A man allegedly caught with 1067 baby crocodiles in his car appeared in a South African court overnight.

How do you fit over 1000 baby crocodiles into a car? I can't even fit my five kids into a car with a couple suitcases!

Recent figures from the international police agency, Interpol, showed that trade in flora and fauna was now the second largest illegal trade in the world, after narcotics.

Recent estimates for the illegal flora and fauna trade put the figure at $US20 billion a year.

I've got some grass outside I need to sell. Any buyers? It'll only cost you $500 million!

It has recently come to my attention that many Chicago area school districts require their students to take and pass the written driver's examination in order to graduate. Not a bad requirement you might think.

Mayra Ramirez would disagree. She and other students like her are being forced to take and pass the written driver's examination, and it is a waste of their time. You see, they are blind!

A Chicago Public Schools spokesman said he "can't explain why up to this point no one has raised the issue."

I can't even come up with something to say about this one. It's no wonder our schools are graduating idiots who can't read well or write properly. The teachers are too busy ensuring blind students can pass the written driving exam!

Meanwhile, when radio DJ Tim Shaw told guest (and supermodel) Jodie Marsh that he was prepared to leave his wife and children for her, he paid a price. Listening to the radio was his wife, and she was fed up with his antics.

Immediatly after hearing his pronouncement, Mrs. Shaw went to Ebay and arranged an auction for Mr. Shaw's Lotus Esprit Turbo. The $45,000 car was sold in less than five minutes, at the 'Buy it Now' option of $1.00.

Dang, never at Ebay when the deals are up!

Guys, never announce to the whole world that you are willing to leave your wife for some hot supermodel, even if it is true. There are only two outcomes to this:

1) The supermodel turns you down, and your wife leaves you.

2) Oh sorry, I was wrong. There's only one outcome to this. See 1)

I have twins. One boy, one girl. They are almost fifteen months old now, and are very cute. They do, however, get into everything.

This past weekend, my wife left the house at 3 pm Friday. She drove to St. Louis to attend a women’s conference entitled “Time Out.” Time out for who? I certainly didn’t get a time out. Nevertheless, I thought it very sweet and generous of me to let her pay her fifty bucks for the conference (not to mention the cost of the hotel and meals) and have a weekend away from the kids.

Did I mention I have twins? That wouldn’t be so bad, I suppose, if I didn’t also have three daughters who are older than the twins. My oldest is seven, the next 5, the third is 4, and then the twins. Just slightly a year out of heaven and a year out of hell.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, all of them. But man, did they put me through my paces! The normal nap time for the twins is 3 pm. Do you think they were going to go down for a nap after they watched their mom march out the door? No way. I put them in their beds at 3:10. At 3:45, they were both still screaming. At 3:55, I heard banging. My kids are used to going to bed, and I have long subscribed to the belief that if you go in and get kids out of their bed, you teach them a bad habit. So normally I would not have gone into the bedroom. But this banging got my attention. I walked upstairs, and opened the door to the twins’ bedroom. My son, angry as the Skipper at Gilligan, had been banging his head against his crib and had given himself a nice bloody nose. Blood was streaming down his face. After a few frantic moments searching his face to make sure it was just a bloody nose, I decided that maybe nap time today wasn’t going to happen.

Meanwhile, my three older daughters were happily destroying the family room downstairs, where I had so recently been trying to read a book while listening to my son beat his face into a bloody pulp! My son promptly joined them. While I was supervising their cleanup of the mess they had made, he was happily emptying all the CDs out of one of my CD stands. With the three older girls cleaning (albeit grudgingly), I turned my attention to my son. I quickly stopped him from pulling the last 10 CDs from the stand, then set about returning the already removed disks.

By the time I finished that task, I noticed the room looked fairly clean. That is until I looked at the other end of the entertainment center. There he stood, knee deep in my collection of Loebs which he had pulled from their shelves, and happily unloading the other CD stand. I rushed to him, but not before he grinned at me and removed the last of the CDs. As I started cleaning up this mess, I noticed his twin sister meander over. She was removing all the dustjackets from the Loebs. I stooped to stop her, and realized what she had been doing while I had been focused on my son. The first CD stand now stood empty!

AHHHHHH!! I threw my hands up in disgust. I grabbed them both and sat them on the couch where they alternated between laughing at what they had done and crying that I had taken them from their game. I cleaned quickly, hoping to finish before they started doing more damage. I failed.

With my back turned, the twins had devised a new plan. If the CDs were off limits, video tapes would do nicely.

