perfidy

Cindy Sheehan, who has already seriously abused the fifteen minute rule for fame, has vowed to chain herself to the White House Fence until all the troops are brought home. I had some sympathy for her when she first appeared on the scene. No longer. To insist that all the troops be brought home immediately - in defiance of any logic or strategic considerations - is merely petulance.

I'm sure her son would be proud of the use to which she's put his memory.

Outside the Beltway has an informative round up and lots of links to reaction on SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers' answers to the Senate questionaire. Looks like the Judiciary committee looked at it and told her, "do over!" And next time, answer the questions with more "particularity and precision." And that command came from both Republican and Democrats on the committee.

Of course, the fact that she only spent 3-1/2 pages answering the substantive questions is, to put it mildly, less than impressive. Indeed, her answers amount to a regurgitation of the first few days of an undergraduate ConLaw course.

I'm ever more convinced that she just ain't it. Loyal is a good, but not sufficient recommendation for a position as important as this. And we've had very little evidence that she has any qualifications beyond loyalty - except perhaps that she is also nice.

Bush needs to take the hit and nominate someone who is manifestly qualified. Doesn't need to be a judge necessarily, but someone who has a record of thinking clearly on constitutional issues.

Hold your finger right in front of your nose. Close one eye, then the other. See how your finger appears to jump back and forth? That's parallax. A few feet away, the effect is almost indetectable. Hold to needles in front of your eyes. (Pointy bits facing away, just to be safe.) Its easy at that distance to tell that there are in fact two needles. Hold the two needles at arm's length. Much harder. The further two objects are apart, the farther you have to move away before they appear indistinguishable again. This concept has been used to determine the distance to nearby stars - using the orbit of the Earth as a baseline rather than the couple inches between your eyeballs.

So how frickin far away do you have to get to be in a place where you can no longer distinguish Hillary Clinton from Rush Limbaugh? Well wherever the hell that is, Cindy Sheehan's found it. I always figured that if you went that far left, you'd fall off the planet. In fact, I secretly hoped that that was the case. But in a letter published on Fat Bastard's website, she does just that, and as an added bonus throws in a lot of other loopy shit.

I read somewhere (I cannot now recall where) that the next time she uses the word "sacrifice" she ought to be referring to her son. Somehow, I think that isn't gonna happen. She says:

Playing politics with our soldiers' lives is despicable.

Hello? What does that make playing politics with your own son's death? Sheesh.

I feel an untowardly grand sense of accomplishment this morning, having last night set up a wireless network in my home. It only took nine months to network two computers, which has to be some kind of low-end record for pathetic technical wimpery.*

[wik]* And no, both machines are modern-era Pentiums with plenty of RAM and so forth, running a recentish version of Windows. If I had managed to network Linux to Windoze, that'd be cause for laurels and champagne, but it was a simple matter of hooking up two machines running the same OS through a router**, and it took nine.... months. Yeesh. Don't let me near your car if it's broken.

[alsø wik]** And this after being the "network guy" in a small office in a past life. I know how to do this stuff. It's not hard and I have the skills. Nine months. Same time it takes to make a baby, a sentient being. And all I got was a laptop and a desktop to talk to each other***. Yeesh again.

[alsø alsø wik] Maybe I should rename the two machines "India" and "Pakistan." Haw!

I realized something today; there's a reason that people in New York and LA think everyone in the middle is crazy. It's because the only time that Beaufort, Montana or Monkeybutt Township, Tennessee makes the news, it's over something really messed up. Flood, famine, fire, bizarre hunting accident, massive KKK rally, or lurid murder plot. Usually the last of those.

Case in point: the place I'm from has made the news exactly once in the past decade, when a woman drowned her kids in a bathtub and maintained that the Lord commanded her to do it. In the past twenty-five years that count bumps to twice, when a budding serial killer was nabbed and identified as a resident. Also, two members of 80s hair-metal also-rans Warrant are from the next town over, so it might just be that I am from a cursed place.

An now my wife's hometown makes its own sad debut on the national stage. The very small, quiet, and lovely river town of Ford City, Pennsylvania is now in the news because some crazy evil woman tried to murder her neighbor and cut her unborn child out of her abdomen to keep as her own. And THIS after pretending to be pregnant right along with her neighbor for eight-odd months. The DA of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania was on the news this AM, and my wife upon seeing him said... "Holy crap... I went to school with his brother!"

