Noose Nuisance

So apparently the new "fad" for the news world and idiots around the country is the noose. The incident in Jena apparently was the spark that ignited the moronic cavalcade of noose-related stories popping up, even though the Jena 6 incident really had nothing to do with a noose.

Yes, earlier that year, three white kids hung nooses from trees and were unfairly let off with a warning.

Nothing to do with the fact that six black kids beat up a white kid and jailarity ensued and then Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton got in the mix. And whenever those two start speaking out, they fan the flames of hatred as well. I don't like to think of myself as a bigot or a racist - but when those two start with their claptrap and outcries and demands, I have to admit that my personal view of their race diminishes proportionately with the size of the ruckus they're creating.

Not surprisingly, others must feel the same way I do (well, maybe a hundredfold worse, since I'd never do anything that a jury would consider a "hate crime" against a race) - because nooses are popping up all over the news stories now. Let's take a quick look:

Yes, you probably heard about the professor who had a noose put on her door.

Get a bunch of college liberals riled up, and the media won't be too far behind. Hilariously enough (if you can find humor in the situation, and I apparently can) - the professor, Madonna Constantine, wasn't even around that day. Another professor found it on Constantine's door, and went to find Constantine's research partner. They went and found security, and eventually called the professor so she wouldn't be startled the next time she went to work.

The uproar caused a march from Teachers College (the education grad school branch of Columbia University) down to the main Columbia campus, and a quote from one of the marchers just kind of made me angry and laugh at the same time.

"Teachers College student Nicole Woodard told them she wasn't surprised by the noose incident because she believes the college lacks racial diversity. "When I walk into a class of 100 students and can count on my fingers how many look like me, that's a problem," said Woodard, who is black. Teachers College, which was founded in 1887 and is the nation's largest grad school for education, has a student body that is 12% black, 11% Asian-American and 7% Hispanic."

Putting those sentences together makes it look like Woodard has twelve fingers. And if the statistics are trying to suggest that the school is indeed not diverse (or "racially homogenized"), I hope that people take into account the fact that it's a grad school for education majors. There are fewer minority teachers than ever, both in the major while trying to get their teaching certification, and in the profession - since there's a higher rate of minorities failing the teaching exams than white students.

They're actually considering "affirmative action" to get TEACHERS rather than STUDENTS into the schools.

But I digress, let's move on to a lesser-known news story involving a noose:

While working on the completion of a new Home Depot store in Illinois, a construction worker saw a noose made of a foam packaging material hanging in the garden center area.

He decided not to return to work at the store, for safety reasons, and nobody reported the incident until the following Monday, since during the weekend a racial slur had been spraypainted inside the store by vandals.

And let's not forget the student who has since apologized for his actions:

The high-schooler drove around the parking lot of his high school with a noose hanging from his rear-view mirror and a Confederate flag hanging inside his vehicle.

It's still not known if he was suspended or expelled from his school - he hasn't been there since his arrest for disorderly conduct. He has since made a public apology and asked for forgiveness, which has currently been widely accepted by those he offended.

So what does all this mean?

Frankly, I think it means that too many people are giving this symbol way too much power over their lives and emotions.

It's just another example of words and symbols and ideas being STOLEN by racial groups. They get to claim it as their own, it belongs to nobody else. They're the only ones who can use it in a non-threatening manner, and they're the only ones who get to feel threatened by it. Anything else is "racism" to them.

Back in the day, my fraternity was the victim of this "stolen symbol syndrome" - we hosted a party and the flier had the word "ghetto" on it. The party was a costume party and you can undoubtedly guess the theme. While I had little problem with the fact that a few select individuals felt offended by the nature or theme of the party, I was dismayed and offended to hear that a few black females were offended by our use of the word "ghetto" and wrote a formal complaint to the college administration. They claimed it was THEIR WORD and we weren't allowed to use it, especially in such a manner, because it offended them.

I won't go into the many many logical arguments of how the word itself is NOT something entirely owned by African-Americans - I'm pretty sure I've done that before. What I will go into is how it relates to black people and nooses. Just like the whole "ghetto" story, I will admit that for a period of time, nooses were used in lynchings directed at black people, predominantly in the South. However, practically in the same breath, people should be reminded that it wasn't JUST black people who were the victims of lynchings. And then in the NEXT breath, people should be reminded that the noose is a symbol of death - of unbiased and impartial death.

Unless every suicide in the history of mankind that involved a noose was committed by a black person - which it certainly wasn't - there should not be this immediate decision that any noose you view is an attack on that race. Are you seriously going to try and convince me that the hanging of Saddam Hussein was offensive to black people because "that's THEIR terrible death symbol"?

A noose hanging on someone's door shouldn't be seen as anything other than "I want you dead." Just because it was hanging on a black professor's door, why does that automatically mean that it was saying "I want you dead, [n-word]"?

Is it right to hang a symbol of death on someone's property to symbolically state that you wish they were dead? Not really.

Does that automatically make it a racial issue? Not really.

Does that automatically make it a hate crime? Sure, but only in the sense that you probably hate someone if you wish they were dead - not necessarily hating them because of race or religion or something.

All I'm really trying to say is that we spend too much time attributing extra emotions to things that already HAVE emotions attributed to them. There's a lot of hate involved when you display a death implement to someone in hopes that they will get the message and die already. But that hate doesn't need EXTRA emotions like racial bias and sex discrimination and ethnic cleansing or anything tacked on to make it WORSE. It's already BAD. We KNOW that.

Maybe instead of trying to find extra hatred in the world by digging deeper into open wounds, we can try and find more love and compassion and forgiveness to alleviate some of the tension and create LESS hatred in the world that needs to be overanalyzed by the media.

And to avoid ending on a sappy-made-for-TV notion, I'll end by saying that "no noose is good noose."

(The Columbia teacher noose)
(The Home Depot noose)
(The high school noose)







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Deadly Marathon: Who's to Blame?

I am not a marathon runner. That is one of the biggest reasons you did not see me in the Chicago Marathon - or anywhere near it, for that matter. Another reason would be that it was 88 degrees outside. Call me a product of bad parenting if you will, but my policy is that if it's hot and icky outside - I stay inside where it's cool and refuse to "go out and play." I'm sure that there are even more reasons why I didn't attend the marathon (as a participant or supporter), but those main two seem like explanation enough.

Not surprisingly, I was safer in my air-conditioned room than those who were out in the heat - especially if they were also running in a marathon. 315 of the runners required an ambulance to be removed from the course. Five of them wound up in the hospital as of Sunday night. One runner died. While the death is tragic (unless you were his enemy, which I am not, but I guess that if you were you wouldn't think of it as "tragic"), there's apparently going to be an autopsy to figure out if the death was a result of the heat, or a heart problem, or a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Since the news has not reported anything about a gunshot wound, I feel it's safe to eliminate that third possibility. Still, you never know.

So who is to blame? Anytime a tragic death - or a mass-emergency with over three hundred needing medical care or hospitalization - occurs, fingers have to start pointing. It's our nature. So where are the index fingers collectively drawing our attention?

Several are pointing at the City of Chicago. It's pretty easy, since the word "Chicago" is on all of the memorabilia you could find at the Chicago Marathon. Runners and spectators are blaming Chicago for not providing enough water or enough water stations for the runners. They say that on such a hot day, drinks stations should have been set up at every single mile on the 26.2-mile course, rather than the 15 stations set up every mile or two. The runners were vocal about claims that all of the water stations "were out or really low" on water and Gatorade.

Chicago points its finger right back, particularly at the jackasses who were in the marathon. Shawn Platt, a senior vice president of sponsor LaSalle Bank, said that each of the stations had been outfitted with over 50,000 servings of water and over 35,000 servings of Gatorade. "We checked with all the aid stations, and the amount of water was adequate. We had thousands of thousands of gallons of water," said Platt. The problem, he claimed, was partially about distribution - the bottlenecking at the dispensation tables caused delays and distress, while at the same time he pointed the finger at runners making up for the delay by taking cups two or three at a time, faster than volunteers could fill the cups to replace them.

Several marathon participants and even more spectators decided to point their fingers at the race officials, saying that the weather was too inclimate for marathoning and should have been cancelled at the outright. Also, after failing to cancel it before it started, they point their fingers even harder and say that it should have been cancelled earlier - before all of the people started collapsing and requiring ambulances and the opening of fire hydrants.

So of course, several more marathon participants are pointing their fingers at the race officials, saying that the marathon should NOT have been cancelled because they didn't get to finish and the whole thing kind of becomes a moot point, I suppose. Honestly, I don't think anyone was really stopping them from continuing to run, but people left the watering stations and I guess when the race is cancelled, police escorts and barricades function less and bus routes possibly were routed back to their original statuses.

So now that we've taken a look around the room and watched all the fingers pointed at one another, I think it's time to spin the camera my way and see where my digit's directing:

My finger's pointed straight at you - the runners.

