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September 12, 2005HOME IS WHERE THE E. COLI ISRob: The evacuation of New Orleans continues, but many residents are refusing to leave their homes. I can understand not wanting to leave the city you grew up in. Where else can you just wade down the street and run into someone you know floating face down in the fetid water? People just don’t want to go outside of their comfort zones. Many of them are also reluctant to take up Governor Mitt Romney’s invitation to relocate to Massachusetts. Evacuee: Hey, I’ll move to Massachusetts. Who do I get to live with? Johnny Damon? Manny Ramirez? Rob: Sorry, that’s actually only Curt Schilling who’s doing that. Evacuee: Oh, well, forget that then. Jeff: I was reading about the evacuees coming to the Cape and I'm not so sure we shouldn't have let them stay down south if that's what they really wanted. Of the 209 people brought along, nine were convicted sex offenders. I don't have the numbers handy, but I'd have to guess sex offenders don't make up 5% of a random sampling of the American population. There was also a tattoo artist who had just gotten out of jail and his pregnant wife, who plan on naming their child Katrina. Yikes. I wasn't expecting the best and the brightest; those people were able to get out before the storm. But I don't think it's unreasonable to hope for slightly fewer felons. John: We might have gotten off easy on the number of felons we received. How many did Texas receive? A lot more. I’m not saying all the refugees from New Orleans are felons or anything. But what’s wrong with relocating to Massachusetts? Our weather sucks sometimes but it hardly ever tries to kill us. Then again, it’s generally frowned upon for girls to yank up their tops to earn some beads. That always bugged me. We could learn a lot from New Orleaners here in MA. And where is Mardi Gras going to be next year? I'd suggest my house. FINGER POINTINGRob: It seems a little crass for people to be injecting partisan politics into the tragedy that resulted from Hurricane Katrina, but when has that ever stopped anyone? Fingers are being pointed at the Bush administration for everything from failing to properly fund FEMA and take necessary precautions against this eventuality to being slow to respond when the scope of the disaster was finally evident. Kanye West: And he hates black people! Rob: Right, there’s that too. It’s hard for me say how much should’ve been done when I really have no idea what’s logistically involved in airlifting food in and people out of a city on such a scale. It is pretty ridiculous for officials to claim that no one saw anything like this coming when there have been numerous studies published over the years predicting exactly this. It’s also pretty stupid to insist that the relief efforts went well. Whether anything more was possible may be up for question, but it seems pretty clear to me that things didn’t exactly go well in the aftermath of the storm. Jeff: The partisan extremists on both sides are being fucking idiots. The ones who blindly support Bush are using the "he hates blacks" strawman to argue that anyone who thinks the response wasn't appropriate thinks that because they believe Bush is a racist. (Although it's hard to imagine a 55 year old rich white guy loves black people.) And the ones who hate Bush are claiming that a better federal response would have stopped most of the victims from dying, which is completely ridiculous. If you want to say they could have dealt with the survivors better, that's fine, but it was a gigantic hurricane that destroyed everything along hundreds of miles of coast. If you were in the way, you were getting fucked, regardless of how quickly the National Guard showed up. John: Thank God the Hollywood celebrities have come to clean up FEMA’s mess with their timely celebrity telethons. Did anyone else catch the fund-raising concert special on Friday night? If you ever anywhere near a working television, I can’t see how you missed it. It was on every single network, except UPN here, which had its priorities straight and was airing the Red Sox game. The celebrities had a weird dichotomy going on: when it was their turn to give a little speech, they were solemnly reading from the teleprompter, but when it came time to answer phones for pledges they turned into stand up comedians. Jack Nicholson: A man walks into a talent agency, says to the agent, I’ve got a great act for you… John: Whoa, easy, Jack, that joke’s not fit for any type of broadcast. It’s hard to feel bad for rich celebrities, but the one who seemed to be having a rough time on the phones was Mandy Moore. They showed her taking a pledge and I guess the person on the other line had a horrific sob story because Mandy looked like she was going to cry. Why would you call a celebrity telethon and dump all your problems on Mandy Moore? That’s kind of uncalled for. She was just trying to do her part to help, you didn’t have to bum her out. CALIFORNIA ALL BE BITING OUR STYLERob: The state of California is making a bid to steal all of our sweet gay tourist dollars by being the first state to legislate for legalized