Recently, the following letter appeared in the Buffalo News’ “Everybody’s Column”:

“As a graduate of Lafayette High School, I must comment on The News story discussing Board of Education plans for closing it, and the editorial urging action “without worrying about . . . history.”

Buffalo didn’t worry about history when the Larkin Building was torn down. Albright-Knox didn’t worry when it sold priceless art treasures. The Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. isn’t worrying, subsuming one of two great nexuses of American immigration (the other is Ellis Island), and burying the Canal District under a Bass Pro-inspired project.

Lafayette is Buffalo’s oldest public high school still in its original (nationally historic) building, the educational font for hundreds of local and nationally known professionals: Judge Joseph Mattina, architect Gordon Bunshaft, The News’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Bruce Shanks and many others.

It has been renovated and refurbished, with energy-efficient windows and a new library and cupola. Its Steinway piano was rebuilt, and its carillon reactivated; both with funds from the city’s most active public school alumni association. We raised more than $30,000 at the 100th Anniversary celebration, attended by graduates from the years 1931 through 2001.

The board should keep Lafayette open, and encourage West Side families to view it as the great community asset that it is, and to send their children there.

Angela Bongiovanni Coniglio

Amherst”

My first inclination was to write my own damn letter to the Buffalo News, but I realized that I would not be able to use the language nessecary to convey my true feelings about Angela’s comments.

Read the signature– ANGELA LIVES IN FUCKING AMHERST.  Angela, like so many other scared folk, left the City of Buffalo screaming for the suburbs, and now has the audacity to suggest that “West Side Families” should send their kids to Lafayette.  Now, in Angela’s defense, maybe she doesn’t have kids.  Maybe she can’t have kids for all I know.  Maybe she moved to Amherst because she inherited a house.  I don’t know.  What I do know is Angela has no right getting up on her soapbox criticizing the city for considering closing Lafayette High School.

Personally, I agree with Angela– closing Lafayette would be a huge mistake.  As a resident of the West Side, I see Lafayette as tradition, an institution, and as an architecture buff, I agree, it’s a beautiful building.  Kids are bussed in from all over the city to attend Lafayette, and from what I can tell, the staff there are trying to fight the good fight.  But this woman sits in her home in the suburbs and suggests that West Side families should send their kids there in hopes of… what?  Changing the demographic of the student body? Making it more like it was when she attended classes?  If she does have children (and again, I don’t know the answer to that), where do they go to school?

I’m sure Angela has Buffalo’s and Lafayette High School’s best interest at heart.  But she ran.  She’s part of the problem.

I bought something on Craigslist recently.  The woman I spoke to was very nice.  She lived in Amherst.   She even offered to deliver the item.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“In the city, on the West Side,” I replied.

Silence. Then, “Maybe you should come pick it up.”

The City of Buffalo is in the state that it is because people left.  People got scared and ran away.  And people are too scared to even set foot within it’s boundaries.

Angela, thank you for being an active alumnus and donating to the building’s renovation, but if you are so concerned about Lafayette High School, move back to the West Side.  Buy one of those nice homes in the Elmwood Village. Become part of the community, instead of sending letters to the Buffalo News.

So turncoat Lieberman says he’ll stop caucassing with the democrats if they take his chairmanships away.

Um… and this matters WHY?

Since he supported the party’s candidate for president?  Since he votes along with them so often?  Why is it important that he say in the caucus when he does nothing to further the goals of the democratic party, and actively works to keep them from being acheived?

Come on, Reid, boot the deadweight.  It’s not like you can count on his votes in the future, or his support for the president-elect’s agenda.  Let him bluster.  So what if he goes to the GOP.  Does anyone really think they’ll pass over a longtime Republican to give mumbly Joe a chairmanship on their side?  Shit, they picked Caribou Barbie over him on the McCain ticket!  Cut him loose, and he can see how popular he really is on either side.

Ah Florida… will anyone unseat you as the WTF capital of the United States?

