Sounds Like one of Sponge's Ex's

Naked Woman Arrested after Bicyclist Hit on San Pablo

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is investigating a bizarre crash on the Southside involving a woman driving a car full of children and a bicyclist.

The incident happened on San Pablo Road, just north of Beach Boulevard Sunday night.

Witnesses in the car told police the unidentified female driver deliberately ran into a woman riding a bike on the side of the road.

Witnesses say the woman jumped out of her Honda and hopped in the back seat of a car whose driver had stopped to help the injured bicyclist.

The driver managed to get the woman out of his car, but she ran to another car, yanked the driver out, got behind the wheel and smashed into her Honda.

One of the driver's at the scene told First Coast News reporter Kyle Meenan, "Three young children got out and they were running around screaming and everything!"

Fortunately, a 14 year old Boy Scout riding in the Honda helped to get all the kids out of the car before the woman rammed it.

Witnesses said the woman had been babysitting the Boy Scout and another child, and the two other children in the car belonged to her.

Witnesses say the woman then drove a car into a fence, got out, and ran in circles while taking off her clothes.

It took several officers to subdue her, according to witnesses.

The suspect has been identified as 34 year old Holly Kay Highfield. Officers arrested her and took her to Shands Jacksonville for an evaluation.

She is facing charges of aggravated battery/use of a deadly weapon, carjacking, DUI, and DUI with damage to property.

Ha Ha!

The Garden Gnome Liberation Front Strikes Again

Gnome at last: Stunned owner finds kidnapped ornament on doorstep, with photos of him in 12 countries around the world

By Beth Hale

If only he could talk there would surely be extraordinary tales to tell.

He's been swimming with turtles off the Great Barrier Reef, scaled a glacier in New Zealand and toured the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat.

Unfortunately the gnome formerly known as Murphy is giving nothing away - save for a singularly enigmatic smile.

On holiday: Murphy the leprechaun poses for a picture in front of Sydney Opera House in Australia

The adventures of Murphy, now Barrington (of which more later), began back in September after the best part of a decade spent in 'quiet reflection' in a simple flower bed in the 'Shire'.

Owners Eve and Derrick Stuart-Kelso were stunned to discover the 10-inch high stone leprechaun they had inherited when they bought their Gloucester home, had disappeared.

The couple, both retired, assumed the gnome had fallen foul of students from a nearby college and would never be seen again.

Taking a dip: Murphy cools off in Thailand

Both keen travellers, the couple never dreamed that the humble green-hatted garden ornament was setting of an around the world jaunt taking in 12 countries and three continents.

And oblivious they would have remained if Murphy had not decided that there really is just no place like home.

The 8lb gnome appeared on the Stuart-Kelso's doorstep on Thursday last week, some 11 months after disappearing.

A little the worse for wear, the traveller was standing next to a mysterious and tightly-wrapped parcel.

Once unwrapped it revealed a leather-bound photo album containing 48 pictures of the gnome's trip around the globe along with a note putting his impromptu world tour down to 'itchy feet'.

The painstakingly compiled album, complete with index, showed their gnome - renamed Barrington by his travel companions - abseiling down a mountain, standing in a shark's mouth, swimming in the sea, and riding a motorbike.

On top of the world: The gnome takes a cable car ride

Also with him were immigration stamps for all the shores he had been taken to visit - South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong and Laos.

A witty note, purporting to be from Barrington, referred to his 'travelling companion' only as The Bear, and told the couple how he attracted unwanted attention from customs officials and took up 25 per cent of the party's luggage allocation.

The only clue, however, to the identity of those companions was a photograph of a group of grinning young men.

As for the letter it began:

'Hello! First of all I feel I should explain my prolonged absence. A gnome's life is full of time for reflection, and whilst surveying your garden one summer morning, I began to get itchy feet.

'I came to the conclusion that the world is a big place and there is more to life than watching the daily commuter traffic, and allowing passing cats to urinate on you.

'So I decided to free myself from the doldrums of the Shire and seek adventure. My travels have taken me across three continents, 12 countries and more time zones than I can possibly remember.

Adventurer: Murphy joins some ice-climbers

'There have been high points, low points, and positively terrifying points. But I have survived - small thanks to the companion with whom I have shared all these moments.'

The bizarre crime echoes the French film 'Amelie' starring Audrey Tatou in which a gnome belonging to her father is taken around the world and photographed to show him how much he is missing out on in life.

Last night grandmother-of-three Mrs Stuart-Kelso said: 'The leprechaun went missing many, many months ago and I had forgotten about it.