And of course, since this story ended up on the national news, the damn fool crazy woman (who of course lives in a double-wide trailer) had to drive her unconscious prey all the way out to Rural Valley to do the baby-extraction part, and then managed to be discovered in flagrante by a kid out tooling around on his four-wheeler. There's a town out there called Rural Valley! Go a little way down 66 and US-422 and you'll also find Oil City, Coaltown, and Distant, Pennsylvania. This area is country.

S. We've got trailers, Rural Valley, a kid on his ATV. and a sensational murder plot that is like stinkbait for the rabid wombats of the national press. That's like some hideous perfect storm of unfortunate stereotypes to make it even easier for the stringers from the AP, Reuters, and CNN to play up (quite unfairly) just how gomerish the place is. Just Ford City's luck that it didn't make the news because the toilet factory opened back up, or for the fine exploits of NFL quarterback Gus Frerotte (who's from the neigboring Kittanning, but that's academic), but because some idiot damn-fool woman thought she could fool the world into thinking that it would be mere coincidence that her neighbor has disappeared and her new baby looks a lot like her.

But all's well that ends without disaster. The victim is alive and in the hospital and the baby is fine, and the crazy lady's husband is shocked and bewildered rather than complicit or room-temperature himself. I just wish for once places like where I'm from would make the news for good reasons. Puppies. Cotton candy. Children getting together and singing in a spirit of love and harmony. Something.

Jesus.

Bloomberg, along with everyone else, informs us that "House Majority Leader DeLay Indicted for Conspiracy". Elsewhere, "Republican leadership in disarray after DeLay indictment"

"He's the one person they can't replace," Steny Hoyer, a senior Democrat in the House, said earlier this year of Mr DeLay.

I'm forced to point out that this is a perfect example of everything that's wrong in Washington, and by extension, with our entire political system. Tom Delay was indicted first, foremost, and solely for leading the charge to make the US Congress' delegation from Texas match the political makeup in the state. In essence, he played a crucial role in gerrymandering the gerrymandering of several earlier generations of gerrymandering. And when you're egging Dean Wormer's house, well, you're going to break a few eggs.

Tom Delay being subjected to prosecution in this case is wrong. You see, what Tom Delay should instead have been indicted for the inanity inherent in his assertion that the budget's just about as tight as it needs to be, and there's no fat left to cut. And he should be convicted for believing it, as I'm sure he does. Moron.

Steny Hoyer, quoted in the story up top is right - the Republicans are going to have one heck of a time replacing "The Hammer". I don't know that there is an inexhaustible supply of folks in the Republican delegation with the hubris and stupidity to say and believe the things that Delay has.

If Hoyer's correct, he'll be quite hard to replace, and that's an altogether good thing.

Scene: FEMA offices, int. day. GARETH sits at his desk shuffling papers and playing with a toy ambulance. Michael Chertoff approaches.

MICHAEL: Uh, Gareth, something has come to my attention....

GARETH: Can't talk; busy. Saving lives.

GARETH makes ambulance noises.

MICHAEL: Actually I think we should clear this up. It's about your resume.

GARETH: My resume? Why, do you have something for me to put on it?

MICHAEL: Well, here's the thing. We called your old boss in Edmond Oklahoma, and there seems to be some discrepancy.

GARETH: Discrepancy?

MICHAEL: (sighs) ... Can you just read me this line here?

GARETH: (reading) "Assistant City Manager"

MICHAEL: Well, in Oklahoma they say you were Assistant TO the City Manager. That's a bit different, don't you think.

GARETH: (mumbles) Same thing.

MICHAEL: What?

GARETH: Same thing.

MICHAEL: No, they're not.

GARETH: What?

MICHAEL: Assistant TO the city manager is a different job than the one that's on your resume. One involves budgeting, administrative coordination and regulations compliance. The other involves coffee and Xerox. Which was it?

GARETH: It's a typo.

MICHAEL: What's a typo?

GARETH: In Oklahoma, it must be a typo.

MICHAEL: ...

GARETH freezes a moment, than bolts from room. From EXT we hear sound of a car starting and tires squealing.
Uhhh.... what, Johno?

Well, first, go rent The Office, both series, and watch them. I'll wait.

You back? Good.

Now: from Time Magazine:

Since Hurricane Katrina, the FEMA director has come under heavy criticism for his performance and scrutiny of his background. Now, an investigation by TIME has found discrepancies in his online legal profile and official bio, including a description of Brown released by the White House at the time of his nomination in 2001 to the job as deputy chief of FEMA. (Brown became Director of FEMA, succeeding Allbaugh, in 2003.)

Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

In response, Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, insists that while Brown began as an intern, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service. "According to Mike Brown," she says, "a large portion [of the points raised by TIME] is very inaccurate."

Under the "honors and awards" section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University". However, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here," says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University). "He may have been an adjunct instructor," says Johnson, but that title is very different from that of "professor."

. . . .

Speaking for Brown, Andrews says that Brown has never claimed to be a political science professor, in spite of what his profile in FindLaw indicates. "He was named the outstanding political science senior at Central State, and was an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City School of Law."

Have you, as a mature and intelligent amateur pundit or consumer of said amateur punditry, ever said to yourself, "I wonder... where all the hoochies at?"

If so, you're in luck. Thanks to the magic of the Internets and the puckish wit of anonymous code-gnomes, we now have a mashup of new hotness Google Maps with old and busted fad hotornot.com that lets you locate all Hot or Not? submitters in and around your town. From the needy-looking coed who's "up for anything" to the barely legal teen who loves the "hott boyzz" to the scantily clad un-MILF who has "three kids" and wants "NO CASUAL SEX," there's something here for pathological loners and Megan's Law fugitives of all genders and persuasions.

Since this same territory is covered in every meaningful way by dating sites and webcam peepshows of all stripes, what is this for besides giving us an easy way to affirm our superiority? To paraphrase the immortal Dale Gribble from TV's "King of the Hill," Hot Or Not is already "the feces that is produced when shame eats too much stupidity!" This new mashup just makes it easier to identify the losers among us so they may be more easily excised from the margins of our social circles. Hopefully all these hott frontaz and skanky hoochies will find each other and sink together to the bottom of the gene pool.

This is Phase I. Phase II will involve radio tagging.

Is all this unnecessarily elitist of me? After all, these people are already *something* enough (lonely, vacuous, foolish, hapless) enough to end up on hotornot.com. Do I really need to add to the misery they probably (ought to) already feel by pointing an electronic finger and laughing?

You bet I do.

[wik] Link from gawker.

And no, I don't think editorial failings are cause for a federal case, whether perpetrated by AP/UPI/Reuters/whomever. Pfft! We're all human, except for our robotic overlords, who, well aren't, but that's fodder for some later post.

Anyhow, while gnoshing on an exceptionally poorly written AP story about the luzers who killed the Tennessee corrections officer the other day (and no, Cletus, I didn't just forget to insert "allegedly") and then politely declined the favor of extradition from Ohio to Tennessee, I came across several speed bumps.

First, it must suck to be a public defender:

Attorney John Sproat, representing Jennifer Hyatte, said later Friday that the extradition challenge is a precaution he advised her to take because of the severity of the charge.

"I've done this kind of work long enough to know that all kinds of things can happen that you don't expect initially," he said. "I don't think we should be waiving anything."

He said Jennifer Hyatte is holding up well. "Given the severity of the charges, I would say it's more that she's concerned, but I'm not looking at a person who's completely despondent," he said.

All of which is a mistranscription. I'm sure he actually said something more like:

Well, the reason we're fighting extradition is to get her a couple extra weeks of breathing time between now and her inevitable dirt nap. That, and the fact that I've got less experience than Joe Pesci's character in My Cousin Vinnie. How the hell else do you think I got assigned this turd of a case?

I've done this work long enough (just passed my one monthiversary!) to know that all kinds of things can happen that you don't expect initially, like the fact the you have to hang out with a stone-cold killer and pretend to believe her innocence, or, even more amazingly, that the state where she committed the murder might ask to extradite her! Who knew? Oh, and I've also learned the meaning of "waiving", so there's that.

Given the severity of the charges, I'm forced to think she is nearly dehydrated, on heavy drugs, or has the IQ of a skin tag, otherwise she'd be pissing herself pretty much constantly about now.

And then, imagine my horror when I was informed, or apparently so, that not just one, but two guys ("Brothers?", I thought.) had gotten murdered that day:

Jennifer Hyatte, 31, a licensed nurse with no criminal record, is accused of ambushing two prison guards Tuesday as they were leading her husband - a convicted robber - from the Kingston courthouse, fatally shooting guard Wayne "Cotton" Morgan before the couple sped away.
{...}
About an hour away from the courthouse where he was killed, corrections officer Larry "Porky" Morgan, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was buried with full military honors Friday.

What? Wayne "Cotton" Morgan got killed, and so did Larry "Porky" Morgan? Or, worse, did Wayne get killed, but they screwed up and buried his otherwise-perfectly-healthy brother Larry?

