EDIT: Sorry, everyone. I broke it. Bad content removed.

Via waxy, a tale of a camera lost and then found:

“Hello,” I said, when I reached the woman who had reported the camera found, “I got your number from the park ranger, it seems you have my camera?”

We discussed the specifics of the camera, the brown pouch it was in, the spare battery and memory card, the yellow rubberband around the camera. It was clear it was my camera, and I was thrilled.

“Well,” she said, “we have a bit of a situation. You see, my nine year old son found your camera, and we wanted to show him to do the right thing, so we called, but now he’s been using it for a week and he really loves it and we can’t bear to take it from him.”

I listened, not sure where she was going with this.

“And he was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and he’s now convinced he has bad luck, and finding the camera was good luck, and so we can’t tell him that he has to give it up. Also we had to spend a lot of money to get a charger and a memory card.”

It started to dawn on me that she had no intention of returning the camera.

[more]

Got this from Polly and it was too funny not to share:

Capital One just announced they have signed Maurice Clarett as their spokesman.

His job will be to stand in front of the OSU Stadium with a gun and ask people “What’s in your wallet?”

Oh, I mean, that poor misguided young man.

(reposted by Gus because Blogger hiccuped and ate it)

A funny thing from yesterday: yesterday’s Dispatch had a wonderful letter to the editor casitgating Columbus-local Schoedinger Funeral Homes for some ill-chosen remarks. I couldn’t believe what I was reading — stuff like that doesn’t happen in real life — so I went to look for the original article, and yeah, it’s not exactly the kind of thing you want to say in print:

With solid schools, a thriving economy and loads of services, including the promise of wireless Internet, Dublin is a great place to live.

As a place to die, however, it lags.

Dublin joins Whitehall as the only Franklin County suburbs without a funeral home.

“We’ve always thought that was kind of odd,” said Susan Jones, vice president of the Central Ohio Funeral Directors Association.

Rutherford opened a chapel in Powell 10 years ago that serves many Dublin residents. And Schoedinger’s chapel in Upper Arlington, along with Hilliard’s Tidd Funeral Home, also serve many from Dublin.

On Monday, Schoedinger introduced plans to Dublin City Council to build a funeral home on an 8.8-acre site in Dublin’s south end.

It’s a longtime company goal, said Michael Schoedinger, executive vice president of Schoedinger Funeral Service and Crematory.

“We’ve known that Dublin is a great growing community and our company has always been about community,” he said.

But the cold reality of mortuary science dictates where and when a funeral business expands.

“There just aren’t enough deaths in Dublin,” he said. “We hope in the near future that that will change.”

Heh. (emphasis added, of course, and there’s more to the article after that; link is from the Dispatch archives, which are registration-required)

Could MY baby angel possibly be a bully?

So I got the dreaded phone call from the daycare today.

Turns out Carl’s been hitting his “friends”, not just a little, not just once or twice, and not just with his hands, but occasionally with toys. So I asked, hoping for the best, “Is it just when he’s frustrated or about a toy or something?” She was kind, but direct, “No, sometimes he just hits them when he wants them to go away.”

WHAT! Could he have inherited my horrible temper? Too much TV? Too much daycare? And we can’t even blame it on the baby yet!!!

Worst one was today I gather from her description and the timing of her call. Seems hard toy + friend’s head = big trouble for him, and for us. She held his arm back just as he fired up to give this poor kid another whack.

So any advice or reassurance is very welcome.
Gus and I will certainly be needing it!

– Valerie

I don’t know how your Valentine’s Day went, but I got filet mignon from my sweetheart.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

EDIT TO ADD: Brak, for context.

OK, so yes, it is teh funny to gawk at the Ohio GOP gubernatorial primary these days. A frequent lunchtime topic of conversation at my office is just how much more painful it could be to watch Ken Blackwell and Jim Petro try to outdo one another. The spectacle is something we should probably be greatful for, because for the moment, it’s taken away some of the attention on just how pathetically inept the Ohio Democratic primaries are about to become.

Three candidates in the gubernatorial primary? Nope; after an embarrassing round of “we’re not really trying to make this endorsement process difficult for anyone” (see, for instance, ODP Chair Chris Redfern actually calling a blogger to reassure her that they’re not trying to make Fingerhut drop out of the race), lo and behold, Fingerhut’s out. (Not that I think he had much of a chance in the primary, anyway, but come on, it’s a primary.)

Then there’s the now-contested race between Paul Hackett and longtime Congressman Sherrod Brown for the chance (chance!) to run against Mike DeWine in November — Hackett declared first, Brown later only when he sensed some vulnerability in DeWine’s seat. Only now there’s pressure on Hackett to drop out of the Senate race and go back to Cincinnati to run against Jean Schmidt again, leaving the field clear for Brown — which is suddenly trumpeted as “Hackett definitely out” from some quarters. (No definite response from the Hackett campaign yet.)

Oy. Bickering over who should go to which race in order to make it “easy” for the party’s preferred candidates kind of, I don’t know, defeats the purpose of the primary, yes? Save it for November, guys.

(Chris‘s on-the-money post on the subject is what spurred all of this tonight, so start there and work your way through the links. Worthwhile reading.)

UPDATE: Hell, I hadn’t even finished the last post edit and he dropped out.