SleepingPoliceman

Hi everyone.

So let’s talk about us for a few minutes. I know, you’ve been patiently waiting for some more delicious SP goodness to distract you however-briefly from the doldrums of your regular life. I hear you. It’s an important service we provide, and we’ve been dropping the ball.

Part of the reason for that is, as always, jz’s continued desire to improve his life and the animal population of the world by diligently pursuing his veterinary career. All the while ignoring the damage done to the interwebs. Selfish, I know.

While he’s being self-centered, I’ve been committing blogging bigamy. For the past few months, I’ve been putting my thoughts up on a new site: Why I Am Awesome and Not Awesome. The conceit of this site is pretty self explanatory. I would recommend any and all regular readers of this site head over there to see what I’ve been up to, thinking about, and how that’s affected my abnormally high/low self regard.

Where does that leave us? Well, there’s more to say over here. I won’t get into what exactly we want to do, because the potential plan-shifting and time-delays could lead to further accusations of being a tease. But ideas are floating around. More content will be done here. Don’t delete those links and RSS feeds just yet.

And if you’re new here, having just come over from Awesome/Not Awesome, or through some sort of random online browsing, then welcome. Peruse the archives. Enjoy yourself and stay a while.

Thank you again for your continued patience. Sincerely,
The MGMT*

(*meaning us, not the band.)

Not that this will come as much of a surprise to anyone who comes by these here parts regularly, but we’re officially announcing that SleepingPoliceman is going on hiatus for a while.

Will this be different than the “four posts in five months” hiatus that it’s been on recently? Not really. But, you know, it’ll be “official.”

Don’t delete the bookmarks, though. We’ll have something going on this site again in the future. We just have to take care of other endeavors at present. Updates on those will come as we feel comfortable publicizing them.

If you are new here, take a look through the ol’ archives…you can see what jz and myself were thinking/talking about for the past few years. Hopefully some of it comes across as mildly entertaining.

Thanks for the attention and your continued patience. We shall return.

I know things have been pretty quiet around here. It’s been so quiet, we even dropped the ball on celebrating the site’s three year birthday a couple weeks back. Tragic. In case you were wondering what we were up to, here is a brief synopsis:

-jz has continued his scientific endeavors, conquering the worlds of biology, genetics, organic chemistry and organic chemistry II (the sequel). When last heard from, he was preparing to leave the continent and the hemisphere. Basically, he’s too busy to invest as much time as he wants into World of Warcraft and Apple products…so he doesn’t feel the need to post much.

-ptm spent a lot of time and effort sending in applications to creative writing programs, and an almost equal amount of time and effort sorting through rejection letters. Thankfully some letters had good news, and he is currently prepping to transplant himself across the country to sunny Los Angeles to begin the Master of Professional Writing program at USC. And by “currently prepping,” he means that his bags are packed right behind him, and as soon as this post is done he is packing up the computer, going to bed, waking up and hitting the road. While this whole California thing was falling into place, he also left his job, had a surprise party thrown for him, got engaged to Lisa, and began referring to himself in the third person. It’s been a busy couple of weeks.

All that being said, we’re* looking to reboot the site and rededicate it to some new content. I’m going to use the magic of motels-with-high-speed-internet to document the drive out to L.A. And then I’ll be tracking my attempts to acclimate myself to the left coast, and all the fun stuff going on in the MPW program. I’ll also try to finish the Lester post, the party recap and the movie reviews that I’ve promised people I’d do.

So…lots of fun stuff to come. Or maybe it’ll be another four weeks before anything is posted, and it’ll just be a couple of links with some mediocre one liners attached. You know, either/or.

*when I say “we,” I’m really just speaking for me. I think jz is too preoccupied and too international traveling to contribute much. We’ll keep poking his blogging corpse with a virtual stick to see if he’ll twitch…but don’t hold your breath.

I: …that the top headline on the biggest sports news outlet in the world would be discussing a retired athlete expressing his interest in coming back to the game, you probably would have thought it wasn’t that big a deal. But the fact that it’s all about him sending a text message to his former boss makes it a weird cross between a subtle “you’re in the 21st century now, son” reminder and a unique version of the gossip rag staple “Stars…they’re just like us!” Hey, I send text messages. Brett Favre sends text messages. I…I’m just like Brett Fav…ruh!

ESPN.com: Report: Favre sends text message to Packers GM Thompson

Note: This was not a text message about coming out of retirement; it was just a text message. It might have been something like, “Dude, u see that Japanese game show thing? so weird. lol. l8r.” BREAKING NEWS!