One would think that I would have paid attention to any extra noises. One would be wrong to think that. It wasn’t till I was almost finished cleaning the Loebs and CDs that I heard the distinctive sound of video tapes being banged together. I turned, and there stood my beloved twins, each with a tape in hand, happily banging them against each other and laughing like it was the funniest thing they had ever done. I collapsed in the middle of the floor. If my son hadn’t been in the room, I might have cried, but I have to set a good example for him, right?

I decided to leave them to their fun. Maybe they would fall asleep on the piles of CDs, Loebs and video tapes.

This was only day one. I’d like to say I got better as time went on, but the twins and their older sisters didn’t take it any easier on me. By 9 pm on Saturday when my wife finally got home, I was a broken man. My children played happily around me. The house was a mess, but I no longer cared. My wife took pity on me, scooted the children off to bed and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I went to bed after extracting a promise that she would never leave for longer than two hours ever again.

Sean Penn and some guy who makes movies nobody watches both made cracks on Sunday at the Oscars about America's current involvement in Iraq. Penn said every actor knows there were no WMDs and the other guy said America was going down the same rabbit hole we went down in Vietnam. While I believe in the right of every Amercian to voice their opinions on just about everything, I grow tired of Hollywood actors who think they know more than everyone else about politics.

At what point did Sean Penn become a political thinker? Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed many of his performances on the silver screen (my particular favorite is Fast Times at Ridgemont High), but when did the ability to act give one the right to call into question the motives of the sitting president of the United States of America? Admittedly, neither man did so openly at the Oscars. But their comments left little doubt.

On another note, film maker Leni Riefenstahl was honored by the Academy for her career making movies. This has elicited a fair amount of criticism, since Riefenstahl made propogandistic movies for Hitler and was his personal favorite among his movie makers. Riefenstahl never apologized for her association with Hitler stating that she didn't know about the mass murders.

WHAT? Are we to believe that anyone in Germany didn't know about the mass murders? The theory that the average German didn't know what Hitler was doing has been decisively proven wrong. We might as well honor Saddam Hussein for funding recruitment videos for Al Quaeda!

Lastly, but certainly not least in my world, last month was a bad one for me. I neither won a Golden Brush award, nor was I invited into the Curia! My self-esteem has taken some big hits of late.

This is just some of the weird or crazy stuff that goes on.

While the Statue of Liberty remains shuttered for lack of $5 million in post-Sept. 11 upgrades, Congress in January mandated $10.7 billion in "earmarked" projects (also known as home-state "pork"), including: $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa, $50 million to make sure a Florida beach resort bridge remains toll-free, $450,000 to decipher the gene structure of rainbow trout, $225,000 to repair a public swimming pool whose drain U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons of Nevada clogged with tadpoles when he was a kid, $200,000 to introduce golf to youngsters, $90,000 for the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, and, ironically, $500,000 for a University of Akron program that analyzes how Congress makes difficult budget decisions.

I need to figure out how to get on that free money train! That is ridiculous.

This next one is unbelievable:

Driver Terry Lee Crouch, 29, accidentally ran over his 6-year-old son while, he told police, playing a game in which the boy tries to cling to the rear bumper while Crouch starts and stops the car attempting to dislodge him.

Look, I like to play and wrestle and throw my kids in the air as much as the next guy. But hooking your kid up to the bumper of your car and trying to dislodge him seems like fun??

And, as an indication of how things can be spun, the following from Boston.

An October Boston Herald column hailing the Boston South End neighborhood's alleged top cocaine dealer, Philip "Sonny" Baiona, said the fact that Baiona is 80 is a sign that the city's crime rate is tapering off.

Tapering off? Isn't the fact that an 80 year old man is selling cocaine an indication that crime is spreading to ever greater parts of our population?

And finally, maybe Americans don't eat less healthily than the rest of the world:

A Ukrainian candy company has begun marketing what may be the stickiest, richest and most fattening treat on the market: pure pork fat covered in chocolate. Cracking open a finger-sized stick of ''Fat in Chocolate'' reveals exactly that: a vein of white fat. The dark chocolate product pokes fun at the traditional Ukrainian snack of salo, or salted pork fat, usually consumed with vodka and pickles.

I have no comment on this one other than it is just flat out wrong!

Sources

Slightly Off Center & News of the Weird

Recently, AncientWorlds has been the site of a theft. Many of you are probably unaware of this theft, but it occurred nonetheless. Actually, the theft took place a long time ago at an URL far, far way. Alright, the URL wasn’t all that far away; it happened at Ancient Sites. The thief at AncientSites got away with his crime. Fortunately, those who benefited from that theft have now had to give up what was wrongfully theirs.

