The Bullpen

A serious escape attempt at Stillwater Prison was thwarted Wednesday morning when a staff member discovered a "very well-hidden" and "very sophisticated tunnel" in the basement of one of the prison's industry buildings, officials from the state Department of Corrections said today.

The staff member, who was "doing what he was supposed to be doing when he was supposed to be doing it," discovered the tunnel in its very early stages, said David Crist, an assistant commissioner of the facilities service division of the Department of Corrections.

Officials would not give dimensions of tunnel, what was used to construct it or its length.

"The tunnel entrance was large enough for someone to actually enter," an official said. The distance between the start of the tunnel and the perimeter wall was about 50 to 60 feet.

"There was still a significant distance to go to the wall," Dennis Benson, deputy commissioner.

Here's a web app to design a small comic strip. It might be worthwhile to use some of these comic strips for an image post:

Explanation...
You pick the two characters in the strip with the dropdown and throughout the 6 cells you enter the conversation via text. Its actually been around for a while but it’s a classic. Here's one I made.

-HS

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- As Bert Blyleven pointed out before autographing the bruise, my mistake was shouting "Remember, I have a Hall of Fame vote!" when I stepped into the batter's box to face him. He's right. I was too ambiguous. I should have made myself clear by yelling, "Remember, I vote FOR YOU for the Hall of Fame!"

"If you had done that," Bert said, "I would have grooved it in there for you."

Instead, he hit me in the left hip with a fastball. Which, again, was my fault. Bert wasn't trying to hit me. He merely wanted to throw the pitch behind me as a gag, but I stupidly stepped back into it. I winced, spun around and, naturally, charged the mound. Which was yet another mistake. Bert is not only 10 years older than me but he is also much bigger and in pretty good shape. So when I got to the mound, he grabbed me, laughed and pinned me to the ground.

When he helped me up, I chose to return to the plate to bat again rather than take my base, and this time Bert did indeed groove me a fastball. Not that it mattered. I hit a routine grounder to short and was thrown out by several steps. Still, it was a better outcome than my previous at-bat when he buckled my knees with an 0-2 curveball.

Bert Blyleven took great joy in tossing me to the ground like a rag doll.
Fellow campers jokingly asked whether I would continue voting for Bert. Of course I will. It was all in good fun and besides, when Blyleven does get elected in a year or so, I'll be able to say that I was hit with a pitch from a genuine Hall of Famer. The autograph may have washed off the bruise, but I have a signed ball to prove it.

I was reading this today on my lunch break. Did you catch the part where Caple was being pulled from pitching and the manager said *We're gonna bring in some fresh meat* Kinda funny, reminded me of Bull Durham.

Bluefields is a creation of the gods of geography. Located halfway between the cocaine labs of Colombia and the 300 million noses of the United States, Bluefields is ground zero for cocaine transportation. Nicaraguan waters are near Colombian territorial limits, making the area extremely popular with cocaine smugglers using very small, very fast fishing boats.

The US military calls them "go fast boats", which is a bureaucratic way of describing these mini-water-rockets. Typically these 12m boats have 800 horsepower of outboard motors bolted to the stern. A Porsche 911 Turbo, by comparison, has 485 horsepower.

While they are very fast, they are also very visible to the array of radars set up by roaming US spy planes, Coastguard cutters and helicopters which regularly monitor the speeding cocaine traffickers.

"Down by Monkey Point, a family found an entire boat ... they stashed it and bought up houses all over town. It was 57 sacks [about 1995kg]," says Jah Boon, a local Rasta man. "Those people have money and still have coke buried in them hills. It is another way of having money in the bank."

At a local price of $3500 per kg, the typical 35kg sack nets a cash sale price of $122,500, which by all accounts is spent immediately.

"Last time bags and bags washed up, everyone [felt like] a millionaire, but that money does not last." explains Helen, who runs a university research institute in Bluefields. Asked how the locals unload their cash, she said: "Beer, beer, beer. You should see the amount they drink here. Go to the pier and see how much alcohol goes out to the islands."

"When the drugs come in, everyone is happy, the banks, the stores, everyone has cash."

Arana, the former mayor, recalled one month when the village bought 28,000 cases of beer.

Given the massive amount of cocaine in town, violence is surprisingly rare. Gunfights are nearly unheard of and most of the town seems to lounge around or play baseball all day and then erupt into a frenzy of energy by late afternoon, fuelled by Flor de Cana, a Nicaraguan rum, fresh fish, an endless supply of native oysters, and "the white lobster".

Police said witnesses reported that White's motorcycle appeared to be going at least 120 mph when it crashed into the truck on U.S. 169 south of 81st Street.

Police said the truck driver reported hearing a bump and then seeing debris from the motorcycle going past him. When he managed to pull over, he saw that a man was embedded in the back of his trailer, police said.

White was dead at the scene.