Left unanswered, the question of whether "Porky" will now have to quit playing dominoes.

I was tempted to write a letter to the editor, but it occurred to me almost immediately that the editor, like Wayne/Larry "Cotton"/"Porky" Morgan/Morgan (Harris?), played no sentient role in producing the story. And that may be normal in the unfortunately named city of the writer who assisted in creating the miasma of mismatched "Bubba Names":

Associated Press writer Duncan Mansfield in Kingston and Wartburg, Tenn., contributed to this report.

You'd expect a Tennesee feller to be better equipped to sling hillbilly monikers, especially if he's from two cities (18 miles apart, as the buzzard flies, or 43 minutes, if you're driving). Perhaps he got corn-fused during the drive?

Note to self: if you're driving a semi filled with 35,000 pounds of explosives, don't flip the truck.

The explosion left a 60 foot wide crater in the road, and the truck was "pretty much vaporized."

Really?

A little while ago, I related a charming and heartwarming story of willful and persistant stupidity in the face of the concerted efforts of cluefull to avert disaster. Sadly, I must inform you all that - at least in this instance - evil and the forces of dimness have tirumphed.

My acquaintances inform me that after a meeting involving high level and well paid representatives of their client, as well as their own CIO, it was decided to implement option "a" of the two methods I described in my earlier post. Now these proud and competent programmers have to write code that will propagate this retarded and blinkered parody of good accounting practice. When it comes to bad accounting, at least the Enron people were clever and stole money. These idiots should by rights be toothless and banjo-picking somewhere decent people are afraid to go.

Check it out. If there was a mom like that at my school, she kept it too well hidden. A couple moms were really hot, but they certainly weren't providing me or anyone else with booze, drugs and sex.

Speaking of loan repayment calculators, certain acquaintances of mine are dealing with a client who wants an application that calculates loan payments. This client is a CPA in charge of finances for a large entity. This individual believes that a loan repayment schedule should look like this:

For a loan of 1000, for ten years, at 5% APR, with yearly payments.

Plugging the loan amount, number of payments and interest into a standard loan calculator, you get something like this:

Given that the stated purpose of using the first formula was to save the loan recipient money, the client's stubborn refusal to admit that maybe their conception of simple interest loan repayment plans is a bit out of touch with standard accounting practice, general wisdom and in fact reality.

A few things to consider: while the second scheme is not exactly intuitive, the total interest paid makes sense when you consider that over the term of the loan, you will owe half of the loan amount, on average. The decreasing interest/increasing principal as percentages of the payment amount make sense when you realise that at any given moment, you're paying 5% interest on the remaining balance. It has to work that way if you want a constant payment over the term of the loan.

I am not an accountant. I have software do my taxes, and I haven't ever thought about this subject in any depth whatsoever until today. But what is obvious to me is not to the client, who in the interest of protecting his loan recipients is proposing terms that a loan shark would love - especially the 50% interest on the last payment.

Click here for a fascinating and darkly humorous look at the antics of the less, well, able of the Iraqi insurgents/regime holdouts/foriegn jihadi/fucknuts.

My personal favorite:

Item 6: And an oldie but a goodie from the early days of military operations in Iraq. The enemy will always try to provoke you into doing something impulsive and, let's face it, stupid - so don't let them. This simple lesson was, alas, lost on Saddam's brave but foolhardy irregulars:

Before plunging into Iraq, U.S. psychological-warfare operators studied certain cultural stereotypes. One was that young Arab toughs cannot tolerate insults to their manhood. So, as American armored columns pushed down the road to Baghdad, 400-watt loudspeakers mounted on Humvees would, from time to time, blare out in Arabic that Iraqi men are impotent. The Fedayeen, the fierce but undisciplined and untrained Iraqi irregulars, could not bear to be taunted. Whether they took the bait or saw an opportunity to attack, many Iraqis stormed out of their concealed or dug-in positions, pushing aside their human shields in some cases to be slaughtered by American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

Not impotent; just stupid.

From Rocket Jones, via Simon, by way of Mr. Brown and through rx78ntx, we find real life Dilbertisms:

A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert quotes" contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life dilbert-type managers.

Here are the top ten finalists:

1. "As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks." (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales, Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, WA)
2. "What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter." (Lykes Lines Shipping)
3. "E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business." (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)
4. "This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it." (Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)
5. "Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule." (Plant manager, Delco Corporation)
6. "No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them." (R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.)
7. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say." (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)
8. My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me." (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)
9. "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees." (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)
10. One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!" (Hallmark Cards Executive)

My summary of the Michael Jackson verdict, dittoed from an email I just sent to a friend in PA who insisted that she had to know what I thought of the matter:

Well, I don't blame the jury; I think they did a fine job. The prosecutor screwed up by bringing a weak case, and then by trying it in the newspapers. He should be ashamed.

