Something Requisitely Witty and Urbane

I'm not really a speeder...

... but this video makes a pretty solid point. (Via Amber).

RIP Don Knotts

Barney Fife and The Incredible Mr. Limpett died today.

Aaron Brown Recap Redux

So, the Aaron Brown landslide that happened on this blog over the past three months or so has begun to die down (well, comments have... I still receive 2 or 3 a week, but traffic remains strongly driven by searches of people wondering "What happened to Aaron Brown?").  It was staggering to see that the most response I've ever gotten out of this blog was from a couple of throwaway posts about his departure.

So, it comes as no surprise to me now to see an entire Yahoo group devoted to Aaron Brown, as well as many, many more viewer comments lamenting his loss as though a family member had died.  I appreciate that many liked him... but read too many of these comments in a row and you begin to get caught up in the surreal comedy of it all.

Incidentally

Over the past week, this blog reached a little milestone.  Though exact numbers aren't totally available, by all counters, I've reached 100,000 unique visitors.

Thanks for coming back, everyone.

A Good Start

It's been a good week.

I got my grade today for the first test I've taken since returning to school.  I figured I'd done decently on it, and I was right.

I got a 100%.

I'm glad.  It's a nice way to kick things back off.

This week was also a first for me, as I wrote (well, I'm just about done with my final rewrite) my first article for the school newspaper.  I gotta say, I was surprised at how much fun this was.

When I approached the professor who runs the newspaper with my interest in helping out, she was very kind and assigned me my first story.

It turns out that the Student Resource Center used to allow students to print in the computer lab for free, but this summer they instituted a policy which required students to pay for the pages they print.  Some people weren't happy, and Kathleen wanted me to cover it.

It sounded like a pretty mundane story, but I began talking to people in the Resource Center, and pretty soon I found a story coming together.  I'll print the text of the article once the issue comes out (our deadline is tomorrow, which means, I'd imagine, the issue will be coming out in the next week or so), so I won't go into all the details, but underneath this simple little story, it turns out I got to break a little bit of news.  The software system that that a third-party contractor had installed to control the payments hasn't been working to anyone in the entire District's standards, on ongoing problem since the summer which hasn't really been improving.  The District is now considering pulling out of the contract with this contractor.  When the issue comes out, it will be the first time that anything about this possibility at all will be made known publicly, and only because I was able to uncover it.

I know it's a simple thing on the grand scale, and yes, I'm aware that this is just a community college newspaper, but it really gave me an idea about how this stuff works, and the whole process was really gratifying.  I walked onto this campus a month ago knowing nothing at all about anything.  I didn't even know where the computer lab was until two weeks ago.  I was given this story, and I just started asking questions.  Asking one person questions revealed some about the story, but also how little most people on staff really knew about this story.  The answers led me to other places, which led me to other places until finally, the story emerged.  When it was all said and done, there was one person on campus who really knew all the ins and outs of this story, and it was me.  In a week, what I know will become common knowledge for the entire campus.

It's totally nerdy, but really cool.

Anyway, all this by way of saying that things are going really well. 

Scriptural Reading

Rob Cordrey (though not the only one to say it), on the VP's unfortunate mishap on Saturday:

Rob: The mere fact that we're even talking about how the Vice-President drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised, wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know how we're hunting them.  I'm sure, right now, those quail are laughing at us in that little covey of theirs.

Jon: Well, Rob, I'm not sure birds can laugh.

Rob: Well, whatever it is they do, Jon.... coo.  They're cooing at us right now because here we are, talking openly about our plans to hunt them.  Jigs up, Jon.  Quail - 1, America - nothing, happy?

Jon: On a purely human level, is the Vice-President at least sorry?

Rob: Jon, what difference does it make?  The bullets are already in the man's face.  Let's move forward, across party lines, as a people to get him some sort of mask.  Hindsight is 20/20, Jon, as was, ironically, the shotgun the Vice-President used to shoot his friend, a 78 year old man, in what can only be described as his face.

It is striking that the comedy in this piece, and the Ed Helms piece before hand, is that Dick Cheney did, in fact, shoot his friend in the face.  We haven't heard that on the news.... once again it takes the best comedy show on television to tell us the actual truth.

10 Ways Dick Cheney Can Kill You

Everyone's seen it, but I have to put this up, if only for easy bookmarking when I need to break from monotony with spontaneous, maniacal laughter.

(via BB)

Serendipity

So, you know how Iran has restarted their Nuclear Weapons programs, and is now openly seeking weapons of mass destruction? 

Yeah, so, it turns out that Valerie Plame was working undercover on this very issue before the White House outed her in retaliation for her husband writing op-ed pieces critical of the administration:

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

[...]

Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.

The Democrats need to win the House or the Senate back in November, so some real investigation can begin.

"This is something that happens from time to time."

So, by now, most everyone has heard that Dick Cheney shot a guy.

I've just got to repeat it again, as I've been doing all day.  Dick Cheney... shot... a... guy.

For the purposes of this post, let's just assume I've already made the other obligatory, "I wonder if he was about to testify in the CIA leak trial / Wow, could this administration BE anymore incompetent?", jokes you've all heard already.

Now that we've dispensed with that.

1.7 million children live at home with loaded, unlocked firearms according to the Pediatrics Online Journal. 