By now, I am sure you are all waiting with bated breath, wondering what it was that was stolen so long ago, but only recently recovered by the rightful owner. I will tell you. A long time ago at an URL (not so) far, far away, a man named Drakus Domitius plagiarized the rules of Imperium: The Game of Rome and created a group called The Roman Republic. This was not a malicious theft. I created a group for the purpose of enjoyment, and rather than spend hours coming up with my own rules for every aspect of the game, I borrowed them from a game which I felt at the time (and still feel today) to be the best RPG based on Middle Republican Rome. At the time I thought little of this, for I was a member of Imperium and didn’t think this was a problem. Nor did it ever appear to be.

Unfortunately, it was a problem. The rules of Imperium: The Game of Rome have been a work of love and effort of several years. The original founder of the group, Maritus Furius is no longer with us, but he left the rules in the capable hands of Victorius Marius who did a nearly complete re-write of the rules. His effort was a year long toil of love, and in the end, he copyrighted that material. He then entrusted his rules to Caius Livius, who has spent several years guarding those rules, tweaking them and rewriting some parts of them completely. Caius Livius too has copyrighted those rules every year.

The issue did not stop there, however. I was also a prominent member of The Legion, and while I cannot claim to have written the rules, I did give input on them. Large sections of the rules of The Legion were taken wholesale from Imperium, just as at The Roman Republic. I feel largely responsible for these problems, but once AncientSites died, I figured that was the end of both groups. I was wrong. Sometime ago, I learned of the continued existence of The Legion and not many months ago, The Roman Republic was recreated (without so much as a ‘by your leave,’ I was never consulted despite the fact that it was my group originally). Still, I didn’t really mind that it had been recreated. However, it recently came to my attention, and that of Caius Livius, that the group was using rules basically cut and pasted from Imperium. As the rules are copyrighted, the administration of Imperium decided that we had to ask both groups (The Legion and Roman Republic) to abide by copyright laws.

Those who administer The Legion were very willing to do as was asked of them. Unfortunately, the same was not true at Roman Republic where the desire to protect years of work and effort on the rules of Imperium was called “petulant, childish, and completely unnecessary.” I do not understand this. It takes time and effort to develop a working and effective set of rules to govern a game. Is it really petulant or childish to want to protect that effort? If I spend 5 years developing a piece of electronic equipment, no one would argue that I had a right to protect it, even if at the present time it makes me absolutely no money. The same applies to intellectual property, such as the rules of Imperium: the Game of Rome.

Now, both The Legion and The Roman Republic are in compliance with both U.S. and international copyright law. I want to publicly thank both groups for complying with the law on this matter. Mainly because now I am off the hook. I was really beginning to feel the pressure. Let this be a lesson to all you prospective RPG founders. Always ask for permission when borrowing from another group. I wish I had.

Ok, I guess I am out of the loop, because I just found out what BoTox is. Don't get me wrong, I know what BoTox is being used for, as evidenced in my last post mentioning Senator Kerry. But I didn't know what BoTox actually was. By the way, the makers of BoTox have actually come up with a new use for it. It seems BoTox inhibits sweating, so now all those people who perspire so much can get BoTox shots in their armpits so the rest of us don't feel so uncomfortable around them.

Anyway, back to the point. BoTox is a weakened form of the toxin which causes botulism. In case you don't know what botulism is, let me provide the following:

Botulism is a rare but serious paralytic illness caused by a nerve toxin that is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. All forms of botulism can be fatal and are considered medical emergencies.

Now, having read that, I have to wonder, why are people putting the toxin responsible for botulism in their body for aesthetic purposes? I realize that a lot of thought and effort went into this from people far smarter than me, but this just seems crazy to me.

Actually, I was going to write about some other things too, but I think I'll just stop there tonight.

BTW, I still haven't been asked to join the Curia.

It has been exactly a month since I last wrote a journal entry. The last one earned me two late night long-lasting gram sessions, so I hope this one does not do the same.

Janet's breast is a big issue these days. I found myself wondering why MTV (who I am still convinced knew what was going to happen) didn't pick a better breast to show on TV. I mean, Jessica Simpson was in the stadium that night!

What has happened to Howard Dean? A month ago, he was the toast of the democratic party. Yesterday, he placed no better than 3rd in any of the primaries and was 5th in South Carolina. Did the yelling and screaming after Iowa hurt him that much? And doesn't Kerry look younger these days? I think he is using Botox to smooth out his forehead.

I'm still not a member of the Curia.

Speaking of the Curia, there has been very little in the way of controversy there. What the heck am I supposed to write on!

