High School Flag Ban A Good Move

Recently, there’s been an uproar over Hobboton High School in North Carolina due to the fact that they didn’t allow students to wear American flags to school on September 11.

Well, good for them. Personally, the biggest rule on the dress code at my high school was no spaghetti-strap shirts or uber-short skirts, but Americanism? Oh yes, let’s ban that. Patriotism? Nah, the new go-to word is “terrorism,” my friends.

There’s no official word on the Internetz as to why the flag was banned at Hobboton, but neighboring districts give a good indication; students displaying the Confederate flag as a means of degrading or insulting black students led several other North Carolina schools to ban flags as well.

The only thing is, everyone else was wise enough to ban just the Confederates. Hobboton? Oh, they took the politically correct high road and did away with them all.

So yes, banning the flag was a good move. But having a bit of common sense and forethought is a good move, too. I can see where the school was trying to be non-partisan, however, seeing as the US flag could be misconstrued as an anti-Confederate symbol. In Western states like New Mexico, Colorado and California, the US flag is outright banned due to immigration issues. So it’s not as outlandish or uncommon as people are making it seem.

The final word really is that the flag shouldn’t be the complete embodiment of our patriotism. We should be able to carry respect and honor in our hearts, not in a piece of cloth. That’s why flag burning is legal. The flag is a symbol, but it’s not our country. Terrorists tried to destory America that day, not our flag. Even if we were to fall, the flag would persist, even in our absence. Just being in school, being out in general on 9/11, is the right way to show our national strength.

THAT Doesn’t Go There: N.O.T.E.S.

There comes a time in some peoples’ lives when they’ll need to have an abdominal surgery. Ce-section, gallbladder and apendix removal, having that alien spore removed…

But really, who wants to deal with the ugly post-srugical scars? Think of all the women in Miami with tummy-tucks and flay-marks from those three kids they never should have had, strutting around in bikinis, looking slightly less fabulous than if their skin was blemish-free?

Thanks to the marvels of science (insert 1950′s B-film music here), a new method of surgery that doesn’t require invasive, skin-splitting incisions has been developed. It’s called natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery, or NOTES for short, and it allows doctors to put a scope down your throat, punch a hole in your stomach, and dig around in your belly without getting a scalpel out.

Just recently, Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital removed a man’s gallbladder through his mouth without ever spilling a drop of blood.

This revolutionary procedure may be a good cosmetic option, but what does it do to your stomach? There is some concern that damage to the stomach lining might lead to future complications, but due to the youthfulness of this technology, there are no definitive studies at present to either inflame or subdue concerns.

Personally, I find the idea disturbing, but for the few who can’t get general anesthesia and don’t like have a hypodermic needle burried in their spines, it’s a good alternative. I think everyone else should just get over themselves and go under the knife. Do you want to bleed on the table, or into your stomach and abdominal cavity after the doctors send you home? Yeah. It’s that choice or nothing.

‘Run, Fatboy, Run’ Won’t Run in America

I love Simon Pegg. Not like that. I just think he’s a hilarious, flexible actor and a great writer.

His recent work on Hot Fuzz was prodigious. Similarly, Shaun of the Dead was unforgettable. But his most recent film, Run, Fatboy, Run, while not due out until October, already looks set to flop, at least state-side.

First, its core idea is really fitness and weight management. These are concepts Americans aren’t fond of. I mean, just looking at the numbers on obesity in America will show how much of a sedentary nation we happen to be. You wouldn’t expect to sit down the average 200-pound man with his personal large tub of popcorn and gigantic soda, start a film about fitness, and not have him walk out.

Next, for those of you who watched Spaced, Pegg’s character is basically a repeat of his Tim Bisley persona. The only difference is, instead of have fun-loving Mike Wyatt (Nick Frost) in the mix, we have piss-ant David from Shaun of the Dead (Dylan Moran) making him look like more of a tool. It’s British humor without the low-class jokes we love so much here in the States.

Another huge problem is that the casting makes no sense. Why is Hank Azaria randomly inserted in this film? We may never know. Besides that, there seem to be a bunch of nobodies and a lot of little kids, plus a disproportionate amount of hot women versus the number of barely-tolerable-looking men. To make it even more disconcerting, the film is produced by David Schwimmer, who just got done making a straight-to-RedBox film called Big Nothing with Pegg, and we’ve got a favor-turned-ugly scenario.

