Sunday rerun: Give it arrest

People think I'm a liberal on every issue because I'm a yellow dog Democrat, but on crime and punishment issues, I guess you'd describe my stance as existentialist.  One aspect of existentialism stresses personal responsibility for making it (or not) in this mean old world.  In fact, at crime scenes, when mobs form around the cops and robbers, I am often able to cut the line and gain access to a front row vantage point by shouting, "Let me through! I'm an existentialist!" as the crowd parts like the Red Sea.

Recently, our part of town has been beset by house burglaries.  These are not usually well-thought criminal conspiracies by masterminds, but, rather, a couple of losers kicking in a door, ripping off electronic devices and any cash that might be lying about.  Take a look at our local Patch, and their story about a couple of upstanding locals who were pinched the other day.  This couple was arrested yesterday afternoon with a lot of stuff of which they could not immediately establish ownership in their car, but that's beside the point.  They'll have their day in court and if they have any luck at all, they won't see my unforgiving face in the jury box.

But the comment made by one fellow citizen really makes my furrow my brow and shake my head.  It's the comment where the guy says he knows the dude involved, that he has struggled with drug addiction and he hopes he gets some help with that.  How about, I hope that people who have been burgled in our town get their stuff back AND I hope this fine young man gets to go to the Ironbar Hilton and spend some being penitent in the penitentiary?  They named it that for a reason!

I don't hold with the theory that people who are drug addicts and therefore have to steal stuff to pay for their habits deserve to be treated with the same respect as those who are afflicted with, say, leukemia, or some other random illness that strikes with no reason or cause.  I doubt that there is one person who has never heard that drug use and abuse lead to awful consequences.  Paying the price for those consequences is part of growing up and being a responsible member of our community.  We can help these people by not treating them like victims of a disease.

Beyond senseless

Aaliyah Boyer was 10 when she died on Thursday.  She was the little girl we talked about the other day; she was shot by a stray celebratory bullet fired by some cretin on New Year's Eve in Elkton.  By Wednesday, while she was still on life support in a hospital, a brain scan told doctors that there was no hope for her to survive; life support was removed and she passed away on Thursday.

Aaliyah and her family had been in Maryland for the holidays, leaving their home in Delaware.  While they were down here dealing with this tragedy, another person broke into that home, stealing all their Christmas gifts, including three new iPads, and the childrens' clothing.

As Aaliyah left our earth for her new heavenly home, she left behind vital organs:  her heart, kidney, lungs and liver were harvested to be transplanted to others in need.  She had noticed that her parents' drivers' licenses declared them to be organ donors, and Aaliyah wanted to donate as well.

Aaliyah Boyer

We never count on a ten year "little princess" (as her family called her) who loved Hannah Montana and Justin Bieber being an organ donor so young.  The person who so thoughtlessly fired that gun the other night did not, most likely, count on his (or her) bullet doing murder.  And probably, the thieves who broke into the family home did not know of the pall already hanging over its residents when they jimmied the door and stole toys and t-shirts.

From all this, I take two thoughts:  there is evil in the world and it must be overpowered by love.  Call me an idealist.

And it also reminds me that we need to remember that our actions have consequences that often lie far beyond what we can see from where we stand. 

I wish that Aaliyah may rest in peace, and that her family will know peace and better days as they face the future with thoughts of the past, and how the future might have been.

The shooter, and the thief, have themselves to face.

The resolution to save money

It's a good time to make resolutions, and my friend Jamie put this on Facebook the other night.  I think I'll try it.  It's an easy way to save money...

Back in the days when I was a cigarette smoker, we used to sit around (smoking) and discuss ways to quit smoking.  One novel way was, every day, put off that first smoke for an hour.  So if you get up at 5, no smoking until after 6 the first day, then after 7 and after 8 the third day and so on.  Of course, it got to where you couldn't have a cigarette until after 11 PM one night and then you were supposed to be able to quit, mainly because you were sick and tired of waiting to smoke.

