Wow, time flies when you’re having fun. Or when you’re drinking a Natural Light. Anyway, it’s been a whole week since I got something up on this beast so the topics are going to be a bit varied. In a way, this will also be a salute to some of the feedback I’ve been getting about the blog lately. And oddly enough, it’s feedback that I’ve received in person. Now, right there your interweb red flag should go up and you should be asking yourself, “Do these people understand the point of online communication, or are they Metallica fans? I’m going to side with the latter, but that’s just my opinion. So here’s a finger to those who think my topics are “too varied.” This bitch will be as varied as the Various-artist titles you find in the CD aisle at your local Megalo-Mart and you try to figure out what the hell the connection is between Black Eyed Peas “Don’t Phunk with My Heart” and Ben Folds Five “Brick.”
Various Topic Numero Uno
Censorship’s Trial Balloons - What happens when wartime news gets censored? By Liam Callanan
This comes straight out of the book titleed “Shit Our Government Does But You’d Really Rather Not Know About.” Did you know that there were 6 deaths on the US mainlaid during WW II? No? Well, neither did I. And that’s mainly because the government covered it up in the interest of “national security.” Turns out that Japan launched thousands of balloons from their shore that had bombs attached to them. Many floated to the US shore, and when some kids were out with their mother in Oregon, they thought the bomb was a toy and decided to drag it back to the car. You can imagine what happened next. Blam, 5 dead kids and a dead mother. But since the all-knowing gov’t thought we’d panic, they decided to keep it a secret and surpressed the press. All they had to say was that there’d been no property damage from the balloons, which was technically true. No property damage, just 6 dead people. Turns out that some of the balloons haven’t been discovered yet, so if you ever come across a bomb with some Japanese writing on it and a balloon attached, don’t fuck with it. I guess it serves us right, though, with all of the unexploded ordinance and radioactive waste we’ve left around the world on our conquests of any communist-dictatorship in the axis of they-must-be-evil.
Various Topic Letter B
Tallahassee Democrat | 06/06/2005 | FWC officers give warnings over pay issue
I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one, but I think it’s pretty screwed up. For the record, I’ve been the recipient of officer discretion once, but I’ve seen and heard a few things in relation to this that really get my goat. For the must part, they both could be grouped into one story that relates to a speeding checkpoint where I received a ticket. Fine…I speed…I get ticket. Cause and effect, I understand that. But when the officer tells me how they’re ticketing everyone (emphasis from Officer herself) no matter how small the infraction, then they (unsuspectingly) pull over another officer. The speeder asks for a reprieve and is turned down. Not 10 yards away from my vehicle, he pulls out his badge and lifts it just over the door for the ticketing Officer to see and they send him on his merry way. WTF? I love watered down terms like “officer discretion,” which really should read “people in power do whatever the fuck they want so that laws aren’t really laws but ‘guidelines,’ but not really guidelines either, so do as you please.” Except that wouldn’t read so well in a press release or news article. On a related note, read this article, which details how Tampa Police would give Bucs tickets that were confiscated from scalpers to friends and family. Now that’s officer discretion, yes sir.
Various Topic Numero III
Wired News | Man Gets Life Under Fetal Protection Law
Let me sum this one up for you: women tries to kill her unborn baby multiple times and is unsuccessful. She asks her boyfriend to help her out by stomping on her stomach, like any good mother would do to her baby if she didn’t want it. Boyfriend agrees to help, like any good boyfriend should. Boyfriend is successful and baby is aborted.
Recap: 1 dead baby, 1 happy mother, and 1 life sentence for boyfriend. Astute readers may ask themselves if the woman will receive any punishment for her attempted murder of the fetus? Nope, thanks to laws that guarantee her access to an abortion under the right-to-choose mantra. Lady justice, where art thou?
On to more light-hearted topics, because there is no sense in getting riled up over a few dead kids from WWII or a baby who died from stomach stomping.
I learned to wakeboard last weekend on Shawn’s boat. I’m trying to decide whether wakeboarding or skiing is more fun, and right now I’m leaning toward wakeboarding. I’ve been able to catch air over the wake, but not much more than 6-8 inches. I have to say it feels higher than that, though. Alas, I’ll have to practice more, which means hanging out on a lake and at Gator Joe’s with pretty girls and Bud Light. Sing it, Shawn and Justin…”Gator Joe’s, Gator Joe’s!”
Random side note, but has anyone gone shopping at the K ‘n K next to Home Depot in New Tampa on a Monday at 5:30 pm? If not, let me know when you can go. There’s quite a few talented business women who need groceries at that particular time of the week.
Now that I’ve run the various-topic-gamut, I’m going to see about removing some of these items from the front page of the blog. I’ll probably do a new section where interesting topics like the WW II deaths and the FWC officer discretion can go, so that you don’t have to read through the random bits. Although I think the random bits will probably be the most entertaining part of this site, I’m a bit biased.
Seacrest out.