This is my favorite interpretation of “Funny How Time Slips Away,” by Al Green:

I trust you had a productive day.

Nevertheless, I refuse to add my voice to those condemning Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers.   While trusting in the motives of those who condemn Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers, I worry that People Of Good Will are playing directly into the hands of Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers, by giving Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers the publicity that is their only real reason for committing this latest Outrage.

Think about it, People Of Good Will.  Two weeks ago, two months ago, two years ago, had you even heard of Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers?  Now Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers consume your thoughts.  You take time out of your day to write blog posts, to write Facebook entries, to sign petitions, to comment on websites, perhaps even to create websites, condemning the Outrage that Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers are about to commit.  In doing so, you empower Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers.  You give Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers valuable time and attention, which really might be better spent on your family, your friends, and your neighbors, where People Of Good Will such as you could actually do some good.  In fact, isn’t it counterproductive for People Of Good Will to fret about the Outrage?  Shouldn’t People Of Good Will, like you, ignore morons like Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers?

After all, it’s not as though Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers give a shit what People Of Good Will think.   Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers hate People Of Good Will, and believe People Of Good Will deserve death or hell, simply because People Of Good Will, even though People Of Good Will may disagree with Target Group, would never think of committing an Outrage against Target Group and others like them.  Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers will commit the Outrage no matter what the friends of People Of Good Will read on Twitter.

Of course, I should point out that the Outrage planned by Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers doesn’t involve violence.  If it did, all People Of Good Will would be justified in joining Target Group in defending Target Group, and encouraging the government to use force necessary to prevent Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers from carrying out a violent Outrage.  But this isn’t a violent Outrage.  Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers don’t want scalps.  Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers want your attention.

And from the looks of things, they’re getting it.  In spades.

Are you, People Of Good Will, sure that the attention you’re giving Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers will prevent the Outrage, or do the slightest bit of good to Target Group?  Or are you just fulminating, to no real effect, so that other People Of Good Will will know that you don’t support Outrages like that planned by Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers?  Here’s a thought:  If a Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers committed a vile, but non-violent, Outrage in some godforsaken basement in the middle of nowhere, and no People Of Good Will paid them the slightest bit of attention (except perhaps to laugh at Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers), would an Outrage even have occurred?

Note that I do not include The Media among the People Of Good Will.   While many of The Media are, individually, probably People Of Good Will, The Media have to sell papers, or ads, or get pledge dollars, to earn a living.  The Media perform a valuable function when The Media hype Real Atrocities in Darfur And Bosnia, or the plight of The Starving Children Of India, but this Outrage isn’t a Real Atrocity like Darfur And Bosnia or The Starving Children Of India.  No one, even in Target Group (many of whom are armed, and Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers know this) will suffer a broken toenail when Outrage comes to pass.  But The Media will get rich if People Of Good Will continue to fulminate, and will serve up more Outrages, distracting you from important news, Real Atrocities like Darfur And Bosnia, and The Starving Children Of India.

As for Target Group, and I know that some of you read this site, I shouldn’t have to point out that Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers believe, against all of The Evidence Of History, that Target Group and everyone in it are barbarians.  Of course The Evidence Of History shows that Target Group has produced not barbarians, but people like Great Scientist #1, Great Poet #2, and Great Artist #3.  If you, Target Group, resort to litigation or even violence in an effort to retaliate for this Outrage, won’t you be proving Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers right?  Only you, Target Group, can make a martyr of Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers.  Don’t give them what they want.  Of course, if Sick Twisted Individual And his Followers plan a violent Outrage, a Real Atrocity like what was done in Darfur And Bosnia, Target Group should man the barricades if the government won’t act, and I’d be the first to cheer you on.  But The Evidence Of History, despite what Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers say, proves that you in Target Group are a wise and civilized people, in the tradition of Great Scientist#1, Great Poet #2, and Great Artist #3.

Far better than Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers.  Don’t play their game.  Laugh at them, but don’t prove them right.  Hundreds of years from now, Target Group will be here, stronger than ever, while Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers are forgotten even by their descendants.

Unless you give Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers power by making martyrs of them, or worse, ordinary innocent People Of Good Will, who’ve done Target Group no harm.

The article is full of bon mots like “If your man returns from the gym too exhausted to talk or have sex, that is a worrisome sign.” or “Natural men have a certain amount of grit about them.”

