Reason Number 2...No 4...No Make It 18 Why Our Legal System Needs An Overhaul

Our legal system absolutely baffles me sometimes. I could probably go on and on for days about all the reasons why, but today I'll just stick to one that particularly gets on my nerves.

I do not, and likely never will, understand the purpose of giving 2 for 1 credit during sentencing to people who spend time in custody while waiting for or going through a trial. This credit, as should be obvious, is only given to guilty people, which makes no sense whatsoever. If a person is guilty and you sentence him to 4 years in jail, why should he
be getting out in 18 days
just because he served a couple years already while the system did it's work? If you want to give him credit for the 2 years he's been sitting there, fine, be my guest. Other than because he's a criminal, it isn't really fair to lock somebody up for 6 years while sentencing him to 4. But that being the case, why wouldn't you just do a little bit of simple math and give him a 2 year sentence, taking into account the 2 years you've already had him? Call me crazy, but it seems that would be the logical thing to do. I know I know, there I go again, using the L word. But I have to, and more people need to join me. If jail is supposed to be a deterrent, then we need to use it as one, not as a place where time passes twice as quickly as it does in the rest of the world and where people who shouldn't be are spit out the other side long before their time.

You Have the Right To Remain Confused

The other day I was reading some story about a guy who was sneaking people into the U.S. illegally and pretending to be another guy. The story wasn't really that interesting, but what he was charged with got me thinking. He was charged with criminal impersonation. I know what criminal impersonation means, but the literal part of my brain wonders why it's a crime to impersonate a criminal. Would they think you were the fugitive and arrest you instead? Why the hell would anyone want to impersonate a criminal. I mean, if your impersonation was too good, they'd never believe you weren't who you said you were.

This got me thinking about other weirdly-worded charges. For example, gross indecency. Is there ever a nice kind of indecency? I assumed indecency was gross. I know they don't really mean gross as in disgusting, but every time I hear that term, all I can think is "eeeewwww! Gross!" That's probably because the person involved is being charged because they showed off Mr. Willie or wacked off in front of someone or something.

Then there's the term forcible rape. Hmm. It's rape. What other kind of rape is there? I guess there's statutory rape, but I think most rapes are forcible, don't you? That seems like a bit of overkill.

Then I heard once that someone was charged with aggrovated murder. I understand aggrovated assault, if you beat someone really badly, but how can you kill someone really badly? They're either dead or not dead. How do you decide that one person's murder was worse than another one's?.

And in the overkill department, what's up with the term "aiding and abetting"? If you go to dictionary.com, you'll find that aiding and abetting are synonyms of each other. So if someone gets charged with aiding and abetting, they're charged with helping and helping? Why all the redundancy?

Maybe I just think too much. There's probably a perfectly good reason for these weird terms. But for some reason, a whole bunch of them came to mind.

Trixie Says...

You know, this white stuff is getting really annoying. It was fun for a while to play in, but now, I would like regular sidewalks and nice days back. Nobody knows how to move the stuff out of the way. So there are lumps of it everywhere. Sometimes, after a lot of it has fallen from way way way up, there's a big pile of it just outside the door! What am I supposed to do? There is no way around this big pile! It's an obstacle! But to get to where it's clear, we have to go down a slippery step! I want us to be safe! This is hard!

There are piles of it where I do my business, too! It's really hard to get in there! Once, Carin got lost and thought we were where we were supposed to be so I could do my business, and we weren't!

On the sidewalks, they move it out of the way for a bit, and then I guess they get tired or bored or forget to finish or move on to another spot or something. Anyway, it gets bad again. And then more of it falls from the sky. It just keeps falling. Just when I start to follow tracks, they get buried and I have to figure it all out again! Am I ever going to see solid ground again?

At least now, I can walk through the snow and the salt and the ice without yeeeping. It's nice to not have to think about every step and wonder if it will hurt. I love that stuff she bought that came in a paint can in that box that we had to pick up at the post office. The only thing that's not so good is she puts it on me first thing in the morning, before I get food. So I have to lie still and let her put the goop on my paws, and only after she's happy with all four paws and how much goop they have will I get to eat! Sometimes it's hard to lie still and my tummy goes rumble rumble rumble, and I squirm. But then she tells me the more I squirm, the longer it will take. So I should probably just lie there. At least it dries quickly, usually while I stand there staring at her while she puts my food in the dish. She says she does this so I won't lick the goop off my paws. She's smart, isn't she? She knows me too well!