I try to be understanding.  I try to say “hey, they can’t help it, they’re educational system blows since most people in the state are seniors who couldn’t give a fuck about it.”

But really now, you’ve raised the bar for idiocy and ignorance.

Naming a high school after the founder of the Klan?  Classy!  Deciding to KEEP THE NAME IN 2008?  Moronic doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Now, there’s a lot of people in the article talking about history, and why the name isn’t actually offensive.  Here’s a little hint from this latte-sipping liberal.  When your school earns an F GRADE on FLORIDA assessments you are not allowed to discuss history.  or math.  or science.  or literature.  You are allowed to ask me if I want fries with that. 

Oh, and if you get bored…

5530 Firestone Rd., Jacksonville, Fl. 32244

Oh, and they’ve been kind enough to list a whole ton of phone numbers here… and I’m not saying you should call them or anything, but I am saying the area code for Jacksonville, FL is 904.

I’m sure you have heard of this story by now but since new information has popped up I thought it would be good to go over it again for the class.

Davis Davis is the principle at a high school in Ponce De Leon, Florida. Heather Gillman was a student that went to him for help. Heather was being harassed by other students for being a lesbian and thought Davis could help her. Instead he went on what can only be described as a witch hunt, outing her to her parents, ordering her to stay away from children and suspending any of her friends that showed any support for her.
According to U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak “He went so far as to lift the shirts of female students to insure the letters ‘GP’ or the words ‘Gay Pride’ were not written on their bodies.”
What the fuck?
With the backing of the ACLU Gillman sued the school and won. Davis has since lost his gig as principle at the school but he remains a teacher there. What really caught my attention about this case was the response from the school board’s lawyer when asked if there was a policy against wearing clothing that supported gay rights in the school district.

As has clearly been shown at Ponce de Leon School in September of this year, the types of clothing and symbols your clients seek to wear to school will likely be disruptive and interfere with the educational process. Also, said symbols were used and can further be used by select students to show participation in an illegal organization as defined by the School Board

Again, what the fuck? An illegal organization?

During the trial Davis had to take the stand and some of his quotes will no doubt amuse you:

The principal went on to admit that while censoring rainbows and gay pride messages he allowed students to wear other symbols many find controversial, such as the Confederate flag.

Davis also testified that he believed rainbows were “sexually suggestive” and would make students unable to study because they’d be picturing gay sex acts in their mind.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this guy?

Now that the quick review is over let us jump forward to the more recent news.
This is the headline on Yahoo: Fla. town backs ex-principal in gay student case.

“We are a small, rural district in the Bible Belt with strong Christian beliefs and feel like homosexuality is wrong,” said Steve Griffin, Holmes County’s school superintendent, who keeps a Bible on his desk and framed Scriptures on his office walls.

I have no idea how there are still parts of the world that act like this, let alone in my own country.

You may not have known this, but the federal government really is concerned about you, your feelings, and wants you to know that you have a say in how things are done around here– and to prove it, they are going to continue to spend $500 Million dollars of taxpayers money each and every year to print $1.00 bills.

That’s right– because you, the American public would be outraged–nay, scandalized, if you woke up tomorrow to find out that the dollar bill was being phased out, our treasury will continue the wasteful practice of printing crisp new dollar bills every 16 months (the average life expectancy of that portrait of George) instead of doing what nearly every other industrialized nation in the world has done and switching to a dollar coin.

The important thing is that you feel like you’re making a difference. Here we have democracy in action. Smell the freedom? I mean, if this were some big billion dollar corporate conglomerate, you’d never have this kind of control. Do you think General Electric or Nestle Foods would hesitate to save themselves $500 million a year simply because their employees might whine about having to change their behavior? Hell no!