For those runners complaining that it was Chicago's fault for the man who died while running - you can suck an egg. The autopsy showed that it wasn't the heat at all, but rather a heart-valve condition known as mitral valve prolapse. It's common, and usually harmless, but it was the cause of his death.

This goes way beyond the runners who are pointing fingers at others, because every runner not pointing a finger at themselves is just in denial. You do NOT participate in a marathon without practice and training. And if my calculations are correct, it's been pretty damned hot for the last three or four months at LEAST. Are you ALL seriously telling me that you trained for this marathon in the heat, having to provide your OWN water, but when it's time for the big day, you can blame your shortcomings on OTHERS?

Again, I'm no runner. But I'm full of enough common sense to know that any activity you participate in at this high level, you already KNOW the dangers and risks and you take PRECAUTIONS accordingly. You don't play in the NFL and then throw a hissy fit when your arm gets fractured from a powerful tackle. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

But it doesn't stop there - I'm especially pointing my finger at the JACKASS runners. When all of the water station attendants were being questioned in the huge water-shortage inquisition, you know what almost all of them had to say? "We had the water. We were trying to get the water out. But runners were taking more than one cup at a time, injuring each other to scramble for cups faster than we could put them out, and then were WASTING the water by dumping it on themselves instead of DRINKING it." Drinking water is for drinking - mist systems and sponges that were set up were supposed to be for that kind of stuff.

If I were one of the people in charge of this marathon, here's what my response would have been:

I'd mail each and every one of the 40,000 runners a package. Inside the package would be a big bottle of Ice Mountain and a photo of me displaying my middle finger. The photo's caption: "Thanks for participating in the Chicago Marathon. Here's your fucking water."

(The runner who died)
(Someone else who fucking GETS IT!) Read more!

PETA vs CraigsList

Apparently not satisfied with targets as large as Michael Moore, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears or even the NBA, PETA has decided to take a blind stab at something possibly bigger than all of them combined:

PETA is going after CraigsList.

For those of you unfamiliar to the series of tubes we call "the internets" - CraigsList.com is a huge internet site known for classified ads of all varieties. While it's most popular for personal ads, selling an eBay's worth of items and job offers - we're already aware of the darker side of anything large and internet-based.

The spam, porn site links and scams are one thing. You're pretty much going to encounter those anywhere. Recently, CraigsList has hit big in the media spotlight regarding "erotic services" ads and linking them directly to prostitution rings. But I digress, because PETA doesn't give a damn about PEOPLE being treated ethically, just ANIMALS (and maybe one of these days, they'll realize that human beings are animals as well).

PETA is attacking the website for their allowing of "free to good home" ads for people who wish to give their pets to others.

You know, those "cruel individuals" who'd rather spend the effort to find a new home for their pets instead of tossing them into the street or dumping them at an animal shelter.

PETA is claiming that the practice of giving away pets online should be banned from CraigsList because of one incident of an animal-abuser who admitted that at least one of the three cats he tortured and mutilated was obtained through CraigsList.

While I'm sure that this is NOT an isolated incident and that more than one animal-abuser has probably acquired an animal from CraigsList - I'm willing to venture a safe bet that it's a very small percentage when compared to those who acquire a pet thanks to CraigsList and DON'T wind up torturing or abusing the animal. That's like saying that if ONE serial rapist/killer targeted his potential victims through speed-dating events, we should ban all speed-dating because it enables serial rapists/killers. The logic itself doesn't even make sense.

You know what logic DOES seem probable in this scenario?

PETA just doesn't want you to own pets. PETA would rather kill them.

No, seriously. All of these people who want to give their pet to a good home, for free, obviously do not want their pet or can no longer own their pet. If they're banned from trying to advertise and give away their pet, odds are it will wind up on the streets or in a shelter. And we all know what PETA does to animals on the streets and in shelters.

PETA "rescues" them. By which I mean PETA takes the animals in, and over 90% of them are killed by PETA members.

Heck, they've even admitted to owning puppy-killing deathmobiles! Vans driven by PETA employees who go to shelters, pick up a few puppies and kitties, euthanise them with lethal injections IN THE VAN, and then dump the dead bodies in nearby DUMPSTERS.

Oh, but let's not allow people to give their pets to good homes and avoid the shelters! That would lead to crazy things like happy people with new pets and fewer animals for PETA to kill!

Now that I'm done with my logic-process of PETA preferring to kill animals than have them find good homes, I'll go back to the issue at hand - PETA thinking that CraigsList banning the use of their site to give away pets would mean less ability for animal-abusers to have access to animals. The way I see it, people (generally) CARE about their pets. That's why they put "good home" in their ads - because they don't want their pet to go to a person who might BE an animal-abuser. What's really causing the problem is when people post all of that, but don't really care about who their pet goes to. They don't bother meeting or talking to the person who wants to adopt their pet until the switch is made. The question is: if these non-caring people weren't allowed to post on CraigsList to give away their animal, wouldn't the animal just wind up on the street or in a shelter, where there's both little chance of it finding a good home and just as much chance of it winding up the victim of an animal-abuser? I mean, animal-abusers get their animals from SOMEWHERE - and I'm pretty sure most of them get pets through shelters. Or animals they find on the street.

Which all means that no matter what, animal-abusers are going to find animals. So it makes no sense whatsoever to try and limit one of those possible pathways, especially when it does so much more benefit than potential harm to the animals. I personally have friends who have found pets thanks to CraigsList - and they did so from caring people who interviewed them and talked to them before making the official switch.

So CraigsList - keep up the great work! Keep allowing pet owners to find new homes for their pets and letting them have the ability to choose who gets to adopt them.

And PETA - go find another target for your terrorist organization! Every animal given a good home by CraigsList is another animal that never has to see the inside of a shelter and run the risk of getting picked up by your puppy-killing deathmobile!

(PETA's press release about CraigsList)
(Petakillsanimals.org)







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How NOT to Sue a Church

The Rev. Luis Alfredo Rios, a priest at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, might not always be on his game. That's a given. But it was when Angel Llavona decided to take his opinions to the next level that things apparently started getting out of hand. He called up the reverend on his church line and left the following message:

"Father Rios, this is Angel Llavona. I attended mass on Sunday and I have seen poor homilies, but yesterday broke all records."

Feeling offended, or perhaps wanting to hear opinions from the rest of his audience, Rios decided to play the message for his Sunday mass, adding:

"This is the person in charge of religious education here last year. That's why it is no surprise to me [that] we had the kind of religious education we had. That's why we didn't get altar boys. What should we do? Should we send him to hell or to another parish?"

After all, Llavona, a teacher at a high school in Des Plaines, did indeed serve as a volunteer with the parish's religious education program from September of 2005 to April of 2006. And while I could certainly attempt to make a few altar-boy-related jokes, I will refuse to do so - since I'm totally in favor of the church on this one. Especially because of what Llavona decided to do about being publicly outed as a jerk who complained to the preacher.

He sued. Not only did he sue Rev. Rios, he's also suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockford - because somehow in his mind, the diocese is legally responsible for anything that any of their priests decide to do. So what, pray tell (no pun intended), is he suing for?

Llavona claims in the lawsuit filed this week in McHenry County that he was defamed and suffered "immediate emotional distress, embarrassment and humiliation." Llavona says the humiliation forced him to change parishes. He is seeking a minimum of $50,000 in damages.

That's when I became enraged, reading the article. While I'm the first one in line to say that the Catholic Church is loaded with parishoner money and is always willing to part with chunks of it to keep things settled, especially out-of-court, there are things you sue over and things that you do NOT sue over. Getting molested as a child? Go ahead and sue. Being kicked out for discriminatory reasons? Maybe you can get away with it - the case is in the details. Being a jerk and then getting called out for being a jerk? Suck it up and move on, buddy!

That in mind, this guy COULD have had a case - he just chose the WRONG case. He's decided to wimp out and beg for "you made me feel bad" money, which he should never get a penny for. You don't get to act like a jerk and then sue for monetary compensation when your actions are made known and everyone knows you're a jerk. If the guy had punched the priest in the face over the sermon's failures, and all the priest did (rather than sue for assault and battery) was tell the congregation, "Oh, my black eye? Angel Llavona punched me because he thought my sermon sucked" - Llavona would STILL have no case over the fact that he decided to switch parishes and was ratted out for being a jerk.

What Llavona COULD have argued was that he called the Reverend on his church line, expecting the privacy associated with the confidentiality laws applying between religious leaders and followers. Although it was in no way a "confession" (the usual conversation those laws apply to) - the law might be swayed on his side in a case of breaking confidentiality.

The only other thing that gets me irked about this (which has no legal grounds) is that it seems like the priest was commenting that he (and the congregation) had the power to send Llavona to hell. That just seems a little blasphemous in my mind. I'm pretty sure that in the Catholic faith, it's God who makes that decision, not an angry priest or a congregation. The afterlife is not determined through a democratic process. Also, it's contradictory that a priest is supposed to hear confessions and offer absolution for sins, and this one aired those sins and treated them as unforgivable.

