ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE BEGINS IN MIAMI

So this is how it begins.

Police in Miami, Fla., shot and killed a man who was eating the face of another man on a causeway ramp.

Yeah. Seriously. According to the Miami Herald:

"A road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area. 

The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots."

The coppers are blaming cocaine, of course, because they don't want us to know the truth.

COME SEE THE SQUID

Wake the kids, pack the car and go west, young man. Squid on the beach.

The Oregonian has the story:

"I haven't confirmed it, but we are hearing reports that dozens are washing up," said Chris Havel, spokesman for the Oregon State Parks & Recreation Department. "They are probably Humboldt squid, which are much more common in warmer waters around Santa Cruz."

The squid are about two feet long, and have a life cycle of only a year or two, Havel said. They may be dying because they are at the end of their life cycle or it could be food related or a disease, he said.

"If you get a chance, go look at them," said Havel, who suggested Washburne State Park would be a good starting point. "Bring your camera, take some pictures. This may be your only chance to see a Humboldt squid lying on the beach."

Or you can check out this pic of said squid and freak out.

WORTH YOUR TIME

People who hate The Media -- and to them it is a monolithic monster, worthy of proper name -- are sadly blinded to the best bits of an admittedly flawed profession. Hatred keeps them from seeing and appreciating storytelling at its best.

So they missed a helluva read in Sunday's New York Times about Gilberto Blanco, shot and killed by a cop outside a Brooklyn church.

Al Baker and Michael Wilson tell the tale and do it well. Two grafs to whet your appetite:

And so the details and echoes of a shooting are set to fade from the city’s memory. A man with no known criminal record and an otherwise invisible life as an immigrant worker is dead, at 46. The officer was treated briefly at a hospital and for the moment has been sidelined with administrative duties.

What was left to show for the last two years of Mr. Blanco’s life fit in a corner of a Bensonhurst apartment’s back room: two laundry bags, a duffel and a cardboard box of DVDs, magazines, a bottle of Old Spice and a toothbrush. He shared the tiny bedroom with a laborer from Guatemala, above a Chinese bakery on 18th Avenue. There was no room on the floor to walk when both of their twin mattresses were laid out. Mr. Blanco paid $225 a month. The people who owned the apartment said they had never learned his name.

Vivid, detailed. Great kicker grafs. Worth your eyeballs.

DESTROYED, NOT DEFEATED

Forty-seven years Wednesday since Ernest Hemingway went pop in search of his lost generation. Proof that all men do die equally, and that electroconvulsive therapy is probably not a good thing. There is also the truth that a double-barreled shotgun to the face is an effective way to check out, though it may leave the well-lighted room a little less than clean.

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them," the man once said. We aim to take that advice.

SMOKE 'EM IF YOU GOT 'EM

Your favorite smoker will appreciate this:

This ashtray looks like a lung. And as you put your cigarette in it, it starts coughing and screaming.

Eleven bucks. Hey, a bargain.

SOME DEATHS ARE WORTH MORE

At least 35,000, or maybe four times that number, dead in Myanmar. Another 30,000-plus killed in China. It's news, even big news, but it's not the Mother of All News. The MOAN designation is attached only to the events we see for ourselves, when it's our shoes on the ground, our nose filled with the pungence of mayhem.

Unfair but true; subjective but real. It's the Law. McClurke's Law.

Reportedly named after a jaded BBC editor, McClurke's Law holds that some deaths are worth more. NBC journalist Martin Fletcher's Breaking News -- a helluva read, even if you don't work in a paragraph factory -- includes McClurke's Law:

One hundred thousand Bangladeshis killed in a flood equals 10,000 Africans killed by famine equals 500 Egyptians eaten by crocodiles on the Nile equals five British soldiers killed in Northern Ireland equals two of the queen's corgi dogs run over by a bus.

Rue the day when the U.S. has to endure a death toll equivalent to a dozen Sept. 11ths. The ensuing coverage may kill us all.

DETERMINED TO DIE

Steve Gregory Walther of Michigan couldn't reunite with his ex-wife, so he killed himself. It happens.

The 41-year-old Walther, however, went hardcore. He put a chain saw to his head.

