Chillin' at Children's The Franklin Regional Tragedy Spawns A Selfie

Dear Nate,

   I am the father of school age child.  Not a moment goes by that I don’t worry about her.  Will she behave in class?  Will she do well?  Will she make new friends?  Will she get an A on her spelling test?  Will she grow up to be smarter than me? Will she get into college?  Will she get a great job?  Will she invent something or discover something that will solve world problems?  Will she make it home safely today?

   You see, what you did today was very, very brave.  It was a selfless act.  Something simple.  Something we would usually punish a student for in my day; pulling a fire alarm to get out class.   But you did it to warn others.  You acted in a way that probably saved countless lives, just like my little girl.  I can only imagine what your mindset was when it happened and then, to have been attacked by the person who caused this chain reaction of events that have reached CNN and the world, you are now a hero.   You are a part of the tapestry of parental nightmares that have plagued all of us since Columbine happened fifteen years ago this coming April 20^th.   Southwestern PA now joins a host of other schools and communities that have become statistics of classroom violence.  All of us more worried each day that somehow that evil will find its way into our children’s schools. 

   But, you were there and you did what you did and now, by virtue of being born towards the beginning of the Gilded Age of Social Media, you are part of the historical tableaux of memories, like the students dangling out of the window of a Virginia Tech classroom.  Your face and your act will be remembered.  You are a hero.

   You deserve this moment for being the one to “Roll into action”.  You and all the others who helped stop the threat before more could be injured, including yourself, deserve so much praise and thanks.  For that, this is your time to shine.  Your Facebook wall is probably flooded right now with well wishes and bro fists and probably dating offers.  Your profile picture will probably your Children’s Hospital pic for a day or two… There’s already a community page on Facebook, which is probably not related to you in any way.  You’re going to have interviews with local media and probably National Media.  It’s not unfathomable to see you ending up on the couch of Fallon or Letterman… because the media loves a hero so much in the face of tragedy.

   It is also your time to reflect.  A lot of criticism is going to come your way, from myself included, simply because you exist in that “Gilded Age”.   The selfie seen round the Commonwealth already has a Twitter following and a People.com article.  Again, I thank you for what you did, but remember with great power comes greater responsibility… and clichés.  Don’t think for one moment that you aren’t a hero, but also not above reproach in the eyes of those who made you famous for what you did.  You are a hero, but you’re also a teenager, and I get that.  Taking the selfie “Chillin’ at Children’s” is the tip of a proverbial iceberg of contextual misconception.   In one light, it’s a kid being a kid, taking a moment to show the face of a tragedy.  But in another, it’s a kid being dumb and disrespectful while his classmates are in critical condition from their wounds.  The choice of how you choose to identify yourself in that moment is your own.

   Humility is a powerful balance and can never be abused.  Remember this as you take those first steps towards no longer being anonymous outside of Allegheny County.  Remember this when your attackers are armed with a Social Media account and not a knife.   Remember this when it’s time to go back to being anonymous.  Remember this when it’s time to step up as a man in your 20s and 30s and 40s.   Be the man who pulled the fire alarm every day of your adult life.  Be the hero when your own child goes off to school and worry about them every day.  Be the humble American who does things not because of the photo op but because it’s the right thing to do.   You do all that, and you will be fine.

  Thank you and have a speedy recovery.

Jackasses Dead And Alive

Ryan Dunn was a Jackass. There, I said it. Is it hurtful and despicable to say that in light of his death? No. He was a member of Jackass. In truth, I couldn’t remember which one he was until it was mentioned that he’s the one that stuck the toy car up his arse in the first Jackass movie. Then, it triggered a faint recollection. Other than that, his fame was lost on me.

Just after his death being reported, Roger Ebert tweeted something about the incident and it set off a firestorm of tweet rage among other celebrities, or those who claim to be. “Too soon” and “hurtful to families” was thrown about. Was it too soon? Does it matter? This is the age of the Internet, where everything is presented, digested, regurgitated, debated, and beaten like a dead horse in the matter of minutes. If Roger Ebert were to come back with that quip about Ryan being a jackass, say next year, it would be lost in the sea of trending topics.

Should Ebert have said it? Why not? He’s an observer of entertainment and media. He’s allowed to say whatever he wants and people are allowed to disagree with it.

