This is just sad

There has been a lot in the news about a missing 12-year-old girl, and it has just come out that her body was found and that her uncle may be charged with her murder. Yes, this is the uncle who is the registered sex offender who took her to a store right before her disappearance. He claimed that she was going to visit a friend in the hospital, but initial investigative reports turned up that she was meeting someone from MySpace and had run off. Here's the thing though; it turns out the uncle set up the MySpace messages to make it appear as if she were meeting someone online, and he is accused of planting her clothing and a bag of semen (what?!?) to make it look like an abduction.

How fucking demented can you be that you would go to that much trouble to throw off the police from finding your niece that you happened to have killed because she wouldn't get involved in your child sex ring? This should sicken anyone, but it bothers the hell out of me because of how much effort went into this. It wasn't enough to try to victimize her, but you kill her and make some internet person the bad guy.

Part of this is my rage that this happened to anyone, and part of it is rage from the years I had to endure my aunt's [now] ex-husband's "doings", but I want the worst thing that could happen to him to occur in as many horrific ways as possible right now. Death would be too good for this guy. I want him to suffer.

I hope they put him under the jail if they can find enough evidence to convict him. Sick bastard.

The Strange and the Baffling

Here are today's news stories. I feel like crap, so I don't know how creative I'll be with these things.

- A man was doing a bad drag impression by walking down the interstate wearing a thong, fake boobs, and a wig.

- A couple was caught skinny dipping in the reservoir, and since this water is not filtered before it gets in people's homes (eww), they almost had to throw all of it out. Almost. So, eww squared.

- A woman is seeking $30,000 in damages when her home was mistakenly demolished. She thinks it's fair compensation because all of her belongings were inside. This happened to someone here, but it wasn't a mistake; the demolition people waited until he left for court to get the injunction (that he received), but I don't know if they ever paid him for destroying everything illegally. Why colleges (or cities for that matter) think they can get away with this is beyond me.

- The Swedes have been good to me for the second day straight: A drunk man tried to row home from Denmark and fell asleep in the stolen boat along the way. At least the boat owner won't be pressing charges.

- Seriously, can't people just not talk to each other? This guy was so annoyed with a conversation in a ferris wheel that he climbed out of the car while it was moving and had to be talked back down.

- This was cute: A giraffe helped a bunch of animals escape from the circus. It's always the kids who want to go, and the animals who want to leave.

- I've got two "stupid teenager" stories. The first is a teen girl who bit her mother over a cell phone. If your phone is like crack to you, maybe you shouldn't have broken curfiew. The second tale involves a 14-year-old who pushed an old man off of a dock because "he thought it would be funny." Well, ha-ha dumbass, because now you get to sit in jail (which you deserve; especially since you used your one phone call to brag to a friend about being a jackass). Stupid teenagers.

- And now for more serious news: the missing 12-year-old's stepfather has been arrested on molestation charges. He had been molesting a female relative that wasn't the missing girl for the past five years, and this is the second arrested relative in this case. Her uncle (a registered sex offender) was picked up the day before. I think one of the posters on abcnews.com may have been onto something when they said that she might be better off away from these people (but still alive, of course).

- This is disturbing, because it's happened before: A woman dies on the waiting room floor and is ignored by everyone in the NYC hospital waiting room for a full hour. Several staff members have been fired, and the union ones are going through procedures to end in the same terminated fashion as those not in the union for leaving this psych patient alone and falsifying reports that she was "fine" when she was, perhaps, already dead. Earlier this year, a woman died while in an emergency waiting room in California because she was accused of being a drama queen for coming in several days in a row. When her family asked the police to intercede on her behalf, they arrested her and didn't notice that she had died until the officer ordered her to get in the car and she didn't move. I wasn't scared of the hospital before these stories, but they do make me incredibly nervous.

I don't like ending these in a somber mood, so I've got a quote from today's Overheard in New York that I'll end with.

You're Kidding Yourself If You Think Those Things Don't Matter

Account executive: So, who'd you vote for?
Creative director: Obama, he's got cool logos.

--New York Ad Agency, Midtown

via Overheard in New York, Jul 1, 2008

News You Can't Use

Before I go home today, I wanted to snag my favorite news posts of what caught my eye today.

- Apparently, it's not a good idea to go streaking on a bicycle, but I'm sure most people would've known that before now.

- Another lesson to stupid criminals: If you're going to steal fuel, don't leave your personalized drill behind. These lessons are like warning labels for the criminally stupid; someone has to screw this up first before the warning is put out there.

