That “victory” post a few weeks back? Yeah, I should have known it would come back to bite me in the ass. Anyway, if you haven’t already gone done and shot yourself up with the poison otherwise known as the H1N1 vaccine, don’t do it. My household has had a rather large shot-related scare, and after doing a bit of research we are highly suspicious of the contents of the vaccine, as well as the shady science legitimating its use. I’m sure you’ll hear about it soon enough, because with the numbers of folks that have been injected, it’s sure to surface at some point — even with the stupidhead media pundits pushing it like crack that’s good for you. I know it’s probably too late for this, but beware the hype.

In other news, there is no fucking other news. We stopped listening to it because it’s sickening.

(Actually, I lie. There is other news but it will have to wait for another, less angry post. The last couple of weeks have been tough, is all. We’ll get over it.)

i seem to recall many of my friends liking the “sh*t my dad says” twitter account which i find totally not funny at all so pretty much tried to forget that people i associate with find it pure hilarity.  well it all came flooding back to me when i read today that cbs is going to make a sitcom out of it.  what?  like, for reals?

so.  go ahead and enjoy the scoop… but lets not discuss it.

that is all.

————————-

via bwe, via gawker

While we as a society are undeniably wonderful in a multitude of ways, we’re also endlessly plagued by a slew of social problems and moral dilemmas that will never be easily solved. Among these concerns is pedophilia — It’s a sad fact that some adults wish to do lewd and inappropriate things with underage children, and it’s our social duty to make sure our children are safe from people who exhibit this behavior.

While some may call it excessive, I fully support the action taken by an English playground to ban all adults (including parents) from playgrounds. Kudos to them for looking out for the children and covering a weak spot that seems to have been mostly overlooked. One that is all too scary. Society has been quite vigilant with protecting children from any rogue pedophiles that may be inhabiting the local area, but what if the kids are living in the belly of the beast? What if the parents are the pedophiles?

One of these people is infinitely more likely to be a pedophile than the other. I don't like those odds.

Internet, I know I’m not the only one looking out for the kids. And I’m hoping this is just the first of many steps to protect the children from their own potentially-pedophilic parents. We’ve always seen it as the parents’ job to watch out for their children. But who’s watching them?

Internet, we have a serious problem. In South Carolina, an innocent man is being hassled by the pigs for doing what any good-natured Deputy Assistant Attorney-General does when he decides to visit a cemetery on his lunch break. Seriously, Internet, do we really live in a world where a 66 year old ex-state legislator can’t pay his respects to lost loved ones in the company 0f an 18 year old stripper in a conveniently roomy SUV with Viagra and sex toys on hand?

What's next? Will we start prosecuting the upstanding citizens who run the world's free candy vans?

I mean, I can almost see the case. If you look at the details a certain way, you can imagine some illicit funny business going down in this scenario, despite the fact the fact Mr. Corning’s alibi checks out. He says he keeps the viagra and sex toys on-hand “just in case”, and to be frank, I think the world would be a better place if more people put that much effort into being prepared.

Honestly, I think the whole stink is just social paranoia. I mean, a sick enough person can pervert any innocent story into something heinous for the sake of complaining.

Disclaimer: This is my first crack at a post like this, so it probably sucks. Next week will be better

Apparently, we should make health care public, but privatize death row. It’s like yin and yang.

According to one homeless guy, the best way to deal with a snake problem is to pour gasoline all over your camp and set it on fire. I’m not yet sure that I disagree.

Speaking of fire, some dude blew his whole damn house up by lighting a cigarette while working on his furnace. If he doesn’t get any insurance money, I wouldn’t be too worried. Chances are Lady Gaga will hire him as part of some exploding dress.

A Florida man was apprehended for a home robbery because he left his cell phone at the premises. Think about that next time you’re cursing at yourself for forgetting your charger.

A man on trial in Washington got in trouble after headbutting his defense attorney. In his defense (you know you like my pun), lawyers can be so smug, and when they won’t shut up, there’s only one way to let them know what’s up.

Make sure you double-check to make sure you’ve got the right number next time you use the phone, because a hot-headed man turned a text message exchange into a shooting.  And the news told me “sexting” was dangerous…

Let’s end the week with something else from the stupid news file. A fight broke out at a kebab stand in a Bremen, Germany train station because a customer was allegedly refused napkins by the salesman at the stand. The dispute erupted when the 23 year old customer, for lack of any other means of cleaning his hands, wiped them on the stand. I’m not really sure, but I don’t really think that got all the mess off his hands; the vendor retaliated by flinging a ladle of kebab sauce at the customer, splashing him in the face and, of course, the eyes. Naturally, the police were called to investigate and that’s just what they did. First things first, though, they took a sample of the sauce to decide whether it constituted normal or grievous bodily harm because the man’s eyes became bloodshot. Let’s see, salt (no doubt), tomato in some form or other (perhaps), maybe a hot pepper all thrown into the mix, yeah, that’s an owie! Police are also investigating why the napkin debacle happened in the first place and it’s a good possibility both men will be facing charges.

But you don’t have to have salsa thrown into your face to make your eyes get bloodshot. Especially if you’re eating Dave’s Insanity Salsa. I’m telling you, I learned my lesson while hurting myself at the same time. Once upon a time, when visiting some of Ariel’s cousins, we got into a discussion of tolerating spicy hot foods. Rounds of “Well, I can eat blah blah blah” and “I can eat a BLAH blah blah” volleyed back and forth across the table to the point where a challenge was issued and since I had the means, I bought a jar of the hottest salsa I could find and that was Dave’s Insanity Salsa.

