February 2005 Archives

Ladies And Gentlemen, Your New Arbiter Of Speech

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It would appear that Ward "I never met a PC scam I couldn't run" Churchill's rights are better than mine. Via Belmont Club, I bring you this whack-job screed from the alternative-to-reality web hallucination infoslop.org:

Question #4: I'm glad I came here tonight; I've heard a lot more than I heard on the average sound bytes we've been hearing on the radio. I agree with some points, there are other points that I disagree with, but I do believe you have a constitutional right to say what you have to say. On the other hand, do you agree that the First Amendment rights for the people marching in the Columbus Day parade should be taken away, because that is their freedom of expression as well, and I'm one of those people.

Ward Churchill: Let me answer the man. No, I don't believe you have a First Amendment right because that bounces off against my Ninth Amendment right [emphasis added]. You know what my Ninth Amendment rights are? Do you know what the Ninth Amendment says?

Question #4: No, sir.

Ward Churchill: Yeah. Do we have a law professor in here? I think this is a lesson for law school, because I addressed another university auditorium with about this many people in it last week, and I posed the same question to the whole group. Professors, students, townspeople and all, not a soul, including law professors, could tell me what the damn Ninth Amendment said. [laughter] S'pose there might be a reason for that?

Question #4: Sir, sir, sirdoes that negate the First Amendment?

Ward Churchill: No, no, wait a minute; let's get an answer to it.

Audience Member: Basically it says that whatever rights were not given to federal government are given to the states.

Ward Churchill: Actually, wrong, beep. [laughter] What it says, in very close paraphrase, is that all rights not otherwise enumerated herein that are inherent in people are retained by them, OK? You can have a real entertaining time looking at the nature of those rights as articulated, and it can be rather nebulous and it can be debatable, but I'll tell you one place you can look where it's not debatable at all and that's in black letter legal articulation. That goes to human rights, particularly the articulation of international human rights that take the form of ratified treaties. Under Article Six of the Constitution of the United States, those are the supreme law of the land, and among them, are fundamental human dignity, OK? And celebration of the conditions that I was describing as pertaining to native people as an outcome of the process initiated by Christopher Columbus, celebrating that guy in any respect at all is a celebration of those conditions. That's a denial of fundamental human dignity, that's a denial of my Ninth Amendment rights and you don't have a right to do that, and you know exactly what you're doing. [applause]

So his right not to be offended trumps your right to free speech. If you're planning on saying anything publicly, and there's a chance Ward Churchill might be within listening distance, you'd better clear what you want to say with him first.

He's not done, though:

Question #7: I was just wondering, where do you get the gall to call the people who died in 9/11 technocrats, when you sit around and get a $90,000 paycheck from the government you purport to hate?

Ward Churchill: To answer the question, to answer the question ­ yo, he's posed a question, I'll answer the question. And it really goes to the question of "hey, sucker, you consider yourself innocent?" No. You show me where I ever said. What I said was I tend to fly more on these gigs than the average American, making myself more susceptible to being strapped in a passenger seat on a 300,000 pound cruise missile. I've been ­every moment of my adult existence ­ in flat-out opposition, in every way I knew, to the status quo of this country, but I have not changed it. And to that extent, I have not measured up to the responsibility, I am not innocent, and I'm subject to the same penalty, and that's the answer to your question, and you don't get a second. [applause]

Question #7: You do admit your hypocrisy?

Ward Churchill: Sit down. You barely don't understand the language, to understand, that was the opposite of hypocrisy. Over here, sir.
First off, he didn't like the question, so he changed it into one he did like. Secondly, he didn't even answer that question. Thirdly, of course he wasn't going to allow a hostile followup question, and of course that was hypocritcal BS since he'd allowed followups to verbal blowjobs he'd gotten elsewhere in the Q&A (specifically, #6 and #9).

I just wish someone had asked him whether any of his artwork was original.

