Feral Island Teens

(Photo from the Seattle Times)

I'm usually not really that big on 'true crime' kind of crap, but there's something really intriguing about this story from the Seattle Times this morning, about 17 year old "Feral Teen" Colton Harris-Moore who's been living on Camano Island near Seattle and robbing from its wealthy residents for 11 years. Apparently he camps in the woods and robs from the rich to support his existence, have fun and give to friends. Kids these days.

From the Times Story, by Jennifer Sullivan:

CAMANO ISLAND — Whether it's locals gossiping over coffee at the Elger Bay Café, fishermen picking up bait at the country store or snowbirds lounging in their luxurious summer homes, one 17-year-old boy is the talk of the island.

And depending on who's talking, Colton Harris-Moore — a ninth-grade dropout believed to be responsible for scores of burglaries on the island over the past 11 years — is alternately described as a calculating criminal, master survivalist or modern-day Robin Hood.

But Island County Sheriff Mark Brown has a one-word description for Harris-Moore: "Wanted."

It seems everyone on this 40-square-mile island nestled between Whidbey Island and North Snohomish County has an opinion of the teenage fugitive and what should be done with him. Some believe he's a product of a troubled childhood and deserves sympathy and psychiatric care, while others say he's an opportunistic burglar who deserves to be greeted with gunfire...

The teen's alleged recent burglary spree, which Brown says involves identity theft, stealing credit cards and cars and taking up residence in empty homes, has forced many of Camano Island's more than 17,000 summertime residents out of their rural comfort and to do something they never thought they had to — lock their front doors.

There's something that makes you want to root for a kid like that.

And the Lord Said, "Let there be Assault Rifles"

Everyone's been posting on the Oklahoma church that was planning to give away an assault rifle as a prize at a youth event. I guess I should take a swing. I actually think it's a great idea of outside of the box evangelistic thinking. Along similar lines, if the Promise Keepers would hold a Vegas rally with free prostitutes they'd be relevant again. Free Meth at New Life in Colorado Springs? Joel Osteen giving out a thousand free stolen Rolexes? I'd assume this is what Jesus meant with his command to St. Peter to "Feed my Sheep".

My favorite line from the video on the link above: "Our primary targets (ominous pause) are the young people".

My Liturgical Dance for the Presiding Bishop

I knew this would be online at some point so I might as well bite the bullet and be the first to tell you about it. If you know me and like to see me embarrassed, you'll really want to watch. My appearance comes about a third of the way through and gets better as it goes along. When you have about 20 minutes, click on this link, and watch "Story of the Land". You might as well go full screen for the whole experience.

Welcome To My Nightmare

I've never really told many people this, maybe 3 or 4 people tops, but I frequently have nightmares. It's not that I'm ashamed or feel weird about it, it's just not a topic that comes up in conversation often. (I mean, if you really want to hear about the dream I had where I was getting chased by cobras I'll tell you.) The amount varies from week to week but the average is somewhere around 3 or 4 nights a week I have a bad one. The weird thing is, every time I have one I wake up with an erection that won't go away until I murder a prostitute. Okay, that's not true. The actual weird thing is that I only have them when I sleep on my back.

Maybe I shouldn't say "weird". It may be normal to have nightmares when one is sleeping on one's back. I wouldn't know because I didn't take the time to read this Wiki article on the subject. If you're really interested you can read it and then tell me about it. At any rate, I have nightmares whenever I sleep on my back. Sometimes I'm falling, sometimes I'm being attacked and, on mercifully rare occasions, I'm James Brolin on he and Babs' honeymoon night!


The most recent nightmare I've had was actually last night and it was totally effed up. I don't remember the whole thing but I still remember the money shot vividly. The gist of it was this: I was staying overnight at my parents' house and I wasn't allowed to sleep in my old bedroom. Instead they informed me that I would be sleeping in their basement. (If you've seen my parents' basement you know it's scary enough as is; they have about 30 cats that all stay down there in the winter.) In the dream the basement was a fairly accurate representation of reality, the ground was filthy and there was cat crap all over the place. To top it off I was given only a sleeping bag and pillow to protect me from the feces.