- How does one hold up a store with a banana? Apparently, you don't do it well when your opponent is armed with a knife. A bad pun lurks on the site, so don't slip when you find it (sorry!).

- Here's a three-for-one. A man named "Bubba" lives up to his name (liquoring up teens and beating up people in their own homes), famous last words of someone looking to "keep [their] butt out of trouble", and more food items used in assaults (to go along with their last report of a "plate of chicken" being used).

- Just in time for wrapping up Gay Pride weekend: A couple in Richmond, Va may be facing misdemeanor charges for getting married because the "bride" was not a woman. I wouldn't bother with the charges, but this does demonstrate a serious problem with how transgendered people are handled in this country (read: inconsistently). Even the courts are divided on this one.

- The Church of Sweden will be performing drive-by weddings. Get hitched in 7 minutes or less. Take that, Vegas!

- To quote Billy Idol, "It's a nice day for a moose wedding." I should be ashamed of myself.

- Maybe they should stick to local sign hangers: A crew from North Carolina came to South Carolina to hang signs and managed to send people away from the attractions they were supposed to be directing people towards. Next time, stop and ask for directions.

- The man who decided to auction his life away was disappointed that he didn't get more money for his life. What an arrogant tool. What made you think you were going to get a lot anyway? Suck it up, cupcake.

- In movie sequel news, "THIS IS STUPID!" (sorry for the shouting, but if you've seen 300, you'll get it.)

- I'm more insulted that these people think they have what it takes to run a school, but Will and Jada Pinkett are opening a school based on Scientology principles. Leaving out my objections to the "principles", I'm offended that so many celebrities seem to think that they are now the foremost authority on education and can open schools. Just shut up and do your jobs, already! I'm still pissed with Jada for essentially throwing her career away for the clown prince of rap himself.

- And this is just wrong: A Swedish school confiscated a boy's birthday party invitations because they wanted to "ensure against discrimination". Apparently, your children no longer have the right to not invite people to their parties. And when you consider the reasoning behind why they aren't invited, I wouldn't force him to invite them either. Maybe he could've mailed them to the kids' homes to avoid this mess, but it's still making something out of nothing. Life isn't fair, and everyone needs to learn that sooner or later [What you hear is the ice water flowing through my veins].

I was supposed to leave 10 minutes ago, so I'm bouncing out of here. Peace out!

My First Pride-Fest

This won't be that long of a post (I hope), but I did manage to make it to the local Pride-Fest this year. One of my husband's co-workers was singing in a choir at the event, so he managed to talk me into going. It's not that I didn't want to go before this year; it's just that we also have an event called ComFest at the same time and I've been so dumb that I never knew they occurred on the same weekend [My uncle, however, found this out years ago when he got approached by some hustlers while out for a walk that Saturday night].

I had a great time. I took lots of pictures that I hope to get uploaded soon (if I can get them up within a week, I'll be impressed) and I even took a picture of a guy who came over to touch my parasol. I'm not supposed to be out in the sun for too long, so I used my parasol and got many a compliment about it (another reason to love gay men so much). This one guy came over and touched the fabric and said that it was very nice. I laughed (because I laugh in all situations) and he told me that his boyfriend told him not to come over and touch it...but he just wanted to feel it because it looked so nice! He and his boyfriend were really cute, but the fact that I got them on camera was the exception to my otherwise bad-luck on photo-taking Saturday. Every time I would turn off my camera, male hotness would walk by. It was very frustrating (and it makes me feel like I failed a little as a photographer), but I hope that I got some decent shots.

I ran into another of my husband's co-workers who brought his partner. This guy is really into bears and I am waiting to hear how the "Wet Fur" contest turned out that night (my husband will dutifully report this story to me when they meet up again Tuesday). The singing co-worker was the stage manager for a Drag King show at Wall Street (a lesbian bar downtown) and reports are that it was a "fun" show. The reportee said that he had seen better "kings" but that this show was entertaining.

We had a long way to walk to and from the event, so it took a little toll on me for the rest of the day, but we had a great time. I just wish we had had time to take pictures of the restored cars that were on display. There was some great craftsmanship on display, and I'm pretty sure the cars looked great, too.

