Quick Hitts

In North Carolina a high school showed up with a piece of red duct tape across his mouth. “Silence for Christ” was written on it.  He was suspended when he refused to remove it.

I’m not sure, but I think I was in tenth grade when I went to a class with a 45 record on each ear.  The teacher had a perfect, foolproof way to handle it.

(Some background may be necessary for our younger readers.  Back then we listened to music on plastic disks called “records.”  (ri kôrds′)   Singles were sold on smaller disks called 45s.  For some reason they had a much larger hole in the middle of them than albums did.  Large enough that you could stick an ear through it.)

I had been horsing around with some friends and somehow ended up with a 45 on each ear.  Someone dared me to go to class that way.  I was never much for taking dares, but this one was harmless and would only get me in minor trouble. It would be worth it to see how Mrs. Mitchell would react.

She didn’t.  She barely glanced in my direction and started class without mentioning it. I was not only disappointed, but began to feel like an idiot, sitting there with my ears sticking through two hit singles.  I waited three, four, five minutes, for some reaction.  There wasn’t any.  I sheepishly removed the records, and stopped trying to get a rise out of Mrs. Mitchell.

His teacher could have used the same method to achieve the same result, and it wouldn’t have become a news item.

And if ignoring him didn’t work, if he kept wearing the tape, day after day, it would be even better.   How many times have you wished you had a nice piece of duct tape when hearing some fundamentalmidget  spew on and on about. . .well, nearly anything?  We should do whatever we can to make this a huge fad.

As you probably know by now the Texas school board has revised their educational guidelines so severely they’re going to have to put “educational” in quotation marks.  Phil Plait made fun of them, then, on Facebook, reacted to people whining about it.

In the ensuing conversation I made a comment about the Moron Badge of Honor, which inspired Glenn Sogge, who I hadn’t met before, to create and post this:

I suggested he might like this article, and he responded with this:

All this goofing around with seals reminds me of this oldie but goodie, which remains a perfect response to the idiots who are still whining about the last Bush election:

Glenn made his badges at this site, which has been around for quite a while (in internet terms, at least).   It lets you make badges, church signs, and a plethora of other things that feature your words on their images.

Sometimes, you really do need some steenking badges.

Note to non-US readers:  Knowing a few facts about the state of Mississippi will make the following story more understandable.

The sole purpose of Mississippi is to keep Alabama off the bottom of every quality of life list.  Whenever you see a chart of US states comparing unwed births, high school dropouts or average number of teeth per citizen you’ll see why Alabama’s state motto is “Thank God For Mississippi.”

Is This The Face of Evil?

Constance McMillen attends high school in Mississippi’s Itawamba county.  She’s also a lesbian who wants to wear a tuxedo and take her girlfriend to the prom.  The school district responded, not simply by refusing to let her attend, but by canceling the prom.  They don’t even have the guts to admit their reason, saying it was canceled “due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events.”

One board member reflected the board’s “thought” process when he said, “We have to protect the childreeeeeeen.  Seeing a cute lesbian in a tux will make all the other girls turn queer.  The only way to prevent a flood of lesbians is to stick our finger in the dike.”  This quote could not be confirmed and may have been made up by me.

Quick question for all the guys reading this: If you were back in high school and had to choose between attending a prom full of pimply heterosexuals trying to look cool, or a prom full of pimply heterosexuals trying to look cool and several hot lesbians in tuxes, which would you pick?

Me too.  I’ll meet you in the long line.

You should follow me on Twitter.

The New York Legislature is considering a bill that would make it a criminal offense for restaurant chefs to add salt to food. Yes, you read that right.  Once again, the absurdity of real life makes satire obsolete.

This is exactly what happens when you let the nanny camel get its nose in the tent.

It started, of course, with smoking bans.  Nicotine nannies, using concocted “science,” demanded laws that prohibited smoking in any “public” establishment.  The results were devastating to many businesses, but they lied about that too.  Those of us who believed in property rights and freedom of choice were shouted down and treated like ignorant lepers.  Our warnings that this was the first step of an increasingly nanny state were met with derision.  “Pfft, that’s just the slippery slope argument.”  But slippery slope is exactly how these weasels operate – time and time and time again.

Two years ago The New York City Department of Health asked restaurants that survived the smoking ban to “voluntarily” limit their use of trans-fats.  (New York City has their own health department, because New York State’s DOH isn’t nanny enough.) Within a year it was law.  Ãœber-nanny Michael Bloomberg hailed it as another victory.  Next they forced most restaurants to post nutritional information about all their dishes.   So although this proposed state law is so ridiculous we need a new word for ridiculous to describe it, it’s not surprising.

Felix Ortiz, the weasel proposing this legislation, has a history of extreme nannyism.  He once tried to legislate mandatory ignition-interlock breathalyzers in all automobiles in NY.  Not just those for people with a DUI, but for everybody.  Sound goofy?  Several car manufactures are now working on making it standard equipment for future models.

It won’t be the first time an oppressive government has tried to interfere with people using salt.  This legislation was announced on 80th anniversary of Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha protesting the British salt tax.  It was the start of India’s revolution against the UK.  On this side of the pond it would be nice to imagine this could be the final straw, the thing that makes Americans rise up and lash out at any congress weasel that supports nanny legislation, but that’s wishful thinking.  Americans used to be made of sterner stuff, but today the majority either doesn’t care about this kind of tyranny or actually likes it.

The bill won’t pass this time, but once the derision dies down it will be back, probably in a more “moderate” form.  Nannies are the most persistent dirtbags on the planet.  To those who scoff, let me remind you that fifteen years ago the idea of Big Brother arresting you for having a smoke in a bar seemed outrageous.

So, liberals and progressives, still think having Big Brother in control of every aspect of your lives is a good idea?

Edited to add: With each passing day the wonderfully cheesy movie “Demolition Man” becomes more accurate.  Check out this clip at the 4:45 mark:

Marketing failures can teach you as much, if not more, as marketing successes.

I just received an e-mail from a company I’ve done business with.  The headline was “Free Ground Shipping from <Company Name>.  I opened it and saw a very attractive ad, which I clicked.

Instead of  taking me to http://companyname.com/ it loaded http://marketing.companyname.com/ and requested a user name and password.  It looked like the prompt for the e-mail administrator.  I tried my name and password anyway, and got a very unfriendly “Access Is Denied” message.

They spent time creating an attractive advertisement. They got me to open it.  They got me to click on it. Then they got me to laugh at their incompetence, because they skipped the simple step of sending a copy to themselves and testing it.

Not too smart, folks.

Check out the latest Quick Hitts Podcast: Figuring Our The Tea Party. Are they a great thing that will save us from creeping socialism, or a mass of misfits and whack-a-loons?

I’ve watched a few CPAC speeches, and they reminded me of townhall.com: It was a combination of brilliant thinkers and mouth-breathing wing-nuts.

It was encouraging to see they invited a gay rights group, and even more encouraging when a wing-nut who condemned them for it was booed off the stage. But it would be better if the wingier of the wing-nuts we’re left where they belong – waiting in the wings. It’s hard to take any movement seriously when a substantial percentage of its followers are birthers and truthers and theocrats.

I don’t usually have the patience for long videos, but this one is worth your time. George Will was funny, entertaining, and smart as he talked about the dependency agenda being installed by both the Republicans and the Democrats.