This concoction is made up of Red Savina Habanero peppers, which certifiably rate at just over 577,000 Scoville heat units which is doubly as hot as regular Habanero peppers and 65 times hotter than a Jalapeno. The Scoville scale is named after Wilbur Scoville who developed the test in 1912. My sister is gonna love this reference–original TABASCO brand hot sauce has a heat rating of a mere 2,500-5,000. (We had challenged each other once to a spoonful of it when we were younger and wondered if we’d ever see the light of day again) By comparison, a plain old every day Sweet Bell pepper falls in at 0 and coming in at between 100-500 is a Pimento. Also listed in the ingredients is regular Habaneros, which clock in between 100,000 and 350,000; Thai chiles that fall between 50 and 100 thousand, plus some juice from a pineapple and some spices. So, you kind of get an idea of where this is going, right?

My order of various salsas arrived and we made arrangements to visit Maribel, John, Maggy and Nelson for a night of wine drinking and persiflage, as we often do. Somehow the red wines they serve suit my pallet, and no fishy finish. But, anyway, the time came to open the bag of chips and Dave’s Insanity Salsa, which, by the way, on the Scoville scale, is a tame 180,000. Facing off against each other, John and I, armed with a single chip prepared to dip. I chose to scoop, he chose to dip, and only the very corner of his chip. CRUNCH. While I was writhing and convulsing on the floor, desperately in search of a remedy, however ineffective, my face was drenched with sweat, my tongue felt as though it had swollen to proportions beyond what my mouth could accommodate, and John recoiled and with a disapproving and surprised scowl on his face made the statement which is the title of today’s blog, “Food is not supposed to hurt!”. I was told some time later that my eyes were turning blood red and the funny thing is, I could feel it happening. And then, go figure, John’s son was dipping into it with nary a reaction.

I’m assuming the German kabob customer did not have this strong a salsa thrown into his face as the report did not mention anything about blindness or the liquefaction of his eyeballs.

That’s all I got. It’s time for the weekend. Enjoy.

PS. I found a website that sells these Red Savina Habaneros in a variety of mixtures and extracts that will not sell to minors. And here are two more figures: pure capsaicin tops the Scoville list at 16,000,000 heat units and police grade pepper spray ranks at 5,300,000.

This is scary. The journal I kept, the one I got the notes for the Florida Tan Story from, is still out from its secret hiding place (note to self: put that thing AWAY) and I was looking through it last night for something in particular. The entries were made between 1978 and the early part of 1981 and its fascinating the things I found important to write about. Believe it or not, I had the same rather sarcastic outlook on things as I do now. One such entry I read last night was about a particular laundry detergent claiming to be the first to incorporate fabric softener in its formula, when another one claimed the very same thing a few months before.

I found what I was looking for, a list of designer jeans. Back in the late 70’s, we were overrun with an outburst of designer jeans, one right after the other. You know, the ones that had the look and fit similar to denim colored spray paint, the ones that accentuated every curve of your lower torso. I had no use for them mainly because I couldn’t get into them. They were meant, I think, for very tall and very slender people. It was all I could do, even to get into a pair of Levi 501 buttonfly jeans, simply because of the cut and Levi’s was about as designer as I would get. I hate labels. I only have this new Tommy Hilfiger button down shirt I wore to dinner in Philly because it has no insignia on it. But, I’m getting off the track. This onslaught of designer jeans gave me fodder for a journal entry and between October and December of whichever year it was, ‘78 or ‘79, I had a list of 12: Gloria Vanderbilt, Jordache, Sassoon, Studio 54, Clouds, Jou Jou, Steven Burrows, Zena, Charlie’s Angels (honest!), Bonjour, Gitano and Kasper.  And they all look so good with a pair of Candies high heels. Especially if they were peek-a-boo toed.

In my romp through the pages of my past I also found two particular items that have anniversaries coming up, so I’m saving those for when they hit. One is at the end of this month and the other is in November and both will be 31 years old.

A poll of 938 U.S. adults was conducted in August about the most annoying overused words or phrases and the results were released yesterday. “Whatever” topped the list with 47% of the votes. “You know” got 25% of the votes; “it is what it is”- 11%; “anyway” – 7%; “at the end of the day” eked in at 2%. Well, if you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know my vote would have to go to “amazing” simply because of it’s overuse. I complain about that word all the time. “That’s an amazing movie”; “that’s an amazing song”; “you look amazing”; “dinner was amazing”. The parting of the Red Sea so Moses could lead the Israelites to freedom….THAT’s ‘amazing’. A dress is pretty, or fashionable. Gag me with a spoon.

Personally, I find “at the end of the day” more annoying than “whatever”, but, whatever. Michael Adams, author of Slang: The People’s Poetry” says that ‘whatever’ can be used in place of neutral phrases that have lost popularity like ‘six of one, half a dozen of the other’. I use that one all the time; it’s more colorful than a deadpan dismissive ‘whatever’.

This is eerie. Last night, I was watching  the Las Vegas preliminary eliminations on So You Think You Can Dance and one kid got whacked in the nose with his partner’s elbow as she was spinning herself around and around like a corkscrew and he was thusly covered with blood. In an instant, MY nose began to bleed. WTF?

The last thing I have for you today is that my old alma mater, Edison High School, is apparently failing in academic standards and has been for two years in a row. As of three days ago, 50 EHS students have asked for a transfer to J.P. Stevens on the other “upper crustic” side of town. The issue is that the school missed in the state testing criteria for language arts for special education students, which state education officials say is a common area to fail. But, because Edison is the largest district in Middlesex County (14,000 students) and is unique in that it has two high schools, EHS missed the state standards. I wonder if anyone has thought that maybe using some stimulus money to build another facility to avoid overcrowding–14,000 sounds like a LOT of students crammed into two schools–might provide a better education to these kids and they can grow up and figure out how to get us all out of this mess we’re in. Heaven knows we don’t need another strip mall or condo complex in that area. Come on, don’t make me ashamed that I went to that school. Whatever!