Great Moments In Darts

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It was an auspicious night here in the 'hood: I scored the first bullseye of the year from the 14-foot line, and Chumley had the first freestanding floor shot:

Chumley sticks one in the floor

You're pissed off with the service you got at McDonald's, so you threaten to blow up the Pentagon. Makes perfect sense to me. From local6.com (have I mentioned lately that I love local6.com?):

HOUSTON -- A statewide alert remained in effect in Texas Friday for two men accused of threatening to blow up the Pentagon, KPRC-TV in Houston reported.

Wharton authorities and officials with the FBI and the Texas Department of Public Safety said a man in his 50s and a man in his 20s were apparently upset with the food and service at a McDonald's restaurant in Wharton, Texas, at about 2 p.m. Thursday when they made the alleged threats.

The manager notified Wharton police about the threats, which prompted authorities to issue the statewide alert.

"Two gentlemen made threats toward blowing up McDonald's and also blowing up the Pentagon. By the time officials arrived, the men had already fled the scene. We immediately contacted the FBI, who is conducting the investigation at this point," Wharton Police Department Capt. Richard Coleman said.

And the punch line?

The FBI said the men were of Middle Eastern descent.

Nobody Panic!

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Spongebob is safe.

Whachoowont?

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Comedian Geoff Brown appeared on Bob & Tom last Friday, and the topic of his voicemail greeting came up. The guys called his cell phone to listen, and it was basically just "Whachoowont? Beep!" They liked it so much that they asked him to do it again in the studio so people could record it for their own voicemail greeting / answering machine message, and he consented. I present it to you here.

No need to thank me; I'm a giver.

And The Casino Is A 6-5 Favorite In The Suit

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So Daisy got the bright idea to sell ad space on her pregnant belly on eBay (look at this picture and tell me you can't hear the banjos. Also, her name's not really Daisy, but whatever). OK, fine, it's a free country and all, although I have to wonder what babydaddy's opinion on the matter is... oh, who am I kidding?

Aaaaaaanyway, there's this little detail about selling on eBay - when somebody wins an auction for something you're selling, you have to either actually sell it to them or not to anybody at all. And apparently this is an issue for young Bobby Sue:

"The highest bidder at first was SunPoker.com but I decided after the auction ended not to go with them and decided to go with The Golden Palace Casino," she said.

SunPoker.com argues that by putting the auction on eBay, she agreed to sell to the highest bidder, reports Local 6 News.

But Elise insisted: "No, even if I was selling T-shirts or anything else on eBay, as a seller, I have the right to decide who I want to sell to."

And you know that (as the above story refers to) my favorite TV station website, Orlando's Local6, would be on the case. Apparently, little Missy Jo is proceeding with her updated business plan:

Racing fans at the Daytona International Speedway this weekend will likely see the pregnant woman who sold advertising space on her stomach, according to a Local 6 News report.
and SunPoker is going ahead with theirs:
Harp, who is due to give birth next month, faces a lawsuit by SunPoker.com for violating eBay rules.

Local 6 News reported that according to the auction site's rules, once bidding ends, a product must go to the highest bidder and that the auction is a binding contract."

Update: We get picture (thanks to Joe S.):
Not an actual picture of Elisa Harp's wedding

It's White Trash Wednesday! Take the whole tour:

The Shot Heard Round The Kennel

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If you're a regular Bob & Tom listener, you're probably familiar with the animal conspiracy to bump us off the top of the food chain that only Tim Bedore is brave enough to write about. Nervously, I watch the news, wondering if each day will be an evolutionary Pearl Harbor. We had a bit of a scare back in early December, but things died down after that.

Or did they? Now we've got elephants enjoying a nice shish-ke-Bob in Vienna and Malaysia, and if that isn't bad enough, gun-wielding dogs:

A hunting dog stepped on a loaded shotgun, firing a blast into the arm of a Klamath Falls man, authorities said.

Matthew Harper, 27, was taken to a Klamath Falls hospital on Sunday and then transferred to Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, where he was in critical condition, the (Klamath Falls) Herald and News reported Monday.

I always thought the no-opposable-thumbs thing would be enough to keep all but the other primates at bay, but that limitation can now be worked around.

Be afraid. And make sure your dog can't get the key to your gun cabinet.

