Permanently Checked Out

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Permanently Checked Out

Snookie's Avenger

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Snookie's Avenger

This Is Not a Threat

Doesn’t the Second Amendment Cover This?

Oh the shame and humiliation of making the national news. I would rather some whackjob had tried to blow up the Chandler Home Depot again. But no. We have to face public humiliation for having the world’s dumbest school administrators. They work at Payne Junior High, which is part of Chandler Unified School District.

Last week a 13 year-old student of Payne Junior High was suspended for 5 days as the result of doodling a gun on an assignment. According to the school he violated their “No Tolerance” gun policy. Parents of the child spoke with administrators, who agreed to reduce the sentence to 3 days.

Paula Mosteller, mother of the child, cannot believe that her son was suspended for sketching a gun. She said, "I just can't believe that there wasn't another way to resolve this." Administrators have filed the sketch of the gun in her child’s Permanent Record. They would not release it, even for the ogling pleasure of public. They also declined to explain why the sketch was viewed as a threat.

My theory is that the Principal of Payne Junior High, who is ultimately responsible for the 3-day suspension, upon accepting her position stuffed a knitting needle up her nose and scrambled her brains until the resulting bloody gray goo ran out onto her sensible 1-inch pumps. That is the only possible explanation for absentmindedly handing down suspensions in the name of “No Tolerance.”

The school administration is not commenting on the story. There might be a piece of the missing puzzle. But why then, would administrators not have told the Mostellers, who appear to be baffled by the overreaction of the school to what can’t possibly be the first gun sketch to enter its hallowed halls.

If it were my kid, I’d have school administrators in court faster than they could say ACLU. Perfectly normal, nice children draw pictures of guns and tanks and Serbian Death Squads. These violent drawings are not indicative of a child’s intention to commit violence. They are indicative of a gun-obsessed culture and the highly impressionable nature of children.

Incidentally, the East Valley also contains the world’s dumbest news team. ABC affiliate, KNXV, told viewers that a child was suspended for “drawing a gun.” They neglected to add “on a piece of paper,” until about 30 seconds into the story.

If You Really Loved Those Cats, They'd Live In Your House

Advanced Communication Technology and the Proliferation of Stupid

Yesterday I’m in Kohl’s bra shopping. Bra shopping is more fun than shearing a herd of crazed Alpacas. That’s why I went in the morning, when I though the store would be relatively deserted and quiet. It was. Until about fifteen minutes in. Enter a woman on her phone with two small children in tow.

The children are arguing loudly about whether one of them is a poopybutt. The woman is calling her friend, and browsing lingerie. The squalls and squeals build. The mother threatens their visit to the toy section. This has little or no effect. The argument devolves into pinching and hair pulling, as their mother is now talking to their father, who apparently didn’t wasn’t reimbursed for moving expenses.

Being able to pay off your credit card debt is important, but the children didn’t want toys or emotional scars from sibling domestic violence. They wanted their mother’s attention. Or a portable DVD player. For god’s sake lady, just plop them down with Blue’s Clues, Lion King, or the new foreign import Baby Brainwashing Pacifier Good Time Dance Party.

It's imperative for our country to require every 3 and 4 year old child to attend preschool. The children are the future. Do you really want small children, under the care of neglectful parents, annoying mentally unstable bra shoppers?

We also need harsh punishment for doctor visits during school hours. The other day I walk into my dentist’s office about ten minutes early for my appointment. There’s a man leaning over the counter as if completely exhausted by the strain of his tiresome day, and it’s not even 9am. The reasons for his fatigue are slouching, whining and squirming. Impatient, when really they should be enjoying their freedom from state sponsored indoctrination. They are teenagers. And the man I can only assume is their dad tells them to sit, stay! The male, appearing to be about 15 complies. A whoosh of air deflates the overstuffed leather chair in the waiting room. He looks pretty content to be at a state of rest. His sister, appearing to be about 13, likewise flops onto a chair.

But then she’s sitting up. Asking about something pressing and urgent. “Dad, can we go now?” Then she’s standing. Doing a little impatient teenager dance. Her dad is trying to have a “grown up” conversation. He waves a hand at her, an instruction to go back from whence she came and be quiet. He is setting up appointments with the receptionist.

