Let’s talk about how stupid people can be!
I’ll start. I can be so stupid, that I could suppose the First Amendment would entitle a teenager to make an anti-Bush poster.
The Progressive reports that the Secret Service swooped down on a highschooler and his school, seized an anti-Bush poster the kid made, and interrogated him and the teacher who gave the Bill of Rights assignment the poster was created for.
The poster showed a photo of George Bush affixed to a wall by a threatening red thumbtack through the forehead area. Red! It also showed the kid making a thumb’s down sign. As we all know the thumb’s down sign today still means “slay the vanquished gladiator” just exactly as it did more than one and a half millennia ago. So Ebert and Roeper have killed hundreds of directors, and both collect “trophy ears” to show off at parties.
Thank you, Selective Service, for straightening me out on that!
Next, how about those Lynnwood police officers that say they were just doing their jobs when they let prostitutes go ahead and service them before arresting them.
I don’t recall the last time a police officer anywhere let a criminal shoot him so as to strengthen a case against him. But maybe the Lynnwood police should also consider that approach.
While I’m at it, I can’t help but note that the Seattle Times story by Jennifer Sullivan and Christopher Schwarzen had this to say: “The Seattle Times is not naming the officers because they work undercover.” Ha!
Let’s move right along and across the country. Not that there isn’t plenty of stupidity around here. Just to stretch our legs.
The Florida State Department of Corrections, or the FSDC, as I’ll call them, had a bad man in their custody, who had been convicted of attempted rape. As bad as he was, he had served seven years and he was due to be released on probation. Before that, neither he nor the FSDC could get him housing, because nobody in Florida wants to house a convicted sex-offender. Since, by law, while the offender is on probation he must report his address, and since he wouldn’t have a regular address to report, the FSDC figured they could just save some trouble and re-arrest the man for probation violation before even releasing him.
Here is how stupid the Florida State Department of Corrections is: not only did they need a judge to tell them they can’t arrest people for being homeless even before they are, they also may need another judge to tell them that, because they’re planning an appeal!
As the judge pointed out, the guy could report his address as being under a specific piece of cardboard, if that’s all the housing Florida can make available for him.
Finally we leave this country altogether to note the story that really got me started on this batch of rants. This is the Mother of All Stupidity Stories, in which the Israeli Supreme Court had to inform the Israeli Army that it was not OK to use Palestinians as human shields.
How stupid has the Israeli Army been? Well, the Israeli Army was already in 2002 told by the Israeli Supreme Court not to force people to be human shields. So it instituted a policy whereby only “volunteer” human shields will be used.
It took another trip to the Israeli Supreme Court for the Israeli Army to be introduced to the difficult concept that when a civilian member of a hated group is “asked” by angry shouting men carrying automatic weapons, hand grenades, and pistols, to willingly “volunteer” to pick objects up to see if they are booby-trapped, nothing that civilian does or says can be considered voluntary.
One member of the Knesset said the court had ruled, "an army in a democratic state cannot act like terror gangs.” To learn this they need a court?
Showing posts with label slay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slay. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Housed Man Eats German
Since our last column was about such a morbid subject as the death penalty, I've decided this time to lighten things up: Let's talk about consensual cannibalism!
Until last week I didn't think of consensual cannibalism as anything more than a fun idea for a grotesque novel. While I have often fantasized about slaying and devouring my enemies I've never entertained the idea of eating a willing dinner, especially not one that was still talking and asking me how I liked him.
But then Armin Meiwes, a 42-year old German computer technician got himself charged for killing and eating a 43-year old man who had asked him to do so. I feel the intense need to quote Eric Cartman at this juncture: "Holy crap, dude! This is really [beeped]-up right here!"
I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Dr. Wes, how can you make light of this horrible situation? Cannibalism is such a gross and heinous act." Yes, but what I think is if you can't make fun of people who practice the occasional consensual cannibalism, who can you make fun of?
Besides, it's not like I'm going to gross you all out with the gruesome details of Mr. Meiwes confession or from the videotape he made of the slaughter and feast. That would be obscene and I am totally opposed to public obscenity. I believe obscenity should be done in the privacy of one's own homes. Just like Mr. Meiwes was doing. Sort of.
But there is still so much to talk about that isn't gruesome. For example, there is Mr. Meiwes' confession that his ideal meal would be someone like the slim, blond, Sandy from the 60's TV series Flipper. How can you thoroughly detest a man who adores Flipper's boyfriend?
