Snapshot of America: March 2, 2011

The most popular stories on the New York Daily News site. Read 'em and weep, America...

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It's March 1st--Do You Know Where Your D-List Load-Dropper Is?

For those of you who mopes out there who don't know what it means when people call you a mope, here is a fascinating education, courtesy of the LA Weekly:

The porn industry is many things. Subtle is not one of them. So when Porn Inc. went searching for a job title for people like Stephen Hill, the choice was "mope." It's based on the off-camera life of these fringe actors, hangers-on who mope around the studios hoping for a bit role, which if they're lucky might bring them $50 plus food — and the chance to have sex with a real, live woman.

The average rate for a mope is $50 a movie, $75 if the porno gods are feeling benevolent. So financially, mopehood is a losing proposition in an industry where just getting the HIV testing required to work costs $135.

"They're worthless, D-list load-droppers," says Jim Lane, also known as Jim Powers, the director of such fare as Young and Anal 39, Ganged and Banged and White Trash Whore 40.

Unlike mainstream Hollywood extras, Lane notes, "Mopes don't know they're mopes." Instead, most cling to a delusion. "They all think they're going to be stars and millionaires."

Mark Kulkis, the head of Kick-Ass Pictures, a company that specializes in specific niche porn such as foot-fetish and gangbang material, says, "We pay $50 for a foot job. And we shoot one a week for the site. There are only so many of those gigs to go around. These guys are hanging on the edge economically."

Hill, whose screen name was Steve Driver, used to say his signature was "monster hands." According to set photographer Gia Jordan, Hill "would wear these hands, like, from a Halloween costume. That was his shtick. He'd jack off on the girl with the hands and when he'd come he'd yell, 'Monster hands!' It was ridiculous."

Wow. Okay. The only thing I would argue there is that mainstream Hollywood extras lack delusions of grandeur, which anybody who has spent any time with extras knows is patently untrue. 95% of extras expect to be millionaire actors, whether those millions come from 15 years of nationwide Verizon commercials, a role on CSI, or the fat paychecks commanded by an A or B-list movie actor they are expecting it one way or another--IF THEY CAN JUST MAKE THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS.

It's good to know foot-job dicks can be rented for only fifty dollars. This is knowledge that's good to have up your sleeve when you run out of other options. It also helps explain how homeless men in the Valley get all their booze money and how male Hollywood extras are able to stretch out their paltry paychecks during lean times.

But just so you know, not all D-List Load-Droppers go quietly into the night, clutching a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill, and stretch out on a piece of cardboard along the cement-lined Los Angeles River, never to make a name for themselves.

Todd was a pioneer among the D-List Load-Droppers

Take Stephen Hill (aka Steve Driver), for example, who was mentioned above--the lovable "Monster Hands" dude. Now here is a guy who moped his way to infamy in style.

Check it:

Female porn actor Charley Chase recalls, "I only worked with [Hill] once. It was a boy-girl scene and it was terrible. Mainly from bad hygiene."

People in Mexico Must Be Afraid of Being Fed to Dogs for No Reason At All

The somehow-always-escalating violence in Mexico over the last decade has just got to stop being so crazy. Thankfully, despite their brutality, our era's thugs still pale in comparison to both the brutal conquistadors and the psychopathic tyrants they supplanted, but still--come on.

It's like Mexico is an episode/season of Breaking Bad--the best show on television--so no matter how bad you think things are going to get they always get much worse and keep you on the edge of your seat.

One day you're a respectable family attending a provincial bullfight, feasting on all manner of delectable street meat, and dozing in the cool shadow of a mountain of used plastic silverware and putrid diapers trucked in from Texas, the next day you have a sack thrown over your heads, get fed into a sausage grinder, and become a hasty buffet for a pack of alpha-male pitbulls raised to ruthlessly erase all evidence of your existence. For no reason. Well, other than the fact that some asshole druglords want to send the government agents and their employers (aka taxpayers) a message that they are not to be fucked with or everybody will die eventually die a horrific, carnival death.

Mayors getting kidnapped and stoned to death in the woods, their corpses lying in the back of a pick-up truck for days before being found?