A word about Christwire. It’s funny, but nobody is sure if they are satirical or not. And, like all good satirists (he said, not looking at Hugo Cha… er, Redma.. I mean Patrick) they are committed to the bit. Personally, I think it’s a joke (I mean Motivational Children’s Party Entertainer? C’mon!) , but if it isn’t I’m both super happy and full of despair.

Strangely, there’s no companion article on how you would know if your wife is gay.

If you don’t remember Lone Wolf, the idea of the books was to take a standard choose your own adventure & add random combat. Some pages would cause you to fight monsters or gain items or cast spells. It required some mild record keeping, and cheating was rampant (“why yes, I do still have that fireball spell!”) They (and the earlier (?) Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks were a revelation to me. Much better than the vanilla choose your own adventures.

This download has almost 20 books you can play. It may be the most dangerous Friday Time Waster ever. You have been warned. Thanks again Andrew! And feel to recommend Friday Time Wasters in the Hat’s Forum.

Of course you still had to go and lose your temper.  You could have had the site with just a polite email.  But nooooo, that’s not the Bob Fletcher, Sheriff of Ramsey County Minnesota way.  You had to get all angry, and all huff and puff, and try to bloooooow the site down!

When you could have just ignored the site.  Simmer down Bob! Who was going to read it, after all?  Nobody.

Until now anyway.  What are you going to do next, Bob?  Are you going to lawyer up?  Are you going to get all legal on this poor sap?  Is he going to get beaten up for resisting arrest because he was abusive to a trusted and decorated deputy when he was caught, alone on a desolate highway at midnight, with a broken taillight?

I guess that’s up to you, Bob.  Don’t lose that famous temper, Bob.

For our readers, especially those who have blogs of any sort and there are a couple of you, I’d encourage you to read this site now, and tell your friends, before Bob Fletcher, Sheriff of Ramsey County, Minnesota, calms himself and politely asks the owner of the site to take it down.

Of course, knowing Bob, that could take a while.

Thanks to JDog for the tip.

Now, let’s be clear – James Jay Lee was just crazy. There’s no ideology, or hidden purpose here. He was just nuts. Now, we just hope a telepathic gorilla didn’t tell him to do it.

In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction.

By 7 years old, a child who speaks the Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr knows north from south from east from west, wherever he is, every moment of his life.  Because he uses these terms to describe the relations of objects to other objects.  He doesn’t refer to his left hand.  He refers to his north hand, or his east hand, which could be either hand depending on which way he’s facing.

While we don’t know what languages the people who originally settled Australia and Polynesia spoke, a tongue like Guugu Yimithirr would be a positive boon to people migrating from Asia to, say, New Guinea, or even in stages to Hawaii.

On the other hand, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr, literally, don’t know left from right.  And of course epic feats of navigation have been undertaken by relatively primitive people, like the Vikings, whose languages didn’t require them to develop a built-in compass.

What I quoted above is just a tidbit from a longer article by Guy Deutscher, whose book “Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages,” will be published this month.  The article is well worth your time, and I look forward to the book.

2. Search for the word “mosk,” which is the way that you might, under some circumstances, spell mosque.

3. Weep.

You’ll find two categories of posts:

1. Frightening drivel about the whole “Ground Zero Mosque” thing,

and

2. Elitist assholes (guilty!) and hipster douchebags talking about this search as a result of this Wonkette article. (More specifically, people who are both (a) elitist asssholes/hipster douchebags who like to make fun of sub-literacy and (b) too stupid to set their Facebook settings properly, even after reading a post making fun of people who don’t set their Facebook settings properly.)

Nobody is talking about Judge Stanley Mosk. It’s a damned shame.

Post your favorite example of either type that you find in the comments.

My favorite so far:

“If the people who are building this Mosk at ground zero are American, Would we consider them to be committing Treasen? I believe so!”

Brownie points to anyone who can help me identify a word likely to be spelled wrong by left-wing loonies to conduct a similar elitist study of them.

The story, broken by a blogger, has hit the mass media. In response, School Superintendent Russel Taylor has posted an awfully tepid statement.

“Student elections have not yet been held at Nettleton Middle School for the 2010-2011 school term. The processes and procedures for student elections are under review. We are reviewing the origin of these processes, historical applications, compliance issues, as well as current implications
and ramifications. A statement will be released when review of these processes is complete.”

Yeah, you do that review, Russel.

