Recently in What the hell is WRONG with people? Category

In Durham.  It has to be the water.  Because how else can one smallish Southern city contain city officials like a school board that regularly devolves into fistfights, the entirety of stupidity, laziness and corruption that marked the lacrosse case, and now this:

"Allegations that a local Democratic official and her husband were involved in satanic rituals that included shackling people to beds, caging them and depriving them of food and water have horrified county party leaders."

Okay, maybe an alternate explanation could be that the devil made them do it...

Best quote in the entire piece, though, is right here:

"McCullough would not release details of the allegations, but he added, 'I don't want to leave the impression this is a widespread thing.'"

To which I can only reply a) I should hope not, and b) it's an election year and it's still early.  Just wait.

And home of way too many stupid plays on the word.  What am I talking about, you ask? 

Freegans.

And Freemales.

Okay, technically the freemale thing is in a UK newspaper, but I am totally ignoring that because otherwise my clever headline doesn't work.  Play along, people.

What I've managed to glean from these two articles is that "free" is just another prefix for "stupid ginned up non-trend."

And also, freemales?  Seriously? 

So the lesson for today, kiddies, is that if you want to be a part of the zeitgeist of the free, you need to eat your meals from dumpsters and refuse to have a relationship.

Interestingly enough, one could argue that part one of that equation will definitely lead directly to the second part, with very little input from you.

And I'll pay attention to the election stuff.  Because thus far, all I've discovered about politics in 2008 are the following:

• "Smart" equals "Better than you."  Or it should, dammit.
• The corollary to the first point is this:  "Smart" is defined as having the correct political opinions.  The correct political opinions are the ones held by the person calling him/herself smart.  Ergo, all smart people think correctly, correct thinking is smart, and anyone holding a different political opinion is therefore stupid and should die in a fire. QED.
• The definition of "working class" differs according to the state where it's being applied, and the size of the population that can be shoehorned into the working class, particularly where vote pandering is concerned.
• People are always shocked, shocked! That folks on their side of the aisle can act as horribly as folks on the "evil, other side," especially when the "evil" actions on their side are directed against the candidate they support. 
• The definition of "evil" can include asking legitimate questions of a candidate you support and/or making remarks which could be construed as critical of said candidate.
• No one wants to resort to negative campaigning, except to mention all the ways in which they COULD have campaigned negatively before rejecting the negative campaign strategy.
• Similarly, all candidates have moved beyond race, gender and age issues, and will point that out by telling the voters how wrapped up in race, gender and age issues the other candidates are, or by subtly reminding the voters that the other candidates are of a different race, gender, or age than they are.
• Policy discussions must avoid "getting bogged down" in things like plans or strategy or details, to avoid "confusing the voters."
• The only people who will have to pay higher taxes are always those who "deserve it," and the definition of this class of people varies in size and income levels based upon the number of "working class voters" in the voter population being addressed.

I'm sure my list is incomplete, but my sense of self-preservation has prevented me from thinking about this any further, because I'm not in the mood to reconstitute my head post-explosion.

So I read this article and the 500-odd Comments Of Outrage following.  Good grief.  Do we have to have this conversation again?

Disclaimer:  men and women both play into gender stereotypes.  Alert the freaking media--oh, wait.  That's why I'm writing this.  I think the Allen article loses focus halfway through and so the larger point that I think can be made here--that if you want to be taken seriously as a voter you should act serious about voting, particularly if you're female (and it doesn't matter whether or not that perception is fair, because apparently the perception of women voters as unserious persists)--gets lost in her digression into statistics about women drivers.  And the whole thing devolves from there into Outraged Comments and Proclamations of Self-Hating Misogyny and Armchair Psychiatry!  Whatever.

Here's my take:  if you're voting for someone because they make you swoon, that's your right as an American citizen.  However, don't be surprised if, after you proclaim your undying love for the candidate what makes your tiny heart go pitter-pat, you hear a faint buzzing sound coming from the direction of Susan B. Anthony's grave.  Because I'm thinking that after hearing your vapid nonsense, the corpse of our most famous suffragette has launched into a truly epic fit of spinning.

