Is it just me, or have people become increasingly hostile?
First off, some stupid kid got himself tasered at a John Kerry event. Say what you will about it, but there’s only one way to get electrified listening to John Kerry is if someone shoots a couple hundred volts through your body. The stupid kid was upset when Kerry wouldn’t answer his question in a short enough time period. Not willing to shut the hell up, guards told him to come peacefully and, when he refused, was tasered.
His tasering has become a lightning rod (ha!) for protest, as many are decrying the fact that someone exercising their right to free speech was punished with physical force, and other are decrying that the security guards didn’t make him swallow his teeth.
This one is a tough call. To be fair, the guy wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, and many people believe that tasering the fellow was an overreaction. On the other hand, the guy was a complete douchebag, and the officers repeatedly advised him to shut his yap or risk getting a metal rod tapping your scrotum. He chose to keep on blathering, and then was shocked (ha!) when he was forcibly subdued.
There are few immutable truths in the world. One, of course, being that Lions for Lambs is going to be a complete load of horseshit. The other is that, if you are an individual, and you happen to come into the possession of a taser, you immediately have two options:
1) You will use the taser to electrocute someone.
2) You will not use the taser to electrocute someone.
Research indicates that every single person on the face of the earth since the very beginning of time, up to and including Quakers, kindergarten teachers, and Buddhist monks, will choose option number two. So the fact that this assgoblin got tasered really shouldn’t exactly be the most surprising thing on the face of the earth.
Speaking of people who need tasered, O.J. Simpson declared himself to be back in the news. And it’s not because he had someone ghost write a quasi-confession or he backed over a newborn or anything. It’s because he was connected with an armed robbery to recover sports memorabilia, which all in all is a pretty pussyish way to get back in the news for an accused murderer.
One can only imagine the dialogue that occurred before this heist:
Simpson: I think we need to break into that place and steal some stuff.
Accomplice #1: That’s a rotten idea.
Accomplice #2: (whispering) Hey, if we don’t do this, he will kill us.
Accomplice #1: Sounds like a plan.
Simpson initially claimed that he was simply recovering the items that had been stolen from him in the first place, which seems kind of silly since as soon as he admitted this, he would have to double-time it over to the Goldmans’s house and pony it up. It soon became apparent that this robbery, which apparently included no less than six dozen completely normal people, all of whom promised to not say a single word to anyone about the B&E being spearheaded by a famous football superstar turned double murderer.
It seems kind of odd, since robbery doesn’t really seem like Simpson’s M.O.—the murder he committed –cough, cough, I mean accused of committing—was famously a prime example of rage-fueled spontaneity. Still, Simpson wanted to take a stab at it (ha!) and see if he could recover the goods.
Still, it’s kind of disappointing that the Juice may be going away for armed robbery and attempted kidnapping. It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Everyone is hoping that he gets the chair for garroting a Subway sandwich artist or cracking open the skull of a theater usher with a sack of nickels in a fit of roid rage, but instead it’s because he’s trying to lift an autographed copy of the Criterion Collection edition of The Naked Gun 2 ½.
While Simpson is running around stealing trinkets, something a bit more in the way of large-scale destruction was happening halfway around the world. Vladimir Putin, Pending Emperor of the Russian Empire, detonated what is now classified as history’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb. It’s being hailed as a “vacuum” bomb, which seems a remarkably domesticated adjective for something that could easily decimate several former Soviet breakaway republics in a few seconds. You know, in theory.
One can only imagine the dialogue that occurred before this detonation:
Putin: I think we need to create the world’s most destructive weapon.
Cabinet Member #1: That’s a rotten idea.
Cabinet Member #2: (whispering) Hey, if we don’t do this, he will kill us.
Cabinet Member #1: Sounds like a plan.
This has raised some alarm in diplomatic circles. Putin has become increasingly despotic in his actions and words, and this is seen as a rather blatant power play to showcase his otherwise doldrumatic army, which is quickly descending into three parts listless hooligan and five parts mafia bagmen.
Still, while it may be a touch of overkill, Putin may have the most elegant solution of all. There won’t be any trials with which to pretend to not be able to fit into a glove, and there won’t be any signs of protest when a rent-a-cop shoves a cattle prod inside you. There will just be a lot of dust and a little bit less of the godless Siberia.
American Lament 