book it for an ibook

did you hear about the richmond ibook insanity?

and i actually seriously considered going to get a $50 ibook until they announced that it'd be for henrico county residents only. bastards. on second thought though, and with the release of these hilarious (but slightly horrendous) photos and information, i'm glad i stayed home and slept. really glad.

in short, henrico county public schools (in richmond, va) were selling 1,000 of their used apple ibook laptops to the public for $50 each. on sale at 7am on tuesday, august 16th. it turns out that 5,000 people showed up, some around 1:30am, to try and get one, and when the gates finally opened, the rush of people-needing-laptops turned into a stampede. 70 police officers had to struggle to control the chaos, and 17 people were hurt with 4 being sent to the hospital. the quotes are nuts:

Latoya Jones, 19, said, "I could not move, I could not breathe." She said she lost a flip-flop in the ordeal and limped around on the sizzling blacktop with one foot bare.

"It's like the people are going to die if they don't get a computer," Lester Caudill said. "This is like the last chopper out of Saigon."

and being the great americans we are,

Some people managed to make money off the sale -- one man sold his laptop on-site for $200. An eBay entrepreneur was offering 100 T-shirts for $7.50 apiece that read: "I went to Henrico County for a $50 iBook . . . but all I got was kicked in the [vulgarity]." By 7 p.m. a dozen had been ordered.

hahaha. total insanity -- check out the articles in the washingtonpost and richmond times-dispatch (including the accompanying articles about people being incredibly pissed). apparently, there's another 8,000 laptops that the county still wants to sell. maybe they'll do a better job of planning/managing the next time around. phew!