It's been an interesting news day

[sabotabby]

Conservative senator Patrick Brazeau is a wife-beating racist shitbag, and it seems to have caught up with him. Read this, then read this, and then enjoy the happy memory of that time Justin Trudeau punched him out. (Note: I also enjoy the thought of Trudeau getting punched, but Brazeau is more of a scumbag. Note also that this typifies my feelings about the Liberal and Conservative parties, respectively.)

While we're on the topic of people who shouldn't be in positions of authority, the LAPD has now totally lost its shit. If I'm following the story correctly, an ex-LAPD officer went nuts and killed a bunch of people after trying to whistleblow about corruption in the department. The LAPD reacted by shooting him just kidding, shooting two completely innocent people who looked nothing like him (as in they were Asian women and he is a black dude, but, you know, driving a car that looked a bit like his).

My pension plan is evil. :( I mean, I knew that, but this is really evil.

If you need a chaser after that, here's a video of the first Hello Kitty in space.

Watch on YouTube

I also like this list of 25 things you don't have to justify to anyone. I disagree with #22, though—who you vote for affects other people, and if you vote for someone who, for example, wants to take some of my human rights away, I reserve the right to judge you for it. Otherwise, though, I think it's got a message many of us need to hear right now.

In other news, the snow is really coming down, isn't it? I am really enjoying my classes this semester and I hate the thought of losing a day of teaching, but—you know, if it's a snow day and I can hang around in my pyjamas all day watching The Wire and cuddling with my cats, that's okay too.

Comments

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Totally off topic, have you seen the abandonedplaces community? Most of the stuff is from Russia.

[sabotabby]

I have! I think I joined at some point, or at least stalked it a lot.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

Some of those things, just, no.

Like the drinking one-if you crash your car and beat your wife every weekend, yeah, you gotta answer for it. Etc

And some of them, in theory you dont have to answer for it, buf people will judge you.

[sabotabby]

How much I judge tends to be based on proximity, and also the effect various behaviour has on others.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

I usually dont give a shit what people do, but there are some things i judge, if theyre bad enough.

If someone beats his wife & kids, i think theyre a piece of shit. Doesnt matter that its not my wife & kids-i judge em-they just suck.

[sabotabby]

Oh, of course. I mean, first link being a prime example. But generally if people want to fuck up their own lives and it doesn't affect me, I'm quite unconcerned. It's only when it extends to someone else that it's a problem.

[90pointmetaphor.livejournal.com]

I think a bunch of them need an "as long as you're not hurting anyone else" caveat. Like the drinking one.

[metawidget]

Yeah, this. Once you start hurting people, you may be a scumbag and should be in for some scrutiny, tough love and/or jail time. Not that that's contentious around here. But otherwise, have a drink or not, eat special brownies or not, whatever.

Voting in a way that doesn't attempt to minimize scumbagginess counts as hurting people :)

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

Like the one about experimenting-if youre a man, and you fuck 100 women, and 1 man, you are forever known as "the gay guy." You just are. Not fair, but thats how it is.

[sabotabby]

Dudes are weird. I'm pretty sure it's not like that in my social circles.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

As I undestand it, the LAPD guy was fired more than 5 years ago and joined the Navy. Then a month after he was honorably discharged (now), he posted a manifesto that said "if I can't have a family you can't" and started murdering the children of police officers. Which to me lends a certain gravitas to "you are kind of paranoid and we don't want you to work here anymore" and makes me think he is the kind of guy who really likes shooting people. Hard for me to see an armed muscle man shooting kids as the victim rather than manifestation of patriarchy and entitlement.

The LAPD did shoot up a totally wrong truck, though. And they're obsessed with high speed chases, which are never a good idea.

[sabotabby]

I would feel much more sympathetic towards him if he was just shooting LAPD officers rather than their children. But it does make you question the sort of people who are armed and legally given the right to use deadly force.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I have known some very responsible and intelligent military folk and maybe two police officers I considered friends, but I've known a lot more of them (most now working as security guards) who I really, really, really don't feel happy to have in positions of authority. Bad drivers, too.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

I tend to think it is a combination of the kind of people we attract to these jobs (be totally self-reliant! stop shit before it starts! represent the will of the state!) and the way we condition them once they're there (be top dog! don't have sympathy for these subhumans! we'd all be better off rid of them! don't hesitate or you die!), and being constantly under stress and in fear for your life (while being discouraged from admitting weakness or fear or lack of sleep, or shamed for seeking psychological help). Not good. Not good at all.

[sabotabby]

This.

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

"children" means the adult children of police officers. It's not as *not-bad as targeting police officers but the guy isn't going around shooting kids.on the playground.

*not-bad meaning it's not "good" to shoot police officers. But you know...

Is there a word in the English language that would fit here?

[sabotabby]

Ambivalent?