As expected, Michigan beat fND like a red-headed stepchild on Friday, 9-2, in front of 7,948 fans. So much for Coliseum GM Randy Brown's prediction of a 10k+ sellout, and when that's combined with what he said in advance of last summer's Freedom playoff game versus what we actually saw, I'm beginning to think he's just a shill for the Coliseum. Oh, wait - that's actually his job title. My bad.

So how did the Coliseum measure up as a venue for college hockey? Pretty well, I think:

After hosting Fort Wayne's first college hockey game, next on the agenda for the Memorial Coliseum is securing a selection as an NCAA Regional site.

The 53-year-old arena, which once housed the NBA's Fort Wayne Pistons, and the CCHA are partnering in bidding for regionals for 2008-2011.

"I think our location is our strongest asset to start with," Coliseum general manager Randy Brown said. "The market, the fact that we are such a hotbed for hockey, and then, of course, the facility itself - those are our strengths."

Fort Wayne has been unsuccessful in previous bids, but now it has a renovated building - a $34.5 million project in 2002 raised the roof 41 feet to add suites and additional seating - and now the city's has hosted a college hockey game.

Other pluses include 5,000 on-site parking spaces, meeting rooms and ballrooms in an attached exposition center and its relative proximity to several college hockey programs.

Berenson enjoyed Friday's atmosphere and said the building would be a good pick for a regional site. "This is a hockey town," Berenson said.
I'm surprised that there was no mention of this in the Fort Wayne media - since the Fort has a chip on its shoulder about all kinds of things, this should have been a great opportunity to toot our own horn. Anyway, by my PIDOOMA calculations, Fort Wayne is within an eight-hour drive of every team in the CCHA except UNO and Alaska-Fairbanks, plus CHA's Wayne State and Niagara, and the WCHA's Wisconsin. Michigan Tech and Minnesota are not far outside that radius, either. Do I think we could host an NCAA hockey regional? Well, the Coliseum ain't Van Andel Arena, but I think it would do.

I've got pictures below the fold.

Last season, when Notre Dame qualified for the NIT, they were not able to schedule their second-round game in their own arena, as it was hosting part of the NCAA women's tournament. What they could get was Fort Wayne's own Memorial Coliseum. The game was a huge success, selling out within a few hours of the announcement being made on local media.

fND liked the idea so much that they'll be using the Coliseum for tonight's hockey game against Michigan. When I got my tickets at the Coliseum yesterday, they'd already sold 7000 tickets, and they expected a complete sellout (about 10,500) by gametime. I plan on bringing my camera, so I may have pictures tomorrow. I might even get the T-shirt.

In today's lesson - a live demonstration of which took place a couple of hours up the road from Dangerous Logic Galactic HQ, we learn the difference between a flak jacket and a bulletproof vest. A flak jacket is designed to stop relatively-low-velocity shell fragments - not bullets, or for that matter, shotgun pellets:

HOBART – A man whose friends initially said he was killed by gunfire outside a Gary liquor store actually died after he donned what he thought was a bulletproof vest and asked a cohort to shoot him.

A friend then shot Daniel Wright with a .20-gauge shotgun, but it turned out the vest Wright had put on Thursday was a flak jacket not designed to stop a bullet.

Wright, 20, was mortally wounded in the shooting and died later at a Gary hospital after two of his friends drove him there.

Why on earth would Wright have asked his friend to shoot him? Here's why:

Hobart police Lt. Leo Finnerty said Friday that Wright was going to join the military and wanted some battlefield experience. So he went to a field in Hobart with his friends, donned what he thought was a bulletproof vest, and then told them: “Shoot me. I’m ready.”

“He voluntarily put on the vest because he wanted to experience what a .20-gauge shotgun would do,” Finnerty told the Post-Tribune of Merrillville.

I'm inclined to think the Army is better off not getting this guy - someone who showed such spectacular bad judgement could be counted on to make a mistake that could get a lot of people killed. Sad that he's dead, but 'Death By Stupidity' is more common than we want to admit.

How could I possibly have missed this Fort Wayne story that happened back in early January (I had to find out in Sunday's News Of The Weird?