Was he wrong? In my opinion, no, he was not. Look, the truth about what actually took place will not come out for days, maybe weeks or maybe ever. At the speed of a 140 characters per minute we take whatever news we get, vetted or not and run with it. Details evolve, change, get refuted and transmuted in the now and it’s ridiculous to think that it will ever go back to the way it was before social media eliminated credibility among informative sources.

The word on the tubes was that Ryan posted a picture of him drinking with two other people about two hours before he decided to drive. He was said to have had three beers and three shots over an indeterminate amount of time. It was also probable that he was driving his Porsche at a high rate of speed of around 130-140 mph. Of course, why wouldn’t you, if you were driving a Porsche; drinking or not?  It was also determined that his BAC was 0.19, twice the legal limit.  Drunk and driving a Porsche at that speed is asking for trouble, though I cannot conceive the idea that six alcoholic beverages made a huge difference in the constitution of someone like him. He simply had the odds stacked against him.

And Dunn didn’t just do this to himself. There was a passenger involved, too. Dunn’s car flew about 40 yards, through the trees before bursting into flame as it hit the last one. Regardless of all else, his tragedy affects not only his family, but also the family of his passenger. This could have ended in other ways, too. There could have been another vehicle and another fatality involved.

Why lionize what could have been avoidable? He did something stupid. He paid the price and took someone with him. He was a jackass. And guess who else is a jackass, Perez Hilton. He has the nerve to blast Roger Ebert for making an offhanded comment. This is the same guy that claimed Michael Jackson, going into cardiac arrest, was a publicity stunt.

Not to mention posting a picture of Miley Cyrus’s nether regions, supposedly without garments in what could have been considered child pornography. Not that I care all that much about Hanna Montana being critically damaged by Hilton but it was still wrong and Hilton hastily covered his tracks removing the picture. Do you think he wants to go to jail? Oh, and Hilton invades all kinds of privacy by publicly shaming closeted celebrities into coming out or revealing them like he’s judge, jury and executioner in the court of public appeal. Guess what, d-bag. It is neither your right nor your job to say whether or not someone needs to come out. Talk about bullying. In fact, what the hell is your job? Oh that’s right… third grade level graphic designer and blogger. Too effing bad, I already have that job. Go away.

If anyone should be apologizing, it should be the Internet for giving an account to Perez Hilton, not Ebert. And it seems as if the Internet agrees more with Ebert than Hilton. Score one for journalism and credibility.

Buccos Brewhaha With Local Bar

Yes, I spelled 'Brouhaha' wrong on purpose.
I had planned out a lengthy, count 20 paragraphs, post about this story.  Instead, I'm listing a few links because each one has it differences.  You be the judge on who is right and who is wrong.

Coonelly 'scolded' Bar Owner:  Warning... Bob Smizek alert.
'Pirates Lose' Beer Special Brings Bar Heat From Team‎:  WTAE
Bar Discounted Beer Every Time The Pirates Lost; Team Bullies Them Into Ending Promotion: Deadspin


In essence, a local bar offered a discount of five cents off a pitcher of beer every time the Pirates lose a game.  It's a consolation prize for fans who patronize the bar.  It was taken as a jab at the ball club and someone within the Pirates' front office asked for a boycott of the bar using Pirates' letterhead in her communication.  That caused the owner to contact the news media, which in turn caused Frank Coonelly to contact the owner, which caused everyone to jump all over this because the Pirates' Front Office is evil.  Right?
My take on all this...

WTF?!?!?!?!?!?+infinity.

The Pirates suck.  They have sucked for 18 years.  They continue to suck.  News media in Pittsburgh makes fun of them.  Locals make fun of them.  Other teams make fun of them.  Yet, this little bar in Kennedy Township is the straw that broke the camel's back?

When I was 16, I did a stupid thing.   To which everyone says, "Only one?"  That week, yes.  Anyway, I went with some friends and participated in egging a house on Halloween.   What I didn't know was that everyone egged this house.  It was listed in Zagat's guide to egging and corning houses.  I swear....  (No, I don't, really.)  Yet, apparently, my friends and I were that proverbial straw, because the homeowner chased us down and got my friend's plate number.  The next day, cops called my house and I was fined $93.  I also got grounded for the first and only time in my life where it lasted more than five minutes.   I also had to miss a Def Leppard concert, which I paid for with my paper route money.  Lesson learned. 

