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March 06
March 31, 2006
OK, that’s an overstatement. However, the Rocky’s story on wrestling coach Jon Penfold is eerily apologetic to a teacher that decides it’s a good idea to restrain a child with duct tape.
Witness this crap (emphasis mine):
The pride runs deep this town of 838 about 70 miles northeast of
Denver. When the longtime wrestling coach was charged with child abuse
for taping a young boy to a bench, the news shook the town and
assumptions on both sides were made quickly.
You see, this is the heartland where earnest agrarians work and toil. But really, I wonder if these assumptions were made because the coach, to his credit, never denied what he did. But hey, the 13 year-old deserved having his mouth and jaw taped shut, right?
"I was surprised, but I figured the kid deserved it,"said Bill Rogers,
a business owner and a life-long resident. "It’s not appropriate for
today, but when I was in school it was OK."
Uh huh.
The story then goes on to report the incident that led up to the taping, quoting the kid and his parents, who are still understandably upset.
But then it returns to Coach, who gets the last word and the chance to posit the notion that he — and not the kid — is the real victim. Take a look (again, emphasis mine):
He chose to discipline Chance himself, without first contacting his
parents, he said, to teach him the self-control, self-discipline and
respect that he’s tried to instill in every student he’s coached in 30
years.The month he has been waiting for word on his future has been difficult.
"It’s torn my world apart," Penfold said. He has lost weight and
sleep. He wants to finish out the last few weeks of the school year so
he can retire.
But I can’t believe they ended with this bit of self-serving martyrology:
"I’m supposed to be innocent until proven guilty," he said,
"but (the school is) acting like I am guilty until proven innocent."
Yep. Well, maybe that’s because you taped a kid to a bench during practice, in front of his friends, until he pissed his pants.
Tough love, Rocky reporter Bianca Prieto seems to suggest, is something people today can’t understand. That’s cause Wiggins, Colorado is a place "where the pride runs deep." People talk about corn and soybeans. Good grief…
Posted by: johndicker in Uncategorized | Permalink 4 Comments
March 31, 2006
We here at the TP are proud to announce our inaugural MySpace Tard of the Week, Craig, who is a baffingly endowed porn-star, chess wunderkind, HTML guru, gifted musician, but not — and I can’t make this any clearer — a pathological liar. Be sure to check out his musical projects, Craig Sings and Alias God, the latter of which indicates no lack of self-esteem on young Craig. It’s also incumbent upon you to listen to Alias God’s “MySpace Diss,” which is as self-indicative a song as any of the online-rivalry oeuvre. Magical. Juuust magical.
Posted by: Aaron Retka in Uncategorized | Permalink 9 Comments
March 30, 2006
From the Louisiana State University’s Daily Reveille, three letters to the editor:
Squirrel antics cost student money
Squirrel letter shows lack of sense
Overblown rhetoric over squirrel letter
A sample:
I have seen the squirrels on this campus do some strange things —
things that I have never seen squirrels do in my lifetime and that’s
saying a lot being that I’m a country girl. But to blame the squirrels
for his own laziness and stupidity just pushes the line.
Enjoy!
Posted by: thepfef in Squirrel of the Week! | Permalink 2 Comments
March 30, 2006
I spend a lot of my day typing nonsensical URLs into my computer, hoping for the existence of heretofore marginal and exciting sites. Alas, www.lapcrapper.com doesn’t exist. Nor does www.tardfarmer.com, or www.ohboyimpregant.com, or www.fungusfuckers.com or few among the countless dozens I try to find.
Until Cheese Weasel, which makes just as little sense as I hoped it would.
Cheese Weasel, you should know you give me hope.
Posted by: Aaron Retka in Uncategorized | Permalink 3 Comments
March 29, 2006
File this under yet another example of rampant Stranger sycophantism, but I can’t help but to call your attention to Dan Savage’s very rockin’ Impeach the Motherfucker Already campaign.
It’s a grassroots-a-palooza! Buy killer ITMFA swag at Slapnose, show it off and watch your friends and enemies alike worship you.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering about this post’s picture — yes, dogs do hate our President. They loathe him, for he stole their snausages.
Posted by: Aaron Retka in Uncategorized | Permalink Comments
March 29, 2006
By now everybody knows that Good Ol’ Jack was sentenced to 5 years and 10 months for his SunCruz Casino-related frauduliciousness. His call for a letter-writing campaign was apparently only semi-ineffective, as 260 pleas for leniency rolled in from friends, family and rabbis.
Marianas forced abortions aside, I feel kind of sorry for the guy. Only not really. Whatever; this post was essentially just an excuse to use the phrase “Gay for Abramoff.” You may now return to your regularly scheduled Web-trolling.