Kyle Hans, 24, drove his car through the front of a Target store in Fort Wayne, Ind., in January, down an aisle, where he told employees he had a gun and wanted to see his estranged wife so he could reconcile with her. When the employees informed Hans that his wife didn't work there anymore, he got frustrated and took one of them hostage, forcing the evacuation of the store and an eventual standoff with police. Officers talked Hans down, got the hostage freed and arrested him. [WISE-TV (Fort Wayne), 1-7-05]
I'm not sure this is a true White Trash Wednesday story - I don't think Target is the store of choice for yer average White Trasher (*cough*Wal-Mart*cough). Just to be safe, I'll be publishing another WTW story later.

In the meantime, take the whole White Trash Wednesday tour:

My long-time reader knows I've got this thing about Daylight Savings Time - specifically, anger that it isn't observed in most of Indiana (I've discussed this before, in April of '04 and April of '01). This puts us in our own time zone, which I call 'Indiana Stupid Time' because it makes us look like backwards-assed country fucks every time I have to explain it to somebody not in Indiana (and when I worked on the program I spent half of last year on, which required us to telecon on a near-daily basis with multiple sites spread across all four time zones, I had to explain it a lot).

And even though Governor Daniels is more actively pushing the 'adopt DST' issue than any previous governor in my memory, I'm not going to get my hopes up unless and until he actually signs a bill into law. It seems that every year, it looks like it's going to finally by God happen, then the Farm Bureau Illuminati makes a couple of phone calls and the whole thing goes down the memory hole and nobody speaks of it again... until the next year.

The local news last night had coverage of some of the debate in the General Assembly, including something I thought very curious:

Several members of the Indiana Theater Owners Association said that if the state added daylight hours, fewer people would go to the movies, and theater owners would lose money.

All the GA is debating at this time is whether or not to adopt DST. If they do, then they'll consider the question of which time zone to align with (a nontrivial issue, since Indiana is on the western edge of the Eastern time zone and on the eastern edge of the Central time zone). It seems to me the smart play for the theater owners would be to favor adopting Central Daylight Time, since that would lead to earlier sunsets year-round (if you're on the eastern edge of your time zone, your sunrises and sunsets are earlier than if you're in the middle or on the western edge). Earlier sunsets -> increased theater revenue (actually, the broadcast last night had the spokeslady for the theater owners claiming that movie patronage would drop 20% if the state added more daylight hours, which sure smells like a brown number to me).

So clearly the theater owners are working as the pawns of someone else. And by applying Tetrick's Law ("Once you play Illuminati enough, all games become Illuminati") and Carter's Corrolary ("Every weird thing you see in the world can be expressed in terms of Illuminati plays"), I have concluded this:

The Indiana Theater Owners' Association, assisted by the Farm Bureau, is attacking to control Indiana.

[Incidentally, I would be just as happy if the rest of the country abandoned DST; my beef is against constantly having to remind out-of-staters what time zone Indiana is in on any given day.]

Motivational Quote Of The Day

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Today's quote of the day, from my Franklin Covey day planner:

Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
--Dr. Laura Schlessinger

I don't think she goes far enough, though:

Look instead for a window - they're easier to break.
--Chris of Dangerous Logic

More Fun With Mix Tapes

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Just because I haven't posted since Friday, and that post was also about The Automatic Mix Tape Generator, one might conclude that I spent all weekend submitting mix tape requests. Not really, although I did spend a bit of time looking at other requests, and some of them are quite interesting, like Um, you're not Ms. Right, you are Ms. Right Now (track 2: The Impossibles - "Priorities Intact"), You told me that you had a baby shower to go to! Why are you here with a stripper on your lap? (track 8: Magnetic Fields - "Fido, Your Leash is Too Long"), and I missed a whole year of my life in an alcoholic fog. Can you tell me what happened this year? (track 15: Robbers On High Street - "Hot Sluts (Say I Love You)").

