I'm sayin', is all.

John McCain fails at logic.

2008-08-13T15:29:00.000-07:00

From a recent John McCain ad: "The real Barack Obama promises higher taxes and more government spending. So, fewer jobs."

What? Seriously? No. Just no. Can anyone explain how this is a valid argument, irrespective of soundness? Anyone?

The Need for Specifity When Discussing Melons

2008-08-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

It has recently come to my attention that the English call all varieties of melon "melon". This does not make sense to me at all. It seems natural (and logical) to differentiate these glorious fruits by their forenames, as it were. If you were having dinner with the Smith family, would you say "Say Smith, this is a lovely roast" and "Smith, how are the grandkids?" and "Smith your ass looks great in that dress"? I'm guessing not, unless...well, I'm not even going to go there. It's the same with melons!

"Those are some lovely melons!"
"Those are some lovely melons!"
"Those are some lovely melons!"

And therein the confusion lies. Those sentences should read (respectively, and I apologize to those on Facebook where I'm not sure the links will work) "Those are some lovely watermelons!", "Those are some lovely honeydews!" and "Nice tits!"

Considering the huge variety of melons (excluding the colloquial definition, about 27), just saying "Hey I want some melon" begs the question "Well what type, you jackass?" Can you imagine walking up to a melon bar and telling the...er...barman..."Hey, I'd like two slices of the melon, one slice of the melon and a whole melon, please"? Patently absurd jackassery, and I refuse to allow it to continue.

If this generality is allowed to continue, where does it all end? Do we go around calling all cheese "cheese" or all wine "wine"? It just cannot be allowed to happen. We've got to put a stop to it!

I propose invading England.

McDonald's

2008-07-14T04:56:00.001-07:00

Er, so I just saw a new McDonald's commercial on TV. In it, Ronald McDonald was in a tree luring small children over so he could give them fruit.

A park. A tree. A man in a clown suit. Fruit. Children.

That's damn creepy. I'm just sayin', is all.

Band of Evil Macaques Take Over Bovine Compound, Demand Voting Rights and Release of Political Prisoners from President Kiwi

2008-07-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Also, Macaques Can Apparently Talk

by Benjamin Lloyd

Maputo, Mozambique -- A band of decidedly evil macaques have taken a local cow compound hostage and a list of demands has been presented to president Kiwi.

At 0700 GMT, a group of macaques who have recently been accused of rambling on about many inane things into the ears of unsuspecting citizens stormed the local Haven de Vaca and took twenty-three cows hostage. At 0730, a list of demands was faxed to president Kiwi along with some photos of the macaques being evil and poking cows with big sticks. The list of demands is fairly extensive, including voting rights for all macaques, the release of all macaques in worldwide zoos, four pints of Ben and Jerry's One Sweet Whirled ice cream, and the island of Madagascar.

President Kiwi has heretofore expressed a desire to not negotiate with terrorists, but the level of outrage displayed by the cow and penguin citizenship has forced his hand. Kiwi has acquiesced to all of themacaques' demands save one: the ice cream. Ben and Jerry's is staunchly refusing to relaunch the One Sweet World flavor for any reason. A spokesperson released a press statement saying, "Hey, if we did it for them, we'd have to do it for everyone. Frankly, it's just not cost effective." B&J's stock has dropped considerably since the announcement.

Owing to the ice cream giant's staunch refusal to acquiesce to the macaques' request, Kiwi had no choice but to send in the SPAT (Special Penguins and Tactics) team to raid the compound. All of the cows were rescued, and all the officers of the SPAT team returned unharmed. However, two macaques were pip-slapped to death by the penguins' tiny, furious little flippers.

Also: Apparently macaques have evolved the ability to speak English. I'm sure someone cares about this, but no one could be reached for comment. -- A[P]P

The Southern Culinary Review

2008-07-06T21:10:00.000-07:00

Local Woman in Mississippi Starts Latest Food Craze

by Benjamin Lloyd

Chickasaw County, Miss. -- A new food fad is emerging from the back woods of the American Deep South. Previously made (in)famous for such famed foods as the deep-fried Twinkie, deep-fried Oreo, and of course fried chicken, a new craze is sweeping the South: deep-fried chocolate cake. That's right: deep-fried cake. Here is its incredible story.

