The Procrastinators Meetup was set up here in the Accordion Bay area a week ago and now has 20 members, but hasn’t yet gotten around to setting a date for its first meeting. I think that’s pretty clever, and I don’t even care if that’s intentional or not.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
If you’re in the market for a used large van with very low mileage that stands apart from most of the other used van offering out there, you might want to take a look at this one on eBay, which is selling under the headline “1989 Ford E-Series Van E-350 Dully”. It becomes more intriguing when you look at the subtitle, which reads covert special weapons and tactics unit vehicle.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
The seller’s not kidding: the manufacturer’s product identity plate identifies it as exactly as a covert special weapons and tactical unit vehicle manufactured by the now-defunct Florida-based Phoenix Worldwide Industries Inc.:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
Wikileaks has an interesting little tidbit on Phoenix Industries’ secrecy, and how Venezuela’s Director General of Military Intelligence bought millions of dollars of spy equipment from them.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
Here’s how the seller describes the vehicle:
This Command Vehicle Would Work Perfectly For The Prmivate [sic] Investigator
– New Tires – Six (6) / (2)-Front Tires & (4)-Rear Tires Recently
– ALL Equipment In The Photos Are Included In The Price
– Full Door Entrance On The Passenger Side For The Command Area
– Rear Door Entrance For The Command Area
– Inside Door Access Through The Driver & Passenger Cab Area
– Command Mounted Chair – Very Comfortable
– Plenty Of Storage Areas – Under The Padded Bench Seats And Wall Storage
– Cameras 360 Degrees
– Escape Door From Inside The Command Area
– Can Be Upgravded [sic] With Today’s Technology
Click the photo to see it at full size.
– Very Roomy And Comfortable – I Am 6′ 2″ Tall And I Can Move Freely Standing Erect In The Command Area
Click the photo to see it at full size.
(I must admit, if I had my own covert ops vehicle, I’d be erect every time I was in it, too.)
You might be surprised at the mileage on the van: it’s a mere 3,457 miles. It’s not a typo; someone asked, and the seller confirmed that:
Q: your ad says 34 hundred miles…is that correct? Also..is the rear air conditioned?
A: Yes–This vehicle ONLY HAS 3,457 Three Thousand Four Hundred and Fifty Seven Original Miles. YES–There is air conditioning and many other communications items in Command Center Area–Pictures were taken from inside the vehicle.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
If you’ve watched any police procedural TV show or movie featuring a special investigations unit, the van’s exterior look pretty much as you’d expect: a plain white Ford Van with an expanded rear body. The interior is also as you’d expect — for a couple of decades ago, in terms of both styling and technology. Still, most of it would serve a private investigator (or creep) very well.
Note that the van appears to come with three phone lines: a main line, a phone line for negotiators, and a phone like for hostages. There are also a number of surveillance cameras:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
If you can head over to Sanford, North Carolina to pick it up, this just might be the biggest used car deal you’ll ever get!
Thanks to Danny O’Brien for the find!
The video that is supposed to show deceased former mayor of Toronto Rob Ford smoking crack has never been seen by the general public — until today. Here’s an captioned version, which was put out by the CBC:
The video shows Toronto’s messed-up Pete Griffin-esque ex-mayor huffing rock and engaging in profanity-laden conversation with an off-camera Elena Basso (who has convictions for cocaine trafficking and prostitution), owner of the house where the crack-smoking took place. You’ll hear Elena praising Ford for what drives him, Ford’s great dislike for Justin Trudeau (who’s now Prime Minister of Canada), and inquiries about whether the whole thing is being recorded, and this CBC article has a full transcript of the entire hot mess.
The National Post’s Chris Selley writes that the video “elicits more sympathy than scorn”, but keep in mind that the Post endorsed Ford for mayor. The Toronto Sun, who were Ford’s most gleeful supporters, kept their trademark right-wing editorializing to a minimum in their coverage. And here’s the piece published by the Toronto Star, who were investigating Ford’s crack connection when Gawker revealed what was going on.
But the most telling reaction is the one on the I Hate the War on Mayor Rob Ford, the pro-Ford Facebook page that’s stayed active all this time:
Here’s the text from their posting in reaction to the news:
Here you go, Toronto. Are you happy now? Watch out. Karma is coming back on everyone who capitalized on this, for financial profit or political gain, or who used it to simply heap scorn on the regular average everyday people of Toronto who decided to reject the Liberal-left mafioso political professionals and elect a reformer to high office.
