Why females should avoid a girls night out after they are married!..

 

The other night I was invited out for a night with "the girls." I told my husband that I would be home by midnight, "I promise!" Well, the hours passed and the margaritas went down way too easy.

Around 3 a.m., a bit loaded, I headed for home. Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hall started up and cuckooed 3 times. Quickly, realizing my husband would probably wake up, I cuckooed another 9 times.

 

I was really proud of myself for coming up with such a quick-witted solution, in order to escape a possible conflict with him. (Even when totally smashed...3 cuckoos plus 9 cuckoos totals = 12 cuckoos = MIDNIGHT!)

 

The next morning my husband asked me what time I got in, and I told him "Midnight". He didn't seem pissed off at all. Whew! Got away with that one!

 

Then he said, "We need a new cuckoo clock."

 

When I asked him why?, he said ........."Well, last night our clock cuckooed three times, then said, "Oh #OOPS#", cuckooed four more times, cleared it's throat, cuckooed another three times, giggled, cuckooed twice more, and then tripped over the coffee table and farted."

 

 

 

Hello everyone!

 

It’s been awhile since I have posted anything about my career and decided it was time to ask you guys a question. But first, the background ~

 

As you know I have been working as a job coach for mentally disabled adults for the past four months. I was one of four job coaches that were hired back in October 2006 (three girls and one guy) and I am the oldest one by about 2 years and the guy is the youngest by far. We found out after two months that the guy’s girlfriend is also a job coach and most of the time, it wasn’t a problem.

 

Fast forward to about a month ago ~ the girlfriend who is also very young (and stupid sometimes in my humble opinion) started getting too friendly to me. Her downfall was at Wal-Mart about a month ago. This is the only place where there are multiple adults and their job coaches. She was teamed with me for the first time and I felt uncomfortable but couldn’t put my finger on it except that she was asking too many questions both personal and professional. I don’t reveal too much personal information until I am comfortable with you and that you won’t find a way to turn it against me (besides I really am a shy person.) First she was asking me questions about her observations about my adult and how I coach her and then when we made it around the outer parameter of the store (where the adults look for trash and debris) to the front of the store, we met up with the third job coach whose adult now does the cart retrieval and was getting some carts right at the Garden Department. The three of us stood there watching our adults do their job when out of nowhere, J. said, “You know, EVERYONE loves your case notes. It’s just like you are there.”  I shot a look at her in surprise and said, “Excuse me?”  She went on to say that when “they” read my case notes, they love it because it’s just like you were right there. Now you must understand something; in our last job coach meeting in December I actually brought up that question during a discussion. I asked our boss and the “big boss” who reads our case notes because something that I wrote about one of my adults that I was concerned about wasn’t addressed or answered in the meeting. The official answer was just the counselors, the California state department of rehabilitation and on occasion, our immediate boss. Our boss told us that if we had a concern and/or question we were to either call or email our boss. The other job coach who happened to be one of the other job coaches who was hired with me looked horrified as well as she ran off with her “diarrhea of the mouth.” We now had confirmation who the spy was. We had heard that the boss had a spy in the office somewhere since things were being found out about that shouldn’t have been. Now we are not talking about something bad, but stuff that friends talk about. I don’t engage in small talk except when it’s needed about the place of work or our adults. In fact, some people just found out about that beloved and I have no kids and that beloved drives a big rig. Just imagine how hard it was to be around Miss Spy for the next three hours. Then a funny thing happened that same day that proved again how stupid and naïve she really is. There is a display of bananas by the express check stand close to the pharmacy department that gets a ton of people buying bananas on an impulse buy as they check out. The price that day was 48 cents a pound and she looks at me in a serious tone and says, “That’s a good price isn’t it?” I told her no, the grocery store down the street had them on sale for 33 cents a pound. She looked at me, again in a serious tone and said, “But isn’t that per bunch?” It was hard not to laugh right then and there. Apparently her mom does all of the shopping (she is nineteen years old and still lives at home) and hasn’t taken her shopping much if you listen to more of her thoughts about prices. I couldn’t take it anymore and found a way to have our adults split up that day so that she wouldn’t figure out what I was doing. The next day she was scheduled at the same time and got away from here as quickly as possible. When we were together (you must stay together while outside the store for safety) I spoke about TV shows that I watched recently and anything I could think of that would not have a way to get any more personal. Thank god I never had to work with her again.

 

She did something really stupid about two weeks later. In that same job coach meeting in December, we were told different things about our adults and one of them quit after giving four days notice but left after only three days and our company was in trouble because of that. We (the company) signs a contract with the employer that the adult will do the job to that job’s standards and that we, the company will provide a job coach to ensure that. Even knowing this way back then, Miss Spy decided that she was going to quit. Here’s how she did it ~ she heard about another company just down the street who was hiring people to work in their fund raising company for one dollar more an hour. She interviewed on Tuesday, got the job Thursday afternoon, gave notice Friday morning and quit Sunday morning. Now while I was looking for a job and found this one, I came across this company in my search. This is nothing more than a high pressure company that has one side to cold-call companies offering ways to raise money in fund raising and the other side is cold-calling companies looking for products to use in the fund raising. Think of the World’s Best Chocolate and how great that works but find another way that does as well. When I walked into the building, there was a short wall in reception so you could see how the company works and there was a board with names and goals written on them. No one looked older than 25 years old and it looked too much like a boiler room to me so I kept going. I don’t know what she was promised but there is no way she can come back with her tail between her legs to our place. The President of the company made sure of that. I saw her boyfriend a few days ago and asked how she was doing, just making small talk and to get a reaction. He just said that she was doing okay but there wasn’t much enthusiasm in his voice so I guess she must have realized her screw up too late.

