Poplawski gets death penalty and you get fries with that

No matter how you feel about the death penalty in general or the sentence in this case in particular, can we all agree that this sign on the door of a South Side bar is fucked up?
.

It's a twister!

Photo by Mike Lupinacci a friend of Mike Lupinacci

We don't get many actual tornadoes out this way (more straight-line winds), but it sure looks like one touched down yesterday evening in Westmoreland County (Post-Gazette, Tribune-Review).

Fort Allen seemed to be the hardest hit area according to the local TV news reports. Also hit was Hempfield High School (my alma mater) where the roof was torn off of the mini-auditorium and the field house. Fortunately, no one was hurt even though students were participating in after-school activities at the time. Here's a video of it about to hit the school:

Here on the South Side of Pittsburgh, we experienced large marble-sized hail. (I joined half my neighbors on my block rushing to our windows to see what was making all that racket.)

I have to admit that while I'm very happy that no one was hurt at good ol' HASH (Hempfield Area Sr. High as it was called back in the day), I did spend one or more study halls wishing that a twister would spirit me or the whole school off Wizard of Oz-style. On that note, while I was looking for footage on YouTube, I came across the following video. While it's from the Class the year before mine, it gave me a good laugh.

WARNING! This video contains more scenes of feathered hair than is recommended for viewing in a single sitting!

(Or just watch the movie Dazed and Confused)
.

How low can you go?

Did you happen to read this week's Pittsburgh City Paper? Did you also recoil in disgust at the full-page ad on page 19? Here it is, in case you missed it:


(Click to enlarge)
First, I will preface my remarks by noting that, yes, everyone deserves a lawyer in a criminal trial and that attorneys have the right to advertise. But looking at this ad, I guess we have to be grateful that they didn't just throw up a photograph of a bloody, fatal car crash with the tag line: "Caused this? We'll get you off!" Their ad is only slightly less offensive -- and it offends on multiple levels.

I'm going to ignore the headline for a moment and go straight to the boxed-in "joke." Sorry, I find nothing funny about:

1) Someone driving so drunk that they're "weaving violently"

2) Making the joke about drunk driving specific to both an actual upcoming event and to a real area known to have a problem with too many bars and over consumption of alcohol

3) Thinking it's funny that a woman falls out of a moving car

4) The sexist implication that women never shut up

5) And, yeah, making the joke about some idiot from the burbs driving home drunk from the city specific to a street a mere two blocks from my home

In the ad, Rosselli & Horowitz self-identify as "The South Side's DUI and Criminal Defense Law Firm."

Yes, it a law firm which specializes in DUI cases making a joke about people driving drunk.

Seriously, WTF???

You know what can happen on Carson Street when some asshole drives drunk? A seven-year old can get killed and her mother can have the lower half of her body pulverized ("In addition to broken ribs, vertebrae, toes and an ankle, a doctor said, pieces of her hip and pelvis are simply missing." Oh, yeah, she also miscarried.) This happened just three months before this ad was placed. In fact, according to a recent WPXI story, Carson Street had the highest DUI arrests in our area: 218 in 2009. It also had one of the highest amounts of alcohol-related crashes: 152 wrecks involving alcohol in the last five years.

Funny, huh? A real LOL!

Now, back to the headline. "LOOKING FOR A LAW FIRM WITH TIGER BLOOD?" So, you're comparing your law firm to an obviously troubled person just out of "rehab" for alcohol and drugs, who recently lost their job and is universally ridiculed?! From your lips to God's ears, baby.
.