In Wacky But True News
Apparently in some places in the US, eating candy is an offence. That's fine, garbage is a problem everywhere, but like in a big corporation such as the one I work for, police are human beings and are supposed to make sense of policies (laws). They are supposed to understand the purpose of those laws, and make exceptions where the spirit of the law is not being transgressed.
In the situation below, the woman disposed of her garbage properly, and even finished her candy before entering the "no-candy" zone, although was still chewing. The US can't be blamed for terrorism concerns, which was at the root of the "no-candy" law in the subway station in this story, but needs to resist turning on it's own citizens in Saddam Hussein-like paranioa.
Here's the story:
WASHINGTON—A government scientist finishing a candy bar on her way into a subway station where eating is banned was arrested, handcuffed and detained for three hours by transit police.
Stephanie Willett said she was eating a PayDay bar on an escalator descending into a station July 16 when an officer warned her to finish it before entering the station. Both Willett and police agree she put the last bit into her mouth before throwing the wrapper into a garbage can. Willett, 45, said the officer then followed her into the station.
"Don't you have some other crimes you have to take care of?" she said she told the officer.
Washington has been under heightened security because of the threat of terrorism. And last week, police declared a emergency over rising juvenile crime.
The transit officer asked for Willett's identification, but she kept walking. She said she was then frisked and handcuffed.
"If she had stopped eating, it would have been the end of it and if she had just stopped for the issuance of a citation, she never would have been locked up," Transit Police Chief Polly Hanson said yesterday.
Metrorail has been criticized in the past for heavy handed enforcement of the eating ban. In 2000, an officer handcuffed a 12-year-old girl for eating a french fry on a subway platform.
In 2002, an officer ticketed a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy for cursing when he was unable to find a working elevator to leave a station.
Just got back from Company picnic. High Park in Toronto.
Holy crap I'm sweaty. Too much soccer and football. Having folks from your office trying to tackle you on the playing field is a strange experience. Jason Bigio kicked me in the face accidentally and I'm going to give him crap on Monday if I have a welt or a bruise. Sonny, my team's goaltender, had a case of beer on ice by his net, which was why his goaltending got worse throughout the day. Luckily Brian, the other goaltender, and Sony trainer, sucked in net from the start so it all evened out.
Since we have Muslims working in our company, we had Halal burgers as well as regular burgers (and veggie burgers for the wackos). Anyway, I decided to try some of the Muslim Halal burgers, and they were way way yummier. I want more. I asked some of the muslims what made them different, and apparently the only difference is that they are bled or something. Anyway, very tasty.
Holy crap I'm sweaty. Too much soccer and football. Having folks from your office trying to tackle you on the playing field is a strange experience. Jason Bigio kicked me in the face accidentally and I'm going to give him crap on Monday if I have a welt or a bruise. Sonny, my team's goaltender, had a case of beer on ice by his net, which was why his goaltending got worse throughout the day. Luckily Brian, the other goaltender, and Sony trainer, sucked in net from the start so it all evened out.
Since we have Muslims working in our company, we had Halal burgers as well as regular burgers (and veggie burgers for the wackos). Anyway, I decided to try some of the Muslim Halal burgers, and they were way way yummier. I want more. I asked some of the muslims what made them different, and apparently the only difference is that they are bled or something. Anyway, very tasty.
Yay I'm back.. Fishing was just swell, and.....
what the heck? It looks like somebody changed the blogger edit window while I was gone. Ohh and now I can post in courier font, big normal tiny.
This is just so silly. Who wants to read my crap with all these dumb effects?
Still, I have to post this to see what it looks like.
what the heck? It looks like somebody changed the blogger edit window while I was gone. Ohh and now I can post in courier font, big normal tiny.
This is just so silly. Who wants to read my crap with all these dumb effects?
Still, I have to post this to see what it looks like.