 

Anyway, the boss has lost her spy but I think she found a way around that. Since Miss Spy didn’t leave any notice, her assistant had to cover a few shifts one of which was that Sunday. Her assistant, A. worked with me for four hours and it was nice but strange at the same time. Wal-Mart keeps their trash compactors locked and you have to call for an assistant manager to unlock them about every hour which to tell you is a pain in the neck but of course, I keep those thoughts to myself. Well, Mike one of the assistant managers likes to tease my adult S. because she has a little girl voice and squeaks as well when she gets excited about something. Not a mean tease but to hear her laugh. Anyway, she tried to use the intercom to get the manager and when no one came the first time, she tried it again. Mike came in and told her he heard her clearly, which made her smile. They play some pretty good music and after he unlocked the compactor, he stood watching them dump the trash. I was standing behind the adults and A. (the boss’ assistant) was standing off to the side watching us all. With no warning when a really good song came on and he was standing about two feet away from A, he broke out in a dance wiggling his butt big time. That made A. blush (I do mean beet red) and S. break out laughing which is what he wanted. You should have seen the look of horror on A's face! LOL

 

But if she is a way for the boss to see how things are going, she found out a lot of good stuff, the management knows me by name and our adults’ boss and I shake hands every time we see each other. No other job coach gets that privilege, even our boss!

 

Well, today something else happened at Wal-Mart. S. was the only adult working the morning shift and right in the middle of the morning meeting, my cell phone rings. I stepped away from the meeting and see that I need to answer it. It’s my boss’ assistant A. looking for me.  I tell her that we are in the hardware department for the morning meeting. I was busy writing down notes (Sales up 9%!) and write case notes for S. as well using a grocery cart as a table. A. gave me a look of surprise and said she was there to take S. picture for the Wall of Fame. We have 30 adults working in the community and S. didn’t make it to the wall yet so she was there to take a digital picture of her. After the meeting, the three of us walked to the photo department where S. left her blue trash bin so she could take a picture of her with her broom and dustpan. A. then walked with us for a few more minutes and she asked a couple of questions of my adult. She then told me she was going to be at my other location to take that adult’s picture as well. I didn’t care that she was there because I was doing my job well and taking appropriate notes and writing my case notes as I worked. Some job coaches never have any paper, choosing to remember what happened over four-eight hours and write them later. You are paid fifteen minutes per adult to write your case notes and maybe that’s why EVERYONE loves my case notes and not others huh? Anyway, she did show up at the other place where I was working as she promised. I told that adult that she was coming and why so she wouldn’t be surprised. This adult told me that she needed to ask a question of either my boss or her counselor and asked me what to do. I gave her a business card of work and then about a half hour later, A. showed up. My adult told her (after my prompting) about her question and she said that when she went back to the office, she would have her counselor call her. She brought no paperwork or even a pen so I whipped out my notebook that I take my “bullet points” of what’s happened before I write the actual case notes and give her both a Post it and a pen so she could write down the information. You should have seen the look of her face it was priceless! When I told her I was a Girl Scout when I was younger, she just broke out into the biggest smile.

 

Anyway, I am going to close this entry for the moment. Thanks for hanging in and let me know what you think okay Kat?

 

 

Hello everyone!

 

I was surfing the 'net and found this bizarre story that she is going to regret in the morning if she hasn't already!

 

Pop singer Britney Spears goes for new look: shaved head, tattoos

Canadian Press

Published: Saturday, February 17, 2007

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Britney Spears appeared in a tattoo parlour in California's San Fernando Valley with her head shaved completely bald.

Video on KABC-TV showed the newly shorn Spears with tiny tattoos on the back of her neck as she sat Friday night for a new tattoo - a pair of red and pink lips.

"She just wanted something real small on her wrist, something dainty," Max Gott, the tattoo artist at Body and Soul in Sherman Oaks, told the TV station.

"She got some cute little lips on her wrist."

Derrik Snell, who works at the tattoo parlour, said Spears showed up without notice and stayed for about 90 minutes as about 60 fans, photographers and gawkers gathered outside.

"She seemed fine," Snell said.

"I didn't really notice (the hairdo) at first, she had a hood on when she showed up."

Before heading to the tattoo parlour, Spears grabbed an electric clipper and shaved her own head at a San Fernando Valley salon Friday night, CNN reported.

"I tried to talk her out of it. I said: 'Are you sure you're not having a bad day and tomorrow you'll feel differently about it?' salon owner Esther Tognozzi told the network.

"Why don't we wait a little bit?"'

"She said: 'No, I absolutely want it shaved off now.' Next thing I know, she grabbed the buzzer and she went to the back of my salon and she was shaving off her own hair," Tognozzi said.

The appearance came the same day as reports on TV and websites that Spears, who has drawn criticism for her recent partying and sloppy behaviour, had briefly checked into rehab.

Larry Rudolph, Spears' manager, couldn't be reached for comment.

Syndicated entertainment TV show "Extra" first reported Spears had entered a treatment facility. Celebrity website TMZ.com then said the singer had entered a treatment centre but had checked out one day later. Neither revealed their sources.

People magazine's website, citing "a source," said Spears had gone in and out of rehab and identified the facility as Eric Clapton's Crossroads centre in Antigua, in the Caribbean.

"Access Hollywood" then said the reports weren't true but didn't cite a source.

A woman who answered the phone at Crossroads said she couldn't confirm or deny anyone's presence at the facility.

Angelique Uram, a Spears fan who stood on the tattoo parlour's sidewalk for Friday night's spectacle, was aghast at the singer's new look.

"We could see her in the mirror and her head is completely shaved," she told KABC.

"It looks terrible."

Police arrived to control the crowd and helped Spears' bodyguards guide her into a waiting SUV, her head covered by a hooded sweatshirt.

 

Hello everyone!

 

Our neighbor who rarely sends us anything, once again surprised us with some wonderful things that I am going to share before I need to run to work today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hello everyone!

 

Can you say clutter to the ultimate degree?

 

Feb 10, 2007 6:24 pm US/Eastern

 

Hello everyone!

 

This story just "takes the cake" with how stupid people are ~ what do you think?

