Bodies

There are still people insisting on the positive DNA identification of tiny body parts. As in very small bits of bone. Ridiculous. What are you looking for, a dixie cup full of DNA to bury? With FBI and other DNA cases backed up in some cases for many months, those are precious resources better spent in other pursuits.
 

Buildings

Because everybody's got to have their say in what "should" go at Ground Zero, nothing ever does. Some folks want a giant memorial. Or a museum, office buildings, office buildings AND a memorial, etc. No on ever agrees on a design. Then we'll see a propsed design on the TV, and some like it, and some hate it, and nothing ever happens. Then they have to stop because somebody found a tiny piece of bone, and there's a new search. There's a set of cement steps that some morons want to preserve. Other dummies want to preserve a cross made out of girders. There's all sorts of fuss over a flag that may or may not be the one that flew over the site the day after. HOLY CRAP, move on, you idiots.

It's foolish to think that there shouldbe nothing but a big park. What happens after the next attack? Will that be the next hole in the landscape? The terrorists truly will have won if nothing useful goes there. It's prime real estate, and should be used to help drive the economy. 

However, the egotistical notion of putting a raft of huge buildings there is also outta whack. Giant towers will just scream "Hit me with a plane." How about some nice modest buildings, a memorial in the middle, a museum underground to save on the space, and leave it at that?
 

Compensation

The feds set up a fund to "compensate" the survivors and families of 9/11 victims. A minority of beneficiaries viciuosly complained over the relative value of their lost loved ones. They acted like this was an entitlement. It was, in fact, to keep them from suing the airlines and killing the airline industry. The correct opinion is, the gummint cannot compensate families in this way. Shit happens. It's not the fault of the gummint, and indirectly the taxpayers, that shit happens. 
 

Complete scum

Ann Coulter is a vicious piece of shit. She says that many of the 9/11 widows are enjoying their notoriety. What a witch. Belly-crawling, brainless, shit-spewing media whore. And that's just the stuff da wife allows me to type.

Youth is no excuse. Even as an infant, if you stumble, you wave your arms trying not to fall over, fully knowledgeable of the effects of gravity. So if you are hanging on something and let go and land on your f___g head, your parents shouldn't be able to sue.

January 2007, the latest craze among California Hispanic and black kids is ghost riding, meaning getting out of your car while it's idling, and dancing alongside it or even ON TOP OF IT. No surprise that kids have gotten injured doing this, one bonehead can be found on Youtube crashing his pickup into a telephone pole while doing this, and one kid has died. Far as I'm concerned, if they're old enough to have a license and somebody was dumb enough to give them a vehicle, AND they don't take out anybody else, I am all for these jackasses running themselves over. Let 'em die horribly. This is Darwin at work.

Here's one. This kid is a retard.
 

THIS ONE isn't a kid, but it 's on BEHALF of kids. In Lisle IL, at the health/community center, they offer a HIP-HOP class for little kids 5-9. They'll teach your little one "structured street dance" moves that will make you look like you belong in the music videos."  Maybe you'll also get a "thug life" tattoo to show off at first grade.
 

January 2007, a 13-year-old graffiti "artist" got knocked to death by a train, while he was busy spray-painting another train. Admirers mourn his loss, while the rest of the world says, if he'd been home reading a book instead of trashing public property, he could have lived into old age.

Some states have passed laws, or at least tried, saying that pharmacists can't be required to issue drugs which might contradict their religious beliefs. Fore example, they could refuse to put out the morning-after drug, since they believe it to be a form of abortion. In those cases, the person would be directed to another pharmacist who would presumably fill the prescription.

WRONG! If you take the job, you take what goes with it. That means filling presecriptions as written. If you don't want to do that, then GET ANOTHER JOB.

Neil Noesen, a pharmacist at a Madison WI Wal-Mart, refused to fill bith control prescriptions. He also wouldn't transfer them to other pharmacists. He put people on hold when they called about such prescriptions. Wal-Mart finally canned him. He claimed they didn't accommodate his Catholic faith. And THEN he wouldn't leave the store, and police had to haul him out in a wheelchair. IDIOT!

What's next? Scientologist pharmacists who won't fill prescriptions for anti-depressants? 
 

The new medicare system is a freaking mess. Too complicated, too many plans and cards, and it was only ever a giveaway to drug companies in the first place, which is the hallmark of the GW Bush administration. 

Too often, morons with guns wanna go out with a bang. So they pack a bunch of ammo, shoot up stuff, and commit what is sometimes called "suicide by cop." Hey, save the money on the bullets, leave more behind for your kids, and just put one slug in your empty head, Clem.

I also think that people who jump in front of trains and buses should end up in one of the lower rungs of hell. You wanna off yourself, fine. Do it on your own. Don't make somebody else a party to it. Think of the poor train engineer who has to go home to his family and tell them he ran over some idiotic, depressed schmuck.

And please don't do it at home. Find a quiet place somewhere. Don't make your family come home to your bloated corpse, like Hunter S. Thompson, the self-loving gun-nut did. Killed himself in his kitchen. Now every time his wife makes eggs, she's walking past the spot.

October 2007: An alcoholic lady by the name of Gotbaum was flying out of the Phoenix airport, supposedly to get treatment. her husband called the airport several times, to inform them that his wife was there, and was messed up, and had suicidal tendencies. When she was late for her flight, and was denied boarding, she went apeshit in the terminal, and was taken into custody. She subsequently managed to strangle herself with the shackles by which she was restrained to a bench in a holding area. If she was really that messed up, to where her husband KNEW she was messed up and was suicidal, WHY was she allowed to fly on her own in the first place? Everybody's looking at whether or not the authorities acted properly, but it was the FAMILY that knew she was screwed up to begin with. The husband suggested at the funeral that if "one single person at that airport had put an arm around her shoulder, sat her down and given her some protection, she might still be with us today."  While naturally we are all sorry for the family, I'm sorry to say that if I'm in the airport and someone is screaming hysterically (check out the security video), I'm not going to endanger myself or those around me by approaching that person. I once watched a short woman kick the shit out of a security guard's shins as he tried to keep her from walking away with stuff she'd shoplifted. Once again, why did the family let her travel if she was so messed up?

Traditionally, I've liked Jesse Jackson.  He's done a lot of good things for a lot of people.  Sure, he's pulled some stupid stuff, getting so easily offended over perceived slights by politicians, going on TV shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in a bloody sweater, claiming that King died in his arms, and never meeting a TV camera he didn't like.  After negotiating the release of three American servicemen in Serbia, he paraded them all over the damn place like they were fishing trophies.  But his antics in Decatur IL in November 1999 take the cake.

Seems some idiot high school kids got in a fight in the stands at a football game,  sending crowd members fleeing, and with innocent bystanders getting hit in the head.  It wasn't just a brawl, it was a nasty, brutal fight.  Several of the kids involved were less than stellar students to begin with, and here they were practically starting a riot. They were kicked out of school for two years.  UNTIL Jackson got involved.

Comparing this struggle with the epic civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama, Jackson held prayer vigils and staged marches to protest these kids being kicked out of school, much to the chagrin of the Decatur school board.  The school board, trying to minimize the disturbance, agreed to keep the kids out only for the remainder of the current year, and put the boys in alternative schooling in the meantime. At that point, Jackson should have declared victory and SPLIT. 

Instead, he pressed the matter, insisting that the boys be put back in regular school immediately.  He appeared at dozens of events, often with the boys and their moms, including a "dinner" at one of their homes, at which there were more cameras than dinnerplates.  He was to attend a "prayer vigil" at which he once again pouted to the cameras before leaving. The ministers with whom he was to pray had to send someone after him, to drag him back, so he could actually pray with them.  Oops.

This was NOT a civil rights struggle, it was a matter of some bad kids getting charged with felonies. For the sake of the other kids, they needed to be segregated from the rest of the students (and screw you if you take "segregated" the wrong way). Jesse even gave a forum to the idiotic Matt Hale of the so-called World Church of the Creator, a virulent white power group from Peoria.  Of course, that moron can't even get supportf from the KKK, the leader of whom called Matt Hale "the devil himself."   Every newspaper in the country worth a damn pronounced Jesse a dunderhead for dragging this whole situation way too far down the pike.  When he had a chance to claim a moral victory and walk away, he chose instead to keep it up, and lost his mandate, if ever he had one.  This was a dragged-out photo op for him, and it showed.

Jesse says he did this to protest schools' new zero-tolerance for violence policies. But guess what?  That's what parents want.

Here's what it comes down to: without a slot to run for president again,  and with the prospect of presidential candidates who were not likely to give a damn about him (eg. Bush Jr. and Bradley), Jesse needed to gain attention, to somehow claim that he still has relevance.  And this was his stage.  And he blew it.  Big time.

In January 2000, a federal judge has upheld the expulsions, and Jackson, not willing to admit he goofed, vowed more rallies in Decatur. Naturally, the citizens of Decatur overwhelmingly didn't want any more rallies. 
 

Also in January 2000, Jesse sent a nasty letter to the Green Bay Packers, giving them a hard time about their firing of head coach Ray Rhodes.  Jesse is asking the Packers if they're holding Rhodes to a different standard than a white coach, firing him after only a year.  The fact is, the Packers goofed hiring Rhodes in the first place.  He had a disastrous run as Eagles head coach, and he let the Pack go totally to heck with a lax attitude towad practices and meetings.  So now any team that is considering hiring a black coach will also have to worry about increased scrutiny, should they need to fire that coach later.  In other words, Jesse did no favors to potential black coaching candidates.

August 2000: A young black man was found hanged from a tree in his Mississippi front yard.  Two autopsies, including one commissioned by his family, indicated he'd committed suicide.  But the family, along with Jackson, insisted the boy was lynched because of his friendship with two white girls.  To put these allegations to rest, officials wanted to examine the boy's computer, to see if he'd left any notes behind.  You'd think the family would go along with this, to clear things up.  But they refused, and put off officials as long as they could.  Finally, a judge issued a search warrant, concluding that the family had had more than enough time to turn over the computer.  You'd think they'd want to, right?  Jackson accused police of conducting a "Waco-style" raid on the home to seize the computer.  But authorities were wise enough to videotape the execution of the warrant, which showed a peaceful visit by police during which no weapons were brandished.  Even with the video, Jackson still called the raid "Gestapo-like," and said "seizing [ the computer ] was dramatic and unnecessary.  The computer was not someplace in hiding."  Uh, nitwit, it was in the family's possession.  They had to get a search warrant because the family wouldn't turn it over.  Pick the right battles, Jesse.

January 2001: Jesse's found to have a love child, a couple of mistresses, and a whole mess o' splainin' to do.  He apologized, he professed his love for his wife, he said he was leaving public life for a while, then a couple of days later he was back.  Boy, that was a quick sabbatical.

Parental screwups
 

Every week, there are more stories of parents who gave up their kids for adoption, only to want them back. There have been some gut-wrenching stories about kids who grew up only knowing their adoptive parents, and being tossed back with the goofballs who gave them up in the first place. Those kids don't know SHIT about "biological" parents, they only know parents. Suddenly, they're given to strangers. Illinois Supreme Court justice James Heiple heartlessly revoked the adoption of "Baby Richard," who was ripped out of a loving home and given back to the stooges who coughed him up when he was an infant. Imagine the horror of that kid, taken from the only home he'd ever known, and given to people he didn't know. The biological parents went back on their word to let Richard see his adoptive parents and brother, and then they split up. Disaster. If you give your kid up, that's it. You should be done.
 

