Taylor Students Misidentified
Taylor University says an 18-year-old student who authorities said died in an April 26th interstate pile up was misidentified as one of her classmates injured in the crash and is recovering in a Michigan hospital. Whitney Cerak of Gaylord, Michigan, has been hospitalized under the name of 22-year-old Laura VanRyn.

H/T: WANE

Of course it seems that WANE is neglecting their doomsday predictions in the midst of this raucous storm that's flying up our ass right now...

Update: Here is the blog that VanRyn's family has kept since the accident. There's some interesting insight to be gained.

Remember last week when WANE TV tried to spook us into thinking the world was going to end in a fantastic display of lightning and swirling wind...? Well, in case you don't remember, Mike H. and I had some fun with those dorks and their absurd graphics.

THIS is what the apocalypse actually looks like (at least in Kansas...). Thank God there are people out there with big enough balls to stand directly in the path of Perfect Storms so that they might share them with the rest of us, for a slight fee (if you want them expanded to poster size and printed).

Just a quick weekend re-cap for those who are too lazy to navigate the local blogs now that Mark “The Righteous Fist” Souder has shut down all of the Indiana meth labs…

John Good blogged a great piece on his father, who was obviously an American worth our admiration and respect.

• William Larsen took a brief moment to talk about parades and his own experiences.


• Mike Sylvester publishes an unsurprisingly lengthy tome of his thoughts and feelings on Memorial Day…(you know we love ya, Mike!)


• Coffee tells a tale of redneck relatives at a weekend family gathering. Be advised: due to a busted-ass template and Blogger’s failure to trackback properly, you’ll just have to go to her homepage and scroll down until you see a post titled “The Rednex.”


• Mat Rupert (“Native With Leave” in the parlance of FWOb) throws a backyard campfire party (and lives to tell the tale) with a little introspective on the male human psyche.


• Tim Baron from Fort Wayne Area Artists unleashes a fine new B&W for comment (ok, not Memorial Day related, but the timing was appropriate and hey, he obviously had this artwork on his mind this holiday weekend!).


• Leo Morris offers some post-holiday commentary on wars and the sometimes-ugly business of soldiering and warring.


• Bartleby checked out for the weekend.

I think that just about wraps up everyone who had a weekend/Memorial Day related post. If I had to make a wager, I’d say AWB and Craig were fishing, though it’s unlikely that they were together. The Heart of Gold could make a VERY long trip based on that level of improbability…then again, the Universe might just implode.

Looks like somebody got a little offended that Michael Summers neglected them when interviewing bloggers for his article. That's right, Fort Wayne's favorite (and I'm guessing ONLY) self-proclaimed media critic, alien commentator/researcher and anus enthusiast (h/t Smantix) has a few choice words for local bloggers and those who would dare to entertain the idea that blogs/bloggers might be newsworthy. Here's the post (from one of HIS blogs, I might add):


Thursday, May 25, 2006

Stupid
Does anyone think that a lone blogger, or even a handful, can gather news in the same way that The Journal Gazette does? Or The News-Sentinel, Indiana’s NewsCenter, WANE-TV, WOWO, Business Weekly?It’s absurd.But that’s what Fort Wayne Reader’s take on the local blogosphere would have you believe in a current feature piece by Publisher/Editor Michael Summers.One blogger, or two, can’t bring the news to Fort Wayne residents, even if they had the wherewithal to do so. Ego creates blogs, not a search for truth or facts that matter to society.Moreover, those pumping out blogs in town aren’t journalists. One is a lame attorney, another a film-maker without any films, and one a red-neck, KKK-like owner of a tech company.But Reader gave them a forum – a propaganda piece that belies the truth of what these bloggers do.The attorney blogger operates like a fascist, preventing comments from those who challenge his facts and postings. And his blog only takes material from other sources, posts it, with a comment or two of his own, nothing creative or substantive by a long shot. That isn’t journalism.The film-maker and his attorney friend have operated deviously since the inception of their blogs, and we know this from first-hand dealings with both when they started their blogs.Reader knows this also but chose to ignore that aspect of local blogging.Also, Reader left out dozens of blogs that are not media-pretenders, and run by people with something to say.Reader opted, for whatever reason, to tout a few blogs, incestuously connected, and without merit of any kind no matter how much the bloggers insist otherwise.For Reader, or anyone else, to suggest area residents go to the blogs cited in the current issue of Reader for news or anything else worthwhile is akin to the blind leading the blind.Why would Reader push its readers, few as they are, to go elsewhere to find what Reader should be doing in the first place? It doesn’t make sense. That would be like Papa John’s telling its customers to try Pizza Hut’s products.Anyway, forget the local blogosphere. It isn’t the future. And it certainly isn’t the now.
posted by The RR Group at Thursday, May 25, 2006

Let it be known that RR is a contributor (if you consider his tepid and useless media criticism to be an actual contribution to anything other than the floor of the bird cage) to The Reader, so all of this seemingly brainless sniveling makes sense on some childish level, I guess. However, let's review the facts:

1. Nobody relies on any blog for all of their news. Wanna talk about stupid, Rich? I don't recall seeing anything of the sort mentioned in the Reader article.