Funny enough, though, when we went to ComFest the next day, I actually had someone laugh at me for carrying a parasol. ComFest is supposed to be the hippie-commune festival but there were some judgmental people who carted their sorry behinds all the way out from suburbia to park-up the neighborhood and laugh at anything that wasn't what they considered normal (so why come?). We only went for the Catfish Boat sandwiches, but other than that I would've stayed home and not gotten rained on (we missed the rain at Pride-Fest on Saturday, but got soaked trying to get into the car from lunch). Maybe next year we'll spend more time at Pride-Fest and a little less time with the not-so-communal ComFest. I'll probably have more fun that way.

I Had To Post This One

It's a Tom Tomorrow comic strip about the recent spate of non-racist discourse in our media today. I'm bothered by this strip, but not because of the subject matter. I'm bothered that there are people out there who think that calling a well-educated, married black woman a "baby momma" is not offensive. I'm also blown away by the idea that the fist bump (which my uncle pointed out to me is derived from the Wonder Twins) is considered a possible terrorist sign. How? Seriously, how the holy hell does this even come into someone's mind as being real?

To get a little deeper into the fist bump, let's go back to the late 1980s when people would "hit that rock", which was taking your fist and hitting the top of another person's fist. It was a play on the handshakes that black people seem to like to do so much [I'm pretty sure that I could go back to the 70s and look at the whole soul movement, but that would require research as my memories can't go back further than my own existence], but it was pretty harmless. Jumping in time to the period of SARS, people were trying to come up with alternatives to the handshake to keep from making others sick, and hitting the rock started to come back. It was mutating into the "fist bump" but was now becoming a high-five replacement over the greeting that it used to be. Really I'm just talking out of my ass on this one because this is as far from scientific as I can get, but the point I'm trying to make is that this is an American home-grown concept that doesn't have a basis in terrorist activities.

The point of the comic is to say that the racists don't see themselves as such, and even Tom has a little trouble trying to make their current behaviors fit his strip.

Review: "Wipeout" and "I Survived a Japanese Game Show"

I actually manged to sit through both "Wipeout" and "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" and I have come to the conclusion that one of these two might get watched again. The other will be avoided like the plague because it just wasn't that good.

Wipeout takes the concept of several of the Japanese physical stunt shows (i.e. MXC) and puts them together in a format that gets a little slow and isn't as much fun when you know someone is actually going to walk away with $50,000 in the end. It's not as much fun when compared to Ninja Warrior, a show that is so difficult that you actually root for someone to win, nor is it as funny as Takahashi's Castle (brought over to the U.S. as MXC on Spike TV) which eliminates people in hilarity-enduing stunts to win a paltry $8,500. The point of those shows isn't so much to win the money but to actually succeed in all of the stunts and make it to the end. Ninja Warrior is a more physical show which requires contestants to not only finish without missing a beat, but also needs to be completed before time runs out. Takahashi's Castle is very bizarre but with such high-spirited people making fools of themselves (which is the antithesis of the staid, Japanese persona), you can't help but laugh as they try to complete numerous stunts without failing. Why couldn't Wipeout follow the same format of using 100 people and seeing who makes it to the end? I mean, as much as I love John Henson, it felt more like the two hosts were narrating a golf tournament, and the field reporter just isn't as funny as the persona of Gi on MXC. It didn't work for me, and I won't be back. Unfortunately, there are way too many people out there who will love this and make it a hit.

I Survived a Japanese Game Show has elements that I don't like as well (I hate smack talk, and the way some of these people acted about being in Japan was embarrassing for all Americans), but it's actually a real game show that these contestants are put on, which makes it somehow that much funnier than Wipeout. This show was stolen from the Simpsons episode where they were in Japan (natch) and had to go on a game show to win tickets home. It's funny because the Japanese are crazy when it comes to their game shows, and half the time the American contestants don't even know what's being said about them. I didn't really want to watch it, but I might tune in next week to see if Miss Perfect (the self-absorbed contestant who takes forever to get ready) gets eliminated.

I think the idea that the Japanese do this kind of stuff for pride is intriguing as it may explain why it is better as an import than a remake. I would take it in a different direction, however; because we're always doing things for the money, we take the soul out of the competition. And that's why these things are never as good as the original.

The Moment of Truth: Crap That Even I Can't Tolerate

I found a link to the condensed version of "The Moment of Truth" on Videogum.com (a new favorite site of mine due to the classy handling of a cease and desist letter from BET) and I'm glad I found it because I was going to talk about the EMT's segment anyway.