gay marriage. The Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed a veto, not because he’s against gay marriage, but because he thinks that the law runs counter to a voter referendum against gay marriage that passed a few years ago. The Legislature probably should’ve figured that they would, since there’s a ballot initiative for just about everything out there. Arnold supports gay-rights, but says that the decision should be up to “the voters or the courts.” I thought Republicans hated it when the courts made these decisions? And what determines which laws should be left to the voters as opposed to lawmakers anyway? If everything’s up to the people, then what good are the state representatives and senators? Jeff: Republicans (and Democrats and everyone else) only hate it when the courts make decisions that they don't like. If George Bush can get all his guys on the Supreme Court, you'll hear the phrase "I think that should be left up to the courts to decide" from him more over the last two years of his presidency than the first six combined. Anyway, I've always said if there's one state that should legalize gay marriage, it should be Nevada. If any two idiots can get married when they're drunk at 4:00 AM, those two idiots should be able to be of the same sex. John: Now that you pointed that out, Jeff, I’m canceling our return trip to Las Vegas next year. I was all for having a secret Vegas wife, but I can already see where this might lead and it’s nowhere good. VEILED THREATSRob: A court in Daytona ruled against a Muslim woman who was suing for the right to wear a veil covering her face in her driver’s license photo. She said that the state of Florida’s rule that her whole face must be visible violated her First Amendment right to freedom of religion. I respect a person’s religion as much as anyone, but if you’re wearing your veil in your driver’s license, then what’s the point of even having a photo? Which raises another question: if she gets pulled over, does the police officer have to make her take off her veil in order to check if that’s really her? This is probably why they don’t let women drive in Saudi Arabia. Jeff: I don't think you respect a person's religion as much as anyone, but that's not the point. The point is that an identification card is useless if you can't use it to identify the owner. But if she doesn't want the picture taken, then the government should find another way to identify her. I'd suggest tattooing her license number on her forehead. It would be hidden under the veil most of the time, but easily shown in times of identification need. It's the perfect solution. John: What about a compromise? She gets photographed without the veil but her license would have one of those holograms so that if you tilt it a certain way you can see her with the veil. It’d be pretty cool, and then you can charge extra since teenagers will want to get their first driver’s license with the special hologram. But a different effect in the hologram, I don’t think too many teenagers, Muslim or not, would want their driver’s license to have a hologram with them wearing a veil. Robert Hamburger: A veil would make someone look like a ninja, which would be awesome! EXCUSE ME, DO YOU HAVE DIRECTIONS TO THE NEVERLAND RANCH?Rob: A Washington man this week turned himself into authorities and confessed to the murders of two child molesters. Michael Mullen is believed to have gotten the names and addresses of his victims from the state’s sex offender registry. While I’m not going to cry too much over these two guys, I do have to question what kind of fellow decides he’s going to take the law into his own hands. Batman: A man who understands that sometimes you have to stand and fight against injustice because no one else can. Rob: I don’t particularly like child molesters, but it’s never occurred to me to seek them out and gun them down. The Punisher: It’s the best way to insure that these criminals are punished. Rob: I’m just saying that even though there will probably be some sentiment to go light on this guy, it might be for the best to keep him off the streets for a good long while. John: As I’ve never been the victim of any kind of violent crime, knock wood, it’s a hard call to say how someone might be driven to be a vigilante, or be in favor of such actions, but the bottom line is what John Connor told his Terminator in T2. John Connor: You just can’t go around killing people. Terminator: Why? John Connor: You just can’t. Jeff: The kind of fellow that goes out and murders child molesters
is one who's had their child molested or been molested as a child.
But that's only natural. There have been two break-ins and two other
unsuccessful attempts in my building in the last two weeks. I've
had my apartment broken into in the past and I've done enough daydreaming
about beating the guy responsible with a baseball bat to understand
the guy's line of thinking. Still, I'm not going to click the right
analog stick to go on a vigilante mission. I'll just sit in my place
waiting for some motherfucker to try and steal my TV, then he'll
get what's his. |
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