Nevertheless - Llavona, you should be asking for an apology, not a sum of money. You suffered no monetary damages through these actions, which were all your fault for being a jackass anyway. What you should really be doing is making a case to the Catholic Diocese about removing a priest who would do un-priestly things like what Reverend Luis Alfredo Rios did.

Even so, I'm going to side with Rios and the Catholic Church on this impending lawsuit of uselessness and avarice.

Of course, I'm Jewish. So take this all with a grain of salt. And a margarita. L'chaim!

(The article about the lawsuit)







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Shows to Miss

With all of the Fall premieres going on, new TV shows are popping up everywhere. Some, like Reaper or Chuck, are getting rave reviews and bringing something new to the television world. Okay, well maybe not "new" because everything's pretty much already been done, for the most part and to a degree. After all, (and those of you who watch South Park probably know this already,) when you get right down to it, anything really humorous means that The Simpsons probably already did it.

So with that in mind, what out there is invading our airwaves with mindless feces that would make you want to wash your eyes out with soap?

Here are a few things I've been picking up on:

Dr. Steve-O: I can already hear some of you saying "whaaaaa?" - and you'd be right. On first glance, it looks like the Jackass jackass is creating yet another spinoff, since apparently all of his Jackass money and spinoff Wildboyz money had probably all gone right down the toilet from hospital bills and vaccinations and antidotes. So you might be thinking, "Okay, what's the new show about? What new wacky ways will Steve-O degrade himself and injure himself on the airwaves of MTV?"

Wrong. Not MTV. This new show is on the USA Network.

Seriously. Not kidding you. U-S-f*ckin'-A.

Okay, so maybe they're just going to tone things down a little, but certainly it's still just Steve-O running around and doing stupid things, right? "Dr. Steve-O" makes it sound like he's going to be involving some weird medical equipment and probably sticking them in orifices! Well, hate to disappoint you, but here's the show's premise:

"Dr. Steve-O" will be going around the nation to "de-wussify wimps, nerds and couch potatoes." And of course, rather than sitting and talking about it, Steve-O will be setting up hilarious stunts and demented dares which he'll be calling "extreme attitude adjustments" - participants will be selected on behalf of pleas from girlfriends, mothers, and friends to want to hire Steve-O for his dewussification services.

It's pretty much the EXACT OPPOSITE of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Instead of sophisticated guys taking tactless men and training them in elegance and style, this show has a jackass taking wusses and torturing them into manliness - I think?

No matter how you slice it, I just don't think the show will be worth it. The stunts may be entertaining (whatever they'll allow to air on the USA Network), but it's all just a testosterone-fueled ripoff of Dr. Phil. There are just too many therapy shows on TV right now, between asinine weight-loss series and "starting over" programs and "let's either talk about your problems or send you to a boot camp to scare you straight" drivel. Enough. The last thing we need is a guy who sticks leeches on his eye and ties fireworks to his penis telling men how to behave. Frankly, I'd rather just have a few more wusses around.




Cavemen: Oh goodie, an entire television series dedicated to one-liner commercial characters!! How can this POSSIBLY go wrong??

According to reports and what very little actual information there is on the show, since the pilot is still unfinished and probably being rewritten again due to writers committing actual suicide instead of just the career suicide of having their name attached to this monstrocity would undoubtedly bring.

Odds are it will attempt to stray from "ha ha you think we're dumb because we're cavemen but we're really not we're totally smart lol kthxbye" and will go for the faux-comedic route of "we're different and it's funny because we have to assimilate and it's going to be awkward!"

Been there. Done that. If you're really interested in a "fish out of water" type of series with old and overplayed jokes, why don't you just go watch reruns of Mork & Mindy or maybe 3rd Rock from the Sun - hell, you could even watch The Jeffersons and get your dosage of "we're different and it's awkward" that way! No need to drag out another two-episode show (that's when it will inevitably be cancelled) just for the end result of an "I told you so."

That's all I'm willing to speculate on for right now. Expect a few more editions of this as the Fall Season really picks up. (Maybe even a good-show list!)

(Proof that I'm not lying about this Dr. Steve-O show)







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McDonald's Causes Better Eating Habits Than Subway!

And no, I'm not talking about the wussification of McDonald's with the inclusion of salads and parfaits and whatnot. I'm talking about good ol' fashioned Big Macs versus Subway and their Italian sub sandwiches. And you wouldn't believe it, but the Big Macs led to better eating habits than the Subway options. The researcher uses terms like "health halo" for Subway and "health shadow" for McDonald's, but what it all comes down to is that you don't have a freaking clue what's healthy for you and what's not, so you base your guess on asinine advertisements and screw yourself over in the end.

Super Size Me, Jared!

Jared and his whiny little commercials about how all McDonald's food is bad for you and Subway is nothing but sweet angel food that reduces your waistline simply by cramming it down your throat. We've all seen them. So here's what this researcher did: he gave 46 graduate students a coupon for a McDonald's Big Mac, which at the time had about 600 calories, or a Subway 12-inch Italian sub with meat, cheese and mayonnaise, which had about 900 calories. The students weren't told the number of calories in their sandwiches. Participants also were given a menu and asked to indicate what extras they would like to order, if anything.

Thanks to the "health halo" - these students thought that since they made the "right decision" by opting for Subway, and decided to reward themselves for it with what they probably assumed was a caloric difference - ordering cookies and sodas and whatnot. Those with the Subway coupon ended up ordering a meal with an average 1,011 calories. Those with the McDonald's coupon got meals with an average of 648 calories.

Following those lines of logic, in a second test, the calorie count of the coupons were set even at about 600 calories. Not surprisingly, people ate more snacks later in the day if they had eaten a Subway sandwich than a Big Mac. I personally would have liked to see a little interview data about which coupon option left the participant feeling more full or more satisfied. Perhaps the extra snacking isn't JUST due to the "health halo" of thinking you can spare the calories because you ate healthier - maybe it's just that they were hungry again in less time because it was less filling. I personally feel hungier again earlier in the day after eating Subway than I do after eating McDonald's.

More research was indeed done in these studies, though not my idea of fullness. These questions were about guessing how many calories had been consumed, trying to prove that the "health halo" indeed was a culprit. Could the average person accurately guess how many calories they'd consumed at McDonald's or Subway?

Brian Wansink and colleagues interviewed more than 500 people after they had eaten lunches at either Subway or McDonald's. The scientists also analyzed the calories in 320 meals that included a main dish, side order and beverage. Those meals ranged from turkey sandwiches and Italian subs with chips and soda to cheeseburgers or Big Macs with fries and beverages. People who consumed about 1,327 calories at a meal underestimated the calories by an average of 484 at McDonald's and 681 at Subway. That's a 36% margin of error at McDonald's, compared to a 51% margin of error at Subway.

"There's a double curse to the health halo because you grossly underestimate the calories, and you overeat afterward because you think you deserve it," Wansink says.

Okay, so McDonald's isn't actually "healthier" than Subway. I'll still give you that. I'm sure that fat content and sodium levels are probably way worse at McDonald's than they are in the Subway alternatives, even if you're chowing down the same amount of pure calories. But odds are that you're STILL going to screw that up if you're using your little Subway "health halo" to scarf down junk food later on because you think you deserve the treat for "eating healthy". In the end, your eating habits will IMPROVE if you eat bad food and ADMIT that you're eating bad food. Admitting to delving into a guilty pleasure means you'll feel GUILTY about it and will eat LESS afterwards or make it up some other way. On the other hand, eating health halo food can have MORE calories and leave you feeling like you deserve MORE food because of it.

Accept the science, and stop trusting Jared and his stupid commercials.

McDonald's leads to better eating habits than Subway. Chew on THAT, Jared!

And yes, he'd probably want some fries with that.

(Article with the research)







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How can we stop racism?

Short answer: By not acting on our prejudices.

Long answer: We can't, because "racism" is comprised of two separate concepts and one of them can't be stopped, while the other one takes more self-control than most people are capable of conjuring. The two sides of racism (in my opinion, and in definition) are "having prejudices based on race" and "acting on those prejudices." The biggest problem with stopping racism is stopping the first half of it from happening, which we cannot do.

We all have prejudices. The word "prejudice" comes from "pre-judging" - which is supposed to deal with judging someone before it's proper, I think. There is no appropriate time to judge someone where you can jump the gun, except of course in a court of law with an actual judge and jury. You judge people when you want to, in whatever fashion, for whatever reasons - and we'll never be able to change the way the human mind works. I have read in several places that a woman has judged a man and knows if she will or won't have sex with him within the first [times range from two minutes to twenty-four hours] of meeting him. If that isn't clear evidence that we "pre-judge" and will never be able to stop it, I don't know what is.