2. Ego creates blogs? Haven't you started something like 50 blogs, Rich? What does this say about YOUR Death-Star sized ego, you pompous old fuck?

3. KKK-like owner of a tech company? So let me get this straight, he takes you to task on being a circus-sideshow freak (rightfully so), so now he's a Klansman? Last I checked, he was a Catholic who is in favor of increasing immigration, and the Klan was never fond of either...so basically you are just making things up to satisfy your need for revenge (or maybe just the masturbatory glee you get from seeing your own thoughts published). Wow.

4. "The Lawyer" is about as diplomatic as they come when it comes to comment moderation. You on the other hand, only allow your "team members" to post comments on your blog. How ironic that you, a spineless old fuck, would attack someone else because you feel he "operates like a fascist, preventing comments from those who challenge his facts and postings." Shall I call you pot or kettle? I choose "fucking hypocrite" instead....it really delivers more impact.

5. "The film-maker and his attorney friend have operated deviously since the inception of their blogs, and we know this from first-hand dealings with both when they started their blogs." Umm, yeah...we all got to witness your little spat. I hardly think your paper-tiger threats of litigation constitute any improprieties on the part of the film-maker or the lawyer.

6. If indeed blogs offer nothing of value to news-seekers, then why on earth should The Reader be admonished for sending people to the web to check out some blogs? Your statement contradicts your opinion and your analogy is laughable based on that opinion.

7. Nobody gives a fuck what you think or what you say. And I mean NOBODY...especially me. Anyone that reads here can attest to the fact that the opinions of others mean about as much to me as toe fungus, and that most certainly includes yours.

I do not wish to dwell on this unpleasantness any longer, as I feel I have gratified far too much of RR's ludicrous bullshit by responding already.

I hope you all have a lovely Memorial Day Weekend, I know I will. I feel much better.

No, seriously folks...check this out:

AP Via MyWay:

May 25, 7:22 AM (ET)

SIDNEY, Neb. (AP) - A judge said a 5-foot-1 man convicted of sexually assaulting a child was too small to survive in prison, and gave him 10 years of probation instead.
His crimes deserved a long sentence, District Judge Kristine Cecava said, but she worried that Richard W. Thompson, 50, would be especially imperiled by prison dangers.
"You are a sex offender, and you did it to a child," she said.
But, she said, "That doesn't make you a hunter. You do not fit in that category."
Thompson will be electronically monitored the first four months of his probation, and he was told to never be alone with someone under age 18 or date or live with a woman whose children were under 18. Cecava also ordered Thompson to get rid of his pornography.
He faces 30 days of jail each year of his probation unless he follows its conditions closely.
"I want control of you until I know you have integrated change into your life," the judge told Thompson. "I truly hope that my bet on you being OK out in society is not misplaced."

There is just something horribly...umm...wrong about this. Is this the criminal justice version of a "bait and switch?" What a fscking joke.

You Are a Martini

There's no other way to say it: you're a total lush. You hold your liquor well, and you hold a lot of it!

For years, potheads have been blathering mindlessly about how “pot is just nature’s painkiller, man” and “legalize it, don’t criticize it” and other such drivel…the whole time, unwittingly making an hysterically funny case against legalization efforts and the legitimate claims thereto, thanks to their annoying social inadequacies and their burned-out demeanor.  Now, coming out of the land of fruits and nuts, we find a new study that literally reinforces much of the long-standing hippie mantra…

“…the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers…”

So now, with this in mind, the only reason to continue this long-standing and costly prohibition is what?  It makes people lazy?  I know lots of people who were lazy before they smoked pot, and the drug certainly exaggerated the condition, but I don’t know any motivated people that weed robbed of their ambitions due to weed consumption.

