ltmurnau | Entries tagged with idiots

A few days ago I was looking at the FB feed and someone had posted a link to a news story about a pastor in Flyover Country somewhere had been harassed and abused by the local rednecks for being especially welcoming in the way he was running his church.
The illustration was of an unsigned letter, or maybe it was a printed email, from a local anonymous troglodyte full of misspelled obscenity and abuse about all the n-words and q-words he was letting into his church, we know where you live, you should leave, etc. etc..
The email went on to dump on Obama, with the usual string of epithets, except that at one point the current President of the United States is described as a "scholiast".
I thought, what an odd term of abuse to use on someone... not that offensive, rather bizarre in its application.... like yelling at someone and calling them a "Babylonian accountant".
It amused me for a couple of days before I realized that the Faithful Correspondent had meant to write "socialist", which completes the Rosary of Obama Abuse, and was either the victim of a very creative spell-checker intervention or the proof that a monkey can use a typewriter in an interesting way after all.
Ho hum.

Well, been a while but been-a busy too.

Stayed home on Canada Day, to avoid the horrific scenes downtown. It seems to me that, Back In The Day, people did get drunk but it was at barbecues etc. in their own backyards and they normally weren't a pain in the ass (except for immediate family members). But now it's de rigeur and somehow patriotic to dress up in a Canadian flag wearing like a toga or diaper and spend the evening vomiting on your friends and pissing on people's heads off the Embankment? I also note that display of the flag and waving it around on any and every occasion was also a lot more restrained, though people were no less patriotic then. This fixation on symbols of nationality has been a long time coming, due to our time-lag of adopting American cultural norms, and certainly was accelerated after 9/11. Anyway, we could see the top half of the fireworks show from the back sundeck.

Garden's done really well! Radishes bolted almost immediately, grew 2 feet tall and flowered. I got a lot of good spinach, it's mostly bolted now too. Cabbages making lots of leaves but no actual cabbage yet. Turnips good, I've picked and eaten most of them and the zucchini have bloomed and are ready to start fruiting. And peas, lots of snow peas... in fact, when they flowered that finally attracted the deer and I had to put up the deer barrier. I will probably weed and replant part of the garden this weekend. The pear and apple trees were pruned in March and the apple tree is simply loaded down with good-looking fruit; the pear tree has only a few pears on it but next year will probably be good.

On Saturday I took Aki to the Vancouver airport for his flight to Japan. Air Canada has stopped service to Osaka so his mother has to travel all the way to Tokyo to get him; over 500 miles. This is the first time he has ever travelled alone, I got him all the paper he needed but he was still nervous about the procedures at Immigration. He didn't really want to go to Japan, but he does want to see his mother and that's the only way that will happen. He will be back on the 31st.

Meanwhile, Lianne is still in Ontario visiting her Mom, so I am alone for about 10 days - haven't been on my own for so long in years. I should be at Monty's with my pants wrapped around my head hooting at the dancers, but instead I went to Value Village to buy a new old hoodie and went home to make lentil soup. I'm getting old.

Current Mood: blank
Current Music: Devo, "Later is Now"

'An that's all I got to say about that.

(Except that I now know those things have serial numbers - makes sense.)

Current Music: The Clash, "The Call Up"

Well, I suppose this could be a weekly feature here, but let's file these under "WTF is Wrong With Some People."

Man accused of firing pellet gun at Burnaby crowd faces 22 charges

Last Updated: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | 6:31 PM PT CBC News

A young man accused of firing a pellet gun on Monday at a crowd near a bus stop in Burnaby, B.C., is facing 22 charges.

Thomas Anthony Proniuk, 18, made a court appearance Tuesday in Vancouver, Burnaby RCMP said. Police recommended 23 charges against Proniuk, but one count of assault with a weapon was stayed by the Crown, Cpl. Alexandra Mulvihill said. Proniuk was remanded in custody until his next court date, slated for next Monday.

At about 3 p.m. PT on Monday, someone hiding in the bushes near Burnaby Mountain Secondary School used a pellet gun to shoot at people waiting at the bus stop. As many as six people were hit by pellets and suffered minor injuries, police said, while the shooter pepper-sprayed some others as he fled the scene. Police have not confirmed the number of people who were hit by pellets or harmed by pepper spray.

