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.

Why I do not now, nor will I ever, ride the Metrolink. At least if I am in my car I can run your thieving, assaulting ass over, motherfucker.

STLtoday - MetroLink riders attacked minutes apart at 2 stations

ST. LOUIS — Police are investigating two violent attacks on MetroLink riders that occurred within minutes of each other late Saturday night at the Delmar and Forest Park stations.

St. Louis police arrested two teens after one of the attacks, officials said. At least three of the victims were taken to area hospitals.

I hate that my Mom and brother ride the Metrolink to the ball games. I think that whole system is a filthy, gang-and-thug-infested attack waiting to happen. When you have a group of 10 violent thugs who have no qualms in attacking *groups* of people, you have a serious problem with your security presence.

And no, I have nothing against public transport, I used it pretty much exclusively when I lived in Europe. But public transport with free and unregulated on/off access which goes to and from some of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the country… that’s just a retardedly bad idea. Especially in a city with the murder rate St. Louis has.

Maybe it’s because Metrolink stations look too much like front porches, people think that the riders are asking for it.

This anti-fan letter was so wonderfully constructed that I had to comment on it. That second line is pure poetry. Plus my favorite in letters, Totally ranDom Capitalization. It’s almost as if the capitalization carries its own hidden message, too. Lowercase “neil” and “gaiman” but uppercase “Batman” and “Writing” and of course “Fuck You.” Overall a pretty awesome letter.

Neil Gaiman’s Journal
I hope this reaches neil himself. Never have i ever known of anyone as full of himself as well as shit, than you. Now another milestone in your over-hyped career, Writing Batman. Not only are you under the impression you can write, but write batman? Fuck You. You Tried before and it sucked. It was just gaiman… With Batman in it. Fuck You.

If I’d known that Secret Origins of Batman Villains #1 had made that much of an impression on people, I would have… actually, probably not done anything different, really. I was rather fond of it.

If you think you won’t like the Batman comic I’ll write, probably you’d be best off not reading it. It’ll just be a two part Batman comic, you can save your money. Although if you’d bother to write me a letter like that you might buy it just to prove to yourself that you hate it as much as you know you’re going to…

I can’t imagine having to deal with the public regarding things I’ve written and/or otherwise created. Am far to sensitive and don’t know if I could carry the weight of the skin I’d have to develop.

Real creativity eludes me at the moment, so playing at creativity while swirling paint around is my temporary substitute.

Painter (plus PSCS3 composite/adjustment) version of photo I took in Savannah. Original photo after the jump. Click to embiggen.

Continue reading »

Two different quotes, from different people, about different people. Both are stuck in my head lately.

First one was work related: “He’s a lame duck, and he’s just going to get lamer.”

second one was from Todd: “He’s clueless, and he’s going to stay clueless.”

And both of them are pretty true. Which doesn’t make it easier to deal with either of the people they were talking about.

You know what? Just forget it
Name something and I regret it
The sun sets like surrender
And I guess I misremember
that whole time
And what your lips
felt like on mine
It was the sweetest
fever dream
You probably don’t know
what I mean

- Steve Tannen, Just a Little

Holy crap, citizens.

more cat pictures

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.

It’s Sunday evening, which means I am melancholy. And Todd’s going out of town for almost 2 weeks, and that means I am a bit forlorn. And it’s almost my birthday, which means that I am likely on my way to a full-on refuse-to-get-out-of-bed bout of mehateworld depression.

However, it’s also storming with some gorgeously ear-cracking thunder outside, and it’s cool here and the fan’s blowing on me. It’s quiet and the laundry’s all done. My whole world doesn’t seem completely askew, and I spent the weekend listening to nothing but Weepies, Steve Tannen and Deb Talan. (ordering the back-albums from their solo careers=one more birthday gift to me from me.)

(Oooh, that’s really rumbly out there.)

Anyway, my head’s all full of good lyrics and what MyTodd™ would call “that folksy crap music.” It makes me feel peaceful and not alone, and I am pretty OK with that.

G’night.

Quite possibly a devious WIN if you really don’t like soccer players.

see more pwn and owned pictures

don’t push so hard against the world
you can’t do it all alone
and if you could, would you really want to?
even though you’re a big strong girl,
the best made plans
are your open hands

- Deb Talan, Big Strong Girl

Todd was creeped out tonight by Jake’s tendency to sleep in zombie-mode. I have to admit, even I had to look and make sure he was still breathing - there’s a lot of eye white going on there.

Our flash photography woke him up though.

While on a standard type of clothes-hunt at the Galleria today, I spied two rare lifeforms wandering the marble floors. Observe:

To the left of the image you have a rather sad figure, the lone frat-boy.

Observed more regularly in bands of three or more (and in their native south-eastern Missouri habitat) this individual frat boy looked rather nervous and ill-at-ease without his standard protective pack formation.