November 2007: Everybody's in an uproar over another toy from China, AQUA-DOTS. These are little spheres that you stick together in whatever pattern, then wet them down so they stick together as little sculptures. It turns out that when swallowed, a chemical on these things can turn into the date rape drug, of all wacky things. Potentially lethal. Shame on those damn Chinese yet again. But one of the highlighted cases is that of a 13-month-old who ingested 40 of these things. The story revolved around how eveil this product is, since the chemicals almost killed the kid. But where the hell were the parents or guardians or whoever was in charge when this toddler was swallowing forty of these f___g things? Regardless of how toxic the toy is, even if we're talking about marbles or bubble gum or Skiddles, if a little kid swallows that many of anything, they could choke, or block their digestive system, or whatever else. 
 

October 2007: Peter Gecho of Vancouver, Washington was drinking whiskey with his neighbor, then decided to two his nine-year-old daughter behind his truck on a tube while he drank Coors Light. He swung her into a bench and killed her. The child's mother released a statement (likely through a lawyer) that said the charges of vehicular homicide against her husband "further scar a family that has already suffered a tremendous loss." Well, actually, the charges are to punish this goddamn idiot, and to act as a warning to others that there are consequences to your stupidity.

June 2007: Shakita Mangham and Furaha Love, both 25-year-old moms from Pittsburgh, left their collective five kids, ages 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, home alone with two other 8-yeard-olds, and hit the bar. The kids were playing with matches, started a fire, and the five youngest ones died. The two moms at first tried to claim that the kids had been left with a babysitter whose name they couldn't remember. SLEAZY way to try and avoid responsibility. They finally admitted there was no babysitter. They went to the bar. Holy shit.

June 2007: Bonnie Desmond of Lake Stevens, Washington, taped a pacified to her 4-month-old son's mouth, to keep it in there. She called paramedics later to say the baby was unconscious. When they showed, they determined the boy had been dead FOR HOURS. So she taped this damn thing to his face, then ignored him for WAY too long. She's been charged with manslaughter.

These previous two cases are good arguments for STERILIZATION.
 

Always blaming somebody else? A series of stories in the Chicago Tribune focuses on toys with choking hazards. The toy they targeted was Magnetix, which has small magnetic balls and sticks. My kids had them, and loved them. It's a terrible tragedy, when kids swallow toys and have problems. But usually the anger is saved for toddler toys with detachable parts. The fact is, when the easily-swallowed bits are part of the toy itself, the part you see and touch and manipulate, you have to be smart enough NOT TO GIVE THEM TO SMALL KIDS. It's the same as lawn darts. If you don't understand the potential hazard of throwing things up in the air and having gravity do its thing, then you shouldn't have kids.
 

December 2006: Holy shit, these people are dopes. Christopher and Mary Hansche, a couple in Benton LA, were jailed for child desertion and criminal negligence after their infant daughter's toes were chewed off, supposedly by the family pit bull puppy. The husband insists it was the dog's fault, but then the mom said the real culprit was the family's pet FERRET.  Oh no, it wasn't the FIRST dangerous animal in the house, it was the OTHER dangerous animal in the house. How about putting the kid up for adoption, then tossing the parents in a cell with some pit bulls and ferrets, and calling it even?
 

October 2006: A 13-year-old girl stupidly pierces her own belly button, ends up with an infection, drops from 115 to 75 pounds. Her mom, Deborah Robinson of Boston, doesn't seek medical help for her moron kid until the situation is critical. Mom faces five years for endangerment, and for raising an idiot.
 
 

July 2006: Some parents in Santa Barbara CA introduced their 11-month-old to their pit bull, who immediately started chomping on the kid's face. PIT BULLS ARE NOT FAMILY PETS. They're nasty, foul, vicious, and quite powerful.

June 2006: A lady in Stockton CA put her six-year-old kid alone in a Ferris Wheel. Apparently at some point, the kid freaked out and tried climbing out of the car. He fell to his death. While we should all feel awful for that lady, and you wonder why the operator would go along with it, we should also wonder, why in the hell did she DO such a thing in the first place? Holy shit, that's a long way up. Ultimately it's the parent's responsibility.
 

January 2006: Shannon Cook, of Westmont IL, left her kids, aged 3,1, and 4 months, alone in her apartment, while she and her obviously oblivious boyfriend went downtown Chicago to attend a taping of the Jerry Springer show. How ironic. She left her kids alone to attend a show featuring people just like herself. A neighbor spotted the kids in the hall and called police, who arrived at 8:30 in the freakin' evening to take the kids into protective custody. She got 30 days plus a year's probation, and the kids are in foster care. If you're not going to care for your kids, don't f___g HAVE them.

January 2006: Candace Dickinson was pulled over in Phoenix, for being a single passenger in a car pool lane. She pointed to her very pregnant belly and said that her unborn child counted as a passenger. She should be fined DOUBLE for even attempting this lame ass excuse.

October 2005: A couple of nitwits got all over the news with the non-story that they never gave their little girl a name, and let her pick out her own name (Alice) when she was two. Gee, aren't we progressive.

May 2005: Lavern Dunlap, 35, of Glendora CA, was pulled over after another driver reported seeing her woman close the trunk of her car Toyota Corolla with two kids insie. The car had nine people crammed inside altogether. She said she was heading to her sister's house. Her solution to fitting them all in was putting two kids in the trunk. WHAT KIND OF RETARDS IS GOD ALLOWING TO HAVE KIDS ?????

Who's the idiot who started the idea that playing classical music to a child in the womb enhances their later intellect and motor skills?  That is the biggest crock in the world.  Sure, classical appeals to the more intellectual crowd.  But a fetus can't tell the freaking difference.  This is new-agey yuppie bullshit.  Just my opinion, of course, but it's the RIGHT ONE.

May 2002: A bunch of minority parents, whipped into a frenzy by a lame leadership hungry for a cause, marched on Chicago public libraries, demanding internet filters to protect their children from online porn.  Just a couple of years ago, they were marching to demand internet access for their kids, saying that poor minority children didn't have the same advantages as white kids when it came to online access.  They got what they were after, but didn't bother doing their homework.  They don't understand, filters largely don't work, and add considerable cost. Why is everybody else responsible for their kids except THEM? Teach your own damn kids to stay away from it.  Internet porn doesn't come looking for you, YOU have to go looking for IT.  If your kids encounter it while online, it's because they went searching for it. Is that the library's fault?
 

February 2002: Andrea Yates is on trial in Texas for killing her own five kids, drowning each and every one of them.  It's a horrible, horrible crime.  She apparently was nutty for a while, and suffered from post-natal depression at the time of the murders. But she'd been exhibiting weird symptoms for a long time.  And still her husband not only left her alone with the kids, he kept having kids with her.  Maybe since she'd been this way previously, he should have been watching more closely, or better yet, stopped having kids. November 2005, she's won a new trial. Whether she's an evil murderess, which is unlikely, or just plain nuts, which is probable, she needs to stay in a safe place the rest of her life.
 

September 2001: Biology teacher Christine Pelton assigned a paper worth 50 percent of their grade to her high school class, and warned them of the penalty for plagiarism, which was clearly spelled out in the student handbook of their Piper, Kansas school.  Twenty-eight of the kids sucked material right off the internet and submitted it as their own.  Many of them submitted the exact same stuff.  Just brilliant.  So Pelton didn't give them credit, and effectively flunked them. 
       A bunch of the PARENTS complained to the school board.  The principal and school superintendent backed Pelton up, but the school board quivered like a bunch of Frenchmen in a windstorm, and declared that the cheaters should get partial credit, and that the paper should count for only thirty percent of their grade.  So the parents successfully taught their kids that cheating is okay, and the ninety kids who didn't cheat learned that taking the high road isn't worth it. 
        Undermined, Pelton quit to work in daycare.  The idiot kids at the school, and their parents, don't deserve her anyway.

December 2001: Marcella Anderson was in the Greyhound bus station in Chicago on Xmas Eve, and handed her kid to a stranger who had befriended her.  The stranger, Sheila Matthews, took off with the kid, and tried to pass the little girl off as her own, to show to her boyfriend, who'd just gotten out of prison.  The boyfriend's mother turned them in, and the child thankfully was returned.  Matthews, who's abducted one other child, and possibly two more besides that, in the past, should be hanged, in my honest, and correct, opinion.  But Anderson is a dolt.  You don't, no matter how tired or harried or whatever else you are, hand your kid to somebody you just met in the frigging bus station.

April 2001: A mom in downstate Illinois is once again being investigated by the Department of Child and Family Services for continuing to keep her child in bed with her, a six-year-old she still nurses.  He's six, and she still breastfeeds him. 

July 2000: A 21-year-old mom took her three-year-old to a go-cart track in Palatine, Illinois, and asked the operator if it would be okay for her to put her little girl on her lap while she drove a go-cart (despite the sign saying "every rider must be five feet tall."   The woman crashed into another go-cart, and her daughter was crushed between herself and the steering wheel, and died soon after. Yeah, the operator goofed.  But it's the responsibility of the MOM.  She had no business putting a small child in a frigging go-cart.
 

Joseph and Carmen Grad of Marshall County, Indiana, would regularly stick their six-year-old son in a closet adjacent to their bathroom in their trailer.  And then they'd leave him there.  And if they wanted to shower together, they'd turn up the radio so they wouldn't have to listen to his sobbing pleas to be let out.  And so the boy wouldn't sit down or try to sleep, Joe Grad would wrap fencing around the kid.  And if the boy soiled himself, Grad would rub the boy's waste in his face.  And occasionally Grad would urinate on the boy, and brag that he'd given his stepson a "golden shower."  After this piece of SHIT was put in jail, he complained that the other prisoners would urinate on HIM.  Poor baby.  And now just before he's supposed to get out in March 2000, afer serving a pitifully short amount of time, he's being held on new charges.  Seems he had a 19-year-old boarder who provided the household income.  So to keep this mealticket happy, Grad and his idiot wife arranged for the guy to have regular sex with a 13-year-old girl, who subsequently gave birth.  So this guy's a complete and utter tool.  He finally got out, and he's working as a mechanic under another name.  With any luck, a car will fall on him.
 

The mother of Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City bomber and massive mass murderer, suggested at one point that enough years had passed since the bombing, so the relatives of the victims "should get over it."
 

Joseph Motyka of Chicago, 32 years old and therefore old enough to know better, was arrested on the eve of Y2K and charged with unlawful use of a weapon and child endangerment, when his three-year-old daughter found and accidentally set off the quarter stick of dynamite he'd purchased to celebrate the new year.  She lost her right hand, as well as suffering vision and hearing loss. Idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.
 