My Complaint about Stephen Harper
(intended only in fun)
Auto-Generated by Pakin Complaint Generator
I'll get right to the point. Mr. Stephen Harper's apostles merely present their allegations as though they were true, a technique known as a "conclusory" or "Kierkegaardian" leap. And that's why I feel compelled to say something about gutless, incompetent fogeys. If he continues to exploit the public's short attention span in order to silence critical debate and squelch creative brainstorming, crime will escalate as schools deteriorate, corruption increases, and quality of life plummets. He finds reality too difficult to swallow. Or maybe it just gets lost between the sports and entertainment pages. In either case, we should give you some background information about Mr. Harper. (Goodness knows, our elected officials aren't going to.) Contrast, for example, his plans for the future with those of lawless, tendentious spoiled brats, and observe that there is no contrast. I, by (genuine) contrast, take the view that he dreams of a time when he'll be free to cause pain and injury to those who don't deserve it. That's the way he's planned it, and that's the way it'll happen -- not may happen, but will happen -- if we don't interfere, if we don't turn random, senseless violence into meaningful action.
Is this anything other than haughty solecism? The answer is obvious if you happen to notice that another point worth thinking about is that this has been documented repeatedly. Or, to express that sentiment without all of the emotionally charged lingo, Mr. Harper's eccentricity is surpassed only by his vanity. And his vanity is surpassed only by his empty theorizing. (Remember his theory that he is always being misrepresented and/or persecuted?)
As that last sentence suggests, it would please Mr. Harper greatly to discredit and intimidate the opposition, so to speak. I've already said this a thousand times and with a thousand different phrasings, but he indubitably believes that 75 million years ago, a galactic tyrant named Xenu solved the overpopulation problem of his 76-planet federation by transporting the excess people to Earth, chaining them to volcanoes, and dropping H-bombs on them. What kind of Humpty-Dumpty world is he living in? I could give you the answer now, but it would be more productive for me first to inform you that some heartless, witless exhibitionists actually maintain that the kids on the playground are happy to surrender to the school bully. This is the kind of muddled thinking that he is encouraging with his apologues. Even worse, all those who raise their voice against this brainwashing campaign are denounced as voluble used-car salesmen. What does this mean for our future? For one thing, it means that Mr. Harper wants to create a mass psychology of fear about an imminent terrorist threat. Such intolerance is felt by all people, from every background. What is the milieu in which the worst classes of ostentatious practitioners of cannibalism I've ever seen subject us to the untoward yapping of stingy monomaniacs? It is the underworld of conspiracy theory, a subculture in which feral, unbalanced pamphleteers share fantasies of fighting heroically against a huge conspiracy that will tap into the national resurgence of overt colonialism sometime soon. My goal for this letter was to comment on Mr. Stephen Harper's invectives. Know that I have done my best while trying always to plant markers that define the limits of what is oppressive and what is not. Let an honest history judge.
(intended only in fun)
Auto-Generated by Pakin Complaint Generator
I'll get right to the point. Mr. Stephen Harper's apostles merely present their allegations as though they were true, a technique known as a "conclusory" or "Kierkegaardian" leap. And that's why I feel compelled to say something about gutless, incompetent fogeys. If he continues to exploit the public's short attention span in order to silence critical debate and squelch creative brainstorming, crime will escalate as schools deteriorate, corruption increases, and quality of life plummets. He finds reality too difficult to swallow. Or maybe it just gets lost between the sports and entertainment pages. In either case, we should give you some background information about Mr. Harper. (Goodness knows, our elected officials aren't going to.) Contrast, for example, his plans for the future with those of lawless, tendentious spoiled brats, and observe that there is no contrast. I, by (genuine) contrast, take the view that he dreams of a time when he'll be free to cause pain and injury to those who don't deserve it. That's the way he's planned it, and that's the way it'll happen -- not may happen, but will happen -- if we don't interfere, if we don't turn random, senseless violence into meaningful action.
Is this anything other than haughty solecism? The answer is obvious if you happen to notice that another point worth thinking about is that this has been documented repeatedly. Or, to express that sentiment without all of the emotionally charged lingo, Mr. Harper's eccentricity is surpassed only by his vanity. And his vanity is surpassed only by his empty theorizing. (Remember his theory that he is always being misrepresented and/or persecuted?)