They've got quite a backlog of mix tape requests, if the frequent appearance of 'omg make me a mixtape to describe how i feel because i check every day and u havnet made my mixtape yet lol' requests are any indication (like this one or this one or this one or this one). You can even volunteer to help them fill requests, and I'm thinking I can contribute. Take, for example, this whiner: Can you please make a mix for me that will keep me and my friends from Killing ourselves now that W has been re-elected? These are dark days

    No problem; I've got just the thing:
  1. Ozzy Osbourne - "Suicide Solution"
  2. Beck - "Loser"
  3. Angy Dee - "No Escape"
  4. The Blues Brothers - "Shotgun Blues"
  5. Jim Travers Band - "People Who Died"
  6. Head East - "Goin' Down For The Last Time"
  7. Marcy Playground - "One More Suicide"
  8. Nine Inch Nails - "Head Like A Hole"
  9. Manic Street Preachers - "Suicide Is Painless"
  10. Slayer - "Mandatory Suicide"
  11. Gravediggaz - "1-800-SUICIDE"
  12. At The Gates - "Suicide Nation"
  13. Cradle Of Filth - "Suicide And Other Comforts"
  14. Frank Zappa - "Suicide Chump"
  15. UFO - "Just Another Suicide"
  16. Barney and Friends - "Theme"

Oh, wait. The loser wanted a mixtape to keep himself from commiting suicide.

Never mind.

They Still Call Them 'Tapes?'

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During one of my bouts of random web-staggering, I found The Automatic Mix Tape Generator (a feature of tinymixtapes.com, a pretty cool music site). You submit a topic for a mix tape, and, maybe, eventually, one of their 'robots' puts together a track list appropriate to your request.

They've got lots and lots of track lists, and it's depressing in a way because it shows how little I actually know about music - the vast majority of the tracks listed are by bands I've never even heard of. Anyway, some of them are pretty funny, like this one:

My husband thinks it is time for us to have a baby but I love the independent life too much - help! Side 1 to make me want to have a baby, and Side 2 to make him not want to [emphasis added].

Now that by itself is chuckleworthy, if only for the O. Henry-esque possibility that both sides of the tape will be successful in their respective missions, but here's the punch line: every other song on Side 2 is the theme from Barney.

Fishing The White Trash Way

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Not far from Evansville, way down in the hills and lakes of southern Indiana, lived a man named Jim-Bob who loved to fish. One day, he was hauling his catch home in the back of his pickup truck when he stopped at a traffic light next to the village constable, Billy-Bob.

"Dang, Jim-Bob," said the constable when he saw the back of the truck, "You musta been out on the lake all day to catch that much. Lookee there - that's one, two... lotsa fish."
"Naw, t'weren't more than an hour."
"Don't you be pullin' mah leg, now."
"Naw, really." Jim-Bob knew Billy-Bob loved to fish, too. "Lissen. I'll pick yuh up bright 'n early Saturday, an' I'll show yuh how I does it."
"Awright."

So Saturday comes, and Jim-Bob picks up Billy-Bob and takes him to a lake. They load up the boat and head out, but instead of going to any of the half-dozen spots Billy-Bob knows are good for bluegill, walleye, and whatnot, Jim-Bob drives them right out to the middle of the lake.
"Tarnation," said Billy-Bob. "You ain't gon' catch no fish here, Jim-Bob."
Jim-Bob reaches into a sack under his seat, pulls out a stick of dynamite, lights it off his Winston, and throws it into the water.

BOOM! Dozens of fish float slowly to the surface. Billy-Bob is speechless for a few moments, then all the words try to come out at once.

"Jesus H. Christ, Jim-Bob, are yew crazy? That's possession of explosives - "
Jim-Bob calmly reaches back into the bag and pulls out another stick...
"- and illegal demolition - that there's a felony charge - "
...lights it off his Winston...
"- and the Conservation Officer's gon' shit hisself a pink Twinkee when he gets wind of this - "

Jim-Bob calmly hands the stick with the lit fuse to Billy-Bob. "Lissen, are yew gonna talk, or are yew gonna fish?

It's White Trash Wednesday! Take the whole tour:

Life Imitates Bad '70s Pop

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A tale of star-crossed - or should I say, star-recrossed - lovers:

Separated for several months, boredom and chance briefly re-united Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa in an Internet chat room, the official Petra news agency said.

