Red Mosquito

Serial ‘Tickler’ Breaking into Boston College Students’ Homes

A man has been breaking into the homes of students who live near Boston College and watching them sleep or tickling their feet, police and several alleged victims have confirmed.

Police report at least 10 sightings of the so-called Tickler, who some in the neighborhood had long believed to be a myth. At least three students report having encountered him on the same night, April 7.

“This is no myth,” said Sergeant Michael O’Hara, community service officer for the Boston Police district that covers Allston and Brighton. “It’s happening.”

The Tickler has been reported over the last two years in an area from Lake Street to South Street in Brighton popular with BC students who live off campus, O’Hara said.

Victims have described him as a 5-foot-8-inch black male of unknown age in dark clothing and a hoodie, he said. Some reported that the man watched them through their windows as he committed a sex act.

Teddy Raddell, a BC junior, said he was jolted from a sound sleep at 5 a.m. on a Sunday in October by the sound of someone running down the stairs of the house he shares with several fellow Boston College students.

“I thought my roommate had fallen down the steps,” Raddell said, “but then he started yelling. I got up and he said that he had woken up to someone touching his feet.”

Like other students, he said no valuables were stolen.

“The guy didn’t take anything and there were laptops and wallets out in the main room,” said Raddell, who lives on Radnor Road.

BC junior Daniel Marenzi said he woke up late, also on a Sunday in October, to his feet being tickled.

“I thought my friend was just trying to annoy me, but I soon realized it wasn’t anyone I knew,” Marenzi says. “I freaked out and sat up but he was already on the way out.”

He said he and his housemates now lock all their doors.

O’Hara said many students living off campus leave their doors unlocked, however.

“Absolutely students should be concerned,” he said. “You don’t know what this guy is going to do or if he has a weapon. You need to lock your doors. It’s not as safe as you think.”

It was 3:45 a.m. on April 7 when Jake Barrows was awakened, he said.

“Someone was standing at the end of the bed, and by the time I realized there was someone really there, he was booking it right out my door,” said Barrows, a BC junior who lives on Foster Street. “When I was finally out of bed and following, he was out the back door.”

He said he hasn’t slept in his room since that night.

Just over an hour later, Billy Buckley awoke to the sight of someone opening his bedroom door, he said. He called his roommate’s name, and got no response.

The figure slowly crept away, sprinted down the steps, and slammed the front door, said Buckley, who lives on Foster Street.

“The Tickler had made a visit,” he said, certain now that the stories he had heard are true.

Jonny Goldowsky said he also had a run-in with the Tickler. Goldowsky, who lives in the same house as Barrows, said that, a month before his roommate’s encounter, he heard shuffling at the door to his room and saw a man there in a Gator-style ski mask.

All of these students, and others in the neighborhood, said they would like to see more of a police presence.

“I’d really like it and probably feel safer if BPD had a patrol car off campus every night,” Goldowsky said.

Barrows said there are more police in the neighborhood on nights when students have parties than at other times.

“I don’t think there is much that can be done, but hopefully the Boston police can throw a few more police around at weird times instead of just a million cops on Friday and Saturday nights, then one on Sunday night,” he said.

O’Hara said that this won’t solve the problem.

“People calling in saying they want more patrol cars won’t do anything. They need to report crimes when they happen,” he said. “It’s a low crime area. We patrol areas based on the crime statistics.”

There is no hard evidence in the cases, O’Hara said, and no photos or video of the alleged Tickler. “If we had something to go on,” he said, “we would.”

3 Home Invasions Reported Within 1/4 Mile Overnight In Brighton; At Least One Victim Tickled

BOSTON (CBS) – Boston police are investigating three home invasions in the same Brighton neighborhood over the span of an hour-and-a-half.

The first break-in happened at 249 Foster Street around 3:55 a.m. A man who lives there reported that he woke up to find a man standing in his bedroom. The suspect was described as being tall with a medium build and wearing a mask and dark-colored clothing.

A second man reported waking up at 4:50 a.m. to find someone standing in his room at 64 Kirkwood Road, which is less than a quarter of a mile away. That suspect was described as a short to medium-sized man with light colored clothing, a sweater and a black mask.

A third incident happened about 5:20 a.m. at 239 Foster Street.

There, Boston College student David Master, told WBZ that his roommate woke up to the suspect tickled his feet.

“He felt tickling on his foot that he thought was the cat,” Master said. “Woke up and there was a man crouched right beside his bed.”

Master says his roommate kicked the man, was wearing light-colored clothing and a black mask, and took off running.

Nothing was stolen in any of the break-ins. In all three instances, investigators say the victims had left their doors unlocked.

Boston police are asking anyone with information to contact them.