Wouldn’t you love to be in the room when the people who enacted this policy, or turned it into a chart, or distributed it, explain why they thought it was legal or appropriate?

Public education includes many brilliant, dedicated, and skilled teachers and administrators, but also a certain number of people who are so knuckle-draggingly stupid, or so woefully ignorant, that they are able to convince themselves it is appropriate to publish a chart dictating the acceptable race of student government leaders. The size of that category is subject to dispute. The process of weeding out the morons and freaks who create situations like this is stymied by politically powerful public employee unions that frequently make it nearly impossible to fire freaks and morons, or even rate them.

Edited to add: Hey, they’ve got racially divided homecoming courts as well.

Edit two: they changed the policy.

After being notified of a grievance regarding upcoming student elections at Nettleton Middle School, research was conducted that evidenced that the current practices and procedures for student elections have existed for over 30 years. It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body. It is felt the intent of these election procedures was to ensure African-American representation in each student office category through an annual rotation basis.

It is our hope and desire that these practices and procedures are no longer needed to help ensure minority representation and involvement. Furthermore, the Nettleton School District acknowledges and embraces the fact that we are growing in ethnic diversity and that the classifications of Caucasian and African-American no longer reflect our entire student body.

Therefore, beginning immediately, student elections at Nettleton School District will no longer have a classification of ethnicity. It is our intent that each student has equal opportunity to seek election for any student office. Future student elections will be monitored to help ensure that this change in process and procedure does not adversely affect minority representation in student elections.

Thank you

Superintendent

Russell Taylor

To which I respond: seriously? They did this for 30 years, and nobody said anything? It never occurred to anyone that it was patently illegal? Seriously?

Maybe they can get Jimmy Carter to come supervise the next election.

Edit: Matt is also to be commended for finding a very diplomatic way of telling me that I can’t spell “terrific.”

The bill, called the SPEECH Act, limits recognition of foreign judgments. It prohibits any federal or state court from recognizing or enforcing a foreign judgment for defamation unless (1) the judgment creditor can prove that the foreign court offers equivalent protections for free speech as the defendant would have enjoyed in United States courts under the First Amendment, or (2) the judgment creditor can prove he or she would have prevailed even under the stricter standards in the United States. In addition, the SPEECH act provides that foreign libel judgments are unenforceable to the extent they are inconsistent with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides that people who run web sites are not liable for the content of comments left by visitors. Better yet, if a foreign judgment creditor tries to enforce a judgment here and the defendant resists it successfully on First Amendment grounds under the Speech Act, the defendant gets attorney fees and costs. Moreover, a domestic defendant faced with a foreign judgment can bring an action in federal court seeking a declaration that the foreign judgment is unenforceable.

In short, the Speech Act is an effective shield to prevent libel tourists from enforcing shitty foreign defamation laws against Americans. Hence countries that have terrible, censorious libel laws that encourage libel tourism, or have ambitions to police the internet by allowing foreign suits for things written on web sites hosted in the United States, will be thwarted — they’ll be left with a useless foreign judgment unenforceable against people in the United States.

Why is this important?

Just ask the folks at the popular blog techdirt.

Years ago techdirt ran a blog post asking whether a company called Jeftel was a front for spammers. The post was long forgotten, and its untended comments ran to spam, cut-and-pasted Bible quotes, inanities, and squabbling. Standard internet stuff, in other words. Years later, a commenter suggested that the owner of the company offered preferential treatment to employees who shared his Jewish heritage. [Review the thread and judge the evidence on the spamming issue yourself; as to the anonymous commenter's assertion, it's obviously foolish and credulous to believe such things because an anonymous commenter says them.]

This drew an extraordinarily bumptious demand letter from a British lawyer, Brian Addlestone of Addlestone Keane in Leeds. Techdirt posts the letter, and I’ve saved it here as an artifact of extraordinary assholery. Addlestone threatens suit in the United Kingdom, claims that the accusations of spamming are untrue, and complains that the comment about preferential treatment is anti-semitic [sic]. Addlestone, in a flurry of self-important aggression, demands that techdirt shut its site down (not just take the post down, but take the entire site down) or Addlestone will get a British court to do it for him, and give him damages as well. Addlestone explains that he can get a British court to give him a judgment and then enforce it in the United States. So SHUT TECHDIRT DOWN. Or I’ll ask again!

