Man stole buses, drove routes, returned them
July 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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Police have arrested an 18-year-old man accused of stealing at least three county buses and driving them on their routes.
James L. Harris is charged with three counts each of third-degree grand theft and burglary of an occupied conveyance, WPLG-TV reported.
The most recent theft occurred Tuesday, when he was arrested and charged.
According to Miami-Dade police, Harris would take the buses from several Miami-Dade Transit bus depots in the county and drive the buses on their routes, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. He would then return the buses at the end of the day.
Police said Harris didn’t raise any suspicion because he was dressed like a Miami-Dade Transit employee. Police said he also didn’t steal any bus fare.
It was unclear why Harris allegedly stole the buses, but police are investigating whether he had help from Miami-Dade Transit employees.
Monster washes ashore in Long Island
July 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Is is an actual monster, some sort of rodent-like creature with a dinosaur beak? A tipster says that there is “a government animal testing facility very close by in Long Island,” but unless the government is trying to design horrible Montauk monsters that will eat IEDs and fart fire at bad Iraqis, we’re not sure why they would create such an unthinkable beast.
Luckily Hamptons-based website Plum will be hosting two eyewitnesses as well as the woman who took the photograph this Friday on their web show The Juice. Plum writes of the hellfire-born nightmare creature: “Four government biologists contacted by Plum were unable to identify the species of the animal from its photo and came to the conclusion that ‘no such creature exists.’” Shriek!! That’s because it’s a monster. A government experiment gone wrong! A Cerberus come to warn us of doom! A MONSTER!!!!
Source: gawker.com
Japan’s Booming Sex Niche: Elder Porn
July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that’s because he’s kept his part-time job — as a porn star.
Shigeo Tokuda is, in fact, his screen name. He prefers not to disclose his real name because, he insists, his wife and daughter have no idea that he has appeared in about 350 films over the past 14 years. And in his double life, Tokuda arguably embodies the contemporary state of Japan’s sexuality: in surveys conducted by organizations ranging from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the condom-maker Durex, Japan is repeatedly found to be one of the most sexless societies in the industrialized world. A WHO report released in March found that 1 in 4 married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all. Those figures were attributed to the stresses of Japanese working life. Yet at the same time, the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with “elder porn” one of its fastest-growing genres.
Tokuda is rare among Japanese porn stars in that his name has become a brand. The Shigeo Tokuda series he has just completed portray him as a tactful elderly gentleman who instructs women of different ages in the erotic arts, and he boasts a body of work far more impressive than most actors in their prime.
Tokuda’s exploits have proved to be a goldmine for Glory Quest, which first launched an “old man” series, Maniac Training of Lolitas, in December 2004. Its popularity led the company to follow up with Tokuda starring in Forbidden Elderly Care in August 2006. Other series followed, and soon elder porn had revealed itself as a sustainable new revenue stream for the industry. “The adult-video industry is very competitive,” says Glory Quest p.r. representative Kayoko Iimura. “If we only make standard fare, we cannot beat other studios. There were already adult videos with Lolitas or themes of incest, so we wanted to make something new. A relationship between wife and an old father-in-law has enough twist to create an atmosphere of mystery and captivate viewers’ hearts.”
Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of elders is captivating to younger viewers. “I think that, as a subject, there is this something that only an older generation has and the young people do not possess. It is because they lived that much more. We should respect them and learn from them,” says Kono passionately.
But Tokuda stresses the appeal of his work to an audience of his peers: “Elderly people don’t identify with school dramas,” he says. “It’s easier for them to relate to older-men-and-daughters-in-law series, so they tend to watch adult videos with older people in them.” The veteran porn star plans to keep working until he’s 80 — or older, as long as the industry will cast him. Given the bullish market for his work, he’s unlikely to go without work.
“People of my age generally have shame, so they are very hesitant to show their private parts,” Tokuda says. “But I am proud of myself doing something they cannot.” Still, he says, laughing, “That doesn’t mean that I can tell them about my old-age pensioner job.”