According to the Crawford County Avalanche:

Crawford County Sheriff's deputies were dispatched to a home in the Indian Glens of the AuSable subdivision in South Branch Township, at 12:25 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, for a domestic assault in progress.

The woman in the home called the police when Walther, who she was granted a divorce from on March 17, came to retrieve some of the personal property he was awarded in the divorce agreement. ...

After talking to his ex-wife about reconciling their relationship, Walther became upset and threatened to hurt her and himself with a knife he had taken from a drawer, police said.

The woman called 911, then fled the home with her dog, seeking help from a neighbor.

Sgt. Randy Baerlocher, from the Crawford County Sheriff's Office, was patrolling in the area and arrived at the home at 12:37 p.m.

When he arrived, Baerlocher found Walther collapsed in the driveway with a self-inflicted wound to the head. Baerlocher said that Walther retrieved a chain saw from a shed and cut himself in the head. He was still alive and responded to Baerlocher's questions.

Soon after he died, leaving behind an obit for history. And a chainsaw.

PULLING A KEVORKIAN

In name and deed, indeed. NBC San Diego reports:

According to police, Sevan Kevorkian's girlfriend found him hanging from a closet rod in his apartment ... last Saturday. Investigators said that after she cut him down and revived him, Kevorkian, 36, started pulling her around the room by her hair.

Police said the altercation was noticed by a man and woman who were pulling up in a vehicle in the neighborhood. The man climbed through a window to stop the assault and put Kevorkian in a carotid restraint, which is sometimes called a sleeper hold.

Kevorkian lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital. Officials said he died a little before midnight on Thursday.

Definitely deserves a Darwin.

FATHER OF THE YEAR CANDIDATE

Dad: Tyrone Spellman, 27

Daughter: 17-month-old Alayiah Turman

Deed: He beat her to death after she pulled down his Xbox console.

Mom was pregnant and napping in another room when Spellman cracked the child's skull. He fled their Philadelphia home, was arrested, confessed, later recanted and said he had lied to protect Alayiah's mother.

The Associated Press reports:

An autopsy showed that Alayiah had suffered a broken arm about two weeks before she died - an injury that city social workers did not see on two visits to the house in late August, when they found the baby well.

Spellman was convicted of third-degree murder and child endangerment. He faces 23 to 47 years in prison.

DOG 1, MAN 0

Dog bites man, only worse. Let the Houston Chronicle do the telling:

In a freak hunting accident, a Baytown man was killed over the weekend when his dog stepped on his loaded shotgun, triggering a discharge that penetrated his truck's tailgate and then struck him, officials said.

Perry Alvin Price III was hunting on a lease near Stowell in Chambers County Saturday and had shot down a goose but had not seen where it landed, sheriff's investigators said.

The 46-year-old math teacher from Baytown's Robert E. Lee High School then put his shotgun in the back of his truck and was about to open the tailgate to release his tracking dog when the shotgun fired, investigators said. The blast struck Price in the thigh.

Price died from severe blood loss from his femoral artery shortly after arriving about 6:20 p.m. at Winnie Medical Center. Price's hunting companion and a former student, Daniel Groberg, said he tried to stop the bleeding with clothing before taking him from the hunting lease off FM 1941.

Paw prints from Price's beloved chocolate Labrador retriever, Arthur, were found on the muddy shotgun, said Chambers County Sheriff Joe LaRive. ...

Price's sister speculated that the dog was anxious to begin the pursuit.

"His dog was so excited," said Patricia Payne. "He was jumping all around, because he was about to get out and go get that goose.

"That gun had to be knocked around just right to fire. I believe the dog knocked the safety off and hit the trigger, too," she said. "Price was always so careful."

Man's best friend. Just keep him away from shotguns.

STOPPING OFF FOR A COLD ONE

Donald Luis Cooper, 32, is an odd duck. He apparently likes to have sex with dead people. Now he's going to prison. According to the Daily Press in Victorville, Calif.:

In February 2003, Cooper, 32, and his girlfriend, Chaunee Marie Helm, 30, were working for All-County Transportation, driving bodies from Victor Valley Community Hospital to the county morgue in San Bernardino.

