911 Operator Goes Too Far?

Lori's two daughters, 12 and 13, were fighting... after the 12 year-old kicked a hole in a door, instead of ending the fight herself, Lori called 911. The Watauga, Texas 911 operator, Mike Forbess, after receiving the call said to Lori, "Okay, do you want us to come over and shoot her?" After the phone fell silent, Forbess told Lori he was just joking. Lori was not amused. She wanted Mr. Forbess fired.

Forbess apologized, saying, "I admit what I did. It was stupid, it was inexcusable and I'm sorry."

According to what I saw on the news earlier, he wasn't fired but he received a letter of repremand from the police chief.

I've done a couple stupid things in the past couple days...
I was supposed to put some stuff in the washer into the dryer so it would be ready for in the morning... I sat about twenty feet from the dryer for several hours last night and it never crossed my mind. I totally forgot about it. I guess it wasn't a catastrophic event, or anything, but I still felt bad about it.
Then, tonight after I took the biscuits out of the oven, I totally forgot to turn off the oven. That can be, y'know, kinda dangerous.
I've been having headaches rather frequently (again) and nosebleeds a little more frequent than before... well, I've had nosebleeds since I got mononucleosis back in high school... and they usually pick up a little in the colder months (due to gas heating and such) - seeing as the heat hasn't been on in a little while... Maybe I have a brain tumor, or something that is making me... more stupider.

"...eet's notta toomuh..."

Saturday afternoon was one of those times...
"Where were you/What were you doing when you found out that Pope John Paul II had passed away?" I was sitting in front of the television, hoping to watch some of the NASCAR Busch race in Bristol, Tennessee... I could have gone to both the Busch and Nextel Cup race, apparently, thanks to a free ticket from my friend Jarrod's sister-in-law, but I couldn't have gone, anyway... which kinda sucked... ANYHOW, the race got cancelled 'cause it was snowing... so I was watching a couple different movies... about 2:45, I flipped the channels... and I saw the news. I knew it was coming... everyone did... it didn't make the news any less sad, though.

Now, I don't consider myself "religious," anymore. When I was younger, I was very involved in the church, thanks to a really good friend and my grandfather. I didn't particularly agree with a lot of the things the Holy Father "decreed" or whatever during his time... but I understand what he was about... why he was there. He was there to try to bring some kind of hope to the hopeless, some kind of faith to the faithless... whatever he could do to try to fill some small part of the emptiness that is in so many of us.

The Pope did many things in his time, as well, that could be seen in an almost secular fashion... probably the most notable of which was aiding in the downfall of communism in his homeland of Poland, as well as pretty much everywhere else, too. Yeah, the Pope was a Pollock. I am a Pollock, as well, but I am not the Pope. heh

I sat there and watched the news... saw the people in St. Peter's Square. I was sad. I even nearly cried for a moment. I didn't have to agree with what he thought to know he was a good man. I'm not sure exactly why, but he always kinda reminded me a lot of my grandfather. Well, they were both extremely good men who worked very hard to a very old age to try to make people happy... and they seemed to take a lot of pleasure in doing so, even when they had lost their health.

Why do people think that we (the United States) faked the moon landings? It would seem that there are still a ton of conspiracy theorists that will come out and provide all of this "evidence" that the moon landings never happened... it's almost crazy. I mean, everything from "the flag shouldn't wave in a place with no wind" (yes, it should) to the pictures of the astronauts that are highly detailed and appear to have no shadows on the space suits (which apparently, many people have never heard that light will reflect off of things like the ground)... My favorite claim, and one that the conspiracy people seem to stick to like glue, is the "all shadows from a single light source should always be parallel." The simple truth is that shadows on earth, in sunlight (a "single light source"), converge and diverge all over the place thanks to the terrain (something that can also be found on the moon, y'know?). I would wager that one could simply walk out front of their home on any sunny day and see several examples of "non-parallel" shadows.
Basically, everything that has been put forth by a conspiracy theorist regarding the moon landings has been rebuffed, simply and effectively... I personally don't know much about "space radiation" and why it doesn't kill everything that ventures through the Van Allen Belt... I'm sure it has been put to rest by someone out there, though (probably by simply saying, "The Apollo astronauts weren't in the Van Allen Belt long enough to get a dose of radiation big enough to hurt them, much less kill them.").
If it was faked, don't you think that all the Cold War countries that were listening to everything we were doing all over the world at the time would have come forward and said, "Hey, they're faking it?"
I've never really come across any younger conspiracy theorists regarding the moon landings, although I'm sure they exist. But mainly, you see all these old guys, living out in the desert in mobile homes that come up with all the hooey... It must be all that time in the "dry heat," or something.