'Then I opened the door on Thursday and saw he was back. It was such a shock.

'Murphy was quite badly damaged and there was a tightly wrapped parcel next to him. My curiosity eventually overcame my alarm, because I did wonder if it might explode.

'Then I saw it was a beautifully bound photo album and opened it up.

His feet were missing, but that's no real surprise given that he was sent abseiling down a mountain.'

Stunned: Grandmother Eve Stuart-Kelso found her gnome on her doorstep, with a letter and photo album of his travels

She said while strange, the gift had sent the family into fits of laughter.

She said her grandchildren, Sophie, 14, Ellie, 13, and Piers, 13, would be thrilled to hear of the gnome's adventures. The trio give the green-hatted gnome a fresh coat of paint every year.

Gloucestershire police took a less amused view of the adventure.

A spokesman said: 'Any theft of a person's property, even if it is carried out as a joke, will be treated as a crime by police.'

As for Murphy, his wanderlust satisfied he is now back in the flower bed where he belongs - only this time he's out of temptation's way in the back garden.

RIP: Isaac Hayes

(CNN) -- Soul singer and arranger Isaac Hayes, who won Grammy awards and an Oscar for the theme from the 1971 action film "Shaft," has died, sheriff's officials in Memphis, Tennessee, reported Sunday.

Singer Issac Hayes seen performing in the U.K. last year. Hayes was found dead Sunday at age 65.

Relatives found Hayes, 65, unconscious in his home next to a still-running treadmill, said Steve Shular, a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff's Department.

Paramedics attempted to revive him and took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 2 p.m., the sheriff's department said.

No foul play is suspected, the agency said in a written statement.

When Dr. Who Meets Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'

A tale told by a menacing alien life-form

By Oliver Pritchett

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 10/08/2008

Some people have suggested that my new production for the Royal Shakespeare Company is gimmicky, but I am convinced that the Dalek is absolutely right for the part of Macbeth. This is not a case of casting some television celebrity just to get more bums on seats; in fact my aim is to get more heads poking up nervously from behind seats. This casting is perfectly consistent with the spirit of Shakespeare's tragedy.

The Dalek had a career in the theatre before he went off to seek domination of the universe. He spent some time in rep and was a much-praised Tin Man in the Chichester production of The Wizard of Oz. He also knows his Shakespeare; he was very effective in the crowd scene (near the back) in Julius Caesar and his gun-stalk was seen sticking out from behind the arras in the 1987 Stratford production of Hamlet.

So you can see, as well as being a TV star, he is a seriously committed actor and a pro. The theatre runs through his circuits. Of course, his craggy, portable air-conditioner looks make him perfect for the role of Macbeth.

Although he is undoubtedly a celebrity, he has mucked in with the rest of the company and, right from the start, he told us to call him Dal.

He is somebody who has his runners firmly on the ground and he is also incredibly modest.

After our successful first night when we all said: "Dalek, you were wonderful," he shrugged his turret and diffidently murmured: "I am simp-ly pro-grammed to re-peat the lines."

We have all had to remember that we must never utter the words "Dr Who" in the theatre. It's an old superstition from the planet Skaro where Dal started out in the business. Apparently, if you say "Dr Who" all sorts of things go wrong - fuses blow, sparks fly out of your torso, vaporising guns fail to fire at the crucial moment and you could even melt into a pool of slime.

In rehearsals I confess I forgot a couple of times and said the forbidden words - which meant that Dal had to rotate his turret anti-clockwise three times and spit on his control panel, to ward off the bad luck. Eventually, we all learned to refer to Dr Who as "the inter-galactic series."

To complement the vibrant voice of the Dalek, with its magical combination of laryngitis and constipation, I decided to get the actresses playing the three witches to model their performances on sat nav systems.

I firmly believe that Shakespeare, on his journeys between London and Stratford-upon-Avon, would have met such creatures at crossroads along the way and they would have given him misleading directions, so I decided this was valid within the context of the play.

