How To Spot A Baby Conservative

All you have to do is look for the whiny ones,
at least according to a new study done by people who don’t seem to mind pissing off religious gun nuts.

Personally I’m not sure how seriously I should be taking this whole thing, but I have to admit, it’s an interesting theory. If nothing else it’s got me racking my brain trying to think of people I grew up with who can help to either prove or disprove it.

But when I think about my own life and where I should have fallen, it kind of calls the whole idea into question because there’s no one good answer.

I think I was somewhat of a whiny kid, but as weird as it might sound, I was a whiny kid with confidence. I would whine sometimes when I didn’t get my own way or when I didn’t like something, but show me a kid that doesn’t and I’ll show you something that would generally fit at the end of a statement like this one but that for some reason I can’t come up with right now.

But while I did my share of bitching and complaining, it also wasn’t unusual for me to be the funniest person in a room, even when I was really young. that’s not just me and my ego talking either, people have honestly said that to me. I was also the type that didn’t get all that nervous about public speaking or singing or anything that involved opening myself up to public scrutiny. and growing up as a blind person, you have to have some confidence and faith in yourself to start with, so I had that going for me too. If you don’t have that, you’re pretty much fucked, that is to say doomed to a life full of never being taken seriously by anyone and not much else.

And the more I sit here thinking about terms like liberal and conservative and right wing and left wing, the more I realize that I’ve never been able to put myself on one side or the other. Each side has it’s share of crazies and wackjobs and to be honest, labeling yourself that way is just stupid, because it’s a surefire way to get lumped in with the parts of each that you can’t stand. I guess what I’m trying to say is forget what I said a minute ago about calling the whole idea into question. there has to be something to it if I’m a whining confident person who considers himself somewhere in the middle, not completely discounting either side. I can’t believe I wrote all of this for nothing. Oh well. At least it gave you something to read and me something to do for a few minutes, so I guess it wasn’t a total waste of time after all.

Arresting People For No Good Reason, What’s More American Than That?

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has announced that the State has begun
sending undercover police officers into bars to arrest drunk people for being drunk.

According to commission spokesperson Carolyn Beck, the first of the sting operations, which are designed to prevent drunken mishaps before they happen, took place recently in a suburb of Dallas and involved the infiltration of 36 bars and the arrest of 30 people on public intoxication charges.

The brilliant minds behind this idea feel, as Beck puts it, that being in a bar should not, and does not in any way, exempt people from State public drunkenness laws.

“We feel that the only way we’re going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this,” Beck says.

“There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they’re intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car,” she continued. “For instance, they sometimes decide that it would be a good idea to send undercover agents into drinking establishments for the soul purpose of arresting innocent people, wasting valuable police time and resources in the process.”

Ok, I added that last part in, but so what, I’m sure that most of you were already thinking it anyway. However, Beck did add the following: “People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss.”

I’ll give her this much. Sometimes drunk people aren’t the quickest bunnies in the forest, and yes, sometimes they’re pretty dangerous. But I fail to see how that can be used in any way as justification for covertly spying on people and throwing them in jail when the State decides that they’ve had enough of a good time. You would think that it would be much easier to simply increase police presence at bars if alcohol-related issues have really gotten that far out of hand. I’d like to think that that’s what would happen in any similar situation, But maybe it really is true what they say. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the stupidity.

You Don’t Have the Fucking Guts!

Do something for me. Go to google, and type in Nicole Freeborn, and tell me what you find, boys and girls. If your google page is like my google page, you’ll find a whole wack of screaming, ra ra ra-ing and whining. About what you say? Well, this chick claims that she was sexually assaulted by a police officer while being arrested at a protest. The story goes that a group of people from Guelph Union of Tenants and Supporters, GUTS, were holding a protest and had to be arrested, as often seems to happen when these people gather to protest. Hell they even vaguely advocated for the setting of fires at various development sites throughout the city. During her arrest, an officer allegedly pinned her against a wall, pressed his pelvis into her “bum” and said, “How do you like that?” Before handing her off to a female officer to be taken to the station. And now, the reason for the google search I mentioned. There is a giant campaigne all over the web talking about her story, referencing the offending officer’s name and badge number, and calling for his immediate termination. Why don’t we just get a stake and burnhim at it?

