Joined: 06 Oct 2004 Posts: 700 Location: Hawaii! Country:
Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:28 am Post subject:
UWFShooter wrote:
she may have quit, no reason was said for her not being present
i heard that her problems had started from before this 'tsunami song' incident. she felt like she was working in a racist environment, and the tsunami song was the last straw.
Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 120 Location: Kyoto, Japan.
Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 4:16 pm Post subject:
Yes, I've heard about it and some of my university friends who went there while it happened just returned safely two days ago. I'm glad the prayers got through and they realized how much I miss them. Well - we're back together, so that's all that matters, really. Still keeping my prayers for the lost children in the orphanage home, however. I do hope some of their parents still made the ordeal and are ready to take them home in their arms today. Otherwise, a sad tale indeed, nonetheless.
KATONAH, N.Y. - She will be able to return to work and start drawing her $900,000 salary again, and she will be free to throw lavish house parties — as long as she doesn't invite any criminals.
Martha Stewart (news - web sites) will also be wearing the must-have accessory for the convicted felon on the go: an electronic anklet that will allow authorities to monitor her movements.
After five months in prison in West Virginia, Stewart will be released next weekend to her 153-acre estate in the rolling horse country 40 miles north of midtown Manhattan. There, for another five months, she will serve the home detention portion of her sentence for a stock scandal.
The woman behind a billion-dollar homemaking empire will be confined to one of several houses on her estate in Katonah, except for 48 hours a week for "gainful employment," said Chris Stanton, chief U.S. probation officer in New York.
Stewart, 63, who also has homes in Connecticut, Maine and the Hamptons, chose the Katonah estate, which she bought in 2000 for $16 million, to be her prison away from prison until August.
Probation authorities will use the anklet and random phone calls to enforce the ban on going outside during non-working hours.
As for employment, besides running Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and writing a column for her magazine, Stewart can prepare for the two TV shows she will be starring in — a revival of her daily homemaking show and her own version of "The Apprentice."
Her contract with her company says that her salary, which was suspended while she was behind bars, will get reinstated during home detention.
It has not yet been established whether she will commute to Manhattan, travel to her TV studio in Westport or work at home. The details will be worked out at a meeting with her probation officer in the first few days after she gets out.
Allyn Magrino, a spokeswoman for Stewart's company, refused to comment.
After being convicted, Stewart expressed the hope that she would be out of prison early enough to plant a spring garden, and there has been talk that she might use the grounds or her huge new greenhouse to tape gardening segments for her show. But that would require a town filming permit and no application has been filed, said Alexandra Costello of the Town of Bedford, which includes Katonah.
While confined, Stewart will be free to entertain colleagues, neighbors, friends and relatives, Stanton said, as long as they are not criminals. Convicted felons are not allowed to consort with convicted felons.
She will probably not be able to oversee the multimillion-dollar renovation work under way at the estate, known as Cantitoe Farm. The project — which includes the building of a new stable for her horses, a carriage house for her horse-drawn buggies, and a small office building, and an overhaul of her long stone wall — accounts for the not-very-Martha portable potties seen on the property last week.
Stewart won a zoning variance for the stable, which is taller than normally permitted, after bringing chocolate chip cookies to a meeting of the planning board. Some conditions were imposed, however, including a ban on the stockpiling of manure.
Some residents seem happy that Stewart is their neighbor and felt she has been adequately punished for lying about why she unloaded her stock in a pharmaceutical company just before the price plunged in December 2001.
"She served her time and she can come home," said Martha Brozski. "She's a businesswoman and she did what it took to get the job done. Is it all moral and ethical? I don't know." Brozski added: "She did a quality renovation of those houses."
Brozski spoke outside the post office in the village of Bedford, a Martha Stewart kind of town. The 324-year-old village green is surrounded by white-painted or red brick buildings, including a steepled Presbyterian church and a tack shop.
On the community bulletin board are thumbtacked signs — one selling free-range duck eggs, another offering lessons in beekeeping.
A man cooking in his kitchen was shot after one of his cats knocked his 9mm handgun onto the floor, discharging the weapon, Michigan State Police said.
Joseph Stanton, 29, of Bates Township in Iron County, was shot in his lower torso around 6 p.m. Tuesday, the state police post in Iron River reported. He was transported to Iron County Community Hospital.
Michelle Sand, a spokeswoman at the Iron River hospital, said Stanton was treated there before being transferred to Marquette General Hospital for further treatment. But Marcie Miller, a representative of the Marquette facility, said there was no record of the hospital receiving a patient by that name.
A telephone message seeking comment was left Wednesday at Stanton's home.
State police said he was cooking at his stove when the cat knocked the loaded gun off the kitchen counter behind him.
SAVANNAH, Ga. - A beauty queen who shot and killed her two-timing boyfriend was acquitted of murder Wednesday after claiming she acted in self-defense.
Sharron Nicole Redmond admitted shooting her boyfriend outside the home of another woman he was dating, but said she thought he was reaching for a gun. He did not have a weapon.
Redmond, 23, had faced an automatic life sentence if convicted of Kevin Shorter's 2003 slaying. Four months earlier she had been crowned Miss Savannah.
The jury of nine women and three men deliberated for just over nine hours.
Redmond gasped and sobbed as she heard the verdict.
Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 2:37 am Post subject: Man Arrested For Paying Best Buy With $2 Bills
From The Baltimore Sun:
Man Arrested For Paying Best Buy With $2 Bills
PUT YOURSELF in Mike Bolesta's place. On the morning of Feb. 20, he buys a new radio-CD player for his 17-year-old son Christopher's car. He pays the $114 installation charge with 57 crisp new $2 bills, which, when last observed, were still considered legitimate currency in the United States proper. The $2 bills are Bolesta's idea of payment, and his little comic protest, too.