 

Ah, the Sweet Smell of … a $500,000 Lawsuit

By MATTHEW CHAYES
Special to the Sun
February 12, 2007

A condominium board on the Upper East Side is asking a judge to stop a newly opened Subway restaurant from baking fresh bread, claiming the building is being "inundated with strong and nauseating food odors," causing property values to plummet.

The owner of the franchise, Tae Hyun Shin, 47, said yesterday that he has tried to accommodate his neighbors, offering to reimburse them to dry-clean clothes they say smell as well as installing a $3,500 ventilation system that he says pushes the baking fragrance onto Second Avenue.

The campaign is being spearheaded by a couple who live on the third floor. They allege in a lawsuit filed Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court that the lobby, basement, and stairs of the Waterford Condominium at 300 E. 93rd St. suddenly began smelling almost two weeks ago, after the restaurant opened.

"Defendants have failed to abate the condition, thereby damaging the health and safety of the condominium's unit owners and employees," the suit says.

The building's resident manager, Freddy Alvarez, could smell the "odors, smoke, and vapors" from his 46th floor office, the suit says. For his part, Mr. Shin said the condo board, which seeks more than $500,000, filed the suit without giving him enough time after a woman complained to try to fix the problem.

"She's complaining. I say, ‘Okay, I'll do something with a ventilation system," Mr. Shin said, gesturing toward a small, hermetically sealed chamber enclosing the store's bread oven. "But it's not a sandwich, I cannot make it right away."

An inspector from the city Department of Environmental Protection visited several days ago, Mr. Shin said, but didn't issue the store a summons.

Mr. Shin said the ventilation system, which was finished being installed Saturday, would prevent aromas from reaching his condo neighbors.

A weekend desk attendant at the Waterford, Ruben Toro, said the smell had wafted into the lobby since the Subway restaurant opened, but that the odor disappeared when Mr. Shin installed the ventilation.

A spokesman for the city environmental agency that issues summonses for odors couldn't be reached for comment over the weekend.

Recent history has seen several high-profile battles over odor control in a city where thousands of food establishments operate storefronts near and often directly below residences.

A Chelsea Krispy Kreme doughnut shop was fined more than $1,000 in the late 1990s for odor and other violations. At around the same time, neighbors of Pearson's Texas Barbecue in Long Island City, Queens, celebrated its closing after complaining for years that hickory vapors seeped into their homes and factories.

While odor complaints are common, the suit threat unnerved Mr. Shin.

"$500,000? They think I have that much money?" Mr. Shin said, shaking his head and pacing in the restaurant's basement office.

Mr. Shin, a Korean immigrant who has lived in America for more than two decades and owns a nail salon next door, said he could never afford to pay the $500,000 the residents' lawsuit is seeking: he had to put a lien on his Middle Village, Queens, home in order to get a $110,000 bank loan to open the shop.

"I don't have enough money for that," Mr. Shin said, referring to the damages the condo is seeking. "I heard that America is a lawsuit country, but this is really. …"

Neither the complainants nor their attorney could be immediately reached for comment.

 

Hello everyone!

 

 

 

 

Report: Credit card pitch to illegal immigrants

Bank of America aims to provide credit history, card for people who lack a Social Security number, according to a published report.

 

Hello everyone!

 

Beloved made it home safe and I just wanted to stop by and pass along one of the funniest things I have read in a long time. This time it was from one of our neighbors who rarely emails us anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello everyone!

 

I was surfing the 'net during the commerical of the start of Survivor and found an interesting story with a weird twist. I am sure our beloved King would have loved this story. We miss you every day King!

 

Bears Fan Changes Name To Peyton Manning

 

Hello everyone!

 

I was working all day at Wal-Mart and when I left to go home, the news was talking about Anna Nicole dying at age 39. She was not one of my favorite people but it was still a surprise. I wonder if this means the paternity suit is over or just begun. I feel really sorry for Anna's mom since they stopped talking a few months ago due to Daniel, the twenty year old son that died in the Bahamas.

 

© AP

Anna Nicole Smith

"She's been the underdog. She's been besieged ... and she's been trying her best and nobody should have to endure what she's endured."

The Texas-born Smith was a topless dancer at strip club before she entered her photos in a search contest and made the cover of Playboy magazine in 1992. She became Playboy's playmate of the year in 1993. She was also signed to a contract with Guess jeans, appearing in TV commercials, billboards and magazine ads.

In 1994, she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, owner of Great Northern Oil Co. In 1992, Forbes magazine estimated his wealth at $550 million.

In a 2005 interview with ABC Smith recalled meeting Marshall at what she called a "gentleman's club' in Houston. "He had no will to live and I went over to see him," she said. "He got a little twinkle in his eyes, and he asked me to dance for him. And I did."

Marshall died in 1995 at age 90, setting off a feud with Smith's former stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, over whether she had a right to his estate.

A federal court in California awarded Smith $474 million. That was later overturned. But in May, the U.S. Supreme Court revived her case, ruling that she deserved another day in court.

The stepson died June 20 at age 67. But the family said the court fight would continue.

She starred in her own reality TV series, "The Anna Nicole Show," in 2002-04. Cameras followed her around as she sparred with her lawyer, hung out with her personal assistant and interior decorator, and cooed at her poodle, Sugar Pie. She also appeared in movies, performing a bit part in "The Hudsucker Proxy" in 1994.

After news came of Smith's death, G. Eric Brunstad Jr., the lawyer who represented Marshall, said in a statement: "We're very shocked by the news and extend the deepest condolences to her family."

In a statement, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner said: "I am very saddened to learn about Anna Nicole's passing. She was a dear friend who meant a great deal to the Playboy family and to me personally."

Smith's son, Daniel Smith, died Sept. 10 in his mother's hospital room in the Bahamas, just days after she gave birth to a daughter.

An American medical examiner hired by the family, Cyril Wecht, said he had methadone and two antidepressants in his system when he died. Low levels of the three drugs interacted to cause an accidental death, Wecht said. Last month, a Bahamas magistrate scheduled a formal inquiry into the death for March 27.

