Voting Made Easier

We test the school-board candidates by the strictest of criteria and find a local lawman with a great sense of humor

A A A Comments (0) Wednesday, Mar 30 2005

"St. Clair County Sheriff's Department, Illinois"

"Sheriff Stretch"

More About

www.sheriff.co.st-clair.il.us

About the site: Okay, so it's not a blog. This is the official site of the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department, Sheriff Mearl J. Justus presiding. As one might expect, it contains a bevy of crime-prevention tips and a registry of sex offenders.

But that's not all.

Highlights:

"Sheriff Stretch" (www.sheriff.co.st-clair.il.us/stretch.asp) invites visitors to use their computer mouse to contort an image of Justus in uniform.
"About the Sheriff" (www.sheriff.co.st-clair.il.us/srfprof.asp) contains fun facts about Justus, presumably in his own words: "OCCUPATION: baby sit for 400 of St. Clair Count's finest"; "FAVORITE FOOD: Jail wonderbowl, eat it and wonder what it was"; "IF I COULD PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, IT WOULD BE: Siren 'yelp, whirl, whoop whoop.'" The page also features a photo of Justus in a sombrero.
A slide show of the jail (www.sheriff.co.st-clair.il.us/jailpica.asp), including a shot of the facility's basketball court and some computer equipment that looks astoundingly outmoded.
"Illegal Drug House" (www.sheriff.co.st-clair.il .us/drughos.asp) features a shot of the "Drug House Of The Month."
The guestbook (www.sheriff.co.st-clair.il.us/guestbook.asp) that lists visitors from all over the nation. Recently, most have come looking for sex offenders.
"Your picture is available online...and we can prove it!" boasts www.sheriff.co.st-clair.il.us/srchinfo.asp. After entering some personal information, you are shown a "Picture of you when you were 3 months old" -- a likeness of a baby gorilla, nursing.

Know of an Unreal-worthy local blog? Send the URL to unreal@riverfronttimes.com.

Voting Made Easier

Having ascertained that our brain is 77.33 percent female and that our porn star name is Jenny Jiggles (if we skewed male, it'd be Hugh Coxs -- which, frankly, we prefer), Unreal glanced up from our iBook long enough to notice that next Tuesday, April 5, ten candidates will vie to fill three seats on the St. Louis Board of Education.

This led us, in an uncharacteristic moment of selflessness, to construct a meme of our own, in order to help voters better assess the candidates' ability to fit in with the incumbent board members. The results are compiled in handy charticle form.