It all began some six months ago with Clarice Culver, a 380-pound housewife in unincorporated Chickasaw County, Mississippi. Mrs. Culver, who suffers from atherosclerosis, or a hardening of plaque within the arteries, was rooting around in her single-wide for something else with which to clog her already-congested circulatory system (I asked our medical expert what her arteries looked like on the inside, and his prognosis was less than stellar: in a rare show of extreme sarcasm, he purchased a length of 4" PVC pipe and filled it with concrete) when she came across some week-old birthday cake and a decanter of frying oil.

"I thought to myself, 'Well heck! I can't let this all go'n to waste, now can I?' So I fired up the deep frier, battered [the cake] and tossed it in," Mrs. Culver reports. She claims she then ate the entire thing. It should be noted that not everyone believe's Mrs. Culver's story. Many claim that the chances of a cake lasting an entire week in her trailer are "ass-treadnomical [sic]." Despite these few naysayers, however, majority opinion rests on the side of Mrs. Culver.

From Accidental Delight to International Craze

The truly remarkable thing is how quickly delicacy exploded onto the international cuisine scene. From that first remarkably delicious cake, Culver knew she was onto something big. She immediately sped away to the nearest supermarket to purchase several different cake mixtures to decide which was the best. She went through white, yellow, orange, spice, and carrot cake mixtures before settling on devil's food chocolate as the most delicious. After perfecting her recipe she set off to rule the food world.

She set up a booth at the state fair where the cakes were a big hit, the first non-freak fair feature to outgross the Bearded Talking Cow for the first time in seven years. Culver was approached by a major culinary firm and sold the recipe for a record $42 billion. Though many in the industry were outraged by such a high price, and financial analysts had predicted that such reckless spending could push the country further into recession, the economy has seen a considerable boom since the transaction, with the newly-branded fried cakes having grossed nearly half the recipe price in a short 8 months.

Mrs. Culver has since fulfilled all her childhood ambitions, including having purchased a brand-new double-wide trailer and a 1996 Ford Thunderbird 5.0. We at the Associated [Penguin] Press have obtained exclusive rights to the original recipe, which we were able to obtain through a huge loophole in the contract Mrs. Culver signed with her buyers, and here it is, reproduced for you below:

Ingredients:
- 1 cake
- 1 gallon frying oil
- 1 frying basket made from old chicken wire
- frying batter of your choice

Roll cake in batter; place battered cake into basket; lower basket into oil; fry for 5 minutes. Eat.

Mrs. Culver claims to be working on a new secret recipe. We can only hope it will bring as much joy and heart disease as has her previous effort.

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Coming articles: Get a behind-the-scenes look at how a large, multinational news agency goes through the process of replacing a recently-sacked medical expert!; Guns: the loud killer; Space: Is there anything useful out there at all?
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"Gilligan's Island" Remake Dream Team: A Testament to How Boring My Job Gets

2008-05-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Gilligan -- Steve Carrell

The Skipper -- Reginald VelJohnson (you know, Carl Winslow from "Family Matters")

The Professor -- David Duchovny (Mulder)

Mary Ann -- Mila Kunis (Jackie from "That '70s Show")

Ginger -- Gillian Anderson (Scully)

Thurston Howell III -- Michael Caine (or perhaps Kelsey Grammer)

Mrs. Howell -- Betty White (if she's still alive (I didn't bother to check))

Thoughts?

A Friend of Bill W.

2008-03-25T19:37:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do something new for the blog (and me): I'm going to post a short story. It was written as an assignment for a creative writing class. It's short -- about 750 words -- and we were constrained by our professor only allowing us to use monosyllabic words. I'm rather fond of the final product, so I thought, Hey, why not? For my Facebook readers, I apologize for the lack of paragraph breaks. Something gets lost in translation from my blog to Facebook. If you go to http://imsayinisall.blogspot.com you'll have an easier time reading it.

A Friend of Bill W.

Up to this point in his life, Tom was a man who was, some might say, “fond of the drink.” Those who might say this would say it as friends will, when they tried to make it sound like it was all right, not a big deal, though he had just crashed down their stairs, or broke their chair, or, in one fun tale, barged (broke) in the wrong house at 3 a.m. They called him this so that they could pull a hat down to their eyes and shield them from the truth and thus the charge they all felt to help in some way. They did not see marks on his wife or his kids (there were none; he did not hit), and this helped them to feel that all was well.

Then, though, there were those who would call him what he was, and though they too said this as his friends, they were friends of the man he could be, not of the man he was. This last set of friends would call him what he was to try to get him to change, to see what they saw, and to fix it. This did not work.