Richard Jeni, one of my favorite standup comedians, did a show in January or February on HBO (called "A Big Steaming Pile of Me"), in which his opening bit was about Michael Jackson. Sample bits (paraphrased): "Easiest job in the world? Michael Jackson's lawyer - think about it: you have to create reasonable doubt in the jury's mind. (Pretends to point toward Jackson) Ladies & gentlemen of the jury - there's your reasonable doubt. I mean, look at the guy!"

Another part was about needing a jury of your peers. His point was something like "You could troll the entire human gene pool, 24/7, for a month and not come up with one bit of whatever THAT is." So how did they find a jury of his peers, I wonder? They didn't, which is a relief, because he's utterly unique in a damp and clammy sort of way.

He's an easy target, and could well be innocent of all pedophilia. I don't doubt that he was innocent of this pedophilia, primarily because his accusers were so skeezy, even while I have my questions about his proclivities in that area.

And he's a total wack-job, which reinforces the "easy target". But good for him - he got off, and if he could just take a couple years to get his feces together, maybe we'll never have to see or hear from him again.

I'd be OK with that.

Yup - that about sums it up for me, not that I care.

Oh, and happy Birthday, B - Do I get any retro-points for having edited the childish street profanity out of my continuation play to your only-peripherally-about-the-King-of-Pop post?

[wik] It could just be me, but does MJ's lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, look like he could be someone's grandma?

Something I've been looking forward to, perched on the edge of my seat, even. The jury in the Michael Jackson "Is he beyond a reasonable doubt a freaky child molestor" trial is due to announce its verdict in a few minutes after seven days of deliberation. Now, most people have always felt that he was a creepy child diddler. But now we'll know whether or not the justice system will consider him such.

But that's not the birthday present. This is:

It's always somehow heartening to know that there are people like this in the world.

I began my daily dumbing-down by perusing the news in the morning's Houston Chronicle. Among items the editors deemed crucial for my continued functioning as a citizen, I found the following:

Pasadena is a suburb way down on the east side of Houston which is home to many of the oil refineries in the area, and not coincidentally stinks to high-heaven. I was only vaguely aware that it was populated by rejected extras from Deliverance, those with low tolerance for chemical fumes, or both.

The parents of four Pasadena children left at home alone have been arrested and charged with child endangerment and possession of marijuana.

Billy Bob Pettey, 31, and his wife, Crystal Pettey, 22, were arrested after Pasadena police officers responded to a disturbance call shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday from a neighbor at their apartment complex in the 4300 block of Shaver.

After reading the beginning of the story, completely aside from the male protagonist's name (which, well, come on - do you actually know anyone named Billy Bob?), it occurred to me that I've never known a girl named Crystal that wasn't either a stripper or should have considered stripping as a career advancement maneuver.

So I read on. And if you've got 30 seconds of your life for which you don't have a better use, feel free to do the same.

If I were a more caring individual, I'd shed a tear for the future of Houston's east side, because I don't think Billy Bob and Crystal are horribly unique among their neighbors. And no, none of the good strip clubs in Houston, of which I hear there are many, happen to be anywhere near Pasadena.

It has long been an article of faith with me that no matter where you go in the United States, you can find trailer trash there. Before I moved to New England, I perhaps thought that it was a mix of dour upright fishermen who say "ayuh," big time lawyers, and witty, urbane literate types who sit in Edwardian chairs discussing Updike over snifters.

Boy was I wrong. My downstairs neighbors in the first apartment I lived in when I moved to Massachusetts (for the second time) nearly burned the house down the week before we moved in; one of them "fell asleep" on the couch with a lit bowl of reefer. Our next door neighbors never conversed wittily about Updike, or even King. Their nightly 3 AM conversation went something like this:

Him: F*****CK YEEEW!
Her: AAAAH F*CK YISELF!
Him: I HATE YEEEEEEEEEEEW YOU MOTHER****AH!
Her: I'll F*KING KILL YOU YOU **** ******* *** ********* *** ****BAG!!
Spawn: EEEYAAAAAAH! EYYYAAAAH!!!! *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP*
Him: F*ck this, I'm leaving.
Spawn: EEEYAAAAAAH! EYYYAAAAH!!!! *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP*
Her: Fine! You can't get by without me, you lazy **** ******* *** ********* *** ****STAIN!!!
Him: Oh yeah? F********CK YEEEW!
Her: F********CK Y*******U! I HATE YOU! I F***ING HATE YOU YOU **** ******* *** ********* *** ****!
Spawn: EEEYAAAAAAH! EYYYAAAAH!!!! *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP*

The summers were even better, because they'd do this in the parking lot so everyone could hear, and since school was out they had no problem keeping the kid up past her customary 4AM bedtime.