Restaurant chain closes doors for two hours to fight hunger. Right, it’s not what you think, that that would rather defeat the purpose. But, in Louisville, KY, on Tuesday, a Kentucky Fried Chicken store, or rather  KFC, the name the chain is now known by, stemming from a marketing plan to gloss over the fact that fried food is unhealthy and customers were walking away, even from a more healthy menu they were beginning to offer in a new health conscious atmosphere,  closed its doors to the public and for two hours the staff fed 110 residents from local shelters. It was the first of several closings planned around the country. The store that’s closest to me went one step further and is now a pile of rubble.

When did the word ‘stupid’ start meaning ‘good’ or ‘fabulous’? Probably around the same time as ‘ridiculous’ did. That’s just great. And you know I mean stupid.

Guido Westerwelle, who is campaigning to become foreign minister in the next German government got in to a fracas with a reporter from the BBC during his first news conference since this past Sunday’s election. The reporter asked Westerwelle if he’d be willing to answer a question in English. The response was (in German), “Would you please be so kind, this is a press conference in Germany. Then when the reported asked if he would answer in German to a question asked in English, he was once again rebuffed. Westerwelle added, “In Great Britain, people are expected to speak English and it’s the same in Germany, people are expected to speak German. So, with the use of a translator, the BBC reporter finally conveyed his concerns of how German foreign policy would change with this new foreign minister. Don’t you know, Westerwelle dodged the question, but invited the reporter to meet with him for tea outside of the press conference and “then we can speak only English. But we’re in Germany here.”. Ja wohl!

Here’s a bit of trivia for you. On this date in 1896, Yosemite officially became a National Park. In 1908, Henry Ford introduced the Model T. The Pennsylvania Turnpike opens in 1940. And in 2009, I send a follow-up email to that agent lady about my manuscript submission.

Remember that weather forecast I showed you yesterday for my upcoming weekend trip to Philly?  Go on, go back and look at it.  It’s not what you think anymore!

If you some how hadn’t heard yet, the ever-pretentious Kanye West rudely interrupted Taylor Swift during what should have been her acceptance speech at MTV’s video music awards over the weekend.  I wasn’t sure how to feel about this because on the one hand, Taylor Swift is super sweet & sexy and I’ve always thought Kanye was a huge douche. On the other hand I basically hate both of them for being more famous and successful than I am. In the end I guess I just still think Kanye is a douche, but its also pretty funny that he made Taylor Swift cry on TV because she deserves it for making shitty country  music.

A lot of people apparently cared about this for some reason I don’t understand.  There was a lot of “Boo hoo Kanye is a jerk. Don’t worry Taylor we still love you!!11!” People, I am pretty sure that Taylor Swift will get over it-she has millions of dollars, she is STUPID hot, and nobody really gives a fuck about Kanye or his shitty music any more anyway – next year Kanye will not even be at the VMA’s because people will realize that I speak the truth and spread the gospel.

Wandering around Shakesville today, I found this gem of an article: The Way We Live Now: Fat Tax.

Just from the title, I knew that this was going to be good, but it really exceeded my expectations in a wow-this-makes-me-sick kind of way.  In summary, the article focuses on the Cleavland Clinic’s policy of not hiring smokers and espouses the virtues of similarly vilifying fat people to save money.  (By the way, all of the following emphasis is mine.)

Refusing to hire smokers may be more hard-nosed than the other parts of the program. But given the social marginalization of smoking, the policy is hardly shocking. All in all, the wellness initiative seems to be a feel-good story.

Actually, I do find it shocking because I believe that what someone does with their own time and with their own body is none of my business.  While I don’t smoke, and I certainly appreciate laws prohibiting smoking in enclosed public places, it never dawned on me that I should be able to penalize someone engaging in a legal behavior that I find unacceptable.  I don’t consider myself to be a libertarian, but the idea that employers should essentially be able to police the choices you make in your life really burns my cookies.

In order to survive in this society, everyone needs money which, for most people, means you need a job.   In the United States, we already have less vacation time than most other Western countries and we work some of the longest hours too, so we sacrifice a lot of time and life to our jobs.  If employers can start discriminating against job applicants for smoking, where will what we sacrifice end?  Couldn’t they refuse to hire people who have unprotected sex, because they may catch an STD and then they would miss work and cost money by using their health benefits (if they even have them)?  What about people who drink alcohol?  There are some health risks to that.  Or people who engage in risky hobbies?  Sure that mountain-biker might improve his cardiovascular health, but what happens if he falls and breaks a leg!?  Or hell, what about people who watch TV in the evenings instead of reading?  They could be learning more if they read a book instead of watching a reality show, and this could help them in their work.  Shouldn’t employers have some say in that too?

No, they shouldn’t and I’m sure it sounds ridiculous (to most people) for me to even suggest that.  But once you give an employer the right to govern one element of your private life, other restrictions are not going to be far behind.

That’s the case at the Cleveland Clinic.  Because the Clinic’s Chief Executive, Delos M. Cosgrove, not only loves their no-smokers-allowed policy, but would love to expand it if not for those pesky legal restrictions.  Can anyone guess to whom he would like to expand this policy.  Why, to fat people of course!

“Why is it unfair?” he asked. “Has anyone ever shown the law of conservation of matter doesn’t apply?” People’s weight is a reflection of how much they eat and how active they are. The country has grown fat because it’s consuming more calories and burning fewer. Our national weight problem brings huge costs, both medical and economic. Yet our anti-obesity efforts have none of the urgency of our antismoking efforts. “We should declare obesity a disease and say we’re going to help you get over it,” Cosgrove said.