Bakr, who passed himself off as Adnan, fell head over heels for Sanaa, who signed off as Jamila (beautiful) and described herself as a cultured, unmarried woman -- a devout Muslim whose hobby was reading, Petra said.

Cyber love blossomed between the pair for three months and soon they were making wedding plans. To pledge their troth in person, they agreed to meet in the flesh near a bus depot in the town of Zarqa, northeast of Amman.

The shock of finding out their true identities was too much for the pair.

Upon seeing Sanaa-alias-Jamila, Bakr-alias-Adnan turned white and screamed at the top of his lungs: "You are divorced, divorced, divorced" -- the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam.

No no no! That's not how it's supposed to end - this is how it's supposed to end (cue Wayne's World-style wavy dissolve: "deedeleedoop deedeleedoop deedeleedoop"):

So I waited with high hopes
And she walked in the place
I knew her smile in an instant
I knew the curve of her face
It was my own lovely lady
And she said, "Oh it's you."
Then we laughed for a moment
And I said, "I never knew."

That you like Pina Coladas
Getting caught in the rain
And the feel of the ocean
And the taste of champagne
If you'd like making love at midnight
In the dunes of the Cape
You're the lady I've looked for
Come with me and escape

Paint Yerself A Power Supply

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I know that a 'Manhattan Project'-style effort to minimize our dependence on a petroleum-based economy (a/k/a "Tell the oil ticks they can go pound sand") is a pipe dream - Steven den Beste has already laid that all out, at least in the short term. But wouldn't it be cool if you could add active solar to your house for the cost of paint plus a bit of wiring?

That day may be closer than we think:

Development of a low-cost plastic infrared photovoltaic material by a group at the University of Toronto could herald a major step forward for solar power, its creators believe, by enabling solar-powered systems to also harvest infrared emissions.

The material embeds various-size nanoparticles-or quantum dots-in a polymer suspension. "We have designed a plastic device that is physically flexible-you could even paint it onto things by putting it in a solution," said Toronto EE professor Ted Sargent. "However you deposit it, after drying you have a nice, thin, smooth film that provides the basis for an electronic device."

. . .

"Our first device was an infrared detector, which converts infrared optical signals into an electrical signal," said Sargent. "As a bonus, because we hadn't anticipated that this would work, we found that it was also a good photovoltaic material capable of harnessing the sun's power.

. . .

But Sargent argues that his plastic photovoltaic material can be tuned, with almost any variety of embedded quantum dots, to whichever spectrum is required-both visible and infrared nanoparticles-for a full-spectrum solar cell.

"We think it is quite important," said Sargent. "In the past, photovoltaic cells have not harvested that other [infrared] half of the spectrum, but our device does for the first time."

One of the knocks on solar power is that the efficiency factor is too low to be cost-effective. Maybe a material that can capture and convert the infrared portion of sunlight will lower the cost-benefit ratio enough to make solar practical.

Of course, it ain't like I'll be schlepping down to the Big Orange Box and grabbing a few gallons of Behr Galvanic Pile Green anytime soon:

Sargent believes large-area plastic infrared photovoltaics could become a major marketplace within 10 years, depending on how low their cost goes.

The Newest Portugese Export...

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...seems to have hit Fort Wayne. You have probably heard the story of Portugal's Marco Guerra, who posted pictures of himself holding guns and various ill-gotten booty on his website, which included his name and mobile number:

Police in Portugal have arrested a teenager who set up a personal web page which featured photographs of himself posing with a machine gun along with cash he said he obtained through crime - as well as his full name and mobile telephone number, a report said.

. . .

Guerra can be seen on the internet site, which is still up and running, holding a nine-millimeter gun against his face, carrying a rifle and waving a machine gun in the air.

The site also includes photos of a table full of €20 and €10 notes and marijuana along with the statement that "through illegal or obscure deals you can live really well."

Homestead High School is in an affluent part of Allen County, so it's to be expected that the kids there are up on the latest European trends, but this is ridiculous (scroll down past the Churubusco garage fire):

A Homestead High School student stole textbooks and padlocks from the school and exhibited pictures of the items on two Web sites, the Allen County Sheriff’s Department said.

