Criminal Snowflea Tells Cops He Couldn't Freeze

See item one for image source with active clickables.

I'm hungry, but I'm not going to eat until I post this, so you can bet it'll be more rushed and ramshacklier than ever.

1) Tied to our season's Halloween/Death theme, here's a link to a nice round up of Dia de los Muertos items from what claims to be Arizona's home page, but looks to be a partnership of local newspapers and a television station. As I've mentioned before, I love this celebration's associated artwork and sweets and parades and hoopla. I'm a big fan of celebrating life by shaking the bone rattles. Linked to the image above is information about what items go into composing your own traditional or modern altar for el Dia. I like the traditional better. The modern reminds me too much of a curbside shrine for a thuggy skeezer.

2) In a follow-up to my recent list of outlandish plots gleaned from true life, a suspect has been arrested for killing the wife of the attorney currently defending a woman accused of killing her husband. Say that ten times fast. The suspect is allegedly a stoner con man turned entrepreneur who'd ordered some hydroponic growing equipment to start his weed empire. For some reason, Hempy McTrump became convinced -paranoia perhaps?- that the materials had been delivered to the trailer where the lawyer and his wife were living during the building of their new home. And apparently, allegedly, when the wife said uh-uh can't help you, he may have disbelieved her or just disliked her and beat her to death with a nearby piece of crown molding. The story is growing weirder and sadder as it goes, although for my part, I consider teen fascination with the occult as a pretty typical path for disaffected youth and not a necessary or even common gateway to fraud and murder.

3) Potential victim foils carjacker with hot coffee, and it gets more Apple Dumpling Gang from there.

4) And we finally break from death and true life crime to discuss the amazing wingless snowflea who manufactures his own antifreeze. Scientists hope someday to emulate it for use for organ transplants and even agriculture.