Long time, no see..

 Does this thing still work?

Who is at fault?

I recently overheard a discussion about a young man who injured his foot under a fairly unusual set of circumstances. He suffered a broken foot, the fracture being just below the ankle on the outside of the foot, however it was the way in which he broke the ankle that was the focus of the conversation. Specifically, some interesting questions about who is liable and/or responsible for picking up the tab for the young man's medical expenses, which included a visit to the emergency room, to office visits with an orthopedist with at least one more scheduled, x-rays, a cast, crutches and an Aquashield water-proof cast protecter (a device used to keep casts from getting wet while showering and/or from rain).

The young man was enjoying some adult beverages with his friends at a one of the popular establishments in the college town in which he lives (he is a 21 year old senior in college, for what it's worth). When closing time rolled around, a bar employee hastily ushered everyone out of the high-ceiling second-floor establishment and onto the staircase leading to the exit. This created a crowd of people near the top of the staircase.

One of the more inebriated gentlemen towards the back of the pack stumbled, creating a domino effect of people tumbling down the stairs. The young man who sustained the broken foot was positioned toward the front of the pack when the collision occurred, and sustained the injury during the fall - possibly due in part to the weight of the other people who fell on top of him as his foot was positioned awkwardly due to the fall.

The question that was being debated was whether or not the bar should be held liable for the young man's medical expenses incurred as a direct result of the injuries he sustained in a fall that occurred under circumstances in which an unsafe number of people were herded onto a staircase by employees of the establishment. Does the fact that employees of the establishment in a sense were responsible for the crowd at the top of the stairs that prompted the fall render them liable for the medical bills for injuries to patrons hurt in the fall?

At first glance, this seems like a fairly easy question. However, there are other factors that could have contributed to the man's broken foot. For example, was the man getting sufficient amounts of calcium, vitamin d3 and magnesium through his diet and/or supplements? It has long been established that these three nutrients help to built and maintain strong, healthy bones, and that deficiencies of any and/or any combination of the three renders one more vulnerable to osteoporosis, broken bones and a host of other diseases and conditions, especially in the case of vitamin d3 (the form of the vitamin obtained through sunlight and more recently supplements). It has been shown that when people are deficient in vitamin d, the likelihood they'll be stricken with a whole host of diseases, illnesses and other health maladies skyrockets.

Can it be proven that the injury occurred in the fall? Does it have to be proven outright, or would overwhelming circumstantial evidence be sufficient to win a decision in court?

All-in-all, is the young man responsible for footing the entire bill for the more than one thousand dollars in medical expenses incurred as a result of the fall, or should the establishment at which the injury occurred pay for some or all of the man's expenses?

I welcome any and all input from those qualified to answer a question such as the one posed here.

Unruly Women's Threats, Demands: Criminal Fraud or Postpartum Psychosis?

Crazy Postpartum Moms Make Company Rethink Generous Return Policy

By: Fat Lester

This article began as a comment in response to an article written by Jennifer Moyer about postpartum psychosis.

Reading Ms. Moyer's article left me wondering whether or not a disgusting behavior I've experienced at work far too many times is the product of a sociopathic scam artist engaging in criminal, fraudulent behavior; or a mentally ill woman desperately in need of some help. Prior to reading Moyer's article, I had always presumed that the behavior was the former, never even so much as considering the latter.

I work for a company that sells maternity and postpartum supports (orthopedic undergarments designed to provide physical support to women during and post-pregnancy).

We often receive requests for refunds months after women order a maternity support such as the Prenatal Cradle. The obvious suspicion here is that these women want to have their cake and eat it too, using the product until it is no longer needed, then attempting to return it for a full refund after giving birth.

These women all seem to have one thing in common: a mentality that that they deserve and are entitled to receiving their money back despite our company totally fulfilling our obligation for the initial transaction. It's not like these requests come days or weeks after the orders are placed (we do receive such requests, but these often are eligible for an exchange or refund).

The ones that come months afterward are those to which I am referring. The women will call with a tone-of-voice clearly meant to bully the person on the other end of the line. They threaten everything from writing negative reviews to filing chargeback disputes with their credit card companies (we've yet to lose one when they follow-through on these requests). Each time, it appears as though the woman genuinely believes she's the first to ever think of the idea, and thus should be able to pull the wool over our eyes without any problem.