Proniuk, a former student at the high school, was arrested three hours after the incident. The charges against Proniuk include one count of wearing a mask with intent to commit an indictable offence, 12 counts of assault with a weapon and six counts of discharging an air gun with intent to wound others.

Mulvihill said the wounded people were all recovering Tuesday after being treated at the scene. Among the injured was a bus driver who was pepper-sprayed when he confronted the shooter.

And:

Coroner: Texting while driving played role in death

By Joanne Hatherly, Times ColonistMay 27, 2009

A 26-year-old Victoria man may be the first traffic fatality attributed to the use of a BlackBerry device in the province, say Saanich police.

Michael Edward Wolsynuk's BlackBerry showed that he was texting a message at the time his truck jumped a concrete median and crashed into another truck, concluded a B.C. Coroner's report and Saanich police investigation.

[snip]

He wasn't wearing a seatbelt, either.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Klaus Nomi, "After the Fall"

And I'm not talking about that stupid "teabag party" thing either (honestly, did no one know about the associations of that word? This is as bad as the time the Conservative Party wanted to call itself the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party, of CCRAP).

From the Department of Homeland Security, a new report on the growth of rightwing extremist organisations and a threat assessment:

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/video/extremismreport.pdf
or here
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf

Associated Press News (April 16/09) says that "in September 08, the agency highlighted how right-wing extremists over the past five years have used the immigration debate as a recruiting tool. Between September 2008 and Feb. 5/09, the DHS issued at least four reports, obtained by The Associated Press, on individual extremist groups such as the Moors, Vinlanders Social Club, Volksfront and Hammerskin Nation."

There are also hundreds of instances documented by the FBI of veterans joining extremist groups - not in large numbers overall, but in leadership positions (http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/fbi-military-nazis-2008.pdf : this is from July 08). The Department of Defense also did an internal investigation in 2006 of penetration of the military by racist gangs and skinheads. Though I would think actually one good way to get those stupid ideas about "mud races" knocked out of your head is to train, take orders from, and go on patrol with a few of them - which is how the US Army became, by the early 1960s, one of the most integrated organizations in American society.

Current Music: Soft Cell, "Bedsitland"

Certainly it is now common knowledge that Glenn Beck is Losing It Big-Time, but I missed this segment of his show that aired in February 09 where they more or less fantasize about insurrection against their own duly elected government.

Didn't you ever wonder what had happened to the militia movement, who used to supply all the stock bad guys and wackos for the crime shows back in the Clinton Years?

***
Sunday Feb. 22, 2009 07:36 EST
Fox News "war games" the coming civil war

( Read more... )
Link with other links and references:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/22/militias/

More on Glenn Beck, Fox News and conspiracies:

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/135541/

Current Music: awful jazzy Muzak while I'm on hold with Ticketmaster

Thing the first:

Burger King launches beef-scented body spray
Published: Thursday, December 18, 2008 | 8:27 PM ET
Canadian Press: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK - Looking to beef up your mojo this holiday season?

Burger King Corp. may have just the thing. The home of the Whopper has launched a new men's body spray called "Flame."

The company describes the spray as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat."

The fragrance is on sale at New York City retailer Ricky's NYC in stores and online for a limited time for $3.99.

Burger King is marketing the product through a website featuring a photo of its King character reclining fireside and naked but for an animal fur strategically placed to not offend.
***

Is this a Sign of the End Times, or what? Anyway, don't wear this near the dog pound, all whiffing of stale grease....

Thing the second:

Seen on the bus to work: a sign for something called the "DIVA EUROWAVE ULTIMATE INCH LOSS SYSTEM". This looked like someone had just grabbed random words from advertisements, or perhaps it was the automatic product of some Marketing Buzz Phrase Generator. Anyway, on wasting a further 75 seconds on a Google search, it appears the sign was for a day spa that offers no less than four different types of psuedoscience and quackery to impressionable females.

Thing the third:

I'm resolving to drink more water during the day - I think the bad moods I get are due to dehydration, or at least aren't helped by it. So I throw in a little bit of Crystal Light or Emergen-C to make it more palatable. This morning I noticed on the Crystal Light packet the text, "To adjust the flavour to suit your taste, simply use more or less water."