As that last sentence suggests, it would please Mr. Harper greatly to discredit and intimidate the opposition, so to speak. I've already said this a thousand times and with a thousand different phrasings, but he indubitably believes that 75 million years ago, a galactic tyrant named Xenu solved the overpopulation problem of his 76-planet federation by transporting the excess people to Earth, chaining them to volcanoes, and dropping H-bombs on them. What kind of Humpty-Dumpty world is he living in? I could give you the answer now, but it would be more productive for me first to inform you that some heartless, witless exhibitionists actually maintain that the kids on the playground are happy to surrender to the school bully. This is the kind of muddled thinking that he is encouraging with his apologues. Even worse, all those who raise their voice against this brainwashing campaign are denounced as voluble used-car salesmen. What does this mean for our future? For one thing, it means that Mr. Harper wants to create a mass psychology of fear about an imminent terrorist threat. Such intolerance is felt by all people, from every background. What is the milieu in which the worst classes of ostentatious practitioners of cannibalism I've ever seen subject us to the untoward yapping of stingy monomaniacs? It is the underworld of conspiracy theory, a subculture in which feral, unbalanced pamphleteers share fantasies of fighting heroically against a huge conspiracy that will tap into the national resurgence of overt colonialism sometime soon. My goal for this letter was to comment on Mr. Stephen Harper's invectives. Know that I have done my best while trying always to plant markers that define the limits of what is oppressive and what is not. Let an honest history judge.
Braaady in the Mooorniiiiing.....
Old CFTR fans might enjoy this, an old Jim Brady show from around 1979. All the songs have been cut out, as have Russ Holden and Darrell Dommer's traffic reports.
It's about 8 minutes long. Someone must have been digging around and found an old tape in a box somewhere....
Click here to listen. (requires Real player. You know how to find it.)
By the way, when I said "old CFTR fans", I meant people who used to listen to CFTR when it was cool. Of course it is true that most of us who remember those days are starting to get old...
Also, here is the CFTR changeover from rock to "680 News". I think that the last song is supposed to be all poignant or something.
Unfortunately nothing as dramatic as Dr. Johnny Fever's changeover "scratchhhhhh, goodbye to the elevator music.."
Old CFTR fans might enjoy this, an old Jim Brady show from around 1979. All the songs have been cut out, as have Russ Holden and Darrell Dommer's traffic reports.
It's about 8 minutes long. Someone must have been digging around and found an old tape in a box somewhere....
Click here to listen. (requires Real player. You know how to find it.)
By the way, when I said "old CFTR fans", I meant people who used to listen to CFTR when it was cool. Of course it is true that most of us who remember those days are starting to get old...
Also, here is the CFTR changeover from rock to "680 News". I think that the last song is supposed to be all poignant or something.
Unfortunately nothing as dramatic as Dr. Johnny Fever's changeover "scratchhhhhh, goodbye to the elevator music.."
I am taking a leave of absence from my blog. I am going on vacation to sunny cottage country. I will be returning in the middle of the month so be sure to come back to read about my adventures.
Of course if it gets all rainy or something I may write a bit and post from up north.
I will be in Fenelon Falls, the hometown of such famous people as my friend Avery Haines (of CTV Newsnet fame), and a former miss nude world who sat beside me in grade 9 typing, and whose current porn stage name is "Venus Delight" or something like that.
For Tragically Hip fans, Fenelon Falls is a 10-minute drive from Bobcaygeon("where I saw the constellations reveal themselves one star at a time").
Of course if it gets all rainy or something I may write a bit and post from up north.
I will be in Fenelon Falls, the hometown of such famous people as my friend Avery Haines (of CTV Newsnet fame), and a former miss nude world who sat beside me in grade 9 typing, and whose current porn stage name is "Venus Delight" or something like that.
For Tragically Hip fans, Fenelon Falls is a 10-minute drive from Bobcaygeon("where I saw the constellations reveal themselves one star at a time").
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