Comments Are Working Again

Whatever issues the commenting system was having seem to be all cleared up now, so feel free to use it again. But if you’d rather email, that’s fine too. Sometimes email is better anyway, especially if you’ve got something that you really don’t want us to miss, like an update to something we’ve written about, things you think we might like to check out and possibly put up here, or even poorly typed hatemail that will probably end up on the main page with some added mentions of your impaired mental abilities.

So to sum up, comments are great, but if you want to yell at a specific person, you can find the correct address at the end of each post. Or if you’d rather yell at all of us at once to save time, just click on our names, which you can find near the top of each page.

Have a great day, and always remember that humans really aren’t all that different from any other animal on the planet. The only thing that really separates us from them is that we have recipes and they don’t.

Put A Cork In That Bottle

I have a question for anyone out there who happens to be either a sportswriter, broadcaster or an editor. Is there a regulation somewhere stating that every time Tampa Bay plays a hockey game, you are required to use the words “bottle Lightning” when reporting on it??

If the answer is no, then I also have a request. Please, stop doing it! It might have been cute once, but that once was sometime in 1992, and that was 15 years ago. Now, thousands of headlines and sportscasts later, it’s just annoying, and you should really start trying to be creative now, even though doing so goes against everything your industries stand for.

I’ve Never Seen That Before.

Haloscan appears to be puking all over itself in a whole new way. When you open the comment window and write a masterpiece, it lets you post it, and then cries “I can’t save it!” and spews all manner of error code at you. I have no idea why this is happening, hopefully it’ll just go away on its own because I can’t find a reference to this anywhere. Until it does, well, our email addresses are everywhere, so if it pukes on you, drop us a line through the email.

Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Holy Shit You Must Like Legal Bills!

These imbeciles are appealing their DaVinci Code Lawsuit! Why can’t they just quit while they’re…behind I guess? They already owe about $2 million of Randomhouse’s legal bills, plus their own! Face it dudes, you’re done! I wish I could find the page number where their book is clearly mentioned, and save the courts, the judge, and these poor fools a whole ton of time and money.

I Hope The Pay Is Good

No matter how hard I try, I can’t get my head around
this story.
I’ve been sitting here trying to write it up for about the last 10 minutes and I just can’t make it sound right, so I’ll let the story do the talking and throw in comments where I must.

LONDON (AP) – As a painter needs a canvas and a sculptor stone, Blane Dickinson needs a head.

Specifically, the 32-year-old tattoo artist from Wales needs a person willing to have their head tattooed. The subject? The iconic “full English” breakfast. Ideally, the image would contain fried eggs, bacon and sausages, but Dickinson is willing to accommodate personal taste and vegetarians. The breakfast typically also includes baked beans, fried tomatoes and toast.

“It’s such a striking and recognizable dish,” he said, “but I will gladly make changes to suit any taste or background.”

A knife and fork would be tattooed behind the subject’s ears, Dickinson said.

“I like to push the boundaries,” he said. “I like to make people think.”

What he doesn’t realize is that most people are probably thinking “hmmm, that fucker ain’t right.”

Dickinson hopes to display the finished work at tattoo shows in Britain, but said that, so far, he has been unable to persuade any friends to take part.

And this, for some reason, seems to come as a surprise to him. Don’t ask me why. No seriously, don’t ask me why, because I haven’t a clue.

Did You See That Thing with the Guy on the Show There?

Um, this is dumb. Dumb and doomed to fail. A coalition of agencies that fight for the protection of prostitutes in Vancouver is sending letters to the media saying that reporters shouldn’t use Robert Pickton’s name when they talk about him during his upcoming trial so that he doesn’t get some kind of celebrity status from the coverage. Instead they should only refer to the whole thing as “the trial in the case of the missing women. This is apparently so he won’t be motivated to do it again for more hype.

Ok, first, it’s highly unlikely that people aren’t going to know who it was who killed prostitutes on his pig farm and then spread their remains throughout the farm. It isn’t likely that people are going to get confused as to who they’re talking about. It’s not exactly an everyday occurrence. So, what’s the point of not using his name? Either you get a whole publication ban, or you cover something like normal. I don’t know what they’re hoping to accomplish by just referring to Pickton as “that guy.” It’s far, far too late to prevent people from knowing who he is. I mean, look at how the courtroom was packed when they scheduled his trial. And that was just for the scheduling of his trial. People know.