When informed that requests made so long after the initial transaction are ineligible for a refund, they have been known to become so abusive that the owner of the company ordered all customer service personnel to immediately discontinue such calls when the customer becomes abusive and/or threatening.

Anyway, do you think that this behavior would fall into the category of postpartum psychosis? That certainly would explain this rage-fueled mentality that until now we've only been able to explain by writing them off as lunatics, bullies and/or scam artists.

The question is whether or not they planned to attempt to get their money back prior to giving birth, as that would answer the question of whether or not they are simply scam artists who have realized that they can often have their cake and eat it too by threatening online retailers, many of whom simply give in to such uncivilized behavior. My employer stands firm on principle, insisting that such demands constitute fraud, and has even suggested that the act is criminal in nature.

What is your opinion about this? Are these women really merely suffering from a legitimate mental illness or are they simply dishonest scam artists who have figured out how to abuse the system successfully?

Fat Lester: The Novel

I received a spam email from Ebay the other day announcing some contest in which a participant (presumably the winner) could have a character in an upcoming novel named after him or her.

I deleted the email, as it did not interest me in the least. However, it did get me thinking. It's about time someone wrote an entire book about me. Yes, you read that correctly.

It is my humble opinion that an entire book should be written about me. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if opportunistic author were to publish an account of my unusually interesting life, it would constitute a grave travesty and a great disservice to the world.

Imagine if you were to combine Ferris Buhler's Day Off with Forrest Gump, substituting a remarkably good looking guy with a freakishly high IQ in place of Tom Hanks, that would in effect be the story of my (now close to 30 years of) life.

A country boy, son of an Irish immigrant who came to America having taken a vow of poverty as a Catholic priest, who got away with literally everything imaginable while in high school and college, only to rub shoulders with the likes of world leaders, professional athletes, embattled politicians and a list of other famous people way too long to list here - achieving great success and miserable failure all in a span of a couple of years.

Well, that's what would be written on the back of the book cover anyway.

From a financial standpoint, I'm quite poor, and my family came from literally nothing. I live in a remote, rural area that almost no one in the public eye (save for John Goodman, who has a house about 20 miles away) has even heard of - much less had any reason to visit. Also, there's not much about me that really stands out or makes me any more important than any other average Joe (hence the Forrest Gump comparison).

Despite my handsome appearance, women don't seem to be particularly fond of me (I guess I come across as weird --- working on a computer for 14 hours a day will do that to you). Despite the fact that I work 80 hours a week, I'm still pennyless. That said, I have had a couple of near-misses, any one of which would have made me a multi-millionaire had God, nature, the Devil and/or bad luck not intervened.

For example, I was due to sign a contract with the Planet Beach corporation, a worldwide tanning salon franchise corporation, that would have guaranteed me almost two million dollars for about six months worth of work, on August 29, 2005. That wouldn't have been a big deal had both myself and Planet Beach been based out of New Orleans, LA. August 29, 2005 was the day the levees broke, flooding the warehouse that contained all of the $4 million of merchandise the company was going to allow me to sell at a 50-50 split. To add insult to injury, the lady with whom I had negotiated the contract did not return to work after the storm.

Less than a year later, I had built an online empire selling medical equipment via an Ebay Store, had achieved the #1 overall ranking in all of the major search engines for my primary and dozens of secondary keyword targets, and was poised to seize control of the online retail market for the medical equipment industry, only to watch the business fall apart after selling WAY more than the company for whom I was employed was able to handle, both infrastructurally speaking as well as from a personnel standpoint. Once again, I had to postpone my target age for retirement from 25 to 30 - a number that in less than two months I will again have to adjust, this time probably to 35. If I'm not a multimillionaire by then, there's a good chance I'll just give up and try to reinvent myself as a 21st century John Galt.

That is why when looking back on it, I find it so remarkable that I've literally met hundreds of people, any one of whom most folks would consider themselves lucky to shake hands with. I don't particularly relish these opportunities as would most, and I certainly do not go out of my way in the slightest in order to facilitate these meetings. Yet, nonetheless they happen, and with an inexplicable degree of frequency.

