I was leaving work today, and as I pulled out of the parking lot I realized that there was a cop not too far behind me. And there are four four-way stop signs between me and the next main street, and no one’s ever at any of those intersections. I determine that I will stop completely at every single one and go 25 MPH on the street, as I am supposed to. So I do. Full stops. Excruciating slowness. Last stop sign I look behind me and the fucking cop has his fucking lights on. What the fuck? So I pull over. He pulls up beside me and says (with an attitude like I am some kind of moronic fuckwit)

“Where did you learn to stop at stop signs?”

I look at him like “Wha?” And then he says to me, for real, that I have been stopping PAST the stop signs, by a FOOT. AT LEAST. I am not stopping level with the stop sign, but the front one-foot of my car is past the stop sign. I don’t know about you, but I stop with the front of my car positioned somewhere between the curb and the stop sign. I don’t know anyone who stops with the front edge of their car directly level with the stop sign. I just gape at him. His attitude is very rude and assholish, he’s gesticulating wildly and talking about how I am “halfway into the intersection” before I stop. And he does this mock ‘looking around cluelessly’ motion, like that’s me in the middle the intersection, looking around and not knowing where I am. Or something. And he’s saying I am stopping “in the middle of the intersection” right after he’s just said I overshot the signs by a foot. Which would make for a smallish intersection. He’s talking to me like I am the most retarded person, doing the most insane thing, that he’s ever seen.

So he’s all berating me, and saying how he’s supposed to write me a ticket (In the meantime, he’s never even left his car. He pulled up next to me and is blocking traffic himself in order to bawl me out through his open passenger window.) Then, weirdly and suddenly his attitude changes. The more I gape at him the more conciliatory he gets. “It’s alright.” he says “I got you covered, I am not going to write you a ticket. But you have to watch out, there’s lots of us out here, and we’re hiding all over the place. We’ll give you a ticket for that.” And I am thinking “Mother-effer, I KNEW you were behind me. That was my cop’s-behind-me stop. WTF?” So I said “Sorry, I had no idea.” And then he tells me to drive carefully and takes off. I am just sitting there like “WTF just happened here?”

I don’t know what his story was, or why he was so rude, then so faux-nice all of a sudden. It was so ODD. I mean, maybe he thought I was a student and could be easily intimidated by him, then saw I was a grown woman. Maybe he thought that in that neighborhood I would be someone who was up to more than over-shooting stop signs and he could drug-bust me. Maybe he was just pissed that there was someone in front of him doing the speed limit and coming to full stops at stop signs like cops NEVER do. It was bizarre. So I drove home. And there are a LOT of four-way stops between work and home, and I watched very carefully to see what other people were doing. Guess what? Everyone stops with their front bumper beyond the stop sign. They stop with their body right behind the stop sign (bumper somewhere between stop sign and curb.) Everyone. And the cop acted like I was the only person who ever did that, and I was like Speed Fucking Racer behind the wheel.

I don’t know. I hate to make generalizations, but cops can really suck. Power-mad weirdos who act all erractic and have the power to arrest you. It’s unsettling.  I’ve been driving for 20 years, I’ve always driven the same way, plenty of cops have seen me stop at a stop sign, FFS, then this one freaks out on me. It makes me feel paranoid and it makes me think cops suck ass, all cops. And I know they don’t, but they need to really stop with the random petty and subjective shit and get to busting all these people who are shooting people.

This has got to be one of the most jackassy things that I ever read. This dipshit who advises McCain on health care policy, claims that there are no uninsured, because people can go to the emergency room.

Texas still leads nation in rate of uninsured residents
But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

HELLO FROM EARTH! Lack of access to care and lack of insurance - not the same thing. Yes, if you’ve been shot someone must take care of you. But that’s not the same as being insured. Going to the ER with “holy fuck my appendix just burst” is NOTHING LIKE going to the doctor’s office because you’re having stomach pains. See the difference? It’s called preventive care, and routine health screening. It’s the difference between routine treatment and possibly dying because no doctor would see your uninsured ass until something went desperately, unfixably wrong.

He also makes the  assumption that all uninsured persons are deadbeats who will skip out on their health care bills. Not true. Ever heard of the honest working poor? Sure, if you’re too broke to pay, despite your best intentions, you can stiff the hospital and the gov’t (and the rest of us who DO pay premiums) will have to foot your bill, but it will also ruin your credit.

