There’s a school district in PA that has set new levels of OMFG for the Nazi like assholes that seem to be drawn to public school administration. It seems that they offered all of the 2300 students at the districts 2 high schools laptop computers. The details are discussed in the CNN article linked below. Apparently, some asshole Assistant Principal believed that this gave him the right to spy on his students. If I remember right he was suspended for “improper behavior” at home via the webcam on the laptop.

Since when does a school district have a right to determine behavior while a student is off-campus or away from school functions? At any rate they’re being sued. I can only hope that said Assistant Principal can be proven to have seen some of his female students in various states of undress so that when he goes to prison he can be labeled as a pedophile. I hear they’re really popular. And seriously, the very least that should happen is that this guy should go to prison. He’s lucky I’m not in charge because the motherfucker would be standing in front of a ditch trying his damnedest to stare down a firing squad right now if I was King.

Maybe, just maybe, schools should spend a little more time educating and a little less time worrying about any “improper behavior” that’s going on outside of their jurisdiction.

[Gizmodo] & [CNN]

AWESOME UPDATE: According to the Washington Post an FBI investigation has begun to determine if federal wiretapping or computer intrusion laws were violated. Have fun in prison, scumbag. Because you know the school district is going to roll all over you to get out of the way of this shitstorm.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court overturned a century of electoral law by a 5-4 majority allowing unlimited spending by corporations, labor unions and other organizations. Until then corporations had been barred from spending funds on broadcast ads, campaign workers or billboards that urge the election or defeat of a federal candidate. They are still barred from contributing directly to a candidate’s campaign. BFD. If you think for a second there’s a functional difference between Exxon paying millions of dollars for TV ads that cast a negative light on a candidate who is opposed to, say, drilling in Yellowstone and Exxon contributing millions of dollars to his opponent so that he can do it I’d suggest you haven’t paid really close attention to the way campaigns work.

Part of the ill-considered decision rests on the feeling that corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals. The problem is that corporations are not individuals and money is not speech. But I’ll tell you what… as an individual I pay taxes on my gross income not on what’s left over after I pay all my bills. If corporations are now regular individuals, let’s level the playing field regarding taxes and let them support the government that is so clearly concerned about their speech rights in the same way you and I do-by paying taxes on their gross sales.

The other problem is that over the decades we (and by “we” I mean the government) has consistently loosened restrictions on the way corporations can behave.  As originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers, corporations were tightly controlled entities limited to certain specific time frames and activities. Now they are not and have become huge juggernauts. And we’ve seen what awesome stewards of the economy they are.

The good news is that I believe this moves us one step closer to the revolution when we (and by  “we” I mean the people) will bring down the vengeance that is so richly deserved.

LA Times has an article about the decision.

Charlie Hoehn over at Hoehn’s Musings wrote a post that boiled down to “just do stuff”. Of course, “just do stuff”, while succinct, doesn’t really do justice to the underlying sentiment. When people stop doing stuff, in my opinion, they have stopped living and are just taking up space. The group that I rock climb with embodies the spirit of the sentiment with the catchphrase “climb to fail”. What that means is that you can’t climb to a difficult move and just quit – you have to try to get past it and fall. The strange thing is that sometimes you don’t fall. Life should be lived the same way… just do stuff and climb to fail. Trust me, here, I’m a recovering dead person.

At any rate, you can find Charlie’s excellent article over here. I suggest you give it a read.

[Hoehn's Musings via Life Hacker]

It’s probably just me but there are things that I find really irritating and will cause me to not spend my money in certain places. Here’s an example-This morning I had breakfast at the McDonald’s at 1805 N. Harrison in Cary, NC. I had a Big Breakfast with Hotcakes (which is the new name for something that had a different name last week…. but that’s another post entirely) which consists of Eggs, a sausage patty, 3 pancakes, a biscuit, and a hashbrown brick. So she brought me one of the maple syrup flavored corn syrup containers and I asked her for another one because the amount in one is just short of what I consider adequate for use on the pancakes. I’ll admit it bothers the environmentally conscience part of me to use part of a plastic container for no particularly good reason other than some efficiency expert somewhere decided that people use less syrup than I do on an order of McD’s hotcakes, but I do it anyway. At any rate, she said they charge 27 cents for an extra one.

At this point I’d like to point out that I just paid $6.07 for the above plus a cup of coffee so an extra 27 cents puts it within rounding distance of $6.50.  I have several Waffle Houses within 10 miles of me and they all have breakfast specials consisting of food cooked for you instead of food cooked sometime today and kept in a warmer for less than $6.50*. My point is that I spend a significant amount of money at this McDonald’s but won’t anymore because there are and almost limitless number of places to buy breakfast (including other McD’s that don’t charge for syrup) and they’ll be getting my money instead of this one.

I know it may seem petty but if we all voted with our dollars and made sure that the business in question knew why, we wouldn’t have to put up with surly service, bad food, or cheap products.

[image by M.F. Naaldenberg via Wikimedia Commons]

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*Disclaimer: I’m not 100% sure about this because I haven’t been to one lately and I’m too lazy to look it up but I have been to Huddle House where 2 eggs, 2 strips of bacon, hashbrowns and a waffle with all the syrup I cared to put on it plus coffee was $6.35.

I read an article today by Mandy Locke in the News and Observer about Johnny Gaskins, a Raleigh defense attorney, who was convicted October 9th of the crime of depositing and paying taxes on legally earned income but doing it in quantities that were too small. Bullshit, you say?  In our retarded effort to keep people from doing things that they want to do the federal government has passed a whole series of laws that are designed to combat a problem that exists only if you’re a government bureaucrat or peddler of ‘legal drugs’.