It’s obvious why this video was not released to the public during the time Rob was still in office and still running for Mayor in 2014 – it was far more valuable to the haters as a figment of people’s imaginations, than it was as actual damning evidence. It shows a man beaten down by circumstances, using drugs to mask his pains (physical and psychological), and expressing little more than sadness and depression as far as anyone can understand – sadness and depression that is entirely understandable to anyone with even a fragment of a human soul still remaining in their lives.
To hell with you all, haters, and God Bless Rob Ford, may he rest finally in peace. And to the “friends” who allowed this recording to happen? Nothing good can happen to you the rest of your life, as perhaps you’ve already found. Your every day is a living hell.
They don’t see a man who often showed up late for work and left early to coach football while earning a $170K salary, consorted with criminals, showed great disdain for Toronto’s LGBT community, drank on the job and made intoxicated public appearances, but a hero who stood up for “the little guy”.
I subscribe to the hypothesis that raisin cookies are the biggest disease vector at conferences where they leave snacks out for the attendees. People pick up what they think are chocolate chip cookies, get a closer look at them and see that they’re actually raisin cookies, and put them back, leaving their germs behind.
The officer asked Zimmerman to leave. He reported that Zimmerman replied with “I don’t care who you are,” and when asked asked to leave again, Zimmerman’s response was the classic retort that never de-escalates a situation: “Fuck you.”
Zimmerman was charged with a felony, which was then reduced to a misdemeanor and court-ordered anger management classes. Had he been convicted of his original felony charges then, it would’ve made him ineligible for a concealed weapons permit.
Veronica Zuazo, his fiancée at the time, filed a civil motion for the restraining order, alleging domestic abuse. Zimmerman, following the tried-and-true “I know you are, but what am I?” tactic, filed a similar motion, alleging the same on her part. Both orders were granted.
While on patrol as a Neighborhood Watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida, Zimmerman calls 911 to report a “suspicious person”. He is instructed not to get out of his vehicle or approach the person. Zimmerman, likely indulging his fantasy to become a police officer or a judge, disregards the instructions and the rest is now an object lesson in racism and poor life choices.
Related to the ensuing trial: Zimmerman’s then-wife, Shellie, pleaded guilty to a reduce misdemeanor charge for perjury on August 8, 2013 for lying under oath. She lied about their assets during Zimmerman’s bail hearing after his arrest for shooting Martin.
Zimmerman was briefly detained and questioned by police. No gun was found at the scene, and video of the incident could not be recovered from the broken iPad from the incident. Zimmerman’s wife declined to press charges, and the police department announced that no charges would be pressed against Zimmerman, his wife, or her father.
After asking Zimmerman to leave her home, Zimmerman’s girlfriend — yup, he already had a new honey, because the ladies love an mentally unhinged a-hole — calls the police, alleging that he had pointed a shotgun at her and started to destroy her belongings. Zimmerman barricaded himself inside the apartment, so the police had to make their way inside to arrest him.
In December, Zimmerman’s girlfriend — yup, even after that, she stayed — requested that the charges be dropped and asked for the lifting of the restraining order barring him from seeing her be lifted.
Zimmerman embarks on an art career creating jingoistic paintings. One panting featuring the American flag sells for $100,000 on eBay; it’s later reported that the painting was copied from a stock image without attribution.
Zimmerman in named by police in “road rage” incident with one Matthew Apperson, who claimed that Zimmerman followed and threatened him. Zimmerman said that Apperson approached him about his rear tire leaking air, and in the ensuing conversation, Apperson asked Zimmerman if he knew that he was “wrong for killing that little black boy”.
He allegedly threw a bottle at his ex-girlfriend and destroyed her mobile phone. He claimed that he was only trying to prevent her from entering his home. Police say they heard the sound of glass breaking at the residence and saw broken glass on the driveway while on patrol.
The charges were dropped after the ex-girlfriend recanted.
Apperson shot at Zimmerman on a street in Lake Mary, Florida, causing minor injuries to Zimmerman’s face from flying glass and debris. Apperson said that he was acting in self-defense and that Zimmerman was the aggressor. Zimmerman was armed at the time of the incident but his attorney said “George absolutely denies having shown it, waved, displayed, pointed it.”
