Spitzer and the high-priced hooker

The message here, kids, is that if you pay enough for a hooker, you can walk away scot free when caught.  Particularly, if you are, say, the mayor of New York and you spend thousands of dollars per booty call, you can get away with your marriage intact (good or bad depends on your view of your marriage) and no penalty beyond having to resign your position.

The decision not to press charges against former Gov. Eliot Spitzer for his involvement with a high-priced prostitution ring last year came as no surprise yesterday to several former prosecutors and defense lawyers, many of whom said that the case, while full of lurid and suggestive details, would have been hard to prosecute.

. . .

In laying out his decision not to prosecute Mr. Spitzer, Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said he had three main rationales: Mr. Spitzer had apparently not used any public money or campaign funds for his trysts; there was insufficient evidence that he had broken the law in how he had structured payments to the call-girl ring; and, finally, it was not the policy of his or other federal prosecutors’ offices to charge the customers in matters of prostitution.

Hard to prosecute.  Not policy to charge customers.  Remember that when you get caught in Nevada after paying $15 for a blow-job.  If you are a nobody and buy a cheap whore, you will get busted.  If you are a big-name politico, you get to apologize in public, say you are sorry, then wait for the whole thing to go away.

[tags]Eliot Spitzer, Hookers without penalty, High priced hookers, Scot Free[/tags]

Bejeweled Twist quick-impression

I just downloaded PopCap game‘s newest – Bejeweled Twist.  The first couple versions of Bejeweled games grabbed me right away.  This one?  Meh.

But then, I decided to start paying attention to what the game was offering.  The concept is simple – spin a set of four jewels, try to get three in a row.  It lacks the immediacy of the original, but it gives some new twists that add depth and strategy.  Here’s a video someone else made showing a bit of gameplay.

Read more of what I saw in the game below the hump. Continue reading “Bejeweled Twist quick-impression”

Watchmen – the graphic novel trailer

I recently finished reading Alan Moore’s Watchmen again.  It is, quite simply, one of the best graphic novels ever written, I think.  The art is well done.  The story is thoughtful.  This is one of the graphic novels that made people recognize long-form comic as legitimate novel rather than just another comic format.  I had read this in college, then forgotten about it for a long time.  In the past year or two, I’ve started seeing it on bookshelves again (or possibly it was always there and I just started noticing it there), and decided last month to order it from Amazon.

While doing other random surfing this week, I stumbled on mention of a Watchmen trailer that was out.  I didn’t even realize this graphic novel was being made into a movie, but it is.  So naturally, I had to track the trailer down.  You can get the official, hi-res, widescreen trailer from the official movie site, but I have a soft-spot for Rorschach, and liked this fan-made trailer enough to use it instead:

No compromises.  Not even in the face of Armaggedon.  Not much longer to wait.  I look forward to seeing this.

[tags]Watchmen, Graphic Novel, YouTube, Watchmen Movie[/tags]