The Gang of Four on the town in Asheville, NC this past weekend.
From left: Some guy, Danielle, her man Duncan, and Mike.
note: Danielle would have you believe that it's a bit colder out that it actually is... I think it's because she's so short and doesn't have as much blood to keep her warm.
note2: That's not a restaurant sign above Mike's head... That's actually what he was thinking at the time... I don't know how the camera picked it up.

"Take my hand
Look into my eyes
Tell me what you see
Because the eyes never lie

And all that you've ever done
And everything you ever knew
And in every dream you'll ever have
I'm there with you

Tell me everything you can
'Cause I am the one who will understand
I am all of your fantasy
And after all, it's just you and me

I'm Your Secrets

And when you hurt from the weight of the world
There's nothing I wouldn't do
And on the day you leave the world
I go with you

Tell me again about endless love
The talk with the sun and the moon and stars
What do you think about God and man
Tell me the thing no one would understand

'Cause I'm Your Secrets

You ask is love a lie
And is the world insane
Why do we cry
And is this life really just a dream

Tell me everything you can
I am the one who will understand you
I am all that you wish to be
It's always been just you and me

'Cause I'm Your Secrets..."

It took a long time, but I came to realize that "sacrifice" isn't something I do... it's something I am.

POLICE WOMEN RULE!

How to confuse your party guests.

This is really cool... I wanted to do this years ago... but I got over it, I guess

CLICK HERE

"They say I don't think enough about the afterlife
Of what's below and above, it's all in black and white
They say there's only one kind of love
You have to choose just right
They say there's only one kind of love in the afterlife

Kiss it all goodbye
In the afterlife
You don't get another try

But I can't see... I don't know how
That I won't be what I am now, no
Even in my afterlife
And I won't have some other heart
That could find peace though we're apart...
No...

It's not enough anymore to be good in this life
They say you've got to be sure so you can sleep at night
The only love that endures gives up without a fight
The only love that endures in the afterlife

Kiss it all goodbye
In the afterlife
It was just a clever lie

If I could never see your face
Then I would have to fall from grace, I know
Even in my afterlife
Or for eternity be blind to your presence in my mind?
No...

And they could promise me a seat
At the right side of the throne
But all would still be incomplete
Within the holy host, alone
Without the guiding light so sweet
That has forever led me on
For me there's no eternal rest
You and I have unfinished business...
Yes...

If I could still hold one thought clear
Then you will instantly appear, I know
Even in my afterlife
But I can't see... I don't know how
That I won't be what I am now, no
Not even in my afterlife
And I won't have some other heart
That could find peace though we're apart, no
Even in my afterlife
I could not repose in bliss
Never more to know your kiss, no
Even in my afterlife..."

-

"Nearly everyone I know claims to have heard your voice

And every time they do, I know I should rejoice
Because one day I'm sure you'll break your silence
And speak just to me
But I feel like time's running out
My heart is, my heart is filling with doubt

And god said,
'I don't dwell upon you, I dwell on something else
And I am not really here so get over yourself'

I've tried to follow every rule they said you handed down
And spread the sacred testimony all around
But still the others seem to have your ear but never will I
Have I displeased you somehow?
Can't help, can't help feeling left out

And god said,
'There's no anger in me, you must mean someone else
'Cause it's not me that you see, you're looking at yourself
And I won't give you a prize instead of someone else
'Cause I don't play favorites, so get over yourself'


Is it my fear, is it my pride, is it my vanity?
Should your name just be denied to save my sanity?
What is the price I need to pay to have
What others seem to grasp so easily?
Pity your servant your slave
Who'll kiss, who'll kiss your feet to be saved
Save me, save me

And god said,
'You are not serving me, you're serving something else
'Cause I don't need to be pleased, just get over yourself
You can't suck up to me, I know you all too well
But I don't dwell upon you, so get over yourself
'Cause you're not praying to me, you're praying to yourself
And you're not worshipping me, you're worshipping yourself
And you will kill in my name, and heaven knows what else
When you can't prove I exist so get over yourself...'"