Ok, he was arresting her, and she was likely resisting, since these people like to fight the system to their own detrament. This is also the same woman who put up ads through a mailing list asking people to join her in forming a fight club in a public park. So, what do you expect this officer to do? Stand there and kindly Ask her to please stop resisting and calm down? No! he’s going to restrain her, and it likely felt like he pressed his pelvis into her. As for the words, “How do you like that?”, if he said those words, he’s a dick and should be tried, but how easy would that be to be heard and proven that you heard it during a noisy and commotion-filled protest. Along with her, four other people are being arrested, I assume for being unreasonable and causing more noise. Then there are the regular protesters, police perhaps driving in, and other random noise. I would think that he would whisper or say these words quietly, so that at best, anyone who’s not her would have to read his lips which are most likely near the back of her head since he’s pinning her down. At this point, that part of the story is her word and the word of a few other bystanders who say they’re friends of hers against his.

If I believed that it happened, I’d be right behind her. But here’s something else I found out. It was stated in the paper that the police chief has called in the Special Investigations Unit to get to the bottom of this, and they want to meet with her. They want to meet with her in Mississauga, which is like an hour away from where she lives, if that. But this girl says that is too much for her. In her words printed in the same article, “I don’t have any money, I don’t have any transportation, and I don’t have any faith.” Apparently she doesn’t have any official complaint either, since she never bothered to file one. Ok, I’ve never been sexually assaulted, but I’ve been wronged in other ways, and I think if a special investigations unit wanted to meet with me about any of them, I’d be doing anything to get there, and I don’t have much money or any transportation of my own either. Faith? I don’t know if you can ever have no faith in anything, friends, processes, life’s possibilities. If you don’t, what’s the point of living?

And about those friends and processes, what about that big organization called GUTS that started this mess? According to the press release that’s duplicated everywhere, some of them witnessed it, and had no problem bellowing at police at the scene. How about doing something productive and useful like, oh, say, helping her get there by arranging transportation? For christ’s sake, buy a bus ticket, find a car, pay for gas, something! If you believe in what she’s saying and saw the disturbing display of disregard you’re claiming to have seen, show it. They’re not asking her to travel to the People’s Republic of China to talk to these people. How hard would it be to help? Hell I’ve travelled to a place near Mississauga just to help a friend with something a lot less serious than this. I love groups like this. They’re all over causing a stirr, but don’t want to do any real work.

Let’s get bak to the star of the show with more of her own words. “I’m trying to figure out if there is any point in continuing with their complaint process. I don’t feel like they’re making it very easy.” How easy do you want them to make it? If you want an independent body involved, they’re not going to be local. You’re going to have to go somewhere else to get this done.

Let’s here more fine words from our friendly neighbourhood gutless wonder. “Just based on the response so far, I don’t think they’re taking it as seriously as they should be. It seems like it’s going to take a long time.” Let’s dissect this piece by piece. They’re not taking this seriously? Neither are you if you’re not willing to go to Mississauga for a meeting, or even file a complaint. It’s going to take a long time? Of course it is! Court proceedings concerning murder take a long time. Anything involving due process will take a long time. Has this activist ever actually advocated for anything before? A human rights complaint takes, gulp, five years on average! Trust me, I know this. You see, I’ve tried to do some actual work, and that’s how I know that. Due process is long, it’s painful, and part of me thinks that’s the point. They want to know you’re serious, and if they can make you give up along the way, woohoo, less work for them. It sure didn’t take long in this case.

I guess all of this will make more sense in time. I hope the investigation will get to the bottom of it, no matter how long it takes. I hope she cooperates with it to help us make sense of things. And, if it’s determined that what she said happened, then I’ll take back almost everything I said. But right now, while all these other people are screaming, “Get ’em!”” The only thing this story screams is, “you’re lying!”

Am I Crazy?

I got thinking the other day about things I used to think when I was a kid, and realized I thought a lot of weird things. I hope other people thought of just as many. Then I’ll be able to say I’m not weird.

Where do I begin? I remember sitting at the table once and my older brother laughing and saying, “I remember when I used to think that a bank kept all of our money in a vault in little self-contained compartments and they’d go in and get some from the compartments when you asked for it.” I sat there so bewildered thinking, “Isn’t that what they do?” I seriously thought they had all of our money in cash at the bank. Granted this was before bank machines, telephone and online banking and all that good stuff. But I remember feeling too stupid to ask, “well…what do they do?”