If coding bores you, maybe you just need to try a different programming language. Perhaps you’ll allow us to recommend one but together by Lauri Hartikka - which is themed around Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Called ArnoldC - see what he did there? - it’s “an imperative programming language where the basic keywords are replaced with quotes from different Schwarzenegger movies.” Yes, really.

So, every program has to start (“IT’S SHOWTIME”) and stop (“YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED”). To print text you use the command “TALK TO THE HAND”; to declare a variable you type “HEY CHRISTMAS TREE “; while is “STICK AROUND”; return is, obviously, “I’LL BE BACK”. And so on, and so on, hilariously.

If you’re interested - and of course you are - a full program to print all the numbers from 1 to 10 would look something like this:

IT’S SHOWTIME
HEY CHRISTMAS TREE isLessThan10
YOU SET US UP @NO PROBLEMO
HEY CHRISTMAS TREE n
YOU SET US UP 0
STICK AROUND isLessThan10
GET TO THE CHOPPER n
HERE IS MY INVITATION n
GET UP 1
ENOUGH TALK
TALK TO THE HAND n
GET TO THE CHOPPER isLessThan10
HERE IS MY INVITATION 10
LET OFF SOME STEAM BENNET n
ENOUGH TALK
CHILL
YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED

broken iris wrote:Apparently youtube is getting ready to remove a bunch of indie artist music videos from it's site because they are signed up on it's streaming serivce. Or something like that. The articles are vague and ramble on incoherently about topics they don't seen to understand in way that on a small subset of their potential audience will appreciate. Like an indie band.

NY Daily News wrote: ....
Hillary Clinton insists she isn’t “well-off” and now daughter Chelsea, according to a recent interview, claims she couldn't care less about money.

“I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,” she told Fast Company in an interview that ran in the magazine's May edition, explaining why she gave up lucrative gigs to join her family’s philanthropic foundation.

Comparing her experience to the average millennial, the 34-year-old former first daughter defended jumping around to different careers — from consulting to a hedge fund to academia to journalism — before finding her true calling working with her parents.

“It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents? I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents … it’s a funny thing to realize I feel called to this work, both as a daughter and also as someone who believes I have contributions to make,” she continued about her reluctant status as a boomerang kid.

The Clinton name likely opened doors for the political heiress, including an eye-popping $600,000 annual salary for an irregular stint as an NBC special correspondent, but Chelsea insists her work speaks for itself.

“I will just always work harder (than anybody else) and hopefully perform better,” said Clinton, who along with former banker husband Marc Mezvinsky, purchased a $10.5-million Gramercy Park apartment in 2013. “And hopefully, over time, I preempt and erase whatever expectations people have of me not having a good work ethic, or not being smart, or not being motivated.”

broken iris wrote:Good news, Chelsea Clinton doesn't care about money.

NY Daily News wrote: ....
Hillary Clinton insists she isn’t “well-off” and now daughter Chelsea, according to a recent interview, claims she couldn't care less about money.

“I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,” she told Fast Company in an interview that ran in the magazine's May edition, explaining why she gave up lucrative gigs to join her family’s philanthropic foundation.

Comparing her experience to the average millennial, the 34-year-old former first daughter defended jumping around to different careers — from consulting to a hedge fund to academia to journalism — before finding her true calling working with her parents.

“It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents? I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents … it’s a funny thing to realize I feel called to this work, both as a daughter and also as someone who believes I have contributions to make,” she continued about her reluctant status as a boomerang kid.

The Clinton name likely opened doors for the political heiress, including an eye-popping $600,000 annual salary for an irregular stint as an NBC special correspondent, but Chelsea insists her work speaks for itself.

“I will just always work harder (than anybody else) and hopefully perform better,” said Clinton, who along with former banker husband Marc Mezvinsky, purchased a $10.5-million Gramercy Park apartment in 2013. “And hopefully, over time, I preempt and erase whatever expectations people have of me not having a good work ethic, or not being smart, or not being motivated.”

This attitude always reminds me of that scene from The Aviator when they are at Hepburn's family's mansion for a dinner party:



Ludlow: Then how did you make all that money?

Mrs. Hepburn: We don't care about money here, Mr. Hughes.

Howard: That's because you have it.

Mrs. Hepburn: Would you repeat that?

Howard: You don't care about money because you have it. And you've always had it. My father was dirt poor when I was born…. I care about money, because I know what it takes out of a man to make it.

Chelsea Clinton wrote: “It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents? I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t. That wasn’t the metric of success I wanted in my life. I’ve talked about this to my friends who are doctors and whose parents are doctors, or who are lawyers and their parents are lawyers. It’s a funny thing to realise I feel called to this work both as a daughter and also as someone who believes I have contributions to make.”

Spoiler: show

not pictured: bowl of noodles