_

I don't even really know what to say about it (imagine me, speechless?), so I'll just let it speak for itself...

MAN WITH TWO PENISES LOSES WIFE

Okay... shouldn't it be penii... maybe?
meh
Anyhow, interesting stuff.

My niece...
...on a "Highway to Spell"

(from the comments)

why speed safe? doesn't that seem to be sortof strange with respect to a knife?

Well... yeah... I always thought it was a rather silly name, too... especially after one time, I was cutting the tie-wraps off a light rig on a stage and a flipped open the knife, my other hand in "blade proximity" and the tip of the knife whipped out and sliced the crap out of me... that was an instance of "speed unsafe."

By request - My Kershaws...
From left:
Model 1600 - "Chive" (420HC stainless) - $49.95
Model 1660VIB - "Rainbow Leek" (440A Stainless, titanium oxide coated) - $99.95
Model 1660 - "Leek" (440A Stainless) - $69.95
Model 1550 - "Blackout" (440A Stainless Tungsten DLC coated, Polyamide handle) - $89.95
Model 1640 - "Vapor" (AUS6A Stainless) - $35.95

All models (except the Vapor) are made in the USA. They all (except the Vapor, again) also feature Kershaw's "Speed Safe" assisted-opening feature... that is, there is a "torsion bar" (apparently, a fancy name for a spring) in the axle of the blade that flips the blade open... Don't mistake them for a "switchblade," though. To be a switchblade, the knife has to have... well, a "switch" to activate it... On these, the person has to physically start the blade in motion and the spring kicks in and finishes the job.

The Blackout was my first Kershaw. It's been used pretty well over the past few years. The Chive is really cool, because it's so small...

My Kershaw/Ken Onion USA Leek.
I've had it for a while. I'm quite partial to it. In fact, I'm quite partial to Kershaw knives... well, the USA-made ones, anyway. I have a Kershaw Vapor (designed by Ken Onion, but produced in China from somewhat inferior material - thus, a thirty-five dollar price tag) and it's... well, it's not nearly as nice as the one above. Handy, however, for "shit work," when I need something I'm not too concerned to get nicked up. It sharpens back up just fine, anyway. But this knife rules. Materials, balance... it rules.

My Kershaw/Ken Onion USA "Rainbow" Leek.
I had this ordered a long time ago, when I still lived in Colorado. I just got it in the mail the other day. They only make a few of them per month, apparently. It is coated with titanium oxide which, when electric current of various intesities is applied to different locations, produces the "rainbow" effect. It's not a knife that I will be cutting anything with, anytime soon... In fact, it will most likely stay in it's cool little pouch, unless called upon in order to attempt to impress friends.

I've always had a thing for nice knives... ever since I was a wee laddie, sitting in the backyard of my grandfather's house, playing this strange-yet-cool game with him... where you have to sort of balance the knife off of various body parts (fingers, forearm, elbow, shoulder, chin, nose, etc.) and get it to fall off your body and stick in the ground. We played mubletypeg, too, but that was usually with a butter knife.

My dad gave me a cool Case bone-handled knife when I was about eight. I inevitably cut the shit out of myself with it, once (as I have done with basically all of my knives over time). In the years since, I have had Buck, Schrade, Gerber... all kinds of nice knives... But I really am fond of Kershaw kinves... I have a total of five of them. They rule. Better than Spyderco & Benchmade, in my opinion (no offense to those companies - I just don't find them to be very balanced blades).