This is the case here. The government makes, let’s say, pot illegal. People still want to smoke pot. Some enterprising capitalist will provide them with pot. Now, said capitalist has cash income for which he has no legal source. In order to catch this “criminal” who’s providing the exact same service as the convenience store on the corner (except that the pot industry doesn’t have enough high paid lobbyists lining the pockets of Congress), a law must be passed to catch people depositing the “illegal” income. Which they did. It’s illegal to deposit sums under $10,000 for the purposes of causing the bank to evade reporting you for depositing $10,000. Got that? Read it again.

So that’s what happened to Johnny Gaskins. At this point, a paranoid person would point out that he has built his career on defending persons engaged in drug trafficking (of the “illegal” sort). Therefore, this could be the government’s attempt to rid itself of somebody trying to stop them from eliminating RJ Reynolds/GlaxoSmithKline/Guiness UDV North America’s competition. I’m not that person because I generally think government employees are too stupid and lazy to engage in that kind of behavior. What it most likely is, is a bureaucrat blinding adhering to the letter of the law. Again, Johnny Gaskin’s “crime” is depositing money that he legally earned and paid taxes on but did it in insufficiently large quantities. Are you frightened yet?

There are times that I despair for the Republic because something like this can happen and the people aren’t in the streets asking why the government has any right to tell this man how he can deposit his money. The article seems to question why he would break the law or indicate that he might be mentally unstable from dealing with criminal defendants all these years. What if he just doesn’t think it’s any of the government’s fucking business how much he’s depositing.

Photo by Trevor DeVincenzi.

I just got back from a weekend of camping and rock climbing at Pilot Mountain, NC with some of the most fantastic people I’ve ever known. Here are the things I learned:

1. Everybody’s definition of what is art is different. And their definition doesn’t affect me any more than whether or not they like the same kind of music as I do. What I carrying away from that is that all forms of creation are as personal as religion or politics and, while not as emotional, should probably not be discussed in polite company.
2. Things that you learned well when you were young come back to you pretty quickly. I hadn’t been climbing in probably 10 years; seriously & regularly for a lot longer than that. The first attempt I made some classic beginner mistakes and tried to arm my way through which didn’t work. After that, the climbing was pretty good. Overall, I think I did pretty well… not nearly as bad as I was afraid I was going to be but obviously not at the level I used to climb. I will be going again as often as possible and think I can get back to close to the ability of my youth.
3. My last climbing experience was at an indoor climbing wall and this weekend verified what I thought about it then… Indoor is probably fine for practicing and so forth but it’s a dry and antiseptic experience compared to climbing on living rock. There’s probably an analogy for modern American life and Wal-Mart there someplace but I’m too lazy to figure it out right now. Maybe later. Or You can think about it yourself.
4. There can be no understating that having good people around you is one of the most important things you can do for the quality of your life. The group I went camping with is strangely diverse but respectful of the diversity. IMO, that provides you with maximum exposure to ideas that you can examine and adopt if you like.

In closing, I had a great time. We created great shared stories. We got out and wallowed in nature for a weekend instead of sitting in front of a TV being told when and where to buy things while we were waiting for a place to permanently lay down. I highly recommend you do the same if you get the chance.

Larry Thursby, who is apparently Nationwide’s vice president of Personal Auto,  is an asshole. During one of their radio commercials, he’s talking about accident forgiveness and specifically teenagers when he says it’s not a question of if but when they get in an accident (paraphrased because I couldn’t find the commercial online anywhere). This is how insurance people think. I, for one, was never in an accident as a teenager. My brother was never in an accident as a teenager.

As far as he’s concerned rampaging teenagers are out there running around crashing into things and fucking up his bonuses. But they’re such great people that they’re willing to let the first one go. That’s how Nationwide is on your side.

I don’t think I’ll be giving them any of my money.

Normally, I’m pretty libertarian in my outlook but there are a couple of areas where I think government intervention is a pretty good idea. One of them happens to be public libraries. So it was with some concern that I read that the Free Library of Philadelphia will close on October 2nd. It’s exactly the sort of brinksmanship politicians play when they want to raise taxes in the face of public opposition. Tennessee legislators did it a few years ago when voters disapproved of a bond referendum or something. So they stopped funding school transportation.  It’s one of those times you wish that people would grab their guns and descend on the state capitol for a good ole revolution.

That may be  what’s going on here. Or, if Philadelphia or PA is in such bad economic shape that they really can’t afford to keep the libraries open,  I hope the voters of Pennsylvania remember over the course of the next several elections who put them in this situation.

Mostly it reminds me of why politicians can’t be trusted.

[Free Library of Philadelphia via Boing Boing]

I don’t know who Laura is but I caught The Guide For Being So Choice on her blog and only have this to say…. if you are a woman and can exist while mastering even 80% of the things she’s listed for being an awesome girlfriend and are halfway attractive, I’ll treat you like a queen. If you look like Mia Sara did in the late 80′s, I will give up my vow never to get married again. Just a thought.

(Quest for the Golden Crab Bag via Boner Party)

So just to prove I can do it I’m posting this from the mall. I didn’t really need anything but there’s a good Greek place in the food court so I thought I’d stop and get some lunch and wallow in humanity for a little while.

While I was here I thought I’d thow out some random observations that aren’t really complete enough to deserve their own post.

Judgemental people suck. I think everybody is a little judgemental sometimes but people who go out of their way to categorize based on appearance aren’t worth the effort to dislike.

Downtown Raleigh has changed a lot in the last few years. I don’t know if opening back up Fayetteville Street had anything to do with it but there’s a lot going on down there now.

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