Meanwhile, the paternity of her now 5-month-old daughter remained a matter of dispute. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, Smith's most recent companion. Smith's ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead was waging a legal challenge, saying he was the father.

Debra Opri, the attorney who filed his paternity suit, said Birkhead "is devastated. He is inconsolable, and we are taking steps now to protect the DNA testing of the child. The child is our No. 1 priority."

She was born Vickie Lynn Hogan on Nov. 28, 1967, in Houston, one of six children of Donald Eugene and Virgie Hart Hogan. She married Bill Smith in 1985, giving birth to Daniel before divorcing two years later.

"From my professional exposure to Anna Nicole, I can say she was always personable, down to earth and driven. All in all, a joy to have as a client," said Wayne Munroe, her Bahamian lawyer who has overseen the aftermath of her son's mysterious death in Nassau.

 

 

 

 

How a PlayStation speculator misread the market and lost

PS3s gather dust in man's home after buying frenzy fails to materialize

NICK PATCH

Globe and Mail Update

PlayStation 3 has it all: a Cell Broadband Engine chip, a built-in Blu-ray disc player, a 60-gig hard drive and full online capabilities. For Derek O'Brien, it was a no-brainer.

On Nov. 16, a day before the system's launch, Mr. O'Brien left his construction job and began driving on Highway 401 toward Toronto. His plan was simple: pick up one or two PlayStation 3 systems, advertise them online and sit back as the sure-to-be hot -- and scarce -- commodity gathered steam in the chug toward Christmas.

Instead, the first-time scalper learned an expensive lesson about consumer demand and when to take a profit. Now that the dust has temporarily settled in the busy gaming marketplace, another lesson is coming into focus: Mr. O'Brien might have backed the wrong box.

But none of that was clear as lines formed at video game stores across North America on the eve of the launch. Mr. O'Brien called every Wal-Mart, Future Shop and Best Buy along Highway 401 from his car to gauge the length of the lineups of hardcore gamers and profiteers awaiting the powerful new PlayStation 3's release. He shied away from imposing queues in and around the Toronto area at Scarborough, Concord and Markham before settling on the Wal-Mart in Peterborough, an hour's drive northeast of the city. He arrived at 2 p.m., good enough to snag the fourth spot in line, "looking like a bum" in his work clothes until his girlfriend brought him a fresh outfit and some food.

The 23-year-old stood in line all night and at 7 a.m. the next morning, it paid off. He got his hands on two of the coveted machines, both 60-gig models, one bought legitimately at the store for $659 plus tax, the other acquired on the spot from a scalper, for a steep $1,800.

The hard part done, Mr. O'Brien thought he could sit back. He would flip the PlayStation 3s just before Christmas when demand was at its peak and use the profit to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend -- the one who brought him the clothes and the food, whom he has been dating for seven years and whom he has known since Grade 2.

But two months later, the sleek PlayStation 3 units are collecting dust in Mr. O'Brien's closet in Bowmanville, Ont., while his girlfriend is still without a ring, although Mr. O'Brien repeatedly refers to her as his wife before correcting himself each time. He is looking at unloading the systems for as little as $600 each to buyers on the on-line classified service, craigslist.org, which would roughly amount to a $1,360 loss.

And the part that's haunting Mr. O'Brien. It didn't have to be this way.

Mr. O'Brien saw the market for PlayStation 3 systems soar initially after their launch, with the units fetching anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 in eBay auctions. Still, with a month until Christmas, he waited. And waited.

"I just kept thinking, 'keep it until Christmas,' " he said. "And that was a mistake. A huge mistake."

Even before Christmas arrived, demand for the system started to decline. Sony managed to keep up semi-regular shipments through the holiday shopping season, which kept customer demand from ranging into the hysterical.

"I think a lot of people expected us just to ship on Nov. 17, so that no one would be able to buy them through Christmas and you'd see the insane eBay auction prices building up," said Matt Levitan, marketing and public relations manager for Sony Canada, who also said the company had shipped 1.1 million units to North America by the end of December. "We spoiled a few plans for people looking to make a big profit on the PS3."

Mr. O'Brien tried auctioning the systems on eBay in the United Kingdom, which won't see the official launch of the PlayStation 3 until March. It looked as though he was going to make a tidy profit, until eBay yanked his ads and suspended his account for trying to beat Sony to the punch in the British marketplace.

After the holiday season, with some retail chains well stocked with the system, Mr. O'Brien faced an even less promising market.

Jason Canam, a clerk at one downtown Toronto game retailer that has two PlayStation 3 systems, said the store hasn't seen much of a demand for the new console. In fact, he has seen a handful of opportunistic profit seekers buy the system only to return it a short while later. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

POSTED: 3:43 pm CST February 1, 2007

 

 

 

MILWAUKEE -- Did Jeffrey Dahmer confess to all his crimes?  There's a call to reopen the investigation into Milwaukee's most notorious killer.

There are new questions about Dahmer's criminal history before he returned to Milwaukee and never-reported details that some believe link Dahmer to one of the United States' most notorious cold cases.

Colleen Henry has a special 12 News investigation. The boy at the center of that cold case is now a household name. Who can forget the toothless grin of 6-year-old  Adam Walsh, the Florida boy abducted, dismembered and dumped in a drainage canal in 1981.

 

A Miami author is making the case that Dahmer   may be responsible for the Walsh slaying.

WISN 12 News dissected his argument and has detailed the never-reported evidence that has at least one career FBI man calling to reopen the case against Dahmer. It was a strange and surreal summer. Officials reported the daily death toll and named the faces of death.

As the victims' families faced the horror that was Jeffrey Dahmer, 12 News now knows a subplot was unfolding that police tried to keep from the headlines.

"It smelled. All the right smells were there. That's the way I looked at it," retired FBI agent Neil Purtell said.

Purtell was the FBI agent assigned to the Dahmer case. For the first time, he talked about his role in the Adam Walsh investigation. Purtell said from the day of the arrest, many in law enforcement wondered if Milwaukee's most notorious killer could be responsible for a high-profile case that went cold long ago.

