Achtung! Halt! Papers Please.

Well covered in many other more widely-read forums is this guys account of being arrested after failing to show his store receipt (and driver's license) upon exiting a Circuit City store in Ohio.

This boils my blood (and scares the holy shit outta me). I had a similar, much less severe run in with a store goon years back when I waltzed out of a local electronics store without producing a receipt. I despise being asked to account for my personal property when leaving a store. I'm not a criminal, don't treat me like one. If you saw me steal something, bust me. If not, fuck off. Leave me alone.

So I donated a few bucks to the guy's legal fund. And I'm writing Circuit City a letter (on actual paper) and mailing it (with an actual stamp), telling them that unless they resolve this, publicly, and in the above referenced guy's favor, the money I was planning on spending there this year (after getting my new high-paying job) for the new ~50" HighDef TV and DSLR camera system will be spent at a competing store. (I never said I wasn't a liar).

Don't fuck with my rights. Or anyone else's for that matter.

Sherlock Holmes-like detective skillz

This just in from the "Oh, no shit?" department:

"...on Wednesday, soldiers found Campbell's body buried in a shallow grave in a dry river bed in the area of the northern Philippines where she was hiking by herself. Police said they believed foul play was involved."

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1115249

These cops are good. I'm glad they didn't fall for that old "she died of natural causes then buried herself in a shallow grave in a dry riverbed" routine. That one works *so* often.

Another from the "People who just don't get the irony" department

On the way to work today (in my very red state), I saw a car with a "Dissent is disloyal" bumper sticker.

:-
If "dissent" is disloyal, then I guess they'd really have a problem with a group of people rising up against their leader.

And imprisoning him.

And putting him on trial for all of the crimes he's committed.

...

Wonder if they've ever heard of a little place called Iraq?

:-
Maybe "disloyal" is relative to which side of the fence you're standing on.

Officially...

...I am an idiot.

I saw the following headline on cnn.com



and my first thought...I swear to god...was "Fuck, that's a long way to walk".

Just for a second.

Ok, on a positive note...

At least I'm not *this* big of an idiot...

Again from cnn.com:



A quick poll produced the following reactions from the public:

"Who exactly gives a fuck?" said 99.986% of the people in America.

"WHAT? WE CAN'T HEAR YOU BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING CAR BOMBS BLOWING UP NEXT TO OUR HEADS EVERY DAY", commented the people of Iraq.

"I'M SORRY, WE COULDN'T HEAR YOU EITHER BECAUSE OF THE ROCKETS RAINING DOWN ON US AND BLOWING UP OUR FAMILIES EVERY DAY FOR THE PAST 3 WEEKS" the people of both Lebanon and Israel agreed (surprisingly).

Seriously, CNN. Stop wasting the electrons of my LCD display printing that useless shit on the screen please.

My only friend...the end

I have seen the end of the human race (at least in car-centric cultures). And it's produced by JVC. Witness the in-dash DVD player, complete with screen...for the driver who has everything!



The first to go will be the cyclists and pedestrians who are unlucky enough to share the same roads as drivers with their new DVD players and a fresh copy of "Meet the Fockers". They'll be run down like so many squirrels on suburban streets in the springtime.

The only hope, I suppose, is that drivers with their new in-dash DVD players will run headlong into inanimate objects and off themselves before they have the opportunity to squash me (and my ilk).

One final irony. In the print ad for this unit (which is where I first saw it), the movie shown on the screen is not "Pink Panther", but "Final Destination", as if they know what they've wrought.

*Just* missing the point

The girl and I went to a restaurant for dinner tonight. Not a four-star, high-brow gourmet grub joint, but a well known national chain. On the bottom of one of the pages of the menu was the notice:

"An optional 18% gratuity will be added for parties of 8 or more".

Er, what?

Are you f*cking kidding me?

In what is at once the most funny and fucked up explanation (spin) I have ever EVER heard, a military official had this to say about Saturday's three suicides at US the military prison at Guantánamo Bay:

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Wait, wait, wait. So the enemy is now waging war against us by killing themselves?? That's fantastic news! All we have to do now is sit back and watch it happen!! Maybe Bush knew more about war than we thought after all.

Fun for the whole family

I love CNN.com. On their home page, they have headlines of videos you can watch, followed by a "try it free" or "watch now" tag line. Often, when you take the headline along with the "try it free" part, you get some inappropriate sounding "offers". Like "Man shoves entire six-pack up rectum. Watch now!". I'm going to start saving them and posting them, just for fun.

The first:

Henrico County School System

Proving that it is still quite probably the dumbest fucking school system on the planet...the Henrico County VA school system suspended a kid (and kicked him off of the baseball team) for eating a cookie from a spilled cookie jar in the school kitchen.

For those who don't remember Henrico County's rise to the throne of "Dumbass-est School System on the Planet", allow me to refresh your memory:

1,000 laptops. 12,000 people. What could possibly go wrong?

The only reason I made this post is that I saw the county name and thought "Hrm, they're still being dumbasses. I should point that out to somebody". Mission accomplished.

It's official, it's quantifiable

According to a story on CNN, MD drivers are dumber than VA drivers.

DC still takes the "Dumbest Drivers in the Region, and Nearly the Nation" award. You could have fooled me. I'd have sworn MD drivers were the dumbest on the planet. I don't think I've seen one on the highway in weeks who knew where the turn signal was. And why oh why, do so many MD drivers feel the need to go 56mph in the left lane?

(Note to my MD readers, I'm not saying all MD drivers are bad, just that the vast majority of bad drivers I've seen in the last few years have had MD plates).

The test is currently offline, but I'm hoping it is back up soon. I'm interested to see how I score.

***

Edit to add, if you hit this link, it should take you to the test, even tho the main page still says it's down. Strange. Good luck!

***

A game

I think I need to make a game for this blog. I'll give you a movie description from my digital cable's guide service, you have to figure out the movie. Ready? Go!

Description: "[title character] and flying cyborg Jet Jaguar meet a giant cockroach and a big black chicken sent by Seatopians."

Title:________________________

Tour Sponsorship: From Apropos to WTF?

Reading the weekend section of my local paper, I come across upcoming local concert info. Two things catch my eye:

From Apropos:

Pop tarts...sorry, that should be "'Pop-Tarts' presents American Idols Live Tour 2006".

To the tour that should be called "WTF Has Become Of Us Live Tour 2006":

VH1 Classic presents Ministry and the Revolting Cocks live at the 930 Club.