Not only do we have never-ending traffic jams, high taxes, and a chronic bad attitude, but we also have some pretty loathsome characters who call this state home. Here are but a couple.

The Happy, Bragging Killer
His name is Noah Cuebas, and he is a convicted drug dealer who was released from prison in October 2004 on probation to live in a residential drug treatment program. While out on probation (and being sought for not reporting to his probation officer), he was picked up as a suspect in a carjacking. (He had originally been picked up the day after the crime, but fled from authorities.) The victims of the carjacking were a man and woman. The carjacker robbed the man, kicked him out of the car and drove the 22-year-old woman to a church parking lot in Newark, where he shot her in the head, leaving her in a coma.

When questioned by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, he freely admitted to the carjacking, demanded that his confession be videotaped, and boasted about other crimes he had committed while on probation. He wanted to be sure to get proper credit for all the crimes he committed during that time. He seemed particularly thrilled that the FBI had been brought into the case.

Here’s a sample of what this fine fellow was up to (in addition to the carjacking) while walking freely among us:

He fatally shot a 20-year old man in the back of the head and then proceeded to use the victim’s cell phone to call relatives of the dead man and threaten them. In one of the calls to the victim’s brother, he bragged about how the victim had begged for his life, and then he proceeded to give the brother directions (real-time) to the victim’s body. The brother of the victim stated:

As I got to the end of the alleyway, I turned and saw my brother’s boots. And this guy was saying in the phone, “You see him? You see him?” [the brother of the victim] said. He left messages saying he killed my brother because he owed him money and that he was going to kill me and my other brothers, too.

In March 2005, he sneaked into a man’s house and shot him in the face. Somehow, the man survived.

The following month, he forced a 14-year old runaway into a basement where he sexually assaulted her and then shot her in the head.

I cannot see any reason why a rabid animal such as this should not be put down. Unfortunately, it is not likely to happen, even though New Jersey still has a death penalty statute.

Read the whole thing.

Yet Another Crooked Pol.
Sure, another crooked politician in Jersey is hardly news, but when John “Fazz” Zambrano, 44, a Long Branch Councilman, pleaded guilty to extortion before a federal judge, he was one of “nearly two dozen public officials in Monmouth County who have been accused or convicted of corruption in the past two years”. One of the others who previously pled guilty to taking bribes was Zambrano’s brother. They each took money from an FBI undercover operative posing as a demolition contractor.

It is worth noting that certain Monmouth County towns are embroiled in eminent domain proceedings involving the condemning the property of residents in order to convey the land to private developers. No opportunities for corruption there, right?

Sometimes I could just puke.

Check this one out. Makes me want to join in on the chorus.

Via Sistaweb

Jay at Accidental Verbosity is hosting a very special edition of the Carnival of the Vanities. Not only is it the 200th edition of the Carnival, but a portion of it is specifically dedicated to submissions about the Late, Great Rob “Acidman” Smith of Gut Rumbles.

There is some great reading there this week. Go take a look.

Dear Mr. Dogshit:

At the outset, and in the interest of fairness, I would like to thank you for not walking your dog in front of my house and letting your dog shit all over my sidewalk. I’m sure that my neighbors on either side of my property thank you as well.

Having said that, I believe that you, sir, are an inconsiderate swine.

Oh, don’t pretend to be shocked. Over the past several years, I have seen you early in the morning taking your dog for a “walk” and permitting him/her to shit liberally on your own sidewalk, where you just leave these piles of doggie dung as a little surprise for the poor bastards who happen to walk past your house. I gather that your Dogshit Removal Plan is to have the aforesaid poor bastards remove the disgusting masses bit by bit on the bottom of their shoes. Perhaps you just choose to wait for rain. In either case, you need your ass kicked.

A while back, before I became aware of your curious “Dogshit Removal Plan”, I happened to step in one of the many caca mines all over the sidewalk, which you seem think are just fine. I have since become aware of your “Screw-Everybody-It’s-My-Sidewalk” attitude and, as such, when I come to your stretch of sidewalk during my morning walk, I am ever so vigilant so as not to step on one of the many piles of sidewalk shit that seem to bother you not one goddamned bit.

Let me point out to you, Mr. Dogshit, that the sidewalks are there subject to the town’s easement, for the purpose of permitting pedestrians to walk in front of your property, presumably free from having to do a daunting dance to avoid stepping in any number of shit piles. Let me also remind you that, pursuant to a local ordinance, you have a duty to clean up the dogshit generated by your dog on the sidewalk, irrespective of where the sidewalk happens to be.

I am rather fortunate, because I have come to learn of your thoughtless behavior, but pity the hapless pedestrian who does not expect to walk into a minefield of dogshit. I offer a particularly generous helping of pity for the person who must walk on “your” sidewalk at night. The odds of such a person stepping into one of your fecal treats approaches unity.

Mind you I don’t blame your dog, for it is you, Mr. Dogshit, who trained him/her to shit all over the sidewalk.

Don’t bother trying to deny any of this, Mr. Dogshit, because Ol’ Jimbo the techno-tard, now has one of those spiffy cell phones with a camera in it. I have learned how to use it, and I wear that Star Trek-like device in the mornings when I do my walk.

The good news for you, you inconsiderate turd, is that the walkway to the Municipal Court remains dogshit free.

You absolutely cannot make this shit up.