And second, I doubt he’ll be getting out to be able to do this again. He’s on trial for six women’s deaths so far. I know that prostitutes’ lives may not be given the value that they should, but he’s on trial for six murders. He’ll be in for a long, long time. Plus, when he goes to jail, I doubt he’ll survive his sentence because the other prisoners will probably be out to get him. He’s done. They caught him. He’s not going to do this again. This whole not saying his name is silliness.

I hope the media doesn’t cave and they look at the letter for what it is. Ridiculous! It made me laugh that in the letter itself, they used his name several times. Way to shoot yourself in the foot. What a waste of time.

Off I Go, Into the Wild Blue Yonder!

It looks like we finally got our winter. I woke up this morning to a hissing sound outside my window. That was a whole wack of ice pellets and snow smacking into the building. Yee ha, welcome to January. At least that seems more normal. Crappy, but seasonal. Maybe it’ll kill off the whole host of flus and colds that seem to be floating around, waiting to strike.

Well, after a lot of pondering and nashing of teeth, it seems that my epiphany was more than just a passing thing. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I don’t know if I can emotionally handle being a counselor or doing social work stuff day in and day out. I don’t know if the rewards would outweigh the draining aspects of it, and I don’t know if I could keep my enthusiasm for the work at the level it should be in order to, well, do a good job. So I’m thinking about maybe…gulp…starting my own business.

What’s that sound? Me drowning in debt? Hopefully not. I was thinking about being a vendor of computers and other assistive technology, and hopefully being an ADP-registered vendor. There are so many scammers, scumbags and ripoff-artists that it’s hard to find one good vendor in your region. So I’d like to be another option. Now all I have to do is…everything. Set up a website, learn how to assemble computers, find out what is all involved in running this business, find suppliers, promote myself, hopefully get customers and hopefully do more than survive…if I can even get this idea off the ground. I’ve got a long road ahead, but maybe I can make it. Now why is my gut spinning? At least it’s a different spinning than the spinning and twisting of dread I was starting to feel about doing any kind of social service job. It’s the spinning that comes with the fear of the unknown.

My main fear is what if I’m not any good. In everything I try and do, I excel up to a certain point, and then I fall ker plop on my face. If I can’t do well, word will get around, and soon I will be screwed. Then my student loan will feel like a few cents compared to the debt I would have incurred. And then what will I do? It’s a huge risk, will I be able to do it? I guess only time will tell. Everything’s so unsure. And then of course there’s the waiting game to hear about when I’ll be taking off to guide dog school. I’m still waiting for that news. So…here’s hoping this next plan doesn’t fall to pieces like the last one.

Blinded Me with Science

Ok, this is just stupid. A 15-year-old boy apparently learned how to make a home-made bomb out of caustic soda and other common products from a children’s television science show, although that is under dispute, because the show’s producers can’t find record of that exact experiment. His plan of impressing all of his friends went horribly wrong when he took his exploding creation to school, through it down, it didn’t explode…and he went to pick it up…at which point, it exploded in his face!. He has permanent damage to one eye, and spent several days in the hospital. Now police are trying to tell retail stores not to sell certain products to young people because they’re dangerous, and writing to the show’s producers telling them that their show caused this tragedy.

No! This kid’s wanting to build a bomb caused this tragedy. If he hadn’t seen it on a show, he would have gone to find info on it somewhere. It would have been just a matter of time.

Even if he did see it on the show, every science show I’ve ever seen tells you to not try this at home if it’s even remotely dangerous. They tell you to protect your eyes, and get a big person to help you if you really want to try this at home.

And, finally, the kid was 15. At 15, I knew that I shouldn’t make things that go boom because I might go boom if things went wrong. If I had decided to do something crazy like that, I knew it would be my fault, not some show’s fault, if I got hurt. And that’s the part that pisses me off. We can’t make the world completely safe, because then there’s no risk and there’s no way for anyone to learn anything. And why, once again, is personal responsibility going out the window? Sure, it sucks that this kid got hurt. But that’s where it should stop. No letters to TV stations, no attempts to tell stores what to sell. Just a realization that he’ll probably never try anything that stupid again.

Spreading the Word

I got this in the mail today, and figured I could help spread the word. I remember how hard it was to get study participants. so hell, any way I can help someone else, I’d be glad to help.

Harvard Medical school is conducting a survey of legally blind women to see if the incidence of sleep disorders and cancer risk, among other health factors, is any different among blind women. If you want to participate, go to www.bvihealthsurvey.com. I don’t think I need to say this, but I guess I should. You have to be legally blind and a woman. You can do the survey on the web, or they have ways for you to contact the study’s director if you’d like to do the surveyin about 6 zillion other formats. They really want our input! So there it is, if you want to give them a hand.