Of all the places you might expect to find a hidden cell phone camera taking video of men using the washroom, who would ever think it could happen at a place called We Spy?
On Monday, the Tarpon Springs Police Department said a customer was using the men’s restroom at the “We Spy Coffee & More” shop, located at 505 Dodecanese Blvd., when they noticed they were being recorded by a camera placed underneath the sink.
“it was an iPhone that was propped underneath the sink and it was upside down. He picked the phone up and he looked at it and he saw that it was actually actively making a video recording,” said Detective John Melton.
Bonus: the employee who is said to have hidden it could be called Spy for short.
The victim confronted 31-year-old Spyridon Voulgarakis, who is an employee of the store. Authorities said Voulgarakis later admitted to hiding the camera and recording other men using the restroom.
“Voulgarakis became nervous, tried to get his phone back and ended up battering victim in the process,” said Detective Melton.
Knifepoint robbery goes poorly is a story that comes up fairly regularly. But knifepoint robbery goes poorly because the victim recognizes the perpetrator as his dad? I think that might be a new one.
The 17-year-old victim had used the cash machine close to his home to withdraw £10.
He saw a hooded man dressed in dark clothing with a snood over his face lurking nearby.
Prosecutor Carrie Stevens told Glasgow Sheriff Court: “As he put his card in his pocket and took the cash from the machine, he turned left and felt something against the left side of his face.
“He was pinned up against the wall by the neck.
“The boy felt a large kitchen knife pressed against his face.
“The accused stated: ‘Give me it. Give me it now’.”
The victim instantly identified his dad from his voice and eyes.
The stunned boy said: “Are you serious? Do you know who this is?”
The attacker replied: “I don’t give a f*** who it is.”
The victim pulled down the snood revealing his dad’s face and said: “What are you doing?”
The man responded: “I’m sorry, I’m desperate.”
His son fled the scene and told his gran of his ordeal before police were alerted.
Dad initially denied he was the culprit, but eventually thought better of it and pled guilty to attempted robbery and possession of a knife in a public place. He was sentenced to a year and two months in jail, which may be a safer place than home since as his lawyer pointed out, “His mother, brother and son are all extremely angry at him.”
It’s hard for me to sit here, especially these days, and bag on anyone for wanting to remove sadness, negativity and pain from their lives. I will say, however, that in my experience, simply pouring some of the alcohol from the bottle into myself rather than onto something that I’m trying to set on fire in order to burn all that bad stuff away has generally worked out fairly well for me. Not once has doing so resulted in me setting my apartment building on fire, leaving six of its units uninhabitable in the process.
As the fire was being investigated, Moss approached police and claimed she had started it, the affidavit alleges.
When questioned by police and fire crews, she claimed she “intentionally used a Bic lighter to ignite a tree of life, which was placed inside a cauldron near her bedroom closet. According to Crystal, it was difficult to ignite the tree of life, so she poured a bottle of alcohol on it to speed up the process. Crystal said the intent was to burn away the negative energy, sadness and pain in her life. According to Crystal, she wanted to burn the universe, but didn’t want to hurt anyone,” according to the affidavit.
Police said Moss claimed she did not attempt to warn any of her neighbors but did bang on the garage door of the nearby fire department.
At the time the story was published, police were considering charging her with arson. That sounds pretty negative. May be time to start worrying if you’re in the area.
There was a time when something like the United States Secretary of Education not knowing the difference between technology and steak sauce would be remembered and ridiculed for years, like Dan Quayle and his “potatoe”. But nowadays? Barely registers. There really are just too many goofy ass motherfuckers in this timeline.
“I heard, I think it was a letter or a report that I heard this morning, I wish I could remember the source, but that there is a school system that’s going to start making sure that first graders or even pre-k’s have A1 teaching every year, starting that far down in the grades,” McMahon said.
“And that’s just a wonderful thing. Kids are sponges. They just absorb everything,” McMahon continued. “So it wasn’t all that long ago that we’re going to have internet in our schools. Now, okay, let’s see A1 and how can that be helpful? How can it be helpful in one-on-one instruction? How can it be helpful in absorbing more information for those fast learners? It can be more one-on-one directed. And those are the kinds of things and innovations that I want to see continue to develop.”
I’m going to go ahead and blame the rampant shittiness that has been life the last few years for it, but I’m still kinda disappointed in myself for not having gotten around to listening to Dolly Parton’s “Rockstar” album even though it came out like two damn years ago.
Here she is, from that album, covering “What’s Up?” with Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes doing some background vocals. It’s quite good.
You’ll likely notice a couple of lyric changes. “All of these years” instead of “25 years” which makes sense since Dolly hasn’t been 25 for a long time, and “I take a deep breath and I wonder why” instead of “get real high” which also makes sense if you’re one of those folks who still gets twitchy about anything that might be a drug reference here in the 2020s. I’m not sure how she herself feels about it, but changing it for the sake of her usual audience is an understandable enough call regardless of how silly it is.
