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Source: The Star Trek Shitposting Facebook group.

For those of you who didn’t watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, this is a reference to the episode Chain of Command, Part II.

Here’s the key scene:

Take a close look, and treat it as a reminder to double check your work.

I flipped the image horizontally so that it reads better from left to right. Here’s the original:

It was bound to happen sooner or later — a “Florida Man” story featuring someone I’ve actually met!

But first, the story: Jonathan Crenshaw, a man with no arms and who weighs 90 pounds (41 kilograms), is a homeless man who makes a living painting on canvas by holding paintbrushes with his toes. He paints in front of spectators as a sort of street performance at Miami’s Lincoln Road Mall, an outdoor shopping mall on a pedestrians-only street just north of South Beach. I saw him hard at work on a painting when I visited last year, and threw a fiver into his donations can.

I’ll let the Miami Herald tell the most recent story about Crenshaw:

But on Tuesday, just after midnight, Miami Beach police say that Crenshaw stabbed one of those tourists. Crenshaw, police say, used a pair of scissors he clutched with his feet to stab Cesar Coronado, 22, who was visiting Miami Beach from Chicago.

According to the arrest report, Crenshaw said he was lying down when Coronado approached him and punched him in the head. He stabbed Coronado twice, put the scissors back into his waistband, and quickly walked off, police say.

Miami Beach officers found the victim lying on the ground, bleeding from his left arm. Paramedics took Coronado to Mount Sinai Medical Center.

If you want to know more about Crenshaw, Miami New Times — one of the best sources for oddball Florida news — wrote a profile about him back in 2011.

I’m not going to attempt to determine whose story is more in line with the truth — the homeless man with the long rap sheet, who says he was attacked by a couple of young troublemakers who thought he’d be an easy mark, or the young tourists who say they were just asking for directions when the crazy transient attacked them.

What I will remark on is the fact that a scrawny, armless man almost 50 years of age who sleeps on the street got the upper hand on a millennial half his age and infinitely more arms (mathematically speaking, 2 arms is infinitely more than 0).

It leads me to conclude that this isn’t really a “Florida Man” story, but a story about one or more of the following:

• The power of the element of surprise, or
• That old age and treachery will beat youth and exuberance every time, or
• How Gen X kicks the Millennial generation’s sorry participation-trophy-clutching ass every time.

As a gentleman of a certain age, the final interpretation’s my favorite.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

And remember, kids: if your fireworks vendor has all their fingers, it means their wares are BO-RING. Fly-by-night fireworks stands run by sketchy-looking Florida drifters are your best 4th of July entertainment value!

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

In honour of this day, and as a Canadian now living in the United States, here’s the most appropriate tribute I can find: Stewart “Brittlestar” Reynolds’ video, in which he explains Canada to its neighbour to the south. Here’s the video…

…and here’s the story behind the video, courtesy of the Stratford Beacon-Herald.

I’ll close with this classic video by Tom Brokaw about Canada, which was broadcast just before the 2010 Olympic Games’ opening ceremonies in Vancouver, Canada on February 12, 2010:

Given the heat and humidity here, a good lawyer might be able to successfully argue that her actions were justified.

Kimberly Dunn of Lake City, Florida put an air conditioner up for sale on Facebook last year. Her husband, whom she was divorcing, and his brother came home to pick it up, and a scuffle ensued. The police report says that she first sat on the unit in order to keep her her and his brother from taking it away, and when her husband tried to remove her from the unit, she attempted to shock him with a pink stun gun.

When the stun gun failed, she took a handgun and shot her now ex-husband in the testicles.

The police say that the brother shouted “You shot my brother!” and choked Dunn until she blacked out. The ex-husband took the gun and brought it with him as he checked into a nearby hospital, after which Dunn was arrested.

Dunn said that she only meant to scare her husband and that the nut-shot was an accident. She had a court date on June 14th that she missed, and she now faces an additional charge: contempt of court.

In case you were wondering, Lake City is just southeast of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge — yes, it’s a real place! — in that part of Florida where the phrase “Paddle faster; I hear banjos” is a survival strategy.