It’s only been five months since the last body was found and charges were filed, and another body was found early this morning and people are scared. Not that I blame them, as I don’t think I’d go down there after about 9:00PM anymore (despite routinely going for runs through the park late at night when I was younger).
Category: Scary
Ballot Fraud Waiting To Happen
Due to Oregon’s mail-only elections, I can understand ballot counters needing a bit of extra time to count them, but a whole week? That’s how long clerks in Oregon get, prior to election day, to start opening up and taking care of those votes:
When Oregonians mail their ballots to their county clerks this fall, many might mistakenly believe that those inner, “secrecy envelopes” can?t be opened until Election Day. Actually, clerk?s offices around the state can begin to open and examine those ballots a full week before Nov. 2 — two days earlier than back in 2000.
The 2001 Legislature approved the two-day extension, requested by county clerks, giving them more time to process and sort the ballots, checking for any problems, said John Lindback, director of the Oregon Elections Division.
“Due to the heavy turnout in 2000, the clerks asked for the extra two days,” Lindback said. “All the processing is done by inspection boards and is open to the public, and the counties are, of course, required to keep the ballots secure. Everything can be done (ahead of time) except counting the votes.”
The state law, amended in 2001, also says, “The county clerk may take any other actions that are necessary to allow the counting of ballots delivered by mail to begin on Election Day.”
So they can’t officially begin counting them until Nov. 2, but they can open them and get them all ready for counting.
Is it me, or is this just asking for trouble?
Good Thing He Didn’t Ask For A Burger
If you got a bad milkshake at McDonald’s, would you bomb the place? I mean, come on: McDonalds has far worse food to get upset about.
Surfer Rides Hurricane Ivan Waves
This guy has to be one of the craziest people I’ve ever seen. Talented, but crazy.
This Has to Be a Twilight Zone Episode
Imagine driving along on the road, minding your own business, when you notice something a bit weird about the road your driving on. Looking down, you see several hundred Ronald McDonald dolls lined up in perfect formation on the road. I know that’d probably wig me out:
“It was eerie, frightening,” says Dau, who is corrections officer for the Clinton County sheriff’s office. Why all those 14-inch stuffed dolls, with ceramic faces, had been so carefully placed in the middle of a half-dozen roads in Cedar Heights, is a mystery from “Twilight Zone.”
[…]
He estimates there were 500 of those Ronald McDonald dolls, in perfect formations, spaced about two or three feet apart in the center of six roads in the court that houses about 150 mobile homes.
[…]
“It was so scary, all those Ronald McDonalds staring at us in our headlights. It gave us a very, very funny feeling. If you hadn’t seen them with your own eyes, you wouldn’t believe it,” Dau says.
The article goes on to say that McDonalds hasn’t sold the dolls for years, so somebody was seriously hording the things.
113 Reasons to Have a Desk Job
Sometimes I’m really glad I have a desk job, especially after I read about all the industrial accidents out there. In Japan, nearly 2,000 workers die annually from industrial accidents, and they’ve documented (and illustrated) some of the most common here. Some of the grizly deaths include being run over when a dump truck stopped on sloping ground starts to move and explosions inside a tank during wastewater system repair work. Scary stuff.
Oversize Truck for Men With Small Winkies
If you though the new Hummers were big, check out these monsters. If Hummer drivers are compensating for something, the guys that buy these must not have anything down there at all.
Bend Burrito Joint Serves Cockroaches With Food
Simone was hungry. Based on the premise that, quite frequently, the little hole-in-the-wall places have the best food, she decides to try out a little Mexican place in downtown Bend called “Super Burrito.” She was enjoying the food until it happened: She saw a cockroach.
There, on the woodboard-covered wall right above our little table, sat possibly the most hated animal in the universe: a cockroach. It was brown, about an inch long, and quite obviously a youngster (I’ve come across adult cockroaches in my travels, and they are significantly larger).
My first reaction was one of astonishment. Then, as I fully realized what I was looking at, there was horror and deep disgust. I instantly dropped my burrito. Jeff dropped his fork.
We were out of that joint faster than you can say “cockroach”. Worst is – you just *know* that that little roach wasn’t a loner. I bet there is a Mama Roach, a Papa Roach, and several, if not hundreds, of Sister and Brother roaches. Maybe even an Uncle Roach, and a Grandpa Roach.
It’s a damn scary thought, but to be quite honest with you, I’m pretty damn sure that Super Burrito has been shut down in the past for health violations, as I distinctly remember seeing the familiar “Closed for Health Violation” sign on their door at one point in the past.I can’t confirm that with any thing on Deschutes County’s hard-to-navigate site, as they don’t have a database for violators listed there (which they really should, as a service to the local community — we do have 290 or so restaurants here, after all).
Simone’s going to file a complaint with the health inspector tomorrow. Stay tuned…
Update on 9/13: Simone has posted a follow up. According the the county health inspector, all three restaurants in that building (corner of Wall & Minnesota) have had problems with cockroaches, partially because the building is very old. The restaurant owners claimed the “little pets” (as the inspector called them) had imported themselves with some produce. “Usually”, he said, “this area has little to no problems with roaches.”
What that also means, however, is that some of the yuppie fancy restaurants in that block might also have roaches.
When Simone asked him if the Super Burrito place had had past health code violations, he said yes, but only very minor.
Again, I stand by what I said above: Health code violations should be publicly available, period. I’m sure a FOIA request would get the information, but damned if I’ve got the time to do a formal request.
A Monster Killing Machine
While the site’s not in English, many of the comments are in English. The commentors say the machine in the picture (below, in case the site disappears) appears to be a gigantic saw used in coal mining:
It’s one scary thing, that’s for sure. In the comments there were links to other sites that show pics of this and other huge mining machines here, here, and here.
Cremated Ashes Crash Through Woman’s Roof
My parents both grew up in Forest Grove, and I’m related to at least 1/2 of the town, I would guess. And after reading this story, I can say a) I know roughly where that lady lives, and b) It probably came pretty close to hitting my cousin’s house:
FOREST GROVE, Ore. – An unwelcome guest recently crashed into Barbara Vreeland’s home: the cremated remains of a Washington man.
The 46-year-old man died of natural causes in June. He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered over Mountain View Memorial Gardens, a cemetery near Vreeland’s home, Forest Grove police Capt. Aaron Ashbaugh said Tuesday.
Family members told police the bag of ashes slipped as they were circling the cemetery in a small plane they had hired for the day.
The 4-pound bag crashed through Vreeland’s roof and landed in the attic.
Key quote: “I feel for those people. But I think some of their relative is still in our attic.”