I sign the sign-in sheet and hear a greeting. I nod, but don’t look up. I’m trying to remember which Dentist I have an appointment with, and watching the antsy pants dance out of the corner of my eye. I sit on the other leather couch. Pull out my PDA. And pretend to play solitaire.

The dad warns the girl again to sit down again. She inches back towards the sofa, but remains standing. And then a terrible crunchy clattery noise, the sound of heavy, expensive item wrapped in plastic hitting tile flooring interrupts the drone of “grown up” conversation. The man winces. He does not have to look to know that his daughter has dropped her Motorola RAZR for the umpteenth time. “Whoops!” The young woman flinches as if preparing for a fatherly blow to the head. She picks up the phone and slinks back to the leather couch.

It was not long after that the man and his draining children leave. I do enjoy a good show, but now I soak up the quiet of low-level office rumble and dental office rock. My appointment is at 9, but I’m not too worried when the time is five after, and I haven’t been called back. The sound of the receptionist and the scheduler making confirmation phone calls fills the waiting room.

Then I hear, in full phone voice, “Hi, Sarah? This is Cindy from Dr. Warner’s office calling to remind you about your 9am appointment. I’m sure that you’re on your way. Good bye.” I realize that Cindy has called me, at home. When I am obviously sitting in the dentist’s office. I walk up to the counter. Cindy has risen also and this time she notices my presence in the room. “Oh, you’re here.”

That’s what I get for using the quiet mode for my game of solitaire. And what I deserve for not bringing a pair of surly, bored teenagers with no respect for delicate electronics with me.

Dear Drunken Celebrity Driver,

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Dear Drunken Celebrity Driver,

Further Proof the Critics are Full of Crap

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Further Proof the Critics are Full of Crap

Toasted

On March 9th a Chandler man drove to a nearby Wal-Mart to purchase a fire extinguisher because his toaster oven was on fire. The man set his toaster oven on fire while drying the Methamphetamines he was manufacturing.

The man attempted to douse the flames with water and was unsuccessful. Presumably the 19 year-old did not want to bring the authorities in the matter, as he was whipping up a batch of Meth and also in possession of marijuana.

While the man was absent from his endangered condo the sprinkler system was triggered and stifled the flames. Altering the authorities to the fire, and making him the lucky winner of a fabulous vacation in a concrete cell without a view, courtesy of Maricopa County.

Part of the punishment for crimes like this one should be sterilization. This man shouldn’t be responsible for the care of a Chia Pet let alone a human being.

Tune in Wednesday for a special Cursed Tongue Guide to Surviving a Toaster Oven Fire.

Just What Pat Roberston Always Wanted

Okay, you’re going to hate me. But I’m working on my Christmas shopping. If you’re reading this and you’re on my Christmas list, of course I buy your gift in November so it will be fresh. (Although, if I was to buy you a Christmas present in March, it should be flattering to think that I am confident that I will still like you by December.)

I found the perfect gift for Pat Robertson. Now, normally he wouldn’t be on my list, but you know when you find the perfect thing for someone you know, and you just have to buy it for them? I know I probably just lost my male audience, which I believe to be considerable, but please just humor me and nod. I knew you could!

It’s The Human Evolution Coloring Book, and the connection between humans and our closest living primate relatives couldn’t be more clearly explained.

What To Do If You Bought Your Wife a Retractable Laptop Mouse at the Intel Gift Shop Yesterday

You messed up big time. Yesterday, you realized, by the talk about restaurant reservations what day it was. Valentine’s Day. Some inexplicably unromantic part of your male brain told you it was a good idea to go to the gift shop that happens to be in the building where you work

You get there and see that the Valentine’s merchandise has been picked over. There is a singing, dancing gorilla that doesn’t do anything when you press the button, a couple of cards that say “Happy Valentine’s Day, Grandmother,” and the usual Intel paraphernalia and office supplies. Maybe it’s Valentine’s panic that inflicts you with temporary idiocy. You know you’re in trouble, and you could still stop at Target for slippers, but for some reason you think it’s a good idea to buy a retractable laptop mouse.