The point is that the Pirates have been the egged house for so long that someone felt compelled to fight back against a semi-satirical jab at their losing streak.  Now, it's a major news story.  It didn't need to be.

Was the Pirates' employee wrong?  Yes.
Was the promotion a bad idea?  No.
Was Frank Coonelly rude and an 'arrogant ass' as the bar owner said in a WDVE interview?  Maybe.

Frank has a track record and looks guilty, no matter what he says to the contrary about the incident.  What he needs to do is take ownership of the situation that was created by his staff and promote the fact that it was a mistake and steps are being taken to readdress company policy about such matters.  He should also make amends with the bar owner and she should make amends with him.   Then he should go out and start winning some ball games or my friends and I will be looking for his house in the latest edition of "Places to TP in Pittsburgh".

Besides, what right do the Pirates have in even calling out this business?  It's a free country.  The only real loser is the bar, which would have ended up serving free beer by the All Star break.

Get Dave Letterman On the Phone

On Monday, I kind of took a jab at my wife over her saying that they killed Obama Bin Laden.   Well, I apologize because everybody seems to be having trouble getting the name right.   Now, normally I would laugh at the fact that FOX News got it wrong.   I’ll let you stew on that for a bit.   However, it seems that CNN, local news affiliates and even people can get the names mixed up just as much as Geraldo Rivera.

Check out 1:02 for the huge fail.

Now, as I was coming back from lunch during my day long sit-and-wait-to-be-told-that-I wasn’t-going-to-be-picked-for-jury-duty, I passed by one of the televisions which was showing HLN.   The crawl at the bottom was “NYC FIREFIGHTERS REACT TO OBAMA’S DEATH”.

As an amateur humorist and lover of all things quirky about language I have to find the funny in all this.   In our time, we have had a murderous Al Qaeda leader named Osama Bin Laden and a President of the United States named Barack Hussein Obama.  Now, what are the odds that, one day, these two people with similar sounding names would cross paths where one would end up being killed during the others Presidential term?  It boggles the mind.

As we move through the life cycle of this news story, there will probably be countless other grammatical slips and I hope that we have the common sense to realize what they are and move past them.   However, I’m sure somewhere in the White House, Michelle is asking her husband about his ‘other wives’.   At least, I hope she’s joking about it.

With that, I leave you with the only possible to tie this all together.

Dave at the 67th Annual Academy Awards

March 27th, 1995

The Saga of Balloon Boy

Andy Warhol coined the phrase "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Who would have known that Warhol predicted the age of reality television and the 24-hour news cycle almost two decades before the first Gulf War and Jessica McClure falling down a well.

On October 15th 2009, the world was gripped with fear and astonishment as a little lopsided helium balloon, which I’ve dubbed the Helium Falcon, took flight across the skies of Colorado. The experimental balloon, which looked like the love child of a Jiffy Pop pan and the Swedish Chef’s toque blanche, was tethered outside the home of a family in Fort Collins, Colorado. Reports came in that the six year old Falcon had climbed into the basket or compartment below the balloon and undid the moorings. The balloon then floated up and away from the home as onlookers wondered if this was an attack or a live promo stunt for ABC’s V, airing in November. That’s when the world started watching. Speaking of ABC and 15 minutes of fame, the Heene family was featured on the show Wife Swap.

As the detached dirigible floated up towards 10,000 feet, everyone sat on the edge of their seats wondering if little Falcon was inside. Wolf Blitzer covered it on CNN as analysts and pilots debated on the qualities of the balloons. Was it big enough to carry a boy Falcon’s size? How did the father construct the balloon? All manner of questions were thrown out to keep the story alive for longer than 20 minutes. Helicopters and camera crews watched in awe as the spinning balloon soared along the skyline towards Denver International Airport. Two Imperial Officers watched the balloon whiz by their tower, “Look, there’s another one.” “Hold your fire, there are no life forms on board.” To which the other officer replied “What are we being charged by the laser, now?”