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: in the stall
Current Music: F-Space, "Through the Night Slowly"

Security breach grounds Vancouver's international flights

Last Updated: Friday, January 5, 2007 | 3:27 PM PT
CBC News

Thousands of passengers at Vancouver's airport are facing lengthy delays after a security breach Friday forced officials to hold flights departing from the international terminal.

( Read more... )

This is even worse than the time they shut down the airport in 2005 because of some goombah who wandered through the wrong door with his backpack: http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/84811.html.

I say again, no system is foolproof because:
a) fools are so ingenious; and
b) fools are trying to implement the system in the first place.

[PS: How much liquid is too much, anyway? Is it possible to bring down an aircraft with urine?]

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Cramps, "I Wanna Get in Your Pants"

I wasn't gonna say anything but:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2006/09/25/guards-return.html

The Canadian Border Security Agency says it will take ten years to train and equip every officer with a sidearm. The first two years will cost $101 million (http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/agency/security-securite/questions-e.html).

Conspicuous by its absence is any reportage of the number of Canadian border guards who have been shot by desperadoes raging to hop the line into the Great White North. That's because there haven't been any: among the 730 names in the Canadian Police and Peace Officers Memorial Honour Roll, going back to 1804, there are only four entries for customs officers: one in 1980 (no one seems to know how he died, but a boardroom in the Customs Excise Union building is named after him) and three in 1994 (two drowned in a flood, and one was killed when a drunk driver hit her car).

I am not convinced this is a good idea, when I cross the border and look at the college students doing their summer term with CBSA, asking me about where I've been and do I have any cigarettes.

It kind of reminds me of the late 1980s when I was working in Ottawa, around Parliament Hill and the Governor-General's residence. The RCMP was tasked with a lot of public security duties and as usual was very short-staffed. So, they hired 3-400 "Special Constables" who mostly did airport security, VIP security, and institutional security at Parliament Hill and the residences of the Prime Minister and G-G.

They all had sidearms and many of them were armed with the Heckler and Koch MP-5 9mm submachine gun, a short-barreled compact weapon then used by many SWAT and counter-terrorist units. These were taken away from them within two years, because of the many instances of SCs shooting themselves in the foot or leg with them!

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: up here
Current Music: gurgle of my tum-tum

Security breach creates delays at Vancouver airport
Last updated Jun 27 2005 08:11 AM PDT

CBC NEWS – Thousands of passengers faced long waits at Vancouver's International Airport on Sunday as security staff searched for a man seen bypassing pre-board screening.

The man, who was carrying a backpack, left undetected on an Air Canada flight for Toronto, said Jacqueline Bannister, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.

Meanwhile, thousands of domestic travellers who had already been cleared through to their gates– including people who were already on aircraft – were moved back to an unsecured part of the terminal. After a security sweep, passengers had to line up and be checked through again. The shutdown, which lasted about an hour, delayed most flights leaving Vancouver.

Police stopped the man for questioning at the Toronto airport, Bannister said. She said he likely missed security screening by mistake, and might not have understood which lineup he was supposed to wait in.

No charges are expected in the incident.
***

Goddamnit - if we can't even get the idiots to stand in the right lines, let alone the terrorists, then They have won.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Sisters of Mercy, "Detonation Boulevard"

Back from waiting at the Passport Office, in order to drop off application to get Aki's Canadian passport replaced.

First, it took me 20 minutes just to get a number, so I could go and sit Over There and wait for someone else to deal with me. Time spent with clerk: about 2 minutes.

Second, over an hour to get to an examining clerk. Time spent with this clerk: less than 5 minutes.

Q: Why is there a 10+ to 1 ratio of time spent waiting to time actually getting business done?

A: OTHER PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY THE DIM ONES.

There were not that many people in the lineup ahead of me, and the room was not especially crowded, and no one seemed to have any particularly weird issues or conditions that the Passport Office itself was enforcing. What I saw was people, either quavery fearful oldsters or long-haired Shaggy-sans-Scooby types, filling out the frigging forms while standing in line or actually talking to the clerk - "oh, just one more thing I have to fill in here", or discovering at the last minute that they needed to turn in their old passport, or that they left their wallet at home because money and ID is involved at some point in the process, or overlooking some other thing that had been pointed out several times in the paperwork. (One obese mother-and-son pair did this, and hissed "I thought you took it off the kitchen table, no, I thought you did" all the way out. I hope they get it together and travel to some faraway place where the theories of that nice Mr. Darwin will take care of them.)