The biggest problem with the film is that Pegg’s love interest is black. Now, I’m not a rude racist, but everyone’s a little bit racist. Avenue Q proved that. Nobody in America is going to want to see a British flop-comedy about a gun who ditches his pregnant wife at the alter, especially not if she’s black. I think Thandie Newton was great in The Pursuit of Happyness, but this isn’t her thing.

All these things make for a film that could possibly do worse than Gigli. I know I probably won’t even rent it. I’m betting it’ll hit TNT in March.

Peeves: Can I Beat You, PlzKThanx?

Alright, well, I grew up in a family with too many kids.  I was the second-born of the herd, so I knew about hand-me-downs and hand-me-ups and hand-me-which-ways, and I got used to the idea of sharing.

But, being in a big family, you also learn a lot about personal space.  For instance, you know to stay the hell out of other people’s, or else you’ll get your arm ripped off.  Or worse.

I never really did get the ‘worse’ option.  I should look into that…

Anyway, for future reference, you should know that the following things make people want to kill you, simply for relying on your “brains” to help you make “decisions.”  If that’s the best you can do, then you should just “kill yourself.”

•  Park BETWEEN the lines, not on them.  I may need to get into my car at some point.
• Keep your damn lips shut when you chew.  CHRIST, I learned about digestion in middle school.  That goes for gum-chewers, too.  I know you’re a cow, but the cudding?  Really…
• If you fidget so loudly I can hear you across the room, take some Ritalin.  You do not have a jackhammer attached to your leg.  That is a foot.  Treat it as such, plzkthnx.
• As much as I love music, I don’t want to feel it in my intestines when your car goes by.  It is a woofer, not a ‘break my fucking eardrums’ machine.  Plus, your music inevitably sucks if you have to blast it.
• If your music sucks, get new music.  Don’t make everybody else suffer with you just because you’re cheap and/or have horrible taste.  A good litmus for this?  If your friends refuse to let you touch their radio under penalty of death, there might be a problem.  Don Imus probably hates you.
• When you walk into a library or Internet cafe, and there’s only one other person there, DO NOT SIT RIGHT ON TOP OF THEM.  Personal space, remember?  I don’t need your mouth-breathing fogging up my screen.  Moron…
• The same goes for all public places; lines at banks, sitting in theaters, viewing art galleries, ordering fast food.  There are ten million square feet of empty space you could be bothering, besides the half-inch surrounding me.
• Keep your religious and moral beliefs to yourself.  I eat things with faces.  I support abortion.  You live in a Green cave and shoot at passing Liberals.  Good for you.  Good for me.

Finally, why is it that women insist on being cute?  I know we’re supposed to like pink and tiny, furry, explosively adorable chinchilla-esque things, but really, does EVERY accessory you carry have to match?  Could we see your REAL face for once, instead of what Clinique and L’Oreal sell at Macy’s?  And on the top of what we see, could you cover your invisible ass and breasts?  We know you’re so busy being thin that you can’t be bothered to shop around for some T&A, but nobody wants to see your anorexic boy-legs.

EAT A CHEEZBRGR.  YOU WILL BECOME MORE HUMAN.  And you’ll feel better.

I wish I did.  Ranting never helps.  >.>

Cell Phones Really Can Kill You

In a less-than-shocking study done recently in Amsterdam, researchers found that the electromagnetic signal from cell phones can interrupt or stop devices like pacemakers and syringe pumps.

 This comes in contrast to a study done by the Mayo Clinic earlier this year that found the exact opposite; that cell phone signals pose no threat to hospital equipment.

The study showed that, when used around 61 life-sustaining machines commonly found in hospital rooms, a minimal number of catastrophic events will result.  By that, they mean that 50 incidents were sited, and 75% of them would lead to fatality.

However, if your phone doesn’t use a nifty new program called General Packet Radio Service, which does stuff like let you surf the Web and check your email from your phone, chances are you won’t be doing any damage when you’re innocently trying to pass the time at your comatose uncle’s bedside.

Besides, you have to be insanely close to machinery while using your Internet connection; according to the study, the mean distance for interference is 3 centimeters.  So just don’t sit on anybody’s face while looking at Facebook, and you’re cool.

Photon Thrusters are GO: Let’s Go to MARS!

For the longest time, people have wanted to go to Mars.  I guess the moon just wasn’t enough, or maybe War of the Worlds got us all worked up, so now everybody has a grudge against our red sister planet?

Regardless of our violent tendencies, we’ve figured out the secret to space travel is stability.  If your engines are shaky or easily influenced by their own output, thereby making them dangerous, you’re not going to get very far without exploding.

And yet, we still had to get to Mars…Only trouble was, it would take six long, boring months to get there.

