An 8 year old kid + a loaded Uzi = Bad, bad things

From the article:

A Massachusetts sporting club is donating $10,000 to children’s charities as part of a deal settling criminal charges in the death of an 8-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself in the head with an Uzi during a gun fair.

There were so many points of failure in this story (the organizers’, the former police chief’s, the gun club’s, the father’s, and the poor 15 year old boy who was supervising Christopher) that it’s hard to know where to begin casting the blame. Christopher Bizilj deserved so much better than what happened to him. Mistakes and lapses in judgment happen all the time, but I honestly don’t know how his mother, Suzanne Bizilj can stand the knowledge that when their child was handed a loaded Uzi, her husband was preparing to take pictures, rather than to help his son hold the firearm.

Craziness

I’m wonder if yesterday’s post made it sound like I hate children, which actually couldn’t be further from the truth. I like kids, and kids really like me. I’m the Baby Whisperer. You give me a fussy kid and me holding them generally quiets them down pretty quickly (note: this only works on babies who don’t know me very well – I guess my charm is in my newness). I just try not to be all, “Won’t somebody think about the children??” when it comes to a everything. I think that sometimes people give up too much in the name of protecting children, to nobody’s benefit.

Unless, of course, protecting children is exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. In which case, you’d better earn your keep. I just read the most horrific story about Our Little Rugratz, a daycare center in Jersey City that left behind a two-year-old after a field trip to New York City. Are you kidding me? My 19-year-old cousin was in Manhattan on Saturday and wouldn’t even let me leave him in Chinatown, where he was supposed to meet up with his friends.

How is it possible that people in charge of multiple children didn’t count obsessively to see if they had everybody? Kids wander off all the time, so if they’d known that they were missing one child, that would have been more understandable. But they didn’t. They left Emily Grogan in New York, and didn’t realize it until several hours had passed. Oh. My. God. And the first indication that parents Amy and Joseph Grogan had that something was wrong was when Amy went to pick up Emily. I’m so sorry that her parents had to go through that, and completely understand why the Grogans have pressed charges against Iris and Luis Pietri, the owners of the daycare center.

Thanks, TSA

I think the TSA keeps doing really stupid things because they know I’m too lazy to look for good posting material. Anyway, this time they detained a college student who was set to board a flight for having Arabic-language flash cards. How do they think that native English speakers are going to learn Arabic? Magic?

Let’s all sigh and shake our heads sadly.

Ouch

I thought my high school volleyball coach was a jerk (and he was), but at least he never hit any of us in the head with a volleyball.

Eeeeeevil

Dating site BeautifulPeople.com just shoved a bunch of its members back into the rating process, after other “vigilant members” noticed that these people had gained weight. That seems pretty cold to me, but what does the site’s owner have to say?

“As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld,” said site founder Robert Hintze. “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

Jesus. That’s cold. The professional first half of that quote left me completely unprepared for the part where he thought that using the term “fatties” was a good idea.

Ya think??

“We tend to believe Zhang’s death was caused primarily by unknown health problems. But there’s still a possibility that the freezing contributed to his death.“

Wow. To call this sentence an understatement would be doing a disservice to all the mere understatements people have uttered throughout recorded history. I mean, it doesn’t even assume as much responsibility as that classic, passive-voiced cop-out, “Mistakes were made.”

Also, happy Monday!

I may never eat again

Below you will find an email that I received from UrbanDaddy. I just joined this site, and I’m pretty sure that I will be unsubscribing rather soon, if this is their idea of something that MUST be shared. I left the contact info at the end, though, in case what makes me vomit in my mouth actually makes you salivate. I simply do not understand why you’d want sausage that tasted like a bacon cheeseburger, instead of just having a bacon cheeseburger.

Served Up
	Introducing the Bacon Cheeseburger Sausage
	Think back to your early days. It seemed perfectly reasonable, even brilliant, to combine all the foods you loved into one glorious superfood. Sure, there were naysayers who thought your chicken nugget pizza terrine was obscene. But you stuck to your guns. And we have a reward for you. Introducing the Bacon Cheeseburger Sausage, a hybrid foodstuff born into this world by superstar butchers Tom Mylan and Brent Young, available now at the Meat Hook, in Williamsburg. If you’re not familiar with these guys, they’re all about “disrespecting” high quality meats. They recommend serving the sausage on a bun, with mustard, at home, as an antidote to fast food cravings. Pair it with cheap beer (more on this later) and let the soul satisfying goodness wash over you. The varied, powerful, sausage ingredient list reads like the roster of the 1927 Yankees (or the cast of The View)—beef shoulder, pork belly, onion, cheap beer (usually Busch or Budweiser), cheese (American, cheddar and bleu), crunchy bacon bits, salt and pepper. And if you’re looking to indulge your old superfood cravings, they take custom sausage orders (in mass quantities). Call ahead and they’ll turn your whims into a meal: Buffalo Chicken Wing Sausage. Taco Chorizo Sausage. Go ahead, say it out loud. The sausage future is wide open. Note: Bacon Cheeseburger Sausage, available now at The Meat Hook, 100 Frost St, Brooklyn, 718-349-5033

NIMBY-ism at its finest

Wow. Lawyer Andy Vickery hates homelessness so much, he’s suing a homeless shelter located in the church across the street from his office. His claim that he is suing because the shelter’s clients are disruptive, driving down property values, and are scaring off business would be easier to believe if he was only asking for the shelter to be shut down, or even for increased measures to control the homeless population who visit the shelter. The $250,000 that Vickery has requested makes him look ever so slightly like a greedy douchebag.

Meh

I suppose I should post something happy in honor of Thanksgiving, but whatever. This story is awful, which makes sense, because teenagers suck. Later today or tomorrow I’ll post some pictures that are so cute that you brain will explode.

More on TSA Mom and Balloon Boy

Just a quick followup to yesterday’s post about Balloon Boy and TSA Mom. Stories about Falcon Heene’s ordeal seeming faked grew louder and louder as the weekend progressed. Gawker posted a weird interview with Robert Thomas, a student who helped the boy’s father, Richard Heene, with his balloon stuff earlier this year. It’s not definitive proof of a hoax on the part of the Heenes (as it’s billed), but it shows how much of a messed up famewhore Richard Heene. As I said yesterday, that’s nothing that couldn’t have been determined by his two appearances on the reality show Wife Swap. Just an hour ago, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden, who earlier in the weekend said that this was not being considered a hoax, reversed that, and announced the following possible charges against the Heene parents:

Conspiracy
Contributing to the delinquency of a minor (Class 4 felony)
False reporting to authorities (Class 3 Misdemeanor)
Attempting to influence a public servant (Class 4 Felony)

Nic, the woman who wrote of being detained and having her child taken from her by the TSA, has posted a response to those who have questioned her story in light of the release of CCTV footage by the TSA. The post is entitled “My Apologies,” although it seems more defensive than apologetic. She maintains that the video does not show everything that happens, and that at some point, her son was separated from her by the TSA. She says that she doesn’t know why the video doesn’t show things that she stated happened, and I hate to speculate, but I have a theory, and it rhymes with frying….mmmm, frying. I am so hungry right now.