Middle fingers on TNT, Riot Watch! in the streets of Bangkok and how Twitter reflects society

- If you watched TNT’s Inside the NBA show Thursday night, you got a little dose of obscenity to go with your basketball, courtesy of Charles Barkley. The Chuck Wagon has never been politically correct or shy about loudly stating his opinions, but this one may have been a tad over the edge. While Barkley and fellow show panelists Ernie Johnson and Kenny Smith were discussing Lakers guard Kobe Bryant’s finger injury that has plagued him all season, Chuck extended his fingers to make a point and then decided that while his digits were up in the air, he may as well just give all of America a big middle finger - literally. After he shot the audience the bird, Johnson scrambled to cover for Chuck and with it being April Fool’s Day, EJ figured he had an way out. “Do me a favor and say April Fools for what you just did, that you were trying to be funny,” he pleaded with Sir Charles. But being who he is, Barkley wasn’t backing down, making nice or backpedaling. In response to Johnson’s life preserver, Barkley shot back, “For who?” Attaboy, Chuck. Not that I advocate giving millions of people the finger on national television, but if you have the balls to make that sort of gesture, then you darn well better back it up. Don’t pretend it was a joke, don’t say you’re sorry and stick with what you do best. As I once heard Chuck say during an interview, “No matter what you do in life, half of the people are going to love you and half of them are going to hate you, so you might as well be yourself. Well, there is no better examples of Charles Barkley being himself than this situation and as such, I would be disappointed if he hadn’t stayed true to himself. Having said that, in the future, maybe forego the obscene gestures on air, Chuck…………

- Kids often have precious, sweet memories from childhood events like Easter egg hunts. Searching for hidden treats with friends and family, enjoying superb spring weather and hunting down candy-filled plastic eggs or real, hard-boiled eggs and filling your basket with them is the sort of thing that sticks with you and brings a smile to your face years after the fact. Either that or they bring back memories of a horrific day in which you and one of your friends went to the park for an Easter egg hunt and found a dead body, but one or the other. The latter was true for two Des Moines, Iowa teens hunting for eggs in Beaverdale Park on Saturday morning. The teens discovered the man's body in the park at about 10:20 a.m. during Beaverdale's annual Easter egg hunt. At the time, there were about 100 children in the park, so one the one hand it’s fortunate that some of the older children found the body as opposed to younger children. However, I have a beef with this situation and with these teens. Simply put, what the heck were they doing taking part in an Easter egg hunt? They are freaking teenagers. If you are over the age of nine, you should not be hunting for Easter eggs, not in a public park and not in your back yard. It’s the same basic principle that holds true for wearing Halloween costumers and it’s an ironclad rule in life. If you are old enough to like members of the opposite sex or cross the street on your own, you should not be hunting for Easter eggs or wearing costumes all day on Halloween. So I suppose my real beef here is with the parents of these teens who allowed them to attend the Easter egg hunt and didn’t step in to stop them from making fools of themselves. Just because the teens founds a dead body and may have helped solve a crime or missing persons case doesn’t justify them participating in an event they should have been nowhere near. Step your game up, parents of Des Moines, and teach your kids the valuable lessons they need to learn in order to not become embarrassing members of society…………