Speaking of money, I was even confused by the expression “making money”. What a literal child I was. Since it seemed that every time my parents came home from work, their pockets jingled with money, I thought that at the end of my mom and dad’s workday, they actually crafted the bills and coins that they had earned. I was so amazed by my mom especially. I remember staring up at her and thinking, “She’s a nurse. So she’s busy taking care of everybody else, and then she still has time to go make money! Wow!” I remember asking her one day how she made money. I meant how does she create the bills and coins and stuff. She said something about cheques and cashing them, and I couldn’t even begin to understand what language she was speaking.

And then there were the things that I’d always want to do because I thought they were super cool and I wanted to say I did them. I could never understand why mom was so confused about why I really really really wanted to do these things. Like mailing stuff. She’d take me with her while she did errands and part of that was sending mail. Every time we’d have to send mail, I’d want to put the mail in the box because I thought the slot was magical and could read where it was going. In my mind, it would grab the mail and suck it through a strange tunnel to somebody’s mailbox. Now, if I was really smart, I would have figured this wasn’t true, because if it was, why would we have a mailman? But I was 4. So every time I’d put an envelope in the slot, I’d try to feel the suction. I remember asking mom, “What would happen if I stuck my finger in there? Would it try to mail my finger somewhere?” Mom laughed and laughed and then promptly burst my bubble about the mail. I remember still thinking while she explained it, “Why do we need people sorting the mail if it just gets sucked to its destination?”

And then there was the vacuum. If mom had been smart, she would have let me believe this crap longer so I’d keep vacuuming for her. I actually thought the vacuum had some kind of power to completely wipe out the dirt it found. Not just suck it into a bag for you to empty into the garbage. No no no. I thought the vacuum would declare war on the little dust bunnies. Again I was so sad when I figured out that nothing in this world is ever destroyed completely. It just changes form or location.

Then I’d sit and listen to Raffi and wonder what made him cry. Seriously, in every song, it sounded like he was ready to fall to his knees and bawl his eyes out…it was just a matter of time. I would sit there and think, what’s so sad about this song? I think it’s happy. Am I missing something? I remember thinking, come on Raffi, be happy! Then I thought, “Somebody should come and take Raffi aside and talk to him and find out what’s wrong!” Ah, that’s why I have the psychology degree now.

Some of his stuff really confused me. Like the song he’s got the whole world in his hands. I’d sit there and sometimes roll a tennis ball in my hands and think, “So he’s always holding the whole world in his hands? How big are his hands? How strong is this man? What if he has to do something else with his hands? Does he never get itchy? What happens if he drops us?”

Then I’d sit and listen to “All I really need” and go, “Man, he needs more and more stuff. First he says all he really needs is a song in his heart, food in his belly and love in his family and then he starts talking about clean air, clean water and the list keeps growing.” Maybe that’s why he was so sad. He didn’t get enough stuff.

And there was this one song that would scare the hell out of me. I couldn’t explain it to anyone, not even myself, until years later. Does anyone remember “Something in my shoe?” There were these jugs and kazoos that would play together, and every time I heard that, I would run screaming from the record player. Mom would ask me over and over again what was it about the song that would scare me, and I’d just cry. Grandma would get so mad at mom and ask her why she’d play a record that I hated. Poor mom, I put her through such hell. I eventually figured out what it was. The kazoos and jugs sounded like a swarm of bugs to me. the kazoos were like mosquitos and the jugs were like flies or bees. And I hated bugs! Why couldn’t I explain this to mom then? I guess I was too busy bawling like Raffi.

So…am I alone? In the words of REM, oh no I’ve said too much. Hope not.

Yes Sir, Yes Sir, 3 Bags Full…Of Complete PC Horseshit

Officials at a British Nursery school have ordered that the words to Baa Baa Black Sheep be changed to Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep so as not to offend any of the kids.

I’ve gone on and on about the stupidity of things like this more times than I care to think about, so I’ll leave you to let that sink in while I go have a good cry.

Extra Extra, Read All About…what?

Remember the old days when news stories all had a point? The point could have been obvious, enraging, thought-provoking, it didn’t matter. It was there, and it was clear.

Now, it seems reporters have forgotten this concept and waste our time with lots of pointless crap.

