Silly Snake!

Submitted for your approval:

Though it became a well-known pop culture joke after Samuel L. Jackson’s 2006 fictional movie, snakes can sometimes be found on a plane.

That’s exactly what happened on Tuesday when a cabin crew was checking an airplane that landed in Glasgow, Scotland, according to The Scotsman newspaperin Edinburgh. The flight had come in from Cancun, Mexico when staff found a 18-inch long, juvenile snake under a row of seats in the passenger cabin, the newspaper reported.

A Scottish animal welfare charity was called in to recover the snake, The Scotsman reported.

Ok, not exactly a new story. I delayed commenting due to travel. Anyone want to guess where I was?

My first thought was: “Silly snake! Why would you leave Cancun to go to Scotland?

My second thought was that I could completely understand how the little fellow got on board. His home was mere yards from the tarmac.

Cancun — the “nest of the snakes” — was carved out of the jungle. The airport itself is testament to that, and it is even more obvious if you travel South towards Playa Del Carmen. Outside the Hotel Zone, there are clear and constant efforts to keep the jungle from reclaiming territory. Even within the Hotel Zone, sun and salty air mean an ongoing battle against modern human-built structures. A bright coat of paint appears to be shorthand for “recently maintained.” You’ll see at least one person with a paint brush on a regular basis at any resort.

In Closing: about time!; I’ll skip the Winter Garden Loaf, thanks; what’s wrong with Lime Squeeze?; hmm; escaping poverty; security theatre; Nevada Supreme Court quietly wades into serious issues with national implications; and truth in numbers.

And it Happened in Texas

Sorry, I’m not going to add my somewhat useless two cents worth to the discussion of the Supreme Court and the Affordable Care Act. You can get that from almost every other blog on the interwebs today. I still hope we end up with an option beyond being forced to pay the highly profitable insurance companies that arguably created the problem in the first place.

A couple weeks ago in the In Closing bits, I said that “the case that will show ‘stand your ground’ laws have gone overboard involves a grade school teacher who was killed because the stereo was a little loud.”

It turns out that in a rare victory for common sense, I was right.

A unanimous jury was smart enough to say “Hey wait a minute, you were so scared that you went and confronted an elementary school teacher with a freaking gun because his stereo was a little loud?? Didn’t think to call the cops on a noise complaint?”

He probably thought he was being clever recording the incident on video. Maybe he shouldn’t have “bragged about his guns and told [a neighbor] a person could avoid prosecution in a shooting by telling authorities you were in fear of your life and were standing your ground and defending yourself.”

What a shame that somebody had to die for logic to prevail. It’s one thing to shoot at someone who is trying to kill you. It’s another thing to make up a threat to justify murder.

Comrade E.B. Misfit has a knack for putting thinks briefly: “Stand Your Ground” Does Not Mean “Go Looking for Trouble”.

In Closing: funny how libertarian utopias are only grand in the absence of disaster; and Americans would rather have Obama than Romney in charge should there be an alien invasion. Nice to see we have our priorities straight.