I really thought the nice weather was coming back. I could feel it in my bones. I would look out the window and get all excited. There were lots of dogs out for walks. It had to mean the end of the white stuff! Then it would get c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-cold again! It was like somebody turned a knob back the other way. Is this ever going to end? Whoever's playing with the weather knob can stop now. Put it back up to nice.

Today was weird. Carin woke me up early! I got kind of excited, because usually when we wake up at a weird time, neat things happen! I thought maybe we were getting back on that bus to Kitchener where the nice people were who gave me treats. Maybe that other dog would give me a kiss again. But no! She just fed me, took me out to do my business, brought me back in and did the rest of the morning routine like it was just another day. Don't get me wrong, I'm never one to turn down early food, but why did she wake me up for nothing? What is this? She said something about another time change. Do we have to go over this again? Time doesn't change! I know what time it is, always!

then, later on, right around the time I have been asking for food since the last time-change, she got up and fed me! Ah! I get it! She's just using the time change as an excuse, but really, she has caved to my demands for food when I want it! She has caved, I have won, ha ha ha ha ha! Who's the alpha? Who's the alpha?

I thought I'd test this theory. When it came around to be the time when she used to feed me, that horrible time that I would have to wait for, I came and asked for food again. If I was right, I'd get more food! Hmmm. All I got was another trip outside to do my business! Maybe I'm not the alpha after all! Well, I'm nothing if not patient, so I'll just keep trying. We shall see who's top dog around here.

Remember that dog that came to see me? The other dog with the same harness that walked that other human? What was her name again? Oh yeah, it was Rosamae! Well, she came back. As soon as I saw her, I got all excited! Someone to play with! Someone to show the ropes to again!

Well, the deal got even sweeter. Rosamae was a bad bad girl, so she had to stay on the leash the whole time! You know what that means? She couldn't jump on me in my bed! She couldn't chase me around and go up and down, up and down on me like last time! Ooo! I could stand just out of her reach and make her mad, and she couldn't do anything about it! Nana nana booboo, I get my revenge, and what are ya gonna do about it, Rosamae? Huh? Whatcha gonna do? Who's got the upper hand here? Yeah, it's good to be a good girl. Good girls get to stay off leash. good girls can come into the room, and go out of the room when they want to. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

The other day, something scary happened to me. I was walking Carin home through the snow on the sidewalks that had lumps and clumps, clumps and lumps, when all of a sudden another dog came out of nowhere! He said "Roof! Roof! Roofroofroof rerrerererroof!" He didn't sound happy to see us, and he had no leash! There was no fense! He was coming right at us! Carin yelled something at him and some people whistled and he went away, but sheesh! That wasn't very nice of that dog. All I was trying to do was walk past his house, if that was even his house. I was minding my own business, he should mind his own. I wish I could talk, because Carin keeps saying she wishes she knew what that dog looked like and where exactly the whole thing happened so she could call...who was it again? The police? Yeah. She says he shouldn't have been out like that with no leash or anything. She says she doesn't want him to scare me again, and this was near where we live. I know what he looks like. I know what he smells like! I know all that stuff! Oh I just wish I could speak human! I could tell her all about that big scary mean dog.

You know, life is pretty good. I don't yeeep anymore. I always have food and toys and love from Carin, and other people too. I get to go to lots of neat places. Things are always interesting. You know what would make life perfect? If we got rid of the white stuff. Then I would be so so so so happy! Until then, I guess I'll just deal with it. Maybe tomorrow, it will be gone. Maybe! Just maybe! Maybe? Pretty please? To the guy in the sky who likes to turn the weather knob, can you hear me? Can we work something out? I don't have much to offer. Do you like peanut butter bones?

Maybe He Spent Too Long In The Spin Cycle

Ok Aron Pritchard. There are only two conclusions I can draw from this story. If you actually believe that putting toddlers in a dryer is a fun activity, then you are too stupid to be near anyone vulnerable. If you don't, but expect we will, then you're a lying sack of shit, and you're also stupid. Either way, you have to be dumb. There is no other way to explain this.

Safe Text? Are You Serious?

Hey, buddy, over there walking down the sidewalk texting on your phone! Yeah, you! If you can't see that post you're about to smash your nose on because you're texting, maybe the solution is to stop texting while you walk! It is not to put padding on posts and make a texting lane. Good god.