Michael and Angeline Rogers of Brillion, Wisconsin, were in the habit of beating their kids with a rod and locking their 7-year-old daughter in a dog cage in the baseent, occasionally hosing her down with cold water, occasionally letting her out, and occasionally feeding her.  Instead of getting the chair, they got a ridiculously easy year in the can and ten years probation.  Angeline, being dumb as bricks, decided that a year was too much, and she fled her work release. This dummy didn't even have to be in jail full-time!!!!   She was caught, and was given another four years.  In addition, her probation was revoked, and she's begun serving the full ten years.
 

This is a sad one.  You hear about this with people who keep Rottweilers and Dobermans.  In Carlyle, Illinois, a family who kept a pet python lost their three-year-old when the python squeezed him to death.
            The father says he doesn't think the snake "tried to stalk" the child, but maybe just got out of the cage and "cuddled up by him."   WRONG!!!  It's a DUMB ANIMAL.  Snakes are not CUDDLY.  They don't cuddle, it's not something they do.  A python is a DANGEROUS BEAST, it SQUEEZES things to KILL them.  And a python is therefore a STUPID PET to keep around.

Recreational screwups

October 2007: Late in the month, with the water cold and choppy, four guys went out on Lake Michigan from Chicago's Monroe Harbor on a racing sailboat. Members of the local yacht club watched them take off, and wondered what they were doing going out on the high waves just before dark. Not too swift. Sure enough, the boat's owner, Alexander Childers, fell overboard, and during the rescue attempt, the boat hit a breakwater and fell apart. Childers and two others drowned. I don't boat, but I know when the water's too high, and I also know that when the sun is already practically setting, you don't go out on the lake.

October 2007: Record heat in Chicago caused the city to shut down the annual marathon. Instead of the mid-fifties expected days earlier, the temperature was around 90. A lot of folks still finished, but many did not. Some started and quit. Some never bothered running. But a whole bunch started the race and ended up in hospitals. One guy died. Many blamed the city itself for not having enough water at the various stations, and sure enough, in some places they ran out of water or at least cups, because many runners resorted to dumping one cup on their heads and drinking another, resulting in lots more water being consued than normal. But rather than completely blame the city, some participants seem to have forgotten that it was f___g HOT, and nobody twisted their damn arms to make them run. When it's too hot or too cold, I skip running outdoors and use my treadmill. Makes sense. But running 26 miles in the freaking heat means you are either a professional runner who needs the prize money (as were the winners, as usual), or pretty damn stupid.
 

Parachute Pinheads

In base jumping, there's typically no reserve chute, since you're jumping from a range of 3000 feet or so, and there may not be time to deploy a backup. One item to note: base jumpers often leap from buildings in crowded cities, and don't seem to take into account the fact that, even if they don't screw up, they might still land on someone and kill them.
 

October 2005: Yet another base-jumping idiot scewed up, and got tangled in power lines. Utility guys had to risk their necks to unhook him. 

May 2005:  A very dumb Norwegian guy died after jumping off the Eiffel Tower. Apparently he was going to film his jump as part of some PR for a clothing brand. He entered the tower on Monday night with a hidden parachute and a helmet with a camera attached. When he jumped, his chute got caught, and came loose from the rest of him. He kept falling, WITHOUT his parachute, and made a lovely puddle, I'm sure. The thing that really bugs me about these assholes is that they don't care about the possibility that they might hurt somebody else.

June 2000: Terry Forrestal, veteran British stuntman, parachuted from the 3000-foot Kjerag cliff near Lysefjord, Norway, and instead of clearing the rock, hit a ledge.  While waiting to be rescued, he thought he'd launch himself again, but wasn't high enough for his parachute to deploy.  The second bounce did him in. 

October '99: Jan Davis, 60, plunged to her death while parachuting off El Capitan peak in Yosemite.  The jump was part of a protest against a park service ban on such jumps.  Why the ban?  The service says jumping from El Capitan is too dangerous.  Apparently they are the ones with the correct opinion. 

July '99, Thor Axel Kapfjell, noted Norwegian base jumper (meaning someone who jumps off cliffs, bridges, buildings, or other tall stationary objects), leapt off a cliff back in Norway, and was promptly dashed to death when the wind blew him right back into the rocks. In June, a buddy of his died when he dove into a river to escape park rangers, after jumping off a cliff in Yosemite.  Kapfjell had previously jumped from the Empire State Building, World Trade Center, and the Chrysler building. Too bad he didn't land in the midst of a bunch of muggers in Central Park. My sister jumps out of planes, which is bad enough, but jumping off things that are already pretty close to the ground is just plain stupid.
 
 

Mountainous Morons

December 2006: A trio of climbers going up Mt. Hood in Oregon get in trouble when one of them gets hurt. Bad weather comes in, hampering the search, and the results of the eventual search are of course AWFUL. One of them had a cell phone, which he apparently turned on and off to conserve the battery, but which also made finding him more difficult. Storms were already approaching, so they decided on a quick ascent, which left no room for error or accidents, and whaddaya know. Would-be rescuers found the trio's camera, and the pics indicated these guys didn't bring sufficient gear to handle the weather that they should have known was coming in.It's a sad, sad thing, but you make your own luck.

May 2002: A group of climbers going up Mt. Hood in Oregon get in trouble, and fall into a crevasse and die.  An army reserve helicopter crashes, injuring several, during the rescue attempt.  Not to sound callous, but if you go up a big, cold, icy hunk of mountain and have a problem, you're an idiot.  You're not proving anything, and you're endangering others when they have to pluck your ass off the mountain.
      A few months ago, four idiots went up Mt. St. Elias, wanting to be the first to ski and/or snowboard down, despite the descent from the summit being described as a "45 degree angle of snow and ice."  Not surprisingly, two of them died, in their nutty attempt to be the first at something.   Their bodies will never be recovered.  So, they abandon their families for weeks at a time, to satisfy their childish fun, then deny their families a body to bury.

May 2001: a group of French and Swiss students enter a cave in Goumois, France, despite warnings from locals that water has accumulated in the cave and rain is on the way.  Sure enough, it rains, and they are trapped in an air pocket in the cave.   Rescuers have to pump water out of the cave for days straight, send in divers, blast holes in the cave, dig more holes, and in general start destroying its natural beauty in an effort to save these ninnies.  Because they didn't listen.
 

A lady mountain climber, Heidi Howkins,  who wants to be the first woman to ever successfully scale K2 and actually live to tell about it, is also the single mother of an eight-year-old girl.  She tells her daughter, "I will do my best to come home to you."  The woman is gone many months out of the year.  She complains that she's held to some double standard by observers who say she's abandoning her kid.  The correct opinion on this matter is : if she was a single DAD, it would be the same thing.  You're a parent, and that is your primary responsibility, not hiking up big rocks.  Stay the hell home, you moron.
 

Cycle Stooges

July 2000: A bunch of motorcyclists were clocked doing 73 in a 40, in Gilberts, Illinois.  Police tried to pull them over, but they made a run for it.  They led police on a chase that got as fast as 130 mph.  Four of the five were finally arrested, with three being charged with felony aggravated fleeing of police.  One was caught when he ran into a sheriff's car head-on, breaking his wrist.   One of the riders later commented, "There were mistakes made on both parts .... it's a bunch of kids on bikes, and [police] put a lot of people's lives in jeopardy."  No, dummy, you and your friends put a lot of people's lives in jeopardy.  The cops were just doing their job.  Your job was not to speed in the first place, and to pull over when you got caught.   Give these boys a scooter.
 

The US government released statistics indicating that the number of motorcycle fatalities for riders over 40 years old has increased 38% in two years.  Why?  Because aging Baby Boomers want to recapture some macho thing they never had in the first place, buying Harleys and Hondas that are too much bike for them, or which they never bother learning how to properly ride.  At least when a biker takes a header off his hog, he usually doesn't take any other drivers with him.
 
 

Fireworks Fools

Fireworks are dangerous, annoying, and way too many people hurt themselves and others with them. They start fires. They are feared by officials in drought-stricken areas. They should be banned everywhere. If you hurt yourself with a firecracker, make sure you hurt yourself very badly. 

July 2007: An apartment building in Carmel, Indiana, went up in flames because of errant fireworks. How unfortunate that the state of Indiana is so liberal with fireworks, attracting not only their own boneheaded citizens, but the citizens of neighboring states where the things are otherwise restricted or banned altogether. Also this month, Danialle Barse, 27, of Melvindale, Michigan, was trying to set off a commercial-grade rocket, which exploded in her face, killing her in front of her fiancee and her 8-year-old son. The rest of the rockets, all attached, continued to go off, keeping potential rescuers away until they were done exploding. 

Two Einsteins from my own state of Illinois go out on the lake (June '98) with an M-250, a firecracker the equivalent of a quarter stick of dynamite. In what can best be construed as an idiotic new method of fishing, they light the thing and fling it in the water, hoping to scare up some fish. The wind blows their ill-fated boat back over the explosive, which goes off, blowing a hole in the bottom. One swims, the other doesn't. The latter sinks. Is there an IQ cutoff for the afterlife?

Ryan Hively, 25, of Indiana, decided to celebrate July 4th by setting off an antique cannon near a home in Niles, Michigan. He used too much black powder, and the resulting explosion sent pieces of the 80-year-old cannon flying, killing a 63-year-old woman standing down the road talking to her grand-daughter. Hively was given an entirely inadequate 11 months.

February 2001:  the recipient of the second known hand transplant in medical history lost his original hand because of a fireworks accident.

July 2000:  Keith Seymour, 34, of Long Island, was participating in an unofficial neighborhood fireworks display.  He lit a shell, and when it didn't go off, he peered into the launch tube, and promptly lost half his head. 
        And in Des Moines, kids riding around in an SUV were throwing firecrackers out the window when one of  those firecrackers blew back in through the window, setting off a pile of other fireworks.  The SUV quickly caught fire and crashed.  One girl died, and four others were in critical condition.
 
 
 

Thomas Czechowski was convicted of public lewdness for humping his girlfriend in the stands during a Buffalo Bills game.   This is a typical attention-starved moron (it doesn't say much for the girl, either).  He says, "I won't try it this year, because I'm on probation.  But someday, down the road, if she's willing to do it again, I will too.  I'm being punished for loving my girl, who is now my fiancee."  No, you idiot, you're being punished for doing something that belongs at home, not in public where little kids might see you.  FOOL.  Are you happy now?  Did you get in the news?  Good for you.
 

August '99, French authorities have documented 27 cases of eye damage resulting from people staring directly at the latest solar eclipse.  Hey there, Pierre, didn't your mom ever tell you not to ......
 

Woodstock '99 featured exorbitant ticket prices (avg. $150), ridiculous vendor prices ($4 for bottled water, $7 for a hot dog), little shade, inadequate security, and nobody to haul off the garbage.  Young girls (some of whom ill-advisedly body-surfed in few clothes to begin with) were stripped and sexually assaulted in the mosh pits, and hundreds of the gouged (and stupid to start with) attendees rioted the last day, setting fire to large piles of uncollected refuse, looting and destroying vendor trailers, wrecking cars and broadcast towers, and driving off the overmatched security staff.  The idiot lead singer for the lame group Limp Bizkit told the crowd before the trouble, "Start some shit."  And they did.  The great irony was the goofball waving the large, peace-sign-bearing Woodstock banner in front of a raging bonfire.
 