Oh, I don’t know Dr. Cosgrove, maybe it’s unfair because a person’s body size is none of your fucking business.  Even if we discount the fact that there is a genetic component to body size, the idea that you should be able to govern the size of your employee’s asses is insane.  What would you do if you hired someone, who you felt was of an acceptable weight, who later gained weight?  Suspend them until they lost weight?  Fire them if they couldn’t or didn’t want to?

The debate over health care reform has so far revolved around how insurers, drug companies, doctors, nurses and government technocrats might be persuaded to change their behavior. And for the sake of the economy and the federal budget, they do need to change their behavior. But there has been far less discussion about how the rest of us might also change our behavior. It’s as if we have little responsibility for our own health. We instead outsource it to something called the health care system.

Oh yes!  Of course, that is one of the major problems of our health care system.  It isn’t that insurance companies are using every trick in the book to avoid paying for necessary treatments or that drug companies are doing everything they can to make a huge profit off of illness and suffering.  It’s that people just don’t care enough about their health not to be fat.  Because according to a study referenced on the left side of this very article, 9.1% of the annual health care costs in the United States are “obesity related.”  Yes, that’s right: less than 10% of our health care costs go towards treating these so-called obesity related problems, including heart disease and diabetes. If not for that ten percent of costs, everything would be a fucking field of flowers; everyone would have all the health care they need, and no one would ever die.

Let’s ignore the fact that the top risk factor for heart disease is increasing age and that increased age is also a risk factor for developing diabetes.  And that our population of people over age 65 tripled from 1990-2000 and has been growing ever since.  I’m sure that an increasing older population has nothing to do with the increase in the cost of treating heart disease and diabetes; it is all those lazy fatties who clench their teeth shut when presented with a vegetable.

Not to mention that even this article acknowledges that you probably aren’t paying the costs of your fat coworkers health care:

Cosgrove mentioned to me an idea that some economists favor: charging higher health-insurance premiums to anyone with a certain body-mass index. Harsh? Yes. Fair? You can see the argument. And yet it turns out that the obese already do pay something resembling their fair share of medical costs, albeit in an indirect way. Overweight workers are paid less than similarly qualified, thinner colleagues, according to research by Jay Bhattacharya and M. Kate Bundorf of Stanford. The cause isn’t entirely clear. But the size of the wage difference is roughly similar to the size of the difference in their medical costs.

Certainly one of the causes is fairly clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together: fat hatred.  Fat people are repeatedly categorized as being lazier, sloppier, and dumber than thin people, and it is often claimed that they cost the healthcare system more money than thin people.  Considering the widespread nature of these beleifs, are we really that suprised that employers are paying fat workers less than their thin colleagues?

But that isn’t enough for people like Cosgrove.  In spite of this study, he still wants to find a way to charge fat people more for their insurance (if he can’t avoid hiring them all together); if they are already paying their fair share do to the decrease in pay (and this assumes that the alleged increased costs of obesity are true, though as I showed above, that is also complicated), why should they also be penalized with higher health insurance premiums?

Cosgrove’s would-be approach may have its problems. The obvious one is its severity. The more important one is probably its narrowness: not even one of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals can do much to reduce obesity. The government, however, can. And that is the great virtue of Cosgrove’s idea. He is acknowledging that any effort to attack obesity will inevitably involve making value judgments and even limiting people’s choices. Most of the time, the government has no business doing such things. But there is really no other way to cure an epidemic.

Control, that’s why.  The end of this article brings me right back to my original point.  It isn’t about increased costs or keeping people healthy; this is just one more thing that those in power would like to control.  If they can keep us all worried about not being able to find a job because we are fat, than we won’t dare to worry about being overworked and undercompensated.  We won’t speak up about a stressful work environment or a lack of vacation time.  We will be too busy worrying about keeping ourselves acceptable enough to remain employed!  Someone will decide for us what is important in our lives and what we are entitled to have, and if we don’t agree, well…that will just have to be too bad.

People worry that a single-payer healthcare system would be a step on the road to the government dictating what sort of treatment we would get, punishing those they deemed unacceptable, well as you can see, that’s already possible.  When everything is about profit and cost, those things that supposedly cost the most are going to be the first things people try to cut down.  This is why we need to move towards a system that is based around caring for people, not making money by denying those who need help.

So the ongoing debate over health care in the US has reached heights of awesome that I never thought possible. From the crazies flocking to town hall the complain about birth certificates and tear up Rosa Parks signs (why don’t they like Rosa Parks now?), to the death panels and Senior citizen death clocks, the whole thing has provided me with hours of entertainment.

However, something is really getting on my nerves. Clearly, the average US citizen is not required to pass basic high school history to get a diploma. No one seems to know the different between communists and Nazis. Nazis were in no way Socialists. In fact, they weren’t even very fond of socialists. They had a great many Communists and Socialists rounded up and killed. Hitler didn’t even want to keep socialized health care in Germany, but he was advised to keep it to prevent a public uprising.

Everyone who remembers grade nine history remembers that communism and fascism are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum. Communism and Fascism are two very different things. The confusion, I suppose, stems from the fact that most every country that has attempted communism has also had some nutjob dictator running the show. That does not, however, change the proper definition.

Even so, socialism is still different from communism. It has a distinct definition. That definition, shockingly enough, isn’t “Whatever the government does that I don’t like.” It’s funny how Americans seem to disregard the many benefits that they have that came from all those dirty liberals getting in the way of commerce and capitalism, and from socialized programs that built their highways and save them from fires and protect them from criminals. Do you think that you have a job that pays you more than a dollar a day because corporations love you so much? Do you think that your employer’s decision to protect you from hazardous work conditions was out of the goodness of its heart? No. The government had to step in and make a dirty anti-profit law to protect you. And do you know who convinced them to make that law? Most likely a union somewhere. That’s right. A dirty liberal socialist union. You don’t just get all this stuff because you’re an American and therefore you’re entitled to it. Somebody had to fight, maybe even die for it.