Links Ahoy!

For a long time, we've been wanting to update the links section. It needed it! So, today, I decided it was time! Apparently, Blogger had other ideas. But despite Blogger trying to puke on itself and trash all the work I was doing, finally, at long last, the links bar has been overhalled. I added a guide dog section, a dog section, and Steve added a wrestling section. Some stuff has been moved from one section to another, so if you think a link is gone because it's not where you expect it to be, just look around. It might be hiding somewhere else.

Enjoy the new links...if Blogger can stop browning out, that is. And, I know the new dog sections are small, so this is a call to all folks who are reading who have dogs. If you have an idea of a good site, fire it my way! I especially feel like I'm cheating other service dog handlers out of good resources just because I don't know of their existence.

Serving Our Community, One Voice Track At A Time

All the snow we've been getting and our building's power transformer blowing up the other night got me thinking again about how much commercial radio sucks these days. That might sound strange, but hear me out.

When something disruptive happens, something like...let's say a snow storm or a power outage, what's one of the first things people do? Do they run to their TV's? Do they fire up the computer and do a search for "what the fuck just happened on my street?" Or do they bust out the little battery powered radio and tune in a local radio station looking for info and answers? I'm pretty confident that a lot of you are thinking radio, because radio is by far the best and quickest way to get a message to a lot of people as soon as they need to get it. Actually I should make that radio *was* the best way to get the word out, because radio, at least in its current form, is the drizzling shits at doing what was and will always be its job.

The reason for this is a simple one. Voice tracking. If you don't know what that is, I'll quickly explain it. Do you ever listen to a station and notice that things just don't sound right? I'm talking about small things like the fact that nobody ever says the time or that the person reading the weather isn't the same one doing the rest of the show. These things are clues that what you're hearing isn't actually live. Your radio station, on a never-ending quest to save a few bucks, has contracted somebody or gotten an existing employee to record an air shift in advance so that they don't have to pay people to staff the station during what they consider off hours. Off hours can mean anything from evenings after about 6 or 7 PM to an entire weekend, meaning everything from Friday night until Monday morning.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the problem with this idea, but you do apparently need to be smarter than radio station management, who for the most part are somewhere between dog shit and a ham sandwich on the IQ scale. Emergencies don't have off hours. They happen when they happen, and it's the job of essential services like radio stations to provide as close to up to the second coverage as they can. It especially burns me up when I hear a station talking up its community involvement only to hear that same station leave the community in the lurch when it actually needs it for something more complicated than sending the Rockmobile to Wally's Waterbed Wearhouse to broadcast live from the big Summer Blockbuster blowout Bonanza.

I don't care how much it costs, there needs to be somebody live on the air at all times. It's ridiculous that I could get no info Monday about what exactly happened to my power and when they planned to have it fixed, and it's absolutely unacceptable that anybody who found themselves driving through Guelph today would have to get conditions from stations in another town or find
CFRU
and hope they've got live programming on. This morning they did, and it's a good thing. It's also pathetic in the sense that the one place that did the right thing was staffed by volunteers who could have easily stayed home for safety's sake and been well within their rights to do so. The 2 corporate stations in town could learn a lot from this, but they won't, and that's a shame.

Sikh Cycle Carousel

Well, it looks like our Sikh motorcyclist who didn't want to wear a helmet has been ordered to wear one. Good!

What I don't understand is if nothing can be worn over the turbin, why not put the helmet on and the turbin on over the helmet? Or maybe there's a rule against that too.

Stupid Mindless Spam

To all spammers: if you're advertising increased penis-length, do not have the message come from Lorraine with a subject of "I gained four inches." Where is Lorraine gaining her inches? It can't be good.

Speaking of Bicycle Bob...

Now, if you're going to put people who hump bikes on sex-offender registries, put this guy on.

Turn Me On And I'll Suck It

We haven't had a good guy getting busted for having sex with something story in a while, so
here's a Polish man who was fired from a building job at a children's hospital after he was caught humping a vacuum cleaner.

Hopefully the justice system will work as it should, because if
our old buddy bicycle Bob has to be registered as a pervert
and this guy doesn't, there's something seriously wrong with the world.

A Definite Case For The What The Fuck Department

Why on earth would you

• cut up noodles
• with a steak knife
• while they were cooking on the stove?

What the hell? Had this man never cooked before? Well, I guess he'll never cook again, and his kids will never be the same.

