May 4, 2011

Former Playboy playmate and B-movie actress Yvette Vickers 

kept to herself and tended her flowers on a quiet, 

tree-lined street perched above Beverly Hills that actors, 

producers and writers call home.

So it came as a shock when neighbours learnt a badly decomposing body 

had been inside the home for several months to a year.

Neighbour Susan Savage told the Los Angeles Times 

she saw letters and cobwebs in Vickers's mailbox last week before 

going into the house and discovering the body in an upstairs 

room with a small space heater that was turned on.

Ms Savage described her neighbour as an elegant woman with flowing 

blonde hair and warm smile.

"She kept to herself, had friends and seemed like a very independent spirit," 

she said.  "To the end, she still got cards and letters from 

all over the world requesting photos and still wanting to be her friend."

Terri Cheney, an author and entertainment lawyer who has lived in 

the street since 1994, said: "There is a feeling of safety on this street.

"You don't feel like that would happen here - someone being neglected like that."

It was still unknown if it was the body of Vickers, 

who appeared in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, 

Attack of the Giant Leeches and other cult films of the 1950s.

It could take a week to determine the identity, 

coroner's Lieutenant Cheryl MacWillie said.

By the looks of Vickers's one-bedroom home, it might have been 

difficult to detect that anything unusual had happened inside.

The two-storey, brown dwelling is rustic and sits next to two 

modern homes that dwarf it. 

Ivy and bougainvillea are draped on a front window, 

and the grounds on a steep hillside are overgrown with foliage.

A handwritten note at the front gate reads: 

"Deliveries, please ring doorbell." Guests had to climb a stone walkway that wrapped around the house.

Cheney, 51, said she did not know Vickers had been an actress 

or was a Playboy magazine playmate in July 1959. Cheney 

greeted Vickers only a few times and noticed the woman liked to water her flowers.

"She seemed lovely," Cheney said.  "She went with the house, 

it was a little bit unusual. It has a fairy tale kind of charm to it."

Born Yvette Vedder in Kansas City, Missouri, on August 26, 1928, 

she attended the University of California, Los Angeles, 

before discovering acting and leaving school to pursue it.

Her first film role was as a giggling girl in Sunset Boulevard in 1950. 

In 1957, she appeared in the James Cagney-directed Short Cut to Hell, 

but it flopped and she turned to B-movies.

It wasn't immediately known if Vickers had any relatives.

April 25, 2011

A woman who claims Google is "inside 

her head and making her do things" quietly gained entry to the company's 

Silicon Valley headquarters last month, leaving behind a book 

and angry letter for the company's co-founders, police said.

The same woman is alleged to have stalked the creator of FarmVille, 

Mark Pincus, who has taken out a restraining order against her.

Vera Svechina, a self-described filmmaker and former stripper, 

walked undetected into Google's main offices on March 14 

and spent several minutes there, 

Mountain View police spokeswoman Liz Wylie said.

"An administrative staff member returned to her desk and found a book in Russian 

as well as a letter addressed to the two founders," 

Wylie told Reuters, referring to Google co-founders 

Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

"It didn't make any sense," 

Wylie said of the letter. 

"They were the ramblings of somebody with some kind of condition."

Google contacted police four days later, 

after reviewing security camera footage and finding that Svechina 

had breached the inner offices of the world's largest internet company 

by walking in behind a visually impaired employee, Wylie said.

Police do not know the current whereabouts of Svechina, 

37, who was last known to be living in San Francisco. 

She has not been arrested or charged in the case.

While Svechina was "a little bit angry" at Brin and Page in the letter, 

Wylie said, that did not constitute a criminal threat.

Company representatives for Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

Wylie said that Svechina came to Mountain View police 

last May to file a complaint against Google, 

claiming that the company "was inside her head and telling her to do things."

"At that point we evaluated her, determined that she was a threat 

to herself and took her on 5150 hold for psychiatric evaluation, because 

we felt she was potentially capable of hurting herself," 

Wylie said.  She said Svechina was taken to a hospital but has since been released.

According to the Business Insider blog, 

Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus obtained a restraining order against Svechina 

in March after filing a court declaration 

saying she had visited his home and threatened his wife and children.

On her blog, Svechina describes herself 

as a filmmaker who was born in Obninsk, Russia, 

studied at Moscow State University 

and worked in a Geisha club in Japan.

BODHI

          The one you decked is Bunker Wiess.

          The big one is his brother,

          Warchild.  The other two always

          hang.  They think they're some kinda

          death squad around here.

                         UTAH

          What's their program?

                         BODHI

          They're punks.  Nazis.  Their brains

          are wired wrong.  They hurt surfing

          because they give nothing back, and

          they have no respect for the sea.

          They just want to get radical.  It's

          mindless aggression.  They'll never

          get it, the spiritual side of it.