Dirigibles and Incorrigibles

Richard Heene, the perpetrator of that balloon boy hoax plead guilty in a Colorado court the other day to influencing a public servant.  Sentencing is next month and this caper could see him serving some jail time. 

Don’t ask me why he was charged with an oddball crime like that.  In Canada I suppose we would have called it public mischief and some Provincial Court Judge would have let him off with a conditional discharge and a warning that next time his balloon escapes, his son had better be in it.   

In the interim Heene has achieved his goal, massive media publicity.  He can readily write his book on the adventure and there is a great chance it will make Oprah’s best-seller recommendation list. The only question now is where he will write the book from. 

While we’re on the subject of this type of activity, neighbours of Caroline and Steve Cartwright of Newcastle, England complained that the couple was too noisy while they were having sex, virtually nightly. A judge imposed a ban on the excessive noise. The Cartwrights appealed and the Appeals Court dismissed their appeal, Freedman J noting: 

"It certainly was intrusive and constituted a statutory nuisance. It was clearly of a very disturbing nature and it was also compounded by the duration -- this was not a one-off; it went on for hours at a time.” 

And I’ll bet that until now most of us thought that the only thing Newcastle was known for was coal.  In future, when we next hear the word “ Newcastle”, the first thing that will come into our minds will no longer be mining. 

I do wonder what the learned justice meant by, “a one-off”?  Whatever it is, it seems that would have been legal.  Couples about to fool around in Newcastle should bear this in mind and decide in advance to have a one-off.  In Newcastle, this must be a form of safe sex.