This works the same way.  Save a dollar the first week, $2 the second, and follow the arithmetic progression.  At the end of the year, you'll have $1,378 to spend for Christmas, the easy and pain-free way.

Of course, by November and December, you'll need to come up with healthy chunks out of your allowance to make the deposit, but it should be worth it. 

Who's with me? 

Myth America

As the New Year gets off to a start, how about a resolution that we all stop getting all worked up about stuff we see online?  As in:

Not banned!

"Facebook is trying to stop us from showing a manger scene!  Let's show them that they can't stop us!"

"How come kids are NOT allowed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school every day?  LIKE if you're against this crazy policy!"

"As much as I enjoy sharing my life and photos on this website, I hereby for all time abjure the right of any second-party organization to reproduce, share, copy, publish, print, or even look at my photographs, especially the ones showing Aunt Audree with her prize-winning deviled eggs at the State Fair.  Failure to heed this prohibition shall result in fine or imprisonment or both."

And, all these copy-and-repeat memes asking people to demand that members of  Congress start earning the same salary as a first-year teacher in an urban setting, or that one that starts every few months and says "I'll quit Facebook when they start charging $4.95 a month starting in August."

OMG!

Friends and neighbors, the people at Facebook are so busy counting their money from advertising revenue that they couldn't care less about a picture of a manger scene.  And they don't need this "$4.95 a month charge" to stay on the profitable path.  In fact, the people who own Facebook stock light cigars with hundred-dollar bills and have diamonds on the tips of their shoelaces.

This cut-and-paste about privacy rights is a myth, albeit an oft-repeated one.  Kids still say the Pledge of Allegiance.  Congress is not about to take a pay cut.

FALSE

And the deaths of Morgan Freeman (heart attack), Henry Winkler (car wreck) and Adam Sandler (ski accident in Switzerland) have not occurred.
 

Please. Rest easy.  Things are not as crazy as they seem.

Senseless

Elkton, MD, is a quiet little burg in our state's northeastern corner.  It used to be known as a quickie place to get married, because of some local loophole, and people such as Babe Ruth, Debbie Reynolds and TV sinbuster Pat Robertson would elope to Elkton "Marry-land."

These days, Elkton is being spoken of in much sadder terms.  A ten-year-old girl was shot there on New Year's Eve.  It will stun you to read this, but she was shot by a bullet fired from the gun of a New Year's celebrant.

I don't know if this goes on where you live.  It's a local custom around here, and it boggles my mind that someone would say, "Hey! I know a great way to ring out the old year and ring in the new one!  I'll take my pistol out in the yard and shoot the darned thing!  Yahoo!"

Anyone who stayed awake in school long enough to study Isaac Newton will remember it was he who first postulated the theory of gravity when an apple fell off a tree and conked him on the melon.  "What goes up must come down," Newton pointed out, but not harshly enough to be understood by some goober who fires bullets randomly into the air.

Those bullets come down, son.  They don't go into outer space and puncture the sun or anything.  And one of your bullets came down and caused head trauma to a ten-year-old little girl who, as I write this, is on life support in a hospital.

2012 certainly ended on a sad note for her family.  In a larger sense, she is a member of all of our families - the family of mankind.  We have to hope that certain of the older, wiser members of the family will speak words that will encourage the fools among us to be a little more thoughtful. 

1/1/13

Predictable

I see by the local Patch that a local psychic predicts continued growth and togetherness, but we should watch out for a major challenge by June.

Well, there's good news.  I was worried about our continuing growth and togetherness.

Ronald Reagan, probably our greatest president of all time (among those who starred in B movies as a younger man) and his wife consulted a psychic, so there you go.

Tarot cards, crystal balls, tea leaves, the lines on your palm, the lines of people waiting to buy Lotto tickets ...how can any of these foretell the future?  More to the point, how often do you see the headline "PSYCHIC WINS LOTTERY FOR TENTH STRAIGHT WEEK"?