I didn't get to hear the video clip because video has a tendency to not always work when I'm at work, but I did see the tail end of his segment last night. I'll give you the condensed version of this guy: He's a Mormon EMT who doesn't always wash his hands after using the bathroom, is sometimes ashamed that he was raised Mormon, is repulsed by fat people and think they're weak, and thinks he's a failure for having to move back home. What pissed me off is how his poor girlfriend got screwed on this show. He essentially revealed that he thinks he's dated hotter women than his girlfriend, that he can get any woman he wants [yeah, good luck with that], that he thinks his parents don't like her because she's not Mormon (she's Jewish: And his explanation after that one was that he knows that his parents would want him to be Mormon, obviously, and that they'd want him to date a Mormon girl), and that he wouldn't marry her "even if" it meant never speaking to his family again (strange wording, I know). So he just told his nice, Jewish girlfriend that she's wasting her time with a jackass who has no intention of marrying her. And that she's ugly. And that he's given out his number to other girls while dating her.

Asshole.

I'm not saying that he should leave his family for the woman he "loves" (sometimes it's a good idea and sometimes it's not), but the fact that he was so relieved to be found to be telling the truth of choosing his family over her just sickened me. His family was all too happy when he stopped at $100,000, with his mother saying that it would take him four years to make that kind of money (except that if he had earned it, he'd be able to keep most of it because taxes will take away at least half of that amount), and I wanted to punch the host (and the producers) when he said to the guy that he had a "lovely family" as they callously switched the camera to show an obviously hurt girl. The family was hugging and loving all over each other, while that poor girl probably wanted to run offstage and find a hole to hide in forever.

I'm not saying I'm not a fan of people humiliating themselves on T.V. (remember, kiddies, I'm not nice), but I don't think it's right to hurt an innocent victim for your own selfish gain. What did that girl do to deserve this? Other than date a jerk, nothing. She didn't sign up to get any money out of this. What killed me was when he was asked the question about what his parents thought of the girl, his mother patronizingly patted her on the leg...like that makes up for it.

I only watched a little bit of the show because I forgot that Cops was on somewhere, but I hope I never get him as an EMT if I happen to be in whatever state he's from. He'd think I'm weak and repulsive, and he'd probably fake the report, but at least I wouldn't have to worry about being groped while in his care, because he's classy like that.

Again, what an asshole.

I hope that she's going to find a much better person for her than this jerkwad, and that he gets himself a nice, shallow, Mormon girl that his parents will love but will make fun of him for being a failure.

Hey, I've got to stay true to my nature ;-)

Suburbaneisenhowereraville

That lovely little gem comes from a blog that points out the problems with my university's school paper. It is called the Anti-Lantern, and this is going to be this guy's last post for awhile. The subject of today's rant is about a student who wrote an article about his "harrowing" experience of being dropped off in the middle of downtown Columbus. To give you a little perspective, downtown Columbus is the size of a postage stamp, and there are so few blacks who live in town that I usually joke that "there ain't but 5 of us here." The assertions the original author makes are wholly and completely insensitive to different races, and the fact that it got published really hurts my head. The purpose of Anti-Lantern is to pick apart articles for grammatical, factual, and spelling errors, giving the reader a play-by-play of how horrible the articles (in particular, opinion articles) are written. The author of this blog wants to write for the paper in the hopes to improve things, so he's going to be giving up the blog to someone else (if a replacement can be found) when he takes the journalism class for the paper in the fall. He's written some really insightful and hilarious comments, and this was just priceless if, for nothing else, my new favorite word: Suburbaneisenhowereraville.

Keep in mind that I grew up on the "mean streets" of Cleveland where we have no bars on our doors (and the window ones are decorative), and locking doors just makes sense. There have been door locks since the invention of the door, so why people keep their crap-shacks unlocked is beyond me (OK, so crap-shack might be a bit harsh). My family still lives on the "dangerous" East Side (so called because that's where the blacks live; the city is still horribly, racially divided) within walking distance of the Cultural Gardens, the Botanical Garden, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Case Western Reserve University, and other museums and art and music colleges. The neighborhood is on the National Register, and the house I grew up in is one of three that were commissioned by Rockefeller. I get really defensive when people bash city dwellers in general (and Cleveland in particular; it will always be home), so the idea that some suburbanite kid spent 27 minutes in "the ghetto" (which was not nearly as bad as the Projects of various big cities) and acts like he was living out a scene from "Menace 2 Society" is irritating.

What a punk.