If you are low-income enough to not have insurance and you do your best to pay after going to the ER, you will probably go bankrupt, since any uninsured ER visit is sure to cost upwards of $5,000.I think my 3-hour visit for my broken foot (for which I wasn’t even admitted) cost upwards of $8,000.

God, what a total fucktard. I mean a TOTAL fucktwatted assfaced baboon. What a clueless dipshit motherfuck. Idiot.

McCain listens to this guy? He had a hand in crafting McCain’s health care policy? WHAT THE FUCK?

I think “right-leaning” is a misnomer for this guy and his group. I think “leaning so far right that they’ve fallen and can’t get up” might describe them better. I would like to put him on the “ER Only” insurance plan for a year, and see what he thinks of it then.

Sheezus.

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I don’t know citizens, this looks on-purpose to me.

Few Sugar though!

So last night I was planning on taking it easy, chilling at home and minding my business. I really did not treat myself well last week, got next to no sleep and was exhausted. Plus, my retard boss was out on Thu-Fri but someone let him have access to a computer at some point and he emailed me some bullshit late Friday afternoon that almost made the top of my head pop off in sheer anger. I have been trying to enhance my calm with all things involving that fuckwit, but for some reason I couldn’t do that on Friday afternoon, I think because I was really exhausted and cranky. So I came home, took a two-hour nap and prepared to just watch some TV and hang out with the doggies. Then I let said doggies outside. They let loose with such a caterwauling that I had to go see what the problem was. Normally this just entails opening the door and calling them back in, or telling them to shut it already, but they were going NUTS, and then I heard another big-sounding dog bark so I had to get my shoes on and go out there.

So I am just woken up, cranky, tired, headachey, sweaty and just generally aggravated. I get out to the fence and shut the dogs up, and my neighbor pops his head over the top of it. I say “hey” to him, apologize for the dogs being obnoxious and then find out it was his big, sweet dog who was barking at them. So I ask how he’s doing, trying to be neighborly, and he tells me that his wife has driven to Kansas to see relatives in some old car he bought for $20. I nod - they’ve always got a story like that, he buys all his cars for $20, or trades a pile of bricks for one, or finds one at a junkyard he just has to have and then he tinkers with them until they run somewhat. They’re that kind of people. So I am expecting some story about how the car broke down on her. No such luck.

He tells me that his wife is doing all this stuff, she’s out of town for the next few days. This is when my alarm bells start ringing, due to my past interactions with this guy. He then looks around furtively, licks his lips and says “Hey, you want to sleep with me this weekend? [My wife] allows me dalliances.” And when he says “dalliances” he makes a scrabbling little gesture with his right hand, halfway between drumming one’s fingers on a table top and rotating some of those Chinese exercise balls. Perhaps this was meant to illustrate the nature of the dalliance I could expect were I to take him up on his proposition.

I gape for a moment and then let out with a peal of laughter, because I know he’s serious but I don’t want to act like I am taking this seriously. I want him to take the hint and laugh it off like it’s a joke. So I just laugh a little and say something about him having all that free time and no one to do, ha ha, so funny. And he says more insistently “No, I am serious, do you want to?”

So I have to answer, and I say very seriously and slowly while shaking my head back and forth: “No, I am all booked up this weekend.” He nods sagely. “I thought you might be.”

Now I kinda wish I’d gone for the 8ft fence instead of the 6…

Now, if it had ended there it would have been bizarre and creepy and gross enough. But you know me, it didn’t end there, it had to get insulting on top of that. You’d think that Mr. Smooth would quit while he was totally behind, and I really don’t know if this next part was attributable to his utter cluelessness or some kind of passive aggressive jab at me for daring to refuse him.

“Well, I thought you might be.” he said “And I think I am going to see if I can find a skinny girl to fuck anyway. It’s been a while since I have been with a skinny girl, and you’re really just more of the same of what I’ve got at home.”

:-|

OK then. So I point out to him that there are some really skinny crackwhores in the apt behind us, but he’d have to pay for that. And then his friend who was in the garage tinkering around on the car called him and he said he had to go. So that’s me then, hoping for a peaceful Friday night, but ending up hot, tired, cranky, now bitten by bugs, rudely propositioned, insulted and disturbed. Just a typical day in the life.

So I went in and considered this for a moment. Not considered the proposition, but considered how fucking irritating it was and why. That guy has been making comments to me for more than a year that led me to believe he thought he might get a piece, despite my NEVER, EVER being in the least flirty and pretty much only ever talking to the guy when I am in some yoga pants and a t-shirt covered in sweat, OFF! and garden dirt.

