You know what vuggestue is?  Yes, yes, it's Danish for toddler day-care, but beyond that.  You know what it is in a biochemical sense?  It's a great big petri dish.  And every day my daughter comes home from that petri dish just bubbling over with nasty bacteria that her own super-charged immune system is already decimating--so they jump ship and climb aboard the good ship Daddy.  I've had more colds this fall than I've had in the previous five years, and right now I'm in the middle of one of the worst.  Hence the low posting.

 

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Now you can read it in English: Jared Heller has been sentenced and released.  The account of the episode is about as grisly as it gets:

 

Prosecutor Lone Damgaard read aloud from Heller's previous statements taken during closed court sessions before the verdict was announced on Monday.

 

'The atmosphere in Jaguar's apartment was relaxed and good, and there was cocaine on the table. But then Jaguar asked the taxi driver to take a bath. He followed him to the bathroom, while the American went to sleep. He heard knocking noises from the bathroom and thought they were cleaning the bathtub. After that there was a single cry of help, but who was screaming?' Damgaard read from the statement.

 

'The American walked to the bathroom and saw Jaguar leaning over the taxi driver, who was lying in the bathtub with his legs hanging down the side. Jaguar was hitting him with his fists. The American tried to drag him away. There was blood spilling out of the taxi driver's mouth. It was like a film.

 

Jaguar said the taxi driver was dead, and that he could not tell anyone. The American was scared to be in the apartment with a man who had committed a murder. He wanted to call the police, but the other one demanded and took his telephone. He did not dare to run away, but left the bathroom, because it was a terrible sight. Jaguar called him in again and wanted his help to saw the body to pieces. He had already sawn off one leg and both arms. The American felt he did not have a choice.

 

He tried to saw the other leg off, but threw up after a few moments. He left the room, and was called in again. He tried to cut the body in two, but gave up again. Jaguar called him 'a bitch' and finished the work.

 

Jaguar placed the body parts in trash bags and told the American to take a bag and follow him to the street, where they emptied the bags. The torso and the head were put in a suitcase and a laundry basket, which they carried out and emptied in a corner.'

Meanwhile, as long as we're trolling the English-language Danish news, here's a story of every Danish parent's worst nightmare:

 

A woman in the [Fyn] town of Odense received the fright of a lifetime on Saturday, when an unknown perpetrator stole her pram - and two-month-old baby along with it.

 

There's a happy ending, sort of:

 

After ten minutes of frantic search in the neighbourhood, she found the pram and her unscathed baby behind a nearby container.  Police guess that the man stole the pram and drove it to the container to throw away the toys lying in it. When he discovered that there was a baby sleeping inside, he ran away.

 

This is the kind of crime that cannot stand.  This "blond junkie-type" guy needs to get very publicly whacked down with the full force of the law, nailed with every charge that can conceivably be made to stick, so that the message is spread loud and clear: you snatch a pram, your life is ruined.

 

You snatch my pram, and you'll wish your life were merely ruined.

 

Compared to pram-snatching, this may not seem as bad, but it's still sad: Santa's ripping people off in Denmark.  I won't bother translating the whole article, which is only a couple of paragraphs, but the gist is that an autodialer program is apparently calling Danes, declaring "This is Santa Claus from the North Pole" (in English), and informing the call recipient that if they punch in their bank account number, they've won "something or other."  You can guess what happens to the unhappy souls that give Santa the benefit of the doubt.