Now here comes the good part. I went to bed for the night and that was that. The dream picked up the next morning with me waking up to find I was covered in GIANT FREAKING CENTIPEDES!!!


The nasty little bugs were crawling all over me and, as if that weren't bad enough, some of them had dug there filthy little bug legs into my flesh! I remember sitting up and ripping them off me, screaming in terror. I swear to you that I can still feel how panicked I was and what it felt like to rip their legs out of my skin. At some point Mom and Dad came down to the basement and I began screaming at them about being covered in bugs. Their reply? "So, what's the big deal? The cats do fine down here."

At that point I woke up, still panicked and still grabbing at invisible bugs. It only took a moment to realize how stupid I must look to my cats and then I calmed down. I don't get freaked out easily but that damn nightmare got to me. I spent all day swatting at my legs and arms because I thought I felt things crawling on me. I felt like I normally do when I forget to do a speedball in the morning! Jokes about drug abuse aside, I still have the heebie-jeebies. I couldn't even bring myself to soak in my bathtub leech farm tonight!

And on that note I'm going to conclude this blog. I'm pretty tired so I think I'm going to go to bed and not fall asleep on my back again. Pleasant dreams all. Try and make sure you don't think about bugs while you're going to bed tonight. Leeches, leeches, leeches, spiders, bugs, snakes, Barbara Streisand's vagina. Haha, suckers!

I beg to differ sir. I'm pretty sure Emilio Estevez was not in "Red Dawn"

Well, tonight I WAS planning on going to a little indie theater over by OSU to watch Battle Royale which, if you've never seen it, is awesome. I find myself running short on time however and I don't think I'll be able to make it. I suppose missing it isn't that big of a deal; I've seen it before and I'd have to drive across town at 11 PM to watch it by myself. The theater was probably going to be full of fat nerdy otaku anyway and I can do without that.

When it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to make the start time I decided I better just stay in and work on getting some things done around the house. In order to accomplish these goals I found that I was going to need some Krazy Glue, epoxy putty and an X-Acto knife. To make a long story short I drove around for two hours looking for these things and wound up returning home with the Krazy Glue, a pound of hamburger (extra lean) and Poltergeist and Red Dawn on DVD.

When I left my apartment I had every intention of only getting the glue, putty, and X-Acto knife. But, much to my chagrin, every store that would potentially sell these three things closes at 8 PM on Saturdays. I finally found myself at Wal-Mart and, of course, all they had was the Krazy Glue. Frustrated and out of stores to check I decided to juts go ahead and get the glue - the other items could wait until tomorrow. So I grabbed the glue and headed to the front of the store to check out. When I got to the front of the store the lines for the registers were all at least six people long and there were only four registers open. I guess I should have expected as much. Aside from incompetent employees the only other thing you can always expect from Wal-Mart is too few open registers during peak business hours.

Rather than wait in a long line (which I hate almost as much as Sean Hannity) I decided to browse around the store for a while until the lines died down. In retrospect I probably should have just waited in line because when I "just browse" I usually wind up making impulse purchases. Tonight proved to be no exception.

I started my browsing in electronics where I perused all the fancy HD tvs I'll never be able to afford. When I got sick of that I made my way over to the $5 DVD display which, of course, was over-run by pro-wrestling fans, their screaming children and Mexicans. I've had a pretty short fuse the last several days because I haven't been smoking and I found myself getting increasingly agitated with the unwashed masses gathered around the cheap DVDs. All I really wanted to do was check out the special features on the Joe Dirt disc but Cooter, Jolene and their little kid, let's call him "Couldn't Afford An Abortion," kept getting in my way.