So it is that we find him in a bar late at night. It is a bar: bar stools pushed to a long, coarse-wood bar top; a few booths lined the walls; two or three large drink stands with chairs in the space from the end of the bar to the door; some dark, dull glass looked out on the cold, lamp-lit glow of the street. He sat at the bar, on one of the stools, a full glass of scotch in hand.

He stared out into space. My wife is with child, he thought. A new kid. A new life to add to mine. One boy, three girls he had had by now, all grown. His new wife had one of each, both young. He did not think that, at this point, he would have more kids, but here he was, with two step-kids and one more on the way. He thought of his own kids, grown up, raised in the house with him, the way he was. He looked down at the glass, shook his head, slapped a five on the bar and walked out.
The cold air hit him; he looked left, then right, picked left and walked. He walked, found he had stopped in front of a store, saw a light blink, glanced into the store. The store was dark, and he stood in front of a light on the street; he saw a man in the glass look at him. The man was drawn, pale; fat, but looked too thin; eyes sunk on pouched dark half-moons; chin with rough fuzz; thin hair on his head not combed. He glanced down, and stood in shock. He saw that the man in the glass had on the same shirt and tie, the same three-pleat pants, the same look of shock on his face. The glass-man’s jaw hung down; his breath came in short, quick grey mists in the night air; his hands shook; he bent over and retched up some bile.

Tom stood up, looked at the green-brown pool on the walk in front of him, wiped his mouth. He looked up to the street signs, struck out south. He knew where to go. He walked fast, a near-jog. He saw the sign, found the stairs; ran down the stairs, turned the knob; walked in, closed his eyes to the bright light; looked out, was stared at. Smiled at. Hands on him, a push to the front. He looked out, saw help. Saw truth. He coughed, took a breath.

“My name is Tom, and I’m an—“

Attention everyone who reads this blog:

2008-03-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

I need ideas for a short story that's due at the beginning of May. I have a couple in mind, but any extra sparks of inspiration would be most welcome.

Dunkin' Donuts now sucks on a whole other level.

2008-03-15T21:24:00.001-07:00

Dunkin' Donuts sucks. On two levels:

1) Their donuts are lame. They're all cake donuts and, while I enjoy cake donuts occasionally, Krispy Kreme's yeast donuts are far superior.

2) Their freaking commercials.

The second level of sucking is the subject of this particular diatribe.

They've had, off and on for the past year or so, a commercial wherein a group of people are in a generic mass-produced coffeehouse (an obvious mockery of Starbucks), standing around staring at the menu. Then they start to sing. "My mouth can't form these words/ My mouth can't say these words/ Is it French, or is it Italian?/ Perhaps, Fritalian?"

The commercial is making fun of the silly names for some drinks and, I think more to the point, drink sizes. I will grant them this. Starbucks really should just call its sizes small, medium, and large. But they don't. And really, it's not hard to say "tall," "grande," or "venti," is it? I didn't think so. Other coffeehouses do this too, with slightly different names for sizes and drinks. But it's all pretty much the same. As I said, I grand them this: it's sort of lame. But then what happens in the commercial is this: John Goodman starts a voice-over, talking about how "normal" DD is, which, again, I can grant them. Then, though, he says "The Dunkin' Donuts Latte: you can order it in English." This is the point at which my head explodes.

Latte, you pricks, is an Italian word. You cannot order one in Inglese. Sure, you can specify the drink size in English, but the drink itself? No, you have to order that in Italian (unless of course you want to say "May I please have a medium cup of steamed, frothy milk with a shot of espresso [though that's another Italian word for which you should substitute "steam-pressed coffee"] in it?"). This bugs me so much that I actually wrote an angry e-mail to DD (which was, I might add, promptly received, read, distributed, discussed, and ignored).

I have continued my boycott on DD, which was began in response to Suckiness Level 1, but has since been expanded to include both levels of Suck.

On writing

2008-03-15T20:09:00.001-07:00

W.E.B. DuBois spoke of double-consciousness as it relates to race. Specifically, he posited that black people are always aware of being of a bipartite soul (or at least, feeling as they are of a bipartite soul). He describes it, in The Souls of Black Folk, as the "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

Emerson spoke of this phenomenon first, in 1843, but in a slightly different vein, and I find the DuBoisian concept a bit more apt for everyday life. But I digress. I'm going to borrow DuBois' term and apply it to writing. Authorship, really. I suppose one could consider it simply a gender-neutral version of Sandra Gilbert's concept of "anxiety of authorship" (which was itself borrowed from Harold Bloom (I'm beginning to wonder if there's any such thing as an original theory, here)), but it's more than that.