Apperson was later ordered to wear a monitoring device that would alert Zimmerman when he was nearby, and would later stand trial for second-degree attempted murder.
Zimmerman began selling “limited edition” paintings of what’s commonly known as the Confederate battle flag to raise money for bigoted gun dealer Andy Hallinan, who has a “Muslim-free” gun store in Inverness, Florida, bringing together three highly controversial topics with which the nation is dealing: the deaths of young black men, the Confederate battle flag and discrimination against American Muslims.
Here’s his tweet about a statement made by Barack Obama about guns…
…and here’s how he responds to challenges: by reminding you that he killed someone!
It’s considered bad form to retweet compliments, and doubly so when the compliment is about shooting an unarmed kid while indulging in your vigilante fantasies.
This is the tweet that got Zimmerman’s Twitter account suspended.
In yet another attempt to profit off his ill-gotten fame, Zimmerman announced the auction of the gun he used to shoot Trayvon Martin, calling it an “American Firearm Icon”. The original auction site removed it from sale, saying they wanted nothing to do with the listing. Zimmerman found another auction site on which to sell the gun, which was flooded with offers, including one from douchey price-gouging pharma bro Martin Shkreli, who said he’d either like to destroy it or put it in a museum. Zimmerman later claimed that he accepted a bid of $250,000 for the gun.
I’ll leave it to the New York Daily News to tell the story:
George Zimmerman was punched in the face at a Florida bar after bragging about killing Trayvon Martin, officials and witnesses said.
The former neighborhood watchman said he was clocked by a drunken diner who mistook him for someone else at the Gators Riverside Grille in Sanford around 5:00 p.m. Sunday, according to a police report obtained by the Daily News.
“This man just punched me in the face,” Zimmerman told a 911 dispatcher. “He said he was going to kill me. You need to send three or four cops.”
But staff at the restaurant and witnesses countered the acquitted murderer’s account and said the incident was nothing more than a shoving match that stemmed from Zimmerman bragging about his notorious past.
“They shoved each other and that was the end,” Gators Riverside Grille owner Edward Winters told The News.
“He said, ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ And Zimmerman said, ‘I’m George Zimmerman,’” Winters added.
…
Witnesses told investigators Zimmerman announced himself in the restaurant as the man cleared on self-defense grounds in the 2012 shooting of Martin.
The 32-year-old complimented a man’s Confederate flag tattoo and then started talking about Martin.
“You’re bragging about that?” a man said as he approached the group.
Zimmerman told the Orlando Sentinel Thursday that his drunken assailant, identified in the police report as “Eddie,” thought he was Matthew Apperson, the man accused of shooting at Zimmerman during a road-rage confrontation last year.
“You better get the f— out of here you n—-r lover, you ain’t welcome here,” the man told Zimmerman before punching him and breaking his glasses.
Photo by Yours Truly.
This clock, located by the northwest corner of East Kennedy Boulevard and Marion Street, doesn’t have a plaque or any other marker explaining its origin, nor have I been able to find much about it online.
It appears in a couple of Getty stock photos…
…but beyond a handful of photos, there doesn’t seem to be anything written about its history.
Here’s how it appears when looking north from the corner of Kennedy and Marion:
I’m increasingly becoming a regular at Tampa Bay WaVE, the local entrepreneurial incubator / co-working space / meeting place, which means that I see the clock pictured more often. It’s rather unusual, so I tend to snap a photo of it every time I’m in the area.
The clock is now a Pokéstop in Pokémon Go, where it’s called The Sultan’s Clock:
“The Sultan’s Clock” probably isn’t its official name. The names of many places in Pokémon Go came from its predecessor, Ingress, where players gave certain locations fanciful names. For instance, there’s a local car wash that’s called the “Car Swallowing Wave”.
I hope that it sticks around. It currently stands beside a street-level parking lot that will eventually house a building, and I worry that it may get torn down when that new building eventually goes up. It’s little things like this that add character to a city, and I’d hate to see this clock go the way “Cantankerous Quincy”, an old clock in South Tampa, did.
If this were Toronto, I’d know to go to Mike Filey, who’s a family friend and historian who’s forgotten more about Toronto more than most people will ever learn.
Is there anyone in Tampa who can tell the story of the Sultan’s Clock?