PEOPLE PEOPLE, IT'S NOT THAT HARD. It's only a short form, full of obvious things, and if you'd spend a few minutes doing your homework, WE WOULD ALL GET DONE THAT MUCH FASTER AND NO ONE WOULD HAVE TO WAIT THAT LONG.

I understand no one likes jumping through bureaucratic hoops, but if you want something routine from a desk jockey, then do it the routine way, and then all of us can get out of the lineup and on with the rest of our lives.

Okay, now I want you all to vote on the Most Pathetic Facet of this post:

A) that I sound like that uptight asshole cartoon cat, Pat from Achewood?
OR
B) that I am so smug about doing my paperwork correctly and getting done quickly?
OR
C) that I thought enough of this little Skirmish With Stupidity to post about it in my online journal?
OR
D) that I have an online journal in the first place?

Current Mood: pissy-ranty

OK now, in Virginia they really understand what's important!
Well, two points for a good try, anyhow....

***
Droopy-Pants Bill Dropped in Va. Senate

Thu Feb 10, 5:30 PM ET U.S. National - AP

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia lawmakers dropped their droopy-pants bill Thursday after the whole thing became just too embarrassing.

The bill, which would have slapped a $50 fine on people who wear their pants so low that their underwear is visible in "a lewd or indecent manner," passed the state House on Tuesday but was killed by a Senate committee two days later in a unanimous vote.

Republican Sen. Thomas K. Norment said news reports implied that lawmakers were preoccupied with droopy pants.

"I find that an indignation, which dampens my humor," Norment said.

Republican Sen. Kenneth Stolle, the committee chairman, called the bill "a distraction."

The committee hearing drew a standing-room-only crowd that included about 75 government students from Surry County High School.

"If people in Florida can wear bikinis, a little underwear showing isn't going to hurt anybody," 17-year-old Elvyn Shaw said.

The bill's sponsor, Democratic Delegate Algie T. Howell, declined to answer reporters' questions Thursday but issued a statement saying the bill "was in direct response to a number of my constituents who found this to be a very important issue."

He has said the constituents included customers at his barber shop who were offended by exposed underwear.
***

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Numb - "Blood"

Someone out there is taking pictures of students' butt-floss thong underwear hanging out and posting them on the net! Aiiieee!

( excerpted from today's Vancouver Sun )
Clode added: "This person is clearly working as though people are not aware of what he's doing, although as somebody pointed out to me, how can you not be aware that you're not being revealing?"

Referring to the students being photographed, he said: "Their choice of attire is their choice. I can't image that you don't know what the effect is of how you dress."
( Read more... )

Think I'll crosspost this to

so_busted.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Sonic Youth - "Society is a Hole"

Well, it was an OK weekend, even if I did not get a lot accomplished. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: soundtrack to "Lola Rennt"

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Page Summary

Odd, then Aww.
Tupdae
"Investigators used the serial numbers on her breast implants to identify her."
Idiots in the News, local edition
More Right-wing Loopiness
Right-Wing Loopiness Abounds
Things that make you go "Whaaaa..."
It Happened Again! Oooh, Too Much Liquid!
(no subject)
System Obviously Not Foolproof, Since Fools Are So Ingenious.
"Clients" Suck
Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny....
The Thong Retains the Frame
insert description of brief work-free period here

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Das Tagebuch Murnaus

"The Internet is a vanity press for the demented."

Entries tagged with idiots

Odd, then Aww.

Tupdae

"Investigators used the serial numbers on her breast implants to identify her."

Idiots in the News, local edition

More Right-wing Loopiness

Right-Wing Loopiness Abounds

Things that make you go "Whaaaa..."

It Happened Again! Oooh, Too Much Liquid!

(no subject)

System Obviously Not Foolproof, Since Fools Are So Ingenious.

"Clients" Suck

Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny....

The Thong Retains the Frame

insert description of brief work-free period here