I know it's comforting for some to be reassured by someone who possesses no more knowledge of the future than the kid who wrangles the shopping carts down at the Try 'N' Save, but I just feel bad for people who put their money into the palms of soothsayers in exchange for looking at their palms.

Sunday rerun: Best Blade Plans

Shhh!  Please don't tell the good folks up at Gillette Razors Inc., but something went wrong with their OctoSmoothieSupreme Hawaiian-Jazz Fusion Razor.  At least, the one I am currently using, and have been for about six months.

Now, I'm the first to admit, I am not the most hirsute in the bunch, and so shaving my face is not quite as tough on a razor as, say, removing shellac from an old dining room table with Hepplewhite legs.  But I'm doggoned if I haven't been using the same blade insert doodad since Tisha B'Av (which is in August). I don't know why this is.  Every time I lather up the old face (emphasis on old) I always think, today is the day I will start whittlin' off the whiskers and leave abrasions and contusions on a facial plain that, quite frankly, does not need any more damage done to it.

See how it gleams in the morning sun

But no!  The multi-bladed wonder slices through the face forest like Grant took Richmond (not to bring all that up again...) Like a snowplow in last year's blizzard, like Charlie Sheen at a high school prom, like that guy you always see at a buffet who can balance two plates at a time, the razor makes easy work of my quotidian pruning.  A quick rinse in some lukewarm water is all it asks, then it's back into its ready position in the little jar that holds my toothbrush, all set to be pressed into duty again.


I don't think it was supposed to happen this way.  This is maybe the fourth or fifth newly-installed blade set in this razor, and none of the others lasted this long.  As Oprah® would say, What I Know For Sure is, when I do need to change it, the next razor will give me one, two, maybe four good shaves, and then will slice me dangerously close to the carotid artery.


You guys know what I mean.

The Saturday picture show, 12/29/12

 Photo 1, above, shows a nice cooperation between the Highway Department of some municipality somewhere and a certain hamburger chain.  They get to advertise their McFries and pedestrians  walking off their McCalories have a nice place in which to do so.

As with photo 1, photo 2 shows a road someplace, and again, I don't know where this is taking place, but it's funny and why not be a little whimsical, if you can't be a little Popsicle?

 There is often something haunting about old, rusted, abandoned structures (such as the Republican party) but this is particularly interesting, because this Ferris wheel is located in Chernobyl, Russia, where the worst nuclear accident in history took place in 1986 in a town still largely deserted because of it.

Apparently, it used to be popular to depict a new year as being a baby delivered by a stork on December 31.  However yours arrives, I hope you have a great 2013, and thank you for sharing 2012 with me.

Nuttier than a .....

With snow in the forecast for Saturday, I ran to the Giant Food in full panic mode yesterday.

Not for the standard Oh My God! Baltimore order of Bread, Milk and Toilet Paper.  We're all stocked up on that.  I had in mind a more basic, more primal, winter need.

Fruitcake!  Ah, sweet fruitcake.  Say it with me!  Say it loud, and there's music playing!  Say it soft, and people start to wonder, so just say it loudly, all right?

I know it's the butt of all cake jokes.  The stories abound about people being given fruitcake for Christmas and how mad they get, especially since they went out to the drugstore and got a nice Jean Nate Deluxe Travel Set for the person who then turned around and handed them a five-pounder. 

I'm never that guy!  I will be glad to scoot down to the all-night drugstore and buy you the Super Deluxe Two Weeks in Sunny Paris Jean Nate set if you'll lay a fruitcake on me next Christmas.

I asked for a fruitcake, and Peggy couldn't find one, and then when I went to the Giant to ask for one, the woman in the Bakery Dept. looked at me a little oddly, as if I had asked for porcupine pie or something.  And no, they won't be getting more of them in stock, sorry.

But then as I rounded the corner past the gigantic display of paper towels, there was a table with a sign reading "Whoops We Over-Baked!" and there sat four little bricks of joy, with expiration dates well into March, 2013. 

Nothing says baking like fruitcaking!  I snagged one of those bad boys and took it home, ready to sprinkle it with whisky and slice a little bit every night.  If I work it just right, I'll have the last slice while watching Alabama beat Notre Dame on January 7.