Japan’s adult-video industry is believed to be worth as much as $1 billion a year, according to industry insiders, with the largest video-store chain Tsutaya releasing about 1,000 new titles monthly, while the mega adult mail-order site DMM releases about 2,000 titles each month. Although films featuring women in their teens and 20s are the mainstay of the industry, a trend toward “mature women” has become evident over the past five years. Currently, about 300 of the 1,000 adult videos on offer at Tsutaya, and 400 out of the 2,000 at DMM, are “mature women” films.
Ryuichi Kadowaki, director of Ruby Inc., which specializes in mature-women titles, says that when the company started offering the genre a few years ago, the term referred to actresses in their late 20s, and that last year it was expanded to those in their 70s. The company believes the advantage of mature titles is their enduring appeal. “Adult videos with young actresses sell well only in the first three months after the release,” Kadowaki explains. “On the other hand, mature-women films enjoy a steady, long-term popularity, which after 10 years or so might lead to a best seller.” And then there are the cost savings. A popular young actress can earn up to $100,000 per film, while a mature actress is paid only $2,000.
The market for elder porn has doubled over the past decade, according to Kadowaki. “In view of [Japan's] aging society,” he adds, “I think that in the future, we will see a steady increase in demand.”
By MICHIKO TOYAMA
Suicide on the Tube
July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
On July 13, my westbound train on the Central Line of the London Underground subway system was pulling into Queensway station when it abruptly stopped. The driver’s voice came over the intercom. The message was meant for the control room, but we passengers heard it too. “We have got one under,” the driver squawked. “Send emergency crews immediately. He jumped. We have one under.”
My memories of what followed unfold in a series of images. I remember filing to the front of the train and thinking how it felt like leaving the bus on a school trip. I remember putting my hand on the shoulder of the driver and saying “I’m sorry” as he gesticulated frantically at two platform colleagues. I remember glancing down under the driver’s carriage and telling my girlfriend not to look, and noticing how reassuring the warm bodies of the passengers felt as we crowded into a packed elevator to leave the station. I remember a blur of fire trucks and ambulances (how did they get there so fast?), the screaming sirens and, later, a woman I recognized from my carriage pretending to browse a window of real estate ads as she wept.
There are plenty of ways to commit suicide, but few more public than turning a multiton moving train full of passengers into a bullet. Last year in the U.K., 194 people killed themselves on the tracks of mass-transit systems, with some 50 of those choosing the sooty tunnels of the Tube. New York City’s subway averages 26 suicides a year. In Paris, 24 died on the tracks of the Métro last year. While it is a fallacy to imagine any suicide as a solitary act — even the tidiest affair leaves survivors stricken — death by train is a particularly declaratory form of killing oneself. It makes the act a form of theater — for the driver, watching it all from behind his windshield, and for the rest of us.
Read the rest of this article at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1827064,00.html
By EBEN HARRELL with reporting by Camille Agon
Did you know:
People who commit suicide by throwing themselves under tube are called “one-unders”. In New York they are known as “track pizza”
The peak hour for tube suicides is 11am.
Victoria and King’s Cross record the highest number of tube suicides each year. This isn’t surprising as Victoria is the tube’s busiest station with 85 million passengers each year and King’s Cross has 70 million passengers each year.
NYPD cop in YouTube body-check probe
July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A New York City police officer was stripped of his gun and badge after a video posted on YouTube showed him body-checking a bicyclist during Friday’s Critical Mass bicycle ride.
The video (see below), which was shot by a tourist and posted on the video-sharing site Sunday, shows bicyclists whizzing past uniformed officers during the Times Square protest. One officer begins to stride across the street, picking up speed and violently tackling a bicyclist into a crowded sidewalk.
The video sparked an immediate public outcry and led the department to place the officer, identified by several news agencies as Patrick Pogan, 22, on desk duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation.
The bicyclist, Christopher Long, 29, was charged with blocking traffic, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and assault, prosecutors said.
Critical Mass is a leaderless mass bicycle ride typically held on the last Friday of each month in cities around the world. The event, which originated in San Francisco in 1992, is alternately referred to as a celebration and a protest against automobile-choked streets.
by Steven Musil