Another year, another running of the bulls in Pamplona, another bunch of idiot tourists gored. In 1999, it was an idiot from Chicago. Hmmm, let's see, bulls run loose, idiots run in front of bulls, idiots get bullhorn up the ass, literally. Yeah, that sounds about right. In 2006, one complete idiot was left paralyzed from the waist down, after a bull got him. GENIUS.
 

Arsonist screwups

May '99: 18-year-old Andy Stuckmeyer is sentenced to time served (he'd already done nine months), 30 months probation, and restitution of $9000, for torching an Algonquin, Illinois mobile classroom. He and an equally idiotic friend, Jason Golt of Algonquin, calling themselves the "Dudes of Destruction," and perhaps more accurately termed the "Stooges of Stupidity," set the fire together. Golt got six months in the clink.

Stuckmeyer got off so easy because he's also got a kid. He must remain employed full-time (hopefully there are openings for a circus geek), turn over at least 20 percent of his income to the mother of his unfortunate child (who will probably eventually do time or therapy because of his moron dad), get a high school diploma or equivalent, and perform 200 hours of community service. This service should probably include being lashed to a tree and having to dodge lawn darts heaved by the principal of the school he damaged.

Computer screwups

Mmay 2005: It was revealed that when the military released an edited document regarding the shooting of an Italian agent by US troops in Iraq, they blacked out certain portions, which reporters were easily able to restore, so they could see classified information that might be useful to future attackers.

May 2000: Nelson Robert Holcomb, a Colorado grad student,  was arrested on the campus of CSU, charged with interstate commercial extortion.  Allegedly he sent email to a New Jersey online publisher, telling them he'd figured out how to download their stuff for free, and threatened to tell the world how to do this if they didn't give him a Volvo, stereo equipment, and unlimited downloads.  He was caught.  Quickly.

May 2000: The little scumbag in Manila who says he "might have released" the I LOVE YOU virus says that the Internet should be free, and that it is immoral to charge for access.  Well, he's saying that for one reason: he's looking for sympathy from other crackers.  And y'know, dummy, SOMEBODY's gotta pay for all those computers and all the salaries of the people who keep the thing running.  He also says the fault is Microsoft's, for creating products with holes in them.  And it's true, Microsoft has a lot of cruddy stuff, and Outlook is a piece of shit.  But they didn't invent the viruses. Assholes like HE did.

There are guys online who actually trade images of Lara Croft, a fictional DIGITAL character from a popular computer game.  NUDE images of Lara Croft are especially popular.  NUDE images of a digital chick.  These guys who trade these things, they actually walk around in public.  When they're not sweating it out alone on a Friday night in their parents' basements, that is.

Michael Ian Campbell, an 18 year old aspiring actor from Cape Coral FL, posted a message on the Net to a Columbine High student, saying he would "finish" what  began in the Colorado mass shooting.  His sleazeball lawyer attempted an "Internet intoxication" defense, saying the young man was simply overwhelmed by the whole envornment of the Internet (sounds like an updated version of the Twinkie defense).  Personally, I think I have a simpler explanation.  Campbell is a frigging idiot.   In February 2000, they dropped this ridiculous defense in favor of the more obvious plea: he IS an idiot.   Hey, there's a new angle: honesty. This little prick was lucky, and only got four months, but like a little pussy, he still collapsed when they read the verdict. His mother, who also appears to be a boob, wagged her finger in the direction of that Columbine student after she had to go prop up her idiot son. The lawyer said after the sentencing that the Columbine killers had "claimed another victim," meaning his idiot client. Un-freaking-believable.
 
 
 

eBay shut down an auction page on which somebody was trying to peddle a human kidney.  Allegedly, the bidding got up to $3 million before the stoppage.  Winter '00, an NBA loses a tooth in a collision with another player.  A very short time later, the fan who found the tooth tries auctioning it on eBay.  The player's coach says, "I love the guy, but I wouldn't pay for his tooth."
 

La Raza, a respected Chicago-based Hispanic newspaper, wanted to swap their web sites from their old ISP, Ripco Communications, to a new ISP, onShore Inc.  Shortly afterward, La Raza found, to their horror, that two of their three old web sites were not only still in the possession of their old ISP, they also pointed to an adult site, dildo.com.  In fact, Ripco has pointed numerous abandoned sites to dildo.com, since they make some money off the banner ads there.  Nice guys.  They claim La Raza is three months behind in paying their bills.  Fine.  So take them to court.  Don't insult their constituents.
 

Hackers often say they believe information should be free, not private.  Okay, assholes, how about posting your credit card numbers, names and addresses on the web, if you believe all information should be free?
 

Religious screwups

Don't speak ill of the dead ... or at least not too much

The big blowhard known as Jerry Falwell has finally gone someplace where I'm sure God gave him a good talking-to. This dummy said that AIDS was punishment for homosexuality, that 9/11 was America's punishment for gays, abortionists, feminists, etc. He disliked the legitimately religious Jimmy Carter, but loved the divorced Reagan, because of politics. This guy, who invented the poorly-named Moral Majority, used religious more for politics than for saving souls.
 

Many wives, few brain cells

July 2007: Polygamist Tom Green (not to be confused with the shitty so-called comedian) wants out of jail, so he swears he'll stick with one wife if he's let out. A fifth wife left him while he was in the can, but that leaves him with four more. The reason this piece of shit has been in jail in the first place is for having sex with his first wife when she was 13 and he was 37. He was also convicted of bigamy, and for not supporting all of his THIRTY-TWO KIDS, many of whom have had to be supported by the government. Hey, asshole, if you wanna make lots of kids, no sweat. Just PAY FOR THEM. Face it, this polygamy thing is all a religious dodge for scummy guys to get off with as many young chicks as they can.

In the meantime, also this month Warren Jeffs, a leader of another Mormon offshoot sect, is still rotting in jail, after being arrested a while back while wearing a disguise. How the mighty have fallen. He forced very young girls into marriages, sometimes with their own relatives, and therefore has been charged with aiding and abetting not only rape, but incest. In November 2007, we discover that this paragon of fundamentalist virtue tried hanging himself in jail. Oh yeah, I'd like this guy as my prophet.
 
 

Mangling the facts

The so-called Family Research Council has taken issue with new hate crimes legislation. And sure, maybe the new bill, inroduced in May 2007, is overkill. But the FRC completely mangles its meaning, maybe to drum up support for the rest of their policies. They call it a "thought crimes" bill, that will punish Christians for speaking out against homosexuality. But in fact it punishes violent crimes, and that's it. This is what the far right does all the time: misrepresent the facts. The Bush administration, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of their ilk bend, warp, fold, and mutilate the truth for their own ends.
 

Jesus wants you to squeal like a pig

Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, says that John McCain is pissing off conservatives because the senator has pushed back on President Bush's policy on detainees. In other words, McCain doesn't believe in state-sanctioned torture (while the leader of the free world is on record as loving it). Sheldon's group supports "tough interrogation techniques" for terror suspects. So apparently traditional values include sleep deprivation, water-boarding, sticking people in coffin-sized containers for months at a time, beating them, and siccing dogs on them.
 

Allah turned me into a moron !!!

September 2006: Pope Benedict made a boo-boo, and quoted from a Medieval text which says that Islam is violent and spreads its word by the sword. So a whole lotts Muslims in a bunch of countries rioted, burned effigies, attacked and killed various Christians (including the shooting of a Catholic nun working to help the poor and helpless in Africa), and set off bombs at Christian churches. Al-Qaeda issued a statement saying that the pope and the west were "doomed" and they would have to accept conversion to Islam or "death by the sword."

So Muslims are so pissed off at being called violent that they react with unbelievable violence. Yeah, that makes a lotta sense.
 

March 2006: A single Afghani admitted he'd converted to Christianity years ago. The whole country went nuts, saying he had to die, that it was blasphemy to convert, he was evil, and so on. The Afghan courts tried to settle everybody down by simply declaring the guy was insane. But ultimately he had to be spirited away to another country. These idiots are so afraid of losing one single guy, they had to sentence him to death.

February 2006: Lotsa Muslims, especially the idiot Palestinians (who always manage to screw up truces), are screaming bloody murder, firing guns in the air, storming buildings, and THREATENING TO KIDNAP PEOPLE because a couple of European newspapers printed a cartoon with an image of the prophet Muhammed. Instead of being indignant, writing letters, maybe staging a protest, they go absolutely goo-goo, and then they wonder why the western world thinks of them as cave dwellers. You don't like a cartoon, so you threaten mass kidnappings? Grow the f___k up.

This is the same mentality that prompted the Iranians to issue a death sentence against Salman Rushdie for the written word. These people are afraid of ideas and words. The same culture that kept science alive during the dark ages, the Arab world, is now living in its own dark ages.

June 2005: In Pakistan, an elderly sweeper with a heart condition was asked to burn some papers. Later, somebody thought that there were some Koran verses among those papers. The police beat him up and he was threatened by fundamentalists, and he had to go into hiding. 

Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans said in January 2006 that God was mad at the USA for the war in Iraq. I wish these idiots would stop claiming to know what God thinks.
 

Gorillas in the Classroom All those fundamentalists sure look like chimps to ME

February 2007: ONCE AGAIN, the Kansas state board of education has reversed itself. After conservatives lost the majority, evolution once again righteously re-enters the classroom. Democrats and moderate Republicans have turned back the turning back of the clock. Proponents of Intelligent Design, which is simply creationism hoked up to sorta smell like science, had previously pushed the Bible-based view of things INTO THE CLASSROOM. John Calvert, a retired lawyer who helped found the Intelligent Design Network, said the education board now promotes atheism. And retired biology teacher Greg Lassey said that the new standards hurt families by "discrediting parents who reject materialism and t he ethics and morals it fosters."  HUH??? What the hell does that have to do with SCIENCE? See, these fundamentalist boneheads can't see science for what it is. It has to be infected with their personal beliefs. 
 

January 2006: The El Tejon school district in California put an end to a philosophy course that included Intelligent Design, because it violated the separation of Church and State. Supporters of the course said it was merely offering an alternative to evolution. Critics said it was insertion of religion into a public school curriculum. The smoking gun is in the words of the lady who had been teaching the course. She said, "I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach." Says it all right there

November 2005: In Dover, Pennsylvania, they debated a case against the school board, brought by the parents of several kids who don't want their children being taught the so-called science of Intelligent Design (ID), which is merely creationism repackaged as junk science. ID cannot be observed, cannot be tested, and there is no empirical evidence for it. 

BUT THERE'S GOOD NEWS. Voters ousted eight Republicans from the Dover PA school board, replacing them with Democrats who opposed the insertion of Intelligent Design into the school curriculum.
 

Proponents of Intelligent Design can only point to one thing as their "evidence" : the human body sure looks awful complicated, so Somebody must've planned it out in advance. The correct opinion on this is: if we're all so well designed, kindly explain my man-nipples, my appendix, and my vestigial tailbone.

Intelligent Design wonks also favor the movie "March of the Penguins," saying that the care given to eggs by male penguins, and the whole hatching process, somehow promotes the notion of ID. Okay, so NOW explain why penguins only mate for the year, then shack up with somebody different each subsequent year. And explain why the penguin hatching process is so damned complicated, it's a miracle that any eggs survive?