In any case, if anyone reading this happens to know any author(s) who'd like to make a novel out of a true story of a normal dude who has lived more in 30 years than most people would in several lifetimes, please put them in touch with me.

My story is just too good not to be told and preserved for all to see long after my time here has ended.

Fun Zappers Hand-Held Bug Zappers Make Killing Insects Fun

I moved into a new apartment a little over a month ago. The apartment is a dream-come-true, however that is not to say it is not without its own share of problematic issues.

Before I get to the drawbacks of living here, I'd like to state a few of the positives in order to put everything into perspective. First, the building is basically a one-room apartment that was converted from a boat house into a livable space. Two rooms if you count the bathroom. It literally overlooks a tributary of the Tchefuncte River near Covington, Louisiana.

The balcony (and the majority of the apartment) was literally built out over the water. What used to be a boat house was built on top of a garage with slightly over half of the building hovering over a boat slip (a human-dug extension of the river/canal on private property that exists for the purpose of parking a resident boat). The part that is out over the water is supported by reinforced wooden pilings.

The problem is that with all of this wood (specifically the shed, the bottom-side of the floor of the apartment overlooking the boat slip, and the inside of the apartment above the ceiling), wasps and hornets have found the place to be a haven of sorts, with an ideal environment for them to build their nests. With all of the wood that is sheltered from the weather but technically not inside the living area of the apartment, the building is capable of supporting several dozen wasp and hornet nests simultaneously.

With the river below (and in particular its banks), the wasps have an ample food supply to support as many colonies as they decide to found.

Needless to say, I wasn't just going to sit back and allow these pesky insects to dominate my domicile. No, regardless of where I choose to reside, I am the master of my domain, and I refuse to allow a pack of stinging flies to take that away from me. Before they had even had a chance to sting me, I had already committed to fighting back and attempting to reclaim what was now my property.

While I was committed to winning this war by any means necessary, if I could achieve my objectives without the use of toxic chemicals and poisons such as wasp and hornet killer, which inevitably are inhaled by the person spraying them more often than I was comfortable with.

A traditional bug zapper wouldn't work, because these were some smart insects I was dealing with, and I just couldn't envision wasps and hornets flying into a hanging bug zapper in such numbers that they were eventually eradicated from the property. I needed a more personalized approach.

Luckily for me (not so much so for the wasps), I came upon a device known as a Fun Zapper. Fun Zappers are battery-powered, electronic tennis racquet bug zappers that can be swung like a tennis racquet in the pursuit of killing bugs. Within moments of laying eyes upon the device, I knew the Fun Zapper was the solution to my wasp problem.

One lazy Saturday I made it a point to kill as many of the flying, stinging insects as I possible could. Between myself and a friend who was there assisting, we killed at least 44 hornets and wasps, and largely rid the place of the pesky flies. Now, my apartment is peaceful again.

I can finally step outside on my balcony without being greeted by angry wasps who get up in my face and demand to know who I am and what my business is inside of their territory. My apartment is now my territory, and I owe it all to this convenient and fun electric tennis racquet bug zapper.

Stolen Van Crashes Into Uptown Home While Tenants Play GTA Inside

This from the 'you can't make this stuff up' category: The following is a true story of an incident that took place while I was living in uptown New Orleans while attending college in late 2002 or 2003.

Seven or eight years ago, I was attending school in New Orleans and renting the downstairs of a house near the uptown campus.  One cold night while my roommates and I were inside playing Grand Theft Auto on Playstation 2, a stolen van flattened the hedges in our front yard before plowing through the side of the house.  It came to a rest just a few feet away from where I was sitting.

Prior to its collision with the house, the van struck two cars while fleeing the scene of the initial theft.  One of the drivers caught up to the van when it came to a stop in the side of the house.  The driver of the stolen vehicle -- an overweight middle-aged woman -- attempted to flee the scene on foot but was successfully pursued by the driver of one of the hit-and-run victims.  The driver whose car was struck caught up to the woman and tackled her, and then held her down until police arrived.

The photo above is meant to help the reader envision what the scene looked like from the vantage point of my roommates and I.  It was not taken at the crime scene described in this post.