Then as suddenly as it happened, the balloon gently landed in a field and little space men walked out and greeted Richard Dreyfus. Kidding, there was no Falcon inside the balloon. Where was Falcon? So, then it becomes a mystery as to what happened to this little boy. Did he fall out? Was he ever in the balloon in the first place? Now, a twenty minute story morphs into a media frenzy as search and rescue teams head out into the dwindling daylight to search a 15 mile or so radius for this detached basket. Soon, Wolf Blitzer throws up an image of the balloon and in the lower left corner of the image an object of some sort is seen in motion. Cue the Mega Pixel Giant Touch Map! Now we people trying to grasp and stretch this image that, wasn’t clear to begin with, into a huge blurry image so that we can try and perform a mass Rorschach test on live television. Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it Falcon? There was no clear indication what the hell that thing was except for the fact that it happened to be in the field of vision during the photo. It could have been a turkey flying over head.

Now, here’s where it gets even crazier. All the while during this media frenzy being dubbed Balloon Boy, which conjures up images of Jake Gyllenhaal in Bubble Boy, the Internet goes nuts with parodies. Shirts on Zazzle and CafePress hit the net. Writers in Hollywood start churning out spec scripts for a movie or at least a Lifetime Television Event. Everyone goes nuts until…….they find out the kid is hiding in the garage.

Around 6:15 pm, I finally switched back from watching Glee on my DVR to find out that little Falcon had been found alive, hiding in a box in the rafters above the family’s garage? His diary will be out next week. Seriously? The kid was hiding in the garage. Was this kid taking lessons from Bart Simpson? Did he just watch 12 Monkeys? WTF?!? (Internet Slang Quota Reached)

Now, what would have happened had this turned out differently? The entire media machine, including the amateur set of bloggers and shirt designers [read me, et. al], went crazy over the story and had we been wrong and the kid did fall out of the balloon or crashed, we would have been no better than the paparazzi standing alongside the wrecked remains of Princess Diana’s car in 1997. The ability to reach out and propagate a thought or fad or meme today is astounding. Blogs let us publish opinions and editorials, instantly. YouTube let’s upload movies…as long as they are not copyrighted… in minutes. I can produce and publish a design for a shirt in less time than it took for that balloon to crash into a field.

But, the joke could be on us. All of us who got sucked into the pseudo drama of Balloon Boy may have been taking for more than just a balloon ride. This could have been some Warholian attempt to get back into the spotlight. When asked by Wolf Blitzer why little Falcon didn’t come out when he was being called for, the kid didn’t answer. When his parents repeated the question, the six year old did what most kids do, say the wrong thing. “You guys said that, um [pause] we did this for the show.” What show, exactly? For show, meaning pretend? Then the kid gets sick, twice, during interviews on television, when asked the question, again.

Now, taking a day to digest all this, I watched the video of the “lift off” by the Heene family. After the balloon starts to float away, the father gets visibly upset, almost to the point of bad acting. Then, watching the Wolf Blitzer interview and hearing Falcon’s response, it almost seems like the kid was afraid to answer, like he forgot the preprogrammed response to that question. Asked about Falcon’s response, Richard says that Falcon was talking about a later moment when he was asked to recreate his climbing into the ceiling for the cameras.

As more and more comes out about this story, shock and awe turns to disbelief. The kids are allowed to swear and make rap videos? What about the report that the father asked his other son, Bradford, to take a ladder and get on the roof to look for the balloon’s heading. Then he states his fear that the kid could touch the high voltage supply inside. Was it 1.21 gigawatts of electricity?

As this all unfolds, you feel like this is some unscripted episode of The Office and Richard Heene is Michael Scott. Then the police hold their briefing today and the candor of the officer is just hysterical. I couldn’t hear all the questions being asked but at one point it sounded like a reporter asked him his personal take on the story and he responded, “I’ll tell you off record, perhaps over a toddy.”

And yet we watch and we watch and for 14 more minutes the world talks about Balloon Boy and his father Caractacus Potts. ABC is probably shuffling to find a spot in the schedule, so that they can rerun the episodes of Wife Swap featuring the Heenes. I’m sure the SNL is churning out specific bits for their live show on Saturday. I can see Bill Hader playing the beleaguered father while Fred Armisen plays the young Falcon. Robot Chicken could do an entire episode of bits with the balloon crashing into various Pop Culture clips like the aforementioned Star Wars interlude I spoke of or crashing into the balloon from the end of the Wizard of Oz after the Wizard breaks loose and even floating across the stage of the VMA’s in miniature as Kanye West halts the balloon’s progress long enough to say, “Im’ma let you finish, but Richard Branson has one of the best balloon videos of all time.”