Having fairly well established my position on this, let it be known that I no longer get the kick out of marijuana that I once did, so my usage has ceased in the last half of a decade.  I think it would, however, be awesome if I could look forward to puffing-down some reefer in my retirement 40 years from now without the fear of prosecution.  I foolishly made no secrets of my fondness for pot when I was a lad, and that folly sadly closed some doors for me that I would have rather had open.  I will always recommend to my children a higher road (no ironic punnery intended, I assure you) free of distractions, but I realize that I must do this from a borderline hypocritical position…which thrills me none-too-much.

Now, let our attention drift back to the story at hand.  It does turn out, that these study results should not be blindly accepted at face value.  There are some likely reasons that pot smoke has this unlikely effect!  

“…[Dr. Donald Tashkin] theorized that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, a chemical in marijuana smoke that produces its psychotropic effect, may encourage aging, damaged cells to die off before they become cancerous.”

So in essence, the cells may just die before they become mutated tumors.  Relieving to know that instead of dying of cancer, a heavy pot smoker might just die anyway (without the cancer).  Too bad someone who is really baked will not likely get that far in their reading (it’s at the end of the article) before the allure of a Powerpuff Girls re-run diverts their attention…

This guy has to be the luckiest blogger alive….no holds barred.  If it were me, I’m not sure if I’d chalk it up as a terrible day, or the best day of my life…what’s your call???

Ostaf gets it right on testostitude and some other topics.  

OK, I haven't been blogging much, and I'm sure you're all devastated because you don't know how to proceed without your daily dose of my bullshit. Here's the deal: BLAME SAM.

Canadian blog guru Samantha Burns posted a moronic game the other day that has had me absolutely glued to my computer doing nothing productive at all. And by nothing productive, I mean playing a game where you use a swinging hammer to pound levels of platform off some goofy cartoon chicks' shoes. It's EXTRA annoying, and it's all in Chinese or some other such eastern-Asian language...so you have no idea what's going on at any time, but just keep swinging the hammer and try not to knock the girls over.

DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU: Play the stupid fscking game.


When you're done (in a couple of days), send Sam a "thank you."

...Than the goofy one we are used to. Check him out here.

...Tell me again how evolution is a myth, jackasses.

See the hi-res image here.

It’s been 8 days, 7 hours and 35 minutes since I last smoked a cigarette.

Fact: It’s the longest I’ve gone without a smoke in 15 years.

Fact: In that 15 years, I smoked approximately 200,000 cigarettes. That’s 10,000 packs. Even conservatively estimated, that’s $20,000, not including lighters, lost packs, $5 packs in Vegas, California, Bars, Airports etc., paying for cough medicine, extra drinks (to kill the dry-mouth).

Fact: It’s not as hard to quit as what I expected.

Fact: I do, on occasion, still want a smoke.

Final Fact: Fuck those rotten big-tobacco cocksuckers. They can take those evil little pieces of shit and cram them directly up their collective ass. They’re not getting another dime from me.

Apparently, the Idaho state Ways & Means committee has absolutely nothing to do but get drunk (or possibly very, very high) and come up with the dumbest fscking ideas to ever grace the pages of legislative resolutions....

Smantix Gets it Right

“I can’t be the only one about ready to cancel my HBO subscription over dedicating half of the final season of The Sopranos to such an idiotic and irrelevant subplot.”

No, Smantix, you’re in good company for sure. What a moronic way to fuck-up a potentially immortal television program!

Join the conversation.

So “The Record” has had bestowed upon it a truly humbling honor:

We have been named Blog Of The Week by Mr. Matthew Rupert, author of one of our favorite daily reads, From the Morning.

Mat did link us with a twice-repeated disclaimer, since some of his readers are the regular church-going types and might not appreciate the…um, well….”raw” nature of some of the material related here on http://www.j4tr.com/.

Now…just for the record, when I make comments that seem to be a little harsh toward Christian folks, I want it to be known that THESE are the people I’m talking about, and I’ve found that Mat’s blog, although certainly Jesus-oriented, takes issue with many of the same nitwits that I do. So, even if the Jesus end of things doesn’t thrill you, there is still much fabulous reading to be done at Mat’s Manly Meat-Locker.

We suspect that Mat may have just felt that we needed some encouragement after the recent round of rather personal attacks from rank-and-file foot-soldiers of the Flakey Pink Idiots (no, I’m not going to name you fools or do you the service of linking to you and driving up your traffic again…I did it once as a nice gesture but from now on, you’re responsible for rolling your own).

Rest assured, Mat, we’re just fine over here at the Web’s Garbage Dump.

All this glad-handing and warm, fuzzy linking action has got me a little queasy. Also, I think I must throw in the word “COCK” here, as not to disappoint anyone visiting our little online dumpster from Mat’s link who might be expecting a little glimpse of some off-color language.