Whooo Doggies, do I love me some fruitcake.  Hot a-mighty!

Bad grammar

 From the Associated Press:

The owner of an Annapolis trolley company says he’ll no longer offer wedding services because he opposes same-sex marriage.
Discover Annapolis Tours was a longtime fixture of the city’s wedding scene. The Baltimore Sun reports that the company’s decision to get out of the wedding business was publicized by a straight groom who was offended by the move.
Business Owner Matt Grubbs declined to comment on the decision beyond acknowledging that it will cost him $50,000 in revenue. He says he’ll post a full explanation on his company’s website by Jan. 1, the first day that gay couples will be allowed to marry in Maryland.
Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is illegal in public accommodations in Maryland.

There's a simple way to test your grammar.  For example, let's say you want to indicate that you and your friend are going to the mall later today to return some doo-dad.  If you find yourself saying, "Me and Fred are going to the mall..." just pretend that Fred can't go, owing to a late bout of common sense.  Would you, going alone, say, "Me is going to the mall"?

Likely not. And you can use the same test when you want to share with your friends that your Aunt Grizelda sent you an antique vinegar cruet for your anniversary.  Should you find yourself wanting to say, "That was a sweet gift she sent to Jim Bob and I" because, if you hadn't married Jim Bob (and your father urged you not to) you would never say,"It was a sweet gift she sent to I."

I'm not beating the drum for good grammar here, as much as I am for good citizenship.  Take the sentence:  
  the owner of an Annapolis trolley company says he’ll no longer offer wedding services because he opposes same-sex marriage

 and change it to

  the owner of an Annapolis trolley company says he’ll no longer offer wedding services because he opposes interracial marriage

or     marriage between Lutherans and Methodists

or     marriage between short people and tall people

or     marriage between Steeler fans and Ravens fans

and you'll see how using a little sense makes things better for all of us!

 

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

With a child's heart

Christmas Eve finds a certain sadness lingering from the Connecticut horror from a couple of weeks ago. This year has been tough in every way.  Killings, tornadoes, bickering over politics and policy, murders, hurricanes, a college football child abuse trial, so much sadness. 

We end the year soon, not soon enough for many. 2013 beckons and there is always the chance for hopeful people to see a brighter day beyond that blue horizon. 

For now, let's pause and ponder what the holidays can be for us all.  If I could, I'd have us all see Christmas through the same eyes we used as children, when even the simplest little thing could fill our hearts with happiness and laughter.  We got older, that's all, and things got bigger - our wants, needs, things in general. 

If you feel a vague sense of being disquieted, why not turn down the surround sound, close your eyes and think back to another day.  Look around at the children in your life, in your family or in your neighborhood.  They still feel the joy.

May God send you joy at Christmas and all through this coming year.  And when we speak to - and of - each other, let's try to pretend that it's Christmas every day. And ask the drug store or the grocery to keep candy canes and egg nog in stock all year long.  That will end a lot of the agitation.

Sunday Rerun: The importance of train-ing

See, this is what we get for assuming. 

As children in the Baltimore area, we all figured that everyone everywhere had train gardens of some sort around the house at Christmastime, and that most firehouses did too, all around the nation.

Wrong again, Santapants.

The tradition of having a Christmas garden - a miniature diorama with wee villages and model trains, often with hovering helicopters, ascending aircraft and plummeting parachuters (I just renewed my membership in the American Alliteration Association) displayed above - may take places in lots of houses around the nation, but somehow it became a Baltimore tradition to have them in fire houses, and there is where we find amazing work in action: in plenty of local fire stations.

It wouldn't be the holiday season if Peggy and I didn't make our annual trip to the wonderful display at Baltimore City Engine 45 house at Cross Country Bl and Glen Av (21215).  The firefighters there have nowhere to store the huge plaster mountain and other features that make up the base of their garden, so they have to tear it down at the end of the holiday season every year, put the thousands of miniature houses, buildings, cars, trucks and people in storage along with the train sets, and rebuild it again every year, beginning in August. 