I don’t understand this thing lately where a mistake is made, someone gets angry, the mistake is fixed, but then the angry person feels the need to cause a disturbance anyway.
Also, the best chain restaurant biscuits are Red Lobster’s and it’s not close, but the ones at Popeyes aren’t bad, in case you were wondering.
A woman drove her SUV into a Georgia Popeyes building after the manager said she became angry over a missing order of biscuits Saturday, according to an incident report filed by the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office.
The manager said that prior to the crash, restaurant staff gave 50-year-old Belinda Miller biscuits to rectify the error, but she was still not happy and “…would drive her vehicle into the building.”
According to the incident report, a witness who allegedly waited in line with Miller told them to hurry and get their order “because she was coming back.”
Miller did return, according to the incident report, and allegedly drove her SUV into the chicken restaurant, narrowly missing an 18-year-old employee.
The vehicle crashed through part of a wall, along with the doors of the building. Miller then continued to force her vehicle another four feet inside the building until debris made it impossible to go further, according to warrants filed.
Back in March, our friend Jason (the one with the book), was a guest on The Agenda with Steve Paikin. During the segment he talked about that book, and also shared some stories from his rather interesting life. You can watch it here:
Jason Dunkerley was born with a condition that has rendered him blind his entire life. And yet, somehow, he has managed to represent Canada at five Paralympic Games and numerous other international events as a runner. How he does that, not to mention negotiating the obstacles in the rest of his life, is the subject of his new memoir. It’s called “Visions of Hope: Running Towards My Own Truth”.
Speaking of The Agenda, word came down last week that the show would be closing up shop at the end of June. I wouldn’t count myself as a regular viewer, but I did watch. It was an important show that not only covered the big news in Ontario, but also gave a voice to people who aren’t always given one. I hope that whatever replaces it will keep doing that going forward.
So here we are, the day before another election and I’m finally writing one of these posts. I usually try to write it before the advance polls, but the advance polls were mostly across Easter weekend and I was gone for Easter. Plus, for this election, there aren’t great accessible voting options for anyone who’s blind. Provincial elections have them, municipal elections have them, but the federal elections can’t get it together, and they barely try.
Here are the list of voting options at the polls:
you can bring a friend to help you vote or you can get a poll worker to help you vote.
they do have large print ballots, but no braille.
there’s the good old braille template, which consists of a piece of metal with braille numbers that must be lined up with the ballot properly. Oo oo, if you show up on election day, which is exactly when most folks who might need a little extra help are least likely to go vote, you can get a braille list of candidates with the numbers that are on the metal template thing. But if you show up in advance, no braille list for you.
Signature guides, magnifiers with lights and screens to help with glare.
I swear I saw the same old thing about allowing people to use their phone as an accessibility device, but I can’t find it.
And that’s it, that’s all. It’s not nothing, but notice that a lot of those help out folks with low vision. But all someone with no vision really has is “We’ll help you” or “your friend can help you.” Even if I do the template thing, I still need all the stuff read off, and I need them to line up the ballot properly.
Once again, when we went to vote in advance, we expressed disappointment that the municipalities and the province have got it together, so it’s sad that the federal elections can’t manage it. We got told a bunch of excuses about how they couldn’t possibly manage it for the whole country. Garbage! Purchase the machines, make them available, program them, end of story. They’ve been around for 19 years. Figure it out! I’m sure the company who makes them would be happy to sell them.
So instead, we had to watch as poll workers hoped our friend who drove us to the poll would help us vote, and then when we said no, they agreed to help us. They were reasonably friendly, but it still felt crappy to have to hope it was lined up correctly and have no way of confirming it. So we voted last week, at least we tried to.
For anyone who hasn’t voted yet, please vote tomorrow. If you never got your voter card, you can check where your polling station is by going to Elections Canada and entering your postal code. It does this weird thing where it slaps the map to the polling station over the page so you have to close it to read the name of the station, but it is there. It basically says at this point, the only way to vote is to go to your designated polling station and vote tomorrow.
It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these. Somehow, I’ve still been babbling lots in the night, so here’s another batch of what in the world is Carin talking about in her sleep?
First, I said in the last one that I’d gotten a new mask and I was hoping for some peace for Steve. I don’t know what was up with this mask but it didn’t seem to fit as well as usual, so it wasn’t long before we had more jabber.
I’ll cut her a little slack on this one because of the sinus medicine she was on, but last night Carin woke me up three times with some variation of “No! Stop! A huge mistake has been made! Something is way out of line here! I must fix it right away! It’ll be quick! I promise!”