Your wife has a laptop. She would love a retractable mouse to go with it. I’m sure she practically swooned when she peered into the plastic shopping bag to reveal a treasure trove of cheap electronics. The disappointed look on her face makes you think that you should have gone with the broken love monkey. But what you should have done was spend some time thinking of a thoughtful gift.

It is not punishment enough that you slept on the couch last night. You will most definitely be getting the silent treatment from anywhere to 24 to the next 72 hours.

Your wife will never forget that you couldn’t even be bothered to stop at the grocery store for roses that would expire within 12 hours of being charged to your Visa, you big spender, you. You’ve created ammunition for your wife in arguments for years to come. You will have forgotten all about this Valentine’s Day and will find yourself in an argument where she claims you don’t pay enough attention to her, and she will pull the story of the time you went to the company gift shop to get her a Valentine’s present.

Then she’ll bring up the year you brought home Valentine’s wiper blades. And you think she’s done, but she brings up that teddy you bought her that was not only something you saw in a Britney Spears video, but also two sizes too large. By now you’re singing the Meow Mix theme song in your head, because you just can’t take it anymore.

Save yourself from a laundry list of horribly thoughtless gifts. You could have gotten a CD from a favorite band, a book from a favorite author. You could have schlepped to the mall and bought her a box of See’s candy. But it’s too late now. You’re in for make-up jewelry, and it better not be Wal-mart jewelry.

Dear Neighbor,

Flush Fund

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Flush Fund

Boston Emboldens Terrorists by Kicking Capitalism in the Nuts

Plastic boards covered with Light-emitting Diodes, or LEDs, powered by four D batteries, were scattered across several cities as part of an ad campaign for the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. The lights were arranged in such a fashion as to depict Mooninites, characters from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon.

Boston Emergency Service workers apparently responded to concerned “old people,” who noticed the signs, after they had been in place for 3 weeks without causing any problems. The signs were blinking in what this columnist can only assume was a frightening manner. Coincidentally, a couple of fake pipe bombs were found in Boston on the same day as the ad campaign became a concern to police.

The pipe bombs were not placed by a mischievous, self-centered, talking cup called Milkshake. Nor were they place by the cutting edge ad agency that apparently devised the concept of blinking advertisements, because Bostonians reacted as if they had never before seen such a thing. Similar guerilla advertising schemes, with the plastic boards, were launched in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, and Philadelphia without causing massive bridge, road or waterway shutdowns.

Boston Mayor, Thomas Menino, said, "It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme. I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates for any and all expenses incurred during the response to today's incidents."

When an act of pure and harmless capitalism gets the Turner Broadcasting System into legal trouble, the terrorists have won.

Instead of charging the manufacturer of the fake pipe bombs for the disruption of the morning commute, Boston charged the mooks hired by an advertising company to install the signs. I don’t really like advertisers, either, but I don’t think they deserved to go to jail for signs that look about as dangerous as Lite-Brite(R). They expect Turner Broadcasting Systems to pay for the safety measures taken by Boston Emergency Services to protect its citizenry from the scary marketing ploy.

And now City of Chicago Supt. Philip Cline is sniffing around for compensation, because their Police Officers were ordered to remove 20 signs, although it was well known that they were harmless by the time they did so (and, again, these signs had been installed for at least 2 weeks). After this news hit the fan, people probably would have collected the signs and attempted to sell the on eBay, making the removal by city employees nonsensical.

Cross into the Nude

USAF Drill Sergeant Michelle Manhart was relieved of duty, pending investigation, for giving new meaning to her job title.

Manhart, a Staff Sergeant with 13 years in the Air Force, apparently exercising the freedoms she joined the military to fight for, posed in Playboy, nude and semi-nude, with and without her dog tags.

You can be all you can be, unless you happen to be gay or naked.