Mr. Meiwes was in fact caught because he was soliciting a second cannibalee (cannibant? cannibait?) on the Internet as the meat from his first, a Mr. Brandes, was becoming used up. At that time he expressed his disappointment in Brandes to others, saying that Brandes had been too fat and older than he expected, and he had been in too much of a hurry to be eaten. Mr. Meiwes preferred lean meat and wanted time to get to know his meal personally before jumping into butchery. From Meiwes' point of view, Mr. Brandes was the culinary equivalent of a fat slut. "If I wanted to eat someone uncommunicative, I could've slaughtered a sow," he must have thought.
The really funny (peculiar) thing about this story isn't so much in the details but in the comparative lack of interest in it by our US media. What's up with that? It isn't because of the castration bit, which I've so mercifully omitted. Our news media didn't restrain themselves covering the Bobbitts. It isn't because of the cannibalism itself, or we wouldn't have heard so much about Jeffrey Dahmer.
I think everyone was left speechless because the act was consensual. On the one hand you have the naïve social libertarians who have always said that what consenting adults do is nobody's business, but who never had this in mind. On the other hand you've got the moral absolutists who have always said that what consenting adults do is going to get all of them front row seats in hell. But they're all keeping quiet, afraid this will turn into the new fad, and their children will line up for it.
After all, look what happened when they made a fuss about sodomy. The Supreme Court went and declared it legal! Now, as all the conservatives know, our children are sodomizing one another in our grade schools while our liberally educated teachers cheer them on. Clearly the conservatives made a strategic error on that one.
Or, there's another possibility. The word is that Mr. Meiwes lived in a charming 44-room 18th century manor, with his own garden and a barbecue out back. Mr. Meiwes has been decidedly homeful. He is one of Germany's many non-street people.
Could it be that the US media, which are dominated by homeful people, are once again covering up the fact that their kind are prone to such sickness?
Until last week I didn't think of consensual cannibalism as anything more than a fun idea for a grotesque novel. While I have often fantasized about slaying and devouring my enemies I've never entertained the idea of eating a willing dinner, especially not one that was still talking and asking me how I liked him.
But then Armin Meiwes, a 42-year old German computer technician got himself charged for killing and eating a 43-year old man who had asked him to do so. I feel the intense need to quote Eric Cartman at this juncture: "Holy crap, dude! This is really [beeped]-up right here!"
I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Dr. Wes, how can you make light of this horrible situation? Cannibalism is such a gross and heinous act." Yes, but what I think is if you can't make fun of people who practice the occasional consensual cannibalism, who can you make fun of?
Besides, it's not like I'm going to gross you all out with the gruesome details of Mr. Meiwes confession or from the videotape he made of the slaughter and feast. That would be obscene and I am totally opposed to public obscenity. I believe obscenity should be done in the privacy of one's own homes. Just like Mr. Meiwes was doing. Sort of.
But there is still so much to talk about that isn't gruesome. For example, there is Mr. Meiwes' confession that his ideal meal would be someone like the slim, blond, Sandy from the 60's TV series Flipper. How can you thoroughly detest a man who adores Flipper's boyfriend?
Mr. Meiwes was in fact caught because he was soliciting a second cannibalee (cannibant? cannibait?) on the Internet as the meat from his first, a Mr. Brandes, was becoming used up. At that time he expressed his disappointment in Brandes to others, saying that Brandes had been too fat and older than he expected, and he had been in too much of a hurry to be eaten. Mr. Meiwes preferred lean meat and wanted time to get to know his meal personally before jumping into butchery. From Meiwes' point of view, Mr. Brandes was the culinary equivalent of a fat slut. "If I wanted to eat someone uncommunicative, I could've slaughtered a sow," he must have thought.
The really funny (peculiar) thing about this story isn't so much in the details but in the comparative lack of interest in it by our US media. What's up with that? It isn't because of the castration bit, which I've so mercifully omitted. Our news media didn't restrain themselves covering the Bobbitts. It isn't because of the cannibalism itself, or we wouldn't have heard so much about Jeffrey Dahmer.
I think everyone was left speechless because the act was consensual. On the one hand you have the naïve social libertarians who have always said that what consenting adults do is nobody's business, but who never had this in mind. On the other hand you've got the moral absolutists who have always said that what consenting adults do is going to get all of them front row seats in hell. But they're all keeping quiet, afraid this will turn into the new fad, and their children will line up for it.
After all, look what happened when they made a fuss about sodomy. The Supreme Court went and declared it legal! Now, as all the conservatives know, our children are sodomizing one another in our grade schools while our liberally educated teachers cheer them on. Clearly the conservatives made a strategic error on that one.
Or, there's another possibility. The word is that Mr. Meiwes lived in a charming 44-room 18th century manor, with his own garden and a barbecue out back. Mr. Meiwes has been decidedly homeful. He is one of Germany's many non-street people.
Could it be that the US media, which are dominated by homeful people, are once again covering up the fact that their kind are prone to such sickness?
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