Weird and Wacky Wednesday blog posts are supposed to come out Wednesday morning, but we’re a little slow. Blame it on summertime. Things move more slowly maybe. We lose track of time. In our office we’re always busy in the summer but the days do seem to merge into one another. Somehow nothing seems as serious in the summer which is perhaps the reason one Atlanta thief’s crime failed somewhat unspectacularly.
Show me the money!
“Everybody get down! Give me all your money!” is what the thief shouted when he entered a nail salon in Atlanta. But the owner of the salon stayed calm, and continued to go about their business, essentially ignoring the attempted armed robbery. As did the customers and other employees. It seems nobody was interested in getting down and nobody made any attempt to hand over any money. But really, who is carrying cash these days in any event?
The video is posted on YouTube and you can see that the theft was basically thwarted because nobody paid attention to the robber’s demand. The would-be robber gave up and left. Was it that laid back summertime feeling that kept people from responding to his demands?
You can smell the bullshit but not the natural gas
When one thinks of fast-talking scammers, pump-and-dump business ventures and clever ponzi scheme fraudsters, you don’t usually think of cows. Or cow manure. There is something calming about cows. Imagine cows in a pasture on a summer morning. Imagine cow manure. Imagine getting rich quick off cow manure.
California man Ray Brewer was recently sentenced to nearly 7 years in jail for a cow manure ponzi scheme he operated for 5 years.

Ray invited people to invest in his company which he claimed was building anaerobic digesters at dairies in various regions of California that would process cow manure and turn it onto natural gas. He was full of hot air, however. He raised millions presenting potential investors with fake leases, fake photos of machines under construction and fake constructions sites. He created fake contracts with international companies but, alas, it was all a load of manure.
Of course, Ray spent the money on himself. He bought some land and a new Dodge truck. When things started to unwind, he left California for Montana, where he lived under a fake name until authorities tracked him down.
He was sentenced in California and is spending his first summer in jail. The people of Montana may have been happy to send him back to California.
Go west in the open air…
Apparently at least one Nevada driver would like to send people from California back home. This person applied for and was granted the personalized license plate “GOBK2CA” which apparently is short for “Go back to California.” The plate was issued and then a complaint was made about it to the DMV. Most people would probably think it’s funny and take it in stride. But not the DMV folks in Nevada who concluded that it broke the rules for being defamatory to a person or group.
Considering the vitriol we see in public discourse today, it’s difficult to see how something as simple as this license plate would be viewed as defamatory or not otherwise protected under the laws of freedom of speech.

It seems the decision-makers in the Nevada DMV aren’t in a laid-back, summertime state of mind.