Homestead Assistant Principal Steve Lake told police Thursday about Web sites that show pictures of books and padlocks missing from the school.

. . .

The student told school officials that other people were involved in the thefts, but he did not name them. He admitted that he took the pictures of the items and posted them on the Web sites, the report said.

Uncle Ted In Fallujah

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Ted Nugent was on Bob & Tom yesterday (recall that I'm always a day behind on my B&T listening since I download the MP3s of the show at night and listen to them on the treadmill the following morning), and those of you who remember his previous appearances know that he's always a blast to listen to. Tom asked him to talk about his recent USO trip to Iraq with Toby Keith, and I've transcribed his response below (all the punctuation is my best guess and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where to put the periods). This interview alone justified the cost of my B&T VIP subscription. Now fasten your seat belts, 'cause here we go:

Well, it was a glorious celebration, particularly as life is good, bad, and ugly. It was the greatest of good, and it was the most gut-wrenching of bad and ugly, but the irrefutable conclusion is that good must hammer relentlessly - and good is hammering relentlessly - to eliminate the bad and the ugly, and the spirit, the soul, the attitude, the piss and vinegar, the fire, the passion, the American Dream firestorm of every man and woman of the Armed Forces, everybody in the Army, the Marines, the Air Force, the Navy, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the cavalry, everywhere we went, playing acoustic guitars in some hell zone of a tent outside of Fallujah, sharing C-130s and Chinook helicopters with flag-draped coffins, it was an intense - I believe - y'know, I'm a pretty intense guy anyhow, but I've never witnessed nor felt deep in my guts an intensity of confidence and certainty that was fortified there like never before in my life, that the whole world sucks but America sucks less, and the more America can get freedom and liberty and a hint of these glorious God-given rights that are guaranteed in our Constitution and our Declaration and our Bill of Rights - the more that we can bring that to people, the better chance they have of having a quality of life - most of them for the first time in their lives, so my spirit is soaring on eagle wings right now, and it'll never come down because of that experience.
Of course, once you get Ted going, he's hard to stop, and after a brief exchange with the guys, he continued:
...you haven't lived until you've seen Toby Keith performing 'Great White Buffalo' on an acoustic guitar with some little half-assed microphone supertaped to a folding chair in a tent in Fallujah with 100% of the audience toting machine guns. It was so beautiful, I cried tears of emotion. It was absolutely beyond anything I could have ever dreamed, getting my first guitar back in 1955, but it was, it was moving because, again, because of the buoyant intensity of the troops. I mean, here you've got men and women in just the most athletic, most attentive, most warrior atmosphere that you've ever been in. They're all in great shape, they're all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, cocked, locked, and ready to rock, both figuratively and literally, and you're playing a song like 'Great White Buffalo' with Toby Keith, and you're wearing kevlar, you just came in in the middle of the night in a clandestine operation where we weren't even allowed to know where we were going, it was like two in the morning and we land in this godawful desert where you can hardly breathe, and this giant caravan of Hummers and Bradley military vehicles, and I'm manning a big Ma Deuce Browning on top of a Hummer. I thought I was going to die, I mean die like in 'go to Heaven,' and it was BEAUTIFUL, and then I get a guitar and start whippin' out a 'Great White Buffalo' song with Toby Keith at my side. I'm tellin' ya, I've been to the mountaintop and I'm living there as we speak.
But wait! There's more!
...with the emotion of the USO tour for the troops - and I talked to you guys about it live from Iraq, I remember that - and it was very emotional, and it once again cannot be overemphasized that when you're bringing a big 'thank you' to the troops on the front lines of the War on Terror when our brave soldiers are dying every day, but then you take part in that sacred ceremony, saluting a flag-draped coffin entering the back of a C-130, and then you get in that 130 and you're sitting there with those flag-draped coffins, and you know their names - we made our last trip out of Baghdad with LT Erik McCrae, and he had died so we could have radio fun, they die so that we can have barbecues, they die so that we can have concerts, they die so that we can be the best that we can be and reap the rewards of our own work ethic, and I'm gonna tell you, that stays with you forever. So when I hear some numbnut tell me that war is not the answer, and I think back to Pearl Harbor, and I think back to Pol Pot and Adolph Hitler, that maybe some retarded person like Michael Moore could tell the Jews that got out of Auschwitz that war's not the answer, and it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. So I salute the President, I salute the United States military, and I think we all should go to uso.org and help them in any way that we can so that the truth finds its way into policy making so that that support is tangible and efficient so that we can win this war against terror.
Phew! OK, I need a nap now.