If That's Not A Security Breach, I don't Know What Is

Wow. Gary Sinnott is a far more honest man than I. If I had a website that was similar to that of a naval base, and people were too stupid to verify where they were sending confidential emails, and the emails were getting to me, and I'd let the military know and they said "na, don't worry about it," I wouldn't take the site down. I'd done my best to make sure they knew. Now I might get some interesting juice! But maybe I wouldn't if it was actually happening. I just can't believe the stupidity of the American military and the morons sending the emails.

Eat Them Up, Yum!

Here's a new kind of creepsake, only this one you don't keep, you eat it. How would you like some German sausage made from the blood of military airmen?

Miss Bloody Hands

Just imagine a girl dressed up in an evening gown taking out a knife and, as her talent, skinning a muskrat. Hey, if a girl wants to skin a muskrat and be a beauty queen, go ahead. Just the thought of the two together seems kinda creepy.

That's The End?

Yesterday, we had the radio on, and this song came on that left us scratching our heads. It was The Baby by Blake Shelton. It was the weirdest song. It was all about this kid having a pretty normal childhood, being a goof, but his mom loved him anyway, and then his mom died and he didn't make it home in time, and boom! That's it! The end was so abrupt that we were wondering if part of the song got amputated. We had to actually sit there and try and guess at what the message of the song was. Was it that he felt like he let her down because he didn't make it home? That's the only conclusion we could draw.

My explaining of how weird it was doesn't do it justice. You have to find it and hear it. Listen to the song and tell me if you get the same sense that it came to an abrupt, unexpected end. Maybe it's because the song seemed to be a very meandering type of song and then it was just over. In any case, it was weird. Or maybe we're the weirdos for thinking so much about a song.

The Drinkin' Bone's Connected To The Namin' Bone

This one's a bit old, but when has that ever stopped us before?

Charged with vehicular assault and obstructing a law enforcement officer after a crash last October is
Glen Alan Casebeer,
who went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that his story was as funny as possible to folks like you and I by telling a police officer that he had "definitely had a few."

Shockingly Stupid

Ok, who thought this idea would work? Can I zap them too?

In Wales, there's a woman who can't stop calling 999 and uttering fake bomb threats and such. Thelma Dennis often does this when she is drinking. So, after 60 convictions, they decide to try a weird therapy on her. They tape electrodes to her hands and make her dial 999 on a specially rigged phone. After dialing the third 9, she gets zapped and is screaming in pain. Quelle surprise, this therapy doesn't work, and she makes another hoax 999 call.

Ok, geniuses, I think I know why this therapy doesn't have a hope in hell of working. I'm sure she's smart enough to know that as long as she's not at the specially-rigged up phone with the electrodes on her hands, she's not going to get zapped. Duh! Even an animal could make that connection. Wouldn't it be more effective to order her to get help for her drinking problem?

I understand they're desperate for a solution, but this one seems like the stupidest one possible, especially since it's been stated that she is more likely to do this while drinking. Well then, isn't that the key to solving the problem?

Every time I read this, I wonder more and more if the doctors treating her just decided to punish her for all the trouble she had caused rather than actually treating her.

They Don't Get Much More Naive Than That

Apparently, there's a site where women who don't think their boobs are big enough can go ask for donations so they can get implants. The men who give the money just want videos of the boobs in exchange. I'm not going to sit here and criticize the site, or the men who donate. If they want to throw money away so some chick can have bigger boobs, whatever. What I am going to make fun of is this woman. She actually thinks that the men want to...how does she put it? Ah. There it is.

Most of the men seemed to be more interested in making a personal connection and helping her out than just getting some racy images.

You go right on believing that, Karla-Rae Morris. You just go ahead.

The Peace Temple, Or The Piece Temple?

What is it exactly about a monk slipping under a lawnmower that was in disrepair that keeps making me laugh? Is it the fact that that monk was the one responsible for the machine's maintenance? Did he not repair it because he thought God would protect him if he slipped under it? Is it the fact that he'd already mangled his fingers in a lawnmower years earlier? Or is it the fact that it happened at the grounds of a peace temple? There was nothing peaceful about that day, especially not for the ones who found him...er, what was left of him. I know it's tragic, but there's something about the description of the accident that keeps making me think of that song "I'm looking over, my dead dog Rover, who I hit with a power mower." Um yeah. I'm sick. People can feel free to hate me now.