Wacko lieutenants becoming famous for dissolving bodies in vats of lie? Headless bodies hanging from bridges when the President comes to town?

People's faces being peeled-off and sewn onto soccer balls?

Danny Trejo's severed head riding atop a turtle's shell?

It's like the Mexican druglords have spent the last ten years one-upping each other, hell-bent on bringing home the Most Sadistic Would-Be Batman Villain Ever hardware every year at their annual, always-fabulous Mexican Druglord Conference in Cancun and things are really coming to a head here, the fate of a nation in flux until one of the longtime favorites (or will it be a darkhorse?) is finally cast by Christopher Nolan in his next movie already. [C'mon, Chris, don't be selfish here--think of the people of Gotham. -Ed]

Only then will a winner be declared. Only then will these men tire of the game and get back to being productive members of society, stop destroying whatever they can get away with.

If Christopher Nolan fails us here (he will), no living soul in Mexico is safe. People invited to dinner parties will start making ridiculous excuses like "Oh, I'd love to come, Sandra, but I'm afraid my entire family might be fed to dogs for absolutely no reason if somebody happens to see us in the street" and it won't be funny because they would totally mean it.

Dogs and cats will be murdered in cold blood and often later eaten by starving Mad-Max scavengers--or used as bait to lure a meatier human out of hiding if they feel strong enough for a struggle.

Even budding flowers will fall victim to the casually lethal boot-heels of restless warriors.

Harmonicas can be quite deadly

Eventually the Wild West will reign again, as all men remaining in Mexico will be pitted against each other in a relentless series of unscheduled, unregulated, him-or-me machine-gun duels.

In the end, some Mexican-Jeff-Goldblum eccentric-billionaire type (or perhaps total-Bond-villain Carlos Slim?) will square up against a rough-and-tumble bully from the other side of the tracks and smile knowingly as he smites him with a remote-controlled missile to win--finally--the entire vacant blood-soaked nation as his playground/torture chamber.

Hey, whatever--heavy is the head that wears the crown, right? Jeff/Carlos will kill 'em all, eat 'em, play the game, and figure the rest out later! Once he wins the competition!

After all, if the end result of all his efforts is for whatever reason less than ideal, he can always just drink himself to death at an abandoned luxury resort in Acapulco while writing one hell of a suicide note. If that is indeed Jeff/Carlos' path, I hope that he also has the foresight to attach the lengthy missive to a particularly-burly trained seagull's foot before he dies and send the winged slave to find A Living Person in America Who Would Open a Random Piece of Mail Delivered by a Seagull and Be Able to Make Some Sense Out of Nearly-Illiterate Post-Apocalyptic Pidgin Spanish with no delay.

Once I get my hands on that suicide note (ohpleaseohpleaseohplease) I can finally publish my (unrelated) bestselling novel about the unsympathetic, stomach-churning trials and tribulations of a notorious, suddenly-repentant-at-the-end, murdering asshole that The New York Review of Books will call "Lyrical, raw, and positively breathtaking--an astonishing debut focusing on a megalomaniacal prick who is so delusional he actually thinks he is a normal person, a person with strengths and weaknesses you can weigh, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that if he is not the spawn of Satan he may as well be."

That kind of success being something I could immediately take to the bank, I will probably set up direct deposit to an account in the Cayman Islands and never be seen or heard from again once the raucous celebration--for the humble but well-appointed launch of what will turn out to be the groundbreaking novel of a burgeoning Golden Era of Literature, the captain of the elite avant garde--winds down and I seize the perfect opportunity to sneak away unnoticed.

I will disappear in plain sight and live on the lam under the assumed identities of a series of retired international playboys who share a voracious appetite for women, adventure, and the fruits of the sea.

I will rewrite my memoirs for the rest of my life--on stained cocktail napkins stapled together--until I accidentally fall off a hotel balcony in paradise and nobody ever even figures out who I was, much less what wisdom I wanted to impart to the Earthlings I left behind.

But enough about me--what will all of you do, America? Will it even affect you? Will you even notice that your drunken trips to coastal Florida are not taking place in Cancun, a beloved resort you will never be able to visit for the rest of your life because murderous warlords own the streets? Will you join them or fight them when the furious, probing tentacles of their violence become too much to bear?

