I’m Not Normally A Vigilante, But…

A horrible story is making its way around the Internet today.  It involves videos posted to YouTube of a kid torturing a cat.  I’m not going to even link to them, because that’s how disturbing they are.  The cat’s name is Dusty.  The videos are no longer on YouTube, but they can be found.  The incidents took place in Oklahoma.  The name of the alleged torturer is Kenny Glenn.

The good thing is that the animal-loving hive mind of the Internet figured out who this was.  (The culprits, apparently brothers,  are wearing ninja-type face-concealing headwear in the videos.)  People looked at the perpetrator’s YouTube profile and got the name of the town.  They looked at the name on the account and found part of a name.  They started searching through Myspace and Facebook and all those other spots.  By comparing details from the videos with photos posted by the perp on the web, a positive ID was made.  This was all conveyed to the local sheriff, who apparently has already initiated action.  I’m sure nothing would have ever happened except for the work of all those Internet-savvy civilians who took the time to investigate.

I’m a reasonably sympathetic person by nature.  I believe in the concept of rehabilitation.  But, I also believe that some people are beyond rehabilitation.  These kids are two of them.  I don’t care if the chief perp is only in eighth grade.  We’re talking about little proto-Dahmers here.  I, and apparently an awful lot of other people, would like to see them flayed alive, then thrown into a Morton Salt truck until they dessicated to death or whatever would happen in such a situation.  Luckily for society, I’m not in charge of those things.  I’m not normally about vengeance, but some things are just too much.  And where were the parents?  Couldn’t they see what was happening to this poor animal?  How can your kids turn into monsters without you noticing?  It’s apparent from Dusty’s demeanor that bad things had happened to him many, many times.  He doesn’t even fight back.

The good news is that Dusty is still alive.  He’s been removed from the house and is in the care of a vet.  I’m sure he’ll be taken care of well.  I hope he’ll be OK enough to be adopted out to someone who will love him.  Animals are incredibly resilient.  Maybe Dusty can survive.

God, humans disgust me sometimes.

Prediction Turns Out More Right Than Wrong

Here’s what the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had to say about Australia’s first weekend in America:

“Americans chose Christmas laughs over a trip to the Australian outback with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

Baz Luhrmann’s much-hyped epic Australia failed to ignite much interest over a busy Thanksgiving holiday long weekend in US and Canadian theatres, with the film managing to scrape into fifth place at the North American box office with $US20 million ($30.4 million) in earnings.

Audiences instead filled cinemas showing the new Reese Witherspoon-Vince Vaughn comedy, Four Holidays. It collected a bumper $US46.7 million from Wednesday to Sunday to easily claim first place.

The uninspiring opening for Australia will likely damage the Oscar prospects for Kidman, Jackman and director-producer-screenwriter Luhrmann.

It also raises the question if the Hollywood studio backing the film, 20th Century Fox, will make money on its huge four-year investment in the project.”

That $20 million actually includes the entire Thanksgiving weekend, beginning on Thursday.  Not good for Baz and friends.  They’d better hope someone in Europe or Asia is interested.

Heaven’s Gate: Australia

One great thing about blogs is that, unlike conversations, they’re written and verifiable.  Thus, if the following prediction is right, I’ll look smart.  If it isn’t, I’ll look silly.  There can be no denials if it turns out to be the latter.

All right, here it is:  I think the new movie Australia is going to be a big bomb here in the U.S.  First of all, few Americans care enough about Australia to subject themselves to two hours and forty five minutes about it.  I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying that’s so.  Secondly, the plot sounds like a mish-mash of every romance movie cliche, adventure movie cliche, and preachy socio-political movie cliche ever conceived, all rolled into a big smarmy mess.  Third, Nicole Kidman’s face looks so post-chemical now that I worry it will split and some giant grasshopper head or something will emerge.

Yeah, I know this director, Baz Luhrmann, is beloved by some for his last film, Moulin Rouge.  However, Moulin Rouge didn’t cost $150 million to make and wasn’t expected to be a blockbuster.  It did pretty well on its own terms — $57 million here in the U.S. — but that won’t cut it with Australia.  This thing has to approach Titanic numbers or it’s going to be regarded as a failure.  I say it’ll open big from all the hype, drop off fast, and never see the light of $100 million here.  Maybe not even close.