2867 children were killed by guns in 2002.

30,163 people were killed by guns in 2003.

There are over 80 gun deaths in America everyday.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the rate of firearm death of children 0-14 years old is nearly twelve times higher in the U.S. than in 25 other industrialized nations combined. The firearm-related homicide rate is nearly 16 times higher for children in the U.S. than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. The suicide rate of children 0-14 years old is twice as high in the U.S. as it is in those same 25 other industrialized countries combined.

We are a country which protects its citizen's right to own guns because of an antiquated and constantly misinterpreted Constitutional guarantee.  That protection has led to a massive proliferation of killing machines which find their way into the hands of our children.

So, while we live our lives under the illusion of security because we have the right to own firearms, it might do us well to remember that the second most powerful man in the country, deemed twice by the voters of this country as responsible enough to lead this country cannot, himself, safely operate a firearm.

"Fuck You, Dawg!", Or "How One Young Man Has His Bible-Belt Worldview Challenged, and Reacts Poorly."

So, wading back into school (though merely knee deep at first, as I'm only taking 6 hours this semester) really couldn't have worked out any better for me.

The Dallas Community College campus that I'm attending has a program which they call Learning Community Series.  In this program, two or more classes are combined together to form a hybrid class.  For instance, I noticed one in which 12 hours of computer science study was combined into a Video Game Development series.

The class that The Girlfriend and I are taking together combines the Freshman level US Government class with the Freshman level Psychology class, and it has been really great.  These two professors are really interesting people, and you can tell that this is exactly the kind of class that they want to teach: one where they encourage open debate and free-flowing discussion to really get at the intersection between mass psychology and government.  They don't use text books, just a series of articles that they compiled together.  It's the only class I've ever been in which the professors encouraged the students to say "fuck" when it suits their point.

It's also the only class I've ever been in where the teachers engaged in masturbatory humor during the first week of class.  In other words, this class rocks, and it is right up my alley.

It didn't take long, either, for a major incident to occur in class which has been the highlight of the class so far. 

The Psychology professor, who has already told us that he was a member of Students for a Democratic Society in the 60's (though did not go so far, at least not that he admitted, to join the Weather Underground), began the discussion portion of the class by asking us how we thought the government might use the media.  The discussion meandered down several roads, and eventually landed on the fact that the government can use the media to distract us.

One of the methods he mentioned was to take issues that are highly emotionally charged, and inject them into the public discussion to distract from the real, underlying issues like class and poverty.  "For instance," he said, "wasn't one of the major reasons that George Bush won in 2004 because people got so freaked out about Gay Marriage?"

He continued, saying that the majority of people in this country take a "I don't care what people do in their private lives" sort of stance, even if they have some sort of moral objection to Gay Marriage itself.

As you can imagine, the conversation turned rather quickly into a debate about Gay Marriage.  The community college campus that I'm at has a fairly sizable amount of international students (example: in one class, I think there were more people from Nepal than from America), and it was interesting to hear the perspective many of them had.  Many of these countries decided this issue a long time ago, and it is stupefying to them that it causes such heated emotion here in America. 

Being a college setting, there were certainly more people for Gay Marriage than against it, but there were a few true blue patriots who argued against it.  One of them finally spoke up.

"I'm against Gay Marriage because it's disgusting and it's wrong."

It didn't take long before basically the entire class, myself included, was taking him on.  He argued Biblically, and most people argued back the freedom-from-religion, "that's fine for you, but don't force your morality on me" party line.  It continued for several minutes.

In such an informal class setting, it isn't uncommon for students to get up, get a drink of water, go to the bathroom or throw their food or drinks away.  Our pro-Gay Marriage friend stood up and walked to the back of the classroom, to throw some things away, at which point he dropped the bomb.

"The only reason we're having this discussion is because there are so many homo's in this class."

Our Government professor, who's Cerebal Palsy causes his speech to take on a deliberative manner, often giving his words more import than would normally occur, didn't like this one bit.

"What did you say?", he yelled, pointing his finger and stopping down the class.

Bible Boy said he hadn't said anything, making his way back to his seat.  "I said that we're having this discussion because there are so many homosexuals in this class."

"I better not ever here you use a slur in here," our Government teacher said, still pointing his finger.  The two sat in a gunslinger's stare down for what seemed like forever, but was in actuality only 10 seconds or so, at which point the Psych professor took a cue and picked things back up.

"This is a heated issue, because it deals with people's morality..." he began, but was interrupted by our Government teacher.

"Pay Attention!!!!" he yelled, rather loudly, at the boy with his finger still pointed at him.

He sat there for a second, mortified at having been called out in such a manner.  I had my back to him, but in the ensuing five seconds, the emotions and thoughts going through his head were almost audible.  Should he ignore it, and allow his pride to be wounded by the brazen way he'd been made the center of intolerant attention?  Should he say something in response at all?  Or should he simply fight back in a blaze of glory?

The moment of his decision came, and in one motion, he threw his notebook onto the desk, stood up and said.

"Fuck you, Dawg!!!"

Dead silence from the class followed, at which point he picked up his stuff, and stormed out of the classroom, but not before his backpack coming unzipped and spilling itself out all over the floor ruined his Jerry Maguire moment.

Psych Prof took a beat.

"See what I mean? We couldn't have scripted this any better."

I am going to love this class.