So we came up with this lovely idea called “photon thrusters.”

An idiot’s guide on photon thrusters, while probably never entering publication, would explain this unique propulsion system as contained energy transformed into a photon beam (like a frickin’ laser) and pointed in the opposite direction that you want to go.

Only problem is that, with all the contained mirrors and vibration of the engine itself, there were issues that a standard photon propulsion system just wouldn’t be able to maintain stability in a rocket.  Right now, PPS’s are used for space walks, but those are rather small, contained packs, and therefore are easier to maintain and manipulate.

So enter Dr. Young Bae, a guy who owns a school apparently, because he works at the Bae Institute.  This guy came up with a Photonic Laser Thruster that produces enough energy to get us to Mars in roughly a week, and won’t get us blown up in the process.

I think that’s great.  The not-blowing-up thing.  And the Mars thing, too.

What I like best about this, though, is that it shows independent research is still good for something besides ED drugs and fake cloning procedures.  NASA is giving this guy some serious money now, and with it, who knows what he can do?  If he can get us to Mars faster than that girl from The Ring can kill you, I say he’s got something there.

Thank God I’m Not Made In China!

Let’s face it: EVERYTHING is made in China theses days. It doesn’t matter what store you shop in or what you’re looking to buy, chances are, if the one you’re buying wasn’t shipped out of Hong Kong, there’s one just like the one you’re buying on a trans-Pacific voyage right now, and it’ll cost you half as much when it gets here.

The only problem is, it might kill you when it arrives.

For dog and cat owners, you might recall March’s little escapade where tainted products were used for producing brands like Science Diet, ALPO, and Eukenuba. The vegetable proteins, which were the actual source, were also used in livestock feed, but experts say it won’t harm humans. Good for us, bad for Fido.

Now the threat (don’t you love that word?) isn’t to our pets, but to our barely-smarter children, who eat just about everything, anyway. If the lead paint in the Fisher Price toys doesn’t kill them, the little magnets from their Polly Pockets or Magnetix might do the job.

It’s one thing to kill our pets. It’s another thing entirely to kill our children.

Good thing the Chinese government is stepping up, right?

In what they’re calling a “War” on tainted products, the Chinese government has promised to start doing real inspections and testing their own goods before shipping them out, so ‘concerned’ American firms like Wal-Mart won’t have to tax themselves by doing it here.

Also, they executed the head of their FDA.

In the long run, however, we’ll always forgive China. Why? Well, despite the fact that they’re our biggest competitor for consumption, and that they’re Communists, and that we’re dogmatic, sycophantic morons, we need them.  Just remember kiddies, ‘need’ isn’t the same as ‘love.’  We’re not forgiving them anytime soon for getting the 2008 Olympics or being Red or anything.  We’re just begrudgingly accepting to keep buying their poorly-made, super-cheap knock-offs.

Because China is the WalMart of the world, and everybody knows, we can’t live without our WalMartz.

Dora may soon be exploring an ER near you.

Pity on Craig: Why People Need to Back Off

Larry Craig: 27-year Senator for uber-Republican Idaho. Married, three kids, a great job and a secure home.

And, apparently, several gay flings on the side.

This whole business with Craig started back in 2004 when an angry, gay blogger named Mike Rogers got ticked off about the attempted amendment to ban gay marriage and started a campaign to ‘out’ members of the Senate. Since then, he’s been alleging Craig came on to him several times, and has hounded him to death.

If that’s not a biased source, I don’t know what to call it.

First, okay, I’ll admit Craig was soliciting in that airport bathroom. You don’t touch people’s feet and stroke cubicle dividers unless you’ve got OCD or a serious concentration problem (one task at a time in there, man…). That’s illegal. Great.

Well, prove that he was actually going to have sex in that bathroom.

It’s quite probable that, being a highly-recognized, outspoken member of the Senate and part of a party in turmoil, not even mentioning the fact that he’s got a gaydar gun leveled at his head, he wouldn’t have done anything in a public place.

And there’s nothing illegal about hooking up with somebody in a bathroom and then going to a motel.

Some people might say that’s far-fetched. I don’t really think so. As of yet, only one person has come forward to claim steadfastly that he engaged in sexual contact with the Senator in public, and he has no proof. Add to that the fact that Craig has never been caught or outed for any reason, that he’s adamantly anti-gay rights, and that everything about his body language is straight, and you’re looking at a persecuted bisexual guy, at best.