You wanna teach that God made the world in six days, teach it in religious ed classes. No sweat. My kids attend a parochial school as well, but they go to SCHOOL to learn FACTS and well-accepted SCIENTIFIC theory, not half-baked, poorly disguised fairy tales. Make your OWN damn kids stupid, if you want, in the privacy of your own church and home. But don't use tax-payer dollars to promote a religious agenda.

One more note: October 2005, the Vatican again reiterated its decades-old stance that evolutionary theory and religious beliefs are not mutually exclusive. The Vatican's own representative just cautioned against "fundamentalism," and recommends paying attention to "sound science." In so many words, evolution good, intelligent design bad.

May 2005: The Air Force Academy's top cadet sent out a religiously-themed email on the eve of graduation, to thousands of other cadets. In the email, he includes quotations, Biblical verses, and other propaganda. The academy has already been under investigation for allowing harassment by evangelical Christians. Cadets have attended tolerance seminars during which they've been told not to use email for personal messages. 

When asked for comment on the matter, the idiot cadet replied, ''I'll leave that to the senior leadership to explain.'' In other words, I'll cause a big stink, in violation of policy, then wimp out when cornered on it.

Capt. Melinda Morton, a chaplain who says she was fired as executive officer of the chaplaincy corps because she criticized the power of the evangelicals at the academy, said the kid's e-mail was the kind of thing that the tolerance policy was supposed to curb.

Whether or not the email was a violation, it was STUPID. This kid is too dumb to recognize when he's causing a problem in the ranks. He does NOT deserve any kind of leadership position.

Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 academy graduate with two sons currently at the academy, commented, "There couldn't be a more wretchedly timed example of the total and dismal failure of the senior leaders of the academy than having the No. 1 cadet breach the most fundamental and elementary rules of the religious tolerance program.''
 
 

May 2005: Pastor Chan Chandler of the East Waynesville Baptist Church in Waynesville NC kicked out nine members of his congregation, because they refused to support George Bush. Many others from the congregation quit in protest. Less than a week later, confronted with his own stupidity, and saying it was all just a "misunderstanding," he left his own church. By the way, he's 33, been there just a couple of years, and one of the people he ousted had been with the congregation FORTY years. 
 

Spring 2005: In Chicago, a crack in a cement wall under a viaduct sprouted a big splotch, caused by water and road salt. A whole bunch of feeble-minded folks saw in that splotch an image of the Virgin Mary, and started lighting candles and leaving little tributes. C'mon. People see the Virgin Mary or Jesus himself in potato chips, grilled cheese sandwiches, rusty spots, oil spills, you name it. I think what they're doing is trying too hard.
 

March 2002: The Saudi Arabian religious police, known formally as the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, caused the deaths of 14 girls this month, by blocking their rescue during a fire at their school. They didn't want male firefighters and paramedics seeing the girls come out without their heads covered, because HEY, God forbid any of those guys get a stiffy from hatless teenage girls whose alternative is to BURN TO DEATH, which some of them did.  The rest suffocated or fell to their deaths jumping out of windows to escape the fire. 
 

February 2002: Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina's parish in Chicago IL, has been a very loud priest.  Always protesting something or other.  Some of his protests have been very well-meaning, but he's also picked the wrong targets on occasion.  In 2001, some other schools decided they didn't want to play basketball against his school, because it's in a bad neighborhood.  Seems logical enough.  Even after the diocese intervened and some of the other schools relented, Pfleger wanted to hold a big conference on racism before he'd agree to get the school back into the basketball league.
       Pfleger served two six year terms, more or less against the rules, cuz normally you move on after one stint.  After twelve years had passed, he was told, time to move on.  He again raised a stink, and threatened to "quit the priesthood," or possibly even "start my own church" if he was forced to move on.  In other words, he would trample his vow of obedience.  He makes a lot of noise, pisses off a lot of people, then sticks a thumb in the church's eye.  They should have let him start his own freaking church.  He gets enough subsidies from the diocese, let's see how long St. Sabina's would survive without the church backing him up.
    March 2002 update: Once again whining, Pfleger made everybody else in the league sound like a racist, and pulled his team out of the basketball arrangements.
 

May 2001: Tom Green (not the bad so-called comic), a loony Mormon, was convicted of bigamy, for having all sorts of wives, some of whom he married WAY too young.  He defines marriage however it seems to suit his purposes.  Some of the girls he claims to be married to, sometimes he says it's legal, sometimes it's "celestial."  He called Utah officals "spineless" for their verdict.  He says they've forgotten their Mormon roots.  Fact is, dummy, the Church you claim to support officially dumped polygamy in the 1800's. And don't you know the Bible?  Jesus said  "A man shall leave his father and mother, join to his woman, and the two shall become as one."  It doesn't say anything about "becoming as nine or ten."
 

Dr. Younis Shaik, teaching at a medical college in Islamabad, Pakistan, apparently said the wrong things regarding circumcision and the removal of underarm hair in his class.  Hardcore Muslims are real particular about whether the prophet Muhammad practiced proper Muslim habits before becoming the very first Muslim at the age of 40.  The teacher believed that Muhammad started these practices.  His students believed that eerybody was practicing these before Muhammad started them.  Huh?  Anyway, them's fightin' words in Pakistan, and as one 17-year-old student put it, "Only out of respect, because he was our teacher, did we not beat him to death on the spot."  Shaik is now in jail, wondering if he'll be hanged because he spoke common sense, or perhaps only a learned opinion.
 

Speaking of Moslems, I see major problems ahead for the Nation of Islam. Their hair care business seems to be massively in disarray, their forays into the security biz have been disastrous, and once Louis Farrakhan is gone, they're screwed. It's less a branch of Islam (which, in its purest form, is a beautiful faith) than a cult of personality. Farrakhan still spouts anti-white and anti-Semitic nonsense, and if you doubt his goofiness, check out the documentary Tyson, in which he totally excuses Mike Tyson's mishandling of women, and in which he blames all the evil which befalls women on, well, women. The Nation doesn't really have any decent voices to take over the race-baiting for Louis. One possible replacement is Benjamin Muhammad, whose pre-convenient-conversion name was Ben Chavis, under which he was fired as executive director of the NAACP for sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement. Ouch.	Louie under glass.
February 2000: Farrakhan has kissed and made up with a number of mainstream Islamic groups.  But of course the core belief of the Nation of Islam is that an evil scientist created the white race through some sort of "grafting" process.  He actually DID embrace a Jewish group.  Of course, it's a wacko branch of Hasidic Judaism which states that the Holocaust was a righteous punishment of Zionists, since it's a heresy to want to start a Jewish nation before the appearance of a messiah. So the only Jews Farrakhan could find to hang with are Jews who hate other Jews. August 2000: At a speech in L.A., Farrakhan expressed his distrust of VP candidate Joseph Lieberman, asking if Lieberman could be trusted to put the interests of the United States before those of Israel.

Big freaking bonehead Fred Phelps, from Topeka, Kansas, continues to drag his sorry ass and the sorry asses of his sorry-assed followers around the country to picket at the funerals of dead gay people. At the sentencing of a man convicted of beating to death a homosexual student, Phelps and his band of turds held up signs outside the courthouse which read NO SPECIAL LAWS FOR FAGS and [ the victim ] IN HELL. Oh, yeah, don't forget the one that read FAGS DIE -- GOD LAUGHS. Phelps and his toadies claim to represent the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka. If there are fags in hell, they'll all be waiting to give Phelps a big fiery bone up the kazoo when he gets there. And he will get there. 

After the start of the Iraq war, Phelps decided to start picketing the funerals of soldiers, holding up signs saying "Thank God for IEDs."  His theory is that soldiers' deaths are America's punishment for allowing gays to live here.
 

Municipal / government / military  screwups

October 2007: A sheriff's deputy in Crandon, Wisconsin get insulted at a party, so he went back to his vehicle, grabbed his police rifle, and shot six people dead, before holing up and being killed by snipers. He was TWENTY YEARS OLD. Of course, we send kids younger than that into war, but they are heavily supervised. A sheriff's deputy works a lot more standalone. Isn't 20 years old a little young for that line of work, with those kinds of weapons? I know plenty of cops, and the vast majority of their job involves simply talking to people, reasoning things out, rather than pulling a trigger. Is a 20-year-old mature enough to handle hot-tempered drunks and feuding neighbors? 
 

DON'T PANIC !!!!!!  YET !!!!!!

January 2007: There's a nasty gas smell all over Manhattan, clear over to Jersey. They can't figure out where it's coming from, but they've shut down trains, evac'd buildings, and cleared soem streets. The utility and Mayor Bloomberg can't agree on their statements. They say it's not dangerous. But if they don't know where it's coming from or exactly what it is, how do they KNOW it's not dangerous?

On the exact same day, the city of Austin TX shuts down parts of the city because they've found dozens of dead birds. They don't know what killed them, but they say whatever it is, it's not hazardous to humans. Again, how do they know?

It's also freaky that these things happened on the same day. No, you don't want to panic people, but at the same time, don't spoonfeed them bullshit.
 
 

September 2006: Military recruiters are being nailed more and more for indulging in sleazy tactics to fill their quotas. I guess you can't blame them, when the Bush administration is sending people back to Iraq two, three, four, five times. Eventually, you're going to get shot or blown up. But recruiters have signed up mentally ill kids, they've cheated on drug tests, they take dropouts they never would have considered before, they take them younger AND older, they've even signed up kids fresh from psycho wards. No shit.
 

July 2006: Nitwits run Chicago. Wal-Mart and Target, among others, want to open big stores in Chicago. Yeah, they're evil corporations, but at least they'll bring some jobs and cheap goods to poor neighborhoods that currently have neither. EXCEPT that the morons in the Chicago city council voted a minimum wage that they want to enforce on those stores. The stores say, we pay what we pay. If you want us to put in stories, with jobs and shopping and sales tax revenue, then don't tell us what to pay people. Otherwise, we'll take our business elsewhere. Critics of the stores call that "scare tactics." Actually, it was the truth.

The idiot aldermen and other morons supporting this ordinance shouted for joy when it passed, hugging each other like the witless shitheads they are. What they did was vote jobs and sales tax out of the city. There's a very simple reason the stores will never agree to this. If Chicago gets away with it, then every other city will pull the same thing. It's a domino effect. So Wal-Mart and Target won't do it. These dum-dums who celebrated this "victory" have screwed themselves and their fellow citizens. 
 

July 2006: John Stroger, long-time chairman of the Cook County (Illinois) board, always ran a bloated, inefficient, crony-heavy patronage machine. Reform has always taken a backseat to the status quo. Stroger was disabled earlier in 2006 by a severe stroke, and was kept out of sight by family and cronies. Despite his disability, he stayed on the primary ballot. There was a lot of talk of needing to keep the office in the hands of a black person. WHY? Who the hell knows. It's not supposed to be a BLACK job, it's supposed to be a PUBLIC SERVICE job. The dumb thing is, over the years, Stroger never supported black candidates. He backed whoever the Democratic machine in the city wanted, for various slots. 

