muppets strike back

kermit & piggy respond to fox news' take on their movie from a few weeks back

.22 fresno

.22

.22

.22 is much higher the .08. in fact, it's just under 3 times higher than the legal limit to drive.

.22 came up in two stories that i read today.

the first was about a student, a young man that was shot by the fresno police. his bac was said to be .22. now, this isn't a precise science, and his bac may not have been exactly that when the police shot him.

i haven't commented much on that story because i know the guy. i saw him about 3.5 hours before he was killed by fpd. at the time, he seemed to be in good spirits, we joked about some things, he said by and walked off with two other people i know. a few hours later, i received some phone calls about the situation. as i think about it now, i still have a lot of questions about what happened, and we'll never fully know what went down. i doubt the veracity of the official version, although i don't doubt that this young man made some terrible decisions that involved drinking and holding a weapon in the presence of fpd. this young man is now deceased, and there are seven officers on paid leave. at least chief dyer is concerned about the number of shots his cops let fly into a neighborhood filled with children and right next to a school - 63. i mean, he's not expressing his concern that officers fired under questionable circumstances from 70-100 feet away, but it seems he's at least concerned that his trigger happy cops dumped so many shots in a school zone.

the other story went down much differently. this second story was about one of fresno's finest, one of the boys in blue that also had a .22 bac. this officer was driving a giant weapon drunk, and was simply arrested. he's now on modified duty.

that arrest happened on the heels of another fpd member being involved in a dui hit & run. that cop was cited and released to a "responsible adult." the article doesn't say the bac, and i wonder if they actually gave a breathalyzer or just did field sobriety tests. the end result, another cop on paid leave.

so, when it's all said and done, we have 1 dead, and 9 cops on leave. all involving alcohol. but, good old jerry isn't pushing for alcohol to be made illegal, or telling his officers not to drink. or, maybe he is.

wikileaks video of apache attack n iraq

10 ft. great white attacked by 20 ft great white

holy crap. read that title again.

a 20' great white attacked a 10' great white and nearly bit it in half.

"The smaller - relatively speaking - great white was hooked on a baited drum line when it was attacked, and was still alive when it was hauled onto a boat off north Stradbroke Island in Queensland."

here's a photo of the shark that was bitten



good lord. stay out of the water off the australian coast.

oh really?

so i usually watch a little of the morning news before i head off to work. fresno's abc 30 had a pretty decent team, and their traffic and weather every 10 minutes provides a reminder of what time it is and how long until i leave for work.

today, they were giving some strategies of how to keep cool from the fresno heat over the upcoming week. that's helpful, i guess. their solution, go to the coast where it's cooler.

oh really? that's your solution? go somewhere else?

brilliant.

news round up

so, i was reading different news sites today, and saw a couple of things that were noteworthy:

apparently, using cameras to invade everyone's privacy doesn't reduce crime. and if there's a society to prove that, it would be the british.

there's a war going on, and a lot of people just don't care. not surprisingly, that frustrates protesters. just this morning i was saying to a co-worker how the last 8 years have taught me that protests don't matter any more. you can have millions show up, and the gov't will give you the bird (and maybe a stick upside your skull) and go about its business.

bloggers, be careful. you may be charged with sedition. it may be malaysia, but we're doing our darndest to suspend habeas corpus and get there, too!

scojo is off the market. and, she's got a bad album of tom waits covers coming out.

if you're working on your masters in homeland security or getting a bachelors in criminal justice, you may not want to be selling drugs. of course, those crazy ideas didn't stop frat boys @ sdsu.

carl lewis, former olympian, thinks that using banned substances in sports should be criminalized. now, i may not disagree, but i definitely don't want to hear him sing the national anthem again. yes, i do, it's hilarious.

all the news that's (not) fit to print

i <3 the news. it's so predictable. today is the day after thanksgiving. without even looking, i could tell you what's going to be the "big" story on every news outlet: shopping.

so, as i began to see what was happening in the world, i hit up the online news sources i check. and yes, black friday was tops. what was it above? real news, of course. like:
5 dead in a murder suicide
peace talks between israel and palestine
the search for a missing teen
a ship off antartica

and, this isn't just an issue for our local fish wrap. oh wait, it is. i went to the l.a. times page and they have actual stories about news. what a novel idea. i didn't see any stories about shopping there until i scrolled to the very bottom of the page, where i saw one on the a.p. wire, where it was appropriately listed first. right before the ship, the murder/suicide and a bombing that killed 26 in iraq.

deaf people should stay out of texas

and so should the rest of us. the most recent reason texas gives us to stay away - a deaf man was assaulted by a cashier because he didn't talk to the clerk when making a purchase. (video of the story)

the clerk thought he was being rude by not talking to him.

philadelphia teen arrest

i am not trying to downplay the recent shooting in ohio by posting this story. or, the potential danger posed by the kid in philadelphia that said he wanted to do some similar. but...

the guns in the picture aren't real. every "news" outlet is showing pictures of the "arsenal" the teen possessed. only 1 was a real gun. the rest are either pellet guns or airsoft guns. he also had some knives, and some home made grenades. so, 1 gun (a legally owned 9mm rifle) & home made grenades, that's real deal. a table full of toys, not.



and when you say "armed," people generally think that they're actively carrying it. the kid wasn't strolling around with the toys, real gun, or grenades. they were in his bedroom.

again, i'm not downplaying the potential danger, but i'm just asking for a little truth in reporting by both the police and the news, and a little less exaggeration.

street justice stops car thief

would you kill a man for your car stereo?

i hope you all would say no to that question. and, yet, it happened. i'm not surprised that it could happen, that someone could die over something so insignificant. what does surprise me a bit are some of the sentiments expressed in the comments of the article. i didn't read all 22 pages of comments, but ones like, "karma," or "justice," and so on sadden me. and this one, "The Lord works in mysterious ways. Society has just been improved," really takes the cake. the callousness and lack of humanity displayed by people in online settings is almost unimaginable. i say almost because if you spend any time online in forums, you frequently see this sort of behavior in a vacuum.

finally, what drew me to this article was the title, which i've swiped part of for my own title. what happened to this man should not be called justice in any form. yes, it was retribution meted out on the streets, but in no way is it justice.

emo scares you (but not me)

worst. journalism. ever. damn. my hometown made nyc's stereogum. and it wasn't for things like rademacher, julia dawn, the sleepover disaster, el olio wolof, ibid, (yeah, i know those last two are from merced) or any good reason to get mentioned in a fairly well read music blog.

safer roads ahead

generally i don't revel in someone else's potential downfall, but this would be very good.

hey, pot, you're black, too

stupid kettle

and really, this isn't just an assessment on the person giving this commentary, but rather on the idea that any of the hacks, err, i mean, journalists on cable news would talk about the "vitrol" being put out by far right and far left blogs. hey, have you listened to talk radio ever? nevermind that, have you listened to yourself or the show that you are currently guesting on?