Not cool

As loath as I am to agree with the New York Post on anything at all, I have to say that they got this story right. Why is Mayor Bloomberg’s technology commissioner claiming to live in Florida full time? And to save $3,000 a year in taxes? That’s insane. She makes over $200,000 a year by herself, and I’m sure her husband has income, too. There’s no excuse to be so cheap. Of course, today her husband informed the good people of Florida that she is not, in fact, a full-time resident, and hasn’t been since 2001. It’s not as though this was a case of oversight; they actively claimed that she still lived year round in Florida; she had a Florida driver’s license; and she voted in Florida elections. Seriously???

Was it worth the talk of fraud and loss of reputation? I will never understand politicians.

Paging Kim Cattrall

I’m sure that many drivers have sat alone in their cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic and looked longingly over at the cars whizzing along in the HOV lane. They probably wished for a friend or coworker to be in the car with them, both for conversational purposes, and also to get in that fast-moving lane. They maybe even thought that, in a pinch, a doll or mannequin would do. The difference between these imaginary drivers of mine and Kathleen Frascinella is that she actually went that extra step and put a mannequin in her front passenger seat so that she could use the HOV lane. I know that’s an abuse of the system, but that kind of cracks me up. Still, I hate it when people think that rules that others follow shouldn’t have to apply to them, so I think it’s awesome that she got a ticket and 2 point on her license.

Although…who’s to say that the mannequin doesn’t come to life when nobody else is watching??

Derelicte lives

I recently saw Zoolander again for the first time in ages. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it; sometimes, after not having seen a movie in a long time, you realize that it wasn’t as good as you remembered. That wasn’t the case in this situation, which is good, because I have a lot of good memories of watching and quoting Zoolander with my brother.

One of the most awesomely far-fetched parts of it was Mugatu’s line of clothing, Derelicte. It was homeless chic, where they went straight for the homeless look and abandoned chic altogether. At least, I thought it was far-fetched. Fast forward to Vivienne Westwood’s new menswear line, which looks like it should be named “Derelicte 2.0: Now With More Dirt.”

I found this image on Jezebel, and you can read the rest of their post on this subject.

This time the TSA really does deserve our scorn

This New York Times article was sent to me by Virginia, my #1, and possibly only, reader (just kidding, Mom). It’s about Michael Hicks, an 8 year old whose name is on a TSA watch list. (Hey, TSA: Good job on improving the way that travelers’ names are checked against government watch lists.) He is scrutinized and subject to extra searches when he flies. Not his parents. Just him. They patted him down when he was 2 years old. Who could do that? How does that make any sense?

I laughed when I read the article, because it is ridiculous to think that any rational person could look at an 8 year old and suspect him of plotting some sort of aviation-related terrorism. But then I got serious; it’s awful when you think of what this child and his family have gone through. It’s even worse when you think that he’s been getting this treatment since the age of 2. I know what toddlers practice their own special brand of terror (my nephew’s nickname isn’t Satanski for nothing), but seriously? This just illustrates the complete lack of logic behind TSA policies, and shows why the TSA justifiably gets such a bad rap.

Also, I was terrified by the story of  Mario Labbé, an adult male with the same problem of having his name on a watch list. He was always questioned when he flew, and they always asked him the same thing. He got sick of it, and was able to fix the entire solution by changing his name. To François Mario Labbé. That’s it? That’s all it took? He changed his name just a little, and all the hassles ended? Although he shouldn’t have been on the list in the first place, I’d feel better knowing that it would take more than a trip to the municipal building for people whose travel plans raise justifiable concerns to evade heightened scrutiny. Where’s the followup? The intergovernmental agency cooperation?

The TSA was created in a hurry to allay people’s fears after 9/11, not out of careful strategy. I’m sure that a lot of TSA workers do want to help make air travel safe, but the system also seems to involve a worrying amount of pseduo-science (Only people with something to hide don’t look you in the eyes), racial profiling (Hey, you there, in the brown skin…), and plain retardedness (What were you planning to do with 101 ml of liquid, comrade??? The limit is 100!). For all that some justified people are pulled out of line or questioned further, it is inarguable that a lot falls through the cracks.

The TSA is probably not a good organization to work for. Their mission is vague, scary as all get out, and potentially dangerous. The Transportation Security Officer, which is the main point of TSA contact for many air travelers, is the poorest paying position in the organization. These factors naturally limit the pool of applicants, and thinking for a moment about who that leaves to work for the TSA explains a lot about people’s perceptions of TSA officers.  Kip Hawley, a former head of the TSA, famously called airport screening positions a dead end job. Yeah, no kidding.

Reading and thinking about the TSA is depressing the crap out of me, so I’ll stop now.

Everybody’s got an opinion

(I don’t know why I find all of this so entertaining; I don’t even watch any of these shows, although I may catch a particularly entertaining monologue or interview if somebody posts it online AND sends me the link to it.)

So it should be clear by now that NBC totally effed up the way they handled the Jay Leno Show/Tonight Show thing, right? They forced Jay Leno into retirement, then placated him with a show in prime time. They promised Conan O’Brien that he could replace Jay and gave him the Tonight Show. In order to make room for Leno, they canceled Southland, which I’ve never seen but is rumored to be excellent, and moved other shows from the 10 o’clock hour to earlier, less permissive time slots. I mean, the man left New York (current temperature 31 degrees) and moved to that wasteland called Los Angeles (current temperature 63 degrees); if that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is.

Southland’s Ben McKenzie on the Jay Leno Show: I’m glad it failed.

Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, and Craig Ferguson: Various awesome car- and chin-related Leno and NBC slapdowns.

Even Hitler is upset about this:

Wow. The only person who is currently getting more thoroughly trashed in late night than Jay Leno is Carson Daly.

Update: There are even more hilarious videos from last night. Gawker.tv organized them, so I don’t have to. Also, Carson Daly is still getting worked over by absolutely everybody.

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.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot???

Protip: When a country deports you, they generally mean for you to stay out. Forever.

Say that you were convicted of smuggling drugs in Thailand and sentenced to death. And suppose that sentence was the changed to 25 years in prison. And what if, four and a half years after you got to prison, you were pardoned by Thailand’s king and sent back home to the UK, where you were from? To recap: what if you’d been sentenced to death and then imprisoned in a country, and were later kicked out of it, never to return?

Would you then go back to “tie up some loose ends?” You are probably not a moron, so I’m guessing your answer would be “No.”

When the phrase “Epic Fail” just isn’t strong enough

So a man recently defected from (richer, democratic) South Korea TO (poorer, dictator-rueld) North Korea. That’s not a joke. He really braved bullets, land mines, and razor wire to get into North Korea. Hardcore.

Also, I don’t know if this is an actual quote or just a translator having some fun, but this is my favorite sentence in the history of news articles: “He is now under the warm care of a relevant organ,” KCNA said.

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.

Attention whoredom as the natural progression of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy

Remember in the 80s and 90s, when the topic of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy made the rounds of all the talk shows once or twice a year? You’d have the mothers (it was always mothers) who were just sick over what they’d done to their children, and poor Timmy and Samantha, who were hurt and bewildered that mommy could have hurt them like that. Sally Jesse/Ricki/Oprah/Phil etc. listened and tsked, the audience booed, the moms begged for forgiveness and vowed that they’d changed, and at the end of the hour, all again was right with the world.

But now I feel that the 24-hour cable news cycle and the interwebs have exponentially increased the audience for attention whore parents and simultaneously upped the ante at what has to be done to get sympathy and attention. Now, thankfully, the parents aren’t actually injuring or sickening their children. The sympathy comes from having something awful happen to your children, with no messy poison or beatings required. So there’s that. When I think of Richard Heene (father of Falcon Heene, AKA Balloon Boy) and Nic (no relation, seriously!) from My Bottle’s Up, I wonder if we’re seeing the confluence of Generation Me, people’s desire for fame at any cost, a 24-hour news cycle where not enough things that are deemed interesting happen to justify the depth of coverage, and an Internet audience that is always willing to respond to every real or purported outrage with blog and Twitter posts (I resemble that remark).

I was at work when the Balloon Boy saga began, and read about it quite by accident during routine visits to several news sites. My coworker and I kept refreshing the story on the NY Times’s site; it was the site’s central story, and every twenty minutes or so, a bolded Update: designation would provide more detail. At that point, little was happening, and the updates mostly involved where the balloon was spotted, until the news came that the balloon had landed and was empty. The whole thing was so horrifying, and we were genuinely worried about Falcon Heene. I kept following the story when I got home, although I drew the line at actually watching any of the annoying tv talking heads discuss something they knew nothing about. I just kept refreshing my browser until I read the resolution. I laughed like a loon when I found out that the kid was safe at home the whole time. My reaction was composed of equal parts relief, amusement, and disbelief. Why wouldn’t they have checked the house thoroughly?? My amusement became even greater when it started to look for all the world like the whole thing was engineered by people who knew that the little boy had never even been on the balloon. The world had been duped, and willingly so. The breathless attention paid to the Heenes is rather sick, when you think about it. If the child really had been in the balloon, and something awful had happened to him, what good would have resulted from the insane amount of attention the family was receiving?

TSA Mom was only brought to my attention this morning. I read her account of what happened, and thought, “Wow, that sucks. What is wrong with the TSA?” I’d been at that very airport earlier that morning, and had worn a metal headband that set off the machine. I took it off, walked through again, collected my belongings, and went on to my gate with no problem. I did find it convenient that somebody with such a huge web audience and reputation would have something like that happen, but didn’t necessarily want to speculate on whether what she said was true. Bad things can happen to anybody, even those with a steady blog readership.

The Metafilter thread about this was filled with comments that harshly criticized the TSA, and others that expressed mild or not-so-mild doubt as to the veracity of Nic’s account. I could definitely see where they would find room to doubt her story, but I felt bad just dismissing it out of hand, and erred in my (obviously erroneous) belief that nobody would make up such an awful story. The TSA, sick of the internet trouncing it was receiving over its reported behavior, actually posted the CCTV feed of somebody who they identify as Nic and her son going through security. They are detained in the box for about 2 minutes, but at no point is she separated from her son.

The Heenes were on ABC’s wife swap, so that kind of shows that they’ll do anything to get on tv, but I feel so sorry for Falcon, who doesn’t seem to possess his parents’ desire for limelight. If they do end up getting that reality show, the first item of business will obviously be to recast the youngest child.

As for Nic, I still find it insane that anybody would make up anything like this. I guess she didn’t expect the TSA to take the step of posting the video of her going through security. Maybe she didn’t mean to garner all of this attention, and thought they’d never hear of her claims. Maybe she just thought she’d brazen it out. After all, right now she’s about to go on a vacation and therefore won’t be around the internet much for the next 10 days or so. How convenient!

These people sicken me, because every time something like this happens, I grow a little more cynical and distrustful of people.