"If Dahmer did this, if it was my son," Purtell said, "I'd want the truth."

So does Adam's father. Even though it's a cold case, people are coming forward who are claiming one thing, who are saying we were not taken seriously back 25, 26 years ago. So I think they have to look at this case," John Walsh told 12 News this week.

Walsh and Purtell believe new, never-revealed information in the Walsh case demands a second look at Dahmer. It's information developed by a Florida journalist who took up the Walsh investigation long after police had stopped. And now, 25 years later, the time has come." He's our only child, a beautiful little boy, and we just want him back," Walsh said in July 1981.

On July 27, 1981, Adam vanished from a shopping mall in the Miami suburb of Hollywood.

The disappearance of the Little Leaguer prompted a nationwide search and indelibly imprinted Adam's gap-toothed grin in the minds of shaken families across the country.

"I don't know who would do this to a 6-year-old child. I can't conceive of it," Walsh said at the time of Adam's disappearance.

Two weeks later, fishermen found Adam's head in a drainage canal, but police never found his body.

By July 1991, the investigation into Adam's slaying was stale until Dahmer's trail of death exploded in headlines. As investigators traced Dahmer's life path they found a chilling coincidence. Dahmer was living in south Florida when Adam Walsh disappeared.

"When the Army discharged Dahmer it told him he could have a plane ticket anywhere in the United States. Dahmer told police he couldn't go home to face his father, so he headed to Miami Beach because he was tired of the cold," WISN 12 News investigative reporter Colleen Henry said.

Hollywood police figured it was a long shot but asked Milwaukee officers to talk to Dahmer, who denied killing Adam.

The issue got little media attention.

Purtell told 12 News that was by design. Investigators feared news of the link might prove so sensational it could jeopardize Dahmer's court case.

"We did not want to do it during the trial in Milwaukee. Why raise that issue? It could have eliminated his cooperation. It could have made jury selection more difficult than it already was," Purtell said.

Adam's name never made it into the police reports that became his confession, but news of Dahmer's stay in Florida made its way to the Walsh family.

By 1991, Adam's father, John Walsh,   was the star of "America's Most Wanted." Walsh was so moved by the Dahmer link that he made a remarkable request. He asked Florida to waive the death penalty if Dahmer confessed to Adam's slaying.

WISN 12 News obtained a copy of the Walsh letter, where he pointed to Dahmer's criminal record, which includes killing two 14-year-olds, sexually assaulting a 13-year-old and exposing himself to 12-year-olds.

Walsh wrote, "Many people have forgotten that Jeffrey Dahmer started out as a pedophile, kidnapper, and torturer of young boys. He certainly fits the profile of someone who might be capable of murdering a beautiful 6-year-old boy."After Dahmer's conviction, a Florida detective traveled to Wisconsin carrying the letter -- a promise to waive the death penalty. The trip was a bust.

WISN 12 News obtained the never-before published transcript of Dahmer's interview with Florida police.

"My main purpose of coming here for, you know, the investigation of Adam Walsh and you go on record to say that you had nothing to do with it," the detective said.

"I heard it on the news, but I had nothing to do with it, no," Dahmer said." And if you did have something to do with it? You would admit to it?" the detective asked.

"Uh, right. Yeah," Dahmer said.

Dahmer told the Hollywood detective he was broke and drinking heavily while in Miami Beach, worked at a sub shop and often slept on the beach.

Dahmer said he didn't have a car, had never been to Hollywood, and he wasn't interested in kids Adam's age.

"The official line is, he didn't kill. And the official line is what Jeffrey said. Should we believe that?" writer Arthur Jay Harris said.

Harris is a freelance writer who's published three true crime books.

Harris started looking at the Walsh case in 1996 after a landmark legal ruling opened the 10,000-page Walsh file to the public. The Dahmer angle intrigued him. He started digging.

 

Harris just finished a book about Dahmer, and recently laid out his case in a Miami daily paper. His article put Dahmer at the Hollywood Mall, in the suspected getaway car on the day Adam disappeared. One of the reasons why police believed Dahmer that he didn't kill Adam (was) because he said he didn't have a vehicle," Harris said.

"This blue van had a crate for a passenger seat," Darlene Hill said.

Harris located Hill, the former owner of restaurant where Dahmer worked. Hill told 12 News the business had three delivery vehicles. One was a blue van. Several witnesses reported seeing a blue van speed from the mall that day.

 

Hill said employees often took the blue van for personal use.

"Somebody would take the van and not come back with it for two days," Hill said.

Harris then found Dahmer's former boss at the restaurant, whose version of the events, Harris said, shows Dahmer lied to Hollywood police.

Harris said the boss told him Dahmer worked seven days a week at the sub shop, all day and all night. That was another reason he wouldn't have had an opportunity.

"Well, the guy who hired him (Dahmer), said he worked maybe 20 hours a week, late morning to late afternoon five days a week, so that's not true," Harris said.

Also buried in the Walsh file, Harris found two statements -- witnesses who said they saw Dahmer at the mall the day Adam disappeared. For the first time, both men share their stories on television.

"I had a sense that someone was staring at me," Willis Morgan said.

Morgan said he was shopping when a dirty, disheveled guy in his 20s started hitting on him.

Morgan was a buff blond in 1981 -- the Chippendale dancer type Dahmer repeatedly told police was his type.

"I didn't answer him, and he said, 'Nice day isn't it?' And I still didn't answer him," Willis said. "And then the smile went off his face, and he had this look of anger, and I was just like looking at him, you know. I didn't know what this guy was up to, and then all of a sudden that look went to like rage. It was an unbelievable look. I had to look away," Willis said.

 

Morgan said he followed the man into the Sears store and lost him in the toy department -- the last place Adam was seen alive.

Ten years later, Morgan was at his printer job at the Miami Herald proofing the morning paper.

"When the papers came in, I saw the picture of Dahmer, and I started freaking out. I said, 'This is the guy. This is the guy I saw in the mall,'" Willis said.

