Category: People

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The folks of St. Louis are still talking about the massive freeway crash that occurred Tuesday afternoon during rush hour. Three people have now died, and several are still in the hospital.

For those not from our area, the interchange between our Highway 40 (Interstate 64) and southbound I270 is incredibly busy in the afternoon rush hour. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for people to be forced to slow or even stop in the rightmost lane. Tuesday afternoon, a semi-truck hauling scrap aluminum hit, and literally ran over ten cars. Two people died immediately, and a third died today. Two of the three who died were Amish, traveling in a hired van heading to a funeral.

All the facts aren’t in and the police haven’t issued a report yet, but one thing is known: the truck driver was not paying attention before he hit the cars. A person driving besides the truck, who ended up getting hit by one of the cars knocked over the truck, estimated it was going 75 MPH when it hit the cars, and with no slowing down.

No charges have been filed yet. The driver has a clean record, and is emotionally wrecked, as you can imagine.

Tonight, one of the local news stations reported that the driver was distracted by a cellphone call just before the accident. I don’t think any of us are surprised.

The biggest cause of accidents, in this area and most likely elsewhere, is people not paying attention. They talk on the phone, they eat, try to read the newspaper while waiting at lights, check their email, and probably send Twitter updates. We travel in vehicles weighing thousands of pounds, traveling at high speeds, surrounded by other big, fast moving vehicles, and seem to think it’s perfectly acceptable to have a phone conversation with Joe, or quickly check that email from Jane—not to mention drinking hot coffee, smoking cigarettes that drop hot ash, or fiddling with the in-dash GPS, iPod, or radio.

Needless to say, the accident has awakened the call to make cellphone use while driving illegal. We shouldn’t need a law, though. We have something between our ears called a brain.

Earlier in the year I wrote a post about women and weblogging, and based on the old John Lennon song, used the phrase, “Women are the niggers of weblogging”.

People were offended at my use of the word, delinked me, unsubscribed, etc. etc. The fact that I was unsubscribed because I used the “word” didn’t bother me. What did bother me is that my writing didn’t inspire either deeper thought on the subject, or a healthy debate. I failed with that writing and it wasn’t because I used the “word”; it was because I used the “word” badly.

If you’re going to do satire, if you’re going to walk the edge with what you write, how you write, and the words you use, you better make sure that you have the skill to pull it off. I obviously didn’t.

This relates to today’s brouhaha, regarding Loren Feldman, the man who bills himself as a funny man, but who is primarily known for those instances where his “humor” has backfired. Feldman had his own failed “satirical” moment with a show he billed as “TechNigga” over a year ago, and got blasted to smithereens by all but a few buddies. Buddies, I might add, who have a lot of clout within this environment.

Feldman has since lost a deal with CNet, and today, the last of his clips were “refreshed” out of Verizon’s mobile service supposedly because of protests from those offended at Feldman’s old clip.

I’m not sure whether the protests by small but vocal groups were enough, or if Verizon found out what many of us have discovered: the man really isn’t funny. Not outside of a small group of weblogging insiders, which doesn’t translate into an audience for 15 year old text messaging girls, Verizon’s primary customers.

Some are bitching about “freedom of speech”, but I think Dare Obasanjo had about the best response to these claims:

People often confuse the fact that it is not a crime to speak your mind in America with the belief that you should be able to speak your mind without consequence. The two things are not the same. If I call you an idiot, I may not go to jail but I shouldn’t expect you to be nice to me afterwards. The things you say can come back and bite you on butt is something everyone should have learned growing up. So it is always surprising for me to see people petulantly complain that “this violates my freedom of speech” when they have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

Feldman is no Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, or Whoopi Goldberg. These are funny people on the edge, funny people who actually defined both the edge, and what it means to be on the edge. They paid a price, and willingly, for both their humor and their courage.

Feldman wants the glory, but without the cost. He just doesn’t get it.

Rageboy (remember him?) gives all new meaning to the term ‘hot linking’, when he switches one image for another after finding the original was hot linked.

Rageboy done good, on more than one level. The site that had did the hot linking was equating the Holocaust with building a Planned Parenthood clinic in Denver. There are so many lies at the site, I’m surprised Bad Jesuit hasn’t been blasted to hell by the God he supposedly believes in.

This makes a good a time as any to remind folks to support their local Planned Parenthood. This organization is the only one I know of that routinely provides free cancer screening for women, as well as education and information about safe sex, as well as having a safe pregnancy. As more hospitals get scared out of providing full services for women, it is about the only organization left that provides legal, safe abortions. I realize that Bad Jesuit would rather women have unwanted children, which he, of course, won’t have to care for. Or to have back alley abortions, and hopefully the women will die — the harlots. Luckily, others of us have a more ‘Christian’ view, regardless of our religious beliefs.

But hey! The site is an equal opportunity hate site: it goes after gays and atheists, too.

Good job, Rageboy.