Usually I like to write a little something before all the bad news, but I got nothing in me, sorry.
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| CRANKY OLD FART #444 [archive] AUG. 16, 2024 |
Ruling: Fetus can be referred to as "unborn human being" in Arizona abortion measure voter pamphlet
Judge overturns $72M jury verdict, clears Boeing in Zunum lawsuit
In America, big money never loses.
I have occasionally been without an adblocker, and IT IS HELL. Google doing this says a lot about Google, and it ain't pretty.
Fortunately, you can still block ads on Firefox.
The Republican road to fascism:
• Teachers are now free to violate separation of church and state, Texas education official says
• Trump's plan to steal election is taking shape
• 8th Circuit Court says Iowa can keep its LGBTQ-targeting book ban
• New College of Florida tosses hundreds of library books, empties gender diversity library
• Utah's book banning law claims Judy Blume, five other female authors as its first victims
• JD Vance thinks Jeff Bezos is bankrolling Black Lives Matter
• How one Trumpist tech mogul pushed a crackdown on the unhoused all the way to the Supreme Court
• The Roberts way: Dismantling the Voting Rights Act, bit by bit
Harris campaign laughs at Trump with mock press release: "Donald Trump to ramble incoherently"
Harris's finesse as a campaigner continues as a pleasant surprise, but I always need to pinch myself: Politically she's Joe Biden all over again.
Biden policy will make 10 popular medicines less expensive for those with Medicare
The Lord works in mysterious ways:
• Priest thought to pose risk to children is paid off
• Dozens of new allegations of abuse and claims of a systematic cover-up by St. Louis Archdiocese
• Priest arrested for child porn held on $2.5 million bond amid fears he may flee the U.S.
• Catholic priest in Calgary accused of sexual misconduct
• Notorious pedophile Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale pleads guilty to child sexual abuse
• Two more Catholic priests accused of child sexual abuse in southern New Mexico
Trump's trainwreck interview with Elon Musk may have broken the law
Texas sues Biden Administration, to allow understaffed nursing homes
Climate emergency:
• Ancient pyramid in Mexico partially collapses after heavy downpours
• From the New York Times, a good overview of the assorted disasters looming from climate change
• Climate change could reawaken harmful invasive plants
• Unprecedented number of heat records broken around world this year
• Deadly landslides in India made worse by climate change, study finds
• Destructive wildfires at least three times more likely due to climate change, report finds
• "The dumbest climate conversation of all time": the Musk-Trump interview
... but there's money to be made, so la di da, la di da.
Study finds 101 bacterial strains that survive and thrive in your microwave oven
Consumer insecticides are useless for fighting cockroach infestations
All cops are bastards:
• Officer fired (but not charged) after beating handcuffed man in squad car
• Former Rochester Police officer gets 10 weekends in jail for rape of 13-year-old
• Dead killer-cop's gun is used in armed robbery
• Former East Texas police officer gets 20 years in prison for buying, selling meth
Elizabeth Warren targets corporatized veterinarians' offices and animal hospitals
Washington State Department of Health sues over denied entry to ICE facility
Vienna museums waive admission fees after Taylor Swift concert is cancelled
⚡ LINKS FOR THINKS ⚡
• Why do we act like accidents are somehow anomalies?
• A Cyclist dies and goes to Heaven...
⚰️ DEAD PEOPLE ⚰️
Wally "Famous" Amos
cookie master
Jerry Berbiar
"Jerry the Faerie"
Marty Brown
in county jail
Bucky
forgotten person
Grant Clark
in county jail
June Cohen
activist
Charles R. Cross
biographer of Kurt Cobain
Mike Cubbage
baseballer, Texas Rangers
Sergio Donati
screenwriter, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Argie Jones
forgotten person
Hettie Jones
poet, activist
Greg Kihn
rock'n'roller, "Our Love's in Jeopardy"
Peter Marshall
The Hollywood Squares
Takashi Morita
activist
Chi Chi Rodriguez
golfer
Gena Rowlands
actress, A Woman Under the Influence
Ángel Salazar
actor, Scarface
Trevor M. Saunders
in county jail
8/16/2024
Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that's made me smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited.
Tip 'o the hat to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Atomic Raunch, Bleepity-Bleep, Ensalada de lengua de pajaritos, Jesus Is My Hostage, Lemmy.world, A Sudden Violent Jerk, Mr Souza's Happy Place, Voenix Rising, and anywhere else I've stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Wynn Bruce, Joey Jo Jo emeritus, Jeff Meyer, John the Basket, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn't always shitty.
I can't pretend passion for who got a best supporting lapdance nomination in 1977, so am rather asking how the drama with the Hollands (and perhaps other low countries) went today. Were all the negotiations conducted in English, or were there interpreters behind silent glass protection shields, secretly wishing they were in a decent Mrs Rigby's joint?
ReplyDeleteMy wishes for a better day.
johnthebasket
The drama wasn't as dramatic as I was expecting. No negotiations, just talk of death. I'll write about it soon. And yeah, better days would be nice for all of us. Hope you get yours!
DeleteYou have nothing in the news about Matthew Perry!!
ReplyDeleteHaha
DeleteHaha indeed. I have little interest in celebrities, and none in Matthew Perry, but if I grok it right from the headlines they're trying to prosecute people for helping him obtain drugs? Fuck that. Dude was all grown up. If he wanted to say no he could've pronounced that word.
DeleteI understand that some of those drugs are habituating and inhibit a user's ability to say no.
Deletejtb
We really only get these prosecutions when someone famous ODs and dies. But the cast of characters is exposing some bit of Hollywood that everyone knows is there but few of us get the chance to see and, well, smell:
DeleteThere's a doctor who it seems made so many comments about wringing money out of Perry that he probably deserves a serious punch in the face just for being an amoral asshole.