Now, keep in mind, this is the same government that recently passed legislation making it legal to seize any electronic device you may be carrying with you over an international border– your cell phone, your iPod, your laptop computer– and keep it for as long as they damn well like, without reason, warrant, or explanation. Sorry. Hope you deleted those pictures, the ones you took on that “special weekend”. Of course, the government didn’t ask for your feelings about this. They simply did it, allegedly, in your best interest, and in the interest of “security”.

Wegmans, A large grocery chain here in Buffalo, traditionally put out bins for customers to shuck corn in the summer time. I loved it– why get all that corn silk all over your kitchen or front porch? Let me just shuck it here in the store, into this nice big trash can. If I get some on the floor, who cares? Right? This summer, no bins– just a sign saying they would no longer be available. Why? Because having a bunch of idiots standing in the middle of the produce aisle shucking corn all day jams up the flow of a busy grocery store. Mega Marts like Wegmans are designed to move people through in an organized and logical fashion– ever forget something and have to turn around and go against traffic in a grocery store? Ever notice the dirty looks you get? You’re breaking the flow.

Wegmans didn’t ask for anyone’s opinion, they just made a decision in the best interest of their business. Businesses do this all the time. And the corn does taste better if you wait to shuck it anyway.

So why does our government continue the wasteful practice of printing the dollar bill? Why don’t they just pull the trigger on the old boy and tell people to suck it up? It can’t simply be because people would be upset. Thomas M. Davis, a republican congressman from Virginia, supported the “Save the Greenback” Act, hoping to make it illegal to ever stop printing the dollar bill. Why? His main argument was that people’s pockets would be weighed down by all those dollar coins (of course, someone along the way must have pointed out that by carrying one dollar, you don’t have to carry four quarters or ten dimes. But I digress). Trent Lott and Ted Kennedy also took turns supporting the perpetuity of the dollar bill, but they were in the back pockets of the cotton and paper industries, who would stand to lose some profits if we switched to coins. But even that doesn’t explain it. Why does the federal government continue a practice that even the most incompetent CEO would cut in hearbeat?

Could it be just as simple as wanting people to feel like they have a voice, in a country where day by day their voice matters less and less? Is that it? I can’t think of any other reason. This government, especially this administration, makes decisions that affect your life and take away more of your freedoms every day–but they won’t save taxpayers $500 million a year simply because people “don’t like” the idea of a dollar coin?

People didn’t like taking their shoes off at airports, but they got used to it, didn’t they?

A few days ago Ron Paul finally dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination. All the hippies and wackjobs that loved this man more then their own sanity are in a state of mourning. This is also a huge loss for me because, like Mike Gravel and Rudy “Noun, Verb, 9/11″ Giuliani, he was a constant source of easy comedy. Now I’ll actually have to focus my attacks on Old man McCain.
So here is to all the hippies who blindly supported him because he is pro-hemp and anti-war without a glance at the rest of his record.
And here is to you Ron Paul. Here is to the man that:

Who would have guessed that stoned college kids could be so easily misled?

Now that he is gone he leaves behind a nothing but cardboard signs and bumper stickers slapped up on telephone poles and mailboxes around my city. That is his legacy. Soggy, limp, useless hunks of cardboard flapping about aimlessly in the wind and old fading stickers barely clinging to rusty lamp posts. Fitting. Now who the fuck is going to clean up this mess now that his idiot fans have receded back to the paranoia of their 9/11 conspiracy forums?

Being diabetic, I’ve got to say, I’d like to know what Dale and Leilani Neumann know that I don’t. Maybe they’re on to something? Maybe I can stop taking twenty goddamn pills a day? Maybe I can eat cake?

Oh, wait:

“Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin says Madeline Neumann died Sunday, and an autopsy determined the cause was diabetic ketoacidosis, which left her with too little insulin in her body. The chief says she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness.”

Here’s the story if you’re so inclined

According to the Associated Press, these fuckwits kept praying right up until 11 year old Madeline stopped breathing.