COCK. There you have it.

The venerable Angry White Boy had a post last week describing the identity woes of the Maplecrest & DuPont locations of Munchie Emporium (now re-named "Dicky's Wild Hare" and "Lucky's Terrapin Grill," respectively). I really don't care what they're called or who owns them, they're great places to eat so I fully intended to continue patronizing these establishments.

It appears as if Howard Dean might have a new buddy, if you're into appearances, that is. According to many credible sources, including several gay blogs and publications, Dean sided with the so-called NeoCons with respect to what he called "The 2004 Democratic Party Position" on the definition of marriage being between a man and a woman. Dean went on to say that the party's position had not changed since 2004.

After the gay rights group went public with its complaints about his remarks, Dean acknowledged: "I misstated the Democratic Party's platform, which does not say marriage should be limited to a man and a woman," and reasserted the party's commitment to equal protection for all.

So let me make sure this is perfectly clear: Dean is now changing the beliefs of the entire Democratic party based on some criticism pointed at him by the Gay Marriage movement? Who exactly is calling the shots here? I think this makes it very clear that Dean is in charge of nothing. He certainly wouldn't have opened his mouth and declared the DNC position on marriage if he weren't confident he knew what it was. Yet he gets bitch-slapped by some agenda-heads and suddenly the whole platform has changed?

I certainly hope they keep this nonsense up until the elections, it'll make the GOP's job a hell of a lot easier.

Thanks for the photo-edit Andrew...Looks just like me

The new Google Trends searches made available last week allow people to track the searching habits of others based on their geographic locations. It appears as if most of the Google searches for the term "sex" originate in the middle east.



Rotten fucking infidels.

Cindy "The Brain(dead)" Sheehan is once again trying to convince the world that Iraq and Afghanistan are the same as Vietnam was...and lobbying to convince the Canadian Government to willfully harbor AWOL soldiers who are defecting the U.S. Military. This Just In: Cindy Sheehan is truly a moron.

Hey, Cindy...encouraging the troops to break the law and abandon the country they are fighting for is NOT supporting them, you jackass! The fact that you can somehow connect those dots in your head is frightening. Convincing the Canadians that they should help you is equally moronic...they're trying their best to stay on our good side until Bush vacates. How about starting a rally to collect phone cards to send to the forward-deployed? That would be a nice way to support the troops....you know, keeping them in touch with their loved ones!? But instead, we get horseshit like this:

"My position is if it's an all-volunteer military they should be allowed to unvolunteer," said Sheehan.

OK, retard. That would work really well. Everybody enlists during peace-time to help pay for college, then when a war, conflict or deployment springs up, everybody quits! That would be a fscking stroke of genius! What a twit.

I feel so sorry for this miserable, confused woman....until she opens her mouth and speaks...

Yes, this is supposedly one student's answer from a real trig test. BRILLIANT!

Thanks to www.msjc.net for the pic.

How To Steal an Election
From the Washington Post:

Compared to this craziness! What a funny commercial!

This is a very interesting article for a host of reasons...I think most of them will become obvious when you read it. Some of the information is just common sense, but modern religion isn't always rife with logic and reason.

I'm not a Catholic, but for some reason it is rather relieving to have The Pope (or at least a de- facto arm of his mini-government) on my side of this issue.

Here is some writing from a lunatic who seems to think the opposite is true (hey, I'm being fair to the SuperFundies by letting their side be heard too, albeit feeble and riddled with stories of "magic" and "supernatural forces" and what-not). Keep in mind this stuff was written by a person who thinks Harry Potter and his fictional friends and make-believe world somehow pose a real threat to the inhabitants of Earth.

Here's the funniest part: I really wouldn't care who won...I'd consider it a victory for the Country if either ticket were given the nod. All four guys are candid, intellegent, articulate and charismatic. All things of which great leaders are comprised.

I promise I'll post something more substantive later, I just thought this was funny.

I guess we have alternative sources for cheap labor besides Mexico.

This is friggin' hilarious.

According to Mitch Harper's 8:40pm post over at Parley (audio post), at least 146 citizens have cast a ballot in favor of David Roach, Candidate for Allen County Sheriff.

Ooooooooooooooooh creepy.

UPDATE: FWOb has posted some early returns on this race:

OK, primaries are over...votes are being tallied and we're back to chillin' here at The Record. Time for a little mood music. Tonight we have chosen to bust out some Dan Bern just for laughs, compliments of my brother-in-law. Thanks, Miles!