And what great work they do!  The trains go around, skiers jump, skaters skate, and you really have to pay attention to the teeny little details.  A few years ago, my childish heart was made even more gleeful by the sight of the Coca-Cola polar bear...walking away from a patch of yellow snow.  This year, in one of the scenes of a burning house, they managed to make ordinary cotton and some well-placed lights look just like smoke wafting from a burning hotel.  And they made a rock formation on one side of the mountain look just like ET the Extra Terrestrial...with "phone home" graffiti right nearby.

There is something for everyone to enjoy.  Peggy loves seeing the trains go around, and I like the little villages.  The lights come up and go down, and I think you should go down and see this great train garden. Here's a link to further info, and some pictures.  See you in Plasticville!

The Saturday picture show, 12/22/12

This is an old picture; I've seen it around for years. The anthropomorphism of a gun dressed in a tiger suit shoveling snow just amuses me. OR!  Is this a tiger who worked on a highway crew and was making such good money that he was able to afford a human hand transplant, the better to grip the shovel? 

I've kept this picture around for a couple of weeks to see about something, and that is, whether it would continue to suggest an aroma every time I see it. And it does.  When I look at it, I get the smell of a walk in the pine forest out near the reservoir, or cleaning the floors with Pine-Sol.  I recommend pine trees for everyone who wants to put some great trees around their yard.  They are nature's miracle: no leaves to rake, and they drop their needles cleanly at their base, forming their own mulch!  Maintenance free! And so aromatic!

Here are some more pines, but you can't see the needles for the snow.  And that's the way it should be all winter long!  Please?

Almost as funny as someone spelling "misspelling" incorrectly is someone's "Alignment" sign being out of...alignment.

Don't Miss Letterman Tonight!

Darlene Love

She had a mild heart attack this past summer, but Darlene Love is back and ready to sing for Letterman tonight.  So, set your DVR or VCR or BetaMax, or just stay up late tonight and watch The Late Show with David Letterman, tonight at 11:35 after your local news concludes with a fake "lighter side" story about a child being abducted by an eagle.

Spector in his heyday

Lana Clarkson (far left)

Letterman does this show every year.  Darlene recorded "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" for the amazing Phil Spector Christmas album in 1963.  Spector was a genius record producer and is, well, a pretty lousy human being who currently resides at  the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison (SATF) in Corcoran, California.  He was convicted in 2009 of murdering actress Lana Clarkson in 2003.  Ms Clarkson, best remembered as Mr Vargas's wife in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, was shot at Spector's mansion in Los Angeles.

But the records he made are still among the best parts of any radio playlist in December, and Letterman's favorite Christmas song is the one we'll see Darlene sing tonight.  It's always a huge production with Paul Shaffer leading a big band.  We call this the Big Band Theory.

Ahem.

Jay Thomas will make you laugh!

Also, Jay Thomas will make his annual visit to the Late Show, throwing a football at a meatball atop a Christmas tree and telling his Lone Ranger story.  I guess the true test of a great story is whether you can listen to it over and over.  You can, when it's a) funny to begin with and b) told by a master storyteller, which Jay is, as you'll see tonight.

I can't wait!

Santa Jimi

In December, 1969, Jimi Hendrix continued to defy other guitarists, who to this day are unable to duplicate what he could do on an electric guitar, and spelling purists.  He accomplished the latter by naming his new band, which was to replace The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Band of Gypsys.  The more conventional spelling would be Gypsies, of course, but then, Jimi never did anything the conventional way.

He had hired veteran drummer Buddy Miles to slam the skins, and Billy Cox (not to be confused with the old Dodger third baseman) to play bass. Cox and Jimi had become friends while serving in the US Army together in 1961 at Fort Campbell, KY.

Jimi and the band were booked for the holidays of '69-'70 at the Fillmore East, the legendary rock concert hall in New York.  There were new songs ready for the band - most notably "Machine Gun" - but Jimi wanted to do something special. 

