That's Some Fucked Up Shit Right There

Yesterday in the evening I was waiting for my sister to come visit so I decided to take my little daughter to the playground behind my apartment complex. While I attempted to convince Luci that the kiddy swing was supposed to be fun, not a novel form or torture, I was approached by some neighborhood immigrant children.

I noticed an obvious hispanic accent (probably an island or maybe South American) as the older sister, a girl of maybe 12 (I'm pretty certain she's more like 10) engaged me in conversation.

Her: "How old she is?"

Me: "About six months."

Her: "That's as old mine is."

Me: "..."

At this point I assumed she had mispoken in a non-native tongue and meant her brother or sister cousin...

Her: "She's with her grandmother...."

Umm...

Her: "With my mother."

Uhh...

Her: But mine is a boy. The father goes to my school.

It is a rare and amazing occassion when I have absolutely nothing to say. I quickly did some math in my head and realized that, even assuming a very generous age of 12, this girl had gotten pregnant at the age fucking 10 years old! In my ignorance, I thought you needed to be a fucking teenager to have kids.

Then I remembered that girls had started menstruating as young as nine and fertility goes along with that.. Still, that means someone had sex with a 10 year old (at the oldest) and got her pregnant. And she had it. And it survived.

And she's fucking raising it.

That's some fucked up shit right there.

I'll leave you with her most disturbing sentence, "I had to give mom the baby so I could go out and play... have some fun."

What the fuck is wrong with the world?

100% Bitches*

100%ALCOHOLIC

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

* - I'm going to go ahead and claim my exceptional score is because I bartended for two years but you make up your own mind.

PHP Bleg

I'm not sure how tech savvy my readership is but I have a rather complicated, obscure problem with PHP and consuming web services that I could really use some help on.

Anybody?

Tragedy and Parenting

Before I had my daughter in January, I could have never fathomed the agony a story like this must produce:

A 3-year-old girl drowned in a pool at a friend's home in Milwaukee.

Officers said it happened at a home near 80th Street and Tesch Avenue at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday.

Police said the girl might have been wearing a flotation device earlier in the day, but took it off to eat dinner.

While I can't even imagine surviving the death of my daughter, I have many family members who have lost children and they all say "You find a way, you have to."

The worst part is that the child had the water wings on and took them off to eat. This oversight by the parents will inevitably lead them to endless self-recriminations that are, obviously, undeserved. Yes, they probably should have noticed but life is fast and frantic and children are as kinetic as quicksilver. The reality is, terrible terrible things happen and no amount of care can prevent that.

I must qualify all of this by saying that I regularly go into my daughter's room to check if she is breathing and have an absolutely irrational terror about walking when my daughter is on the floor for some reason. Vivid images of me stepping on her skull flash into my mind and I almost have to immediately sit down.

Who knew you could ever care about something so much? Even with the risk of such terrible loss, I can only pity those who have chosen not to have children. I'm not better than you, I just feel sad that you'll never know the most powerful love in the world.

I'd Like You to Meet My New Girlfriend

That's right. A fucking bread maker. After getting back from my vacation out west I bought some supplies for making bread and fired that little darling up. Result?

I have finally achieved true bliss. I only made basic white bread but it was fantastic. The quality difference between store bought bread and the stuff you make yourself cannot be overstated. And the recipes I can try are many and varied! Homemade banana bread? I win.

I just fucking win.

I hope to never eat store-bought bread again.

Alive

And not in Wisconsin, but out west with the family. I'll be out of Wisconsin until the 24th and hopefully will immediately shoot out to Detroit for a little party.

I hear the levies on the Mississippi broke and that my home county was declared a federal disaster area so going home should be fun.

I'll post some pictures from the trip soon.

Freedom!!!!!!111eleventy

The move is complete. I now realize that I am no longer 18 and that my knees do not like carrying 50 pound boxes up and down stairs.

This getting older* stuff really sucks.

* - I say older so my elders don't jump down my throat for complaining. I'll just say that the difference between 28 and 25 is pretty impressive in terms of joint pain.