See, we just can’t stop ourselves because our common sense is hiding somewhere in a box in the garage.

Crown of Bedazzled Thorns

OK. Maybe I’ve been in a vacuum for the past few weeks but why are Miss California and Donald Trump having a press conference? We have an economy in decline, jobs disappearing every day, two wars, constant threats to National Security, and we got these two follicle enhanced yahoos taking up air time.

Let’s see if I can get this straight. During the pageant, Carrie Prejean was asked, by Perez Hilton, her thoughts on gay marriage. First of all, why was Perez Hilton judging this thing? I mean that's like having Harry Knowles judge the Westminster Dog Show. Anyway, her response to Perez's (is that spelled right?) question was that she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. Let it be noted that California has been a hot bed of activity over the can they/can’t they get married debate, thanks to the Prop 8 passage back in November.

Now, let me preface the rest of my sarcasm with the following statement. It is not up to me whether same sex couples can 'get married.' My opinions are just that. In any case, I am of no importance in this debate. I am a simple amateur blogger with an Internet connection and a lack of self control over my rant reflex. Do I think there should be a law one way or the other? No. This is the whole problem with separation of church and state. Why does one influence the other in this matter? I think it’s ridiculous that in the 21st century and with the changes that have occurred in this country that this is even an issue. All people should be allowed the same rights and benefits no matter who they are and they should be allowed to call it whatever they want. The very fact that this is an issue is in direct violation of the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

With that being said, I detest that Perez Hilton pulled the pin on this grenade and tossed it into the room. He knew exactly what he was doing. It was premeditated and wrong. Now, as to her response. Narrow minded as it was, it’s an opinion and everyone is allowed to have one. A wise bumper sticker once said, "Opinions are like assholes, everybody has them....except for Angels and Barbie Dolls. They can't say anything due to their lack of anatomy."

What is really deplorable here is the retaliatory moves made in the following weeks. Apparently, some questionable photos surfaced showing Ms. Prejean in less than concealing clothes. Gee, a model took some photos with some skin showing… wow. We’ve just been thrown back into the McCarthy era. However, if those photos were in direct violation of the rules and regulations of the Miss America Pageant, then by all means she should have been stripped of her crown, just like the other scandalous young adults with their free thinking and alcohol experimentation. Don't you see, they’re ruining society for the rest of us. How dare they be young? Of course, Donald Trump set the precedent because with his refusal to demote previous pageant contestants, I guess he needs the ratings, which is probably why television news stations are devoting time to this non issue-issue.

What is despicable is the fact that they are still calling into question her response to the gay marriage issue. That opinion has no bearing on her ability to adhere to rules and regulations set forth by the pageant. It’s free speech and an opinion. They didn’t go after her until the photos came up. And exactly who found and leaked the photos? Two guesses.

The media latches on and plays the devil's advocate and prosecutor to the proceedings. The left and right winged media analyzes everything from her vocal inflections to a single blade of turf that wags on Trump's head. The Stock Market falls three points but her Q rating is through the roof as is the market share Celebrity Apprentice gains next week. Why does this qualify as news? It's a pageant. The Taliban doesn't care whether or not Miss Ohio dropped her baton during the talent portion.

Simply, if the girl broke the rules, get rid of her. Don’t have a press conference. Don’t over analyze the entire situation. She broke a rule by posing, not by talking. Although, the whole spin on this is laughable. Quite frankly, her recount of what happened is only less credible than those reasons given to Chris Hansen by predators who come into the house of 13 year old girl with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a bouquet of flowers bought at the gas station.

Yet, to keep the story alive and relevant in the media, we have to keep going back to that statement….sorry opinion, she made during the pageant. Perhaps the world is tired of hearing about the economy, the car companies filing for bankruptcy, the problems in Pakistan and Iran, the pirates in Somalia, the health care problems, the recession, the social security disintegration, and the like.

In other news, I hear Octomom, Nadya Suleman, is pregnant again, Jon Gosselin is the father and they are going to live in the Big Brother House next season with Guantanamo Bay released detainees. My DVR is set to stunned.