Please send me your well-reasoned answers and I shall peruse them with casual interest while traveling aboard one of my many identical yachts speeding in different directions across the vast watery stretches of globe, while wearing a clever disguise that just makes you want to weep for its beauty.

Thank you,
Goodtime Charlie

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Message Received

This just in from the Mexican front, via Huffington Post:

Violence peaked in Tijuana in 2008 amid a showdown between two crime bosses – Fernando "The Engineer" Sanchez Arellano and Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental, a renegade lieutenant who rose through the ranks by dissolving bodies in vats of lye.

Garcia was arrested last January. While killings have continued, the most gruesome displays of cartel violence – decapitations, hangings and daylight shootouts – subsided.

Last week, in the wake of Calderon's visit, several bodies were found beheaded and hanging from bridges in Tijuana, leading to fears that the cartels were resuming brutal tactics to send a message that the government is not in control.

Vats of lye? Ohhhhhhkay. Huh. Considering all this new shit comes in the wake of that rural mayor getting stoned to death in the back of a pick-up truck and the following certified-nutso statistics, I find little reason not to believe them:

Upon taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of troops and federal police to fight drug cartels in their strongholds. An unprecedented 28,000 people have been killed in drug gang violence since.

Ciudad Juarez has become one of the world's deadliest cities amid a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels. More than 2,000 people have been killed this year in the city, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Oh, Mexico...I love you but you're bringing me down.

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Hypocrisy, By the Numbers

All life, even that of unwanted, unborn babies the size of pencil erasers, is important. It is the most important thing in the world. How important?

Way more important than dealing with all the starving/malnutritioned, poorly-educated children all over the country who were born into a life of poverty, crime, and neglect.

So important that right-wing asshole ideologues will kill medical personnel to make sure there isn't any killing going on.

Since 1977, there have been eight confirmed murders of abortion providers or other clinic staff, 41 bombings, 175 arsons and 96 attempted bombings or arsons, according to the National Abortion Federation.

(courtesy HuffPo)

Breaking the law to interfere with legally-sanctioned activities and ignoring all the most important tenets of every major religion, all in the name of hypocrisy. Thanks, Red America.

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Diggler Lives!

 
BP, eat your heart out--this is the best news story I have seen in a long time (or at least since this gem):

Sword-Wielding Porn Actor Dies After Falling Off Cliff in Standoff

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A porn actor suspected of killing a colleague with a sword was taken into police custody Saturday after he fell some 40 feet from a rocky hillside from which he had been threatening to jump, officials said.

A "less lethal munition" was used against Stephen Clancy Hill just before his plummet, said police Officer Bruce Borihanh, who had no other details about the weapon that was used.

SWAT officers spent part of Saturday afternoon trying to talk Hill down from the outcropping as he clutched a sword.

It was unknown whether the sword was the murder weapon in Tuesday's deadly attack at a DVD production center that also left two people injured.

Hill fled to the Chatsworth neighborhood hillside after leaving a house where he was barricaded for most of Saturday.

Borihanh said Hill, 34, would be booked on murder and attempted murder charges after he was treated by paramedics. His condition was unknown.

The charges were filed against Hill Friday after Eric Jover, who runs the Ultima DVD production house, offered a $2,000 reward on the company's website for information leading to his arrest.

Hill attacked a colleague with a sword that was used as a film prop during a social gathering at the Ultima's studios about a week after being told he was being fired and that he would have to move out of the production facility, where he had been living, authorities said.

He then turned on two others who rushed to their co-worker's defense. One of those who attempted to help, Herbert Hin Wong, 30, was killed in the attack.

Hill, whose professional name is Steve Driver, fled in an SUV with the murder weapon, authorities said.

Ultima is located in the San Fernando Valley, known in the adult film industry as Porn Valley for its large number of porn businesses. The small company produces niche films featuring fetishes and sexual domination of men.

Hill was convicted of second-degree assault and a handgun charge in March 1999 in Maryland, according to court records.

UPDATE: The LA Times reports that Stephen Hill has died as a result of head injuries suffered from his roughly 50 ft. fall...Developing...