His posture and body language (clenched fists not visible in this image) indicate his discomfiture at this solo excursion. Though his plumage boastfully indicates that (in their native territory) his pack is “kind of a big deal” I think we can all agree this is not the case at the time the photo was taken and the contrast between his evoked status and actual status make us a little sad.

In front and to the right of the lone frat boy, we have an even more rare phenom the Midwestern Guido!

I was excited to spot these three youngsters together, and wish that the faux-hawk sported by the left-most Guido was more visiible. They are still in a formative stage, as the collar on the middle Guido remains mercifully un-popped, and full-on tanorexia has yet to set in. But the copious amounts of hair gel, the gold chains and those douchey plaid shorts (guy on the extreme right is clearly lower-status, as he is wearing rayon manpris, meaning that either he cannot afford douche-plaid or was not contacted prior to the excursion to inform him that douche-plaid was de rigueur.) show that these fledglings are well on their way to becoming full-Guido.

We don’t see a lot of this in the St. Louis area, so I was excited to get them on camera, with the lone frat-boy as pure bonus!

The Rex Begonia on the windowsill

Deathly - listen here

Now that I’ve met you
Would you object to
Never seeing each other again?
Cause I can’t afford to
Climb aboard you
No one’s got that much ego to spend

So don’t work your stuff
Because I’ve got troubles enough
No, don’t pick on me
When one act of kindness could be
Deathly
Deathly
Definitely

Cause I’m just a problem
For you to solve and
Watch dissolve in the heat of your charm
But what will you do when
You run it through and
You can’t get me back on the farm?

So don’t work your stuff
Because I’ve got troubles enough
No, dont pick on me
When one act of kindness could be
Deathly
Deathly
Definitely

You’re on your honor
Cause I’m a goner
And you haven’t even begun
So do me a favor
If I should waver
Be my savior
And get out the gun

Just don’t work your stuff
Because I’ve got troubles enough
No, don’t pick on me
When one act of kindness could be
Deathly
Deathly
Definitely

This is just the most awesome Chyron EVAR.

Yesterday at the Moolah I had to do the “people you used to know” dodge, when I saw an old acquaintance of mine leaving the showing immediately prior to the one I was attending. This was someone with whom I had shared some mutual friends, hung out, chatted, had over to my home - but not someone who I would think to call if I was sleepless and crying in the middle of the night. (my personal Official Friendship demarcator) Anyway, after a while the friend/acquaintanceship waned, as they are wont to do, and then it gets to the part where it’s all awkward. Like… how do you tell someone you’re through being friends with them, when they’re not through being friends with you? And even worse, when you run into them there’s a social expectation that you’ll act very surprised and happy to see them, as if your failing to return their phone calls & emails for the last two years has been The Merest Accident and Something You Were Planning to Get to One of These Days. And then you have to pretend to care what they’re up to, and pretend to want to tell them what YOU’RE up to, and then you have to pretend you’re terribly late for Some Important Something and you MUST DASH but will CALL SOON and have lunch or coffee or some-such. Because your ignoring them was just an oversight. Really. Rilly.

Whatever. That’s all WAY too much pretending for me. I know it’s awkward when you don’t want to be friends with someone anymore, but I think after a certain amount of time you should be legally allowed to not acknowledge that person if you see them out and about. Can’t you revert back to being strangers after some socially-proscribed period?

Interestingly enough, this phenomenon never happens to MyTodd™ who is (or at least seems) always pleased as punch to run into anyone he’s ever known ever, and perfectly happy and comfortable catching up on the last 27 years of history with them as if it’s not all a boring waste of time because if you have your way you won’t ever speak to this person voluntarily again. This is one of the primary ways in which Todd is a better type of person than me, and also why he can keep up a vast, global social circle, the maintenance of which would drive me stark raving batshit. Todd is also my closest friend because he’s the kind of guy who sends me a text message to warn me if someone he knows I don’t want to see is at a place he knows I am going. See, I am nothing like him, socially, but he makes allowances for my eccentricities. Zees ees whai we loooove him zo!

Although… he does sometimes torture me with threats that he’s going to call a bunch of people he knows I don’t want to run into, and have them all “accidentally” meet us somewhere. And I’ve got tiers of people like that in my life, so it would be torturous. People I haven’t voluntarily spoken to in 9 years… 4 years… 2 years… 6 months… given my propensity for adding and dropping casual acquaintances it’s got potential to be a seven-layer dip of delicious awkwardness. We have also debated starting a support group/blog “superBadGirlRefusesToSpeakToMe.com” where they could spend time comparing notes and strategizing my downfall and leave off calling/emailing me.

Look I never said I was nice, or even 100% human. I know I have my (severe) interpersonal interaction limitations. But honestly, I would rather ignore you in good faith than fake wanting to interact with you. And of course I am not talking about YOU anyway. YOU I could never, ever do without and will have in my life always. Really. Rilly. Call me!

*Whenever I want to end a title of my blog with a preposition I always think of the joke that ends “Where y’all from, bitch?” I know that the way I have it written reads convolutedly, but I can’t just leave that “with” dangling at the end of the sentence.