I’m pretty sure she wanted to shut her machine off, because she was trying to get up or at least move her body in its direction every time.
Thankfully she was easy to talk down. Just had to put an arm on her and ask what was wrong. As usual, she couldn’t really tell me.
I can’t remember if it was the second or third one, but she also made a strange “eeeeeeeee” noise that I don’t think I’ve heard her make before and that I can’t possibly do justice to in writing.
I have no idea what was out of line, but the weird part is my only memory is of him putting an arm on me and asking me what’s wrong. And I only remember that happening twice. I felt the arm and thought “Oh crap what have I done now?” The second time, I thought “Again? How much time has passed between the last one?” But I have no recollection of the third one. Steve says it all happened within about 3 hours.
Carin says she was having nightmares last night, but the one time I heard her talking it seemed like she was having a good bit of fun.
Carin: *unintelligible mumbling* “hahahaha. Yeah. Whatever happened to that kid’s face…”
Me: “What?”
Carin: “Oh nothing. Seems my head is dreaming itself off about something or other.”
There was about a month of peace and quiet, and then…
Carin (talking to…someone): “Oh yeah, for sure. It was just like the time when somebody did something really stupid. Remember that really stupid thing that happened?”
Me (awakening to this conversation): “Who did something stupid?”
Carin: “I’m pretty sure it was me, and I don’t think it happened.”
And then another month until…
“I guess I’ll just keep pulling on this. I’m so deeply involved that I feel I must.”
Your guess is as good as mine.
Once again, I have 0 clue and 0 memory. I don’t know what was up with my sleep that night.
“There is some good news, everyone. the guy that they turned on stupidly is ok. What happened was…what happened was…what happened was…nothing hap hap hap hap happa happa happened to him.”
Whenever I read that one, I can’t stop laughing. Although he also said I started yelling something and then apologized in my sleep. I truly am very annoying once I travel to the land of Nod. And the annoying continues with…
Carin: “Please! Hold on! Stop! For goodness sake! Will someone please listen to me!”
Me: “What’s going on?”
Carin: “Someone was about to trip over a big long tangly cord!”
When he described this one to me, it was like I was full on screaming. And according to the dates on this, I was not done that night because I unleashed this one:
“Yeah. It was going eeeeeeeeee! Eeeeeeeeee! Eeeeeeeeeee! A bit like that other thing, but it was very strange.”
She did not elaborate.
I’m always filled with dread when the morning starts with “Do you remember what you were dreaming that made you say…?”
Thankfully, after that, there was no captured chatter for a month and a half or so. And then…
Not sure what got into Carin the other night, but 3 or was it 4 times I awoke to her babbling about something or other and either flopping around like a sleepy fish or getting ready to shut off the machine. I never managed to catch enough of what she was saying to write any of it down, but there still ended up being a decent story in the end.
I wake up to some chatting and to her starting to roll and lean so she can hit her button. I do the thing where I put an arm on her since it often calms her down. She stops talking and freezes in mid movement for a few seconds. How long is she going to stay like that, I wonder to myself. Then, all of a sudden, she says “Squish!” and melts back onto the bed. Didn’t hear a peep out of her for the rest of the evening.
I don’t know if this is written down, but another time, Steve said I started jabbering and he put his arm on me and I made a sound like I was powering down. It was as if whatever word I was saying just came to a stop and started being spoken with a descending pitch. So weird.
Carin, not long after we both had started to fall asleep: “I’m a stupidface!”
Me: “Why are you a stupidface?”
Carin: “Because I’m stupid!”
Me: “Why are you stupid?”
Carin: “Because my feet are cold.”
Me: “How does that make you stupid?”
Carin: “Well…it’s like…because…it’s just…I keep dreaming a bunch of strange stuff.”
Me: “You’re sleeping, aren’t you?”
She then comes to enough to realize she’s in trouble and starts laughing. At least that’s what it seemed like.
For the record, her feet were freezing.
I think maybe I can explain this one…ish. I went to bed feeling kind of dumb. My belly was a bit unsettled and I was cursing myself for not having Rolaids or something on hand to help with that, and even when I was all bundled up, my feet would not get warm and I hadn’t gotten up to put on slippers, and I think I’d caught a hair in my mask, and I had this new song by the Wolves of Glendale in my head about somebody’s parents being ashamed of him and he’d just turned 33. And I guess that’s what my sleep brain came up with.
We had about a month and a bit of quiet, and then I came out with this weird one.
“Oh man, there’s that weird sound again.”
“What weird sound?”
“The one that comes with all of the fake songs!”
Pretty sure Carin caught herself talking last night and let her own self have it. I woke up to something like “Wait! What was that? I just heard it oh shut up you weirdo!” And then she stopped and kept sleeping like nothing had happened.
This one makes me laugh every time I read it.
