So maybe cop spouses get listened to, even if they are loopy.

I get a stong feeling that one does not want to be seen as "strange" in Virginia.

EDIT;

All of which brings me to a belated

Home Town Brag
.
That sleezeball in California with the kidnapped child he held for 18 years?
If you looked at the story at all, you may have read how one of his neighbor's girl friends had thought there was something wrong a few years earlier.
She had noticed kids on the property and thought it seemed "off."
And called the local cops out in the 'burbs.
The local cops came by and talked with him, and didn't think there was a problem

How the creep got busted was coming to the UC Berkeley campus.
Believe me, we are knee-deep in weirdos round here, and, as a result, the campus cops can tell weird from WEIRD.
Cos strange is relative.
Ally Jacobs and Lisa Campbell deal with craziness daily, so they could tell there was a problem.
Made me proud of the old Alma Mater.
.

Many, many years ago.
(Sigh)
I was walking home from the bus, through the twilight, on my favorite street.
Quiet, lots of old houses broken up into student flats, with wild gardens.
And cats.
Hosts of cats, all swarming about greeting people, waiting for their own folks.

Had a very, very friendly kitty come up to me.
And vamp me quite thoroughly.
Demanding pats, rubbing ankles.
The whole act.

Finally leads me up to door, and begins with the begging.
With loud purrs, and talkings, and all

It was clear that people were in there.
It was just getting dark, and lights were on.
And kitty wanted IN.
And I was there, and I was a person, and people are GOOD.

I knocked on the door for her.

For other Doctor Who fans, from here:

Defeated_by_a_Flight_of_Stairs_by_Miss_Bob

Perhaps you've noticed me turning up two and three times a day for a while?
(That is, if you are one of those Statcounter people who keep track of such things.)

It's just that when I try to get into vox by going to the opening page, my computer won't open it.
Sigh.
So I leave emails from vox telling me about comments and such sitting in my yahoo mailbox, and then I follow the link from the email onto vox.
I try to change off the emails every so often, but even so I probably bop in and out of just a few people's blogs a lot.

It just occurred to me that maybe this looked odd.

So, no, I'm not weirdly cyber-haunting anyone, I'm just trying to sneak in here via the back door.

Also from the AP.
In addition to just the sheer barf-worthy nature of it all, there's a little surprise.
You have to wait for the fourth paragraph here.

 Hong Kong apartment sells for whopping $57 million

HONG KONG — It's a price tag that would make even New Yorkers and Londoners gasp — an outsized luxury apartment sold for nearly $57 million in Hong Kong Wednesday amid growing fears of a real estate bubble.

The five-bedroom duplex suite with as much as 6,158 square feet was sold to an unidentified buyer from mainland China, said the developer, Henderson Land Development, a major Hong Kong property company. It is believed to be Asia's most expensive property by square foot at nearly $9,200.

Aside from an aroma spa center, fitness room, outdoor yoga gym and grand harbor views, the new homeowner will enjoy an exclusive address in the hills of Hong Kong's main island — "a majestic realm for the city who's who," according to a statement from the developer.

The deal comes at a time when ever-higher prices of Hong Kong real estate, benefiting from mainland China's booming market and easy money sloshing through the world financial system, are inspiring worries of a bubble in the making. Several blockbuster deals in the tens of millions of dollars have made headlines of late.

Did you catch it?

The part about "easy money sloshing through the world financial system"?

WTF?

First (from the AP) there is this little ride in a time machine:

NEW ORLEANS – A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

Ack.

Ack.

Ack.

If this messes up.

I have new tenants starting in October.
They are not exactly, totally, on target for what we're looking for.
(UC grad students, postdocs, that kind of thing.)
Yes, he's a student.
But not at UC, rather he's at the local art college.
And his girlfriend is a waitress, thinking about coming back to school.
But they seem really nice.
And they like the apartment, in the way that it should be liked by someone living there.
If they are going to be happy.
And, besides that, they have

Two Rescued Rabbits.
 

Indoor-only kitteh from in back just came wandering into my kitchen.
Again.
The second time they've just let him out to stray.
No collar, no one watching.
It's not that I don't think he's safe - the yard and whole area is very cat-friendly.
And not that I don't love to see him.
But the kids who are moving out
(Thank you, powers that be!)
Are being really flaky.
And not around much.
I'm a bit disturbed by the feel of this.

To show the unit, we had to go clean it up for them, including kitteh's box which was icky.
And sweep the porch off, and clear space on the floor of the apartment for people to be able to walk through, and the like.
And recycle a crapload of bottles.
They seem not to have the concept of giving the beer bottles a quick rinse, so the whole trash area was smelling like a brewery.
In fact they throw everything into the recycling unwashed, ick. ick. ick.
Oh, and even though the whole apartment was just painted about 2 years ago, I seriously need to repaint it.
Including the front door which someone has been putting out cigarettes against.
Sigh.

And now I've just discovered they are screwing over the girl who moved-out.
I mean, beyond just playing Nasty Girls with her to get her to move out.
(Current tenant told her they both had to go cos she'd arranged to move out, and as soon as Old Tenant signed a new lease announced Oops, I'm staying after all.)
But with the deposit here is the deal.
See, the two original girls moved in, each paying half the deposit.
When the first one moved out - August 15th - the remaining roommate was supposed to pay that departing roommate back for her share of the deposit.
I continue holding the entire deposit, cos the lease is still continuing.
And then the remaining tenant gets the new moving-in person to reimburse her for the money she just paid to the girl who left.
That way the one who has left is done with the place, and the people living there both have a financial stake in the condition they leave it in.
Then, when the last lot leave, I pay the one remaining original tenant all the deposit I'm holding and she and her subtenant work it all out.

Well, I just found out the girl who moved out hasn't been paid any money by her old roommate.
And I found it out from her, not from the remaining kid, a girl who has talked with me about getting back her deposit and all.
So I was getting ready to hand that kid all the money.
Which would mean the other girl would have come by eventually wondering where her half of it was....

ACK.

So... to get back the the kitteh - which is certainly a better topic and a much nicer place to be.
I have a bad feeling that she is intending to leave it behind when she goes.
She hasn't said anything..
But she seems to be really ignoring it very hard this last couple of weeks
And now it is roaming about on its own, and coming in and eating here.
Dang. I don't need another cat.
But he is a darling, and loves the other cats here.
Dang. Dang.

Maybe I could just drop her off at the Animal Shelter.

DOUBLE ACK.

Did I even mention the furniture from my garage she is using?
When she moved in she didn't have much furniture, so I offered her the use of a dresser I was about to freeccle.
I also said she could look in the storage, and if there was something she could use, to ask me about it.
She never said a word.
I didn't say she could just help herself to stuff.
But I was showing the unit and, uh, surprise!
Familiar stuff.
Ya know - like a small antique sewing table belonging to my great grandmother?
So not okay.
I sent an email saying to just leave it upstairs when she goes.
But now I have to be out there watching to be sure nothing walks away with her...

TRIPLE ACK.

(sooooo ready for her to be gone!)
.