At about the same time, another man was shocked to see Dahmer's picture in the paper.

"That Sunday, in 1991, when the picture of Dahmer came out, it hit me like a baseball bat," Bill Bowen said.

Bowen said he had just pulled into the Sears parking lot that day in 1981 when he witnessed an explosive scene.

"There was a man holding a little boy by one arm up in the air. The boy was struggling, and the boy was saying, 'I don't want to go. I'm not going,'" Bowen said.

Bowen said the man threw the boy into a blue van and screeched off. Bowen said he only saw the man's profile, but it looked like the newspaper picture he brought police.

Both Morgan and Bowen said they reported the incidents to police back in 1981. Police said there's no such record, but conceded the Walsh file contains no log of any of the early tips in the case.

"There were some issues when this case first surfaced that maybe we were a little overwhelmed with the magnitude of it," Hollywood police Capt. Mark Smith said.

Smith said he read Harris' article with interest but doesn't buy his theory.

He called Harris' evidence against Dahmer circumstantial and said that the Hollywood Police Department hasn't been able to find the sub shop's blue van, and two mall witnesses aren't enough to close a murder case.

 

"If we found no more on Jeffrey Dahmer, and I don't believe we will find any more than this circumstantial evidence we have now, we would never get to a conviction. I don't believe we'd ever get to an indictment," Smith said.

The retired Milwaukee detective who spent more than 150 hours taking Dahmer's confession doesn't buy it either. Dennis Murphy said Dahmer repeatedly denied killing Adam.

"He said, 'I've told you everything -- how I killed them, how I cooked them, who I ate. Why wouldn't I tell you if I did someone else?'" Murphy said.

Dahmer's defense attorney, Gerry Boyle, said seven doctors spent hundreds of hours interviewing Dahmer. Not one suggested Dahmer was withholding information.

"He was very honest. By that, I mean, he seemed to unload everything. I don't see any reason he wouldn't have said that he killed the boy. But of course, that was not his profile. Young boys was not his profile," Boyle said.

Purtell said Dahmer was a talented liar, and given the evidence Harris uncovered, it's time to reopen the Walsh case with a team of seasoned investigators -- even though Dahmer is dead.

 

"And a prosecutor looking at that evidence we have now collected would say, 'I could convict him on the evidence we have. We feel that he is now responsible. That's closure. We've done our job as a society. We have not forgotten this child,'" Purtell said.

 

Wednesday, Walsh responded to 12 News' story from an "America's Most Wanted" set in Texas. He said more than 25 years later, he can't believe he's still fighting for a competent investigation into Adam's slaying.

"That's a bitter pill for me to swallow. (As) someone who's a big supporter of law enforcement, that the law enforcement agency investigating my son's murder would lose -- blatantly lose -- key pieces of evidence, and not interview people who thought they had important information about the case, it's really a tough thing," Walsh said.

Walsh told 12 News that Dahmer became a suspect years ago when Dahmer's father, Lionel, called "America's Most Wanted" and told them he thought his son could be responsible for Adam's slaying.

I also just found another link to this story that you might be interested in. It's the back story with a lot more detail. Please read this as well and tell me what you think okay?

 

Hello everyone!

 

I was surfing the 'net and found yet another story that everyone needs to read about Wal-Mart. It's a little long but I feel it's necessary for you to read. Please let me know what you think okay?

 

As the world's biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pays billions of dollars a year in rent for its stores. Luckily for Wal-Mart, in about 25 states it has been paying most of that rent to itself -- and then deducting that amount from its state taxes.

The strategy is complex, but the bottom line is simple: It has saved Wal-Mart from paying several hundred million dollars in taxes, according to court records and a person familiar with the matter. And Wal-Mart is far from alone.

The arrangement takes advantage of a tax loophole that the federal government plugged decades ago, but which many states have been slower to catch. Here's how it works: One Wal-Mart subsidiary pays the rent to a real-estate investment trust, or REIT, which is entitled to a tax break if it pays its profits out in dividends. The REIT is 99%-owned by another Wal-Mart subsidiary, which receives the REIT's dividends tax-free. And Wal-Mart gets to deduct the rent from state taxes as a business expense, even though the money has stayed within the company.

Partly thanks to sophisticated financial strategies like these, states' tax collections from companies have been plummeting. On average, Wal-Mart has paid only about half of the statutory state tax rates for the past decade, according to Standard & Poor's Compustat, which collects data from SEC filings. The so-called "captive REIT" strategy alone cut Wal-Mart's state taxes by about 20% over one four-year period. Now several state regulators are trying to crack down on the strategy, used largely by retailers and banks, and some other states have changed their laws to try to end the practice. Yesterday, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer included elimination of the loophole as part of his proposed budget, a fix he said would bring the state $83 million a year.

North Carolina tax authorities are challenging Wal-Mart, saying its REIT strategy was intended to "distort [the company's] true net income," according to its filings in the case in Superior Court in Raleigh, N.C. The state calls captive REITs a "high priority corporate tax sheltering issue" and in 2005 ordered Wal-Mart to pay $33 million for back taxes, interest and penalties stemming from the REIT. The company paid it and last year sued the state for a refund.

The structure Wal-Mart is using features some unusual elements. Because REITs must have at least 100 shareholders to gain tax benefits, roughly 100 Wal-Mart executives were enlisted to own a combined total of around 1% of the REIT's shares, without any voting rights. H. Lee Scott Jr., now Wal-Mart's CEO, was listed as the REIT's "managing trustee" from 1996 to 2004.

A single Wal-Mart real-estate official, Tony Fuller, represented the company both as tenant and landlord in its lease with itself. Ernst & Young LLP, the accounting firm that sold the strategy to Wal-Mart, also is the company's outside auditor. In its internal sales training materials, the accounting firm explicitly labeled the strategy as a method to reduce taxes -- a red flag to tax authorities, who often demand that tax shelters have other business purposes.