Let's see.  We have a woman who fought valiantly to prove that women weren't too addle-pated or easily swayed by emotion to handle the serious responsibility of weighing issues and voting for our country's leader; and now, less than a century later, we have the Tiger Beat crowd shrieking and passing out at political rallies.

Awesome.  On behalf of the sisterhood, might I suggest that you people grow the hell up?  Or, if you insist on empowering yourselves by acting like 14-year-olds at a boy band concert, then might I suggest that you save your outrage concerning the inevitable articles bemoaning the unseriousness of women voters?  'Cause you're loading those guns yourselves, ladies.

Or - What, your tenured position not keeping you quite busy enough, dude?

Every campus has one.  Actually, every department probably has one or two, but at every university at least one permanently disgruntled (always tenured) faculty member manages to rise above the whining crowd and lodge him or herself permanently into the side of the university as a particularly pointless thorn.

I could spend time perfoming disparaging psychological analyses on what, exactly, is wrong with people who are miserable if they aren't miserable, but you get the picture.

In our case, the thorn is a total stereotype of the whole "fight the power, man" remnant of the 1960's, who has taken it upon himself to determine a) What the university stands for, and b) That we aren't living up to these standards.  Then he takes it upon himself on a regular basis to Send Angry Emails to the Editors of On-Campus Publications and Alert The Local and National Media to our shortcomings, which leads to conversations like this one:

Eager Newbie Reporter:  "Hi, just wanted to let you know we're sending a crew over this afternoon to talk to a faculty member about Pressing Local Hotbutton Issue X, and wanted to see if there was a member of the adminstration available to speak with us as well."

University PR Flack:  "Okay, who are you coming to see?"

Eager Newbie Reporter: "Professor Griper."

University PR Flack: (stifles giggle) "Ah.  Did the Professor contact you directly?"

Eager Newbie Reporter:  "Um.  Not sure.  Just following up."  [This is code for - a producer told me to do this, I'm looking for a juicy story, and this may just be the one!  Look out, local anchor with the helmet hair!  You're on notice!]

University PR Flack:  "Okay.  The go-to person on every aspect of this issue is actually Administrator Calm Dude.  Let me track him down for you.  What time will you be here?

Eager Newbie Reporter: "What about Professor Griper?"

University PR Flack:  (trying desperately not to let the deep sarcasm seep into her tone) "The professor is a thoughtful and committed member of the university community who feels deeply about this particular issue."

Eager Newbie Reporter: (perhaps sensing that something is not quite what it seems, but can't put his finger on it, and is seeing his helmet-hair anchor dreams evaporating) "OK.  Thanks."

University PR Flack: "No problem."  (hangs up phone and addresses office mates)  "Hey guys!  Gotta catch the six o'clock tonight!  Nutty McNutbar will be agitating against the MAN!  Live!  On camera!"

And so it goes.  I love my job - and I'm not being sarcastic.  I just have a deep and abiding appreciation for the unintentional hilarity that folks like this cause.  Perhaps one day, an hour or two after my retirement party, I will send a general email to whoever is the current Griper General and point out that they do have a job description for folks who want to be in charge of the university's direction--it's called Chancellor. 

But, you know, that would require them to be responsible for the consequences of taking constant pot-shots at people and administrators, so that's right out. 

What is it that our rabble-rouser is so fond of saying?  If you aren't part of the solution you're part of the problem?  Yeah.  Oh, by the way, Captain Disgruntled, Irony's holding for you on line two.

Not because they're omg! offensive, but because there never should have been a sequence of events that led up to the sentence being necessary in the first place.

Confused?  Witness this example:

"Really, it makes no sense addressing this theme with drums and dancing girls," said Sergio Niskier, president of the Israelite Federation in Rio de Janeiro state, referring to the slaughter of Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Why was this sentence necessary?  Well, because a bunch of chuckleheads in Rio thought that a Carnivale float depicting the Holocaust and featuring a pile of corpses was just the Bestest Idea Evar!

You know, just when I think that I have seen all possible examples of the End of Days, someone surprises me.

I hate surprises.