I don't know what happened to my dad's cool Victorinox he carried on his keychain for eleventy-billion years (or twenty-some, anyway). I would have really liked to have had it... The main blade was beginning to curve inward from Dad's meticulous sharpening over the years. I think I may have returned it to my brother after my dad passed away... because he bought it for him, and I'm sentimental like that, I guess. My friend Mike said he had originally bought me a Victorinox for Christmas this year, but gave it to his little cousin instead and bought me a couple DVDs. I'm certain that if I sharpen the edges of the DVDs with my stone, they'll cut stuff...

I have my grandfather's old pocket knife... it isn't "nice," or anything... but it was his... so it's awesome.

"This day is overrated
now that I'm awake
And I don't know what to do
to make me feel better
When I drink holy water straight..."

Confused

Okay. Is it just me, or is that new Mastercard commercial, like, a blatant rip-off of one of the coolest movies ever, Swingers? Even the characters' names ("Mike" & "Nikki," I believe) are the same.
For those of you who don't know, the commercial bears a striking resemblance to a scene in the movie where John Favreau calls a girl he just met in a bar earlier and leaves several awkward messages on her answering machine, getting cutoff by the machine several times...
I would hope to God that someone, somewhere, got permission to do that... and even if... somewhere, someone made a shitload of money to be completely unoriginal.
They probably coulda got me to suggest it for a lot less. ;)

If TV Rots Your Brain, Then Why am I Still Here?

I don't make any beef about the fact that I love television... I don't watch as much as I used to due to the fact that today's TV pretty much sucks, anymore... I mean, yeah, the first three seasons of Friends were good... watchable. Starting about season four, it sucked and I wasn't able to make myself watch it anymore... I mean, I think it was the whole thing of trying to hook everyone on the show up with one of the other characters - the show become more about everyone's love life and less about being, y'know, "friends." It just made the show blow...

Anything on nowadays that's any good is a miracle...

I fell asleep pretty early last night... which means I woke up way too early for my own good... which left me with not much to do but... yeah, watch some television... At some point, around eleven or so, the first installment of The Lord of the Rings came on... I hadn't seen any of them outside of a movie theatre, so I decided to give it a whirl... Much to my surprise, the full-screen version of the movie on a television screen really sucks... It looked so cheap, I kept questioning myself as to if I was even watching the high-budget "masterpiece" or some goofy '80s movie like Kull the Conqueror, or something... Very unimpressive...

Several clicks of the remote later, and I found myself somehow watching some show on Mtv (as some of you may know, I think Mtv is the bestest channel in the world... ... ... ...for me to poop on) called Super Sweet Sixteen... at least I think that was the name of it... The fact that I stopped on the channel for more than a nanosecond is a complete mystery, but the fact that I kept watching for the next twenty minutes is probably even more so... The premise of the show is that Mtv follows girls around as they prepare for a lavish sweet sixteen party... So these two TOTALLY SPOILED little brat girls that talk to their parents like they are their servants were going to have their party together at the Hard Rock Cafe (I'm assuming in L.A. because at one point, Paulie Shore kinda crashes the party)... and they're trying to figure out who they want to get for entertainment... So they're going through a list from one of the big talent agencies... and they're all like "Man if we could get Jay-Z and Beyonce, that would be awesome..." If you're contemplating getting Jay-Z or Beyonce to work your sweet sixteen party, well, firstoff you're an idiot... but probably the child of a really rich idiot... They go on and it's like, "Beyonce said she'd do it, but she wants a half a million dollars." FIRST OF ALL, there's no way in HELL that anything that Beyonce has or will ever do, anywhere, anytime, is worth a half million dollars... unless it is maybe leaving show business... forever... The girl's mom is like, "Well there's nothing on the planet your father can't get done..." ... If your dad blows a half million on Beyonce's sorry ass to sing at your sweet sixteen party... well... that's, like, new levels of idiocy... It turns out that they ended up getting Unwritten Law (pop punk band washed up after about five seconds in the spotlight... wait.... were they ever in the spotlight?), assumingly for much less that a half mil... In the end, spoiled little rich girl #2 just wants to go home and all that spoiled rotten rich kid crap... totally unappreciative of the effort that was taken on to throw her a "bitchin' party."