What CAN be stopped is acting on these prejudices. The obvious acts we'd like to stop are violent crimes because of race. Which, I've found, are just normal violent crimes that are either exacerbated because of the prejudice of the enacter or exaggerated by observers transferring their own prejudice onto how they see the violent crime. In each incidence, you really have to ask, "Do we see this as racism because the black guy hit the white guy, or because of how we feel about either the black guy or the white guy?" I have to admit that I overhear a lot more chatter from black men about "the white man trying to keep the black man down" than I hear evidence of any white man actually trying to keep a black man down.

The only theoretical way I can see to "stop" racism is by having people set better examples. Every stereotype out there that causes us to pre-judge is based on elements of truth, hearsay and personal experiences. If some woman gets her purse stolen by a black person, she's likely to think less of them, be more afraid of them, and act accordingly. If a man watches a group of white men tip a waiter of their race poorly, he's likely to see white men in a more-negative light. The real problem is that nobody (especially the media) bothers to bring good examples to our attention. You never read in the paper about all the Asian drivers who drive exceptionally well - but you read one article about a stereotype that seems to prove true, and it just strengthens that prejudice in your mind.

So the only way to stop racism is to have everyone get along and play nicely with each other, so nobody will have a basis to form negative stereotypes or have reasons to act on any of them because they wouldn't have any. Of course, if everyone's getting alone and playing nicely with each other, we've already stopped racism. So I guess it's pretty much a Catch-22. Which if why I like my short answer better: not acting on our prejudices. And you know the best way to do that?

- Stop taking everything so personally.

- Learn to laugh at our differences. (We're all different - and if we can't laugh at our differences, we wind up doing less-positive things because of our differences and that's where the hating starts.)

- Remember that everyone is entitled to their own opinions. (You have the right to dislike and pre-judge and have bias. Everyone else has just as much right to do the same.)

- Obey the law. (That's why we have them - to objectively define what can and cannot be done, regardless of opinions. You can dislike someone based on race as much as you want, but you can't do anything ILLEGAL about it. Just be careful, because even if you have freedom of speech, if the things you say trigger the illegal assault and battery, you're going to be at fault.)

- Be yourself. (You can't be expected to be who you're not. Your opinions, your ideas - they're a part of you and you can't deny them. You can do whatever you want to try and change who you are and what your opinions and ideas are, but never be ashamed of who you are. Be free to be you.)

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS ILLEGAL.

(Sorry, just being myself!)

(The RedEye columnist who posed the question of "How can we stop racism?")







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Wag of the Finger: Riverside, New Jersey

Last week, Riverside - the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone employing or renting to illegal immigrants - decided to rescind the ordinance and join the list of flip-flopping cities that are giving up on this great legislative idea as quickly as they adopted it. So what was the given reason for rescinding the law that WORKED and drove the illegal immigrants out of their town?

It hurt the businesses that catered to illegal immigrants.

Riverside, you are officially On Notice. You have 30 days to reinstate this legislation or face the consequences of becoming dead to me.

The article I read that informed me of the township's legal decision reads more like a heartstrings-tugging pile of blather than a news article. It follows the stories of several small business owners who pretty much SPECIFICALLY set up shop in areas populated by illegal immigrants and catering to the needs of illegal immigrants. Sure enough, when the law worked and the illegals started fleeing the city (having nowhere to work and earn a wage nor a place they could rent and live, which is the point of the law), these businesses in particular saw a decline in customers, and now their boo-hooing has collectively affected the rescinding of the law.

Sorry, but if you own a shop catering to illegals, and you know your town is going to pass a law that scares all the illegals away, and you don't realize your profits will plummet - you aren't smart enough to be allowed to run a business in the first place!

The proper thing to do would be at least one of the following:
- Sell the business while it's still marketable
- Close the business before you hemorrhage too much money
- Move the business or change the business for different clientele

I mean, if you own a restaurant that's only serving Brazilian food because of all the illegal immigrants from Brazil - and then all of those illegals flee the city - wouldn't you CHANGE the menu to something people left in your area would enjoy?

The real problem I have is a combination of businesses complaining to the government over their loss of business (when they should have adapted instead to legal citizen customers) and the fact that the government caved in! Prepare yourself for another horrible analogy!

The government notices that one of its bridges is poorly constructed, in a bad location and has a history of causing accidents because of how dangerous it gets when it rains (so we'll say this bridge is in Seattle). The government does the smart thing and tears down the bridge. Then a bunch of idiot motorists plow through all the "STOP" and "BRIDGE OUT" signs and careen into the river below, because they're used to a bridge being there and are apparently too dumb to read signs, avoid breaking through roadblocks and also seeing NO BRIDGE. They then complain because they fell into a river, and demand not a NEW bridge, but the SAME DEFUNCT BRIDGE be put back. And the government stupidly decides to whip out the 80-year-old blueprints and begin construction of an obsolete, dangerous replica of the old bridge.

I don't know how this can make sense to anyone. It certainly doesn't make any sense to me.

You'll notice that the ONLY aspect of the town's change mentioned in the article is that of CERTAIN failing businesses. They make NO effort whatsoever to investigate the probably-huge improvements to the housing overcrowding, school overcrowding, police force efficiency, crime rate, property value, employment rate, or anything about the LEGITIMATE businesses that catered to citizens and continue to do so! Think Starbucks or K-Mart or McDonalds or even small businesses that didn't pander to illegals are floundering because all the illegals fled the city? I doubt it.

Hell, they even mention one business owner who was smart enough to adapt! He opened his laundromat business when he saw illegal immigrants dragging laundry bags over a mile to do laundry back in 2003 - and then when all the illegals fled, he adapted the business to a wash-and-fold delivery service for young professionals (you know, real citizens). He's obviously still in business, even if the neighborhood around him became a "ghost town".

Riverside, put this legislation back in action, and keep on moving forward to eradicate yourselves and the rest of the U.S. of these illegal immigrant criminals!

And remember:

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS ILLEGAL.

(A biased article written about a stupid decision made by Riverside, N.J.)







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Letter to RedEye: CTA Suggestions

Recently, the RedEye's Going Public column opened the floor to hear suggestions for the CTA so they could improve service and reliability and all the other things we want the CTA to provide because it doesn't.

I came up with a few ideas. Here's my letter. We'll see if any of it gets printed, since I didn't see that they did today.

Since the RedEye is calling for suggestions for the CTA, I can't resist drafting my own list of suggestions:

1) Bus tires.

I don't know what is wrong with the tires on every single bus I get on, but there seems to be a near-constant, squealing, screeching noise coming from the wheel areas. It almost sounds as if some of the wheels on my bus aren't going 'round and 'round - but are literally being dragged along the ground all the time. If this is the case, I'm sure it's affecting the gas mileage of the bus, and fixing this problem would lead to better gas efficiency, better speed and handling, and IT WOULD STOP THE SQUEALING NOISE!

2) "Approximately one minute."

I'm getting a little sick of the "Attention customers: an ___BOUND train, ___ the Loop, will be arriving in approximately one minute" messages. Okay, some stations just have an "arriving shortly" message, but the whole system is a moot point. By the time these messages are playing and being displayed, the train is IN SIGHT. I like the suggestion I read about replacing it with just a sign that flashes with the direction of the train (inbound/outbound) that would do the same thing, quicker and easier, but I'm taking it one step forward. If we have some ridiculous trigger or sensor that alerts the sign to scroll some text and play that dumb message, why can't we move it back farther, maybe to the previous station, and have a countdown of the minutes we'll be waiting for the next train? This would alleviate rubberneckers who lean INTO THE TRACK AREA to fight over catching the first glimpse of an incoming train - which always happens BEFORE any message plays. Just give us a countdown so people can just relax and wait, rather than endanger themselves because we never have a clue when a train is REALLY coming in this whole system until we actually SEE it.

3) Leaks and puddles.

Dear CTA: You know where the roof is leaking. You know it's causing puddles. Spend $5 and get a freaking TARP for the leak to divert the puddle AWAY from customers. The end.

4) Bus-bunching research.

Here's how you can PROBABLY solve the entire bus-bunching phenomenon for about $100 per bus route (though we all know I'm talking about the #8 Halsted, because if THAT could be fixed, anything could be fixed four times as easily). Buy twenty one-day passes. Give them to twenty college students who have nothing better to do than spend a day fixing the CTA. Tell their professors to give them extra credit if they're civil engineers or something. Have them board the bus route at one end, one per bus, so you've now got twenty researchers on twenty buses in a row, all with a watch, notepad and pen. Have them record the time as they get to each stop, and take notes on anything significant that's delaying the bus, whether it's unruly passengers, traffic accidents, or the bus is just going REALLY SLOWLY. When they get to the end of the route, have them get off and board going the opposite way, and repeat. In one day, you'll have enough data to plot the movement of the buses, make all kinds of graphs and charts, and I'm sure you'll have a thousand times more information about the bus-bunching phenomenon than you ever did before. All for a lousy $100. You're welcome!

