Another reason to feel sorry for police...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1024890/Siege-death-barristers-family-hire-lawyer-fight-police.html

Poor buggers just can't get a break. Shooting a man who was clearly deranged and firing a shotgun randomly out of the windows of his house would, to the logical person, seem to be the right way to proceed. But apparently not, apparently police should have let his wife into the house to see if she could calm him down, or used non-lethal tactics. The problem these days is that 20/20 hindsight, hitherto seen as a way to avoid future mistakes, is now applied to past situations and legal cases are constructed around it. The problem is that 20/20 hindsight is great when you're sitting in a comfy chair, or even a court room, but you can't go back to a decision after analysing it for weeks and say "THIS is what you should have done" when the decision at the time had to be made in a matter of minutes.

Personally I want police to shoot someone who is firing a gun randomly into the street, it's what we pay our taxes for - to be protected. If there was a better way of doing things then that's great and bad luck Mr Saunders that police didn't follow that method, but since at the time the police captain believed it was the right way forward I'm inclined to support him. Mr Saunders took the option of shooting a shotgun into the street, and he brought the consequences on himself.

Of course in today's world EVERYONE is responsible for tragedies, especially if it's a government organisation. The only type of responsibility that appears to no longer be viable is PERSONAL responsibility, you know, the sort of responsibility that involves, say, not firing a shotgun into the street outside your home while screaming maniacally at passers-by. Sadly it appears the family of Mr Saunders have brought on board a pretty hardcore lawyer to fight their "case" and logic and reason go out of the window when you enter a courtroom. After all, the police can't say that they are 100% certain that there was no another course of action, they can only claim that with a crazy man firing indiscriminately out of a window and the danger to the innocent public growing by the second, taking him out seemed to be the best option. Ah but Constable Blah Blah, did you consider this option? or this? or this?  Well no miss I didn't because there wasn't time, I haven't had the 3 weeks you've had to come up with these options. Ah-ha! So you admit there WERE other options? Well of course, there always are but...

It would interesting to speculate what would have happened if the police had decided not to shoot Mr Saunders. What if he had subsequently shot dead a passing civilian? Then the headlines would be screaming of police fallibility, and the parents of the dead civilian would be at this very moment be preparing legal action, probably using the same lawyer as Mr Saunders' parents...

Michelle Malkin - Most Pointless Person Ever?

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/28/the-keffiyeh-kerfuffle/

A definite warning re: the dangers of the internet - it allows anyone to have a voice, no matter how idiotic. This person clearly lives outside of reality yet has managed to get a whole advertising campaign pulled, it is hard to know what is worse - her fascist viewpoint or Dunkin' Donuts for listening.

I'm not sure at what point the keffiyeh has come "to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad".  Considering that half the Muslim world appears to wear them as a matter of course, and i'm fairly certain that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists, it's hard to see the correlation. Unless of course you're a right-wing conservative with all the intellectual ability of a boiled potato. Interestingly she is able to give the scarf two vastly different meanings - it's either an anti-war scarf (bad) or a pro-jihad scarf (also bad). So wearing one could make you a lover of peace or a lover of war, presumably it depends on how you wear it, maybe Ms Malkin could enlighten us?

Her comparison of the scarf to klu klax klan hoods (presumably she's got a few in the wardrobe in case the "good old days" return and she can go out lynching rather than blogging) is ridiculous. The hoods are meant to hide the faces of murderous racists, the keffiyeh is meant to keep sand out of your face. The hoods were worn by a select and very specific group of people, the keffiyeh is worn by hundreds of thousands of people covering a quarter of the globe. 

Personally I was never interested in wearing a keffiyeh (it's a look that has caught on in Sydney recently) but have since bought one and wear it with pride. I am neither anti-war nor pro-jihad, but I am anti-stupid people. 

Interesting things in the news

I like the news, most of it is the usual humdrum of war and politics which, will interesting, is usually just a rehash of previous issues, but then you get some gold stuff like below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_east/7341450.stm

First up, a 13 year old who went to a tanning salon THREE times in one day and, surprise surprise, ended up burnt. This was a great story, quite why a 13 year old felt it necessary to go to a salon in the first place is odd especially when he lives in fucking Wales, the land of rain and vicious sheep. 

The best bit comes at the end of the piece where some dozy bint from the dermatologist association reckons that kids can't be expected to understand the risks of tanning beds. I'm sorry my dear but if I ever have kids (currently the majority of public opinion is against this) and my 13 year old can't figure out that going to a tanning salon THREE TIMES in a day is bad then i'll fucking disown them, go to my toolshed and blow my brains out for doing such a fucking poor job of bringing up a human being meant to be capable of cognitive thought.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7341822.stm

Next up, the Mormons or, to be more precise, that radical off-shoot the Fundementalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints which has finally been busted by the feds. The fact it's taken this long is nothing short of disgusting and can be attributed to two things

1. The feds are terrified of another Waco

2. If enough people do something illegal, it somehow gains a legitimate face, especially when you wrap a bogus religion around it

Now let's not mince words here, the FCJCLDC is for paedophiles, plain and simple. It's somewhat unbelievable that any woman would be fucking stupid enough to buy into a religion that reads as a passport for men to basically fuck whoever they chose regardless of age. 