(courtesy Huffington Post)

Wait a minute--he lived at a "DVD production company?"

Dottie popped over for a cup of tea before her big date with Bjorn.

I'm just gonna skip over the fact that this porn actor--who was only involved in fetish and "sexual domination of men" porno, mind you--lived at the studio he also shot porn in because I love how the person who wrote this won't even dignify porn movies with the sobriquet "movie," but rather insists on referring to the company as a "DVD production company."

Harrumph! Nothing those filthy people make would ever be projected in a theatre! They're not movies! They don't even shoot them on film anymore!

I wonder what exactly this swashbuckler did to get fired. Did he lose his six-pack? Forget to shave his chest? Shoot so much heroin into his dick it won't work anymore? Fuck one of the boss' whores?

I also would like to know how this guy is able to travel around LA so freely--he drove from the studio to a house that "he was barricaded for most of Saturday" to another house in Chatsworth --after murdering somebody with a sword in a place of business.

Also, do enough people really frequent the website of this niche porno company to warrant posting a $2000 reward for information leading to arrest? Did it work? Who are these people?

Also also, "less-lethal munition?" They won't admit what it was? Well, here a few guesses:

Acoustic

Acoustic Bullets: High-power, very low-frequency waves emitted from one- to two-meter antenna dishes. Results in blunt-object trauma. Effects range from discomfort to death.

Curdler Unit: A device that is plugged into a sound system to produce a shrill, shrieking, blatting noise. It is used to irritate and disperse rioters and has a decibel range just below that of the danger level to the human ear. It is used in night operations to produce a "voodoo" effect and breaks up chanting, singing, and clapping.

Infrasound: Very low-frequency sound that can travel long distances and easily penetrate most buildings and vehicles. Long-wavelength sound creates biophysical effects: nausea, loss of bowels, disorientation, vomiting, internal-organ damage, or death may occur. By 1972 an infrasound generator had been built in France. When activated it made the people in range sick for hours.

Acoustic & optical

Photic Driver: A crowd-control device that uses ultrasound and flashing infrared lights to penetrate closed human eyelids. Potential for epileptic fits because of the stroboscopic flashing effect.

Psycho-Correction: A technology invented by a Russian scientist that involves influencing subjects visually or aurally with imbedded subliminal messages.

Barrier

Coating, Slick: Teflon-type lubricants that create a slippery surface. In the 1960s the term "Instant Banana Peel" was coined to describe the capability provided by Riotril. When applied to a hard surface and wetted down, this dry, relatively inexpensive white powder becomes ice slick. It becomes virtually impossible for an individual to move or stand up on a hard surface so treated.

Biotechnical

Biodegrading Microbes: Microbes that turn storage tanks full of aviation fuel into useless jelly. Such microbes may produce acids or enzymes that can be tailored to degrade almost anything, even concrete and metal, so their potential use as nonlethal weapons could be extensive.

Genetic Alteration: The act of changing genetic code to create a desired less-than-lethal but long-term disablement effect, perhaps for generations, thereby creating a societal burden.


Neuro-Implant: Computer implants into the brain that allow for behavioral modification and control. Current research is experimental in nature and focuses on lab animals such as mice.


Project Agile: Series of military-science studies in Asia conducted in May 1966 for the Advanced Research Projects Agency. One such study centered on developing "stink" bombs that were race specific.


Pheromones: The chemical substances released by animals to influence physiology or behavior of other members of the same species. One use of pheromones, at the most elemental level, could be to mark target individuals and then release bees to attack them.

Electrical

Police Jacket: Police jacket that jolts anyone who touches it.

Holograms

Prophet: The projection of the image of an ancient god over an enemy capital whose public communications have been seized and used against it in a massive psychological operation.

Soldier Forces: The projection of soldier images that make an opponent think more allied forces exist than actually do, make an opponent believe that allied forces are located in a region where none actually exist, and/or provide false targets for his weapons to fire upon.

Death: Hologram used to scare a target individual to death. Example: a drug lord with a weak heart sees the ghost of his dead rival appearing at his bedside and dies of fright. 

Marker

Invisible: One concept envisions a fluorescent powder sprayed into crowds from a pressurized container. Particles adhere to clothing and are visible only under ultraviolet light. Another concept envisions sponge grenades impregnated with infrared dye so that rioters can be later identified.