While rehearsing for the shows at Baggy's Studios in Manhattan, the band wove together the melodies (melodys?) of The Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, and Auld Lang Syne.  Someone wisely hit the "record" button, and we are left with these holiday treasures to enjoy, 43 years later.  At the concerts on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, The Little Drummer Boy and Auld Lang Syne wound up as parts of medleys with other songs.

If you'd like to hear this tripartite medley, YouTube is standing by.  Just go here and enjoy!

The album of the concerts was released in March of 1970, the last to come out during Hendrix's life, which ended that September. 


We don't have any way to know which direction his career might have taken, but it's good to hear his music again.

5'll get ya 10

I mean it when I say I just don't seem to understand life these days.

Remember when you were a little kid and you did something wrong?  I certainly do.  And my punishment was usually being sent to my room, which contained none of the following: TV, stereo, DVD player, PC, tablet, video game system or entertainment of any sort, save books and a checker board, which was not much fun alone.

Later on, when granted parole, I would enjoy the TV more than ever, cranking the Dumont on to every prison movie I could find.  "Angels With Dirty Faces" was a perennial favorite, bringing together the toughness of Humphrey Bogart, Father Pat O'Brien, and screen beloveds The Dead End Kids.

In that and many other movies that I watched in grainy black and white, prisoners filed into dinner silently (until one of them tossed a tin plate of gruel skyward, crying, "I ain't eating this slop!" and being set upon by two dozen uniformed bulls swinging billy clubs and clobbering him into submission and 30 days in "the hole") and then slunk back to their cells, where they were allowed to read letters from their sweethearts and stare at the ceiling until "lights out."
In baggy jeans and thin chambray shirts with numbers stenciled over the pocket, they served out their days, weeks, months and years as calendar pages whizzed by.

I believe that seeing this type of movie was a deterrent to my generation.  We didn't want to wind up in some big Ironbar Hilton, playing mournful music on the harmonica while the days dragged on.

"Hi! What's your number?"

Funny, then, that a guy whose grandfather and father played plenty of cops and robbers in movies would wind up in the calaboose, but that's where Cameron Douglas is getting his mail these days.  The son of Michael, the grandson of Kirk, the stepson of Catherine Zeta-Jones (she is 9 years his senior) is in the tank in New York, doing a ten-year bid on a drug distribution charge, making a third conviction for narcotics violations.

Young Douglas was only a short time into the sentence when he and a girlfriend came up with a real smart idea.  She brought him some heroin in the battery compartment of an electric toothbrush.  Not easily fooled, the police put her in jail as well.  And how is he to follow a conscientious program of oral hygiene by using a manual toothbrush...or even more sad, a non-electric electric toothbrush?

Dead End Kids

But here's why Cameron is in the news today.  He recently had a fellow prisoner make a wishbone of his femur and his finger, breaking both bones, and leading to young Mr Douglas dropping out of the prison flag football league, what with the word being out that he was a rat and naming names.

Sometimes, words just don't go together.  "Healthy McDonald's Meal," "President-Elect Mitt Romney," and "Prison Flag Football League" are but three examples of word groupings that make no sense.

Hello, penitentiaries?  How about a little less flag football and a little more penitence, whaddya say? I can't imagine The Dead End Kids playing flag football out in The Yard at Sing Sing.

Toss this one around

I'm gonna cross some people up now and discuss a gun crime without getting into the gun aspect of it.  The Charles Village Pub is in Towson, been there a long time, and recently re-opened following a fire that completely burned it out a couple of years ago.  It's a very popular place, and it would seem that Mr Francis Minsung Kang, 26 years of age, had nothing better to do at 0205 hours early this past Sunday but to toss a bottle of Gatorade at a woman outside of the place.  A fight ensued, according to the narrative provided by the County Police, and Mr Kang ALLEGEDLY withdrew a weapon and fired five shots into a crowd of people, striking one man in the hand.