Not that I’ve actually seen the movie or anything.  Nor do I plan to.  It’s just fun to speculate.  Maybe in one of the many alternative endings that were reportedly shot (already looking towards that DVD, eh, Baz?), Nicole really does turn into a giant grasshopper.  Now THAT would be entertainment!

Never To Be Forgotten

Mr. Bonkers’ courageous struggle ended today.  Our loving memories of him will not.  Maybe right now he’s frolicking with Mabel, Bacardi, Fuzzy, Oscar, Vixen, Max, Themis, Luke, Ben, and all of everybody’s other old friends.  More likely, he’s watching TV while everybody else frolics.

Greedy Bastards Escape Tragedy

Unbelievable.  I just read where Bush is going to ask for $700,000,000,000.00 to bail out Wall Street and the banks that made all those unbelievably bad loans.  Where’s the free market now, George?  Where’s that staunch “no bailouts” stand?  Where’s that personal accountability?  All I see is a bunch of incompetent groups and organizations being given a get out of jail free card.  Where’s all the talk about what a disincentive a bailout would be in terms of more responsible conduct by in the future?  And didn’t you say a few weeks ago that the economy was already better?  No danger of a recession, right?

It makes me sick that all these criminals and frauds will be rescued on the straining backs of the rest of us.  Now, they can proceed with their next get-rich-quick scheme, confident that if things go wrong, the politicians will cave in and save them again.  This is like patting the kid who got caught cheating on the head and giving him an A.

A trillion here for a ridiculous occupation of Iraq, several hundred billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, eighty-five billion for AIG, seven hundred billion for the Wall Street slush fund…pretty soon you’re talking real money!

I don’t see where any of this is going to be funded by all the billions of profits these people pocketed while their scheme was working.  Where are the consequences?

To paraphrase Daniel Burnham, make no small screwups.  You have to screw up on such a colossal scale that you are “too big to fail.”  Then you’ll be OK no matter what.

How many social services could be provide for the $700,000,000,000.00 that’s going to be spent to keep the Dom Perignon flowing on Wall Street?  I assure you, it’s flowing right now.  How much has the market gone up since this was announced?  It’s like a big huge party for all the investors who caused this crisis in the first place.  Now they’re profiting from the bailout, too.

Makes me puke.

Tragedy Strikes Greedy Bastards

You can’t imagine the sense of loss I had about the Lehman Brothers collapse — because I didn’t have any.  This is another example of an institution taken down by its own greed.  A reasonable rate of return on investments wasn’t enough for Lehman Brothers.  No, they had to jump on every sub-prime mortage out there, because when things were good, they could make money both packaging them and reselling them for further resale.  Everybody loved the sub-prime mortgages because of the exorbitant interest rates they earned.  Why make a good mortgage at six percent when you can make a no-document one for nine percent?  The commissions for everybody are higher, and if it doesn’t work out, you just foreclose on the poor idiot’s house, resell it, and make even more!  Or at least that was the concept of the brilliant minds of Wall Street.  Obviously, it didn’t work out.

There are many lessons to be learned here.  First of all, flat out, when the hell will the American people and government learn that Wall Street and big business simply are not to be trusted?  This is not to say that there aren’t millions (or at least several) honest businessmen out there.  But on a large scale, money is intoxicating.  For those for whom no amount of money is ever enough, which are the people attracted to Wall Street and mega-corporations, ethics and morality are nothing more than worthless impediments.  Just read a little about the history of American business.  Just look at the financiers who endowed many of America’s finest institutions.  The Morgans and Rockefellers of this world, at least the original ones, built all those libraries, museums, and institutions of higher learning from blood money.  After smashing everything and everyone in their path to accumulate immense wealth, they tried to wash their hands of the stench by doing something good with it at the end.