Obscurant

Smoke, Colored: Colored-smoke concentrations produce greater initial psychological and panic effect than white smoke. Caucasians are said to have a greater repugnance to brilliant green smoke, whereas Negroids and Latins are declared to be most adversely affected by brilliant red. Rioters confronted with a strong concentration of colored smoke feel, instinctively, that they are being marked, or stained, and therefore lose anonymity.

Riot-control agent

Tear Gas, Invisible: Invisible tear gas cannot be seen by rioters once it emerges from a grenade or mechanical dispenser, and therefore has a greater psychological panic-producing effect than tear smoke.

(Find the rest here. Thanks, Harper's)

It's nice to finally see some of the cutting-edge products our tax dollars have been funding over the years. Good job, scientists!

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'Temple of Doom' in the House, Yo!

This is why this whole MMA fad must be stopped:

Jarrod Wyatt, a 26-year-old mixed martial arts fighter, is accused of brutally murdering his 21-year-old friend, Adam Powell. According to the Times-Standard, prosecutors claim the pair took mushrooms along with two other friends in late March. The paper reports that witnesses say Powell and Wyatt "became preoccupied with the idea that a tidal wave was coming, that the end of the world was upon them and that a struggle between God and the devil was taking place."

When police arrived, they found Wyatt naked and covered in dried blood. According to an officer at the scene, Wyatt admitted to cutting out his victim's tongue and heart. Powell's corpse included an 18-inch incision on his chest, and Wyatt allegedly said he cooked the 21-year-old's heart in a wood stove to "stop the devil."

The accused killer faces murder charges in Del Norte County (Calif.) Superior Court. The Times-Standard has additional details on the charges.

(courtesy Huffington Post)

And so is this: cauliflower ear.

And this: some dude thinking he can replace Mr. T.

In other news, I ate mushrooms all weekend long and giggled a lot as I played rummy with Arthur Killer Kane and little baby Jesus in a giant time-traveling spaceship made out of eggplants and baby food.

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Missing the Boat: By the Numbers

A cell phone company in Bulgaria supposedly suspended (five years ago?) the number 0888 888 888 because the last three people who used it have all died.

Sounds like an eerie coincidence, right? There must be voodoo at work, right?

Well, here is a brief profile of the last three people assigned this mobile number, courtesy of the Telegraph:

1. The first owner Vladimir Grashnov – the former CEO of Bulgarian mobile phone company Mobitel which issued the number – died of cancer in 2001 aged just 48.

2. The number then passed to Bulgarian mafia boss, Konstantin Dimitrov, who was gunned down in 2003 by a lone assassin in the Netherlands during a trip to inspect his £500 million drug smuggling empire. Dimitrov, who died aged 31, had the mobile with him when he was shot while eating out with a model. [You kinda wish 'with' wasn't there, right? Me, too. -Ed.] Russian mafia bosses – jealous of his drug smuggling operation – were said to have been behind the killing.

3. The phone number then passed to Konstantin Dishliev, a crooked businessman, who was gunned down outside an Indian restaurant in Bulgaria's capital Sofia after taking over the jinxed line. Dishliev, an estate agent, had secretly been running a massive cocaine trafficking operation before his assassination in 2005. He died after £130 million of the drug was intercepted by police on its way into the country from Colombia.

Hmm. So...some 48-year-old guy died of cancer...no big deal there...two criminals were shot dead...no big deal there, either...three rich people wanted the only Bulgarian vanity mobile number that consists of the same digit...ditto...snore...

Call me crazy, but I find the fact that two nine-figure international drug traffickers were both thriving in Bulgaria far more fascinating than this whole telephone-number thing.

The GDP of the entire nation is only $45.9 billion, after all (by contrast, the US GDP is $14 trillion). Assuming Dishliev's operation was about triple that last bust (it could well have been more), these two drug smugglers alone accounted for $1.27 billion--or 2.8% of Bulgaria's GDP.

That is the equivalent of two men in the United States independently running drug empires worth a combined $39.2 billion, or roughly the entire GDP of Bulgaria.