The Kissing Booth wasn't a big hit for me. I was severely disappointed with the number of those who came to kiss me. Ah well. Cyberlips are not the most tender.

Well, there is alot more to discuss, but I just don't have the time. See you all next month.

It has recently come to my attention that certain of our fellows at AW find the usefullness of RPGs to be limited at a site dedicated to ancient history. I certainly agree with Quintillius Fabius that the level of historical posts at AW is far below what is desirable. There have been numbers of times when I have submitted an historical post, only to wait for hours, then days then weeks for a reply, before finally giving up on the post entirely. I have hopes that this will change as the site grows, but it has not done so yet. Then again, to be fair, I don't often have the time to craft a nice historical post, especially when it is likely to be ignored.

However, I disagree with the assertion that RPG has no historical value. I currently am involved in Imperium: The Game of Rome. This is set in the Middle Republic. As it is a game, there are many inconsistencies between it and history. Nevertheless, I have often gone searching for historical truths because of something I wanted to try in the game. I know others have done so as well, resorting to primary documents to find out information concerning Rome, Roman society, politics, military and foreign relations.

While this doesn't always translate into historically accurate posts, it does result in greater acquired knowledge about ancient history, and that is the goal of this site. I don't know Quintillius at all, but his post indicates that he has no interest in RPGs. That is fine, and is his choice. But his suggestion that the Scribes and Demis should be required to post at least 10 posts per day on historical threads is unfair. The scribes and demis are to ensure that those at the site have a good experience and that all works as it should. Those who wish to have greater historical discussions should not seek to limit roleplay, but instead should seek ways in which the membership of AWs is more interested in posting historical content. In the meantime, I have to go read the rules of Imperium again.

Don't believe what they tell you, that the squeeky wheel gets the grease. Two weeks ago I made it quite plain that I expected Scribal or Demi status. I also complained about not getting put into the Curia. Since then, nothing. I haven't been given Scribal status, nor have I been invited into that bastion of privilege, the Curia.

Now I realize that not everyone should be admitted into the blessed land, there to communicate with Scribes, Demis and occasionally Jot himself. But I think I deserve a shot. I admit that given the new policy it will be unlikely that I am offered a position as Scribe. Still, membership in the Curia should not be that difficult to obtain for one of my stature and longevity at AS/AW! Puffing out my chest and looking down my nose, I continue.

Still, I can see that these journal entries may not have inspired confidence among the Divine Demigods that I can be trusted to offer wholesome advice and constructive criticism. Nothing I can do about that, I guess. I could delete them, but that would remove forever what I consider to be gems which future generations of AncientWorlders will be able to enjoy.

I guess I will just continue on my way, a regular joe tiptoeing his way through the cyberworld of AncientWorlds.

Today was the biggest shopping day of the year here in America. Traditionally, the day after Thanksgiving brings in more sales than any other day of the year. Businesses count on this day to begin the season which puts them in the black for the year.

Many stores opened at 6 a.m., luring the holiday shopper into their store at such a horrid hour by offering terrific discounts on over priced items. In the past, my family members have been sucked into this yearly ordeal which causes many people to contemplate suicide while standing in the mile long lines of a Wal-Mart or Target. I have largely avoided this national idiocy.

Until today. My DVD player broke some time ago, and I have been pining away, unable to watch my extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Unable to tolerate this horrific state of affairs, I perused the fliers sent days in advance to ensure that all were aware of the tremendous deals being offered by the major stores. I found a very low priced model (I refuse to buy the high priced ones until my children are old enough to not break another one). Realizing this very low priced model would not last long, I obligingly arose before 6 a.m. and drove in the dark to the store. Arriving less than 15 minutes after they opened, I made my way back to the electronics section of the store. As I walked, I looked at all these crazy people up and shopping at 6 a.m. and laughed at how big of suckers they were.

I grabbed my DVD player and headed up to pay for it. As I stood in the mile long line, it suddenly dawned on me that I was as big of a sucker as everyone else. Sure, I got my DVD player, but I was up at 5:30 a.m. Not to work or play, but to shop! I am so ashamed!

Are Americans the only people in the world who do this? I know that America has turned Christmas into a commercial holiday, but surely other people must also have big huge shopping days. How do they determine what day starts the shopping season? We have Thanksgiving. What do say, Brits use to start the shopping season with? Guy Fawkes Day? Surely that is too early. What about France, or Germany or Italy?

It probably is just America. And unfortunately I have fallen into the trap. Hopefully, having understood the error of my ways, I will avoid it next year.