“Oh good god!”, whispered Carin after midnight last night.
Before I had a chance to think much about why she may have done this, she began to sing. “All I really need is a light in my face…”
She came to part way through the serenade, but can’t decide if the light she thought she was seeing in the window was real or a dream.
Sometimes I do wake up and feel like there’s a light shining on me. Sometimes I get really freaked out because we’re way up high. Where the hell could the light be coming from? Just when I start to think about getting up to investigate, it’s gone. I guess this time I decided to sing about it.
And then I got a new mask and didn’t say a word until…
I got quite the welcome to bed last night.
“SON OF A BITCH!”, screamed Carin as I walked into the room. “I’ve got a right mess to fix here.”
“You do?”, I asked, suddenly much more awake.
“I sure do,” she said.
She was half way sitting up, playing with her sleep mask the way that she does when there’s no real problem.
“I don’t think you do,” I told her.
“I do too!”, she emphatically assured me.
“No, you don’t,” I countered.
“but but I do!”
“Ok,” I said as I walked closer to her. “What needs fixing?”
She thought. Then she thought some more.
“Hubbidda buh,” she finally answered. “I guess nothing.”
And we all slept happily ever after, or at least until the alarm went off.
Me, as Carin is sitting up: “What are you doing?”
Carin: “I’m waiting for something to fix.”
Me: “What’s broken?”
Carin, *grabs my hand and puts it on her sleep mask*: “This little fella right here!”
Me: “It looks fine to me.”
Carin: “I guess nothing’s wrong. I made a mistake. Sorry.”
*falls back asleep*
Carin, as I finished doing my best to get back into bed after almost tripping over Domino who decided that the one little path to my side was a better sleeping spot than his bed, which is right next to it: “Don’t worry. It’s not hooked up to the point where it’s going to go all kerpow! It doesn’t have all its pluggy inny things. that would be different.”
The actual noise she made was much funnier than kerpow, but I’m not sure it can be spelled using our existing letters.
This last one makes me giggle because I have a friend who wonders if I talk all the time in sound effects. Apparently, I even do it in my sleep.
“It’s so much more fun to imagine all the ships there. I like that a lot better.”
I wish I could remember what made me dream that. Was I on a cruise?
I think Carin might have been dreaming about moving furniture last night.
“Alright everyone…go! Go go go go, and…stop. Ok, now go. Ok stop. Set it there.”
I feel like she said something else funny while this was happening, but I was half asleep and am having trouble remembering.
Again I have no idea.
“Look out look out look out look out look out!”, yelled Carin as she flailed about while I tried to roll over. “The giant sheet is still there on the scoob bed. The one from when we took a snooze.”
“There’s nothing on the bed that shouldn’t be here,” I told her.
“Well. I guess I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about then.”
She didn’t say that last bit as if she was annoyed that I didn’t believe her. It sounded like ok then, I was wrong. Never mind.
And “scoob bed” is just my best guess, of course. But that’s definitely what it sounded like.
Good god. Once again, I break your sleep. Scoob bed, eh? I’ve heard Domino described as looking like Scooby Doo, but since I was talking about our bed, I have no idea. I did this one just after getting back from a trip to Anaheim. I wonder how much of this crap I did while I was away on the trip. Thankfully, I was in my own room.
I gave us a month of peace and then…
“It’s a wrap, so it’s wrapped. It’s different from all the others. It goes this way and that way. It’s up, it’s down. It goes fshfshfshfshfsh, fshfshfshfshfshfshfshfsh … toomf.”
Surprisingly there were no hand actions to go along with whatever this was.
Did she drop a sandwich? That would explain the toomf, but why would a sandwich go fshfshfsh?
First kerpow, now fsh fsh toomf. The sound effects continue.
And Steve hasn’t had a chance to write this one down, but apparently I Niagara tagged him the other night. I woke him up by exclaiming that there’s a problem. Of course there was no problem, but I was insistent. I grabbed his hand and said there was a problem right here and put it on my chin. Of course there was nothing wrong, but I told him to “Look again!” He said that my mask looked fine, and I said no, and tapped my chin again with his hand. He said “That’s your chin, and what is the problem?” In a deep, cynister voice I said “A hole!” And that’s when I woke up and heard him say, “No. That’s your chin. There’s no hole.” and I went “Oh!” and went back to sleep.
Maybe my theory about the mask isn’t as good as I thought. Look at the string of jabber I’ve done since getting the last one. Sure, I went for almost two months without babbling, but it’s still pretty bad.
I think it’s weird. Whenever I remember my dreams, those are the ones where I don’t talk. But there’s all these other ones where I have no idea. I almost wish I could remember those ones too.
And that’s a wrap for this edition of Carin babbles in her sleep and disturbs Steve over and over again. Hopefully the next one will take longer to put together.