You expect who to do what?

Raaaar! That’s what this news story made me do when I saw it on the 6:00 news.

Apparently, suicide is the leading cause of death in people ages 10-24. 10? good lord! That’s not the part that makes me go raaar. This is. The school system has decided that they need to educate all the kids in how to look for signs of suicidal thought in their friends so *they* can catch it before it’s too late. Then they had this little kid on the news saying, “I never knew the signs, but now I know, so now I can watch.”

Are you starting to feel your head spin slowly? For me, it was a gradual bubbling of rage. It started off as sort of perplexing, then slightly disturbing, then I felt like I was going to explode. Why are we making children watch for signs of this in other children? Isn’t that a little too much responsibility to put on the poor kids? Isn’t it the job of Little Johnny’s parents to notice when Little Johnny is falling off the rails? I know that a person is more likely to tell their friends these things than their parents, but at 10, I don’t think it’s right or fair to be having kids watching out to see if their friends might try and jump off a bridge. It’s hard enough for adults to see the signs, and the way kids blame themselves for stuff that isn’t even their fault, I think it’s pretty shitty to put this burden on their shoulders. Am I wrong to feel upset that this is being expected of kids as young as 10? Do I not give them enough credit? Does this seem right to anyone?

Can You Hear Me Now? No? Great, Mission Accomplished!

Ok, here’s the new most retarded thing I heard all time all my life.

Mobiles to be blocked for Bush

Mobile phone calls in sections of Sydney’s CBD will reportedly be blocked during US President George Bush’s APEC visit in September.

News Limited papers report the sophisticated counter-terrorism measure will be used to prevent mobile phone detonated remote-control bombs.

A helicopter fitted with signal-jamming equipment will shadow the President’s motorcade.

It will block all mobile phone calls within an area the size of a football field.

I’m trying to figure out what this is going to accomplish. Sure it might prevent somebody from blowing you up with a phone, but logic therefore dictates that it would also prevent you from calling 911 with a phone if somebody decided to explode you the old-fashioned way.

The war on terror stuff was way out of hand a long time ago, but endangering public safety in a ridiculous attempt to protect it seems like a brand new low to me.

More Musical Weirdness

You never know where something will lead. Steve talked about a funny article about the five shittiest musical instruments. This got Ann Adams digging to find some other weird and wacky instruments, and she found some. She tried to leave a comment, but HaloScan was crapping on itself, so she sent the links to me.

She was looking for stuff on a particular instrument that is played with no hands. On her journey, she stumbled upon a whole gallery of weird musical instruments. They all had pictures and sound samples! Neat! I was playing around in there for quite a while, and found some wierd ones. A beer bottle organ? 29 hanging pot lids? Singing stones? Ok then.

Then she finally found what she was looking for, the Theremin! Now there’s a weird instrument. I can’t believe some people actually get all bent out of shape when it’s used for sound effects in spooky movies because they think it should be taken seriously. God, some people have issues.

So there you have it, more weird instruments to listen to.

I’m Gonna Sue Your Ass!

I didn’t think it would be possible, but the Celebrity Butt Plug thing I posted about last month just got even funnier.

It seems that there’s more than one company making butt plug President Bush’s, and feeling that there’s only room for one President in the hearts and cracks of the public, these 2 companies are now in a legal battle over who has the right to produce them.

I hope they show this case on Court TV, because hearing judges and lawyers being forced to say words like butt plug would make it more than worth paying for cable.

When The Moon Hits Your Eye Like A Big Pizza Pie, That’s…A Beer?

A couple of guys from the Chicago area have for some reason teamed up to create Mama Mia Pizza Beer, a beer that smells and tastes like a pizza because well, it’s brewed using real pizza and pizza ingredients.

Gold Medal Winning Brewmaster, Mike Rybinski of Walter Payton’s Roundhouse has teamed up with Award Winning Homebrewer, Tom Seefurth to brew his creation, “Mama Mia Pizza Beer”.  Tom’s beer is a Saison based light ale brewed with lots of real tomatoes, basil, oregano and garlic.  Just for fun they have tossed a few wood grilled pizzas from America’s Brewpub into the mix. The final product smells and tastes like pizza so,  you can have your pizza and drink it too.

It sounds disgusting, but strangely enough I’d really like to try some. I wonder if it tastes like what happens when you eat pizza and drink beer and then they come up together at the end of the night.

I Know One Teacher Who Should Go to Hell

Wow. This story is another example of schools going to, well, hell.

An English teacher at Fillmore Central High School told her class to do travel brochures on places they’d like to visit. Michael Sattler decided he’d like to visit Hell. that’s right, Hell, Michigan. There is a town called Hell, and he did his research and wrote a fine brochure all about it. He got a 0 and the teacher deemed it inappropriate because it mentioned hell all over it. Well, duh!

Disagreeing with this mark, Sattler’s parents sent his brochure straight to Hell, where the unofficial mayor thought it was awesome. In return, he sent a box of Hell souvenirs and a “grumpier than hell” coffee mug for the teacher.

Now, in the world I wish we lived in, the teacher would have said, “Ok, you proved me wrong, there is a Hell on Earth, and it seems you did a good job. So I’ll give you the mark I think you deserve.” Then the class would have learned all about Hell and it would have been educational. Unfortunately, that’s not where we live, because the principal of the school intercepted the box from Hell and said he’d send it back from whence it came. Why? because handing out the stuff would undermine the teacher’s authority! I know this is getting old, but what the hell? It would show that teachers make mistakes and are human and it would show fairness. But that would be the wrong set of values to instill in our children, I guess.

So now, as agesture of good faith, the teacher is willing to give him a grade if he does another brochure on another town. That does not sound like good faith to me. That sounds like punishment. He did it, and got a perfect grade, but nothing in this story seems fair. It just goes to show that schools seem to be more about control and less about learning. What did they teach Michael Sattler? It’ll be a cold day in hell, not Hell, before his school will show open-mindedness.

The Five Musical Instruments That Just Plain Suck The Most

I’ve always liked bagpipes and I used to know how to play the recorder pretty decently, but the writing here is hilarious and there’s no way to argue that recorders aren’t dangerous when they find their way into the wrong hands [which would be the hands of just about anyone], so here is one man’s list of
the 5 shittiest musical instruments ever.

It Can’t Be Just Me…Can It?

Carin and I were sitting around talking the other day when somehow the subject turned to sleep. I’m not sure how it came up, but I mentioned that I think it’s weird that when you fall asleep with something on like a TV or radio, it always seems way louder when you wake up than it did when you went out. I thought that even though it was strange it was pretty common, but judging from the what in God’s name are you talking about type reaction I got when I brought it up, I’m not so sure anymore. So now I’m turning to you the people to help straighten either myself or Carin out. Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s ever fallen asleep to soft music and woken up to what sounds like a live concert or nearly had a heart attack after accidentally nodding off with the TV on because I’m sure that the cops are going to be at my door any minute to yell at me on behalf of the guy who lives on the other side of the wall. There’s no way I can be the only person this happens to and Carin has got to be the odd one, but I thought I’d better post this just in case. So please, help me out here. I’m curious now and I probably won’t be able to sleep until I get some kind of consensus one way or the other on this issue.