It reminds me of this time this crazy lady came to my high school class to talk to us about autism. She insisted that autism was caused by vaccines, and that vaccines should be banned entirely. When someone in the class pointed out that those vaccines are what kept most of us from dying in infancy from the measles, mumps, etc, she explained that (and she seriously said this) humans no longer get those diseases because we have evolved the ability to fight them all of a sudden. Coincidentally? I’m not sure where her imagination got this information, but as I said, she was a little off her rocker.

Don’t get me wrong. I think capitalism is fantastic. I like money and working for said money, but there’s got to be a balance of power here, folks. Capitalism works because it is based entirely on greed and people are greedy. Socialism hasn’t worked on a large scale because it requires citizens to work together and put in equal effort and show compassion for strangers. On a small scale it does work, but only because when you have a small group, you are more likely to feel a connection to your neighbours, and a desire to see them succeed alongside you. Don’t for a minute kid yourself: capitalism is not the moral one. If Jesus ran the economy, he would be a big fat socialist and you know it.

I’ll never understand the attitude that’s become so prevalent today. So you don’t trust your government. Fair enough, I can’t say I necessarily blame you, but why then do you trust a giant corporation that gains nothing from keeping you alive? Doesn’t it piss you off when you spend $5000 a year on health insurance that refuses shit all the time, and then you see them spending your money to make commercials about how much they love you? I’d be pretty pissed off.

Michael Jackson is alive and at Disney World! He was desperately trying to find his octave-match and I guess he forgot that Minnie Mouse…just isn’t real:

A 60-year-old man has been convicted of groping a woman in a Minnie Mouse costume at Walt Disney World…He was convicted Tuesday of misdemeanor battery and sentenced to write the victim an apology, serve 180 days probation and complete 50 hours of community service. Moyer must also pay $1,000 in court costs and possibly undergo a mental evaluation.

Taken from here.

via Ananova:

Love rat’s sticky end

A wife got her revenge on her cheating husband by hatching a plot with his three mistresses to superglue his manhood to his stomach.

US police say Tracy Hood Davis persuaded rivals Therese Ziemann, 48, Michelle Belliveau, 43, and Wendy Sewell, 44, to get their own back on husband Donessa.

Ms Ziemann lured Mr Davis to the Lakeview Motel near the shores of Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, tied him naked to the bed and blindfolded him.

He then heard a knock, was able to partly remove the blindfold and saw his wife and other two mistresses enter the room.

Ms Ziemann pointed a gun while one of the women glued his penis to his stomach. They then fled, allegedly taking his wallet, mobile phone and car.

He eventually broke free after chewing through one of his bindings before escaping the room and calling the police.

The three have been charged with false imprisonment and Ms Ziemann is also charged with sexual assault. All were bailed.

I’m not sure why this is news.  President Obama is sitting down with Henry Gates and the Cambridge police officer who arrested him… and the three will have a beer and make nice.

Fine.

I’m not sure why Obama weighed in on this local affair in the first place.  Or why the 24 hour news cycle has devoted so much time to it.  Or why the White House issued a statement about which kind of beer was each mans favorite.

But what really gets me is that Massachussetts Rep. Richard Neal has written a one and a half page letter to Obama saying he thinks everyone should drink Sam Adams.  This guy doesn’t have anything better to do?  (I’ve probably got better things to do than write this… but I came across this while watching Pardon the Interruption and waiting for dinner to be ready). 

To his credit, it looks like Neal’s last paragraph is an offer to buy a six-pack and bring it over.

If you’re wondering… I prefer IPAs.

Via Baltimore Sun:

Couple charged with having sex in a parked car loaded with drug-making equipment, ingredients

The car was a-rockin’, and the law went a-knockin’.

Bexar (BAYR) County sheriff’s deputies drawn by the actions of an amorous couple in a parked car allegedly found more than l’amour.

Deputy Ino Badillo (bah-DEE’-yoh) tells the San Antonio Express-News they also found enough equipment and chemicals in the car Thursday night to start a methamphetamine lab.

Badillo says deputies checked out the car after neighbors reported it parked in an unusual spot, just northeast of San Antonio.

He says 26-year-old Timothy Overly and 25-year-old Candace Prewitt have been charged with public lewdness and manufacture of a controlled substance. Badillo says both were booked into the Bexar County Jail with bonds set at nearly $31,000 each.

Via AP:

Women dine, dash and then crash into Detroit IHOP

DETROIT (AP) – Four women trying to skip out on their bill at an International House of Pancakes ended up plowing into the Detroit restaurant as they sped away. No one was injured in the accident Tuesday morning. Restaurant manager Raymond Jefferson told the Detroit Free Press the women ran from the IHOP just after 6 a.m. without paying their bill. Their server chased them out the door.

But one of the women lost control of the Mercury Cougar as they drove away, crashing through the restaurant’s wall and smashing at least one large window.

The driver was ticketed at the scene.

The driver’s father told The Detroit News his daughter had more than $200 in cash on her at the time and was talked into dining and dashing by friends.

*sigh* So many news stories, so little time.

Here’s a good one.

I’ll be honest; I really don’t know whether I think the US stimulus bill will do anything to actually stimulate the economy in the US. I don’t, however, believe that the “Buy America” clause is going to make as much as an impact as so many Canadians think it will. It really only applies to a few products, and it really only exists to calm down all the angry tax payers that don’t like the idea that so much of their tax dollars are going to fund projects in regions they’ve never been to or don’t care about. “Oh, but we’re gonna keep jobs in America, everybody!” Yeah, I’ll bet. You’ll force companies to buy raw materials for a higher price from the US. This will give those companies two options: raise the price of whatever it is they are manufacturing with those raw materials so consumers are forced to spend more; or lower wages/lay off current employees to make up the difference. Sweet, so the folks in the steel industry will make a killing, but everybody else is gonna get screwed.