Frustrated, I decided to move over to the $9 DVD rack - the upper middle class neighborhood of DVD sections. Now I wasn't intending to actually buy anything but a little voice inside my head kept saying, "Come on Shayne, do you really WANT to stand in that big long line just to buy one tiny tube of Krazy Glue?" At first I fought it but it's persistence won out. If I couldn't waste money on cigarettes I was damn sure going to waste it on something else. At first I was going to get The Protector but of course they were sold out. Then I noticed they had the special edition of Red Dawn for $9 and it was settled. Call me sentimental but I'll always have a place in my heart for this movie. I don't know if it's the Reagan-era anti-Commie propaganda or the sub-Brat Pack cast but I love Red Dawn. I snatched it up quickly and then arbitrarily decided to get Poltergeist as well.

At this point I had built up a powerful hunger and remembered I had Manwich sauce at home but no hamburger. Being that I fancy myself a burly man's man I felt that I would be doing myself a disservice by not fixing a delicious pan full of hamburger and bland tasting BBQ sauce. So off to the food department I went to score some delicious steroid laced Wal-Mart beef.

At this point I was pretty much fed up with Wal-Mart and their damn smiley face logos and I decided it was time to make my escape. I found the shortest line (only 5 people in it!) and claimed my lot, much like early settlers in the West must have done. I placed all my items out on the belt and waited patiently for the cashier to get to me. After about a minute the guy standing behind me noticed I was buying Red Dawn and said, "Man, Red Dawn, I haven't seen that movie in years."

Being an anti-social douche I tried to blow him off and just said, "Yeah, it's pretty cool." This wasn't enough though. He proceeded to tell me how awesome it was and how unlikely it would be for Russians to actually invade the mid-West.

"It's not like Pearl Harbor man. We have radar and shit. You couldn't just parachute into America without being noticed" he said grinning at his proficiency for identifying glaring plot holes in films.

He was right of course. A Russian invasion of America is pretty unlikely, even during the dark ages of the 1980s. But still, I'm not going to let something like "reality" stand in the way of me enjoying a perfectly good action movie. My sensibilities had been offended and I had to respond to his allegations of "unrealism." (Is that a word?)

"Well, the Soviets WERE a formidable adversary during The Cold War. It's true that they couldn't get a Hind-D attack chopper over the border let alone an entire army but that doesn't mean the Red Menace wasn't an ever present threat to national security. I think Red Dawn really just served as a mouth piece for what a lot of Americas feared in the 80s...all out war."

I actually said that to him too. I wasn't serious of course but I was pretty sure he wasn't going to pick up on my sarcasm at this point in our "conversation." After I had finished my abridged treatise on Red Dawn and Cold War era paranoia I expected him to just pipe down but he didn't. Instead he began telling me how great Emilio Estevez was in the movie. I told him that E Money (that's what I call him) wasn't in Red Dawn but his brother Charlie Sheen was.

"No way, I'm pretty sure they were both in it," he said.

"No, I'm sure E Dog wasn't in Red Dawn. See, he's not even listed here in the credits," I said pointing to my soon-to-be-purchased DVD. "You must be thinking of Young Guns. They were both in that."

"Aw shit you're right. That's what I was thinking of. That movie was good too. I like the part were Charlie Sheen gets shot by that dude in the shitter."

I agreed with him that Young Guns was also a bitchin' movie and left it at that. By this time my turn at the register had arrived and I quickly paid the employee and left. I don't know what happened to the guy behind me in line and I probably never will. Maybe he'll return home and regail his wife with tails of "this dude at Wal-Mart who was buying Red Dawn. You know, that movie with Emilio Estevez and that Jewy looking bitch from Dirty Dancing." Or maybe he'll just masturbate to internet porn and fall asleep. I just don't know - life is full of uncertainty. The only thing I DO know is that Manwich is good and now I really want to watch Red Dawn.

Peace out yo,

Shayne

Everyone should be Japanese.