5) Enforcing the rules.

At every level, from the CTA to the federal government, it winds up with the fact that we have too many laws and not enough enforcement. I read the entire debate over whether or not there are CTA rules about strollers on buses and trains, but where's the debate over actual-factual rules that simply aren't being enforced? We all love to argue over the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of the buses and trains, but when was the last time you saw anyone being fined or punished for eating/drinking on the CTA? The signs and loudspeakers make it clear that there IS a rule, but nobody enforces it. And the soliciting! My goodness, it's like I can't take one ride on a train without being harassed for change, asked to buy something that was probably stolen, or hit up for money by children and their fundraisers. No soliciting means NO SOLICITING! One of these days, I'm going to snap - grab the solicitor by the scruff of the neck, threaten to drag them off the train and to the nearest police officer or security person, and fine them to the full extent of the law. That is, of course, unless they pay me some hush money. The irony alone of hitting up solicitors for money as a threat is delicious enough to make it worth trying at least once.

6) More buses, more trains.

As long as they're all borderline-functional, why not drag out the rest of the monstrocities hiding in storage or CTA garages? If what they've got on display now is the cream of the crop, how far down could their B-team of vehicles really be? Get more trains and buses out there, especially during rush hour, and this will alleviate a huge portion of the crammed-full trains and all of the problems it brings to commuters. It does no good being in a seat if three stops later, every pathway is stuffed to capacity with people blocking any chance of exit, and you're literally SHOVING people out of the way because they don't understand that this is your stop and they CAN step out of the train momentarily to clear a path and then GET BACK ON! Between 4:45pm and 5:45pm, there should be a non-stop flow of trains rotating around the Loop. Believe me, even if the duration between trains were the two minutes for it to pull out, have the other line's train pull in and pull out, then have the next train pull in - by the time they left the Loop, they would be 3/4 full. And 3/4 full allows for room to wiggle your way out of the train with few problems, unlike sardine-stuffed trains.

These are just a sampling of the numerous suggestions one could make on improving the CTA. Feel free to print any/all of them - the faster they can reach Ron Huberman, the better!

Aaron Samuels, 23, Bridgeport

Like I said, I submitted this yesterday, and nothing in today's paper. Maybe tomorrow. We'll have to wait and see, but I thought I'd at least throw it out there for you readers, just in case.




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PETA vs Vick: The Numbers Don't Lie

I'll agree with PETA on one thing (waits for the *gasp*s to cease): dogfighting and the preparations for dogfighting are cruelty to the animals. Few animals on the planet enjoy being electrocuted (notice how I said "few" - I know some twisted individuals out there). But with that in mind, PETA has gotten so worked up over the fact that Michael Vick participated (or stood by and allowed it) in the deaths of eight dogs.

Eight. Keep that number in mind.

I get it. Vick killed animals. Or rather, let them die. No, I'll go as far as to say he killed them, and I'm sure there are legal terms for criminally-neglegent homocide, except homocide is for killing people - is it "canuside"? "Canucide"? "Dogicide"?

Anyway, the point is that the ones who are pointing fingers and calling him out are the members of PETA. If there were ever a case of pots calling kettles black, these pots in particular would be black holes - so dark that no amount of light could ever escape the darkness that dwells in these pots. Because PETA certainly kills animals. "How many? More than eight?" - I hear you cry.

Try 14,400 since 1998.

It's a number that the Center for Consumer Freedom is trying to get out to the public, going to the point of taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times to illustrate the hypocrisy of this "humane" organization. The text of the ad reads as such:

Who’s killed more animals? Vick (8) or PETA (14,400):

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) loves to point the finger at others, when they should be looking at their own record of killing more than 90% of the animals left in their care. According to government records PETA has killed more than 14,400 animals since 1998.

In fact, PETA has been using the Michael Vick incident to sell shirts, gain subscribers, and otherwise profit from someone who's killed a mere fraction of the animals they've killed in the past year alone.

"PETA has shamelessly used the horrific Michael Vick case to pad their group’s coffers, even though their track record of slaughtering thousands of helpless, adoptable animals is far more damning," said CCF Director of Research David Martosko. "Americans need to be aware of how PETA treats animals in their care and reject the group’s overt hypocrisy."

I mean for crying out loud - two employees of PETA in North Carolina admitted personally killing dozens of dogs and cats in what was literally a "death van" and then tossing the lifeless bodies of the critters into a nearby trash dumpster.

Again, dogfighting and those who torture the dogs to prepare them for the fights are fine examples of cruelty to animals. I'm not saying that isn't the case. My point is that you can't take it seriously when the screams of cruelty are coming from those responsible for puppy-killing deathmoblies. You wouldn't listen to a serial killer speaking out against a man who committed second-degree manslaughter, so why would you listen to an organization responsible for killing over 14,000 animals speaking out against a man who killed 8? The math doesn't add up. The logic doesn't add up.

Yes, Michael Vick killed animals.
But PETA killed thousands more this year alone.

And they're still out there, killing more dogs and cats every day, all the while yelling how killing animals is wrong and cruel.

At least they locked up Vick. When are we finally going to arrest every member of PETA?

And don't even get me started on the other animal-rights terrorist groups...

(www.PETAkillsanimals.com)
(Their press release about the PETA versus Vick advertisement)







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Children's Museum and Racism?

That's what Mayor Daley keeps implying (no, wait, he's blatantly shouting it) - that opposition to moving the Children's Museum from its current smaller location at Navy Pier to a larger space in Grant Park constitutes as racism. That opposing the placement of a new and expanded Children's Museum in Grant Park automatically means that you fear a horde of minority children and poor people cluttering up the rich white folks' neighborhood.

Well, Daley - such is not the case, and it makes YOU the racist. Or at least a sellout.

The real brainchild behind this is Jean Pritzker, the billionaire president of the board of the Children's Museum. What it all assuredly comes down to is that the expanded museum allows for more customers coming in at $8 a head, and the location allows for lots of public-transportation-fed customers as well as ample parking for those who are more likely to waste $8 a person to enter a Children's Museum.

You all know that I'm a capitalist and a realist (which I think equates to a cynic), but I'm definitely siding with Alderman Reilly on this one, because my sense of tradition and opposition to hypocrisy outweigh the acceptance of another rich person just wanting to get richer. The main argument being made on his side of the campaign to keep the museum out is certainly NOT one of racism - it's legal precedence. Grant Park has had a 171-year history of being legally protected from these kinds of construction projects. That protection was made in 1836, and has been reaffirmed four times by the Illinois Supreme Court: that Grant Park be formally protected as "Public Ground -- A Common to Remain Forever Open, Clear and Free of any Buildings, or other Obstruction Whatever."

It's as simple as that. End of argument. Case closed. No museum, kthxbye.

Daley, do you think that this museum, funded and led by your billionaire friend, is the best opportunity that Grant Park has seen? There have been dozens of projects proposed for that parcel of land - and all of them have been turned down. If they hadn't been turned down, there would be no Grant Park left other than the name itself, and that doesn't sound like a place that is "forever open, clear and free of any buildings" at all - does it?

Reilly isn't alone in this fight, either. Some aldermen are joining the cause because Reilly is right about the legal precedence, and generous enough to offer suggestions of other places WITHOUT the legal protection that Grant Park has where the new museum could be built. Some are joining purely because Daley is throwing his weight around and vetoing the decision. This ruffles the feathers of some of the other City Council members, since city projects in THEIR wards have almost always been at THEIR discretion (though it's usually an emphatic "yes") and having that decision power vetoed by the Mayor is causing a disturbance among the aldermen. Some are probably just joining in anger of Daley throwing around his racism accusations when there obviously is none.

Here's a sample of what Daley has been saying:

"You mean you don't want children from the city in Grant Park? Why? Are they black? Are they white? Are they Hispanic? Are they poor? You don't want children? We have children in Grant Park all the time. This is a park for the entire city. What do you mean no one wants children down there? Why not? Wouldn't you want children down there?"

If I may, now that most of the factual information has been presented, I'd like to address the mayor's questions in my usual rant-like and mildly-offensive manner:

Leave the race out of it, Daley, and maybe you'll learn something. No, we don't all want children around. In fact, I'd probably be voting to keep kid-friendly buildings out of my neighborhood. Why? Because they're (in general) whiny, obnoxious brats who cause disturbances in peaceful places - never completely satisfied and always ready to verbalize that at any given point in time, appropriate or not. "Are they poor?" Of course they're poor, they're children! They don't have money to contribute to society! In fact, humans are the species with the WORST duration of time between birth and being able to contribute back to the community. It takes us, on average, nineteen years. If a lion cub took nineteen years to make satisfactory contributions back to the pack, it would surely have been eaten in the process. Children may be our future, but they certainly don't make it seem like it'll be a bright future. And they are certainly NOT our greatest resource. Our greatest resource is probably money. Not children.