Posted by: Aaron Retka in Uncategorized | Permalink 2 Comments
March 28, 2006
Buried on page 3 of the Gazette’s Metro section today was this encouraging news about a whole new supply of Diebold voting machines that will be delivered to make El Paso Co. elections even less transparent. If the voting technology isn’t transparent and open source, then the results can’t possibly be either. The “Help America Vote Act”! If only there were a euphemism less chapped than Orwellian to describe these kinds of doublespeak. Here’s a great site called blackboxvoting.com that reports on the craptacularity of these voting machines. Today, in fact, they reported the Diebold stock has dropped even further in light of reports that California is suing to decertify the machines. No wonder they came in with the lowest bid — they’re pieces of shit.
County buying 315 voting machines
$1.14 million will be spent to comply with 2002 law
By BILL HETHCOCK THE GAZETTE
El Paso County commissioners Monday approved spending $1.14 million in federal funds to buy 315 voting machines and software that will bring the county into compliance with the Help America Vote Act.
Congress in 2002 approved the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which is aimed at ensuring that everyone gets the chance to vote and ballots are counted accurately.
El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink said he hopes the voting machines work, but he made no promises.
He said politics, bureaucracy and legal and technical challenges at the state and national levels caused delays that leave county officials too little time to thoroughly test the machines.
“The primary election is 134 days away,” Balink said. “In election terms, that’s tomorrow. “I don’t want to make anybody panic, but it’s really late, folks. We’re really under the gun.”
Asked by county Commissioner Dennis Hisey what would happen if the county refused to buy HAVA compliant machines for the 2006 elections, Balink responded:
“We’ll be a defendant in a lawsuit. I don’t think we have any choice but to order the equipment and to use it.”
Colorado received $41.6 million in federal money to bring the state into compliance. About $1.14 million was set aside for El Paso County.
Balink said the Diebold company submitted the low bid, at $1.2 million, for El Paso County voting machines and software. The county has used Diebold equipment for six years without problems, he said, and has a credit with the company that covers the rest of the cost above its share of the federal funds.
The next lowest bidder was $600,000 higher, he said.
HAVA was passed in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election irregularities in Florida.
It requires election equipment certification, establishing acceptable forms of voter identification and creating statewide voter registration databases, which advocates say will reduce the possibility of fraud. It also requires counties to provide voters with disabilities an accessible and private way to vote without assistance of a poll worker.
The act mandates that voting equipment allow voters to verify their choices and change them before their ballots are cast.
Posted by: darksandal in Uncategorized | Permalink Comments
March 28, 2006
And to think these fetusses could have been adopted:
Surgeons Remove Two Fetuses From Infant
By PAUL GARWOOD
Associated Press WriterISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Surgeons operated on a 2-month-old Pakistani girl Tuesday to remove two fetuses that had grown inside her while she was still in her mother’s womb, a doctor said.
The infant, who was identified only as Nazia, was in critical condition following the two-hour operation at The Children’s Hospital at Pakistan Institute of Medical Science in the capital, Islamabad, said Zaheer Abbasi, head of pediatric surgery at the hospital.
Abbasi, the chief doctor who led the operation, said the case was the first he was aware of in Pakistan of fetus-in-fetu, where a fetus has grown inside another in the womb.
“It is extremely rare to have two fetuses being discovered inside another,” Abbasi told The Associated Press, adding that he did not know what caused the medical abnormality. “Basically, it’s a case of triplets, but two of the siblings grew in the other.”
The baby comes from Abbotabad, about 30 miles north of Islamabad. She is the fifth child of a woman in her 30s, who was at the hospital to be with her daughter. Her father works in the Arabian Gulf.
Abbasi said surgeons removed the two partially grown fetuses, totaling about two pounds, that had died at about 4 months.
Other fetus-in-fetu cases have been reported elsewhere in the world. A report in a June 2000 issue of the U.S. journal Pediatrics called such occurrences rare and estimated their rate at about 1 per 500,000 births.
Posted by: darksandal in Uncategorized | Permalink 1 Comment
March 28, 2006
From the endless well of questionable taste that is Tha Web comes MyDeathSpace, a site devoted to documenting the passage of those with MySpace profiles.While the site can certainly be macabre (as with the picture above), it seems to mainly contain newsclippings and expository blurbs along with the links to the deceased MySpacesters’ profiles. Most of the deaths are automobile-related — which, if sad, makes sense due to the mean MySpace user’s age — but there are a handful truly creepy instances of murder, sexual manslaughter and even a kid who posted his suicide note as a bulletin before ending his life.
In poor taste? Oh, totally. But what on the web ain’t these days?
Posted by: Aaron Retka in Uncategorized | Permalink 2 Comments
March 28, 2006
From the NY Cragslist:
Posted by: darksandal in Uncategorized | Permalink Comments
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