Binocular Soccer

Hey lonely, unpopular, overweight teenagers...now there's a Bible just for you!

In Columbus there is a small free newspaper called "The Other Paper." Basically it's an arts/entertainment/politics paper that comes out every Thursday. I usually pick it up and give it a read every week so I can look at all the great concerts I'm not going to be able to go to. In the paper there's usually a section of "odd" stories from around the world. Last week featured an article about something called "The Manga Bible." If you aren't already aware, Manga are Japanese comic books that feature a very distinctive style of art. I'm sure you're familiar with the art style if you have even a passing knowledge of pop culture. Anyway, I thought for sure this story had to be a joke but I did some research and it's for real. You can take a look at the website here. Although the creator seems to be taking it seriously it's pretty funny. Aside from transforming Jesus into a Yojimbo style wandering samurai-looking fellow he also "hipped" up the dialogue by using contemporary American slang as well as weird ass British slang.

If you check the website out you can see some of the other stuff the creator has gotten himself into. Apparently he's also trying to become an Anglican priest. At one point he mentions he was a founding member of Black Box...which would have been awesome if he had of meant THIS Black Box. Instead, it's some club for British Christian comic artists...pfft.

Anyway, there's no real reason for me posting this information. I just thought it was funny. Here's a video of some guy teaching you how to win in a bar fight. Cheers!

Shayne

Give Me Socialized Health Care or Give Me Death !

As a card carrying member of The Godless Liberal Heathen Club I am oath sworn to uphold various beliefs and ideas. Collectively these beliefs and ideas are known as "The Esoteric Laws of the Magnificent Kennedy" and to date there are 1,347 of them. In order to gain entrance to the GLHC, a candidate is "compelled" to memorize all the Laws and recite them from memory at an induction ceremony. The ceremony itself is a secretive affair involving a ritual baptism in John Locke's platinum bidet, copious amounts of libations and interpretive dance....but that's neither here nor there. Now I know many of you may not be familiar with these laws since membership in the club is restricted to college professors, politicians, Hollywood types and the French. So for your convenience I'm going to list a few of them for you:

1. Gay people should be allowed to get married if they so choose.
   
2. Bill Clinton was the greatest president in the history of the universe.
   
3. Destroying the environment is a bad idea and we should stop doing it.
4. Grown men should be allowed to marry farm animals and small children.
   
5. Religion has no place in (public) schools.
6. War is very bad...especially when it's declared on nouns. (i.e. drugs and terror)
   
7. Rich people should be taxed all to hell.
8. Life on Earth developed over millions of years due to evolution/natural selection.
9. Although Charlton Heston starred in many great films (ex. Omega Man, Soilent Green, Planet of the Apes) he became a real horror show later in life.
10. Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner is the single greatest moment in television history.

As you can see, my list is nowhere near exhaustive. Were I to copy down every Law it would take 12 hours to read and then Ted Turner would come to your house to kill you. Just know that our Laws are many and varied. And, although we DO have to memorize every one, only the most gifted members of the Club are able to combine all 1,347 tenets into a coherent world view.

But just knowing the Laws isn't enough. We GLHers are also duty bound to disseminate the Laws into society by any means available to us. Some accomplish this by infiltrating the mass media. Others insert themselves into the political world and introduce legislation that reflects GLH dogma. You'll be able to see an example of this next year when Senator Ted Kennedy introduces the Baby Fetus' For Biodiesel Act of 2009. The Act was ghostwritten by Al Gore and represents a masterful synthesis of several Esoteric Laws. Also, be sure to catch Gore's upcoming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth II: the Quickening" in which he begins to plant the seeds for the BFBD Act before it's formally introduced.

Unfortunately I have no political or media ties so I'm forced to work with what I have: Blogs here and on MySpace. That means that, right now, you get the honor of reading (if you're still actually reading this that is) about my current cause célèbre: socialized health care! HOORAY!