There’s also a large number of people asking “Why the hell should we care about Canada?!!!111″ Err, well, here’s the thing about running a business: if you tell your business partner “Ehh, fuck you guys, I’m gonna make my own stuff from now on.” that’s mildly bad for business, to say the least. Trade partnerships are important, because while country A may produce a pretty raw material that country B doesn’t have, country B probably have something or other A might need. If they stop trading with each other, it will hurt business in both countries. I don’t know. Maybe if America decides not to buy any of our steel, maybe we should stop selling them all those isotopes that they don’t produce at large enough numbers on their own. Just a suggestion.

Then again, isolationism worked out really well for Japan.

I love when I see someone say something like this: “All we care about is preventing socialism and keeping jobs in America…” It’s further proof that most people don’t know the difference between socialism, capitalism, and imaginary-ism. Capitalism is based on greed, profit, and selfishness. Don’t get me wrong, it works really freakin’ well, and it’s a great system in a lot of ways. However, the magical rules of capitalism state (and I’m paraphrasing here) that if a company can earn a larger profit by outsourcing to another country, not only can it do so, but it must. Demanding that a company remain in your country if it wants to sell its goods in your country; that is socialism. Labour laws, minimum wage, benefits?! Socialism for the win.

You see, capitalism works really good because it’s based on greed. Greed is a basic human emotion, isn’t it? The problem is, sometimes greed gets out of hand, and it’s up to everybody to keep it in check. That’s why regulations and laws and other evil Marxist stuff exists. There’s something disappointing about the fact that only a few years ago North Americans regarded their strong union history with pride. As much as you may hate the UAW/CAW, they’re one of the main reasons you’re allowed to take lunch breaks and earn more than $5 a day and don’t have any six year old coworkers.

The other fun story in the news, of course, is the murder of that abortion doctor in the US. I’d never heard of this guy, but apparently the regressive conservatives have been stalking this doctor for years on the grounds that he performed late-term abortions. Never mind the fact that the law in that state requires two doctors to agree that the late-term abortion is necessary to either save the life of the mother, or to prevent “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function”. I thought most pro-life people were fans of the abortion exception three: rape, incest, mother’s life is in danger. I thought everybody was cool with at least the last one.

My stance on abortion has always been that (while it should remain legal) the demand for them could be cut by about 80 to 90% in our lifetime. This, of course, would require a few changes in policy:

• Education everyone on pregnancy prevention and safe sex practices.
• Make birth control inexpensive and easily available to everyone.
• Encourage the use of birth control. Don’t treat it like a taboo. Too many people use this “oh, birth control is bad, don’t have sex” attitude as an excuse. Forcing people to know exactly how to prevent a pregnancy will force them to take responsibility for their actions.
• Make emergency contraceptives available to everyone, and ensure that people are properly educated. Taking the morning after pill will prevent a pregnancy that hasn’t already happened. It will not harm an embryo if it has already formed and implanted. There is an abortion pill, but it is a completely different pill and everyone over 12 should know that.
• Put more effort into fighting the taboo associated with sexual assault. Encourage victims of sexual assault to seek immediate medical attention. Not only will doctors be able to administer emergency contraceptive, but it will also help police capture and punish sexual predators.
• Fix the adoption system. From what I understand, it is a bit of a mess.
• Encourage adoption. I know this one sounds obvious, but it really isn’t. I think the movie Juno did this, although it might not have meant to, really well. I especially liked the implication that a teenage couple could put their baby up for adoption, but still remain a couple. There is still a stigma associated with the act of giving up a child, and there shouldn’t be.
• Get over your Jesus-ness. I suspect that at least half of the people who call themselves “pro-life” aren’t pro-life at all. They’re pro-sex-punishment. They don’t care about babies. They care about the existence of a deterrent to sexual activity in young women. Do you think I’m kidding? Ask them why so many of them have a problem with the HPV vaccine? That vaccine doesn’t hurt anyone. It prevents genital warts which cause cancer! Nobody wants anybody to get genital warts and cancer! Unless they want a continued deterrent/scare tactic/punishment for young women having sex. If you care about babies, if you truly do, you would be willing to do whatever it took to prevent those babies from being aborted. Are you willing to accept the idea of teaching young people proper birth control methods? Or the idea of making those methods available? Ooohhh, but your tax dollars might have to help! Well, it’s a lot cheaper to supply some inexpensive birth control pills than to pay welfare for someone’s kids or even the cost of prosecuting people who have abortions. You can bitch and moan all you like, but that’s the solution. Telling someone that sex is bad and abortion is bad might fit better with your faith, but it’s not going to get the job done. It’s time to man-up. The truth is, Planned Parenthood has prevented far more abortions than any pro-life organization ever has. So there’s the ultimatum, folks. What’s more important? Your anti-sex dogma, or saving babies?

In any case, I don’t think that the crazy guy who killed Tiller was anything but crazy. Everyone’s running around blaming O’Reilly (who I guess had some kind of man-crush on Tiller) and a variety of organizations. The killer, however, was looney. He thought the government was spying on him, and he frightened other pro-life organization members. I really don’t think anyone ought to give Bill O’Reilly any attention over this. He’s probably loving it. He probably figures himself the leader of an imaginary regressive conservative army. You know, like the one that Chuck Norris is leading into battle as we speak. Or something.

Hey look, it’s a traiterous whore!