Wal-Mart attorneys say in court filings that the strategy is perfectly legal and that North Carolina is exceeding its authority. A spokesman for the Bentonville, Ark., company, John Simley, said Wal-Mart "is comfortable with its current structure and is in compliance with federal and state tax laws." He added that the REIT structure was adopted to "more effectively and efficiently manage the company's real-estate portfolio, including the impact on the company's overall state tax planning."

Regulators in at least a half-dozen states are going after companies that have trimmed their taxes through similar arrangements, including Regions Financial Corp.'s AmSouth Bancorp. unit; AutoZone Inc. of Memphis, Tenn.; and two units of Bank of America Corp. In a Massachusetts case against Bank of America unit Fleet Funding Inc., authorities call Fleet's REIT arrangement a "sham" in court filings. They note that Fleet increased the salaries of the roughly 100 employees whom it made REIT shareholders to compensate them for personal income taxes stemming from ownership. The Multistate Tax Commission, an association of state revenue authorities, says it has started examining the use of captive REITs to avoid taxes, alerting states to the issue and proposing legislative fixes to close the loophole.

States collected more than $44 billion last year in corporate income taxes, out of $607 billion in total state tax receipts, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, a nonpartisan think tank associated with the State University of New York. But the average effective corporate state and local tax rate has dropped from 6.7% during the 1980s to about 5% during the first half of this decade, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service. This is in part because of the proliferation of state and local tax breaks, as well as tax shelters, according to several academic and government studies.

Some corporate state tax planners say arrangements like these are merely smart business, and that the loopholes exploited by companies should be fixed by state legislatures rather than litigated by state lawyers. Critics of the shelters complain they let companies use public services provided by local governments -- such as police and fire protection or new highways -- without having to shoulder their fair share of the costs. Meanwhile, the portion of state taxes borne by individuals is steadily rising.

Congress created REITs in 1960 as a way to allow smaller investors to put money in a wide portfolio of commercial real estate, spreading their risk. Congress also gave them a tax benefit: REITs aren't subject to corporate income tax on the profits they pay to shareholders as long as they pay out at least 90% of the profits. The shareholders still usually get federally taxed on the dividends, which still count as income for them.

After a boom in REITs in the early 1990s, big accounting firms including Ernst & Young and KPMG LLP figured out that on the state level, they could pair the tax break on REIT dividends with a separate tax rule that allows companies to receive dividends tax-free from their subsidiaries. With the REIT as a subsidiary itself, two rules aimed at avoiding double taxation could be combined to effectively avoid any taxation at all.

The strategy worked especially well if the REIT was owned by a company incorporated, and claiming to do all its business, in a state such as Delaware or Nevada that often wouldn't tax the corporate income anyway. That created an extra hurdle for other states to challenge the practice if they caught onto it.

Ernst & Young early on targeted the banking industry as a possible beneficiary of the captive REIT strategy. Like retailers, banks have branches in many states and often are liable for lots of state-level corporate tax. Ernst & Young targeted at least 30 banks, some of them its audit clients. The SEC generally permits that dual role as long as the firm's fee isn't contingent on the tax savings.

According to documents from a 1995 internal Ernst & Young sales training meeting reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the accounting firm suggested banks put some of their income-producing assets, such as a portfolio of mortgages, into a REIT subsidiary, then use the double-tax break to "shelter" the income from state taxes. The REIT would issue a tiny number of non-voting shares to bank "officers and directors" to meet the 100-shareholder rule that REIT law requires.

U.S. banks "pay millions of dollars each year in state and local taxes," read the Ernst & Young presentation to its sales force. "The FSI State Tax Financial Product we have developed can significantly reduce or eliminate this heavy tax obligation..." One section of the Ernst & Young sales package featured hypothetical questions from clients about the REIT shelter, and the proposed answers. To pass legal muster, many corporate tax shelters purport to have additional business purposes behind merely saving taxes. Ernst & Young, however, was blunt about the reason for its proposed strategy:

"Q: What's the business purpose?

"A: Reduction in state and local taxes.

"Q: What if the press gets wind of this and portrays us as a 'tax cheat'?

"A: That's a possibility....If you are concerned about possible negative publicity, you can counter it by reinvesting the savings in the community."

An Ernst & Young spokesman declined to comment on its REIT work, saying the firm was "prohibited from commenting on client matters." The spokesman said he could not verify the authenticity of the internal sales training documents based on quotes provided by the Journal. However, he said the "limited language communicated in the internal memo does not reflect the quality and nature of the advice we provide to our clients."

State authorities have had mixed records so far in pursuing back taxes and penalties in captive-REIT cases. AutoZone, the big auto-parts chain, won the right to deduct the dividends from its taxes in Kentucky but lost a preliminary round in Louisiana. The Hawaii Department of Taxation won a case involving a REIT used by Central Pacific Financial Corp., a bank holding company. AmSouth is in litigation with Alabama over tax benefits from its REIT.

Fleet Funding's REIT, on which the company was advised by KPMG, has led Massachusetts to seek more than $42 million in back taxes, interest and penalties. BankBoston Corp. is in similar litigation with Massachusetts. Both banks have been acquired by Bank of America, which declined to comment on the litigation.

Fleet's attorneys have said in court papers that its REITs were legitimate, and the fact that they were partly motivated by tax considerations does not legally undermine their valid business purpose -- to raise capital, they say. A KPMG spokeswoman declined to comment on the Fleet case, but said it had stopped any involvement with "prepackaged tax products" before a 2005 agreement it made with the U.S. Justice Department over improper tax strategies that also led to the indictment of 17 former KPMG officials.

It's unknown how many disputes have been raised over the strategy used by Wal-Mart and others, because such tax disputes are generally not disclosed unless lawsuits are publicly filed or the company reveals them in SEC filings.