To give you an even better perspective on that number, when the DEA dropped in on Pablo Escobar's secret cocaine factory in the jungles of Colombia in 1984, they seized 14 tons of cocaine--worth only $1 billion. At their peak, the entire Medellin Cartel was only making $25 billion a year.

The bottom line here? Who knows. Selling drugs is lucrative? Don't carry a cell phone?

Oh, wait--I know:

If you are an illicit captain of industry in a small European nation and worth a staggering sum of money, you should probably travel with a grip of bodyguards in a fleet of bulletproof Mercedes sedans.

Also, you should avoid having a phone number that is so easy for people to remember (or perhaps take a page out of Stringer Bell's book and avoid phones altogether); aren't you supposed to be minting money in the shadows?

And, while you're at it, what with those crafty Russians and their penchant for poisons, you should probably hire a food taster. May I recommend a voicebox-less Carrot Top? I'd love for somebody to take that asshole off our hands...

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Life Imitates Art: Anthony Hopkins Murders Wife, Stores Body in His Freezer

MOBILE, Ala. — An Alabama evangelist who authorities say terrorized his family while preaching at revivals has been sentenced to life plus 51 years in prison after being convicted of killing his wife and storing her body in a home freezer.

Circuit Judge John Lockett imposed the sentence Thursday on Anthony Hopkins, 39, who showed no remorse during the proceeding. He got the maximum sentence of life for murder and additional time for convictions including sodomy and sexual abuse.

(courtesy Huffington Post)

Okay, so...it isn't the Anthony Hopkins we all wanted it to be--cuz we all love a great hook that follows through, no matter the cost, right?--but it is an interesting story nonetheless.

Stay with me now:

During Hopkins' trial in April, prosecutors said he killed his 36-year-old wife, Arletha Hopkins, in 2004 after she caught him molesting a girl, then stuffed her body in a freezer at their home in north Mobile. Investigators discovered the body in 2008 after a young woman abused by Hopkins told child advocates about it, authorities said. Police arrested Hopkins while he was preaching at a revival in the south Alabama town of Jackson.

Defense attorney Jeff Deen said his client admits putting his wife's body in the freezer, but he doesn't know how she died.

"There's evidence in the trial that it could've been by natural causes, and it needs to be explored on appeal," Deen said.

Okay, so...there was a body in Anthony Hopkin's freezer for four years, while he was parading around the South preaching gospel to a bunch of suckers, molesting young girls, doing research for a role. Sorry.

I hate that it's the case, but this whole tragic affair in Alabama is no big surprise. I read about shit like this every day. Yes, the rise of the internet--not to mention the ready availability of audio recorders, video recorders, still cameras, traffic/security cameras, cell phones...--has been a sword with two razor-sharp edges.

Are people more corrupt and disgusting these days? Lord, no--think about the kind of shit the medieval aristocracy were up to, not to mention the Kennedys; think of how easy it was to cheat on your wife when phones didn't even exist. People today just get caught a whole hell of a lot more often, although, thanks to The People's short attention span and general ignorance, they rarely pay any price.

Anti-gay politicians busted for being gay, family-values politicians busted with mistresses/second families, deficit hawks voting for unlimited defense spending, Catholic priests molesting thousands of children, Popes kissing Nazi boots, televangelists raking in millions, Tom Cruise pretending he's not gay, Southern preachers molesting girls and murdering wives...it's all there on the internet, all there recorded for posterity, all there being ignored by 99% of the population. I wish the unwashed masses--who, unfortunately, have all the political muscle--were aware of all this shit, or at least aware of what it all means.

If you're reading, dear, dear, unwashed masses that I love more than little baby Jebus himelf, here is what it all means:

We cannot implicitly trust anybody in power to do the right thing--EVER--despite what they may or may not say with their mouths when they want your vote or get caught on camera with their dick in a small child or barnyard animal. Rather, we need to judge them based on their deeds and then hold them accountable; we need to look into the issues and identify those who act against our interests. This requires that we not only do our due diligence and read Huffington Post, Harper's, and Nothing is Sacred every chance we get, but also that we process what we are reading, come to intelligent conclusions, and act upon them.