For this, Bolesta, Baltimore County resident, innocent citizen, owner of Capital City Student Tours, finds himself under arrest.
Finds himself, in front of a store full of customers at the Best Buy on York Road in Lutherville, locked into handcuffs and leg irons.
Finds himself transported to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, where he's handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service is called into the case.
Have a nice day, Mike.
"Humiliating," the 57-year old Bolesta was saying now. "I am 6 feet 5 inches tall, and I felt like 8 inches high. To be handcuffed, to have all those people looking on, to be cuffed to a pole -- and to know you haven't done anything wrong. And me, with a brother, Joe, who spent 33 years on the city police force. It was humiliating."
What we have here, besides humiliation, is a sense of caution resulting in screw-ups all around.
"When I bought the stereo player," Bolesta explains, "the technician said it'd fit perfectly into my son's dashboard. But it didn't. So they called back and said they had another model that would fit perfectly, and it was cheaper. We got a $67 refund, which was fine. As long as it fit, that's all.
"So we go back and pay for it, and they tell us to go around front with our receipt and pick up the difference in the cost. I ask about installation charges. They said, 'No installation charge, because of the mix-up. Our mistake, no charge.' Swell.
"But then, the next day, I get a call at home. They're telling me, 'If you don't come in and pay the installation fee, we're calling the police.' Jeez, where did we go from them admitting a mistake to suddenly calling the police? So I say, 'Fine, I'll be in tomorrow.' But, overnight, I'm starting to steam a little. It's not the money -- it's the threat. So I thought, I'll count out a few $2 bills."
He has lots and lots of them.
With his Capital City Student Tours, he arranges class trips for school kids around the country traveling to large East Coast cities, including Baltimore. He's been doing this for the last 18 years. He makes all the arrangements: hotels, meals, entertainment. And it's part of his schtick that, when Bolesta hands out meal money to students, he does it in $2 bills, which he picks up from his regular bank, Sun Trust.
"The kids don't see that many $2 bills, so they think this is the greatest thing in the world," Bolesta says. "They don't want to spend 'em. They want to save 'em. I've been doing this since I started the company. So I'm thinking, 'I'll stage my little comic protest. I'll pay the $114 with $2 bills.'"
At Best Buy, they may have perceived the protest -- but did not sense the comic aspect of 57 $2 bills.
"I'm just here to pay the bill," Bolesta says he told a cashier. "She looked at the $2 bills and told me, 'I don't have to take these if I don't want to.' I said, 'If you don't, I'm leaving. I've tried to pay my bill twice. You don't want these bills, you can sue me.' So she took the money. Like she's doing me a favor."
He remembers the cashier marking each bill with a pen. Then other store personnel began to gather, a few of them asking, "Are these real?"
"Of course they are," Bolesta said. "They're legal tender."
A Best Buy manager refused comment last week. But, according to a Baltimore County police arrest report, suspicions were roused when an employee noticed some smearing of ink. So the cops were called in. One officer noticed the bills ran in sequential order.
"I told them, 'I'm a tour operator. I've got thousands of these bills. I get them from my bank. You got a problem, call the bank,'" Bolesta says. "I'm sitting there in a chair. The store's full of people watching this. All of a sudden, he's standing me up and handcuffing me behind my back, telling me, 'We have to do this until we get it straightened out.'
"Meanwhile, everybody's looking at me. I've lived here 18 years. I'm hoping my kids don't walk in and see this. And I'm saying, 'I can't believe you're doing this. I'm paying with legal American money.'"
Bolesta was then taken to the county police lockup in Cockeysville, where he sat handcuffed to a pole and in leg irons while the Secret Service was called in.
"At this point," he says, "I'm a mass murderer."
Finally, Secret Service agent Leigh Turner arrived, examined the bills and said they were legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."
This will be important news to all concerned.
For Baltimore County police, said spokesman Bill Toohey, "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."
The other day, one of Bolesta's sons needed a few bucks. Bolesta pulled out his wallet and "whipped out a couple of $2 bills. But my son turned away. He said he doesn't want 'em any more."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Security is tight in front of the White House for a new resident -- a Mallard hen sitting on nine eggs she laid at the foot of a sapling over the weekend.
The mother duck chose for her nest a fresh heap of mulch on the sidewalk outside the heavily guarded entrance of the Treasury Department, next door to the presidential residence.
Secret Service officers have erected metal stanchions around the tree to shield the incubating bird from passersby on the crowded pedestrian plaza in the heart of the U.S. capital.
The Pennsylvania Avenue fowl's reputation has grown, and it was featured on a national morning television show on Friday.
"I'm getting more calls on this than on the Chinese currency," Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols said.
Treasury staff have dubbed the bird "T-bill", "Duck Cheney", and "Quacks Reform", Nichols said.
Treasury Secretary John Snow, who "had been briefed on the duck", paused to pay it a visit after testifying before Congress on Thursday, the spokesman added.
The mallard chicks are expected to hatch at the end of the month.
Joined: 15 Jul 2003 Posts: 582 Location: san francisco, USA Country:
Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 4:46 am Post subject:
best buy (and frys) = crappy paid employees = crappy customer service.
i just go in and out and buy what i need. talking to the employees??? just ignore them.
Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Posts: 14056 Location: San Ho Se, Ka-Ri-Por-Nya Country:
Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 5:15 am Post subject:
Damn.....dat really sucks for the poor guy. I, like the rest of you guys, would definately sue. Guess i better watch where i go buy stuff because i don't wanna get arrested for using a $2 bill. Must really suck too for Jefferson, not being appreciated anymore
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