I really don’t know a damned thing about meteorology. Weather reports are, for me, the ultimate soporific. Cold fronts, warm fronts, falling barometric pressure, rising barometric pressure, and isobars make my hair hurt. By contrast, weather itself gets my attention.

So here we are in Jersey with temperatures in the nineties (and higher) over the last three days, and all of a sudden I hear “bang, crack, bang, crack, crack, crack” as if someone were shooting buckshot at the house. I look out on the deck, which just five minutes earlier was a blistering inferno the surface would burn your bare feet, and it is covered with little chunks of ICE, each about the size of half a marble. Farookin’ hail!

WTF??

I think I know more about computers than I know about weather.

I believe the temperature in Jersey was tickling 100 (and may even have gotten above that). It was a good day to spend indoors in air-conditioned comfort. I did not spend the day indoors in air-conditioned comfort. Instead, I played golf brought my golf clubs to a golf course and swung them a lot, accomplishing essentially nothing other than proving that owning golf clubs does not make one a golfer.

Yes, it was an outing sponsored by a local organization, and I (along with three others) had promised to show up. Everyone tee’d off at 12:30, not early in the morning when the temperature was a balmy 85 degrees, but at 12:30 when the temperature and humidity were raging.

I must have turned two gallons of water into sweat. Speaking of sweat, I tried a Gatorade for the first time. My God, that stuff tastes like sweat. But, I guess that’s the idea.

The wedding was terrific. The ceremony was performed by the Groom’s (David’s) brother-in-law, who masterfully mixed humor and religion. The reception was a huge, classy shindig, which was followed by a group of the Usual Suspects meeting in The Original Bill’s and the Quietly Sinister Linda’s hotel room until the wee hours of the morning when the vodka finally ran out. It was not unlike a Blogmeet with people packed into a hotel room with plenty of non-stop blabbing and laughing (and drinking adult beverages).

The Original Bill and Linda treated all the guests who stayed at the hotel to a wonderful brunch, which served to dry up the alcohol, awaken tired eyes and kick start the Day Two Party.

After returning from the hotel everyone went home long enough to unpack and then returned to The Deck for some swimming standing around in the pool and doing other water aerobics drinking more vodka. It worked out well, given that the temperature in this neck of the woods was in the nineties.

Now I’m back to the House by the Parkway, more than a bit tired, but I was happy to receive a surprise phone call from this guy, who was on his way to spend more time in the land of our northern neighbors, where lots of folks end their sentences with “ehy?” I hope he gets a chance to visit with Lisa and family again.

Now, I’m gonna try my best to stay awake for Deadwood.

We’ll be attending a wedding later today, and it is a rather special one. David (a Usual Suspect, hisownself), son of Usual Suspects The Original Bill and the Quietly Sinister Linda, is marrying his bride, Jennifer. I believe that this is the first time since TJ’s wedding that virtually all the Usual Suspects will be cleaned up, dressed up, and in the same place at the same time.

Rooms have been booked at a hotel that runs a shuttle to the wedding venue, because an event such as this makes driving home afterward (or even walking straight, for that matter) an absolute impossibility.

It should be one helluva party.

I may not surface until Monday.

Here’s the thing. I am more than overdue for a new computer.

Even writing the words “new computer” gives me a case of the hot squirts. While some people change computers with the ease of changing socks, I am not one of those people.

Still, it’s time.

My current computer is something like 8 years old. It runs Windows 98, and, it has a history of freezing more often than it should, which has been annoying but manageable. Lately, however, things have become more unsettling. More often than not I find myself “holding in the button” to shut the frozen beast down, knowing that, upon restarting, the dreaded Blue Screen will scold me for having “Shut Down Windows improperly”. I’m getting tired of that shit.

Of course, the big question is, “Yo, Jimbo, waddya wanna buy?”

I know that the COMPUTER STORE guys will ask, “Well, Sir, [you old fart] what do you want to do with the computer? [Keep track of your old fart pills?]” I don’t blame them for asking, for every day they have to deal with old farts computer shoppers who think that little people live inside the computer who make computer shit happen. Happily, I know that “little people” don’t make this shit work, but I’ll be damned if I know what does.

OK, so I know that computers aren’t magic boxes, I still have to figure out what the hell to buy.

My current computer is a Dell, and I have read and heard of the horror stories. I have also experienced the Dell Hell firsthand. So, I am starting with the presumption that Dell is out. Compaq? HP? Gateway? (I have a friend who takes two hours to tell you his “Gateway” woes.

Thinking about it makes my farookin’ hair hurt.

To answer the Computer Guy’s question in my own Techno-idiot fashion, here’s what I want. I want a big, badass, super-fast computer that will not become obsolete two minutes after I open the box.

Even if I could settle in on which big, badass, fast computer I want, the real and gnawing fear I have is, once I buy it, setting the farookin’ thing up and getting the shit from this computer to that computer. I have no clue. There isn’t all that much I would want to save, but the things I want to save, I really want to save.

Did you ever read what passes loosely as English in the typical computer Instruction Manual? Even assuming I could understand the “English” in those things, as soon as I see some shit about “drivers” or “ht.access” and “SQL” (WTF?), I get serious sweats.

Hell, I’d rather buy a house.

So, if you happen to live in New Jersey, and you see a guy in a computer store looking like he’s about to barf or have a cyber-seizure, that just might be me. Please just point me to the men’s room and tell me I have great farookin’ hair. I’ll be forever grateful, and I’ll buy you lots of beer.