The same attitude lives on today to a great extent.  Standing in its way are laws, regulations, labor unions (when they aren’t crooked themselves), and government oversight.  Under the present Bush administration, and for years before, business had its way in dismantling the protections citizens have from the amorality of business.  The problem though, is that in their purest form, markets are nothing more than the arena of the tooth and claw.  Fair dealing is a weakness.  The more unregulated the markets have become, the more conscience-free they have grown, to the point where even Mr. American Droid is starting to take notice.  Of course, a lot of damage has been done.

Under Bush II, it became a flat-out free-for-all out there in the financial markets.  Unfortunately, the much-heralded “market forces” didn’t reach an equilibrium and the ship tipped over.  Now, though, the same government that thinks that ordinary citizens aren’t worthy of help is determined to make sure that no one from Fannie May, Freddie Mac, or AIG Insurance (to name but a few bailout recipients) is reduced to shining his own shoes or giving up his butler.  Under Bush II, a regular person who falls down is left to lie there unless the strained resources of private charity come to his rescue.  A rich person, or a shareholder in a rich person’s company, is handed a new bag of cash and given a mild chastisement.  The mulligans all go to the the guys in the nice pants.

Just like it isn’t a bad thing to be a liberal, it isn’t a bad thing to have a government.  As I see it, the government should represent the collective best of its citizens.  I’m against the death penalty, for instance.  However, if a close friend or family member were brutally murdered, I’m human enough that I’d probably want that person executed.  It would be the job of the government to ignore me and do the right thing.  Maybe this is a bad example, since there’s still plenty of support for the death penalty.  But you know what I mean.  Our collective self, our government, should have the rationality to act better than an individual inflamed by passion.  Should.  Our government should understand that while capitalism can be a pretty good economic engine, engines with no guidance can veer dangerously out of control.

Anyway, here’s a picture of Mary Ann with a goat.

Bush Advisors To Counsel Palin On Foreign Policy

I see that Bush has his former aides counseling Sarah Palin on foreign policy.  Isn’t that like Verne Troyer counseling somebody on being tall?

Obama’s Problems Palin Comparison

I’m not quite sure yet where all the lies are with Sarah Palin, her daughter, and their apparent idolatry of the Spears family, but as Agent Mulder always said, “The truth is out there.”   How much do you think the new baby pictures will sell for?

I love it when the Republicans pick a VP candidate who, a few days later, is both having to deny allegations that her baby is actually her daughter’s and that she canned a public official because he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband.

Think The Beverly Hillbillies:

Come and listen to a story ’bout Ms. Sarah P.,
A poor governor with a pageant history,
Then one day she was lyin’ in her bed,
And out of her womb popped her grandson’s head.

Nice vet job, John.  And thanks!

P.S.  So now they’re saying Bristol is “about” five months pregnant.  In Alaskan, “about five months” apparently means “two months.”  It must have something to do with those long winter nights.

Magnificent Creatures

Although we shouldn’t have spent the money, Mary Ann and I went to Providence, Rhode Island and thereabouts recently for a short vacation.  I’ll be throwing up (poor choice of words) some highlights.  First we have the whale-watching tour.  Yes, it’s kind of hokey, and there were a lot of the same kind of people who call whales “fish,” but the whales themselves were incredible.  It’s one thing to see them on TV, but quite another to see them close-up.  I’m not a photographer and don’t have the equipment to do them justice, but here goes anyway.  The photos are probably better than the video:

done

Morticians And Taxidermists With Too Much Time On Their Hands

Southwest Chicago correspondent Nancy, along with Josh (who was bitten by a wallaby, hahahahaha!) recently traveled to various locations in Wisconsin to see strange things.  Among them were a funeral home in Madison where the director and taxidermist friends have set up numerous scenes of squirrels, including the rare albino ones, participating in human activities.  The squirrels, by the way, died of natural causes such as being hit by golf balls.  Well, maybe that’s not a really natural cause.  Anyway, no squirrels were harmed to make of the tableaux.

Words alone cannot adequately depict this veritable squirrel necropolis, so here are some pictures:

I’d like to see someone do this with Republicans.  It would be OK to harm them, though.