especially considering how expensive it is to keep someone in prison for life, couldn't we try just buying him a mannequin?

From the NYT:

FERNDALE, Mich. (AP) -- A man who has a history of smashing windows to indulge his fetish for female mannequins could draw a long prison term for his latest arrest. Ronald A. Dotson, 39, of Detroit faces up to life in prison if convicted of a charge of attempted breaking and entering at a cleaning-supply company in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale. [...]

Dotson was arrested Oct. 9 after police say he smashed a window at a cleaning-supply company to get at a female mannequin dressed in a black and white French maid's uniform. He had been out of prison for less than a week.

Dotson was arrested in Ferndale in July 2000 and later convicted for breaking and entering at a women's clothing shop to get at a mannequin in a pink dress with bobbed hair.

Ferndale police also arrested Dotson in 1993 after finding him in an alley behind a woman's store with three lingerie-clad mannequins.

the boy detective fails, again

Lucy, as much as she's nice as 3.14159265, and I are now locked in public dispute over the penultimate page of The Boy Detective Fails (see update to her post and footnote and update to mine). TBDF is one of the few books to earn a full five kiwi rating in Lucy's antipodal book-rating system. So as not to leave interested bystanders out in the literary cold, I have scanned the relevant page for your perusal here (don't worry, it's not a spoiler):



If you do like this page, then you will definitely love The Boy Detective Fails, given that this is the worst part. Indeed, you can feel free to follow its instructions by printing the scanned page, finding someone's hand to hold, reading the passage again, and making the requested drawing on your printout. Even better: instead of writing the name of that chump whose hand you're holding, write mine! C'mon!

Meanwhile, here are a couple of pages from The Boy Detective Fails in better times, selected nonrandomly but not especially deliberately from somewhere in the middle:



BTW, I may dislike the second-to-last page, but the ending itself is pretty good.

resolution for 2007

(my first experience with the tradition of trying to eat 12 grapes in the first 12 seconds of the new year. i thought it would be harder and hold some risk of my choking and dying. it's easy. plan for next year: bigger, more treacherous grapes.)

Shorter posts.