Wal-Mart adopted its captive-REIT structure just as it was unwinding a previous strategy to reduce taxes that states had begun to challenge. For the first half of the 1990s, the retailer used a so-called intangible holdings company structure also used by many other corporations. Wal-Mart transferred its trademarks to a subsidiary called WMR Inc. in Delaware, which does not tax many forms of corporate income. Then it paid the subsidiary for the use of the brands. That allowed Wal-Mart to deduct those payments from its local income taxes in some states, while WMR's income wasn't taxed by Delaware.

Several states won challenges to the strategy, used by various retailers. Wal-Mart settled a dispute over its use of WMR in Louisiana -- the details of the settlement are sealed -- and lost on the main points of a case in New Mexico. Wal-Mart merged with WMR in February of 1997 and its use as a state tax avoidance vehicle was apparently discontinued, according to New Mexico court records.

In the meantime, Wal-Mart set up a new vehicle to control its state tax bill: captive REITs. In the summer and fall of 1996, Delaware corporate records show, Wal-Mart created a new hierarchy of subsidiaries: a REIT called the Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust; a Delaware-based parent company for the REIT, called the Wal-Mart Property Co.; and Wal-Mart Stores East Inc., parent of the Delaware firm. Wal-Mart Property owned 99% of the REIT's shares, and 100% of the voting shares, according to Wal-Mart court filings in North Carolina and West Virginia. The company also set up a similar arrangement for its Sam's Club stores.

To meet the 100-shareholder threshold required for REITs, Wal-Mart distributed a minimal amount of nonvoting stock, to approximately 114 Wal-Mart employees, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. The dividend payouts were nominal. The structure involved Wal-Mart's top executive tier. The shareholders were generally executive vice presidents and above. David Glass, then Wal-Mart's president and CEO, was listed as president of Wal-Mart Stores East on the lease agreement, and Paul Carter, then a Wal-Mart executive vice president, was listed as the president of the REIT.

Wal-Mart began transferring to the REIT ownership of the properties -- the land and buildings -- for hundreds of its stores in 27 states, real-estate records show. Then Wal-Mart Stores East signed a 10-year lease agreement with its REIT that took effect on Jan. 31, 1997, agreeing to pay a fixed percentage of the stores'"gross sales" as rent, according to a copy of the arrangement filed in the North Carolina case. Mr. Fuller, the Wal-Mart real-estate official, is listed as the contact for both the tenant and the landlord. The original lease was due to be renewed this week.

Wal-Mart could deduct from its state-taxable income the rent paid by Wal-Mart Stores East to the REIT. The REIT paid the majority of its rental earnings to its 99% owner, Wal-Mart Property Co., in the form of dividends. That company's base in Delaware gave it another way to avoid liability for state taxes, since some states do require that dividends a REIT pays to its corporate owner be taxed, as the federal government does.

The Delaware subsidiary then paid the money back to Wal-Mart Stores East, the same subsidiary that made the payments to the REIT to begin with. Those payments to Wal-Mart Stores East weren't taxed either, because dividends paid to a corporation by a subsidiary normally aren't counted as taxable income for the parent company.

The result of the circuitous transaction: Wal-Mart could effectively turn rental payments to itself into state level tax-deductions in most of the states where the payments have been made. Under typical circumstances, rent paid to a third-party landlord also would reduce taxable income. But that would ordinarily be cash out the door, like most other tax-deductible expenses. Here, the majority of the tax-deductible rental payments came straight back to Wal-Mart.

The national tax savings have been significant. Over a four-year period, from 1998 to 2001, Wal-Mart and Sam's Club paid company-controlled REITs a total of $7.27 billion that eventually came back to Wal-Mart in states across the country, according to a North Carolina Department of Revenue auditor's report filed in court by Wal-Mart. Based on an average state corporate income tax rate of 6.5%, three accounting experts consulted by The Wall Street Journal estimated the REIT payments led to a state tax savings for Wal-Mart of roughly $350 million over just those four years. SEC filings show the company paid $1.18 billion in state taxes during that period. The loss of federal deductions that bigger state tax payments would have triggered brought the company's effective tax savings overall down to about $230 million. Wal-Mart declined to comment on the figures.

It is not clear how much Wal-Mart has paid to its own REITs in the most recent five years. The yearly rental payments -- on which the tax savings are based -- are pegged to the "gross sales" of the stores, according to the lease agreement.

Underscoring that the rental payments were cashless Wal-Mart accounting moves, an affidavit filed in North Carolina by the company's former controller, James A. Walker Jr., states that the payments were made by simply debiting the account of one subsidiary and then crediting the account of the other. "Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. served, in effect, as a bank for" both sides, the affidavit stated.

In 2005, after an audit, the North Carolina Department of Revenue issued a notice to Wal-Mart challenging the REIT structure. The state is site of about 140 of the company's roughly 3,900 U.S. stores, including Sam's Clubs. Wal-Mart paid the $33 million the state sought, and in March 2006 sued for a refund.

The company argues that the state does not have the authority to essentially combine the results of the subsidiary that did business in North Carolina with those of the Delaware-based unit and the REIT. The Delaware-based subsidiary, the company says, did no business in North Carolina and therefore was not taxable there. The company says in court filings that the REIT was qualified under federal law, that all the deductions were properly taken and that its North Carolina tax returns reflect its "true income."

 

Hello everyone!

 

After taking a regular day off yesterday which I did a lot of running around, it was back to the old grind. I hate doing my Friday runs to the office to drop off my paperwork. My boss who has no idea that I have short term memory loss, has been kind to me by having me do it first. She assigns the time she wants you to stop by the office and you get paid for a half-hour's work even if it takes less time. The only way I can do it is to match up the same days worked in a row arranged by time as well. This is the only thing that I am terrified that I won't be able to work through, the actual coaching of "my adults" is the easy part. I have spoken to my workman's comp doctor who has explained my problem is that I have a working memory problem ~ in other words I have trouble remembering or recalling things but once it's in my memory, I can remember nearly everything. Even with my doctor's help, I am mystified how one week I can do the paperwork without any trouble and the very next week with nearly the same adults, struggle.

 

I cannot share the exact nature of the paperwork but to give you an idea of what I fill out each week, I can tell you this ~