She’s full of shit, and probably got paid lots of money to make this commercial. C’mon, honestly, how much is do you suppose her soul was worth?

I was going to go into a tirade about how the Canadian healthcare system has worked real nice for me and my family. I could talk about how illnesses and emergencies are treated post-haste, without any worry about who’s paying for what, and what hospital your insurance will allow you to go to.

I could talk about the time I had the breathing problems, so I had to go to the tiny mini hospital here in town (there’s a normal sized hospital about 20 minutes away, but this one’s only 3 minutes) where I had an extremely short wait. The doctor brought me in, assessed my symptoms, and said “You might have asthma. I’d like to do a chest X-Ray.” Two minutes later a nurse came by with a gown, I had my X-Ray and 15 minutes of a Ventolin mask to clear me up. I then took my prescription paper for a puffer and left. That was it. No bill. Nothing. Magic. All you do is show your health card. You need to prove your citizenship to get one for your province, and it takes about a week or so, but it guarantees that non-Canadians do pay when they get medical care.

Sometimes the wait can be long. It’s one thing I’ve discovered about living in a rural area. Doctors don’t like to live in rural areas, and nobody can force them to. If I have a non-emergency, I’m much better off going to the city on the weekend, making a same-day appointment at one of the walk-in clinics, and going in when they tell me. It’s normally quick, and the clinic I go to is attached to a grocery store so I can get two things done at once. Out here, though, there’s a crappy doctor to patient ratio, and that can slow things down. Once I went to the mini hospital with a non emergency, and there was a big car accident and lots of patients were rushed in. Obviously, I waited a long friggin’ time.

Population density is a problem in Canada. It’s a big country with a small population, spread out all over. As I said, you can’t force a doctor to live in the boonies. They like to live in the city where they can spend their money, their spouses can work, and their children can attend fancy schools.

Dentistry is not covered by our health care system, which is odd. I’d prefer if it was, but I’m covered through my work, so I’m alright. This is also true of prescription drugs. While Canada has done a good job of keeping drug costs down (that’s why busloads of American senior citizens cross the border every weekend to buy their pills), the prices have been rising. Again, most people get coverage through work, but that doesn’t help everyone.

I won’t continue my tirade, though. I’ve come to an important conclusion. Canada needs America to maintain it’s corrupt health care system. It gives us a competitive edge in terms of industry. Many international companies have chosen Canada over the US as a home for their factories/offices/etc, because they simply can’t afford to pay for health care coverage for their employees in the US. That’s right. Universal health care is creating jobs. Fancy that.

*sigh*

So, one of my favorite things to do is to see what lovely little search engine terms get people to me…”vag hair + wordpress” is quite possibly my favorite. It kinda makes me think of a troll doll but with pubes instead of that weird bright pink fluff they had (did you know I had an extensive troll doll collection? totally adds to my awesomeness doesn’t it?) and the troll doll is totally creating a wordpress blog or something about having vag hair…because you know troll dolls are creepily asexual and have yet to hit puberty…so this would be like a 70s porn troll doll. ooo I should totally bust out my troll doll collection and “improve” them…then I could set up an animated short of 70s troll doll porn!! yessss!! it will be more awesome than the barbie porn that my friend and I constructed in high school…

oh my, I just went on for entirely too long on troll porn…let’s move on

I also really love “purple vagina” and “blow jobs from heaven”. Those are two things I definitely want to hear about too Like does anyone really have a purple vagina? cause that’s kinda awesome…unless it’s an indication of some weird herpes or loss of blood flow…that might actually be kinda bad…but if it’s purple like florescent purple….well that’s just cool.

I kinda feel bad for the person that was searching “I feel like an asshole”.  Mostly I feel bad cause they already felt like an asshole and then they got to me and I was probably talking about flinging things at people’s genitals…talk about being an asshole.

and I’m rather concerned about the person looking for “black girl vomit job”….what is a “vomit job” anyways? and are black girls doing it differently? cause if they are I so want to know how they’re doing it cause you know, maybe the rest of us are doing it wrong….I mean, just think of all those men out there right now who are probably getting substandard vomit jobs.  That’s just sad.

Go away, orange woman. I am tired of you. You gave a poorly worded answer to a question asked by an internet celebrity in a televised objectifitastic contest. Who cares? I don’t care what you think. No supporters of sexual equality and human rights care what you think (I use the term loosely). The only people who care are the religious right, because they can use you as their latest example of  imaginary persecution. You do, I suppose, deserve some credit for exploiting the crap out of them, though. It’s nice how you’ve tricked them into giving you a job. You’ll need one, I guess, now that you’ve discovered that even if you can make a little money with your looks, they might go away one day. It’s cute the way Donald Trump has become your interview-pimp. What am I saying, though? Trump would never bullshit his viewing audience to gain ratings! In any case, you’ve done an excellent job of winning over the hearts of the anti-homosexual bigots. You’re a freakin’ soft-core porn star and they’re still backing you up. Nice work.

I hate to get into another rant about the American Taliban (okay, no, I don’t), but c’mon, guys. You’re losing credibility by the hour now.

I suppose I should take a moment to complain about someone else and try and balance out my blog a bit. I have a big rant on modern atheism that I plan to post eventually. Not tonight, though, as I am far too busy. I’ll just say that I thought those bus ads kind of ruined the whole point. Seriously, guys. I thought the whole idea was to have no faith and therefore no proselytizing. It’s ridiculous bus/TV/flier/etc ads that turn a lot of people off to religion in the first place. Nobody wants to feel pressured or forced into a belief system. By doing so, you bring yourself down to their level.

Okay, back to work. Cheers!

Hey California! God must be rewarding you for banning that sinful gay marriage.