Case in point: The other day I heard on the news. “There is more packaging than ever before. Here are the details.” Now, when I hear that we’re going to get the details, I think I’m going to get some story about how they ‘ve had to increase the amount of packaging to foil shoplifters. Or, I’m going to hear about the environmental ramifications of so much plastic. At least I’ll hear about what I should do if I hate this amount of packaging as much as the reporter does. But no no no. I get five minutes of, “Look at all this plastic! Back to you, Brent.” Well duh, I would have gotten this bit of “news” by visiting any store in my vacinity, buying something, and then cursing at the unrelenting packaging that will not let me in!

Another story I saw was supposed to be a critique of different types of luggage, and whether you should go for the cheap bag or the expensive suitcase. At first, he talked about how the more expensive suitcase stood up to more ware than the cheaper kinds. He was going for a point. But then the point train fell off the rails with this statement. “But, there is this one guy who has an expensive suitcase which has fallen apart, so you never know.”

Well thanks, Jimmy! So how can your story be of use to me? Honestly, I have no idea. Buy the cheap? Expensive? Cheap? Expensive? What’s that? It’s pieces of my head all over the floor!

It’s really sad when more and more often, I catch myself saying, “Duh!” at the TV when the news is on. It’s supposed to tell me shit I don’t know. It’s supposed to make me aware of things. That’s why they call it the *news*! Next they’ll tell me cars need fuel to function, snow melts when it gets hot, and people who cross on lights that are red for them are more likely to die than those who cross when the little man says walk. I’m left to wonder, if they feel that it’s necessary to broadcast this, is it news to someone? *Shudder*!

Roll up the Rim to Whine!

Ok, can someone bring me these morons so I can kick them in the nether regions? Maybe Steve wouldn’t mind kicking them too since I’m sure he agrees with me. Let’s all have a moron-kicking fest. Sounds like jolly good fun. And no I’m not British. It just seems the caffeine in this tea is hitting me hard.

Read this, and tell me if you want to kick them too.

Readers’ Digest condensed version: girl sees Tim Horton’s cup in garbage. Girl remembers Roll up the Rim contest and sees the rim is not rolled. Girl tries, but her little hands can’t do it. Girl gets help from older girl, who can, and finds they’ve one a SUV! Girls run to school office, which is where things begin to go south. Girls call parents. Little girl’s parents arrive and run off with the cup. Now bigger girl’s parents find out and want a piece of the action. Enter school staff member, let’s call him Mr. Douchebag. He says it was his cup that he, ahem, threw away, and now he’s playing gimme gimme!

Ready? Set? Kick!

  • One for little girls’s parents for not being big people and including bigger girl in the cash.

  • One for bigger girl’s parents for resorting to wee child tactics and whining, instead of talking it out privately with little girl’s family.

  • and 1746 kicks from steel-toed boots for Mr. douchebag for showing up magically to claim the winning cup.

Maybe we should change our lucky recipient of so many kicks to Captain Coincidence. How did he know it was his cup? It could have been anyone’s cup. And even if it was his cup, he gave up all rights to it by tossing it in the trash. It is now, uh, trash, and public trash at that. If he was so concerned about it, he should have rolled up the rim before he threw it away. Now, it’s time to apply the childhood expression finders keepers, losers weapers, so neener neener neener to you, Mr. Douchebag!

As for what the finders should do, they should stop weaping and acting like losers, and keep their dignity and do the only right thing to do. Sell the car, split the money, and put it in the kids’ college funds. Now now children, is that so hard? Otherwise, the parents are doing the ultimate in bad parenting and teaching the kids, what, boys and girls? Say it with me now. “Greed is the way of the world! Even if it isn’t yours, you can take it, and if you really want it, go ahead and sue for it! Mommy, daddy, and your teachers, your role models, say it’s ok!” And we wonder how we get generations of sue-happy, selfish assholes. The answer is simple. What should we have learned by now? We reap what we sow!

Welcome back Karine!

Well holy crap it’s a good day. It’s warm outside and we have a window open. I finally convinced my computer that yes, it’s ok to open haloscan’s windows on this site…and when I did, I found a surprise! In one of the comment windows,
Karine is back, with a new blog! Yea Karine! How the hell are ya? Are you still way over there in the Scandinavian north? It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you! I hope, in your neck of the woods, it’s as good a day as it is here!