Swine Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

If there wasn’t enough to worry about with everything going on in the world, now we’ve got Swine Flu. I’m not going to go into great detail about it because I don’t feel that it deserves the sense of panic that it’s getting in the media. We survived SARS and various other anagrammatic diseases over the past few years, why should this be any different? Because people are tired of talking about the economy. We have this masochistic need to create new drama when we’ve become bored with beating the dead horses of the economy, The War On Terror, and whether or not Susan Boyle will get an extreme makeover and Nadya Suleman will get her Octomom trademark. By the way, Susan, don’t change a thing, and Nadya…get over it. You weren’t clever enough to come up with it, so you don’t deserve it. Go get a job and go away.

But, I digress. The whole Swine Flu got to me thinking, ironically. It almost conjures up apocalyptic visions of flying pigs swarming over the border from Mexico with flight goggles. Ok, maybe just in my head, but still. Beyond that I started thinking musically to Pink Floyd’s and thought, “A Benefit Concert for victims of Swine Flu!” They could get out the flying pigs and go on tour and then Peter Frampton could keep them in a trunk and Homer Simpson could let them out, and I’ve lost you…

Right, we have flying pigs, a concert setting, and of course what better way to celebrate a concert tour than with a T-SHIRT? Now, here’s where this thing gets to be bigger than me. I can never do anything on a small scale. I’ve got to cram so many details into a design that everything is a part of a bigger story. For instance, a benefit concert would probably have a bunch of bands on the bill. That means you have to come up with band names. Really, as much as I would love to include Pink Floyd in my fictional concert tour, I don’t think the Content Police would appreciate it. Well, with Swine Flu we have some places to go. We can think about fictional band names having to do with diseases, medical procedures, and pigs. The words Pandemic and Epidemic sound like good band names. So we come up with our design, get a tour name, and include all of our band names on the front of the shirt. But what about the back?

I’ve recently began doing some two sided shirt designs. Nothing huge, but a lot of the designs I came up with just didn’t work as a frontal design. CafePress charges an additional $3.00 on the base price leaving you with decisions on what to do about mark up. But this is a special design and we can forgo the worries over profit as we try to capture that brief window of relevance before the shirt buying population moves onto the next popular culture horse in which to flog.

Usually, on the back of a concert tour shirt, you see the dates of the tour. Hmmm, well, Swine Flu has been found primarily in Mexico and now spreading to the U.S. in New York, Michigan, Texas, California, and New Jersey. Ok, that gives us cities and concert venues. We can even be silly and say that the Mexican concert dates have been cancelled. And with the disease spreading with new hypochondriacs claiming to be stricken with a case of the oinks, we can say, “more dates to be added.” Now we’re moving beyond a topical t-shirt and becoming a metaphor for social consciousness and the 24 hour media. After all, who actually buys concert shirts? Secondly, you have a subset of those people who go to concerts wearing a shirt of the band they are seeing which is a big social faux pas. To top it all off, just when you think the story has run its course, along comes words like Pandemic and Outbreak and now you’ve got a global crisis of disappearing common sense. You know that professionals are telling the public to do to prevent spreading the disease? It’s the same thing they tell us every year during winter months. Cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing, wash your hands, take care of yourself. Next thing you know, we have a thousand people with Michael Jackson surgical mask starter kits wandering around. Don’t be that guy!

Then, once you have all those elements thrown against the wall, you have to make it vintage and retro looking. After all, the last time the United States went through a case of the Swine Flu, Carter was in office. In 1976, there was a Swine Flu epidemic and could your imagine the bill on that tour? That would be some kick ass, old school bands.

With that in mind, I give you the latest in an attempt to waste precious free time and avoid cutting the grass, Swine Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, World Tour 2009. Now, I must say that I started this idea the on April 27 and there were about 21 designs already addressing Swine Fu. Within three days the idea had been already put into circulation by other shopkeepers and the design count was up to 217. I cannot say that I had the original idea, but I put a lot more time into the creation. I just hope people agree.