The family seemed to be keeping a lid on information, to keep the rest of the board and anybody else in t he county from making sound decisions as to how Stroger's absence should be handled. It quickly became apparent that the reason for his obscurity was to give Stroger's kid the job, who does NOT have the experience to take over. For some insane reason, they think that running Cook County is somehow an entitlement, a family legacy. The kid did not get the nod to take the job in the interim when Stroger was finally obliged to step down for the remainder of his term, but yet the kid is somehow qualified to replace Dad on the ballot in the general election. None of this makes sense. Are these guys secretly Republicans?
 

June 2005: James West, the Republican mayor of Spokane, former GOP majority leader in the state legislature, was asked to resign after it was discovered that he was using town computers on twon time to solicit sex from young men. There are allegations he molested young boys during his tenure as a boy scout leader and deputy sheriff. He also has advocated anti-gay bills. Hypocrite!
 

May 2005: Augusta GA unveiled a state of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, wife-beater, and drug abuser. The statue was to have been unveiled months earlier, but at the time, Brown was facing domestic abuse charges.

A couple of years back, Kurt Cobain's family was complaining that his hometown refused to put up a statue of him. Maybe it was all the heroin and the depressing tunes and the blowing off of the head and all that other stuff.
 

January 2002: A female soldier stationed in Saudi Arabia filed suit, cuz she didn't like the rules there stating that lady troops had to wear veils, ride in the back seat, and be accmpanied by a male soldier everywhere they went.  The US military finally relaxed the rule on the veil (leaving the rest in place), angering the Saudis.  Two points here :
   First, the Saudis are lousy allies, and need to lighten up.  They do everything they can to make our troops uncomfortable.  But they'd be pretty unhappy if we packed up and left.  Second, when you're in the military, you follow orders.  You don't like it, do something else.  And when you are in a foreign land, you are an ambassador, and need to be sensitive to local circumstances.  Are the inmates running the asylum?
 

April 2001 :  The "Reverend" Donald Luster, convicted felon (1991 robbery rap, and 10 days in jail in 1999 for theft) allegedly won election for mayor of Dixmoor IL by one lousy vote.   He and his goofy supporters rushed city hall and the police department, trying to immediately oust the incumbent mayor and police chief, even though by local ordinance he wasn't to take office for another few weeks.  A partial recount seemed to cast doubt on his victory, PLUS Illinois state law says a convicted felon can't be a mayor.  And one more little thing, you typically have to be a resident of a town for at least a year before running for office, and during the controversy, he was sued by a former landlord for back rent, for a house he was living in less than a year earlier, IN ANOTHER TOWN.  So, let's see now, may not have really won, not really a resident, and a crook.  Hmmm.  He said he was just following the path of his Messiah.  And yes, it's true, Jesus was arrested.  Only not for theft and robbery.  And Jesus never skipped out on the rent.
    Eventually, Luster was forced out of office for having committed insurance fraud and failing to file taxes. Really?
 

September 2000: The state of Illinois has figured out how to give its citizens a property tax rebate that instantly results in the federal government grabbing said rebate for federal income taxes.  State legislators want to look like Santa Claus just before elections, but because they want to tie the rebate to property taxes, the money becomes fodder for the feds.  Thanks, guys.
 

Chicago:  Mayor Daley gets caught handing out $100 million in city contracts to a well-connected Irish family, contracts that were to have gone to minority contractors.  Oh, but there was supposed to be a woman running that firm.  Oh, but guess what, she doesn't run that firm.  That's why today, January 5th, 2000, I'm downtown, and there's a couple hundred black men in hard hats protesting at City Hall.  Daley says the firm, run by The Duffs, has no political or financial connections to the city, but they sure have done a lot of political fund-raising in the city.  Daley just can't admit, he got caught.  In 2005, the Duffs get seriously hosed over the whole matter, and the lady who supposedly ran it, their batty old mom, is only avoiding jail because she's out of it. They coached her on what to say when investigators asked her about the business she supposedly owned.
 

Oak Lawn, Illinois, must feel it needs all the sales tax revenue it can get.  So when Krispy Kreme found a spot they liked on Cicero Avenue, they asked the town to help them acquire the land.  To this end, Oak Lawn is threatening the invocation of eminent domain to oust a music store and three homeowners, if those people don't agree to the offers they've been made for their properties.  In other words, take the money and run, or we'll just take your homes and give you less.  You have to get out so we can put in a donut shop.
 

Rosemont, Illinois is situated right next to O'Hare Airport, one of the busiest in the world.  It's also home to a load of high-rise office buildings, and a very popular, very large concert venue.  When the Dead played there, traffic was backed up for miiiiiiiiiiles.  And for many people, the exit they took to get there was the same exit from the tollway that you use to get to O'Hare.  NOW they want to put in a casino.   Are they NUTS?  There's no place to put in more roads.  It's all solid buildings and runways as it is.
 
 
 

June '99, I'm attending Heritage Fest in downtown Downers Grove, Illinois, when I pass three white suburban kids approaching a couple of other kids, and as a way of greeting, they flash gang signs. I said, "You're kidding, right? Rich suburban kids, playing gang member?" I got dirty looks, but I look kinda mean myself, and besides, they're only playing at it.

Criminal screwups

June 2005: An Australian woman got nailed for trying to smuggle home 51 live tropical fish in little plastic bags hidden under her skirt. She had just returned from Singapore.  Can you freaking BELIEVE this? I know you have to be dumb to be a criminal, but this is just retarded. They nailed her for not declaring the fish, plus breaking quarantine and customs laws. They should also charge her with being a complete RETARD.

My dear, your personal hygiene  leaves something to be desired.

May 2005: Carl Edward Roland, 41, was wanted by Pinellas County FL police for killing his ex-girlfriend. He strangeld her and dumped her in a pond. He then drove to Atlanta and climbed a crane, and said he was thinking of killing himself. After a couple of days, an officer went to him with some water, and tasered him. In the meantime, he tied up traffic and a lot of police by hanging around on the crane.

This reminds me of an episode from a couple of years back when a guy armed with a sword held up police for hours in the Pacific northwest. They hit him with pepper spray, beanbags, all sorts of stuff. Finally, they blasted him with a firehose, and pinned him against the wall with a ladder. The whole thing took way too long. I'd have simplified it. One guy with a gun walks up to him, and says, "You have five seconds to drop the sword, or I shoot you in the kneecap." Count to five, then shoot. And when a guy's on a crane, you tell him, "You have five seconds to start climbing down, then the snipers take off your head." Count to five, and make sure nobody's underneath him. End of problem.
 

I've always wondered about the guy who stole Marla Maples' shoes and underwear, and then blew a chance to settle it quietly because he wanted to make a few bucks peddling his inside view on the Trumps. How the hell do you explain that one to your kids when they cry about being teased at school? "Son, one day that underwear will pay for your college."
 

May 2001: Charlotte Cox and Sean Kucharski of McHenry, Illinois, smuggled a lot of the club drug Ecstasy into the USA by swallowing hundreds of tiny  balloons filled with the stuff, with the idea of popping those puppies out later and selling them to teenagers.  But the balloons got stuck in their digestive tracts, and the ones in Cox started to leak, causing her to become extremely ill.  In addition to making themselves sick and getting caught, they both face 6 to 30 years.  Doctors removed 96 balloons from Cox, and 231 from Kucharski.  If they'd just left those things in there, they'd have saved a lot of court and incarceration costs.

Eighteen-year-old Alexander Cirilo of Hinsdale, Illinois, isn't sure why he set fire to a 62-year-old man who was sitting on a curb in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, but he did.  They were just sitting there talking, and next thing you know, the teenage imbecile set fire to the man's back.  He's undergone skin grafts to replace the 89 percent of the skin he lost on his back.  His left hand is virtually useless, and he's in a wheelchair.  Cirilo was given eight years for heinous battery.  Hopefully nobody sets him on fire, or trades him for a pack of cigarettes, or rams anything up his ass, or makes him toss a salad, while he's in the joint.

In retrospect, Rodney King wasn't worth the 3 mil they paid him off with.  While on parole, and also drunk and high, he was pulled over while driving almost 100 MPH.  He ignored all orders to surrender, and wouldn't stay on the ground.  In any argument with the cops, when they tell you to do something, the cops should get the benefit of the doubt. After his much-publicized "beating," he got into all sorts of trouble all over again.

February 2001: Gerald Tyszko of Downers Grove IL held up a bank by handing a teller a note demanding cash, written on the back of of a check belonging to his cousin.  They went to the cousin's house with a description, the cousin identified the guy, and when they went to the robber's place, they found his hands were stained red from the dye pack thrown in with the money by the teller.  In prison, I'll bet he's last one picked by the captain of the gang rape team.

June 2000: Cipriano Alvarez of Chicago was stopped in the suburb of Darien, after police received a call about a reckless driver, heading down Route 55 on the shoulder of the highway.  His driver's license was revoked.  He tried to pay his own bond with two phony $100 bills.  The other two still in his pocket turned out to be phony as well.  Police figured out they were phony because the texture was wrong, and they were more yellowish than green. So now there's a gang of counterfeiters out there making phony bills with toilet paper and food coloring.
 

Jan 2000, Ronald Dean Cherry of Biloxi MS phoned the Treasure Bay Casino and demanded they bring him $100,000 or he'd shoot people at the casino.  He provided his name and address so they could get him the money quickly.  He was charged with phone harassment, and his bail was $25,000.  "It makes our job extremely easy when they give their name and address," said the local police chief.

Only in Bruce Willis movies are crooks smart, athletic, computer-literate, possessed of all manner of computer and military equipment, and in general very good at what they do. In fall '97, a dufus named David Gatt, an employee of an armored car company out east, stuffed several boxes of cash into his car, totalling millions. This act was caught on several cameras. Oops. Then he gave the cash to his friends, a married couple, and told them to lay low before he split town. Almost immediately, this pair of morons went out and bought a BMW, paintings (including an Elvis on black velvet, no kidding), and all sorts of other goodies. Then they dumped a bunch of money on a mansion to keep it all. The husband stuffed the wine cellar with Pabst Blue Ribbon. Still not kidding. Then the wife walked into a bank with a suitcase stuffed with $200,000 in cash, still in the wrappers from the armored car company, to make a deposit. All three are now in the clink. Dumb de dumb dumb.

Tony T. Green, an extraordinary asshole from Waukegan IL, was speeding past a bus stop where parents were waiting with their children.  Some parents indicated that he should slow down.  He responded by slamming on his brakes and backing into the crowd, injuring some of the bystanders, including a 4-year-old girl.  The judge gave him a ridiculously easy sentence: five months in a county boot camp.  If he screws up, he gets five years.  If they'd just run him over in the courthouse parking lot, they'd have saved a lot of expense.
 

Dessert dummies

            "Hey kid, what're you in for?"
           "Pie-throwing."
            "Oh yeah? You sure got a purty mouth."
 

Fashion Jerks

Once again, Calvin Klein has drummed up a not-ready-for-prime-time ad campaign. This time, instead of heroin-addict-standins as models, or prepubescent-appearing human mannequins, he decided on VERY young children jumping up and down on the furniture to advertise his overpriced crap. Now, if another company, such as Fruit of the Loom or Jockey, put out such ads, it would probably be seen as cute. But Klein's reputation is such that anything he puts out DEFINITELY has deliberate undertones.