Sadly, much like when they were in school, the unwashed were not paying attention.

They are all out there in this magnificent world, soiling theater seats as they chortle at lazy donkey-fart jokes in Shrek Again! In 3D!, petitioning the government to get their goddamn hands off their Medicare, Photoshopping fake Kenyan birth certificates, spacing out during reruns of Two and a Half Men as they reminisce about how cool high school was, playing video games, beating up fags on their way to the gay bar, staring at the wall and saying "Duh...", or taking advantage of the awesome drinkability of shitty domestic beer as they needlessly wave around a loaded handgun at their five-year-old's backyard birthday party, as part of some kind of elaborate joke nobody gets until they accidentally shoot a child in the face and they all crack up until they realize what actually, somehow, happened.


What is to be done about all this? Nothing.

That's right--nothing. Eventually, the people will do the right thing and revolt en masse. Eventually the cycle will repeat itself and people will wind up in the exact same place. It is what we do.

Why do you think intelligent people who are not also thieves and assholes always have such a frustrating time of things?

The secret is to not care, to stop giving a shit about the gross injustices perpetrated every day across this once-great (before mankind spoiled it) globe.

The rich have gotten richer, the rich will continue to get richer, evils are rewarded, and the businessmen and politicians may change but they will all stay the same. The day when naive voters are turned away from their polling places by ear-splitting, paralyzing sonic rays emitted from a Halliburton Soft-Kill Crowd-Control Cannon is nigh, folks. It is nigh.

So drink up, tune out, fuck around, and stop washing yourself so damn much.

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Probably Should Have Seen That One Coming, Ma'am

According to Der Spiegel, a German prisoner murdered a woman during an unsupervised six-hour-long conjugal visit on Sunday, using two knives and a wrench to stab and beat her to death.

The prisoner also slit his own wrists but doctors were (fortunately?) able to save him and continue spending tax dollars to keep him in good health for the next thirty years or so.

Why should this woman have seen it coming? Because the prisoner was serving 19 years for raping a 9-year-old girl and beating her to death.

Probably not the best guy to start a relationship with, definitely not the best guy to break-up with during a conjugal visit, especially if you have knives in your purse, especially if he looks like this:


Not quite Darwin Award material, but it sure is close.

The scariest thing about all this, however, is that the brutal murder could have a silver lining for the victim's now-orphaned child.

Instead of this monster being released next year and moving in with them--which surely would have resulted in this child's rape/death at some point--s/he can now live a long and fruitful life in foster care, in constant pant-wetting fear of the inevitable day this psycho escapes from prison--when the guards send him out to buy them some lottery tickets--and decides to finish the job.

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Vegas, Baby

Remember all those whacked out Dungeons and Dragons dudes who used to beat you up in high school?

Well, those harmless little cuties went on to college, where they graduated to fighting each other with cardboard swords covered in tinfoil on the Quad. After college, the mighty diehards among them carried the torch all the way to Ye Olde Renaissance Faire.

Those few, fortunate rogues chosen by the very Gods above, who eventually found these hilarious affairs tortuously tame, advanced further still, to the penultimate step--killing people with "a medieval-style battle ax."

Viz:

LAS VEGAS — Sonia Lisset Castro said she pleaded for her life and that of her baby but the stranger attacking them with a medieval-style battle ax on a residential street only mocked her and kept hacking.

"I was saying in English, 'Please, please leave me alone!' But he wouldn't listen to me," Castro testified through tears and a Spanish translator Monday about the Feb. 11 attack that left her 4-month-old son, Damien, dead.

"Every time he would hit me, he would laugh out loud," she said. "I was begging him to let me go, and he was mocking me."

Castro peeled back a gauzy white scarf to show a Las Vegas judge the scars on the right side of her head where surgeons reattached her face and jaw. She said her right eye was irreparably damaged.

Montague is facing one charge of murder with a deadly weapon and three charges of attempted murder with a deadly weapon.

He is accused of stabbing his profoundly disabled sister-in-law at least 20 times in their home, then bursting outside and randomly attacking Castro as she walked past on the street with her son in a stroller. His sister-in-law, 36-year-old Monica O'Dazier, was treated at a hospital and released.