And before you get all "my child is the bestest ever and the cutest too" on me, I'm sure it is. To YOU. If Heaven is in the eyes of your children, then I can say without a doubt that Hell is in the eyes of OTHER people's children. They're not all smart, they're not all cute, and they're definitely not all "precious" - all reasons why I wouldn't want an influx of them in my neighborhood, Daley!

So let's keep the Children's Museum where it is - over at Navy Pier with the other kid-friendly attractions, so I know exactly where to avoid running into your children. I'm sure you'd agree it's for the best, parents.

(Article saying it's racism)
(Article saying it's not racism)
(Someone who seems to really get the idea)







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Chicago Traffic: 2nd-Worst in the Nation

I am not a driver.

I just had to get that out of the way, so you know that the rest of this post is going to be only pure facts from the article I read, or pure opinion that should be taken with a grain of salt. Last time I was behind the wheel of a car was 2001, and that was just getting some practice hours in before thinking about going for my driver's license, which I obviously never bothered to get. Of course, that's because I moved here to Chicago, under the impression that I would never need a car here - thanks to the public transportation system.

In retrospect, maybe it wasn't all that horrible of a decision. For all the guff my friends give me about not owning a car or being able to drive, and how crappy the CTA runs here in the city - I can at least rub their noses back in the fact that in comparison, I think the vehicular congestion and waste of resources is a much crappier system to be a part of. Plus, I moved here to Chicago from the city of Los Angeles - so I technically upgraded. While Chicago is #2 or #3 worst in a lot of these categories of horrible driving conditions, at least L.A. stays put at #1, though not by a huge margin.

According to the study results that were done on traffic conditions and congestion and delays and whatnot - every year, the average Chicago motorist loses 46 hours of time stuck in traffic during peak hours. Back in 1995, they only lost 33 hours per year, so you can see that the incline keeps going. Every year, more than an entire average WORKWEEK is lost just because of peak-hour traffic, per driver. The amount of fuel that adds up to, per driver, is 32 gallons. The total cost is $906, just due to traffic alone. When you account for the fact that there are millions of drivers out there, it's a total of over 203 million hours lost and costs over $4 billion annually.

The 203 million hours lost puts Chicago smack dab in 3rd place, with New York losing 384 million hours a year and Los Angeles taking the cake with 491 million hours lost. But the real shame brought to Chicago is that it is #2 in the category of Time Indexes. A Time Index is how to calculate how much time you should prepare in advance to make a trip due to delays. Chicago has a Time Index of 1.47, which means that for every 20-minute drive you take, it's going to really take 29.4 minutes. Only Los Angeles has a higher Time Index, and it's only higher by .03 - meaning it'll take a full 30 minutes for that 20-minute trip in the City of Angels.

Of course, I don't put much stock in the Time Index system, after taking a look at it. I mean, it's a great idea in theory, but it's that base-time calculation that befuddles me. Were these trips timed at 20 minutes based simply on drives taken during non-peak hours? Is that 9pm? Midnight? 3am on a Sunday? There's no way to get a "lab test" or any real scientific control done on a commute, so it's very difficult to predict what your base time for any drive would be, meaning that any calculation using a Time Index is going to be rather fruitless.

Here's something that I thought interesting: judging by the numbers, the study shows that the city of Chicago has over 4.4 million drivers on the road. That's the number they used to multiply the 46 hours and $906 lost annually per driver to get those astronomical numbers for the city itself. So what about the third number that they calculated? If every driver is wasting 32 gallons of gasoline per year, then that means that every year over 142 million gallons of gas are being wasted.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill only lost about 11 million gallons of crude oil. Every year, Chicago is wasting more gasoline than almost 13 Exxon Valdez spills.

And people still give me grief about taking city transportation? I'd rather deal with "slow zones" than this mess. Losing $906 a year, on top of whatever it costs to run and maintain a car and keep it filled with gas, let alone parking in the city? No thanks. $906 could buy more than twelve 30-day CTA passes, so I could pay for a year's worth of transportation with the EXTRA WASTED money that a Chicago driver loses in that year.

Every now and then, with all of the muck and mire that the CTA gets dragged through, there are still things that make me appreciate it just enough to keep following and using it. Aside from the colorful cast of characters you meet on buses and trains, there are a few nice things about using public transportation - even if it means relying on the frequently-unreliable. And there's the financial benefit. Something tells me that buses aren't going to fare anywhere near cars when you consider the traffic and time-loss implications (they're in the same traffic, plus making stops along the way) - but the trains make up for it all, even when you take into consideration all of the "slow zones" that commuters seem bogged down with.

Maybe it really is faster than driving. It's certainly cheaper, for now. But then again, I guess you get what you pay for.

(A version of the article printed in the RedEye)
(A pretty graph of some of these numbers)







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Back to School Special: Part 2

It's only about halfway through September, only about two weeks into most school years, and already the news articles are flooding in about school behaviors and suspensions and even one article about some little girl bringing in a grenade for show-and-tell. So I guess it's time to ring the bell, have you students find your seats and shut the hell up - here are your lessons for the day.

Lesson #1: How NOT to wear a shirt.

As you'd expect, there has to be at LEAST one mention of a "kids get suspended for untucked shirts" article. It's written into so many school dress codes, and every year the teachers and principals get riled up about it, and you just KNOW someone's going to get suspended. This time it was 70 kids at Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Well, okay, they didn't get suspended for not tucking in their shirts - they got suspended for a more asinine and hilarious reason: protesting the dress code about tucking in their shirts. It's a suspendable offense to encourage other students to violate school rules or regulations. FINALLY, a school law I can support, if it means getting protesting kids to shut the hell up and get back to learning.

For those of you who don't understand why a school would even bother to care about shirts being tucked in, this school in particular had a student who wore a shirt that was too long and untucked, and managed to bring a weapon into school. The superintendant immediately called for shirts to be appropriate lengths and tucked in, to avoid this problem in the future.

For you students out there - follow the damned rules. A school is no place to be hellbent on protesting and fighting "the man" because of rules you think are unfair. Tough. Rules will always be unfair, you'll always be given the short end of every stick, and you keep your head down and play by those rules or you wind up getting suspended or expelled. In the real world, you get arrested, sued and possibly attacked for pulling stunts like that. Fighting for what you believe in is totally cool and fine, but do so in other places than school. You're not supposed to fight in school, anyway - or are you going to protest THAT rule too?

Lesson #2: How to wear a shirt.

For this lesson, we look to Canada, where a 9th-grade newbie wore a pink shirt to school and was harassed and threatened by bullies - being called a homosexual and being set upon by a group of 6 to 10 older students. Two seniors who found out about this incident decided to finally do something about it - once and for all.

They got together about 75 pink shirts and brought lots of pink material for making headbands and armbands, passing them out to the other schoolkids in support of this one freshman who had been victimized. Some students brought in pink clothing of their own, or things like a pink basketball - anything to show up and show support. In the end, about half of the school's 830 students had pink.

The bullies, frustrated by this show up support and what they probably considered to be flagrant homosexuality, wound up furiously throwing chairs and trying to throw around what little weight they had left in the populous. The students responsible for the show of support, David and Travis, said, "Kids don’t need this in their lives, worrying about what to wear to school. That should be the last thing on their minds."

Couldn't have said it better, kids. Which is why I still think it's a good idea to consider school uniforms or stricter dress codes. The less kids have to think about what to wear to school, the less attention will be brought to what kids are wearing, and the more attention that leaves for school work and LEARNING.

Lesson #3: Sexy dancing is not for school dances.

Another school year beginning also wouldn't be complete without a look into the war against sexy dancing. While I'm not talking about Footloose-strong bans on dancing or anything of the sort, I'm just talking about kids and their lewd and lascivious dance moves being perpetrated on the dance floor. And parents and teachers are STILL trying to take a stand against it in any way they can think of to fight it.

So why care? What reason could I possibly have against the freedom of speech, twisted in a bastardization that "dance is the speech of the body" or some hippie-ism? Because it's a SCHOOL DANCE. I don't even understand why schools still have dances of this variety, other than the blatant fundraising that schools get away with. Pay for tickets, pay for food and drinks, pay for pictures to be taken - just another way for schools to drain money from students and, of course, their parents. But apparently the days of decent dancing and bringing a date are long gone - they're now the nerd version of raves, complete with inappropriate outfits, inappropriate music, and inappropriate dancing. Dark corners, glowsticks and humping the crap out of each other on a dance floor? I don't know why a school would even THINK of letting this go on.

My real beef here isn't with the school for hosting these events, or parents for not teaching their kids any better - my real quarrel here is with the students themselves. You know, I'm not that old. I understand the sexual nature of some dances. I was once a pubescent teenager who'd thrill at the chance to dry-hump the ass of some pretty girl in my class. But even if given the chance, there's no way in HELL I'd be able to do so in front of my Geography teacher, Mrs. Chin - or my AP Chemistry teacher, Dr. Darakjian. To even contemplate a minimal sexual-nature act in front of any of these school figureheads would cause an erection to disappear faster than a bowl of spiked punch.