For his alleged efforts toward making this a better community, Mr Kang is currently a guest at the Baltimore County Detention Center.

Towson, the town that knew me when, has changed a lot.  Used to be, the worst that happened on a Saturday night would be when a drunk would roll a bowling ball down the middle of York Rd.  But times are different now, and Mr Kang finds himself dining on county chow while awaiting trial.  This is not new to him, as a glance at the record will show. 

Crime Scene

But what really troubles me is the nonchalant attitude that several of Kang's friends show about the whole deal.  True, he has not been convicted of anything, but there seems little doubt that he was not at home reading Sylvia Plath while all this mayhem was taking place in Towson.  His friends just about broke their necks to write to the local Patch to say such things as:

 I know the "wannabe tough guy", I've known him since elementary school, and he is not a tough guy at all. He's a good guy; always has been. None of us have any idea what really happened just because we've read a news article. I don't mean to make excuses. He clearly lost his sh*t and that's not acceptable, and there have to be consequences for that, but he's been a good person as long as I've known him, which is a long time, so let's hope he's not in for too tough of a ride in prison, because if someone like him deserves that kind of suffering, than there's not many of us who don't.

and

 If you read the article, then you know a biased side of the story. Do not make an opinion, do not start makin stories, and do not believe what other ppl are sayin. He is a man who made a mistake, and is payin for it. This man is a good guy who i have known my entire life. Everyone makes mistakes, and yes, this was a big one. But there are multiple sides to every story, so dont go making assumptions just because you read an article, mostly of police statements. Who were not there during the altercation or shooting... If you were out numbered and in fear for your life, how would you react?!

OK.  First...spelling and grammar?  Second...friendship is great, and sticking up for your old grammar school chum is admirable, but only up to a point.  If your "friend" is accused of pulling out a handgun and firing into a crowd of people, and, his markmanship being what it seems to be, hitting one of them, please don't take the "well, you weren't there!" approach!

And finally, this bit of advice.  Friends, try to avoid the temptation to throw bottles of popular electrolyte-replacing sports drinks at people.  It will help you avoid that "out numbered (sic) and in fear for your life" feeling!

Can't anyone just go out and have fun and then go home in peace anymore?

What's news?

Last Thursday, students at South River High School, down past Annapolis, were evacuated for a second day that week due to what turned out to be a dryer malfunction.  Apparently, all that time standing outside led some of them to decide to set up a fake "Breaking News" site and share with the world the amazing, although spurious, news that the school had been evacuated because a live tiger was roaming its halls.

Had this been Sri Lanka Senior High School, it would have been believable.  Those with a knowledge of the fauna of Central Maryland know that tiger sightings outside of the zoo and the ballpark, when the Detroit nine come to town, are so rare as to be nonexistent.
Ha, ha, kids.  Very funny joke.  Now, back to reading "Heart of Darkness," solving for "y", and wearing the same gym socks for the third consecutive marking period.

However, according to the local Patch, a "national news website" picked up the story and ran it.  It turns out that this "national news website" is something called "Elite Daily...Voice of Generation-Y" which is not to be confused with The New York Times.  For one thing, the megapaper from New York knows better than to use dashes when they are not needed.  Members of Generation Y, please take note of the way proper grammar solves for "Y".

Of course, the next day, an ineffable enormity occurred in Connecticut, and as we watched, listened and read of the unfolding details from Newtown, a debate took shape on the social media sites about "how much news is too much."  Some people took to the keyboard to tap out messages about how we are only "giving this young man what he wanted" by paying attention to his evil deed.  Others pointed out that what he wanted was to kill people, and maybe we should try to find out how such an abhorrent mode of behavior surfaced in what seemed to be a "normal, everyday" kind of guy.

That's a debate with many sides, but for those who say, "The news shouldn't cover this so extensively; it only gives other people bad ideas", I say bad ideas abound all by themselves.  Those who don't want to see the full-scale coverage by news channels such as NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN have the option of turning to another channel, or turning the tv off altogether.  The news is the news, and wishing it were better won't make it so.