I wasn’t totally startled for him to say something like that, just more startled by the bluntness of it. And irritated by him thinking that I would just be up for fucking whoever made an offer, and irritated by his assholishness in basically calling me an unfuckable fat chick (that he nevertheless wanted to fuck) and irritated by the fact that despite how irritated I was, I had to smile pretty and pretend it was all HILARIOUS and good fun. As my next-door neighbor there are a million ways in which he could make my life miserable if he wanted to, so maintaining the peace is important. But I wanted to hit him in the face with a rake.

There are too many situations like that in my life right now, where I have to pretend that things are fine when they’re not, that people aren’t being assholes when they are. Too many ways in which I have to keep the peace, be the bigger person, act like a rational adult when I want to punch people.

That’s one of the reasons that the Urf! cartoon about the offline box forums delighted me so much, because I think that the chance to holler whatever I am thinking to people who are in the same room pissing me off would be totally intoxicating. I feel as if I am surrounded by a thousand anti-social retards at all times, and I am the only one who considers what they say before they say it. And if I don’t have a chance to say true things to someone, sometime, then I am going to absolutely implode.

Update 08/03/08: 7:30 a.m. Get up and let dogs out. In my bathrobe, as one is at 7:30. Neighbor calls at 7:34 a.m. & leaves message that he has a package for me. Swear. What makes this worse than anything? The only package I am expecting is from Toys in Babeland.

Maybe I am not helping the environment any, but rarely does someone with a Rambo knife pop up behind my seat and decapitate me.

Man decapitates passenger aboard Greyhound bus in Manitoba: witness
“When we came back on the bus, it was visible at the end of the bus he was cutting the guy’s head off and pretty much gutting him up,” said Caton.

The attacker ran at them, Caton said, and they ran out of the bus, holding the door shut as he tried to slash at the trio.

When the attacker tried to drive the bus away, the driver disabled the vehicle, Caton said.

“While we were watching the door, he calmly walks up to the front with the head in his hand and the knife and just calmly stares at us and drops the head right in front of us,” said Caton

Only way to stay safe is to minimize/cut out most contact with strangers and crowds and enclosed spaces. Seriously. Not that people you know are necessarily safer, but at least you may have some idea when they’re going to blow and know where they keep their weapons.

The fuck.

I am beginning to believe that we should offer police officers the opportunity to tase the dead carcasses of livestock, just so they can get “wanting to tase things” out of their system. What other reason could they have for tasering an injured teen NINETEEN TIMES other than wanting to try out new technology?

Better idea - maybe they can be offered the opportunity to get into a Laser-Tag style arena and just tase the fuck out of each other. I am sick of these abuse-of-taser stories. Aren’t tasers supposed to be non-lethal force substituted for guns? They surely wouldn’t have considered shooting this boy, and he wasn’t likely to be going anywhere with a broken back and heel, so why in the world would tasers have even come into play? I hope they are all severely disciplined, and then fired. And then prosecuted. Assholes.

The Raw Story | Missouri Police taser injured boy 19 times
KY 3 News’ Sara Sheffield reports on an injured teen from Ozark, Missouri who was tasered up to 19 times by police.

Passing motorists called Ozark police out of concern for the teen as he walked along the busy overpass. When the police arrived, the young man was lying on the shoulder of the highway directly underneath the 30 foot high overpass with a broken back and foot.

At what point can we just go ahead and posit that Christianity directly causes pedophilia? Just like right-wing politics causes Teh Gay. /nod

Local News | Private-school principal charged with rape of girl, 14 | Seattle Times Newspaper
The principal of a private school in Arlington has been charged with third-degree rape of a child.

Mark Evan Brown, 37, principal of Highland Christian School, was arraigned Wednesday. He spent five hours in the Snohomish County Jail before being released on $100,000 bail Wednesday night.

According to charging papers, the story begins with Brown and a 14-year-old female student at the school exchanging hundreds of text messages and phone calls over the past three months. In some of those messages, Brown encouraged the girl to run away from home and promised to find her a place to stay if she did, according to charging papers.

On June 12, the girl took Brown up on his offer, prosecutors say. Brown prepared a little-used room at the school by putting a hide-a-bed and television in the room for her, prosecutors say. He arranged for somebody else to pick her up and bring her to the school, according to charging papers.

The next evening, Brown gave the girl rum and the two lay down together on the foldout bed, according to charging papers. Sexual contact followed, prosecutors say.