Thanks to the SPEECH Act, Addlestone’s foolish threats are impotent. Even if he gets some pseudo-court in England to issue an injunction and damages award under the United Kingdom’s loathsome defamation law, he’ll never enforce it here. It will be, like Addlestone’s diploma, an expensive but ultimately pointless scrap of paper. A United States court will never enforce an injunction taking down an entire web site on the theory that a post was defamatory. A United States court will never enforce a defamation judgment premised on a statement by a commenter; that would violate Section 230.

A cautious lawyer, before sending such a strident threat, might have checked first to see if there had been any recent developments in the law governing perfection of foreign judgments, particularly because prior versions of the SPEECH Act have been floating about, well publicized, for some time.

I hope Addlestone’s client didn’t pay him too much. Remember, kids: however inane your demand, you can always find a lawyer to utter it for you.

[The mortician] was waiting for authorization to have 37-year-old [LW]’s body cremated. [LW], of Carrboro, died alone in her apartment from a medical condition in early August and by the time the Carrboro Police Department learned of her death, officials think she was dead for almost a week and her body was already decomposing.

[The mortician] was contacted Aug. 11 to handle the body. [His] Mortuary was one of several funeral homes on a rotating list that the Carrboro Police Department uses. Police struggled to find next of kin so [the mortician] was unable to get her cremated immediately.

So he left the already decomposing body in a hearse.

In North Carolina.

In August.

But he parked the hearse under a shade tree!

Unfortunately for the mortician, he’d agreed to be on a list used by the police to place unclaimed bodies once the police are finished with whatever godawful things it is that police do to corpses.  Probably for a little extra money.  After all most corpses are claimed pretty quickly, especially in a small community like Graham, North Carolina, which resembles Mayberry even if Carrboro, where the body died, is a small-town Sodom.

And then the comedy of errors began.  The mortician didn’t have the sort of refrigeration this already badly decomposed corpse needed, or the space.  The police wouldn’t tell him what to do.  The state board, which is now investigating him, wouldn’t tell him what to do (he asked).  And it’s likely, according to the board itself, that if he’d embalmed or burned the body without authorization and a relative showed up to complain, he’d be sued and face disciplinary action from the state board for mishandling a corpse.

And of course, no one would take the body back.  No one wanted that hot potato, or rather, that hot, decomposing, gas-bloated potato.

So under a tree it sat, for 11 days until the Orange County Board of Social Services, a county away, authorized ending the thing with fire.

This is a grimly humorous story, involving a rural funeral director out of his depth, bureaucracy, and a stinking dead body.  It could have been written by Poe, or perhaps H. P. Lovecraft. But it may say something about our society that we’re so regulated, and so afraid of lawsuits, that no one will do the obvious thing without a permit from the proper government agency or for fear of lawsuits, even when it involves something as obvious as burning a 20 day old old corpse, in a coastal southern state, in August.

(Note:  I removed all personal references from this post, because I  feel some pity for the mortician, and a lot for the woman who died alone without family.  And because this site has a higher page rank than the newspaper in question, which is kind of cool because I grew up in that small town and I used to read that paper, back in the days before concepts like “page rank” existed.)

Then our HR manager wandered into my office and showed us an invoice for toner for more than $1500 from Network Office Products of Costa Mesa, California, down below the Orange Curtain.

This struck me as odd, because (1) we get free toner as part of our copier deal, (2) we’ve carefully instructed receptionists not to give out information about our copiers or printers to avoid the toner scam, and (3) inspection revealed that we never received the toner reflected in the invoice.

Time to use some of that inquisitorial mood. FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

1. A search on whocallsme.com revealed multiple reports of toner fraud from the same company, revealing the same phone number (877-689-5659 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              877-689-5659      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              877-689-5659      end_of_the_skype_highlighting) and same address.

2. 800notes.com revealed a similar report.

3. The Better Business Bureau of the Southland has a handy search function. It revealed two iterations of Network Office Products, one in Irvine and one in Costa Mesa. Both have “F” ratings and a history of complaints typical of toner scam operations. Both list a “Tom Miller” as a customer service manager — I suspect that’s a pseudonym. They use different post office boxes in the two cities, but the same number for customer service — it goes straight to a recording. Both use fax number 949-715-1531, which according to several reverse directories is a land line in Laguna Beach, CA.

4. A search with the California Secretary of State reveals no LLC or corporation called “Network Office Products.”

5. However, a search of Orange County records shows a Fictitious Business Name Statement in the name of “Network Office Products” was filed in June 2009 by “Mark Mushkin.” That matches when the complaints began to hit the Better Business Bureau.

