- You wouldn’t think sending your child to school would be that difficult of a task for parents, what with it involving placing them on a school bus and allowing the system to take it from there. Not a Herculean task, but for some parents in Decatur, Georgia, it’s proven extremely difficult to a criminal extent. Thus, more than two dozen DeKalb County parents were arrested this week for failure to send their kids to school. These arrests aren’t just for missing a few days, either; some of the children have more than one hundred unexcused absences. The excessive unexcused absences led DeKalb County Police officers to stage a sweep called "Operation Back in School". It netted 10 parents, all of them now charged with educational neglect. These arrests are part of a bigger plan under which police charged have over 300 parents for having children with anywhere from eleven to 140 unexcused absences in the past year. And just like kids in school are often given second, third, fourth and fifth chances to turn in missed assignments, retake tests and rectify other mistakes, these parents were allegedly given numerous opportunities to resolve these issues. Another 40 parents are still being sought by police with warrants for their arrest. You hate to see it come to this, but if your kid keeps skipping school and you’re that incapable of doing a thing about it, maybe you do need some time in jail to mull things over……
- I like this one a lot. As a big Chicago Cubs fan and a huge Pearl Jam fan, this is a good combination for me. Recently, Chicago-area radio stations and sports bars have begun spinning “All the Way,” a Cubs-themed ditty written by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder at the request of Cubs legend Ernie Banks. The Boston Red Sox may have Dropkick Murphys as their unofficial band, but now the Cubs have Eddie Freakin’ Vedder writing songs about them. The track features lines like “Our heroes wear pinstripes / pinstripes in blue / give us a chance to feel like heroes too.” Vedder recorded it last month during his solo concert at Auditorium Theatre, which was a high point in the career of a lifelong Cubs fan. If you’re a Cubs fan looking to get your hands on the tune, it will be available for downloading in the next few days, according to Pearl Jam's Web site, and depending on how high demand is, it may also be sold on CD and souvenir 45 singles. Here’s hoping that this song is the one that gets played after the Cubs break their 100-year drought and hoist that first World Series trophy since 1908……
- I don’t like cats. They’re aloof, they’re annoying and I’m also allergic to them. You won't find anyone out there less willing to take up for cats than me. That being said, I’m going to be siding with Norman the cat in the case of Norman v. former New York Mets minor leaguer Joseph Petcka. Petacka, a baseball player-turned-actor, is accused of brutally killing Norman the cat in a jealous rage after complaining that his ex-girlfriend cared more for the animal than she did for him. The trial kicked off this week in New York and it began with Assistant District Attorney Leila Kermani explaining that Norman died with broken teeth, broken ribs, a broken leg, a torn tongue, massive internal injuries including bruised lungs and a bruised liver and a chest cavity filled with blood. “The defendant, in a fit of anger and rage, beat a defenseless animal to death,”Kermani told the jury in her opening remarks Wednesday. “The defendant killed Norman simply because he was an angry, jealous and drunken bully.” Dude, I hope this isn't true, but I have a sinking suspicon that it is. Can’t you just picture this angry ex-jock, pissed that for the umpteenth time, his girlfriend is treating her precious cat better than him, so in a jealous rage he decides he’s going to prove a point to her? One hit turns into two, two into three and before you know it, dude is in a crazy, psycho rage and he’s killing this poor cat. The charges against Petacka include aggravated cruelty to animals for killing Norman on March 27, 2007, after a night of heavy drinking. Amazing! You mean to tell me he was potentially drunk on the night he allegedly murdered the cat? No way. If convicted, Petacka faces up to two years in prison. If he is indeed guilty, two years seems on the lenient side, Yes, I hate cats, but in this case I would have opted for kidnapping the animal, putting him in a box and dropping him off in the middle of nowhere, not actual physical violence. You have to be a pretty big scumbag for me to side with a cat over you, and Joseph Petacka looks to be just that type of scumbag. Well done, Joe…….
- Sadly, I have to say it’s time to score on for the trannies of the world. A former Army commander who underwent a sex change operation, claimed that he/she/it was discriminated against by the U.S. government, and on Friday, a federal judge ruled in her/his/its favor, scoring what is being hailed as an important victory for transgenders claiming bias in the workplace. The thing now known as Diane Schroer won her/his/its federal lawsuit against the Library of Congress after officials backed out of a 2005 job offer when told of her intention to become a transsexual. Honestly….I’m siding with the LOC here. How much of a debacle is that going to create when you hire a dude for a job and not long after he starts, dude shows up as a masculine-looking woman instead. That’s not going to be awkward and extremely, unnecessarily uncomfortable for everyone else in the office? At the time of the job interview for a position as a senior terrorism research analyst, David Schroer was a male. He informed those he interviewed with of his desire to be a woman, presumably after being asked everyone’s favorite interview question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Schroer’s answer, apparently, was in a dress and with a brand new gender. Schroer had his/her/its job offer pulled and felt his/her/its civil rights were violated, a claim the judge in the case agreed with, sadly. The judge will later rule on what financial damages Schroer is due, but I aruge that whatevr the cost, it’s an acceptable outcome for the Library of Congress. Rather than having some post-op trannie in your office, freaking everyone out, pay the damages and be glad to not have some twisted, sick, gender-swapping freak around. And yes, if you for any reason switch genders mid-life, you are a freak. You were made as either a man or a woman, and to decide that you want to change sides is unnatural, it’s perverted and wrong, period…..
- Hard to see where this went wrong. After a short-lived run, those bizarre, creepy, uncomfortable, uninteresting commercials for Microsoft and its inferior operating system featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates have been pulled from the air. Microsoft Corp. has retired the bizarre two-week-old ad campaign featuring Gates and Seinfeld after the spots fell flat with viewers. The ads show Gates and Seinfeld engaging in random banter at a mall shoe store and while living with a suburban family, trying to get in touch with regular people. In what I have to guess is an attempt to evoke the nothing-centric humor of Seinfeld’s legendary self-titled sitcom, he asks Gates nonsensical questions about the future of computing, and Gates responds with "signs" that he's on the right track, including “adjusting his shorts.” Microsoft is busy trying to claim that this was the plan all along, to pull the Seinfeld-Gates ads after a short run, to be replaced with new ads. “The notion that we're doing some quick thing to cancel (the Seinfeld ads) is actually preposterous,” Mathews said. “Today was always the day. ... Media buying is something you have to do months in advance.” Right, because why would you do something like yank ads that people hated and which were further turning them off to your subpar product? And no, the new “I’m a PC” ads are no more effective because….you guessed it, Windows still sucks as an operating system. That’s the cruel irony of this whole mess; no matter how good or bad the ads Microsoft puts out, it’s product is still inferior and so in the end, the ads are irrelevant………..
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