Also, getting older is far better than the alternative.

Yup, Still Alive

You know the old joke "They say married men live longer... but it just seems that way."

Well, moving must make you immortal. Lucky for me, I get to spend all day tomorrow doing that which I loathe most. Also, I got to take a vacation day again in which I did not enjoy myself.

See you after the move.

This Moron Is Busy

Can't blog much at work today but wanted to mention that the next installment of Ask A Moron: Zombie Invasion will be out this afternoon. It won't be dealing with too much strategy on our hero's part instead focusing on the general, global situation.

Prognosis: Epic Fail.

So, stay tuned!

Sick and Tired

I missed work yesterday sick so I'm swamped. That's a shame because I have several really good Ask A Moron questions. The problem is that they'll require some real effort on my part and I want to get them right. On that note, does anyone know a good, free world map editing program? I could use the paint bucket on MS Paint but I'm trying to class up the place, ya dig?

Last night was a blast but leaves me with an empty feeling. Hillary! is done. Obama is the candidate. McCain is a douchebag. This general election is going to be very long and depressing. I just wonder what we'll have to blog about until the conventions. There are only so many 80's speed metal videos I can put up here, you know?

I've decided I'm starting the Hillary Clinton Candidacy Dead Pool. Pick a date you think Hillary! will finally drop out of the race. The fact that she canceled all her talk show appearances today makes me think it may be sooner than the convention.

I'm picking May 23rd. Put your picks in the comments. I'll think of something clever to do for the winner.

P.S.: Why isn't douchebag in the spell checker dictionary? What about douchefluid? Douchenozzle? Ah, the holy trinity of douche. If McCain is the bag, who are the other two?

Update: DPUD responds in the comments:

She doesn't drop out, unless you count the Convention going "You lost, GTFO!" droppping out. Her ego won't allow it, that and she wants to do as much damage to Obama as possible in order to soften him for McCain so she can run in 2012.

It is obvious that she wants McCain to win. I can't argue with that.

She'll be campaigning for Obama about the same way OJ is looking for his ex-wife's killer.

But I think she'll drop out. I think she'll be too close to burning all her bridges with her party if she doesn't take a step back.

What she needs to do to position herself for 2012 is to withdraw when it becomes clear she can't win but loudly proclaim that she'd have a better chance to beat McCain.

Then, after McCain wins, she can go back to the party and say "I told you so, now let me at him in 2012."

That's what I'd do. If her ego won't allow that, her ego won't allow winning. Simple as that.

Lulu Loves Her Doggy

It was a busy weekend and looks to be an even busier week. Instead of stretching to find something to say about politics or 'obliterating Iran,' I've decided to dose you with cute.

I'll have more this evening and I'm still taking questions for Ask A Moron.

The Dire State of Liberal Education

I have a friend.

After serving a full term in the United States Marine Corps including service in Iraq, this friend returned to a local college and immediately ran for class president. He won. Putting aside the comical assertion by his opponent that a semester in the senate counted as 'more experience' than raising to the rank of Sergeant in the middle of a war, the voters of the college elected him by a solid majority as well as a dominant selection of his chosen senators.

The government was his. Just like that.

Yesterday he approached me about modifying the constitution of his college seeking my advice as to what changes should be made. I reviewed the document and found it, by and large, to be a boilerplate clone of the U.S. version. The only major deviance was a U.N. style requirement that a large number (though not majority) of the senate seats be held by individuals elected by "major status" organizations on campus. To be a "major status" organization, a club must get support from the student government and must, in its constitution, put forth goals that help the entirety of the student body.

Several of the organizations fall clearly into this category such as the student paper, the radio station, and the student activities committee. The rest of them are what can only be termed special interest, group politics style organizations which represent one or another 'victim' class on the campus.

One of the major things my friend wants to change about the Constitution is categorizing these "major status" special interest clubs into one group that only gets one voting senator automatically. He asked me what I would consider to be the best way to do this and I, to my shame, had to suggest he do no such thing.