Update: The interview sounds much better than it reads, so I'd like to thank Floyd of excelsiornews.com for hosting the audio. You can hear the parts I excerpted above or the whole damn thing.

And Then I'd Want An Inflatable Taxi Cab

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Watching little kids play soccer is tedious and thirsty work. I wish I'd had one of these when my son was a young soccer player:
An inflatable pub!  Why didn't I think of that?

Which Scenario - Sugar Daddy Or Ladyhawk?

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Today on White Trash Wednesday it isn't dueling banjos, but dueling sleds:

GODFREY -- The parking lot of C & W Auto Glass was the scene of a violent automotive encounter Monday, when two Godfrey men repeatedly rammed vehicles in a quarrel that broke out over the affections of a woman.

"They were basically almost having a demolition derby in the parking lot," said Sgt. Brad Wells of the Madison County’s Sheriff’s Department.

The vehicular tangle broke out between Charles A. Bonney, 63, of the 6400 block of Godfrey Road, and Victor L. Harris, 36, of the 1800 block of West Delmar Avenue, at 12:26 p.m. Monday in the business’ parking lot in the 6300 block of Godfrey Road. [emphasis added]
And what WTW automotive story would be complete without a Camaro?
Witnesses saw Bonney ram his black Chevrolet Camaro into Harris’ white Acura Integra three times, and they saw Harris ram Bonney back two times, Wells said.
Note that the Camaro was owned by the 63-year-old combatant. That's gotta be the latest mid-life crisis I've ever heard of.

Read the accompanying comments; they're pretty funny too. And don't forget to do the full WTW roundup on my White Trash Wednesdayers blogroll.

So the 'world's cleverest woman' can't find a job. She needs to hook up with William Christopher Holley (whose whole sad deceased website is memorialized here and immortalized here and here).

Update: I guess Holley is out of luck - Ms. Simidchieva apparently now has to beat the job offers back with a stick.

And I Thought People Who Show Dogs Were Weird

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When I visit my in-laws', I end up watching different TV than I usually do. That's how I encountered Animal Planet's Cat People, a show about a big cat show and some of the people and cats involved.

Some of the people looked relatively normal, but there were two in particular who I thought were just out there. There was a blonde woman who showed kittens (that's right, folks, kittens between four and eight months of age get their own category), and one of her kittens had won Best Kitten something like 21 straight times. How this could happen when there are only fifteen weeks in the four-month period that a cat is showed as a kitten, I'm sure some cat lover will be able to explain to me. Anyway, this lady definitely needed to up her Prozac dosage, because when her kitten finished behind FatSweatyBum's kitten in a preliminary round, she looked despondent - as in 'one more piece of bad news away from eating a bullet.'

And about FatSweatyBum. The show had a bit where he made a big deal of 'putting on his game face,' indicating that he's somebody who 'shouldn't be messed with.'

He. Shows. CATS! What does he do, put on whiskers? Hell, you could probably distract him with a hoagie and do whatever the hell you wanted to his cats.

There was also another woman who had a dream her cat would win, even though the cat had some kind of eye problem and at one point peed all over his cage, but she looked harmless; also, I saw a breed called an ocicat that looked pretty cool, so it wasn't a complete waste of my hour.

In the end, all was well - FatSweatyGuy didn't stroke out (he settled for a quick nap in his car, caught on camera, and boy was that attractive), and NeuroticBlonde's kitten won his billionth Best In Whatever, so we didn't see her go all Budd Dwyer on us.

Now that would have been some different TV than usual.

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