A deal's a deal, now shoot me already.

People, people, I don't know how many times we have to go over this, but, for the last time, when hiring a hit man, PLEASE make sure you're getting someone with some references, some solid work experience. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment (or, in this case, a long and prosperous life.)

What can I say? It's all about priorities.

All right, courtesy of The London Times, here's the story:

Christine Ryder is a 53 year old unhappy woman, with a history of depression, who wants to end her life. She mentions this to this guy that she's in a mental health facility with, named Kevin Reeves, and he says he knows a professional killer who can help her. He just needs £2,500 up front to get things going. He tells her to just go about her business and things will happen soon enough. She does.

Nothing happens.

She eventually leaves the facility and contacts Reeves again to ask about the status of things. He says that unfortunately that the killer has raised the price to £5,000. She writes him a check on the spot.

Reeves tells her that she would be killed in a drive-by shooting on June 11, 2003. She wasn’t; Reeves called her to cancel the arrangement, saying that, due to some unforseen complications, he had had to kill the hitman himself and pay Mrs. Ryder’s money to the hitman's widow to care for her, so as not to suffer from a guilty conscience.

Growing frustrated with the delays, Mrs. Ryder asks Reeves if he would do the deed himself. Reeves agrees, but said it would cost her another £10,000. She writes him another check.

Nothing happens.

When Mrs. Ryder eventually contacts him again, he claims that her £10,000 had been seized by his bank because he was bankrupt, but he could still kill her if she gave him another £10,000. She refused but agrees to pay him £5,000; Reeves promises to kill her on November 28.

The day before the promised killing, Mrs. Ryder receives a letter from Reeves saying that the situation had changed, but “things are still on, so don’t panic”. At the end of the appointed day, surprise surprise, Mrs. Ryder was still alive. Alive, and now really, really pissed off about being alive.

So she calls Reeves, but his wife answers the phone. The wife tells her that they've just come back from a lavish vacation, as her husband apparently won the lottery. (The lottery? I'll say he won the lottery! THE CRAZY PERSON LOTTERY!)

Anyway, Mrs. Ryder finally has Reeves arrested on fraud, which, after everyone finally finishes smacking themselves in the forehead, he is sentenced to 15 months in jail, and he must pay back £2,000 of the money taken.

Ironically, he would have spent about the same amount of time in jail if he had killed her in the first place, but he would not have had such a nice vacation.

Even more ironically is that now Mrs Ryder has found a new lease on life in the prosecution of the man who took her money. I guess all she really needed was something to occupy her time. Isn’t that always the way?


Oh hey, I’ve got an idea!

Let’s update a few more of the stories we’ve been talking about lately. If you missed the story the first time, just click on the picture next to the story and you can catch up on what you missed.

- Pierce Brosnan did NOT win the Golden Globe on Monday night, although he had quite a good seat down front, which I’m sure he got solely on his own merits. There was a slight controversy, however, in that John Travolta called him Pierce Bronson by mistake. Pierce did not seem overly thrilled. Needless to say, there was absolutely no mention of me whatsoever during the ceremony. And, all right, fine, he was very handsome. Are you happy? Are you satisfied now? At long last, have you no decency, sir?

- Shooby Taylor has a new 7” single out this week! ”A new single?” I hear you say. ”I thought he died 2 years ago! And who puts out a 7” single in this day and age?” Well, all right, you’ve got me. This is actually a split 7” single in which The Dead Science sample Shooby’s voice into a new song. The best way to describe it is that it’s as if Shooby Taylor somehow wandered into a David Lynch movie. Which is totally a plausible situation, in my opinion. Here, take a listen to this snippet of it! I really like it. Although I strongly recommend that you first read the original post about Shooby for this to make sense. Uh, I mean, more sense. In a related story, Irwin Chusid wrote to say that Shooby’s CD is still in the process of rights negotiation, and that they are not giving up. Keep your fingers crossed, kids!

- The cat who dialed 911 appeared on the January 3 show of The Late Show With David Letterman, and I have to say, I thought that the kitty was really great. I can’t seem to find video of this on the web, so I’ll just to describe this as best I can: Basically, every so often, they would cut to the green room, which was totally empty except for a single table, and on top of it, sat one lone cat next to a phone. And they would just hold on the cat for a long time, waiting for it to dial the phone, and meanwhile, the cat would just look at the camera like “What? What the hell? Why are you looking at me?” I gotta tell you, it made me laugh. Anyway, so then Bill O’Reilly came on, and then all hell broke loose. We were told after the O’Reilly segment that the cat got so nervous during the show that he did, in fact, call 911, and then left the building. By the way, if you have not seen the Bill O’Reilly segment, drop everything and go watch it here. Thank god for Dave, for telling this windbag where to go. I do not believe we will be seeing Mr. O’Reilly outside of the safe confines of his own show again.