I couldn't suggest he do it because I couldn't erase the image of the impending witch hunt. I couldn't find terms to explain to my friend who had just spent the last 6 years of his life as a member of the most meritocratic organization on the face of the earth that liberal arts colleges long ago ceased being engines of human improvement and were now massive liberal echo chambers.

I couldn't suggest he do it because I didn't want to be responsible for the impeachment proceedings in which he was called a racist or bigot because he believed that, while diversity was important, a group who's name creates a discriminatory atmosphere in any direction can't possibly benefit the 'entire student body.'

It is such unmitigated horseshit that a man who's had to defend his experience against a snot-nosed college kid would have to then be dragged over the coals b by these naive, sheltered, indoctrinated children.

It makes me wonder who would even want to pursue a liberal arts degree anymore. Seriously, what good is a sociology major in the real world. More precisely, what improvement over a High School degree does that person have?

I have no doubt that in nearly every case an individual who has served a term in the military is far more capable of handling a non-specialized job than someone that has completed a liberal arts degree. In reality, these men and women should simply be granted a bachelor's degree upon completing their tour. I surely would rather have the average PFC from the Marine Corps working with me than someone who majored in Women's Studies.

I thought that his description of children was less an S&M thing than...

was all I heard of the conversation before I was out of reach and certainly more than I wanted to hear. I would say that they were just talking about something private but the tenor of their speech and body language made it clear that they were discussing a recently attended class.

There is no conceivable situation in any environment of higher learning in which that statement should be uttered.

Ever.

None.

It is a disgusting and offensive thought that not only do our tax dollars fund the operations of this institution but also give the students a $5,000,000 stipend to spend as they wish while teaching students about S&M and children (no, I seriously don't give a fuck what the context was).

What is funny is that he routinely asks me to come back to school to help him win these fights in student government and change the system. Sadly, I feel I lack the energy to do so. A daughter and two jobs takes a lot of juice out of my My only suggestion at this point is to use that money to help pay each student's tuition for the year. Five million would go a long way among a small student body such as theirs.

So really, am I right to wave him off of this dangerous course or has the dire state of liberal education bid us remember the words Don Juan's words before Lepanto:

Gentlemen, the time for counsel is past and the time for fighting has come.

Long Night

I would have posted an Ask a Moron last night but I was delirious with fever so the post might have looked like something on Daily Kos.

Anyway, I'll get to a couple of Ask A Morons before this week is over and I think that Mr. Hussein Obama needs a good foot up the ass, too.

Can you believe the ball girth on that guy? I'm surprised he can find pants. 20 years he spends with Rev. Wright as his spiritual mentor and now he suddenly realizes he's a racist piece of shit? Only now? Don't forget he has now denounced a man he could no sooner denounce than all of black America.

Blacks, your denunciation is in the mail.

And I thought the Clintons were pragmatic.

Calling in Sick

I've come down with a stomach ailment of some type and the body aches are overwhelming. It is all I can do to muddle through a little work today and go home. I should put together an Ask a Moron tonight if I don't just pass the fuck out.

And so continues, the Week of Suck!

Editorial Spill

I spent the weekend with my daughter while attempting to write a very large amount of web code. Let's say I was more successful making my daughter smile than my employers. This week we go live at my other job on a major project so I'll be swamped and probably very grumpy by the time May rolls around.

I barely got a chance to watch or look at any news this weekend but it looks like there's a whole lot of fucking nothing happening. I tried to find a Moron of the Day and came up with Wesley Snipes. It's old, I know but he is seriously mentally deficient. I'll probably have an Ask a Moron today as well so stay tuned.

The thing that sucks most epically is that last week was the best week this blog has ever had and I have to follow it up with Hell Month. If you just started reading I hope you like crap because that's what you'll be getting for a while.

Well, that and fucking cursing and explosions.