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! It was on like freaking Donkey Kong in the streets of Bangkok today, where Thai Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thuagsuban issued an official order authorizing his government’s security director and other security personnel to remove the United Front for Democracy (UDD) protestors from the heart of the city. Protestors have been camping out on the streets of Bangkok for the past three weeks and finally kicked things up a notch with mass demonstrations on Saturday. They converged on the heart of Bangkok’s shopping district and vowed to remain until new elections are called. What an amazing site it was to see tens of thousands of red-shirted protestors, like a giant wave of blood, seizing control of a main intersection, blocking roads leading to posh shopping malls and five-star hotels and demanding that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of Thailand do something about their concerns. “We will remain here until the government declares that Parliament is dissolved,” said Veera Musikapong, one of the leaders of the protesters. The government didn’t react well to people questioning its authority and angrily ordered the demonstrators out of the area. The Thai Foreign Ministry made ominous statements about how the protestors would be handled, saying the government would follow a “multistep approach, from light to heavier measures.” In other words, batons, water canons, tear gas and abusive police officers are going to be put into play. Don’t believe me? Consider the measure approved Tuesday by the Thai cabinet which extended the use of a law that allows the military to clear out protesters and make arrests. Abhisit said Saturday that protesters had exceeded the limits of their constitutional right to demonstrate and that the government would use whatever means necessary to evict them. Um, Mr. Prime Minister? That is what freaking protests are all about: exceeding limits, stepping over boundaries and making your voice heard. If the government is exceeding its limits and going too far, then the people must be willing and able to match those gestures with equal resolve in order to get results. In a futile attempt to pacify the protestors, Abhisit offered to call new elections within nine months — a year before his term ends — but protest leaders rejected the offer on the grounds that the government is illegitimate to begin with. The Red Shirts have immense support in many parts of the country and analysts believe the group would win handily if elections were held now. Their leader of choice is Thaksin Shinawatra, who was removed as prime minister in a 2006 military coup. What I love most about the Red Shirts is that they are firing back at what they perceive as the undue influence of the country’s bureaucracy, military and elite. Nothing chafes my hide like The Man keeping the little guy down and I don’t give a crap what boundaries are crossed if the aristocracy needs to be brought to its knees. Thaskin, who is no longer in Thailand because he is wanted by Thai authorities for a corruption conviction, addressed the crowd by video link on Saturday and urged them to fight for equality. As for those Thai citizens who are complaining about the disruption of their daily lives…..get over it. Sacrifices must be made in order to affect change and complaining is only going to slow the process. Fact is, up until Saturday, the had until mostly affected a neighborhood of government ministries and offices. That wasn’t getting the job done so the protestors ratcheted things up by blockading the main commercial district. Threats from the government aren’t going to dislodge them and I feel a showdown coming. That’s good news and it could very well mean riot time, so bring it on…………

- This would be why it’s a good idea to double- and triple-check everything when going to get a tattoo. As someone with experience in this area, I can say with assurance that I made 109 percent sure that every detail was exactly right and anyone whose IQ is above 41 does the same thing. What with a tat being more or less a permanent part of your body for the rest of your life, doing your due diligence just makes sense. Well, it makes sense to most of us, anyhow. But for Nova Scotia resident Amy Ullock, laziness and stupidity clearly won out when it came time to get inked and now she is paying the price. Her tattoo was supposed to read “Beautiful,” with the word artfully etched onto her arm. Instead, she ended up with a grammatically butchered tat reading "beatiful." Things came off the tracks when her tattoo request was typed onto a computer, shown to her and stenciled on her. She had ample opportunity to recognize and correct the mistake during this time, but failed to do so until after the ink was already pounded into her arm. It was then Ullock realized there was a letter missing in the tattoo. Enraged, she got into a heated dispute with the tattoo artist at the tattoo parlor and their battle eventually landed in small claims court. On Thursday, a judge ruled for intelligence, responsibility and common sense by rejecting Ullock’s claim and ruling that she was the "author of her own misfortune." Her claim for restitution was denied and the judge decided that Ullock and others in a similar situation are to blame if they don't catch a tattooing error. Ullock isn’t the first to suffer this fate and unfortunately, she won't be the last. I feel no sympathy for her because she knew (or should have known) what was at stake and made sure her tat looked exactly as she wanted it to look. This shouldn’t dissuade those of you who would consider a tattoo…..well, unless you have the IQ of a potted plant, that is…………

- Like so many other things in society and the world in general, Twitter is a fairly accurate reflection of the world from which is draws its existence. Sure, there will be aberrations and abnormalities, but on the whole, the true composition of the world makes Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. what they are. Bearing this in mind, I was not the least bit surprised to learn that some 73 percent of Twitter accounts have tweeted fewer than 10 times, that according to a new report from Barracuda Networks, a Web security company. What that means is approximately 36.5 million Twitter users don’t put any content out and are focused mainly on following others and consuming instead of contributing. Twitter is becoming more of a news source than a place to interact, a development that would seem to raise serious questions about the site’s growth potential. As of December, a mere 21 percent of Twitter users had at least 10 followers, followed at least 10 people and had tweeted at least 10 times. Instead, users seem to be simply using Twitter as a way to follow their favorite celebrities and nothing more. Anyone who hoped that Twitter would become a site where people would interact with friends and share their lives appears to have been hoping in vain. Keeping up to date with Ashton, Oprah or Chad Ochocinco would seem to be the primary reason to log in to Twitter for the overwhelming majority of account holders and I can't imagine a scenario in which that would change any time soon. The overarching lesson is that this is a world fully of lazy, procrastinating bums who want to be fed, served, provided for and taken care of without having to put anything into the process. Why make an effort to provide informative, interesting tweets if you can just sit back and allow others to do the work? And yes, my belief that most people aren’t nearly interesting enough to warrant their own Twitter feed holds true, but that’s not why nearly three-fourths of Twitter users aren’t tweeting. The reason for that is laziness, plain and simple……….