Front and back of the
Swine Flu World Tour 2009 Shirt

B is For Idiot

It's not a crime to be passionate about your beliefs. It's not a crime to want to have fame. But when you go beyond that passion and try to gain fame you can cross over into a whole new realm of crazy. This election has had its share of celebrity. First, Barack Obama was labelled a celebrity, holding flashy rallies on the scale of rock concerts. Then there was Joe the Plumber, who told Obama that he planned to buy his own business and was afraid that under Obama's tax plan he would have to "share the wealth" if he made over $250,000 a year. The latest 15 minute man, er woman was Ashley Todd, the volunteer campaign worker for McCain, who received national attention when she claimed that she was attacked at an ATM machine and robbed. If that wasn't horrifying enough, her attacker noticed the McCain campaign sticker on her car and carved the letter "B" in her cheek in support of Obama.

But now, she's admitted to making up the story and carving the letter into her own face. Her inconsistencies in her story led to a polygraph and the lie began to unravel. Luckily, the 24 hour news cycle had a sense of logic and realized that there were too many reasons that the story smelled fishy. After all, the letter was carved in her face backwards which doesn't sound symbolic in any way. It just sounds like a dumb ass who decided to carve a letter into her face and forgot that the image in the mirror is reversed. Also, being attacked at an ATM affords authorities the ability to look at footage taken by surveillance cameras. Those tapes did not show any transaction being made by Todd or any alleged attack.

Whatever her reasons for doing this whether it be politically motivated Ashley may have just caused herself more trouble than if this were some random act of stupidity. Both the McCain and Obama campaigns called Todd and even made public statements about the attack. Filing a false report is crime enough but the fact that it occurred during an election cycle could spell disaster for her candidate because the rumors may start to fly that this was planned by higher ups in the McCain campaign. Hopefully, this is the product of a lone dumb ass and not some higher plot to grasp at straws in the last days before the election.

In either case, this intrepid blogger has already given her more fame than she deserves and by now Facebook and myspace have a ton of FAIL posters and flair passing around making fun of her. There's a least one I know of.....I did it. I also took the time to put together a little movie poster parody, because stupid is as stupid does.

Seven Sins For Seven Virtues Part 3: Diligence vs. Sloth

A continuation of the Series Good vs. Evil: The Internet

Can you just see where this one is going to play to?

Writing school papers were always a burden to me. I would get the assignment and pretty much put it off to almost the last possible minute. There was always something better that I would rather do then to sit at my old 286 PC or Apple IIC and pound out a four page paper on any subject. Still, I had hopes of being a writer and that kind of procrastination is evidence as to why I am not one today. However, when I would sit down and begin to write, I could get in the zone and within a couple of hours, I had five to ten pages of my paper written. I could bullshit with the best of them but at times the gas tank would run dry and I'd find myself adding some margin space or extra words to fill up the page. But, I made sure I followed the advice of Dr. Meredith from Real Genius who said, "Always... no, no... never... forget to check your references" So, I kept musty old books and MLA style guides riding shotgun as I fluffed my paper. Then, during my junior year I had to perform a mighty task, an electrical outline. Simply put, our crazy Physics teacher had us do a huge paper on chapters from our Physics textbook. This was the same assignment that my brother had done when he took the class six years before. The teacher was so behind with the times that he used the same tests for years and made students covert all the metric units into English in order to take the test. So, when it came time for me to write my outline I figured if his tests hadn't changed maybe his electrical outline hadn't either. I asked my brother for his copy and I reproduced it on my computer. The teacher thought he was keeping us honest by marking every page with a pen so that we couldn't simply change the name and submit one he previously graded. All I did was follow the work of someone else and typed it out word for word. I got a B. He docked me because the printer ink was a little lighter than his liking. It was all worthwhile since I made a $100 selling it to another student the next year.

Now, I told you that story as a basis for how the Internet can help to blur the lines between diligence and Sloth. In 1991, the United States went to the Persian Gulf to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupancy. Gone were the days of going to the movies to see Moviola reports on the Allied efforts during WWII. Now, we could watch up to the minute reports on CNN. We could see grainy black and white POV footage of missiles as they flew through windows and exploded. News and information just became an instantaneous commodity. One the Internet would take to new extremes.

In the race to be first and grab the audience, the Internet has made it possible for news and information to be available 24/7. However, there are casualties in the war for information supremacy. Diligence has become one of those casualties. Newspapers and other media outlets want to be first and its hard to compete with the Internet for first place in the race to report. An example is something I mentioned in my last 7 for 7 post, the Sago mine disaster. While the the reports came in unchecked that all but one miner was alive, the news outlets scrambled to report the good news. What they didn't do was check their facts and wait to see if there was a mistake in the chain of information. It turned out that all but one died in the tragedy and the devastation to the families was second only to the confusion at how a mistake like that could have been allowed to happen. For that matter, how could it have made it half way around the world before it was caught?