The most dismaying part is that I left Ohio precisely because I wanted to get the hell away from people like this. Still more dismaying is that proof accrues daily that people are the same everywhere. Whether it's small potatoes like kids making lightsabers from flourescent bulbs and burning gasoline or world-historical statements of human fallibility like the various genocides that still continue, there's no getting away from the idiots.

More surprising yet is how people everywhere really are the same deep down. Some might see this as proof that some day all humankind will clasp hands and sing together in perfect harmony in a spirit of love. We at the Ministry tend to see this as proof that we're all screwed. Example: read the following and see if you can tell where the incident described took place. Answer below the fold.

A fatally injured man pulled a crossbow arrow out of his torso and taunted the man who shot him, saying: "Is that all you've f... got?"

Soon afterwards, Anton Nauer collapsed and within hours he was dead from being shot by Dean Pender in a late-night confrontation at Pender's ----------------- home.

Hayden Keith McDougall, 19, unemployed, and Jared James Little, 20, a -------, of ----------, deny the charge.

. . . . . . .

During the previous evening there had been a series of incidents, including a window being smashed at the home of Pender's former girlfriend, leading to the trio allegedly arming themselves with num-chukkas and a knife.

"The allegation is that Nauer proceeded onto the property, bearing a set of num-chukkas, and there was an altercation with Pender, who obtained a crossbow and fired a fatal shot at Nauer," Beaton said.

"Nauer died in hospital some hours later and the allegation is that McDougall and Little went with Nauer and were armed when they went on to the property."

Pender's sister, Sarah Pender, told the court she arrived home shortly before the fatal shot. They were outside moving cars so they could close the gates on the property when "a ------- guy", who she now knows was Nauer, arrived with McDougall and Little.

"They said, `Do you know where Dean Pender is? Get him here'. They said he'd smashed Natasha's window," she said.

"By then (Dean Pender's friend) Shaun Lawrence had come down the driveway and was carrying a pole of some kind. He said, `What's wrong, what have you got against my boys?'

"Shaun's younger brother hopped out of the car and started walking over. The ------- guy said 'Get on your knees or I'll slit your throat.' Shaun started getting angry because of what the guy said to his younger brother.

"The guy pulled out num-chukkas and started swinging them around and started getting really aggressive. By this time Dean was down the driveway and they all saw him and started yelling, 'You're going to f... pay.'

"They started running towards Dean and the guy was swinging the num-chukkas. I got pushed to the ground by the ------- guy with (McDougall) right behind me.

"They were yelling 'You're going to f... pay, Pender. We're going to get you.' (Nauer) said `We're going to f... kill you.' McDougall had a knife in his hand. It was like a hunting knife.

"I was freaking out. It all happened so fast – they were running towards Dean and I got pushed to the ground. I was getting off the ground when it happened. Dean said 'Get back or I'll f... shoot. Get back. Get back.' That's the only time I heard him yelling.

"Then the ------- guy was pulling out the crossbow (arrow from his torso). As he was pulling it out, he said 'Is that all you've f... got?' He handed it to Shaun then he and the two [other] guys (McDougall and Little) started taking off up the driveway."

Crossbows? Frigging numchucks? Public knife fights at a girlfriend's house? Where, indeed?

Florida? Nope.
New Jersey? Nope.
Detroit? Gettin' colder.

The incident in question happened in the nicest country on earth, New Zealand.

Thanks to Murdoc, who laughed at our pain during our recent geek deathmatch, we now know that we are not in fact the uber-geeks we hubristicly imagined ourselves to be:

Two Deranged Mongoloid @#!?%wit British Dorks Immolate Themselves in Mock Lightsabre Duel Using Flourescent Light Bulbs and Gasoline

For once, the category used here is almost literally true. If either of these lackwits expires due to injuries sustained in their brief yet glorious attempt to be just like Anakin Skywalker in Episode III, they will certainly be on the short list for a Darwin Award.

[wik] And they got it on tape!