But then there's Perry's personal assistant, who apparently was employed by him for many, many years, and who Perry paid to fix him up. I don't know the details but that's hard to really understand why he's being charged on the face of it. But more importantly, he gave up his life to provide a support system to a charismatic and rich junkie. I would love to sit down with this guy, not to find out gossip but just to figure out how he became this and why.
There's a dealer who seems to have tried to use her dealing profits to become an instagram influencer. The lurid details about her in the prosecution document seems like it was designed to fuck up her ability to get a fair trial via pre-trial publicity.
And then there's the most fascinating person of all, a small-time director of low-brow type movies, who is described as being a middleman who fixed up buyers and sellers. Did his life turn into this? or is this what he was all along? There's very little information about him. This is his imdb page:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004025/
I guess some people feel this is righteous or just or unfair and get upset about something or other, I'm just fascinated that we get this rare shot at the gross underbelly of fame poking out so baldly.
Possibly his greatest creation:
Deletehttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0471006/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_7_prd
Plot Summary: "Women wake up to find they have grown a penis."
It still feels punitive and wrong to prosecute a supplier. But I say that as someone who refuses to read beyond the headline of celebrity news, and only reads the headline because my eyes do it without permission.
DeleteI'd already added My Brother the Pig, just because it sounded so stupid, and if that's the criteria then obviously Hung goes on the list, too.
DeleteAs for the prosecutions, it feels tedious, like a rerun of some stupid show that bored you the first time you saw it. Let's offer no counseling or rescue services for millions and millions of drug addicts, let them die in the bushes beside a bus stop, but when someone rich and famous succumbs there'll be prosecutions for all his 'enablers'.
Has squat to do with justice, everything to do with lawyers hoping to make their names and/or fortunes. I can't even remember — did they lock up Michael Jackson's doctor? Did anyone go to prison for John Belushi?
Sorry, I care enough to ask, but not enough to Google it. :)
Yeah, Michael Jackson's doctor went to jail and I think the woman who sold the speedball to Belushi was convicted, I don't remember if she served time or not. More recently they did this with an actor from The Wire, who bought heroin but received fentanyl and the scuzzy low level street dealers who sold it to him were convicted. It's only prosecuted when the person that OD'd or their parents are rich and important.
DeleteI read the indictment and the whole incident is a breathtaking case of affluenza. Perry had a net worth of a hundred million from a dumb show he was on 30 years ago, and his best efforts hadn't put a dent in it. He wanted to shoot ketamine over and over again, all day long, but didn't want to shoot himself up so he intimidated his personal assistant into figuring out how to do it. This nerdy guy who worked for Perry for like 30 years is now facing 15 in jail (he pled guilty) for basically being an employee.
Sweet jeebers that's outrageous, the employee part.
DeleteIf you have a decent job you do what the boss says. I dunno if I'd do that, but probably I would if the boss was paying me good money and he wasn't an ass.
You will face severe penalties for harming anyone rich, but no penalties whatsoever for anything else unless you're dumb enough to get caught by police that are pretty close to incompetent.
There ain't nothing you can look at in America, even a dead celebrity, that ain't ugly when you know about it. Jeez, even a dead celebrity.
Fuck Friends, btw.
We need fewer people in jails, not more. I was just saying that, in terms of ascribing blame, the primary victim is operating with diminished capacity. That's ALL I was saying.
ReplyDeleteJohn
Yeah, I was just free-stylin' without a skateboard, which is a nicer way to say blowing farts through my keyboard.
DeleteThe victim's capacity is even further diminished now.
Don't want to hang up in the middle, but I need to leave in 30 seconds for the weekly family dice game. Sort of keeps the family together, one snake eye at a time.
ReplyDeleteAdios. John
Happy craps, man.
DeleteIn my family, any form of gambling was grounds for a sever paddling.
Having returned just short of midnight, I'll leave a comment or two once we get the cats settled and respond to any additional cat union demands. This is Martha's family by the way. Neither family was into corporal punishment. Growing up, all the card and dice games in the neighborhood were at my house because my folks decided that knowing where we were at night was more important than their getting a full night's sleep. In July and August, we played on the back patio, just outside Mom and Dad's bedroom. There would be between three and six of us playing card games, dice games and board games until one or two o'clock. On the weekends there might be a few more people and we might go an extra hour before calling it a night. We had great fun. My sis and I tried to keep the noise down, but were infrequently successful. They were quite wonderful times.
Deletejtb
Your parents were "the cool parents." Always envied that. And heck yes, they knew where the kids were at and what they were doing, which is so much smarter than laying down the law and making the kids sneak around to have any fun.
DeleteAlways figured that's the kind of dad I'd want to be, but what I really wanted was not to have the responsibility.
I'll never understand why striking a child with intent to cause pain is considered "good parenting" by anybody but Vladimir Putin. Years ago I had a great aunt who whacked her kids every day for all the stuff they were doing that she didn't catch them doing. My Dad said of her, "People who don't know the difference between discipline and aggravated assault shouldn't have kids."
DeleteThat sounds simply psychotic, like those kids should've been taken away, and I'll bet they're screwed up for life.
DeleteI'm all for some occasional, well-earned butt-swats, though. My pop paddles us when we deserved it, and we all came out completely fucked up in the head, but I don't think there's any direct correlation.
My brother never spanked his kids for anything, thought it was wrong. They both grew up with, near as I can figgur, ZERO interest in breaking even the slightest of rules. Both sons are mega-Christian like my brother, married to mega-Christian women, raising mega-Christian kids.
Makes me wonder if a good hard paddling sometimes gets a kid angry enough to question authority all his/her life. Did your parents never paddle your butt?