Now, before you start throwing fits, I don't believe that the Internet suddenly became sentient and started telling everyone bad information. Anderson Cooper was right there and he got the word, too. But with the Internet as a player in the game, everyone wants to scoop everyone else and to beat the Internet means you have to be quick. Facts be damned. One hand washes the other. There's even been times where the legitimate, and I use that word loosely, have relied on the Internet as a source of information, only to discover it was a prank. In fact, now, there are times when I watch the news where stories or images are credited to websites, like TMZ.com or Smokinggun.com instead of actual reporters. Sometimes, a lackey with an itchy trigger finger and too much Red Bull has pushed the button prematurely on a story before the facts are all there. In an attempt to be the first to prey on the grief of the world, templates are even prepared for obituaries of prominent people and Joe Intern has accidentally left the door open. The interchangeable obituaries leave room for nasty errors like "Dick Cheney was the 'UK's favorite grandmother.' One quick edit could drop the grand and have been accurate. For the record, Elvis is still dead, but Abe Vigoda is very much alive.

The other side of the coin being Sloth. I'll have you know that I'm writing this post from work right now. Remember when I said I would rather find something better that sit and do a paper or any work. I've re watched movies, bad ones, more than once even though I have work to do. I am a professional procrastinator. There is nothing I can't do that the Internet can't help me to do in the act of avoiding work. Although, I do make an effort when I am on the clock. I only stray towards an open browser during lunch or when I'm waiting for my little SAP or Sharepoint window to load the next screen. Usually, it's checking alternate email accounts or reading news. Of course, my work has blocked most fun sites. Oh you name it and it's blocked, most radio station homepages, Facebook, myspace, Youtube, Lottery sites, and anything mp3 or streaming music related, and so on and so forth. I'm surprised eBay is still active as well as ESPN.

When I first started in Customer Service in 2001 I was on a team of four, who were responsible for all orders for the west coast. We handled maybe 35-40 calls on an average day. Since I was the new guy, I had to work most shifts from 11:30 am - 8:00 pm. This usually meant that around 6:30 pm the phone went silent and I was alone in the office with one or two credit analysts. Since the phone wasn't ringing I was surfing. Pogo, Iwon.com, iwin, CNN, eBay, everywhere. My usage probably made IT's head spin as I commandeered the bandwidth pipe and went nuts all to keep myself busy until my shift was over. As I gained tenure, my hours became more regular and the work load became more. My usage became less, still whenever there is a lull, I was out slacking around the net. Today, since most of my favorite sites are blocked, I have to wait until I'm home to do some fun stuff.

My wife asks me what the hell I'm doing. I say, "Getting a third of my $156.00 worth of money spent on cable." I play casino games, scrabble, and other little goofy aps on Facebook, check the job sites of various companies and catch up on email. If I have some time, I even try to finish up a few blog posts to build up my library so that I don't have to scramble at the last minute to keep up with my three a week commitment.

I am not much different than, well, anybody. I get up for coffee or to go empty out my recently ingested coffee and I see numerous screens. Doing a search of "Work Internet usage" in Google News returns a lot of results from Canada and the UK. The Internet has even been a part of a few lawsuits in employee termination cases. Diversions from work are a part of everyday life and the Internet, or more importantly those who create and market sites on the Internet, know it and use it to make billions of dollars a year. What would happen if it all just went away? No more penguin tossing or flying a paper airplane through the office. Go read Richard Clarke's Breakpoint. Of course, his novel is more about terrorism and government networks, but just think of it in terms of slacking. First there would be complete and utter chaos followed more or less by increase of productivity. Maybe, that would be a good thing. Then again, if that happened, how would those 2.5 people who actually read my blog see it? I discovered the .5 was someone who just scanned through and didn't actually pay attention to any posts. Go figure.


Therefore it is the judgment of the Mongo Municipal Magistrate that the Internet isn't evil in terms of diligence vs. sloth.

The Internet isn't out to get you or make you lazy. You are. "It's PEOPLE!"