So, crap like that is what passes for television nowadays, huh? Everytime I forget how bad tv is nowadays, channels like Mtv are always around to remind me... I mean, they have the "let's all be alcoholic" show in The Real World... well... there's so many bad shows on Mtv, I couldn't begin to list them all, here... I'm just so glad that quality programming like The Ashlee Simpson Show will be returning to Mtv what, tomorrow night? Hooray!!! ;)

I have a prediction for Ashlee's show - they will feature the Saturday Night Live fiasco in an episode... and they will re-shoot a bunch of stuff and place it in the episode all sneaky-like to make it look like she really had some kind of acid reflux problem (which, lemme tell you, acid reflux is a muthafucka... I know, all too well... I have, though, never lost the ability to speak or sing whilst in a bout of it... I gag my brains out and stuff, but I seem to speak and sing okay, anyway)...

Dear *****,

I really like you. You are always nice to me.
You have the prettiest eyes. I like them a lot.
I am kinda sad when you are not around. I don't understand it. Maybe I am just kinda sad always and you are just not around to cheer me up. Or maybe I am just kinda sad because I miss you not being around. It's okay though, sorta, because I always try to keep you with me, even if you can't be.
My big brother says girls are mean and will do nothing but tear your heart out of your chest and stomp it to mush as if it were worthless, leaving only a huge gaping wound of despair. I sure hope he is wrong. He's wrong about a lot of stuff.
I was kinda hoping that maybe you might want to be my girlfriend, cuz I sure would like to be your boyfriend.
What do you think?

____ Yes ____ No

If yes, then maybe we can meet at the picnic tables by the rocket slide at the park after school... I really would like to hold your hand. I bet it is soft.
If no, that's okay. You'll still be pretty to me and I will still like you. And I will still be your partner for science class, too, cuz I know you don't like to touch the dead smelly fish we are learning about.

See you after lunch,
******

p.s. - don't show this note to anyone or tell any of your friends about it, cuz I don't want them to make fun of me.
p.p.s. - you are very pretty

I was just watching a press conference with our good buddy, Rumsfeld... He and another gentleman (Gen. Richard Meyers (Myers?)) were talking about how they would try to avoid having troops killed by a suicide bomber on their base happen, again...

Hey, um... guys? Here's a good point to build from... how about DON'T LET IRAQI CITIZENS WORK ON U.S. MILITARY BASES... I mean, you won't let most non-military citizens on any military bases in YOUR OWN COUNTRY, why would you do that on a base in a foreign land where you are currently engaged in a WAR?

It's that whole "outsourcing" thing, isn't it, G-Dub?

When did the "war on terrorism" become the "struggle against extremism?" Did I miss the memo?
What has brought about this change in the semantics? I have come to the conclusion that it's probably a broadening of the term from just a simple "terrorist." Also, now, the people will start to associate multipleforms of "extremism" as "terrorism..." so maybe that will give them what they need to want to go up against some other countries now, too... So who's next? China? South Korea? The American Democratic Party?

The world is strange... I mean, it's not like I'm just now figuring this out... but it's just strange... People are strange... again, nothing new. I never know what to make of them, sometimes.

I have a lot of faith in the thought that whoever gave humans the ability to communicate in the way that they do did so for a reason... so that we would use it to help make ourselves better... So much of the "communication" I see about the world (and the people in it) is so... unappealling... I can't imagine if I were an alien, intercepting television satellite transmissions, that I would ever want to come here, to invade or just to visit... I'd be off to the next terrestrial body...

Of course, I'm not just taking about communicating through media... that's just the seriously shitty kind... Communication between people, two people - that can be some of the trickiest stuff in the world... I always thought I was good at it... I'm really not so sure...

People puzzle me...

...I just got a piece of porn spam email that the subject line was "Sluts are as happy as pigs in shit..."

I know a couple sluts... I'll have to ask...

I was kinda afraid of what might be on the other end if I clicked the mail open... coulda been really scary... like "Clarence the Sexual Mule" scary...