Big Post Coming

I've been threatening this for a while and it is finally started. I'm going to lay out exactly how I feel about every issue in the form of letters to Liberals. The introduction is going to be the hardest part as it will be more essay than rant. Being that I'm a pretty shitty writer that resorts to endless profanity in lieu of the skilled use of vocabulary, this will be pretty difficult.

See you later.

P.S. - I'm still looking for questions for Ask a Moron. Seriously, ANY QUESTION will work.

Earning the Moron Title: Hit List

74% Boring/26% Shitty: I know it's going to break your little moron hearts but I've got nothing today. I came down with a cold on Tuesday and the little fucker has started to move into my sinuses like blow off a hooker's ass. Add to that the bizarre reality that I'm actually doing work at work and you've got a perfect recipe for a boring, shitty blog. Not that it wasn't shitty and/or boring to begin with.

I just have an excuse now.

Under Construction: Beth's improvements on the site continue apace and already the difference is staggering and wonderful. Only when confronted with your own ignorance do you realize its depth and my design ignorance is as deep as Obama's contempt for the common man. Well, maybe not. Let's not go overboard.

Bleg: I realize that my news aggregating abilities are roughly analogous to Larry Flint's tap dancing talents and I'm sending out a request for suggestions on how to optimize my news skimming. This will allow me to provide even more stupid stories about coin-thieves and misspelled elementary school signs; you know, the shit you really yearn for on a daily basis.

Ask A Moron: I have this feature I do where you ask me something... anything and I produce a post on this topic. I call it Ask a Moron. There's just one problem with this brilliant feature; nobody asks me any fucking questions.

So here's the deal. Any of you morons that trip through this shit hole want an idiotic question answered on any topic, you write in these here comments and I'll put out a response. Guaranteed.

Also, I think I need to emphasize how juvenile and amateurish the writing here is with some juvenile, amateurish graphics for my features. What do you think?

Yes, you. Who else would I be talking to?

Dear Liberals: My new feature will be called 'Dear Liberals' wherein I write personal letters to explain my positions on various policies, events and philosophy. I was going to write one yesterday but the illness put me down by 8 PM like an escort at a Congressional ball.

Moronosphere Grunt Sessions: That's an off-the-cuff name suggestion for my proposal to have we Morons get together in some capacity either electronically or in reality during major/interesting political events. Somewhere we can really roast in our own idiot-juices and sound off like a monkey driving a manure spreader. Anyone think that's a good idea or are the cold meds starting to work?

Hooray for Conferences

You may have noticed it was pretty quiet here yesterday and that is because I was at an all-day IT conference getting some face time with They That Design My Framework. We were staying at the Grand Geneva which is the original Playboy Bunny Mansion converted into a hotel and spa. Very classy. Unfortunately, they took the bunnies with them but they still seem to have kept the tradition of utilizing attractive help. Yowza.

It rained all day yesterday and many of the Kenosha county roads are flooded and impassable. Yet again, it is raining/foggy today and this will be turning into fucking snow tonight and tomorrow. Great.

Why do I live in Wisconsin again? Even more interestingly, why am I moving deeper into Wisconsin in June?

ROCKWaukesha here I come!

More Later

Well, my daughter's second day of day care is off and running and tonight I return to my apartment alone to clean and work my contracting job. I also intend to put out a Moron of the Day as well as perhaps a new feature!

Stay tuned!

Moron of the Day: Goracle

God damn you, Al Gore! Why the fuck did you have to pick the second day of Spring to visit Wisconsin? As everyone well knows, your arrival is predicted to bury us in over a foot of snow! Why the hell can't you just stay with your precious polar bears in the Arctic? I'm sure you're disturbing Gaia rage will keep you warm during those long winter nights.

Pros: I get to leave work at 1:00 instead of 4:30 because of the weather.

Cons: I had a hot date that will now be cancelled and getting off work early doesn't really help much when it should take me 3 hours to get home.

I fucking hate you, Al Gore.

Spring Greetings from Kenosha, WI!

That is a lawn chair through my now dislodged and destroyed screen door. The red car in the background is my bottomed out G5 GT