There is one aspect of this story that I think is getting far too little attention. In fact to my knowledge I’m the only one who has grasped its full significance. (My apologies to anyone who has picked up on the same thing.)

The whole saga began because Dorner reported a relatively minor incident of police brutality, and even though the evidence supported his complaint he was eventually dismissed for lying about it. But the really significant part of it, the part that threatened the LAPD the most during a time when they were trying very hard to be seen as trying to ‘clean up their act’ is this:

Dorner witnessed this act of brutality DURING A TRAINING SESSION!! He was the trainee, and the ‘perp’ was his trainer. So the inescapable conclusion based on this simple fact is that LAPD were EXPLICITLY sending their trainees a message: “this kind of behaviour is not only condoned, it is EXPECTED of you. It’s part of your DUTY to beat people down, even when they pose no threat, even when they are helpless and in handcuffs or other restraints.” The idea that the LAPD trains its recruits to assault the public, then PROTECTS the trainer by firing the recruit who reports it is to me a bigger story than all the rest of it combined.

It breaks my heart that Hurricane Sandy thwarted KKKarl Rove in his wish to squeeze just a few more big fat stinking lies through the lips of serial liars Romney and Ryan. And they were slated to be released close enough to the election that fact-checkers’ corrections wouldn’t get to all voters in time. So they must have been whoppers.

Don’t worry KKKarl, you can just put them back in your bag of dirty tricks and haul them out for the next election cycle.

We’ve been ‘making progress’ on marijuana reform for at least 40 years now and still haven’t achieved what is rational and just; full-on legalization. Meanwhile otherwise innocent people are rotting in for-profit jails in several countries. Not only are their potentially productive lives being wasted, but also the lives of the prison guards, support staff and administration.

I guess that any expectation that the law would be rational and/or just is just an indication of how delusional years of smoking ‘the shit’ have made me. Sheesh!

My favourite post-apocalypse literature is The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Sadly, in that book the fundamentalists are in charge even in Newfoundland after a nuclear holocaust. Just because they cause a disaster doesn’t mean they’re going to relinquish power. Look at the 2010 midterm election results so soon after Bush wrecked the economy in 2008. People never f^#$ing learn.

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

– George Orwell

It looks to me as though we’ve reached the future. Doesn’t it make you long for the good old days?

I always thought The Gilmore Girls would have been more realistic if Lorelei had smoked up. I mean really, someone that loquacious, it only stands to reason.

“Simply put, not entitled to credence.”

That’s a keeper! I’ll have to remember that phrase the next time I need to call someone a big fat LIAR in the nicest way possible.

“How come all the Brits and Aussies can do perfect American speech and Americans mostly bollix up their attempts to to the reverse?”

It’s because dialect is much more important in Britain, and most of the actors’ resumes show them graduating from the London Academy of SPEECH and Drama.

The way people speak in Britain serves as a sort of dramatic shorthand. A character walks on stage and says two or three sentences and the audience knows immediately where they’re from as well as their background, education and social class. An actor can’t portray a character supposedly from Yorkshire and give them a Cockney accent. Learning to do half a dozen American accents is a piece of cake after you’ve learned ten times that many from your own country.

Thanks, I really take heart at how fast my favourite blogs have responded to this. I can’t imagine what the ad server is thinking. When you do something as annoying as that it pretty much turns people off of the product that’s being flogged.

Totally inappropriate ad feed, playing video and audio without being clicked on. As soon as one ad ends another begins. And that’s on the homepage. On this post TWO videos are playing simultaneously. Lysol and Woolite.
The feed is from ps.j.tv2n.net, the same source that was doing similar at C&L. I reported it there, John Amato took care of it immediately. Dare I hope the same will happen here?

Maybe it’s time to start a facebook group: Say NO to Auto-start Flash Ads.