Bloom's anxiety of influence is the unpublished writer's desire to break free of his immediate literary forebears (think Cormac McCarthy "breaking free" of William Faulkner), finding his own voice and making his own path through the dense underbrush of the literary world. Gilbert's anxiety of authorship is mostly similar, though it deals with female authors. She said that women couldn't suffer from this particular anxiety (of influence), not having any female forebears against which to rail. So instead of struggling against their antecedents, they struggle against themselves, trying to find a voice of their own at all. Women are (were), according to Gilbert, stuck in the middle of the jungle and just trying to find a path -- any path -- to follow.

Now I've sort of digressed again (can you tell I'm enjoying my literary theory class?), but all of that actually has a point. In order to explain how my idea differs from those others that sound kind of similar, I needed to explain them. So now we can move on to the most important part of anything: me.

My idea is almost an amalgamation of double-consciousness and the anxiety of influence -- but not quite. See, a writer has a different sort of double-consciousness: following some 19th century critic whose name escape me's assertion that (and I'm paraphrasing here, obviously) every writer who aims to get published must be one of the most egotistical sons of bitches that's ever lived because he feels that, after careful review of all the great literature that has ever been published, he deserves to be put on the shelf along side them, so he has to have pride, and ego, and chutzpah. On the other hand, I can't believe that every author really feels that he is the be-all end-all of literature, so an author must, along with being egotistical, have a sense of humility, for he knows that there are some pieces of literature that can never be outdone -- at least, by him.

The creature that emerges is both full of himself and humble. He knows he's a better writer than 99.5% of the people on the face of the planet, but he knows that he'll never measure up to the other .5%. Now, this may seem a bit lopsided, but when you consider the relative awfulness of Dean Koontz (what? He sucks. Seriously. I put him below even the unpublished masses, because he's that awful. Dan Brown lies at .00001%) at the bottom of the 99.5% and the greatness of Shakespeare at the top of the remaining .5%, the divide between where a given author feels his talents to lie on this scale compared to where he feels the greatest writer(s) of English lie is just as immense (if not more than) as the divide between the writer's own perceived talent and the bottom of the barrel. A visual aide:

Dean Koontz @0% <--(the masses)--> Author @ 99.501% <--(other authors)--> Shakespeare 100%

And so, with this dualistic egotism-humility in mind, the author sets forth to publish. But this bipartite nature of his soul forces him to be very anxious about the prospect, and to wonder if he should publish at all. If he gets rejected, he'll be relegated to the masses; published, and he is at the bottom of a new barrel. The worst part about it, though, is that he knows that he will never surpass most of the authors who have already been elevated to the canon. It's like halving the distance between yourself and the door to your room. No matter how many times you halve the distance, you will always be infinitely far away from the door.

The anxiety my author feels is not the anxiety of Bloom or Gilbert, really. My author's anxiety stems, not from trying to break free of a seemingly oppressive/confining literary father (or mother (or lack thereof)), but from just trying to force his way into the same league as his literary forefathers. He hasn't even thought about breaking away from them yet; I guess this stage precedes Bloom's anxiety of influence in our literary psyche the same way that Lacan's Imaginary Order comes before the Real Order in our regular psyche. Without the influence of the forebears, the unpublished author has absolutely no chance of making it into the canon, so he can't think about breaking away until he's milked it for all its worth.

The little engine that could (blog).

2008-03-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

OK. I know I've said this before, but you're all going to have to just trust me this time.

I am going to update this stupid thing on a semi-regular basis. I mean, I really think I have a lot to say, and though it's all completely useless and utterly trite, I nevertheless feel that it should be shared, so that the rest of the online community (i.e. the 2 or 3 people that read this on a regular basis (although having Facebook import new posts might up my readership to a good 6 or 7)) can bask in my drollery.

Promise.

The South is where it's at, bitches. Literarily speaking, anyway.

2008-02-29T19:34:00.000-08:00

Seriously, guys. The South is the place to be if you're a literary American writer (as opposed to a pulp-fiction American writer, or some kind of weirdo foreign writer). Here's a really short list of Southern writers, many of whom have been said to be the greatest writers of whatever style it is in which they write (and a couple are said to be the country's greatest writers ever):

Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, Kate Chopin, Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston.