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Seriously. At their best, cops can be hilariously crude and offensive - with humorous anecdotes about thinking about answering a robbery call and beating up the guy only to learn that it was public urination or arresting angry drunk white people and blasting "Fuck the Police" by NWA on the way to the station.

And apparently there's a lot of overtime that is spent playing Grand Theft Auto.

But one wonders what kind of lazy gatekeeping is involved in hiring police when this shit happens. There was a New York cop that got off duty, went to a bus stop, saw a lone woman, flashed his badge and took her to a place where he raped her. Pretty much most of the cops that he worked with made noises about wanting to kill the guy (becasue seriously if you are a cop, you are already fighting for a decent public image as it is without that kind of shit happening) but a better solution would be at least some kind of psychological profiling to go along with the physical requirements.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

You're talking as if they want to hire balanced, caring human beings. They don't. A guy in Vancouver sued the PD there because they wouldn't hire him because his IQ was too high. His IQ was 104. He lost.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

At very least they want to hire cops who aren't going to go batshit crazy.

And that Vancouver case sounds weird.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

Then there were the NYPD officers who shot Amadou Diallo 41 times for holding up his vending license in the vestibule of his home. I was at a rally where we chanted "Police Academy 101…it's a wallet, not a gun!"

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

Man, if I weren't leaving soon I would totally restart watching The Wire. I miss that show and I'm a little jelly.

[sabotabby]

I just finished the second season and need a hug.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

*hug*

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I have a friend named Sergei (actually he's the boyfriend of a friend but we get along well enough) who actually is from the Ukraine. I put the clip of Ziggy going "Come on, you're Russian. So you're Boris. It's hilarious" on his FB wall (actually I put it on her FB wall because I knew he'd see it) as soon as I knew that he'd find it funny (as opposed to really insulting which it it is as well).

So season 3 is a little confusing because it's trying to do a lot of things including wrapping up the Barksdale story, start the Marlo story and add politicians to the mix (if you watch Game of Thrones, you will recognize the main politician as Littlefinger - he doesn't start out as sleazy as Littlefinger in The Wire) but I think the most important characters are Bunny the lieutenant and the Cutty, the con who is coming out of jail after about 20 years and trying to get back in the game. They are great as characters who are sick of the Game and want to get out of it or at least change it.

[sabotabby]

The Boris thing is funny to me because there used to be this moving company that would robocall people with a heavy Russian accent and say, "Hi! I am Boris the mover." Several of my friends used the company and everyone was always disappointed that they didn't get Boris himself.

The young guy in the first episode who talks a mile a minute is Littlefinger? No wonder I don't trust him.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Carcetti? That would probably be him. I always forget when he's introduced.

And the guy that goes "Kill him or don't. I got things to do." when Bubbles almost gets shot in the first episode of season 3 is Marlo. He's that cold throughout the series.

[sabotabby]

Hah, I like him already.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Marlo or Carcetti?

[sabotabby]

Marlo. But then, I'm apparently the only person watching who doesn't much care for Bubbles.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

gaesrgafhgfhj

[agatharuncible.livejournal.com]

Ugh, the entire story about the LAPD situation is a mess. :/ It wouldn't surprise me if they were initially trying to cover up some kind of corruption (and shooting those women was a dick move on their part, I hope they get sued) but this man is not going to make a point by murdering innocent people. He's not even limiting himself to the officers who dismissed him, but to their families and to other officers as well. I've read that his manifesto threatened lesbian, Asian, and Hispanic officers and African-American officers in positions of authory (blaming the latter for the hostility and racism of white officers). If he's trying to make a point about the police force, he's utterly failing.

One of the articles I've read about him says that one of the things he reported was the fact that a woman who trained new recruits or some such dismissed a man because he was severely schizophrenic. Try as I might, I can't wrap my head around the logic that that was something bad or unfair given the amount of weapons that the average police person has access to and the responsibility it entails.

Idk, it just sounds like both sides are wrong and need to take several seats and gtfo.

(ONTD has a post about a series of open letters to celebrities that he posted on FB. Most of them sound disturbingly normal, except that he admired Charlie Sheen and could think of so many celebrities that he "admires".)

I agree with that list (and what you're saying about #22). The others are sound -- I hate the fact that I have to keep explaining that yes, I'm single, and yes, I'm happy being single because I choose to be single. I like #9, because I have no idea what's wrong with me but it does affect my life and I hate the fact that regardless of whether I'm vague or tell people exactly what happened, I just sound like I'm making it up as an excuse or for attention.

[sabotabby]

Yeah. None of these people should ever have been issued a gun.

I actually don't know how much say one's doctor needs to have about one's body, really. There are a lot of doctors with fatphobic ideas, or my old GP, who linked all of my problems back to depression and refused to acknowledge that I wasn't in perfect physical health. So yeah. Riders and qualifications for all of these, but I still think it's a good start.