Yes, I know you're wasting productive office hours frantically trying to get reservations for MFA St. Pete's awesome new Star Wars exhibition, but I've still gotta debrief you on the weekend's madness.
FRIDAY, NOV. 10:
Sometimes a story takes a couple of days to break on the local feeds, which sucks, because I didn't hear this one about a 40-year-old man over on the east coast who ran naked into a New Smyrna Beach woman's house and started trying on her clothes until Friday. Cops found him "rolling in the yard" when they got there. They said he was acting irrationally. They were gifted with understatement.
Pepsi released a salted caramel version of its diabetes water, marking the first time in recorded history that the words "salted caramel" made everybody throw up in their mouths a little bit.
A Clearwater condo association is threatening to evict a tenant for keeping a squirrel he rescued after Hurricane Irma, saying he's violating a "no pets" clause even though the clause reportedly only mentions dogs and cats. This totally seems worthy of lengthy and expensive civil litigation, and not at all easily solved through the use of the phrase "seriously, just let the man have his fucking squirrel."
SATURDAY, NOV. 11:
A man racked up numerous charges after allegedly stabbing the police offers attempting to take him into custody for beating his girlfriend at a Courtney Campbell marina and threatening the people who were trying to stop it. Interestingly, public intoxication is not among the charges listed; apparently some people don't even need an excessive intake of alcohol to be cretinous enough to batter a woman and try to kill anyone who's got a problem with it.
SUNDAY, NOV. 12:
And finally, a few days after putting a note on his door basically insulting the city of St. Pete for re-electing Mayor Rick Kriseman, a local St. Pete businessman took to YouTube to complain he was being "attacked" by people who disagree with the sentiment. Oh, and he also thinks the LGBT community should quit being so uppity and demanding since they've had their "independence" for years. The First Amendment: It works both ways, and people prone to publicly saying indefensibly stupid shit should remember that.
This article appears in Nov 9-16, 2017.