Montague told police he had no memory of the attacks, and defense lawyer Norm Reed has characterized his client as delusional and paranoid. But neither Reed nor defense lawyer Andrea Luem has sought to have Montague declared mentally unfit for trial.

A neighbor who dialed 911 as she witnessed the attack from her home also identified Montague as the assailant. Teresa Garner testified Monday that after Montague ran back inside his home, she went to Castro's aid near the curb and the overturned stroller.

"I saw the baby lying in the street, dead," sobbed Garner, a 52-year-old disabled former hotel worker. "I saw the mother, her face was completely gone ... bleeding profusely."

Garner said she later suffered an emotional breakdown and spent seven days in psychiatric care. She said she continues to take several prescription anti-anxiety medications daily. After appearing to fall asleep for a few moments during questioning by Luem, she said the medications make her drowsy.

On the 911 call, which was played for the judge, Garner is heard shrieking, "Oh my God! Her face is split open where he hit her with the hatchet!"

Police have said the ax had been hanging on a wall in Montague's home before he used it in the attack.

Montague's wife, Erricca Montague, testified that Harold Montague spent several sleepless nights pacing the floor, wasn't eating well, and appeared dehydrated the day of the attack.

Harold Montague had served since 2004 as the primary caregiver for O'Dazier, who Erricca Montague said has cerebral palsy and mental retardation, suffers seizures and can walk only a few steps with assistance.

Under questioning by Luem, Erricca Montague said her husband has smoked pot but never took other drugs or drank alcohol. She testified she didn't feel her husband was a danger to her, their three children or her disabled sister.

(courtesy Huffington Post)

One would hope that had fair young Harold realized the final step was 'execution by obese former high-school football players poured into correctional-facility uniforms' he would have humbly duct-taped his weapon back onto the otherwise-blank wall above his Playstation/masturbation chair and played with something for a while instead.

Even if it could have been colored as cowardice, it would have been a much more fruitful way to take his mind off how dreadfully boring his life is these days (ie, every day since he was born).

But we all know those guys were never actually very smart, so, you know, here we are...sitting in a chair somewhere, wishing his mother would have had an abortion all those years ago...

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Okay, I think that's enough now, chicos...

You've all heard about the escalating drug-related violence down in Mexico the past couple years, but do you have any idea how bad it really is these days? Last year, there were over 6,500 murders; the other day, 69 people were killed in Mexico.

It gets worse:

Last week a victim's face was peeled from his skull and sewn onto a soccer ball. On Monday, prosecutors in Culiacan identified the remains of 41-year-old former police officer divided into two separate ice chests.

(courtesy HuffPo)

What?! They sewed his face to a soccer ball?!!

I think it's high time we send Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris down Mexico-way to redeem themselves by fighting the good fight against these megalomaniacal asshole drug lords.

And if they don't make it out alive? I'm okay with that.

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Michael Douglas Should Stop Sleeping

First it was footballer Steve McNair, now a boxer I never heard of until today.

What's a rich, older man-about-town to do? Just wait around til his crazy young minx gets some bright idea when she watches Fox News?

No. That would be a fool's fate.

Instead, Gordon Gekko will never sleep. He will never blink. He will die from it, in a matter of days, patiently waiting for the Zeta to snap, almost hoping she will, to put him out of his pants-shitting, broken-pipe misery, but also willing to strike her dead with his Oscar if she has the balls to think she wears the pants.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick...

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How Exactly Is 'Death By Beheading' Not First-Degree Murder?

So a Muslim man living in upstate New York is served with divorce papers by his third wife, on grounds of domestic abuse (which was why his previous two wives divorced him).

A week later, he cuts off her head with a broadsword.

The man turns himself in and is arrested. We are told not to jump to conclusions, that this has nothing to do with honor killings in Muslim cultures, that we should feel sorry for him because he is in shock after what he did.

He is held without bail, on charges of second-degree murder.

I'm definitely not a lawyer, thank Satan, so perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for this ridiculous charge, but what the fuck does somebody have to do to get first-degree murder? Record a videotaped message of premeditation and then make sure to chop her up and eat her after the beheading?

I hope this guy gets chewed to death by rats in Sing-Sing.

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