McCain's actions reek of dishonesty

John McCain has released his medical records to a small group of journalists. They'll be given three hours to look at over 400 pages of documents. Then, a separate group will also be given a few meager hours to pour over 1,000 pages of documents.
There are only two reasons to release data like this:
The first and least likely of the two answers is that he has morons for public relations officials. Since he's made it this far, that is highly unlikely.
The second and more likely answer is that there's something in those files that a) has been agreed upon by the journalists not to be disclosed; or b) there's something there, but it would take more than three hours to discover unless someone got really lucky and found the connection.

Mike Rotch and Harry Shaft cause controversy at Lawson High

According to information that I pulled from a Facebook Group protesting the schools decision, students Dave Keyes and Linus Owens of Towson High School, Maryland, have been suspended for the last 4 days of school and barred from the school prom for signing their names on a photo as "Mike Rotch" and "Harry Shaft," which was later transcribed into the yearbook (see the image to the right; Top Row).

While I'm sure that somewhere in the school's code of conduct you can find a rule that would justify punishment, is 4 days and banishment from the senior prom a justifiable punishment for this incident? I've never been to Maryland, but at my high school even a fist fight wouldn't get you 4 days suspension and banishment from the prom unless it was a particularly bad one that had escalated into a multiple person brawl or something.

Are the yearbook staff and the yearbook adviser being punished as well? These are pretty obvious fake names. In a school where the entire enrollment is approximately 1500 (according to Wikipedia) wouldn't the yearbook staff recognize that the caption was wrong, especially since it seems these two students are fairly well known? Did an administrator or faculty member bother to proof the yearbook before it went to print and if so, are they at fault as well?

Do you think the actions warrant the punishment? Should an administrator or faculty member also be held accountable? Voice your opinion in the comments section or call the school at 410-887-3608.

Wigger on the bus gets put in his place

Tonight on the bus there were a bunch of Wiggers (see photos or Wiki) and they were talking all kinds of trash and being real rude even though the bus was crowded and there were a few older folks sitting nearby.
So this one starts talking about how hard he would fuck Jessica Alba... He gets up in the middle of the bus, holding the handrail for support, and starts humping the air and grinding one of the seats, gyrating around for about 2 minutes.
So after he's made a big spectacle of himself on the bus in front of his friends and all these older people, I turn to him and I say, "Dude... Did you know Jessica Alba has the herp?" He went nuts, like Alba was his girlfriend who he'd just found out had cheated on him or something. He just sat there in the back of the bus in disbelief shouting, "No, way!"
His friends all started laughing their asses off and giving him a huge ration of shit. A couple of the older folks that heard what had happened turned to me and gave me nods to show their appreciation for putting the little twit in his place.

The "I'm fucking...(Insert Celebrity)" Meme?

I'm fascinated by these videos, but especially by the fact that the last one was filmed on the set of a Kevin Smith flick with Elizabeth Banks singing "I'm Fucking Seth Rogen." I think it would be really great if this became a meme - different stars and famous people making "I'm fucking..." videos.
It's pretty genius because it mocks the whole tabloid TMZesque papers and sites by shoving it right in their faces. Are these videos serious or is it just another "act"?

I'm fucking Matt Damon:



I'm fucking Ben Affleck:



I'm fucking Seth Rogen:
Sorry, the video is not embeddable...

The people of Seattle

I moved to Seattle about a month ago for an internship. My house is approximately 3 bus transfers away from my job and at one leg of my trip is through the middle of downtown Seattle. I've begun to notice people in the city who are out of the ordinary.
The following people have caught my attention and I would love to do a feature on them if I could only muster the guts to approach them and ask about their peculiarities:

Blind Wolverine: This guy looks exactly like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine before he joined the X-Men, right down to the spiked hair and clothing style... But instead of blades that protrude from his knuckles he carries a white can most commonly used by the blind or visually impaired.

The Walrus: This guy's fashion is straight out of the 80's punk movement except his glaringly huge "Walrus" mustache. It's similar to Nietzsche's Stache (photo below) except that it's bigger. It looks as though the guy combs it down over his lips and then trims the underneath so that the under layer pushes the top out and over his lips.


The Flute Guy: In the building I work in, there's a guy that I've seen a couple times practicing on a cheap recorder in the parking garage. One day in the elevator I mentioned him to a couple guys I was sharing the ride with and one of them said one day he came out of the elevator and the guy was practicing Tai Chi right front of the door.


Those 3 are the only guys I can think of right now, but for your enjoyment, here's the list of my favorite peculiar people in Honolulu:

John "Mango Man" Cruz: He's a homeless vet that's been haunting the town of Kailua since the 70's. A friend of mine used to work at the Safeway that Cruz frequents and made friends with him. He's a very intimidating guy, but very nice. Recently he was hit by a car and there's been huge public support for him to pull through the incident.

Tuxedo Man: He always wears a neatly pressed Tuxedo and can often be seen walking the streets of Manoa. He usually carries a briefcase and a few plastic bags. He's most commonly found in the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii although when people start to recognize his routines he changes them up a bit. This person noticed that he was sitting at the same benches every night, and left him dinner but he never came.

The Rhinoceros Man: This guy has a lot of different names, like the Horned Man, etc., but if you describe him to anyone that's seen him, they immediately recognize who you're talking about. He's an older guy with gray hair that is always neatly kept and in the front protruding from the front of hairline is a tubular chunk of hair that about an inch thick that protrudes forward about 6 inches. It looks like he puts something in it and then twists it forward. The most peculiar part is that it is flat on the end as though someone actually sheared it with a razor after it hardened into that shape.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have comments, photos, stories, etc. about the people above, or you have your own favorite peculiar person in whatever city, please post them in the comments section and I'll address them in a later blog.

The last laugh?

I USED to be a big Morcheeba fan. Now that the ban is broken up, I'm a Skye Edwards fan.
Dive Deep and The Antidote are Morcheeba's newest albums (both sans Skye Edwards). I don't recommend you buy them however, because now they sound like a cheap, poppy imitation of all the other generic Euro trip-hop/downtempo bands out there.
It's just the Godfrey Brothers trying to ride Morcheeba's fame even though it's not really Morcheeba anymore. I'd heard that Paul Godfrey is particularly a douche bag (Groping former band mates; I also read somewhere that he treated a sound technician with so much arrogance and disrespect that the guy refused to work with him again).

Media only tells one side of "Plagiarism on the Campaign Trail"

Recently Hillary Clinton accused Barack Obama of plagiarism for an ad-lib speech in which he repeated the words of one of his close friends and colleagues. All the media outlets are picking it up and running with it, but did they do any legwork to see if perhaps Hillary is a hypocrite?

Clinton is also guilty of plagiarizing Rudy Giuliani when she said, “I’m tested. I’m ready. Let’s make it happen,” in El Paso and of plagiarizing Obama himself when she said, "We are fired up and we are ready to go because we know America is ready for change and the process starts right here in Iowa.”

Now, instead of repeating Clinton's accusation, a good journalist would do a little bit of fact-checking and take Clinton to task on her own plagiarism.

Last night I began to gather a list of which publications just repeated what the Clinton Camp said and the ones that actually did homework and actually deserve the title of journalist (at least in the context of reporting this story), but there were far too many that fit into the first category and it grew tiresome.

One surprise is that Fox News was actually reporting both sides, which was refreshing... I guess it makes sense that they would report on something that can later be used as fodder for promoting McCain.

On another note, I'm currently talking with an LA Times writer who's column was one of the first to get me upset about this, so maybe I'll talk about that next, when I'm done corresponding with him.