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See this on the way to work. The big lock on the gate makes me laugh.We will see if I can get it on FAILblog

Guy is UTTER douchebag. OMG, have never heard more douchebaggy thing in my life. Srsly.

http://www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com/dimitri.mp3

“I am one of the few men in the city who has nothing wrong with him.”

No, no, you have MANY, MANY things wrong with you. Scores of things. Most men would cap it at 5-10 things wrong with them, while you have approximately a trillion.

How I nearly lost my business after refusing to hire a Muslim hair stylist who wouldn’t show her hair | Mail Online
It seems too lunatic to be true. But here a hair salon boss reveals how she was driven to the brink of ruin - and forced to pay £4,000 for ‘hurt feelings’ - after refusing to hire a Muslim stylist who wouldn’t show her hair at work

For Sarah Desrosiers, meeting Bushra Noah was not a moment in her life that she would describe as especially memorable.

Not only was it brief - lasting little more than ten minutes - but it was rapidly obvious to Sarah that Bushra was not the person for the junior stylist position she was trying to fill at her hairdressing salon.

Sarah’s reasoning? Quite simply that Bushra, a Muslim who wears a headscarf for religions reasons, had made it clear she would not be removing the garment even while at work. (read more at link above)

This is not even in the same realm as “over-zealously politically correct.” It’s in a realm alllll by itself. And when you get to the end of the article and the woman doubled the amount she was asking for “to account for the hate mail she’d received after bringing the case…” that’s really the icing on the crazy-cake.

“Beer-food event hosted by Family Violence Council”

The St. Louis Family Violence Council is hosting “All in Good Taste” — a beer and food tasting event from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at Lumen, 2201 Locust Street.

To be fair, I don’t know if I can really call this a crap headline, as the event itself is kind of ridiculous, in context. But the headline is badly written, no matter how stupid the subject matter is.

American Medical Association notes on link between domestic violence and alcohol abuse.

Saw an AP article (to which I will not link, and from which I will not quote, due to the AP being a bunch of RIAA-style fuckweasels) discusses the newly-redesigned Missouri license plate, complete with grammatical error.

Missouri is the Show-Me state. Show-Me in that context needs a hyphen, however the plate has no hyphen. Officials with the state don’t plan to correct the error, even on future plates, since “That’s the way it looked when it won an online contest last year.”

Great answer. The online voting public approved it, so that’s good enough for you? Nice. I bet you’d be reissuing some plates pretty quickly if they were found to contain a secret pro-choice message, or a subliminal penis illustration. But proper grammar? That’s for pussies.

Hmmm… I wonder if there’s any link between that kind of attitude and this kind of report about our state’s educational system?

Missouri’s underperformance in educating its young population could limit the state’s access to a competitive workforce and weaken its economy over time. Missouri continues to trail leading states in preparing students for higher education and enrolling them in college directly after high school.

Woman with Contaminated Birds Nest is Quarantined

LEVITTOWN, N.Y. (AP) — A Long Island woman has been found by police with her skin crawling with nearly invisible bloodsucking parasites from an infested bird’s nest in her home. She’s been taken to a hospital quarantine unit.

Nassau County police say they were called to the Levittown home of 45-year-old Nina Bradica on Thursday night. They say she was infected with bird mites, a highly contagious condition she contracted from a nest inside a bathroom vent.

Bird mites are half a millimeter long and usually can’t be seen without magnification. Symptoms of human infestation include pinprick bites, red bumps, intense itching and a crawling sensation on the skin.

Firefighters and hazardous-materials officers put the woman in a protective suit and took her to the hospital. She’s being observed and treated.

Mother’s anger turns to delight after her baby survives an abortion | Mail Online

‘Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible but I couldn’t cope with the anguish of losing another baby,’ said Miss Percival, 25.

However, Finley had other ideas. And some time after the operation, Miss Percival felt a fluttering in her stomach.

Eventually her doctor sent her for a scan – and she discovered she was 19 weeks pregnant.

The child had survived the abortion and thrived in the womb. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ said Miss Percival. ‘This was the baby I thought I’d terminated.

I understand that I should not laugh at this. Truly I do. Horrible decision to be made, horrific ordeal to go through as a mother. I get that. I am happy that the baby is healthy. But seriously - couldn’t they have chosen a picture which was a little less “HOLY SHIT, THIS BITCH TRIED TO KILL ME!” in regards to the baby’s facial expression?