Security cameras in the morgue captured Cooper sexually assaulting the body of Robyn Gillett, an Adelanto girl who had died of the flu. Helm served as a lookout.

But Cooper was not charged with necrophilia because it wasn’t illegal at the time. He pleaded guilty to mutilating grave remains and received a suspended two-year prison sentence.

If he kept his nose clean for the five years of his probation, he wouldn’t have to serve any additional jail time beyond the time he spent waiting for trial.

But instead of keeping his nose clean, Cooper was caught in a house where small children lived. Seven kids, in all, most belonging to his current girlfriend. The house was filthy:

“There were animal feces and urine on the floor, in the children’s room, the living room,” said Code Enforcement Supervisor Tony Genovesi. “There were feces on the wall. The odor was terrible. ... Any time you have animals that are defecating inside the house and urinating inside the house, the odor’s pretty bad.”

Cooper's probation was revoked. Now he's headed back to jail for a year. Nice guy.

DOING WHAT TIGERS DO

Tatiana was a 350-pound Siberian tiger. She got out of her enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas. One man is dead; two others are wounded.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Zoo officials are still unsure how the tiger escaped the enclosure. Authorities believe it initially attacked all three victims, killing [17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr.]. Officials believe the cat then followed blood trails to Terrace Cafe, where it cornered the other boys, brothers ages 19 and 23.

Although some zoo officials speculate the threesome may have teased the tiger, San Francisco police Lt. Leroy Lindo said police currently have no reason to believe the three men taunted the animal prior to the attack, which happened shortly after the zoo's 5 p.m. closing time. Dozens of visitors and some employees were still inside the zoo at the time.

Cops shot the tiger to death. Too bad she died while following her nature.

PAUL TIBBETS, 92

He piloted a B-29 Superfortress named the Enola Gay on Aug. 6, 1945, and forever changed the world. Ghastly infamy.

As The New York Times obit notes:

“I was anxious to do it,” he told an interviewer for a documentary, “The Men Who Brought the Dawn,” marking the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. “I wanted to do everything that I could to subdue Japan. I wanted to kill the bastards. That was the attitude of the United States in those years.”

Thirty years after helping incinerate more than 60,000 people -- most of them civilians -- Tibbets flew a B-29 and simulated the Hiroshima bombing at an air show in Texas.

The point goes to Lone Star DC, who sums it up best: [He] gets what he gave. As do we all.

THIRSTY SHOPLIFTER BEATEN DEAD

That'll teach him. Reuters says the shoplifter -- a man in his 50s or 60s -- stole two beers from a supermarket. The manager caught him in the act, dragged him to the back of the store, east of Tokeyo, and beat him before leaving him in the road:

A passer-by called an ambulance, but the man later died in hospital, the agency said.

"I never thought he would die," Kyodo quoted the supermarket manager as telling police.

Imagine the penalty for pilfering a six-pack.

IT'S A BURNING MAN THING

"Radical self expression" is the Burning Man way, and one guy has taken it to new heights. As SF Gate's culture blog explains:

A Burning Man participant was found dead this morning, hanging from the inside of a two-story high tent, according to Mark Pirtle, special agent in charge for the Bureau of Land Management.

The apparent suicide would be the festival's first in its 21 year history, Pirtle said.

Pershing County coroners are investigating the scene and preparing to remove the body. Pirtle said the man was hanging for two hours before anyone in the large tent thought to bring him down. "His friends thought he was doing an art piece," Pirtle said.

Put 36,000-plus free thinkers on an ancient lake bed and someone, or thing, is bound to get burnt.

MMM ... URN COOKIES

Anita Lewis of Elmira, N.Y., held a rummage sale, during which time she sold a ceramic turtle for 50 cents. The buyer said he was going to use the turtle as a cookie jar.

Inside the turtle: the ashes of Lewis' husband's former wife.

The Associated Press reports:

Lewis said she had hauled items into her yard early Saturday while her husband slept. The buyer quickly selected the large turtle container, despite being unable to get the lid open.

Her husband's previous wife collected turtles.

"We have lots of turtles," Anita Lewis said. "It didn't even register that this was the one (containing the ashes)."