I can take religious people and their beliefs. Really, some of my best friends and closest family members believe in some Imaginary Man in the Sky. Great– that’s fine. If faith gives you comfort, I’m all for it. Personally, I find my comfort in my belief in myself, my love for my family, perhaps (just perhaps) some harebrained Zen mumbo-jumbo, and occasionally at the bottom of a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey, but that’s just me.

I gotta tell ya, though, when you start thinking your Imaginary Man in the Sky is going to cure your kid of an incurable fucking disease, so much so that your way to deal with watching her suffer and grow increasingly ill is to just get more people to HELP you pray (because, clearly, your Imaginary Man in the Sky must be deaf or something if he can’t just hear you), you’ve clearly missed the boat somewhere.

However irrational I may think faith is, I’ll never knock anyone’s belief so long as, (A), they aren’t trying to shove it down my fucking throat, and (B), they aren’t using it as an excuse to harm someone else. Which, unfortunately, is usually the problem with most religious extremists (and even not-so-extremists).

The Neumann’s have two other girls, 13 and 16, which, thankfully, since the above story was written, the authorities have taken away from them. Which, considering the fact that diabetes tends to be, oh, I don’t know, fucking genetic, is probably for the best.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be sitting in a dark corner, by myself, rocking and mumbling incoherently. I’m gonna see if I can get rid of this stupid diabetes by chanting.

18 year old Ashley Clark was home alone, recovering from recent brain surgery, when the unthinkable happened.  Two teenagers, a 16 year old male and 17 year old female, broke into the house intending to steal the car belonging to the homeowner.

When they were unable to accomplish the theft, they found the disabled girl and decided to take out their frustrations on her.  They bound her, shaved her head, and beat her in the head with a baseball bat despite her pleas for them to stop because she recently had brain surgery.

These two wastes of air were found later that evening after they had left the scene, but Ashley had to be taken to the hospital where she’s expected to recover.

And watch, these two ‘misguided’ youths will be labled as victims.  People will support them as they do every other scumbag in the world.  I read blogs and posts all the time written by people who say that whatever psycho is being discussed was just a ‘lonley, lost soul who just needed a little love.’

You know what I say to those people?  I tell them they need to be sentenced right along with the buttplugs they’re supporting.

These two kids weren’t just ‘misguided’ – they were sick.  Pure fucking evil.  No ‘human’ being would repeatedly beat on a disabled person who had just undergone brain surgery.  No ‘human’ would beat on a disabled person to begin with.  Any person who would do this is a lost cause and should be put away for life. 

 Here, read the article:

Teens Target Disabled Girl in Brutal Home Invasion 

Why is it that whenever a “tragedy” strikes all the idiots in the world have come out to play?

The death of actor Heath Ledger was tragic in the sense that the world lost a talented actor, a little girl lost a father and his parents lost a son.  I never get too bent out of shape when a celebrity dies, but it’s sad when it’s someone who actually has talent and whose work actually meant something.  I honestly think that Ledger would have been one of the greats if he had lived, especially since he aspired to become a director and had been taken under the wing of Terry Gilliam.

Now, Fred Phelps and his cronies want to picket Heath Ledger’s memorial service in New York because he portrayed a homosexual in “Brokeback Mountain.”  I say let ‘em do it.  The more they picket, the more people are just going to get used to them being around and they’ll turn into a minor annoyance, even a joke.  Getting all up in arms is what they want – they even say so.  The more we go on about the evils of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Asshat Church, the more prominent they become.  Ignore them as best as possible and they’ll go away.  Now, with the good people of the Patriot Guard Riders helping out, their voice is becoming stifled and soon it will be silenced completely.

There’s this other moron, though, who seems to think the death of Heath Ledger makes for good trash talking.  Every time I read something this man has written or listen to him talk I have to wonder if there’s anyone on this planet who takes him seriously.  That man is:

 The Ultimate Warrior.

Yep.  The same Ultimate Warrior who wrestled in the WWF in the 80’s.  In his blog, he somehow manages to compare Ledger’s death to the parenting ability of Hulk Hogan. 