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" May Soon No Longer Exist

A federal court ruled that the military can no longer discharge people because they are gay. This came after an Air Force flight nurse was dismissed from her duties because they found out about her sexuality. [She was given an honorable discharge two years shy of qualifying for retirement, but what's interesting is that the information wasn't disclosed by her. She was relieved of duty (in a time of nurse shortages) because of rumor that she was involved in a relationship with another woman, which makes me think that this woman's case may hold the key to a wrinkle in this policy: is it right to dismiss someone because their sexuality was outed by a source other than the person in question? But that's a question for another day.] In the court's ruling, the judges have essentially said that the military would have to prove on an individual basis that the nature of someone's disclosed sexuality negatively impacts morale. The hope is that the policy will be dropped because it will be take too much effort to investigate each case. I hope it is struck down because we need everyone, including the people in the military, to stop buying into the stereotypes of homosexuality and allow any and all (who are able) to serve their country. It took the military a long time to get over other restrictions (segregated troops, women in military) and while they have a long way to go on those fronts, the restrictions on being gay in the military have to go.

Keep in mind that the same people who fear that morale will be affected by the knowledge of someone's sexuality are the same types of people who used to think that women would be a distraction. And let's not forget Newt Gingrich's astute observation that women couldn't fight in the trenches because of female issues (or something like that; I don't have the time to find the quote). These barriers to homosexuals had cost the military $200 million by 2005, but the policy still exists.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a compromise that was devised to allow homosexuals to be in the military as long as they never disclosed their sexuality. It is a policy I never really understood at the time. I didn't realize that it was an automatic dismissal (and in 1993, I was 15 so I can be given a little leeway for ignorance). However, times have changed; people are starting to relax on their views of homosexuality, and there are states trying to pass laws that protect homosexuals from hate crimes as well as that monumental decision made by the California Supreme Court on gay marriage. With these things going on in the country, it is time that this policy go by the wayside. We are encouraging people in the military to still be afraid of gays because the government doesn't want to risk alienating other soldiers due to irrational fears. It is time to address those fears and start making changes. I don't expect this to happen overnight, but there has to be some progress made or this will go on (and that's not a good thing). I don't know if the policy is really going to be struck down, but I really hope that changes will be made that will allow anyone to be in the military and not fear losing their position because their sexuality was made known to others.

More on the Meier Case

I refuse to name this after the woman who has been indited simply because of a statment she made through her attorney back in December. When it was decided that no charges would be filed locally, the accused essentially said that she had nothing to do with the page, no knowledge of it, and that she wasn't even there when the last messages were sent. But here's the kicker: she also said that "the Drew family is also sorry that their family, friends and neighbors have had to endure the stresses associated with the harassment directed toward the Drews." I'm pretty sure that her neighbors who are participating in this "harassment" aren't feeling particularly stressed about this family's harassment. I just think the statement was tacky; if you want to come off like you are not the scum of the Earth, you may want to not talk about yourself and your stress when some 13-year-old is dead and there is at least one source out there that quotes you as saying that you didn't feel so bad that she died because the girl was already suicidal [and I will find that article when I'm not writing these entries at work]. They also say in this article that the police overstated her involvement in this tragedy.

If that is the case, then why were charges brought against this woman if she had nothing to do with it? This second article brings up some of the concerns I have with this case; do they have enough evidence to convict? Are these charges overreaching? I hadn't even considered the possible slippery slope that this could begin. My stance on this is that the accused did have something to do with creating this MySpace page, but I'm not sure going after the adult who had this page created is enough. There should be punishment for the individual(s) who participated in contacting this girl. We have to show people that bullying is wrong and can have dire consequences, because while this may punish the adult for what she did, how do we get young people to not do this to each other?

That, and I hope that parents out there will do the minimalist thing when it comes to MySpace and obey the age limit set by the company. You are supposed to be 14 to start a page and while I understand that the parents were monitoring her participation, it was still breaking the rules. I remember all of the flack that MySpace got for not protecting young people against predators [Especially from Dateline: NBC who kept implying that their child predators were caught on MySpace despite the fact that not a single one of their predators was contacted or caught through the service, which is why they stopped bringing up MySpace in their subsequent reports], but it defeats the purpose of getting on these services when you allow children who are not supposed to be on there to set up accounts anyway.

For the purposes of this case, it doesn't matter if she should not have had a page or not. It's up to the courts to decide if what the adult did in this situation was criminal (ultimately morally bankrupt, yes) and if she broke any laws to which she can be held accountable. As more information becomes available, I'll report when I can.