II: …that we were still debating whether or not gay people to serving in the military would impede our ability to win a war, you would have thought I was kidding. And probably a little homophobic. Well, how about if I told you that it was newsworthy that someone actually had to do a whole study to make this point? Would it make you feel embarrassed for everyone involved in everything? Probably.

boston.com: Study: Military gays don’t undermine unit cohesion

Then there’s this guy:

“The issue is trust and confidence” among members of a unit, said Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, who retired in 1993 after working on the issue for the Army. When some people with a different sexual orientation are “in a close combat environment, it results in a lack of trust,” he said.

Can I assume from the context of this quote that the right reverend Lt. Col. left the Army after working on this? Could he really not handle the issue, and he had to hand in his uniform to go take a 15 year bath? Or were his quotes manipulated so it seems that he’s channeling his inner Gareth? And what’s his justification for thinking like this?

Supporters of the ban contend there is still no empirical evidence that allowing gays to serve openly won’t hurt combat effectiveness.

Writers of this post contend there is no empirical evidence that Lt. Col. Magenius isn’t really super gay himself. I’ve seen no evidence to categorically prove that isn’t true. Prove the negative, sir…prove it!

III: …that the phrase “the storied New England Patriots football team” would be used in an actual news article, and that it wasn’t a joke or a statement of ultimate irony…you not only wouldn’t believe me, you’d probably walk away shaking your head at my foolishness.

Christian Science Monitor: China trains 200,000 cheerleaders – for other Olympic teams

What a weird, weird world we live in. “Poisemanship,” indeed.

Is it just me, or does this baby in a bunny suit look like the evil super-villain in a really messed up movie? Or, at the very least, he kind of looks like a South Park character come to life.

“That’s right, Mr. Bond. You are too late to stop my super-laser now. Mwa-ha-ha! Fight and struggle. Fight and struggle!”

(In case you were wondering, this freaky dude is from this product on Amazon. And if you are further wondering why I’m looking at baby bunny costumes on Amazon, it’s because my Yahoo sign-out screen had a headline for a “news story” about baby Yoda costumes. And if you think I won’t click on a story about baby Yoda costumes, we must have never met before.)

I had planned yesterday to write a quick post to mark the second anniversary of your beloved Sleeping Policeman. But, like a lot of the other posts that are backlogged, I didn’t get to it in time. Alas.

So, give it a +1 and help us blow out a couple of candles. Here’s hoping year 3 will continue to be productive and entertaining…and that, you know, people are still enjoying it. Thanks for joining along with our virtual rambles.

Of today’s 61 spam comments, about 48 were about cars, trucks or NASCAR. Four more had something to do with Connecticut. The remaining were porn related.

Frankly, I’m insulted. For myself, for jz, and for the readers of SP. Does anyone really think we care more about cars than we do about filthy teen freaks?

The management would like to apologize for once again having sporadic posting here on Sleeping Policeman…some of us are in the middle of changing careers, and the rest of us are stuck being busy in our current ones. I’m hoping to get a few posts up today…but every time I say something like that, it doesn’t end up happening, and I get labeled a blogtease. It’s a cruel, cruel world.

To begin with, I wanted to comment on something that I’ve been meaning to comment on for a while: comments. Specifically, the spam comments that get left here on the site. Ever since JZ elevated me to the illustrious status of moderator, I’ve been able to go through and zap the spam that gets auto-posted here on the site. (You don’t see it because first-time posts get filtered…we’re good like that.)

Now, I know these comments are randomly generated, and they’re the same everywhere…but there’s been a disturbing trend here. We started off all nice and innocent, with online poker sites and places with free Viagra/Cialis. And there’s always comments that link to some random site, but they try to be sly by making flattering statements like, “Oh, what a great point,” and “I like your posts – keep ‘em coming!” (I want to keep those sometimes, because they help my ego.)

Then over time came an increase in other drugs, like Ambien, Xanax and Vicodin. OK, whatever…to be expected. And there was always occasionally “nude girls” or “dirty teens,” which, you know, makes sense as this is the internet and all. But recently there’s been an explosion in really weird sex sites, advertising stuff that isn’t cool at all on any level, like date rape fantasies and forced feminization. Culminating in today, when we got about 15 comments in a row that said this:

Hi there.
Are you there?
All the darkness in the world cannot put out the smallest candle. The darker it is, more brightly shines the candle. instead of complaining about the dark search for your candle. Believe me; It exists…

I’m sort of freaked out by the spam. What does this stuff say about what spammers think of our readers? What does it say about us?

With the hectic hecticity of this upcoming weekend looming, I’m going to squeeze in a happy holiday message right here and now. There will likely not be another chance to do so.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas…well, you should start. Didn’t you get the memo that we won?

Be happy, enjoy, take care and stay alive.

Gobble-gobble hey!

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.