The whole "three wives to get into heaven" thing is fantastic, although you wonder why three is magic number, why not 7? or 10? hell why have a limit at all? "A man must have MANY wives to get into heaven, definitely more than one, and the more you have, the more 'heaven points' you'll build up which upon arrival in heaven can be exchanged for luxury items". Now if there was a religion that said that, i'd be more excited than Tom Cruise on Oprah. 

I'm not sure where the big book of Mormon says that it's ok for the girls to be underage, but I can only assume it's in the small print. 

So here you have a sect that for years has practiced poligamy, which is illegal, and paedophilia, which is both illegal and morally reprehensible, and it's only fucking NOW that the police move in and they only did that because they got a fucking complaint!

It's hard to know what's more disgusting - the religion itself, or the lack of action to take it down. I'm going with the latter because you have to give the religion leaders some credit for managing to make up a list of laws that read like the big book of men's fantasies (incidentally child rape is NOT one of my fantasies thank you very much) and women FUCKING GO ALONG WITH IT. 

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/04/13/1208024958613.html

last up, the Lonely Planet has got caught out - one of its main authors has admitted making up huge parts of his work. Well to anyone who's used an LP I think the only surprise here is if he's the only one because their books FUCKING SUCK. 

I took an LP out to SE Asia and within 2 days has concluded that it was about as much use as a chocolate teapot, and sadly a lot less edible. I kept mine purely for comedy value - when you were on a long trip you could pull it out and chuckle along at the various mistakes or outright lies.

For one thing, a travel book that can't get the prices right is unlikely to help you find a place to sleep which is a shame since that is really your number one priority as a traveller. In Thailand, for example, they list a huge range of prices for each guesthouse and inevitably when you turn up at the establishment it is revealed that they only have one room that costs, say, 100baht a night, and everything else is 500. Great stuff. I learnt not to carry my LP around in plain view because it clearly marked me as a gullible sucker who would pay any amount no matter how ridiculous for after all, I was stupid enough to buy the book.

Fucking trains

This is my first blog, it's always harder to start these things than finish them, I guess you always want to come up with an amazing line to start with, it's similar to chatting up a girl in a bar - you feel that if you could come out with a stupendously clever/amusing line then things will be much easier from then in (and that if the line is good enough you might not even have to say ANYTHING else and she'll ask you straight back to hers). However what usually happens is either:

1. You worry so much about what to say that it comes out wrong and you end up staring down her dress until she asks you to leave (or possibly has the bouncers ask you less nicely)

or

2. Whilst you think up your line she either leaves of her own accord or another guy who came to the bar with a line fully prepared whisks her away (incidentally how do you really "whisk" someone away? Believe me when I say the literal interpretation does NOT have the desired effect)

Anyway, I had something to post about and I feel I should come back to the point rather than deviate again as you never know where you might end up but you know there is a danger that it might be a park bench as happened on Saturday.

It's the trains. Now I'm not going to whinge about the service because to be honest I've travelled around the world and it's just nice to be in a country where the driver isn't a recent escapee from a mental institution and the local interpretation of "slow the FUCK down" is "drive much faster and increase maniacal laughter by 10 decibels".

It's the fact that when you look at people's actions on the train, it's like seeing back through the ages, as 10,000 years of evolution gets stripped away and people start acting like retarded animals. 

"Door is open, must shuffle forwards and take place in big metal box"

yeah but not without letting the morons ON the train get off first you FUCKWIT. Honestly the fact that firearms are illegal in this country is something i've come to see as a blessing since without it I most likely would be getting better acquainted with Bubba rather than writing this scintillating blog.

Can you imagine how satisfying it would be to stuck behind someone standing on the WALKING side of the escalator (Pet Hate No. 34) and just blow them away?

No?

Must be just me then, and my psychiatrist says that's a good thing.

What I LOVE about trains is how people will get on of a morning, it's crowded, they want to get off quickly at their stop, so they REFUSE to move inside the carriages, even if it means other people can't get on! It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

Here we can see a very special form of blindness. The people near the doors can see that people still want to get on and that space is receding rapidly. At the same time they can see that just 2 metres away there is a ton of standing room, but they WON'T MOVE. I can see them blinking in the dawn light, their sightless eyes taking in the empty carriage, and it's like watching a rather well-dressed cow being shown an open gate in a field - they're away that they could move but they can't see the point. 

Another Pet Hate is people who think they're more important than anyone else on a crowded train and that they MUST be the first people off the train no matter where they've been standing/sitting the whole journey. You'll be packed in like Ethiopians in a shallow grave, so close that if you move slightly to one side you're likely to be guilty of some form of sexual assault, and some prick decides that he needs to get past you as the train is about to enter the station. This has two interesting elements of the social fuckwit:

1. They seem oblivious to the crashed masses in front of them, although we are evidently there as you can hear us muttering about how shit the trains are, and occasionally apologising for groping someone when you flexed your hand.

2. They assume that even if a major station is coming up, they are the only one who needs to get off, and rather than get stuck on the train for one moment longer than necessary, they are going to push to the front. It's either this or they must simply be in more of a rush than the HUNDREDS of other people on the train, because of course our jobs don't matter as much...

I enjoy blocking these fucktards. It puts a smile on my face and as unfair and socially abhorent that may be, I don't care, I NEED these little things to get me through the day.