I've been interested in the idea of socialized health care for some time now but lately I've really started to get obsessed with the idea of it. I think it has something to do with the fact that I currently work for a large prescription drug insurance company. I'm not going to mention the name or anything but there's a good chance more than one of you has called me and begged me to override a rejected pharmacy claim for oxycontin...you junkies! I just don't understand what the U.S.A's friggin' problem with socialized health care is. Why aren't Joe Six-Pack and Jill Sleeping-Pill-Addict out in front of the White House screaming for this? Why, as a nation, will we sit back and let the government waste billions of dollars launching missiles at poor people in other countries while millions of people here in America go without health care?

Every single day at work I deal with people who are getting screwed because their insurance company drastically raised their co-payments or stopped covering some medication they need. Then, when I foolishly decide to listen to talk radio I get to hear fuckwits like Sean Hannity lie to his mush brained listening audience about how socialized health care is SOOOO expensive and how it's the next step towards all of us becoming dirty pinkos. Do you know, as a nation, we consistently spend more on health care that any other nation IN THE WORLD?! Every other industrialized nation on the planet offers health care to ALL of it's citizens yet we spend more than they due annually and millions of Americans still go without. Does that sound right to you? Does that sound like something that should happen in "the greatest country on Earth?"

I've gotten into arguments with people about this before and I swear to you that every time their counter-point is essentially, "I don't want to pay for health care for poor and lazy people." Well you know what, you already are. Why do you think your premiums keep going up? Hospitals off set the cost of treating uninsured people by charging YOUR insurance company more for YOUR operations. Then your insurance company raises your premiums to cover their loss.

Why not just eliminate the insurance companies and cut out the middle man? Either way someone is going to wind up getting your hard earned money for health care. Is it really that horrible of a prospect to think that part of what you make in a week is going to help someone out instead of making some CEO's stock increase by a fraction of a percent?

You can feel free to disagree with me if you want (if you do please do it in comment form...I'm pretty desperate for attention) but you better make a really good argument. Part of my job entails telling elderly people that the medication they need to live is no longer covered under their insurance because it's to expensive. It's pretty hard for me to be objective when I have to do that every day.

Also, if you're curious about where I got some of the information from in this blog you can look it up here, here, here, and here. I was going to provide direct links to articles and stats but I'm a typical lazy commie liberal. Besides, it's not like this stuff is hard to find.

Shayne

A-hoy-hoy all. My name is Shayne and I'm Tim's older and vastly less intelligent brother. Tim invited me to contribute to this blog as part of some bizarre scheme of his to dominate something called "the Blogosphere." I'm not really sure what he was talking about but I think the Blogosphere is like Thunderdome from the third Mad Max movie. Anyway, Tim thought it would be boss if I started posting blogs on his site; he thinks I can bring something "funky-fresh" to the cyber-table. (He actually said "funky-fresh" too, that's how I knew this was important to him. He doesn't talk like an early 90's rapper unless he's really excited about something!)

To be honest though, I think this should be really interesting. While Tim and I DO have a lot in common there are still many things about us that are different. For example, Tim is dedicating his life to the church and I'm agnostic bordering on being an atheist, I'm married to the sea while he's married to Angel and he likes mashed potatoes while I have an insatiable hunger for pornography. It's fortunate that, despite these differences, we've still been able to maintain a strong bond due largely in part to our shared hatred of minorities and ethnic types. (Okay, calm down. Neither of us really hate minorities or ethnic types.)

I really am happy to be here though. And I promise to do my best to not drag Tim's good cyber-name through the mud. I don't want to wind up being the Roger Clinton to Tim's Bill. Hopefully my nonsensical banter and bile-filled ranting will prove to be a welcome counterpart to Tim's well thought out and scholarly writing style...it probably won't though.

Smell ya later chumps,

Shayne

Is this real?

Christvertising?

The Solution to my problems

I've found the solution to my problems, and I think I'll be able to get out of paying property taxes on our apartment. http://www.openordination.org.