Beat that, you damn yankees.

Semester THIS, you jerkbags!

2007-12-14T09:16:00.000-08:00

I don't even know what that means, but it sounded cool.

So anyway, my semester is over! Hurray! It's a bittersweet thing, really. I enjoy school a lot, especially a semester like this, which has netted me a few new friends and a girlfriend (w00t). Also, good grades and excellent learning experience! OK, so only two good grades so far, but I expect 3 more excellent grades to be posted shortly. If I get a B, I will not be happy. :|

No, sir. Not at all happy. We'll see, though. I mean, my group WAS almost 30 minutes late to our presentation for class, but the prof didn't seem mad about it, so I'm thinking not much was taken off, especially since our presentation was so full of win as to be overflowing. I mean, seriously, they're going to have to call Stanley Steemer to get all the win out of the carpet, it's so saturated. Gross.

What did you just call me?

2007-09-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

So my Spanish friend was talking to me in Spanish, and since I -- like any good American -- don't know Spanish, I was using the translator that comes in Dashboard to make sure it said what I thought it said before replying.

...Anyway. She said: "Espero que tuviste un buen dia, Ben", which I thought (correctly) to mean "I hope you had a good day, Ben".

However! When I plugged it into my translator, this is what it said: "I hope you had good day, Horseradish tree". ...Exsqueeze me? Horseradish tree? You must be joking, I thought to myself. So I typed "Ben" into the Spanish side, and, lo and behold, it translates to "Horseradish tree".

The following is a fun progression:

Ben --> "Horseradish tree"
Horseradish tree --> "árbol del rábano picante"
árbol del rábano picante --> "tree of the sharp radish"
tree of the sharp radish --> "árbol del rábano sostenido"
árbol del rábano sostenido --> "tree of the maintained radish"
tree of the maintained radish --> "árbol del rábano mantenido"

And from there it's pretty much the same thing. I just thought it was funny. I just don't see how the hell "Ben" means "Horseradish tree". Can someone please explain the etymology of that, please? Thanks.

I wonder what the stars look like from over there....

2007-09-08T17:35:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been getting very restless.

I've been doing what I'm doing now for too long, and it's starting to weigh on me. Work, school, work, school, work school...repeat ad nauseam. I've been in school -- on and off -- for well, about 6 years. I've got two more to go. Don't get me wrong, I love school! Learning is really, really fun, and I enjoy it immensely. Work: well, I've been doing that for about 6 years too. Same damn thing every time I go in.

That's, like, 26% of my life so far that I've spent in school (well, college) and working the same job. The college has been pretty much the same as well -- UNCC feels a lot like CPCC did, with a few notable upgrades. Anyway, that's too long to have been doing the same thing.

Actually, it's just too long to be doing it in the same place.

Which is why I've been thinking lately about studying abroad next year. Somewhere in the UK, most likely Glasgow, Scotland. It would be such a welcome change! I could get out on my own a little, have some freedom, meet new people, see new things, have a new experience. It's the kind of thing you get to do once in a lifetime, and it'll probably be a life-changing experience, which itself requires a bit life-change. But I really think it'd be worth it. It would be extremely awesome, immersing myself in a new culture (but thankfully not a new language!) for 9 months.

And really, this place is starting to bug me. I've been in the same general area my entire life, and I need a change of scenery. Also, my mom is bugging me. I love her, but living with her absolutely infuriating sometimes.

Yeah...I need to get away for a while. Unwind. It'll be nice to not work for that long. I've been working ever since I've been in college, and it too is taking its toll.

Well, I'll think on it some. But I really want to do it.

Because paying $1.62 for a bottle of water isn't interesting enough.

2007-08-13T18:43:00.001-07:00

I decided to cut a tiny slit in the side of my bottle of water to make drinking it more interesting.

Why, you might ask? Well, I was bored.

Clear and concise.

2007-08-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

That was the mantra of my Technical Writing professor a couple of years ago. An admirable sentiment, really, but only in very limited situations. Lord knows I'm certainly not clear and concise, and nor, thankfully, are writers (authors, anyway; I'm sure actual technical writers are pretty clear and concise). If Stephen King were clear and concise, he'd have one novel out, and it would consist of one word: "Boo!". Beethoven's 9th would be about 30 seconds long, and progressive rock would not exist.