And what ever happened to the good ol' days of spiked punch? What, you're comfortable risking getting kicked out for butt-grinding, but wouldn't want to risk anything to slip some rum in the punch?

Kids - freaky-deaky dancing is perfectly normal for teens your age. But there's a time and a place for it. The time and place is when parents aren't awake and where parents and teachers would not go. Basements with your teenage friends, a hallway closet, an authentic warehouse rave - these are appropriate places to get your "freak on" without the watchful eye of chaperones and assistant-principals.

There's the bell. Class will resume at a later time, possibly after you've had time to recover from the cafeteria food.

(Article about Lesson #1)
(Article about Lesson #2)
(Article about Lesson #3)







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Kia Vaughn Withdraws - No Money Shot

Surprise, surprise. I called it. Kia Vaughn (aka "the ho") has officially withdrawn her lawsuits of defamation and slander that she brought up against Don Imus and CBS Radio (among others) on the exact day that Imus negotiated a $20 million deal and got his radio show back. That move alone won her the official title of "ho" in my book, since she did a notoriously dispicable thing just for the money.

As I expected, it was pretty damned obvious she didn't have a leg to stand on in the court case, let alone the notion of having to defend that the things said were lies in the first place.

I mean, first off, she was never targeted by any of the statements. Nobody seems to recall anything other than the two words that sparked the controversy in the first place, but the one that came right before "nappy-headed hos" just happened to be the word "some". Got that? "Some," not "Kia Vaughn" or any targeted member of the team. Had he said "all" instead, she might have grounds to file, since she would invariably be a member of the "all" collective - but it is in no way possible to claim that she is without-a-doubt a member of the "some" collective that Imus was referring to.

Plus, again, it's only defamation and slander if someone actually believes it.

The part of this story's ending (for now) is the statement being made on Kia Vaughn's side of the now-dropped case. Kia Vaughn had no comment. Her lawyer didn't even have a comment. But Kia Vaughn's lawyer's spokesperson had a comment to make? He basically said that Vaughn has chosen to "focus" her attention to her journalism major at Rutgers and her position on the basketball team. "Her strong commitments to both have influenced her decision to withdraw the lawsuit at this time," the statement said.

I think she realized that nobody wants to play on a team with - or hire as a journalist - a ho.

(One story covering the withdrawal)







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Illegal Immigrants and the House of Representatives

I am shocked and appalled of the truth of the situation, and I want to fully applaud and rally support for Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) and the resolution she had introduced back in Jan. 07 and still sits in Committee since Feb. 07. Here's where it all begins, and my mouth starts hitting the floor:

Our Constitution currently says that representatives in the House of Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the number of persons in each state.

Now on the surface, that doesn't seem like an issue at all. Especially when you consider that it wasn't all that long ago that a black person only counted as three-fifths of a person when counting population with the census. How far we've travelled since then. The issue arises when you consider the fact that we have tens of millions of illegal immigrants cluttering up our country. Here is an interesting tidbit that I picked up from Rep. Miller's letter to the editor she sent to the Washington Post:

"Montana has one representative for a population of about 895,000 citizens. The 34th District of California has one representative but fewer than 420,000 citizens."

California, breeding ground for the infestation of illegal immigrants (what with its sanctuary cities of lawlessness), has so many non-citizens cluttering up the census that they are getting a bloated representation in our government. While the 34th District of California isn't the most populated by illegal immigrants, it's known for being the most Hispanic/Latino populated district. The only figure I found for the population of the district (population, not citizens) was "over 600,000" - and I don't know how old that number is. Which means that their Representative should have less than 70% of the power currently held. Less than 70% of that district's population are CITIZENS of the United States - so why should they be allowed to have an oversized say in what happens in the government?

H.J. Res. 6, sponsored by Candice Miller, would amend that part of the Constitution to apportion the representatives according to the number of citizens of the United States, rather than just the number of persons in each state.

When you think about it, it makes nothing but sense and you might even get as furious as I was over how screwed up the system currently is and that NOBODY seems to notice. Why should illegal immigrants affect the governmental representation that makes laws for CITIZENS of the United States? Why would we let criminals buff up the power of their districts to attempt to give them amnesty for their crimes?

It's ideas like these that make me ponder other things. Like the Electoral College when electing a president - wouldn't this change have to be made in order to properly divy electoral votes when having an election? That if we were counting the number of citizens instead of the population, California wouldn't be AS large of a number and neither would Texas? Maybe then we could get fairer representation for all the states and the citizens living in them. I'd rather have states like Montana and North Dakota and even West Virginia (smallest immigration percentage, according to the 2006 census) getting a little more pull and taking away some pull from California and Texas and other illegal-immigrant-heavy states. Candidates shouldn't have to pander extra hard in states for those oversized electoral votes. They should be able to focus on states with more actual citizens - the ones they'd be in charge of at the end of it all.

I don't care how much you point your finger at the fact that our founding fathers were "illegal immigrants from Europe" when they made the Constitution - that's why they had to eventually set up immigration laws and citizenship, to regulate things and keep the populous in balance.

It's time that we replace more "persons" with "citizens" in our Constitution and other legislation.

Sorry, Lincoln, but I'd rather have a "government of the citizens, by the citizens, for the citizens" that shall not perish from this earth.

Oh, and as always...

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS ILLEGAL.

(Rep. Candice Miller's letter to the editor)
(More info on H.J. Rep. 6)

(News article from the Chicago branch of the insanity)







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Immigrants vs Western Union

It's a tale as old as time (well, the time when illegal immigrants started flooding the USA) - illegal immigrant crosses border, takes up a job that should have gone to an American citizen, and when his low (but higher-than-you'd-think) paycheck comes in, there's a quick dash to the Western Union to wire ill-gotten monies back home to his relatives who are feeding off the crimes of their border-crossing savior. Now try thinking that thought WITHOUT the words "Western Union" - and you'll find that it's a difficult task.

After all, Western Union is just about the only way we tend to think about wiring money from one place to another. It's embedded in our collective minds the same way that Kleenex is synonymous with "tissues" and Band-Aid is synonymous with "adhesive bandages". It's this dominance over the money-wiring industry (not to mention efficiency and effectiveness) that allows Western Union to pretty much set its own fees and there's little, if any, alternative to get your money to someone else as quickly as they can.

That's where the illegal immigrants come in. Some jackass immigration advocate named Carlos Arango is organizing the Chicago branch of the Western Union boycott that's supposedly happening around the country. Mostly in high-illegal cities, of course. Their problem with the system is that Western Union (and I quote):

"They get all this money, and all they have to do is push a button" to send the money over, he said.

Yea, that's right, asshole. They get your dirty money, push a button, and your criminal funds go off to Mexico and your relatives. And they have every damned right to charge you whatever they want in order to do that.

It's called business - and they're quite good at it.

You know what you SHOULD try to do? Go somewhere else. If you don't want to be charged $10 by the best company just to get your money to your family, go find someone else to do it. The choices are few and far-between, but you ALWAYS have options. You could pay some OTHER illegal $5 to simply walk back to Mexico and deliver the money for you. Odds are that the process would take a lot longer, and would be less reliable that your money would actually get there. You have the choice. It's just really freakin' obvious which is the best choice. And unfortunately, it will cost you that $10.

You know what you SHOULDN'T try to do? Demand things of the business that's been properly handling your financial transactions and threaten to withhold your business from them. First off, you're asking them to donate $1 per every money transfer toward economic development in the U.S. and in countries being sent money. Do you even understand the word "donate", you numbskull? It's a voluntary decision to be charitable, not a contractual obligation spurred on by angry protesters! And why would that money be put into economic development in all of these countries where you need to send your money? On a national level from a government standpoint, I could see that helping other countries economically helps us economically - especially when it means fewer criminals will cross the border to steal work from our citizens because their country is in the crapper. But on a business standpoint for a company that makes billions of dollars BECAUSE your country is in the crapper and that's why you need to wire money there? That would be BAD business. And no amount of protest will lead to a company doing BAD business to appease the foolish masses.

Oh, and as far as the above statement goes, about some kind of anguish that the company charges $10 for the employee to "get the money and push a button" - are you arguing that the effort required to wire the money is so seemingly little that it doesn't warrant the $10 in your mind? Because it took a helluva lot of business savvy and financial planning to SET UP the system in the first place. Plus, the business itself needs to pay to keep its doors open, keep the place running, and keep staff paid to they will come in to work and push the button that wires your money. It's called running a business - and it takes money to do that, you dumbass!

"They are becoming billionaires on the backs of immigrant workers," Arango said during a news conference near a Western Union check-cashing store in Pilsen.

Western Union spokesman Daniel Diaz wouldn't comment directly on the boycott, saying: "We are very proud to provide consumers with fast, reliable and trusted service."

