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The skinny

By TIMES WIRES
Published October 19, 2007

What time is it?

The Watch says it's time to go back to jail

Victor Lopez will probably be a little more careful about how he accessorizes his wardrobe before his next meeting with a probation officer. Whenever that is. Because for now, he's back in the Santa Fe, N.M., jail after he showed up to Tuesday's meeting wearing a $2,500 Rolex watch, which had been stolen from a home on Sunday. "Criminals aren't the sharpest tools in the shed," said Deputy Police Chief Aric Wheeler. Lopez told police that "a friend" had left the watch at his house. But they don't believe that highly original story at all.

Snowball's a star

His moves are like a Backstreet Bird

Somehow, in all the news about the travails of boy-band impresario Lou Pearlman, we had never heard Word One about Snowball, the Indiana cockatoo that gets all funky chicken to the 1997 tune Everybody (Backstreet's Back) by Pearlman's charges, the Backstreet Boys. Snowball, 11, was brought to a bird rescue a few months ago, and the man who brought him in also brought a CD of the song and instructions as to what to expect. When he hears the song, Snowball lifts his legs, squawks, bobs and flashes his crest in a seemingly choreographed display that has made him a YouTube sensation. Irena and Chuck Schulz have more than 30 birds available for adoption, but Snowball is not one of them. "He's my baby," Irena said. "He will stay here and be loved."

Liquid legislation

Arkansas spittoons

Lawmakers in Arkansas will still be able to bring their portable spittoons to work. The House was considering a rule change that would bar them, since cigarettes, cigars and pipes are already banned. But they needed 67 votes, and only got 51. Rules also prohibit food and drink in the chamber, but say that a day's worth of tobacco spit is just fine to keep at your desk. "The very people that are most for this amendment are about 50 pounds overweight," said Rep. Billy Gaskill. "Leave us alone. Let us die the way we want to."

British pools

Speaking of pudgy parliamentarians, lawmakers in Britain are concerned about their own expanding girth, and are asking that Parliament's shooting gallery be replaced with a swimming pool. "Do you agree that there are too many fat members of Parliament?" lawmaker Richard Bacon (yes, Bacon, really) asked in a House of Commons debate. Julian Lewis, a member of the shooting team, objected, calling the gun range - not making this up either - "an easy target."

New category!

Arrested on charge of aggravated stupid

David Warren, the prosecutor for Athens County, Ohio, has seen a lot of things in his job, but when a woman was recently arrested on charges she dug up and stole her boyfriend's ashes, he says that was a new one. "I have a category of crimes that I like to refer to as 'aggravated stupid,'" Warren said, coining a phrase that regular readers of this feature will see again. Police speculate that Martha LaFollete, 48, may have stolen the ashes of Roger Barber, with whom she lived for five years, because she wasn't invited to the funeral.

Compiled from Times wire services and other sources by staff writer Jim Webster, who can be reached at jwebster@sptimes.com.

[Last modified October 19, 2007, 01:06:50]