Read more from Oliver Pritchett So, at the beginning of Macbeth, the witches greet the Dalek and Banquo on the heath and the first witch says: "At the next roundabout, turn left," the second witch adds: "You have reached your destination," and the third one declares: "When it is safe to do so, make a U-turn." This creates just the right atmosphere of mystery and confusion and it is no wonder that the Dalek Macbeth croaks: "Your or-ders have not been under-stood. My circuits are over-heating." After the encounter with the sat nav hags, the clear idea is planted in Macbeth's memory bank that he is, in fact, named Thane from the planet Cawdor. As Lady Macbeth, we have that brilliant actress Rosalind Peabody. Viewers will remember her from the popular TV series Space Station Zero Nine in which she is held hostage by a giant turquoise sponge. In our production she wears a skin-tight one-piece silver foil jump-suit. We did a lot of workshopping to get the voice right. At first we considered the tones of the Tesco automatic check-out, which had the bossiness, but lacked the right degree of menace, so we settled for the BT woman who tells us we have dialled an incorrect number. There is no doubting her authority now as she orders the Dalek Macbeth to exterminate Duncan. "I will o-bey," he replies, trundling off down the dark corridor of Dunsinane. The famous scene in Act II is more effective now as Lady Macbeth declares: "The dagger which I see before me has not been recognised. Please check and try again." I believe I have also heightened the tension when Banquo's ghost materialises at the feast. Now Banquo wears gold lamé thigh-length boots, a tight-fitting scarlet tunic and has what looks like an upturned colander on his head. No wonder Macbeth looks appalled. I have taken a tiny liberty at the end, but I am convinced that Shakespeare would agree with me that a shower of meteorites is more spectacular than Birnam Wood on the move.

Maynard is Out of the Office and Fighting Crime

Ohio is Number One!!!

America's Fastest-Dying Cities
Joshua Zumbrun 08.05.08, 6:00 AM ET

Washington, D.C. -

The turmoil of the mortgage market granted a temporary reprieve from hearing about the woes of America's Rust Belt. That doesn't mean things are better. Despite a decade of national prosperity, the former manufacturing backbone of the U.S. is in rougher shape than ever, still searching for some way to replace its long-stilled smokestacks.

Where's it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities--Detroit and Flint--making the ranking.

Is This Man Going to Play Captain America? Or Conan? Or Both?

From 411Mania.com

[Movies] American Gladiators Star In The Running For Leads In Conan & Captain America
Posted by Ashish on 08.06.2008

Mike "Titan" O'Hearn is going places...

American Gladiators star Mike "Titan" O'Hearn is apparently in the running for the lead roles in both Conan the Barbarian and The First Avenger: Captain America.

Slash Film reports that O'Hearn has already auditioned for the role of Conan and had a meeting with Lionsgate about the role today. He will also be auditioning for the Captain America role soon.

Of course, O'Hearn is just one of many actors being considered for the lead roles in both films.

More Ark of the Covenant Wood Carvings

These finely carved angels come courtesy of my wife Jennifer's dad, Don Wiggins. As you can see, he's an incredible talent.

Incredible Wood Sculptures of Michael Rea

Man’s Gay Pussy Defense Falls Flat

Doesn’t José Maria Correi know gay men don’t do pussy?

Apparently not, because the 53-year old Brazilian national has been found guilty of attempted murder after shooting a neighbor he thought was another neighbor whom Correi claims sodomized his cat, thus turning it gay.

Confused? We don’t blame you:

[Correi] asked neighbor Anabela Silva Cruz to help catch the animal which had escaped on to an adjacent piece of land. A second neighbor, homosexual José Pedro Macedo, who was at his window, saw they were having trouble in their attempts and offered his help too.

As he tried to join in the mission, José Correia yelled insults at his neighbor concerning his sexual orientation.

After catching his pet, José Correia went to his neighbor’s house with a 6.35 calibre Browning pistol. Anabela Cruz remained on the property’s patio and was injured when the Browning was fired.

Courts proved that it was a case of mistaken identity, that José Correia believed it was his other neighbour on the patio, and was convinced José Pedro “was a homosexual and that there had been contact of a sexual nature between the neighbour and his cat.”

Said “sexual contact” then turned the cat into a queer, claimed Correia. A magistrate described the man’s tale as “one of the silliest motives I have ever heard in my life.” But at least it’s imaginative!

Snap

Politico is reporting that while GOP leaders opposed a motion to adjourn the House, the Democrats have closed up shop and even turned out the lights. While the lights and microphones have since been turned back on, it makes for an amusing mental image and possibly even a few dark YouTube video spoofs. "Only about a half-dozen Republicans were on the floor when this began, but the crowd has grown to about 20 now, according to Patrick O'Connor. 'This is the people's House,' Rep, Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) said. 'This is not Pelosi's politiburo.' Democratic aides were furious at the GOP stunt, and reporters were kicked out of the Speaker's Lobby, the space next to the House floor where they normally interview lawmakers."