I think one should be clear and concise in one's thoughts, but not necessarily in one's communication. For example, one could sum up the Christian faith in just a couple of words: "Love everyone.", but it would take a lot more than that to get the idea across in its entirety.

If your thoughts are short and sweet, then it's easier to communicate them, I believe. Like now, for instance, my thoughts are muddled and confused, and I couldn't think of how to say what I wanted to write -- which is, incidentally, how I got started on this topic. If people were to consciously try to arrange their thoughts on a given subject into some semblance of order, I think a lot of confusion could be avoided. If people could really get there point across -- I mean really get it into someone else's head, then people would be a lot more empathetic to another person's cause or plight. Obviously some people lack the capacity for empathy and compassion, but I think better communication could really help out a few existing situations and keep some others from existing in the first place.

But I digress. Although, it's not like I really had a main point to begin with.

...Oh yeah, clear and concise. Yeah, that's definitely me. *Ahem*

The cynic in me thinks number 1, but the stomach in me disagrees.

2007-08-06T17:48:00.001-07:00

According to my Snapple cap, there are more French restaurants in New York City than there are in Paris.

...Really? That seems so bizarre. I have to wonder if any "American" restaurants exist outside of our own country. I mean, I know there are McDonald's and Taco Bells, etc., abroad; but are there upscale, 5-star American restaurants in Paris? London? Rome?

(...After a bit of research...)

As it turns out, there are several, but not nearly on the same scale. I figure it would be one of two things:

1. We're so desperate for a bit of culture that we siphon as much as we can from anyone we can get our hands on, or
2. We really, really like food. And French food is delicious.

Stephen Crane is my homie

2007-08-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"That fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

I think that may be my favorite poem of all time. It's got several things going for it: it's a little cynical; it's a lotta Naturalist; and it's funny as hell. 3 for 3 ain't bad at all. Naturalism is my favorite epoch of American literature, as it contains many of my own views on the world.

To put it simply, Naturalist writers' message was thus: Life sucks, but the forces controlling everything (God) are beyond our comprehension (though we certainly try, and with good reason), so you might as well get used to it, and, if possible, laugh a little. That's why I see humor in everything. Everybody takes everything so damn seriously, and never just stop and laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.

I often wonder if people just never take take the time to appreciate the inherent humor that is the universe, or if they just don't get the joke. Everyone goes through life setting up the greatest joke ever told, but they never listen hard enough to hear the punchline.

NAACP joins the dogpile (pun intended? You decide.).

2007-07-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

The NAACP has spoken up as advocates of Michael Vick, reminding everyone that he deserves a fair trial, without prejudgment, etc., etc. So this is true, I suppose, but telling all of us that we're wrong for judging him (and judging us in the process, I might add)?

Vick could've made it a little harder, don't you think? First he's flipping off fans, then he's caught with weed in the airport, and now he's accused of murdering dogs for sport and monetary gain. Even if he's not guilty (which seems a big stretch to me), he hasn't set himself up as a role model. So why, then, would you come out on his side?

"Georgia NAACP President Edward Dubose thanked Vick for his community service and the money and excitement he has brought to Georgia as a Falcon."

Oh. Right. Seriously though, do you honestly believe that he's innocent, or are you just trying to edge in on the limelight? If the latter, why do you want to associate yourself with this particular fiasco? Michael Vick is a horrible person, whether he murdered the dogs with his own two hands, told someone else to do it, or simply allowed it to happen.

craigslist for pedophiles

2007-07-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

So I wake up this morning, make myself a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, and turn on CNN. The story that greets my eyes is that of a self-proclaimed pedophile in southern California who goes around finding events with lots of little girls, and takes pictures of them. He rates these events (1 to 5 adorable little hearts); he gives dates, times, etc.; and then he posts them on his website.

...Creepy.

The strangest part about this scenario is that this is legal. I suppose I can see how taking pictures of a public event would be legal, but surely intent must play some role in this? I was under the impression that to take pictures of children, you had to have parental permission. However, I browsed the CA (and NC) statutes and found no such restrictions.

While this particular pedophile isn't really hurting anyone, posting all this information on his website could lead to some other more aggressive pedophiles tracking down and abusing some of these girls. Could this person be held accountable for the information posted on his website if it leads to a crime? I should hope so.

This sounds like an episode of Law & Order.

Rebirth

2007-07-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

I have been reborn into the blogosphere. Neat.