I understand what he’s talking about when he says he was pressured into doing it. If he’d gone ahead and dragged it out in a courtroom battle, Nancy Grace would have been down his pants, in his shoes, up his shirt and back again before he had a chance to get his side of the story out. Mike Rogers probably would have orgasmed just reading about it. The media would have partied on his grave, even if he’d had his day in court and won.

Because I think, being an intelligent man with a large amount of money, and with such stout followers as the Christian Right, he’d have gotten off without even a slap on the wrist. I listened to those recordings. That man could talk himself out of a murder scene with a bloody knife in his hand and the deceased’s entrails on his jacket.

I’ve read interviews with his friends and neighbors. I’ve seen excerpts of him speaking with his wife. I’ve listened to what his kids have to say.

I don’t think Larry Craig is gay at all. I think he’s being persecuted.

And while what he was doing in that bathroom was misconstrued as illegal, I don’t think it should be a crime to try and pick people up in restrooms. Sure, screwing them is still against the rules, but there’s no reason you can’t hook up and move along. So prove he wasn’t doing that. PROVE IT.

And get the hell out of his pants, Nancy Grace…

Larry and Suzanne aren’t gonna do this lying down anymore…Heheheh…

It’s a Strikethrough-Eat-Livejournal World Out There

So it’s been just over a month since Six Apart and Livejournal decided to enforce their terms of service and subsequently ban the living daylights out of 500+ journals.

For the ‘unofficial’ list, try catrinella’s LJ.

The basic idea behind this mass murder was to eliminate journals whose Interest fields contained certain objectionable ideas, such as pedophilia, rape, and incest. However, the moderators got a bit too trigger-happy and started suspending journals whose genre make up a large part of the LJ writing community: Slash.

The Harry Potter fandom took a critical blow for a few days, though with community names like “hp_incest,” it’s really no wonder.

The Strikethrough was genuinely successful, though, shutting down several journals that were legitimately populated by pedophiles and existed for the express purpose of indulging this obsession. Many users involved with these journals, which will go un-named and un-linked here, deleted their journals before moderators could get to them, and the groups were effectively dismantled.

However, the problem remains that these people could still jump back into the system at any given time, as long as they get a new Hotmail address and take five seconds to register a new account. In the 8 years that LJ has been around, this is the first mass action by the abuse team to clean up the network. Now, with far too few checks and far too many threats, this Strikethrough seems more like a temporary fix or a symbolic gesture, especially when you take into account the number of suspended journals that were inevitably reactivated.

Does TB Make You FLY Better?

I have never been on an airplane.  I have never been in an airport.  I have never been near anyone with TB.

But this guy, Andrew Speaker, thought it’d be cool to fly to Paris, get married in Greece and honeymoon there, then get shuffled from the Czech Republic to Montreal, drive into the States, and just spread drug-resistant TB everywhere he went.

Oh!  But he did apologize. 

Now the big fall-out is whether or not security should have caught him.  Personally, I think the minimum-wage employees staffing our airport terminals have enough garbage to worry about with terrorists, bombs, shoe-bombs, bag-bombs, box-cutters, hand lotion and breast milk.  Now they’re supposed to be able to sense disease?  Tell me, where in his security screening at the Atlanta airport was a qualified medical professional present to perform a Tuberculin skin test on Mr. Speaker?

Actually, with the 2-3 day turn-around on results, he’d have been sleeping in the airport for a while…

But is that what it requires?  Should passengers be forced to make pre-flight doctor’s visits with certain FAA-approved physicians?  Or should people be allowed to make their own decisions whether or not to fly?

It’s clear from Mr. Speaker’s little stunt that people are selfish and pig-headed.  He knowingly endangered the lives of hundreds of people, literally around the world, and couldn’t have cared less, really, because he had to get married??!?  I wonder if Mrs. Speaker knew when she married him?

This is a great example of how one person can ruin it for everybody.  We live in an age of insecurity, suspicion, lack of trust, faith, and morality.  We have people intentionally spreading fear, war, hate, and now illness?

You can’t even use the stupidity defense; this guy is a lawyer, his dad is a lawyer, and his father-in-law works for the CDC.  People with this kind of TB have been under federal quarantine since the 1960′s.  It’s not something new.  And yet he claims that he didn’t feel he was a risk?

Authorities are going nuts trying to track down the other passengers from his flights.  Overseas, they’re trying to retrace all his movements, hopefully picking out the people unfortunate enough to catch this thing from him, and safeguard their own people.

The rest of the world hates America enough.  Our foreign policy should not be, “Find a moron with a deadly disease and set him loose upon the world to spread death.”  That doesn’t sound like the makings of good relations to me.