You're damned right, Diaz! You have every right to set your prices, because you're the best in the business with the fastest and most reliable service available. If any of these protesters give you lip about your prices, you should remind them of the easiest solution to their problems:

"You don't want to pay to wire money? Then go the hell back to your own country where you belong and then you won't have to wire money anymore!"

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS ILLEGAL.

(News article from the Chicago branch of the insanity)







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Cats are on the Menu!

Hah! I come up with a great idea, and thankfully it is being utilized somewhere around the world! As some of you may remember from this earlier post, I suggested that our response to the overpopulation of dogs and cats in this country should be to simply EAT them. After all, animals are made of meat, and if we have too many of an animal, logic would dictate that we eat them to "thin the herds".

It's already happened in China, that the overflowing lake caused an infestation of rats, so their logical response was to catch and eat the rats. Of course, it was more of catching the rats and selling them to restaurants by the kilogram, where they'd then be killed and cooked and served as a delicacy. Nevertheless, a problem of too many animals resulted pleasantly with "eat the animals" as a solution.

So now we come to Australia. Feral cats (descendants of housecats who were left to fend for themselves) have become a huge problem in the outback. The cats are killing off all of the smaller animals in the wild, which apparently is a bad thing for the Australians. Somehow. Anyway, one woman in Alice Springs has decided to take my advice (I don't know if she got the idea from reading my blog, but I assume she did, because I didn't hear about this until after I'd posted my idea, so it must have logically come from my post) and brought forth an entry in a cooking contest which was a wild cat casserole - kind of a stew with marinated feral cat meat.

The Aborigines have been eating them for years, actually - roasting the meat over an open fire - but apparently some of the others have more refined palattes. One of the cooking contest judges reportedly had to spit out the meat in a back room because she found it "impossibly tough".

For any of your gourmets out there, here's a rundown of the recipe:

Wild Cat Casserole

The meat should be diced and fried until it is brown. Then lemon grass is to be added along with salt and pepper and three cups of quandong, which is a sweet desert fruit.

It is recommended that the dish be left to simmer for five hours before being garnished with bush plums and mistletoe berries.

Wow! Sounds like a nice holiday dish! I guess the question that's on all of your minds (or it at least WILL be after I've posed the question now) is, "So what does feral cat taste like, anyway?" Well, the report says: "The meat is said to taste like a cross between rabbit and, perhaps inevitably, chicken." I guess sounds about par for the course, a bit of rabbit for the speed and jumping talents, and chicken because - well, doesn't everything default to chicken on our primitive tastebuds?

Say what you want, PETA - fact is, I CALLED IT! Cats are on the menu, and maybe someday this recipe will travel across the Pacific to our humble nation and our humble palattes.

(Proof that I can't make this stuff up - and that I totally called it!)







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Back-to-School Special

Here in Chicago, it's the first day of school. Which means that in a few weeks, it'll finally be time to take down the "Back to School" sales and really pitch in with the holiday-themed items. I've already seen tons of displays up for Hallowe'en candy, which you can apparently now purchase far enough in advance to wind up eating the entire collection of "fun-sized" candies and still pick up replacements at a discount. But that's a topic for another day: I'm here to relay some messages to the little ones out there who are starting their first days of the new school year.

For the elementary school children:

LEARN TO READ, WRITE AND DO 'RITHMATIC!

We can't all be geniuses who learn to read at age 18 months, but the least you can do is keep at it and become literate - so in time, you'll learn how to spell, how to expand your vocabulary and then you'll be in a position above practically 70% of the population when you're in high school. Of course, knowing how to spell doesn't get put to good use (other than spelling bee trophies) until you learn how to write put your ideas into words. The faster you can pick that up, the better your chances will be of having people take your ideas seriously. As for math, don't be an idiot who has to count things with fingers, and needs to wear open-toed shoes in case they need to go above ten. I'm not saying that you have to take calculus or anything, I'm just saying that all of the good jobs involve degrees that require math - and a lot of the crappier jobs still require you to add and subtract quickly, let alone multiply and divide on a bad day. Trust me, math skills will help you save money in almost every situation if you know how to use it.

For the teachers and parents: in order to have your children learn to read, write and do 'rithmatic, you need to stop babying them! Not everybody is a winner, especially not your kids. They need to learn that someone is always better than them and only one person gets to take home the grand prize. If that's your kid, enjoy the moment while it lasts, because there's always someone at your heels, ready to be the next #1. Teams lose, because one did better than the other. Telling them that "everyone who plays is a winner" plants false ideas in their heads - try implanting good sportsmanship. The best way to do that is by demonstrating it, which means NOT being a jackass parent yelling at an umpire or coach about unfair calls and your precious child not getting enough play time. If you wanted your children to always get to play, you should be playing in a park with them as a family, not as a team.

For the high school children:

SHUT UP, PUT YOUR TOYS AWAY AND LEARN!

You know how your parents and grandparents will tell you boring stories about walking five miles to school, in the snow, both ways, and then using old contraptions like slide rules while hand-writing every piece of work because there were no new-fangled computers back then? LISTEN TO THEM! They didn't have your fancy toys, and they learned enough to get them through life, didn't they? Went to school every day because it's the law, AND they'd get a whoopin' if they were caught playing hookey? Studied real hard so they'd get good grades so they wouldn't get another whoopin'? Graduated high school and either went to college or got a job - something something more whoopin'?

It's called a "hard life" and it builds character! That's not just a catchphrase taught to all parents in a mandatory seminar. (Trust me, while all parents should have a mandatory seminar, this whole "character" notion is something bonus that comes from people who actually did it.) Things that are hard to do are usually the things worth doing. Hand-write an essay and you'll find you're more careful about your wording and making mistakes in the language. Try multiplying or adding something on paper instead of with a calculator every now and then - it's a good refresher and firing up those brain synapses keeps them active and healthy and can actually help ward off Alzheimer's.

As for your toys - leave them at home, where toys belong. Yes, every single human being on the planet now seems to have a cellphone - great for emergency contact and scheduling, but not for school time. Same goes for... just about anything electronic that distracts you from shutting up, paying attention and doing your damned schoolwork! I'm not going to promise you that every course and every lesson throughout high school is crucial to living in the real world - but every course DOES offer knowledge that IS necessary to being a well-rounded individual and the potential to not shame your family's name at some point in your life. You know all those studies that say Americans can't locate (insert country) on a map? Maybe if they'd paid more attention in Geography class, they wouldn't be screwing up and making our country the laughingstock in the education department that it currently is!

For the college-bound young adults:

QUIT WASTING TIME AND MONEY AND GET A JOB!

I'm currently more a believer in the idea that college really doesn't do much for you in the real world. And no, college is NOT the real world. It's just a lazy version of high school because parents are no longer part of the equation. They're not pushing you out of bed so you'll get to school/class on time. They're not checking up on your grades with report cards and parent-teacher conferences. They're just an ATM for when beer money supplies are low. This is the point that most college students pass through for some duration of their journey through college. Also the point where I'd yell at them to GET A JOB.

I also hear these tales about how college graduates make $500,000 more in a lifetime, or make double what a non-college graduate makes. What they DON'T mention is the insane amount of loans it generally takes to get through the four years of college for a standard degree. These loans build up, become huge, and even after consolidation - they're huge and you have to pay them with interest. The debt is staggering, and it can seriously ruin your credit rating. What good is an extra 50% salary if all the things you want to buy are off-limits due to bad credit?

You know, not everyone gets into college, either. There's currently an issue in Colorado over the fact that graduation requirements for high schools aren't high enough to match entrance requirements for colleges. So rather than make high school students learn more, or accept the fact that some of 'em aren't good enough or ready for college - they're dropping/lowering the admissions standards to get into college. That's just sick in my book. We're dumbing down so much in American schools, why bother having standards at all? Let's just throw some books at children, expect them to read them, realize they probably won't, then take a nap and wait for the next school year? College is for people who are smart enough and driven enough to warrant getting in. If you're not one of those people, you don't belong in college. Yea, even if you DID get in. Quit wasting everyone's time and just get a job.

Then there's the groups of people who try to convince you that without a degree, you'll never climb that ladder or gain entry to the job positions and types of "work you'll enjoy doing." I say that there are plenty of positions open where the work is something you can enjoy doing. Unfortunately, jobs aren't just about the work, they're about the company/business and co-workers and other employees and bosses that make a job a JOB. If I didn't have bosses yelling at me and deadlines that are unfeasible and co-workers who are a few rocks short of a box, I'd absolutely love the work I'm doing. I enjoy data analysis and reporting. I also enjoy my side-gig of writing articles like these. What it all comes down to is that you can always pick your career - picking everything else isn't up to you, it's all a crap shoot and work was never really meant to be fun.

If work were meant to be fun, they wouldn't have to pay you to get you to do it.

That's all for this segment of my Back-to-School Special. There will undoubtedly be a Part Two.

(The Colorado college stuff)







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