I certainly don’t begrudge USAF’s investigation of the February issue of Playboy. I hope they look beyond Manhart’s life-long dream of posing in the premier nudie magazine, and decide that they need her expertise as a grinder of young souls, which are needed to bake the bread of democracy. Especially what with President Bush sending a surge of finely ground military forces into Iraq. Notwithstanding that a 15% increase in troops is really more of a dribble than a surge.

If every solder whose actions did not “comply with the Air Force's core values of integrity,” was relieved of duty, we’d have a ludicrously understaffed military, instead of just a ridiculously understaffed one.

America is beautiful place. A country where women and men can earn money for being photographed in their birthday suits. And I can’t help but think that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we changed Michelle to Michael, and Playboy to Playgirl.

If USAF kicks Manhart out on her exposed derriere, the terrorist will have won.

IKEA: Many Living Rooms, None of Them Yours

Over the weekend, Sweetface and I made a pilgrimage to the Tempe IKEA. For those of you who aren’t lucky enough to have had the IKEA experience, it is a showplace for modular Swedish furniture, and has just about everything you could want to outfit an entire house or dorm. And at IKEA you can also get every form of lingonberries known to man.

This particular IKEA consisted of one floor of showrooms, and a second floor, which is their warehouse. Now the showrooms are definitely set up for exploring. Why, Sweetface and I explored them ourselves. We even saw a family of eight fit neatly into one of those sleekly furnished 10x10 rooms and marveled at the wonder that is space-saving Swedish furniture. Rounding the corner from a kitchen complete with a home-fill refrigerator, we never had the barest inkling of the horror that was before us.

There was an entire family seated around a Bjursta table and in a scene more gag-worthy than almost any gross-out close up on CSI, one of them was wiping a baby's bare butt. There was no secretively, no hint that what they were doing might be unsanitary or wrong, or even better done elsewhere. I think the most horrible part was the realization that these people weren’t the first ugly Americans to walk into, what is essentially one of Sweden’s many embassies to the U.S.A., and do such a thing.

Even in Sweden, mysterious land of affordable and stylish lamps, I’m sure that in furniture stores such as IKEA, they have restrooms with changing tables. The Tempe IKEA was no exception. The showplace bathroom next to them was not equipped with diaper genie, soap and running water. It did have a striking cobalt blue soap dish, which I was far too disgusted to enjoy. I gazed into the intense cobalt color in an attempt to burn the image from my brain.

Needless to say, I no longer had the appetite for eating any lingonberries.

The Human Knee and the Argument for Intelligent Design

If the design of the human body, for example, is so *intelligent,* then why are the knees of a woman under 30 already shot? I don’t even have any kids to run after, unless you count Sweetface. I have to do my Yogalates three times a week to get to the point where I don’t have to live on prescribed pain killers. I really shouldn’t be at the point where I’m cursing out fitness guru, Denise Austin. She seems like such a nice lady, but in my mind she’s morphed into a militant exercise Hun.

Evolution is only a theory, but so is gravity. Maybe Pat Robertson can stuff that fact up his nose while he’s floating off the Earth into space. We can only pray that will happen. Not unlike the way that Pat Robertson prayed for a space to open up on the Supreme Court (you know, that court where a judge usually retires by dying.) I’m sure that’s exactly what Jesus would have prayed for. Die liberal judge! Die!

What I really don’t understand is why both the theory and the so-proclaimed “Biblical truth,” can’t just live in peace and harmony. Maybe God, who wrote the Bible, knew there would be a lot of simple people, not unlike Pat Robertson. And these simple people would require a simplified, abridged version of Evolution. In the book of Genesis, God populates the world with plants, and then fish, and then birds and then mammals, such as cattle, and people come to the party last. That’s just the Golden Books version of the Theory of Evolution, right?

That’s why organized religion gives me hives. Conservative Christians seem to be missing an important lesson of the Holy Bible: tolerance. Drawing religious lines in the sand and calling down the wrath of God on Dover, Pensylvania is so Spanish Inquisition. I say, “Get with it, Religious Right!" Tolerance is the new black. Cursed Tongue takes pride in digging its own pit to Hell. See all of you non-Conservative Christians there!

Recommended Reading at The Nation:

God's Pat Problem