I Have Seen The Future Of Birmingham's Domed Stadium

And it's not pretty. (NY Times link, may require sign-in)

I Hate The Comments On Al.com

In the Birmingham News today, the lead story concerned a terrible mass killing that happened in north Shelby County. Five men were found with their throats slashed. There were few details reported in the dead-tree edition, so I went to al.com to find out more.

Sure enough, like any good news website, they had more information. The men were all Hispanic, and they had no identification on their corpses. The bodies were taken to the state crime lab in Montgomery. FBI, US Marshalls, ABI were all getting involved to help solve the crime. So far, so good. Then I made the mistake of reading the comments following the updated story.

I've got to leave this state.

Reading those comments is like being smacked in the face with a wet Klan robe. The level of racism, bigotry, and sheer stupid hatred expressed therein was dismaying, to say the least. I won't repeat what was said. You can read them for yourself if you choose.

But if that's the level of intellect (among the people who actually bother to read the paper, don't forget), then this state is doomed and we deserve whatever we get.

I'm dismayed, disgusted, and saddened.

I guess I should have expected it. But DAMN, y'all. We can do better.

Heh

Editorial headline in today's Birmingham News: "Troy King wants to end cockfighting".

What's the matter, Troy? Tired of staying up at night greasing your zipper?

Alabama Court Watch: Huh, What?

My main crush on teh intarwebs, Loretta Nall, has invited me to participate in the Alabama Court Watch blog, and I have accepted her gracious invitation. I have naught of value to offer besides drunkenly bilious semi-coherent bathos, so I will refrain from posting there for the time being, but know that I am hovering, always frowning in disapproval at bad grammar and sloppy spelling. So, Loretta: it should be "I and another Court Watcher attended...", not, "myself and another Court Watcher attended", for fuck's sake.

And when I was in court-mandated brainwashing and was subjected to several watch-me-pee sessions in Shelby County, I was always, without fail, offered a receipt. Never even had to ask for one, at either the court referral officer's office in Columbiana or the dank windowless warren of torture rooms that is the Shelby County Mental Health Whatchamacallit down 31 near the Alabaster city hall. And I don't remember anyone there not getting a receipt or complaining about having to ask for one. In fact, I specifically recall one time the network was down in Columbiana and dude had the old-fashioned spiral-bound carbon-copy receipt book out and had been scribbling in it all day by the looks of it. So, while human error or authoritarian malfeasance is never out of the question, I tend to think tweaker dude was lying his ass off about not getting a pee ticket.

And getting called onto the carpet and publicly humiliated by your public defender is probably good formative character development for a mopy emo kid, whatever the reason.



So I look forward to participating in this project (largely by throwing bricks from the sidelines). I gotta ask about this, though:

Because, we are convinced that the majority of the defendants that make up the bulk of drug court case loads are adult marijuana smokers who are not breaking any laws other than possessing small amounts of marijuana for personal use.

Really? Surely there's hard data on that. Don't we pay people to keep track of this stuff? I imagine what we'll find is that marijuana is the most common illegal substance found but rarely the actual arresting offense. That's a guess, pulled directly out of my ass, but I suspect I'm right. Guy gets a DUI, cops find a roach in the ashtray. Guy gets popped selling pills, he's got a bong in his apartment. Gal picked up for public intox has a gram of kind bud in a cigarette pack. Pot's like the bonus bust for cops. No extra work, plenty of extra profit.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Don't Drink Don't Smoke, What Do You Do? Oh, Yeah, Fuck Like Rabbits

Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis in Mobile County are TWICE as high as in Washington, DC and THREE TIMES as high as in that latter-day Sodom, New York City. According to public health officials, that means that 1 in every 87 people in Mobile County have one of these STDs.

How's that abstinence-based sex ed workin' out down there, y'all? Itchy, ain't it?

Condoms in schools aren't a moral issue, people! They're a matter of public health.

I wonder if our state legislators practice fiscal abstinence when confronted with a sexy, willing spending bill? Or do they just fuck the shit out of it and feel guilty afterwards?

Your Alabama Tax $$$ At Work

Did you know that if you are a resident of the state of Alabama you can sign up at your local library for access to the Alabama Virtual Library? It's free, and you get access to the online Oxford English Dictionary!

There's also a bunch of databases I haven't nosed around in yet. Much of the site is meant for kids doing research papers, but it's worth a trip to the library for free access to the OED, the second greatest accomplishment in the English language after the King James Bible (suck it, Shakespeare!). That's a savings of $295 per year!

Do other states offer this? I mean, the OE-fuckin-D. How cool is that?