6. You have no IDEA how much I could find out about Mark Mushkin on Westlaw if I wanted to pay for that. You’d shit yourself, believe me. For now, several online people finders report a Mark Mushkin in Costa Mesa. They also report he has ties to Newport Beach, CA. I’m toying with spending the $7.95 to find out all of Mark Mushkin’s phone numbers, addresses, and other data.

7. Meanwhile, I’ve reported everything I found to the Better Business Bureau of the Southland, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, the FTC’s consumer fraud report system, and the Postal Inspectors.

8. If I were in the mood, at this point it would be ridiculously easy to file a lawsuit down the street against Mark Mushkin dba “Network Office Products” aka Tom Miller. Maybe a class action, on behalf of all fraud victims? Maybe a unfair business practices suit under California’s notorious section 17200? I could put it together in an hour, tops. Then I could start hitting the business with deposition notices and document demands and interrogatories, and could hit the business’ internet and phone service providers with subpoenas for payment records to find their banks, and then hit their banks with subpoenas to get account information.

I think I’m done playing for today. I need to get a few things done, then we’re taking Evan to dinner to celebrate his family day at a decent Korean place.

But if I get another invoice from Network Office Products, or a call . . . .

Edit: I had some down time, so I just called and left a message asking to speak to Mark Mushkin.

They always have, they always will.

School administrators tend to respond in a way that reflects their attitude towards the respective roles of the state and the citizen. Some perform the core legitimate function of the state: they punish bullies who physically abuse students, and take appropriate and modest steps to maintain order. Some attempt to micromanage student speech and conduct both on and off campus, to the point of punishing unpopular expression that might hurt somebody’s feelings or sensibilities. And some believe it is the role of the school — and the state — to eliminate the occasion of bullying by eliminating any conduct that might draw the attention of a bully. That’s the school administrator who tells you, after the tenth time that week you’ve been sucker-punched or your books thrown in the trash, “You should get to know them and be more friendly. You bring it on yourself, you know.”

It looks as if Paul Smithson of Godley Independent School District falls into that third category.

Just ask Chris McGregor.

Chris McGregor is 12. He’s trying to go to Godley Middle School in Texas. God knows that middle school, let alone middle school in Texas, is an inherently miserable experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But Chris just wants to go to school. He’s a good student.

He also wants to wear a truly hideous haircut. Justin Bieber or Anton Chigurh wouldn’t put up with this haircut. But Chris likes it, and feels it is right for him, and expresses how he feels about himself.

That won’t do.

Godley Middle School and the Godley Independent School District have standards. Nonconforming haircuts don’t meet those standards. So they’ve suspended Chris until he cuts his hair.

Superintendent Smithson explains:

But Smithson said the hair rule protects students and reflects community standards. “There’s a reason in Texas they’re called ‘independent’ school districts,” he explained. “Bullying’s a big thing, and we want to make sure everyone’s dressed appropriately, someone doesn’t bring attention to themselves so that someone says something to them, and all of a sudden we have a problem.”

If you dress, or wear your hair, or act in a nonconformist way, bullies will get you. That’s inconvenient for the school. Bullies are troublesome. They often have verminous amoral parents who indulge and defend their behavior. It’s much easier to force the nonconforming kids to conform, in the hopes that will make it a bit less likely that the bullies will bother them. Plus, people who are indulged in nonconformism in hair, or dress, might expose other children to other nonconformist ideas.

Now, the cynics among you — a category I’d define as “people who went to middle school and weren’t unreconstructed bullies themselves” — know that there’s no avoiding a bully. You can dress the same, look the same, talk the same, but a bully will find some reason to bully. If you are the sort who would want to wear your hair differently than everyone else, it is certain that you will stand out somehow. A school policy — like a foreign policy — premised on appeasing bullies is doomed to ignominious failure at the expense of the rights of the bullied.

But that’s complicated. Enforcing conformism is easy. Even a man like Paul Smithson can do it. And in doing so, and in enforcing any number of other policies based on inane and nannyish policies about what is in children’s best interest, Smithson and his ilk teach the children a lesson — a lesson about the proper relationship among the individual citizen, his fellow citizens, and the state, and a lesson about the relative value of individualty.

I leave it to your imagination whether the Paul Smithsons of the world intend that lesson or not.