And here's the SCUMMIEST aspect to this: he knew exactly what he was doing. Fashion Week in New York, in Feb. '99, was the perfect time to stage a cynical, tasteless controversy. He's done it before, with the agenda being, no publicity is bad publicity. And this time, he did it with children. Stick this guy in Hell with Halston and Warhol.
 

I open up the Chicago Tribune, for 2 June 1999, and there's a full page ad from Marshall Fields featuring Michael Kors, to whom some goofy designers' group gave their Designer of the Year award. He's in some kind of leather coat, with two days' stubble and the most incredibly serious look on his face, as if he's contemplating something very serious. Hey, bonehead, you design women's clothes. It's not a job for a grown man. If you got hit by a bus, about five people would notice. You're unimportant.  Try SMILING.

Gender-bending screwups

It was one of the gay magazines that started the whole stupid thing, lauding BBC-TV's Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubby (if you don't know what one of those is, you don't have toddlers) for being a gay role model. He was the Gay Pride color, to begin with, the antenna atop his head was the triangular shape best-known in the gay community for being pink and adorned with the slogan SILENCE=DEATH, and they called his magic bag a "purse."  Then well-known moron Jerry Falwell registered with his opinion that this was another example of the gay agenda creeping up to corrupt our children.  So what's the correct opinion on this? It's a FRIGGING KIDS' SHOW. He's not gay, he's a guy in a seven-foot costume, spouting dubbed-in Cantonese (no shit) gibberish. He's not a gay role model, you Advocate boneheads, and he's not an evil, scheming gay agent, you right-wing dolts. I have nothing against gays, I have nothing against religion, I just despise MORONS who appropriate innocent material for their own ends.

And now some religious groups claim that Spongebob Squarepants is a gay guy in disguise. Fer crissakes, get a life.
 
 

Spare me: I have gay friends, relatives, and acquaintances. A few companies back, I hired a gay guy. No bias here. But I wish to hell they'd PLEASE knock off trying to out long-dead people who might disagree but aren't alive enough to do so. Spring '99, some idiots are now claiming that Abraham Lincoln was "probably" gay. Their dubious "evidence" for this is ridiculous. And NOW some fool named Stephen Knight, an English lit professor from London, is saying that Robin Hood was gay. He bases this absurd opinion on various ballads written about Robin Hood, saying that arrows and quivers were merely sexual metaphors. Uh, DUMMY, that's what he shot the bad guys with. "Oh dear me, I mustn't attack the sheriff's men, everyone will think I'm a pouf."

Peter Tatchell of the gay rights group Outrage says of this Robin Hood crap, "It's about time school history lessons acknowledged the contribution of famous homosexuals." Actually, history notes contributions of MANY gay people. They simply don't put in the margin notes, "He was gay." And don't try manufacturing more gay people out of dead ones. If he was gay, or if he was not, is it anybody's business? This Stephen Knight guy, I sure hope he doesn't have tenure.

Bureaucratic screwups

FOR THE FULL ROUNDUP ON THE MORONS WHO SCREWED UP IN THE WAKE OF HURRICANE KATRINA, CHECK THIS OUT.
 

Illinois governor George Ryan didn't seem like such a bad guy.  But he ended up in the middle of a terrible mess: a license-selling scandal.  While he was Secretary of State, a whole BUNCH of his employees were involved in selling truck driving licenses to unqualified drivers, some of whom could speak NO English.  Makes it hard to pass the test, no?  One clown recently convicted said he was just following the climate of corruption to keep his job, but he managed to keep plenty of the cash that came his way.  Ryan blames the investigators, blames the culture of corruption that was there when he took the job and remained there after he left, he appointed a crooked (now indicted) crony/pal as his lead investigator, and NOW he blames the federal government for making the driving standards too tough.  In other words, by trying to keep unqualified drivers off the road, the feds are to blame for making people take bribes.  George, how about accepting some blame?  Unqualified drivers licensed by Illinois and pegged as having paid bribes caused accidents, injury, and death, in one case causing the deaths of six children of a minister and his wife.  As it turns out, many, many drivers, both regular and truck, who were foreced to come back and retest, failed miserably. Some couldn't even start their cars.  Some scared driving instructors so bad, those instructors got out of the vehicles rather than risk their lives.  One failed driver was abandoned by the tester two blocks from the testing facility, and couldn't manage to make it back to that facility.

Ryan didn't bother running for gov again, since no way wouldhe get re-elected. Chances are he's going to jail.
 
 
 

OSHA announced in January 2000 that it should require companies to regulate the safety of home offices. In other words, they should provide safe working environments for telecommuters, down to lamps and furniture, and even be responsible for inspecting home office facilities. ARE THEY NUTS? There's millions fewer commuters on the roads, telecommuters LOVE working in their pajamas, and doesn't OSHA realize it's an IMPOSSIBLE task to inspect home offices? I work out of my own basement, and I certainly don't expect my Boston-based employer to come check out my messy "office." Hell, I don't want them anywhere NEAR my home office. If I can't get out because I've started a fire because I've plugged too damn many power strips into too many OTHER power strips, that's my own damn fault. Dumb, dumb rule. January 2000 update : They've rescinded this new policy already, realizing, uh, boy, was that stupid.

Labor screwups

Off with my hand

March 2007: Muslim cashiers at some Target stores are now being allowed to wear gloves, let customers ring up their own purchases, change positions, or transfer, rather than ring up products with pork in them. In other words, they took a job, knowing what the requirements were, then weaseled out of those requirements after the fact. 
    "Ow, doctor it hurts when I do this." 
    "Then don't do that." 
This rivals the morons who take jobs as pharmacists, then won't hand out contraceptives.
 
 

Mop it, mop it good

April 2006: Janitors at the University of Miami went on a hunger strike. Several ended up in the hospital, and one had a stroke. They were demanding a higher wage. Okay, we're talking about very non-skilled labor, first off. Second, those kinds of jobs can be had just about anywhere. Is that kind of a job worth starving yourself for?
 
 

Pricing themselves out of their jobs

Check out this stat. Health costs per car: Ford: $1200, Chrysler: $1500, GM: $1600

Okay, so a chunk of that is the insanely out-of-control health costs in the USA. The other problem is that traditionally, American labor has driven up the cost of EVERYTHING. People in relatively unskilled jobs have always wanted ridiculous hourly wages, ridiculous health benefits, multiple weeks of vacation, and so on. I know plenty of union guys who didn't bust their nuts to go to school, and who perform jobs that can be learned pretty damn fast, and who make stupid amounts of money. When the clock says they break, they stop what they're doing and break. When the day's over, they stop what they're doing and leave. They get paid for every half-second they work overtime. Sounds great. it also eventually breaks the system.

The unions have screwed themselves, and their employers. GM continues dumping tens of thousands of workers, out of sheer necessity. The unions have made this inevitable. Here’s how.

• They’ve put in place such ridiculous requirements for getting rid of unproductive workers that employers get stuck with bums who drag down average productivity.
• They’ve forced employers to provide outrageous benefits, not available to other workers, that have added unbearable costs. Almost $2000 per car coming out of GM, for example, went right into worker benefits. Not for improvement, not to compete with the Japanese, not for modernization. Holy crap!
• They’ve forced ridiculously high wages for not-so-skilled labor. People who need virtually no training and take virtually no risks get paid stupidly pumped-up salaries.

Oh sure, they're lookin' out for us, ain't they?

June 2002: The Teamsters have voted out for life William Hogan (once Chicago's most powerful Teamster) and Dane Passo, James P. Hoffa's right hand man, for trying to get a Las Vegas local union to sign a sub-standard contract, in order to keep costs down at a Chicago-based company where Hogan's brother Mike was an official.  And see, union guys are dumb enough to think that their leadership is always backing them up.
 
 

Choke that chicken

Perdue Farms Inc., the chicken processor, has bought its first automated chicken catcher, a sort of tractor that is driven through a chicken house, and which scoops up the chickens with long rubber fingers and deposits them in boxes.  It's slower than having people catch them, but much easier on the birds. The problem is, this and other chicken-catching machines may eventually replace 150 or so human chicken-catchers, who are organizing a union.  So tell me, do you get a degree in chicken-catching, or is it just a five-minute training video kinda job?  Chicken-Catchers Local 101?  Who'll be unionizing next, guys who collect aluminum cans in shopping carts under the bridge?  A chicken-catchers' union?  HUH?
 
 

Workers of  the World, sit down

A bunch of striking janitors in the suburbs of Chicago decided to make their point in May 2000 by sitting down in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in the metro area, 22nd Street and Route 83 in Oakbrook, Illinois.   They apparently thought they could gain the sympathy of other working people by making those people incredibly late for work.  Dozens of them were hauled away and arrested.  As I drove past them, I seriously considered swerving nice and close and scaring the piss out of them.
 

POSSIBLY THE BIGGEST SCREWUP I'VE HEARD OF IN A LONG TIME:
Donnellan Funeral Home on Chicago's South Side dropped out of the Teamsters, because the family-owned business had only one non-relative working there.  Nobody should be FORCED to be a union shop, especially in that small an environment.  But the Teamsters apparently took offense at this action, and began picketing the funeral home.  This led to the Teamsters following a family from the funeral home TO THE CHURCH, where they chanted union slogans just feet from the casket as it was moved in and out of the church.  They even warned that next time, they might follow people TO THE CEMETERY.  Way to go, guys.  The city of Chicago considered a ban of this kind of picketing, and the moron union members have been lambasted on national news.
 
 

My experience with unions hasn't been the greatest. Early on, I remember my brother and brother-in-law going on strike, for reasons which weren't fully explained to them, and it cost them a bunch of money, and when they finally did get their measly raise out of it, it didn't come close to making up for what they lost.

I had horrible experiences setting up for trade shows at McCormick Place in downtown Chicago:

• we couldn't touch any of the stuff that came with our own booths unless we signed out a union guy at extortion wages
• we couldn't carry in ANY of our own stuff. If we didn't know exactly how much it all weighed, they estimated. And they charged by the pound. They estimated that five boxes of books weighed half a ton. NO JOKE.
• We purchased a rug for our booth, and it was delivered all rolled up, but we weren't allowed to unroll it ourselves. We had to sign out a carpet-layers union guy for a minimum half-hour. He unrolled the rug for us. Wow.
• we couldn't plug in our own extension cord (this is no lie). We had to sign out an electrician for half an hour. He plugged in our lights, to a standard 110 outlet.
• THEN we weren't allowed to assemble our own customized booth. We had to sign out a carpenter from either the Decorators or Carpenters Union. They gave us an old, old man with Parkinson's who literally couldn't even hold a screwdriver anymore. He knew nothing about our booth. He started trying to put our booth together with that same screwdriver, even though there were no screws whatsoever in our booth. Eventually he stood and watched and rang up the cash register while we assembled our own booth.

The state, the city, and the unions are finally getting together to stop the most egregious abuses, described in the Chicago Tribune pretty much how I've described them above, so the conventioneers will quit cancelling shows at McCormick. Short term greed adds up to long term pain.

