October 18, 2007

• Dog Killers, Blogger’s Block, Gay Naysayers, Otters & Thai Geckos

  

  I got this in an email from Joelle recently, and it made me smile.  Then I read this, and my smile was replaced by a gasp.  I hope they catch this lowlife scumbag.  If you live anywhere near Riverside, CA, beware, there’s a dog killer on the loose.

  VALLE VISTA, Oct. 16, 2007 (CNS) – Riverside detectives need your help, hoping a tip will lead them to the driver of a   pickup truck they say intentionally struck and killed two dogs. Along this stretch of the 44,000 block of Florida Ave. in Valle Vista, eyewitnesses tell us they couldn’t believe what they saw happen to an Alaskan malamute named Lucy and a black Labrador retriever named Buddy. It was Saturday night around 9:00 when Travis Domenigoni saw a white- or silver-colored four-door pickup truck speeding along Florida Ave. and going after the two dogs.

  “He hit the dog and slammed on his brakes, turned around and came back like he was going to the store or something, then turned around and hit the other dog,” said Domenigoni. “I know he had to have seen them. The other dog was standing there in the middle of the road. He swerved in the middle lane.”

  Residents who heard the screeching tires and the dogs yelping came out to try to help. “I was trying to get the dogs out of the street. They were running loose. One had a big long chain,” said eyewitness Melissa Green. “They started coming towards me and then the truck came out of nowhere and hit them, like 90 miles per hour, and he turned around and came back and ran the other dog over. It took off down the road and I was screaming. And they saw it across the street, too. One guy said he almost swerved and almost hit him.”

  According to investigators and eyewitnesses, the driver went after the dogs a third time. That driver is now facing some very serious charges. “There are two levels of animal cruelty. This one classifies as a felony. So he’s looking at felony charges of animal cruelty. Plus there was a neighbor who came by to help the dogs. This man, it appears, tried to intentionally run the guy over, so we may be looking at possible assault with a deadly weapon,” said Jerry Franchville, investigator for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Dept.

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  I didn’t blog for 2 days last week and I got 3 separate emails asking where I was, which led me to think about “blogger’s block”.  Like its cousin “writer’s block“, blogger’s block can be debilitating.  Unlike writer’s block however, the effects and aftereffects of blogger’s block can be felt almost immediately:

  • Regular readers keep checking their favorite blogs for updates, all for naught.  Eventually they give up hope, and move on to the “next big blog“. (I wonder who thought of “Random Musings” first?  I suspect it was her.  Rats!)
  • Google “crawls” or trolls your blog constantly, in hopes of you gaining the coveted #1 search result (Like this one for example.  Rest assured if you ever Google the winner of England’s X-Factor in combination with bestiality, I will be #1.  Take that to the bank!  While I’m on the subject, how much do you want to bet that “Gay Thai Geckos” (try saying that three times fast) produces another #1 hit once the trolls come??).  When bloggers stop writing, Google stops trolling.  The life of a blogger ends as we know it.
  • Sites that aren’t updated regularly are like last year’s Playboy.  You may still look at the pictures, but who will bother to read the articles?  (Is anybody even reading this?  Prove it!) 

  If you don’t have enough “Random Musings” or you don’t have a “Storied Life”, all is not lost.  Wikipedia offers these tips:

  • Scheduling time to write and working, regardless of the quality of the output^[2].
  • Engaging in brief periods of “freewriting” or “mindwriting,” in which people impulsively write whatever comes to mind^[3].
  • Using writers’ exercises such as “chunking“. They use many websites that contain numerous creative writing exercises. Writers read an exercise, and do it.
  • Taking a break, meditating, or doing relaxation exercises to relieve any pressure on oneself and on the writing.
  • Doing something out of the ordinary. If writer’s block comes from a lack of new ideas, attempts to spark creativity by going somewhere new or doing something different can be useful.
  • Returning to the writing after a lapse of a day or two.
  • Write a basic plot outline of the story, if having problems keeping the story on the rails.
  • Brainstorming at the beginning of the writing can help the writer by relating every point to another.
  • Reading, watching movies or plays, or similar activities that might bring inspiration.

  So, don’t give up on you favorite bloggers!  Even those of us with “storied lives” need a break!  P.S.  If you think all of this is serious, perhaps you’re reading too many blogs!   BTW, I may not be blogging tomorrow or the next day.  Don’t leave me!  I beg of you.

  
  

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  Why is it that the following groups of people must constantly LIE about their homosexuality??

  • Politicians like Larry Craig, who today defended his “wide stance” once again to Matt Lauer:

  Matt Lauer: Were you aware at all, senator, of the reputation of that specific bathroom?
  Larry Craig: Well, I certainly am now.
  Matt Lauer: According to the airport police and according to some gay blogs, and here go those blogs again that I know you love so much, this particular bathroom in Northstar Crossing is described as a hot spot for anonymous sexual encounters between gay men. And you had no idea of that?
  Larry Craig: No, I did not know that. I had no reason to know that.
  Matt Lauer: Has anything strange ever happened to you in that bathroom that you can remember over the years? Has anyone ever gestured to you, solicited you in any way that you would describe, come onto you in that bathroom?
  Larry Craig: Well, it–
  Suzanne Craig: I asked him that question, too.
  Matt Lauer: What was the answer?
  Larry Craig: Matt, I use bathrooms for bathroom’s sake.
  Matt Lauer: But so do I. But if someone– if I were in a bathroom and someone winked at me or something like that, or slipped me a– a note, I’d remember it. Had anything like that–
  Larry Craig: No.
  Matt Lauer: –ever happened–
  Larry Craig: No.

   

  • Priests like Vatican Monsignor Tommaso Stenico who was recently filmed in a TV sting in Rome telling a young man he saw nothing sinful in having gay sex, and then asking the man if he “liked him”.  He then assured the media that he was only doing “research” on homosexuality in the church.  Dude, is that the best you can come up with?  Pretending  to be gay??  I like wide stance better!  LOL (He even looks like a queen!)

  

  Monsignor Tommaso Stenico says he was conducting research on the spread of homosexuality through the clergy. (ABC News) 

  • Right wing Evangelical meth-smoking nutjobs like Ted Haggard who think they can pray the gay away.

  

  Anybody for a threesome??

  And so I pose one final question….

  Why can’t gay politicians, priests and preachers be like geckos & otters??

  Screw Geico commercials.  This is brilliant.  (May not be suitbable for younger kids though!)

  OK, to be fair I have no idea if the cleverly animated geckos in the Thai ceiling tile commercial or the hand holding otters at the zoo are gay, but it’s a nice thought isn’t it??  As long as they’re not having sex in a public bathroom, I’m good.

  It might be fitting to close with a quote from Machiavelli’s “The Prince“

  “Because how one ought to live is so far removed from how one lives….it is necessary for a prince, wanting to maintain himself, to learn how to be able to be not good and to use this and not use it according to necessity.”

  • 1:23 am
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