Today I came across a mention of something extremely awesome on Cracked.com. At first, I thought Conservapedia was some kind of Colbert-esque joke site. It seemed likely. Apparently, I was wrong. It is, in fact, totally for real, and totally hilarious.

There’s something I’ve never quite understood about American neo-conservatives. To the rest of the world, they look like a joke. A stereotypical, even offensive, cartoon or America. That’s why, whenever I hear about their latest exploits, I’m inclined to believe it’s some kind of grand hoax.

Canada has a Conservative party. They were the Progressive Conservative party, but they teamed up with the Canadian Alliance party and shortened their name to just Conservative. (Okay, that’s a really simplified way to explain it, but it’s how I’ll do it) Perhaps, to distance themselves from America’s Neo-Cons, they should call themselves the Sane Conservatives. Their principals are a great deal more tolerable, and based in actual logic, rather than fear of change, religious intollerance, and voluntary ignorance. I don’t generally vote Conservative, myself, but I’d still pick them over the American Taliban any day.

Neo-cons appear to have no concept of logic. In this particular article, the author makes an extremely emotional argument that women are too emotional to vote, and their ability to vote has destroyed the universe. Or something along those lines. I’m not sure what part of this article qualifies as my favourite; his misunderstanding of the definition of logic, the fact that many of the comments feel that Anne Coulter counts as a logical woman, or that a man with such a clear hard-on for Ronald Regan cannot spell his name right to save his life. In response to captain robot-like logic, I’m going to take a minute to look at some “hot-button” social conservative issues in a purely logical manner:

1. Abortion. I could write an article on my feelings on abortion (and one day I surely will) but not here. Remember, people, LOGICS! Abortion is great for a country. Less unwanted children means less welfare, which means lower taxes (conservatives hate taxes as much as they love Jesus). Women who might have had to end their educations and go on welfare or work menial jobs due to an unwanted pregnancy can get proper educations and be productive members of society. Less unwanted children may also mean less crime. Logically, crime is bad.
2. Homosexuals. Homosexuality is natural. At least, according to the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the Academy of Pediatrics and the Council on Child and Adolescent Health, and a whole slew of researchers. I suppose they could all be wrong, based on a few lines in a particular religious text from whence some folks like to pick and choose, but it seems unlikely. As I mentioned earlier, gay marriage and gay tourism can boost the economy. Allowing homosexuals to adopt can save countless children from bouncing from foster home to foster home throughout their youth. And, most importantly, homosexuals aren’t hurting anybody.
3. Socialized health care is good. I have lived with it my entire life, and I would much rather have it, then the corrupt American system. Of course, Canada’s system is not perfect, but it is much better. I like capitalism as much as the next person, but there are just some things that corporations shouldn’t get to decide. Whether or not I live or die is one of them. Socialized medicine prevents corrupt insurance companies. It ensures that every individual has the care they need to be a productive member of society, and, most importantly, it is good for the economy:  “Large businesses avoid setting up shops in the United States—Toyota just chose to build a plant in Canada to escape the skyrocketing costs of U.S. health care.” Conservatives are opposed to socialized medicine, largely due to fear. They fear it will lead to immediate communist take-over of the US, or something along those lines. Again, it is something of a mystery to me, as they clearly have many examples to dispel this fear.
4. Evolution is fact. It is fact. Accepting that does not, and should not, hurt your faith. Science has accepted it. A scientific theory is an explanation, a truth, not a guess. If this is all it takes to harm your faith, then perhaps you should look to yourself to find out why your entire belief system is based around a few lines in that same religious text from which you so freely pick and choose. Any scientist will tell you, however, that evolution is the logical explanation for the diversity on this planet. He/she is a scientist for a reason. Trust him/her.
5. Separation of Church and State. Theocracies never work out well. And even the ones that manage to stick around for a while still suck. I know you think your religion is different. You think yours would be the best way to run the world ever! No. Theocracies oppress their people. They destroy freedoms. They destroy economies. They prevent human beings from becoming all that they can become. Nevermind what happens as soon as leaders start arguing over how to interpret vague religious texts. And yes, there are always vague religious texts. I’ve always believed that this was on purpose, but I’ll talk about that in another rant.
6. Gender Equality is Key to the Survival of this Species. I don’t honestly believe this one even needs an explanation, but I’ll try to make a short one. Basically, when half of your workforce is poorly educated/oppressed/ignored/abused you are running a weak country. LOGICS!

I’m sure I could make this list so much longer, but I don’t have all day and night to write blogs. One day, when I am old and I retire (assuming it turns out that Barak Obama isn’t the anti-christ and the rapture doesn’t happen and I’ve actually managed to save a pension) I’ll make a much longer list.

And now, I’m off to eat some food and fiddle with some art. Good day!

Via CBS News:

Ohio Teen Expects To Be Suspended For Trip To Prom

An Ohio teenager says he expects to be suspended from a Christian school for attending a public school prom with his girlfriend.

Officials at Heritage Christian School in Findlay had warned 17-year-old Tyler Frost that he would be suspended and prohibited from attending graduation if he went to the Saturday dance. The fundamentalist Baptist school in northwest Ohio forbids dancing, rock music and hand holding.

Frost says he went to the dance because he wanted to experience the prom and didn’t think it was wrong.

School officials say he could complete his final exams separately to receive a diploma.

Frost’s stepfather says the rules shouldn’t apply outside of school and he may take legal action if Frost is suspended.

Those sad, sad Baptists…that sounds like a regurgitated plot for Footloose II: Stay Away From the Electric Boogaloo.

I don’t have a rant prepared for this evening. I would, however, like to point out that between this story and this story, I hope I never have to travel anywhere near Texas. That is, unless it is to go there and laugh at them from a safe distance behind bullet and Chuck Norris-proof glass.