11/20/97 Update: the Decorators Union  managed to derail in the Illinois legislature the much-needed labor reforms at McCormick Place. I guess they really didn't want the business after all.

11/98 update: After months of holdup, somebody explained to the Decorators Union that they're the least useful of the bunch, and finally they got this thing worked out.  The Housewares show was prevented from moving to Orlando, but barely.

05/05 update: Look at the previous dates. This is how long this has been going on. After losing more trade shows to Florida and Vegas, FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY the labor idiots in Chicago are saying they'll stop the extortion that's driving business shows away from the city. A Chicago Trib editorial just the other day mentioned one of those things that I ran into BACK IN 1984: people will be allowed to plug in their own lights without having to sign out a guy from the electricians union. 

05/06 update: Nothing ever changes. The Food Marketing Institute is pulling out after the next show, citing ridiculous setup (aka labor) costs and difficult rules. Other cities simply don't let the local labor unions extort exhibitors completely out of town.
 

Where my wife used to work, the union did two things very well: they collected dues, which more than ate up any benefits they got for the workers, and they enforced the employment rules which kept the employer from firing the druggies who worked there.
 

Animal screwups

December 2006: We watched in confusion one night this week as Animal Planet had on a show about the Guinness Book of World Records, specifically about records having to do with animals. They then showed one of the DUMBEST damn things I've ever seen. How many balloons can a rattlesnake pop in one minute? Well, they had some fat guy chasing a snake with  bunches of balloons. This snake of course wanted nothing to do with this, and kept trying to get the f__k away, while this fat-ass kept shoving these balloons at it. So the poor snakes of the world, now that they're finally free of Steve Irwin grabbing them by the ass and swinging them around for the cameras, now have to deal with fat-ass guys sticking balloons in their faces. 

Also this month, Ted Dres of Cincinnati was strangled to death by his pet boa constrictor. Holy shit, a 13-foot-foot boa is NOT A PET. Also a dumb pet: pythons.
 

November 2006: PETA, busy people with good intentions and awful execution, continually take aim at the wrong targets. This month they sent a nasty-gram to a church in Alaska, demanding that they stop using live animals in their nativity scene, for which they've NEVER used live animals, only plastic ones. May 2001: Claiming that the promotion of milk is racist, since so many blacks and Hispanics are lactose-intolerant, PETA wanted the guys who run the Indy 500 to replace the traditional winner's drink of milk with orange juice.
 

Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin had a lot of balls. He messed with giant, dangerous reptiles. He narrowly avoided losing a limb on many occasions. He was bitten countless times. That said, wasn't that all kind of stupid? He said he was educating the public about these animals, but what do we learn when he grabs them from behind, or teases them into taking swipes at him? Okay, I get it, they can hurt you. Enough already.

Balls also don't translate into brains or good taste. Irwin caught a lot of shit for easing up to a crocodile with a piece of meat, while also holding his ONE-MONTH-OLD son. He had a close call with the croc, WHILE HOLDING HIS KID. Let's say the croc had gotten hold of his leg. Would he have been sharp enough to hand the kid off to somebody else while battling the croc? And in jerking around in front of the reptile, he was also jiggling his kid around. Babies have very weak necks. He could easily have hurt his kid without dropping him or accidentally feeding him to the crocodile. He defended himself by saying that he would have been considered the worst dad in the world if he didn't teach his kids about the dangers in their own backyard. Huh? Is a one-month-old going to recall this lesson? And where the hell does he live, that he's got crocodiles in his backyard?

In fact, Irwin used his kids as props on several occasions, holding them up in the air during his exhibitions and walking them up to waterholes that contained dangerous reptiles.

It's a shame that Irwin died. He donated time and money to good causes, and he was an ardent conservationist.  But he wasn't the best example in the world. Nice guy, maybe, good entertainer, but not always a braniac.
 

Timothy Treadwell gave up booze and drugs to spend his free time with bears in Alaska. But he didn't just observe them. He sang to them, read them poetry, gave them names, and even got in the habit of petting them. He'd walk right up to these big damn things and play with them. He'd been advised by various experts not to do this very stupid thing. But he claimed he was becoming a "bear whisperer," fully accepted by the bears as a "brother." In fact, he was accepted as a snack. On one of his campouts, he and his girlfriend were both killed and eaten by a large grizzly. While on David Letterman, the host even jokingly asked if he was afraid this very thing might happen. Well, whaddaya know.
 

May 2001: Steven E. Chancellor, a Hoosier coal mogul and a big contributor to the Bush administration, has lobbied the government of Botswana to rescind a ban on hunting lions.  In doing so, he has presented letters of recommendation from former president George Bush, Dan Quayle, and Norman Schwarzkopf.  All four of these guys belong to Safari Club International, a US group which promotes big game hunting.  How about when the lions learn to shoot back, we call it a real sport and let you have at it?

Andrew Burnett, 27, was indicted on charges that after a fender bender with a female motorist, Burnett reached into the woman's car, pulled out her small dog, and threw the beast into traffic, killing it. he was found guilty and given three years. Too bad the lady couldn't throw HIM into traffic. He claimed the dog had bit him, but the judge didn't buy that. It was also determined that while in the service, he beat a stray dog to death.  This guy appears to be a real tool. He caused the accident in the first place by cutting off the dog's owner. He also was convicted of stealing from his employer. Somehow, his PacBell service van ended up at the bottom of a cliff, with some equipment missing. It was later found that he had sold this equipment. He was sentenced to three years in jail (with one factor in the tough sentence being evidence that he'd once beaten to death a stray dog), then exposed himself to ridicule again by suing over the accident, claiming a neck injury. Unbelievable.
 

January 2001: Marjorie Knoller and her husband Robert Noel owned two bull mastiffs.  They're lawyers.  They appear to have been running a business with incarcerated convicts in which they supplied animals for dogfights.  Their two dogs attacked a neighbor in their apartment building, mauling her literally to death.  Their "scorched earth" defense appears to include blaming the victim herself, saying that the dead woman, an athlete, may have been using steroids which gave off a scent which enraged the dogs.  HUH?  They're blaming the victim for their damn dogs killing her.  Toss both these idiots in with somebody else's savage dogs.  Turns out they'd had previous problems controlling their animals, who had twice attacked a blind woman and her guide dog. It actually gets WORSE. The two lawyers regularly exchanged correspondence with prisoners at Pelican Bay prison (one of whom they legally ADOPTED), and in some of these letters were descriptions of sexual activity between the pair and one of the dogs. A search also turned up nude photos of Knoller in the adopted convict's cell. And CHRIST, is she ever ugly. They each got four years, which is WAY too little. After the attack, Knoller actually stepped over the woman, who was still alive, to get back into her apartment. 
 

September 2000: the geniuses at PETA erected in New York City a billboard spoofing the Got Milk ads, with a picture of Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a painted-on milk mustache, above the caption Got Prostate Cancer?  Their reasoning, disputed by many experts, is that drinking milk increases your chance of developing such cancer, which in fact Giuliani has.  The dummies apologized and took down the billboard.

In the town next to mine, some animal activists raided a mink farm and let loose as many minks as they could. Most of the minks died of starvation and the elements very quickly.

Cristina Sanchez, the first lady matador of Spain, was glorified a couple of years back by the morons on PrimeTime Live. She rationalizes away the rather extreme treatment shown the bulls by saying, "If we didn't kill them in the ring with a sword, we'd have to kill them in the field with a bullet." In fact, without bullfighting, the bulls wouldn't be raised cruelly to be so frigging mean, then shocked, beaten, and starved to get them ready for the ring, where they're taunted, jabbed with darts, and run through with swords several times before they finally kick. Sanchez is just as big an idiot as her male counterparts in the sport. When I see these guys gored on TV, I feel all warm inside.

July 6, 1999, a dead naked guy was found in the killer whale tank at Sea World Orlando. The presumption is that the guy hung around hidden in the park until it closed, and then went swimming with the big fishes. The whale in question has been considered so dangerous, even trainers and performers don't swim with him. He killed a trainer in Canada several years ago. But I guess he looked so cute and cuddly that some goofy-ass guy decided to frolic with him. Nominate this guy for the Darwin awards.

Militia screwups

Here's the correct opinion on Waco.  It doesn't really matter who fired first, although it's quite apparent David Koresh's wacky band of religious lunatics did.  It doesn't matter what kind of tear gas canisters were shot into the compound, since the sheer speed of the spread of the fire which consumed the compound demonstrates clearly the presence of substances set up to make the place burn.  In fact, it had been suggested to authorities in advance that Koresh ordered hay bales soaked with gas to be piled against the walls, to insure a fiery death in case they were raided.  There's no way that place went up THAT fast, with fires breaking out in multiple places, just from tear gas. The bugs planted in the place picked up conversations during the raid in which some of the boneheads inside are giving instructions on how to keep the fire going.  This all came out when some of the survivors and families of the dead filed suit against the government.  Their suit was tossed, and two independent investigations show that the Davidians caused the flames.

What matters is, David Koresh talked a bunch of weak-willed people, who in turn held other people by force, into holding out against authorities for utterly illogical reasons.  The tapes of his conversations with the FBI alone indicate that this was a totally unbalanced guy.  He held a bunch of children, some of whom he took as his "child brides" (and one of whom was as young as nine), and whom he allowed to die horribly in the fire, while he himself took the coward's way out, with a bullet to the head.  Regardless of what the FBI did or didn't do, if Koresh had come out to answer to the authorities, all those other people would still be breathing.  He hid behind religious nonsense and CHILDREN to avoid gun charges.  THE END. 

People who look at Waco and see an oppressive government are missing the point.  Koresh invited trouble by stockpiling LOTS of weapons and keeping people against their will.  The FBI had legal papers to serve.  Koresh and company shot back, with real bullets.  He broke the law.  If they didn't like the law, they should have moved to another country.

The Montana Freemen have been tossed into jail for a long time. They were convicted of trying to undermine the banking system by passing bogus checks for billions of dollars. They claim that the U.S. has no authority over them. Essentially, they were failed farmers and losers who decided the best scam they could pull off was this bizarro secession scheme. But whatever integrity their moronic followers see isn't based on the fact that these clowns tried cheating a whole bunch of other people with phony checks. It doesn't sound quite so noble when it's just plain fraud.  Maybe they can hook up with the Aryan Brotherhood while they're in the joint getting squeezed for cigarettes.

There was a lady down in Roby, Illinois, who's just a little unhinged, and her relatives were a bit concerned about her, and when the police came to check on her and bring her in for psychiatric evaluation, she fired upon them. She claims the federal government has been bugging her house for years. She also took shots at a neighbor, and actually wounded a police dog in the nose. Then the police had her house sort of surrounded, and they were afraid she'd hurt herself or somebody else. And then of course the militia morons showed up and declared that she was just fighting for her rights and this is another example of the big bad government trying to oppress the little people. Don't these guys have an appointment to get fitted for teeth or something?

Finally, gratefully, she was brought in, then released from protective custody after having her head examined. I wonder if the militia guys are reading up on her claims that helicopters were zapping her brain.