Yeah, I don’t get it either.  Maybe I don’t get it because this guy is a top of the heap moron who can’t put a thought together to save his life.  This is a man who played a character in the world of “professional” wrestling, but can’t seem to stop being that character even though he left the ring years ago.

This is the same guy who began his wrestling career going by the name “Dingo Warrior.”

Here’s what the Ultimate Douchebandit had to say.  Try to decipher it for yourselves, because it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Especially not the nickname he’s given to Heath Ledger. 

Oh, and if you want a good laugh, spend some time on his website.  This is an idiot who takes himself WAY too seriously.

Taken from Ultimatewarrior.com

Dead Before 28

In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you I have watched Brokeback Mountain no less than 45 times and I own the Limited Edition DVD, signed by Willie Nelson a short time after he wrote that queer cowboy song as a tribute to the courage of the producers and actors who broke such incredible creative ground when they made their agenda-less movie. Serious. Until I saw Bendover Brokeback, Braveheart was my favorite movie. But the love scenes of Brokeback sucked me right in and I had no choice but to give myself over to the passion of its wide open range, if you get my drift. Such courage this young man and his colleagues have. Reminds me of the courage of classic movie stars, where during the War they enlisted and flew bomber planes and fought on frontlines, then came back and picked up their lives and careers right where they left off, without anti-American sentiment, whining and complaining, or self-destructive self indulgence. I’m equally inspired.

Apparently, Leather Hedger had sleeping troubles and anxiety and dealt with terrible mood swings. So do soldiers but they don’t self-destructively fuck up their lives. In fact, they don’t sleep, handle anxiety and mood swings while dealing with whether or not they might at any moment lose their life. And they do this all the while they are dangerously protecting the freedom of others to fuck up their own. By the way, how many 28 (or older or younger) year old soldiers met their death yesterday? It’s not easy to find out. None of them made the headlines of any news.

By today’s standard, though, I do have to agree that he was a great father. Perhaps even greater then the father of the year, Hulk Hogan. After all, Leather Hedger did what it took to kill himself. His kid is without a father, yes, but the negative influence is now removed and his own child has the chance for a full recovery. Hogan, on the other hand, won’t go quite that far. He insists on sticking around to keep further ruining, and profiting off of, the parentally mismanaged lives of his own children.

It is sad and tragic….that we don’t demand attention be paid to greater things.

….but you should.  Jack McLellan is a self-admitted pedophile working his evil in California and Washington state.

Jack was recently featured twice on ‘The Steve Wilkos Show’ admitting to the world that he was sexually attracted to children.  Apparently he’s admitted it publicly in other forums as well, not metely on ‘Steve’ because he has his own website which guides peophiles to places where they can easily find children.  He even rates these places by how attractive the children are that can be found there.

Yet he claims he’s never done anything illegal.  The ‘worst’ he’s done is to lure children away from their parents and give them ‘hugs.’

McLellan is still operating his website.  I’ll post the link to it here as soon as I can find it.  Never having trolled the internet for sites relating to pedophilia, I really don’t know where to look.  Wilkos actually asked the question as to what kind of a person would want to visit his site.  I give Steve this answer:  Any person who wants to protect children.   One way of beating the pedophiles is to know where they operate and how they do it.  By knowing which places McLellan is promoting, we can know to be extra careful when in those places.

McLellan also argues that having this website isn’t violating any laws since he’s not directly promoting the molestation of children.  Wilkos asked him about this as well, stating that if something illegal was done to a child based on information gotten through his website, he is partly responsible and should be held as an accomplice.

I agree.

I think Jack McLellan should be locked up.  He’s already a ‘person of interest’ in the murder of a young girl at one of the locations that his website promotes.  He also refused to submit to a DNA test at the Wilkos show to clear his name.  What does that tell you?  The way he was fidgeting around onstage made him look guilty in my eyes.

Here’s an interview done with McLellan: