SleepingPoliceman

So we’ve been meaning to reboot this site (which has, as you might be aware, been dormant for a couple of months) since the start of the new year. Well, what better time to do that than on this historic day? None…none better time.

That being said, I was up early on the west coast to watch the inauguration events unfold. And I kept a little live diary of it. It’s after the fold. I will come back and edit it later, but as of this posting (9:46am PST) I’m just putting up what came out in real time. Welcome back, SP readers.

(Reuters/Brian Snyder)

(more…)

I don’t know if anything else needs to be said. Congratulations, America.

OK, yeah, again, it’s been a while. The Red Sox didn’t make it happen, which is oddly fine. (What a strange world we live in.) Lisa came out for a very fun visit to L.A. School has been progressing nicely, with a lot of work mixed in with a bit of fun.

But there’s no time for all that now. No, now it’s time to do the democracy thing. And, yeah, I know what you’re thinking: this election isn’t really that big a deal. I mean, our secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin isn’t even on the ballot this year. If you can’t vote for him, then why even bother showing up?

I hear you. And the answer, of course, is simple: you have to go and vote so you can make sure weed and gayness stay illegal. Isn’t that what’s important?

Now…not enough time has been spent in this space talking about this election. I can’t explain why. So much has happened, almost all of it worth commenting on. What can I say? There’s no excuse. We dropped the ball. Hopefully you’ll forgive us.

I’ve wanted to write more in the past week or two, but frankly, I’ve been nervous. I don’t like being in the position where the side I’m pulling for has a comfortable lead. Right now, I feel the same way I did during game 4 against St. Louis in ‘04: the score is 3-0 in the bottom of the ninth, two outs, the Sox have a three games to none lead in the Series, and I can think of is, “there’s a runner on base; if Renteria gets a hit, the next guy can hit a homer to tie it, and we could have this all swept out from under us.” I don’t know if I’m a pessimist with a thin shell of optimism, or the other way around. Either way, I get scared when I’m excited, and I’m excited. And scared.

Anyway, the takeaway message is this: even if you can’t vote for William Galvin, you should still get out there and vote. I already have, because I cheated and voted early via absentee ballot. I’m hoping that this will be the first time since 1996 that my Presidential vote in either a primary or general election has gone to the eventual winner. I’m also going to try to vote again tomorrow under the name Mickey Mouse…but that’s only if I can follow the complicated instructions my new ACORN friends have given me.

I’m rambling. Go vote. Vote for change. Don’t let this all get swept out from under us. Can we do this?

…I think you know the answer.

Vote For Change: find your polling location

#1. boston.com: Woman’s odyssey to New York lands her at center of scandal

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the cast of characters go like this: soon-to-be-former-Governor Eliot Spitzer’s political career has crumbled around him because it was revealed that he utilized the services of a high-class escort service. Which people aren’t very down with, even though he was frugal enough to only go for the five diamond girls instead of the seven diamond ones (which cost a few grand more…fiscal responsibility, people!). As the media sharks have circled the story, they’ve honed in on the girl, who works under the name Kristen but lives under the name Ashley Alexandra Dupre. In digging around to find out more about her story (and as an excuse to run blurry MySpace photos of her while moralists and apologists alike secretly think about what she must look like naked and the sort of things she’s able to do to be worth $1,000 an hour), we’ve also been introduced to Carolyn Capalbo, the girl’s mother. While the mom is “shell-shocked” that her daughter is a whore, she still has a strong sense of belief in her girl:

“She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor,” Capalbo said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Wow. It’s nice that you want to stand by and support your daughter, and stand up for her intelligence. But…you could maybe choose your words better. It’s bad enough your mom knows that you have handled a governor – does she have to talk about it to the wire services? Thanks, mom.

Side comment I: how humiliating must it be to be the wife of the famous politician who cheated on you and then had to hold a press conference admitting it? (Boston.com has a nice little photo gallery here.) They always have to stand there, trying to look supportive but not overly forgiving…and in the end, they just look shell-shocked with simmering rage. Sometimes it works out for you (like you can end up being a major-favorite candidate for president)…most of the time, though, it probably just sucks. If I was ever the politician in that situation, I’m pretty sure I’d be standing up there alone. “Uh, yeah, she couldn’t make it – she’s currently destroying all of my possessions and preparing what best way to mutilate my genitals when I get back home.”

Side comment II: did you ever think the day would come when the prestigious New York Times would be giving a photo credit to MySpace? Times are strange.

#2. CNN.com: Boyfriend: Phobia caused woman’s 2-year bathroom stay

The details of this story speak for themselves. And they say things like:

“She is an adult; she made her own decision,” said her boyfriend, Kory McFarren. “I should have gotten help for her sooner; I admit that. But after a while, you kind of get used to it.”
…
McFarren, 36, said he can’t be certain how long Pam Babcock stayed in the bathroom because “time just went by so quick I can’t pinpoint how long.”
…
“It just kind of happened one day; she went in and had been in there a little while, the next time it was a little longer. Then she got it in her head she was going to stay — like it was a safe place for her,” McFarren said.

But McFarren said she moved around in the bathroom during that time, bathed and changed into the clothes he brought her. He brought food and water to her. They had conversations and had an otherwise normal relationship — except it all happened in the bathroom.

How…endearing? I guess it’s nice to support your significant other in whatever their hopes and dreams are. But…dude, her skin grew over the toilet seat, and it had to be surgically removed. You could have tried putting your foot down a little more.

Questions I want answers to on this story: when they say “normal relationship,” does that mean…uh, an “active” relationship? And if so…how? Also, if she lived in the bathroom for two years…and she was sitting on the toilet for at least a month…where, um, did this guy go when he had to TCB? Was there a second bath in this trailer? Is there a particularly fertile patch of trees nearby?

I don’t really want to consider the alternatives. Yuck.

1. boston.com: Young rider gives MBTA board an earful

This story is partly interesting because it shows what many of us have always suspected: a 17 year old spending a few minutes a week on the internet can run a public transportation system better than the people at the T. What sold me on it was the end of the article:

Grabauskas [General Manager of the T] said he is eager to meet with Spina [aforementioned 17 year old], go over the report, and show him the T’s operations center.

And by “show him the T’s operations center,” he means smash him in the head with a sackful of old tokens, toss him into a turnstile, and then stuff unused Charlie Tickets down his throat.

2. CNN.com: BBQ-smoker-turned-’Robocop’ chases off bums

I have a few reactions to this:

-There’s something funny to me about a vigilante defender of public morals…who’s defending his bar.

-The guy who laughs at the robot in the video (about 20 seconds before the end) is genius.

-”Defecating. Urinating. Prostituting. Ahh, the whole nine yards.”

-At first, I thought this was built so this guy could scare off unwanted types without actually putting himself in danger. He sends the robot in, if they shoot it or beat it up then all he’s lost is the robot. But it sort of looks like he has to walk about five feet behind the robot at all times to get it to work. So that defeats that purpose. I know believe it was designed purely to freak out people who were very, very high.

-If RoboCop had actually been about a barbecue smoker mounted on a three-wheeled scooter, it wouldn’t have made as much money as it did.

3. boston.com: Ghostbusters Party at Felt

The idea of a Ghostbusters Party is awesome. This thing, however, sounds like someone trying to throw a budget rave in their freshman dorm. At the very least they could have tried to get Ray Parker Jr to show up. What else is he doing this weekend?

CNN.com: Ex-Florida prison boss: Drunken orgies tainted system

This has the early lead in the race for, “best headline of 2008.” And the article also contains one of the greatest sentences every uttered by anyone on the face of anything:

“The connection between the softball and the parties and the corruption and the beatings was greatly intertwined.”

Wow. Wow. Nothing about that isn’t genius. The sunshine state, indeed.

“Did you hear about Heath Ledger?” My mother has a way of introducing subjects that let you know exactly where they’re going…she’s like a walking inadvertent headline writer. As soon as she said that in a particular tone, I knew she wasn’t talking about an arrest or a bad interview or a sudden appearance at a club with Britney. Before she got her next sentence out, I knew we were talking death. And I then had an immediate and visceral response:

What does this mean for the Batman movies?

I’ve never been supremely overly affected by a celebrity death. I was 2 when Lennon died, and by the time George passed, he had been sick for a while and everyone knew it was coming. I didn’t really start liking Nirvana until after Cobain committed suicide, so that day was more thinking about other people who care and less about caring myself. I also hadn’t really started loving the music of Kevin Gilbert or Elliott Smith when they died. The most distraught a celebrity death ever made me was probably when Phil Hartman was killed…that one still would be “too soon” for me if I was playing a game of Celebrity Dinner.

And I can’t say that I’m supremely touched or emotional about the loss of Heath Ledger. He was a damn good actor, and I never heard anything bad about him. It sucks that he died (for whatever reason it turns out he did, whether it’s accidental OD, intentional OD, pneumonia, whatever), and it especially sucks that he left behind a young daughter. Any loss of human life, especially at an early age, is an unfortunate, self-contained tragedy. Godspeed to him on whatever journey he undertakes on the other side. I feel bad that he’s gone. But, you know…not really, soul-chillingly bad.

But…but…OK, I won’t lie that I’ve worried about confronting this before. I spent the first half of this decade secretly terrified that someone integral to the Star Wars movies would croak before they were done. Ewan could spin out on his bike and not be able to complete Episode III. Anthony Daniels could have a stroke before recording all of 3PO’s lines (and the ensuing commercials). Lucas himself could drop the coil. John Williams was my always number 1 fear…he’s not super-old, but he’s not young either, and I could just imagine a despondent Lucas giving an interview to Bill Moyers, saying, “Johnny stopped in the doorway and he pointed at his head and said, ‘George, I have the final theme for you – it’s all up here.’ Then he walked out, and that was the last time I ever saw him. We just cobbled together outtakes from the Special Edition Ewok song to fill the space.”

In other words, yes, when considering the possible death of another human being, I placed the fear that a piece of fluffy celluloid entertainment that I wanted to see might somehow be compromised over the value of the life in question. And now I’m doing it again, but not in a hypothetical situation. It’s Holyfield, and important questions need to be answered: was he finished with filming The Dark Knight? If so, had he done what he needed to do in post-production?* If there have to be reshoots before the June release, what will they do to get new footage? And what if the Joker was supposed to still be around in the third movie…will they recast? Will they do some weird Livia Soprano CGI thing? Will they re-write the whole tale and take the Joker out of chapter 3? If so, what will we be missing by not having the greatest character in this particular universe involved in the story?

These are the things that concern me. Those things, and the fact that I’m a horrible, self-centered human being for caring about a movie instead of someone’s life. But in my defense…the movie looks really good.

R.I.P., Mr. Ledger. I apologize on behalf of my twisted priorities.

*Apparently, Harry Knowles says yes to both of those first two questions. In case you, too, were worried about such things…you savages.

boston.com: Students in Canton given electrical shocks after prank call, report says

I don’t want to jump to any conclusions until all the facts are in…but that might be the most successful prank call of all time. You got two kids shocked a total of 106 times? Not bad. Of course, the victims of this tele-Milgram study should have realized what was going on after the first five shocks, when the “supervisor” started yelling out, “Howard Stern rules!”

I like these two sentences:

The Judge Rotenberg center, which serves about 250 adults and children from across the country, has been under fire for more than two decades for its unorthodox behavior-modification treatments, including electric shock treatments. Its defenders say that the school takes in troubled students, some with self-damaging behavior, who have been rejected by other schools.

Critcs say that guns are tools of destruction that do nothing but cause damage and have no worthwhile benefits in our modern day society. Defenders say that guns are shiny.

Seriously, is that the best defense they can mount? “Well, we take in troubled students that other schools have rejected.” Oh, yeah? So do crack dens. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for the kids to go there.

Finally, there’s this part:

The identity of the staffer who was fooled into administering the shocks has also not been released. State officials indicated that some disciplinary action took place, though they would not specify what it was.

“Disciplinary action took place.” I bet it did. Look out, Mr. Staffer…it’s shocky-shocky time.

boston.com: Number of Big Dig leaks drops from thousands to hundreds

See? There are only hundreds of leaks in the super expensive brand new(ish) tunnel running through the heart of our city. That’s all. Who are you callin’ a boondoggle now?

This is good publicity for the Turnpike Authority. I look forward to them keeping this positive momentum going for them, and not completely crapping it away by doing something stupid like actively trying to decrease participation in a carpooling program. Even the MTA isn’t that stupid.

I don’t know if this is a big story outside of the realm of CNN.com, but I just became hip to the story of poor little Youssif. Youssif was (well, is) a 5 year old little boy in Iraq who, for whatever reason, was picked up in the street by five dudes who poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. Which, you know, isn’t cool. So CNN wrote a story about it, the kind that says, “Just look at the horrible toll of war. Just horrible. … Please click on our banner ads.” Then people who read CNN.com felt rightfully ashamed of having laptops and high-speed wireless connections while this poor kid sat in Baghdad with horrible scars across his face.

The story is horrible. The guys who did this are jerks. There’s never any reason to hurt a 5 year old, unless you’re another 5 year old and he stole your Tonka truck and you give him a wussy child-like slap-punch on the shoulder before crying about it to your mommy. He deserves all the sympathy and monetary support he has gotten. I hope that he gets better and can return to having a normal life.

All that being said…here are a couple of things from the article about him that sort of struck me as inadvertently and inappropriately funny:

From today’s article, “Surgery over; Youssif’s biggest scar removed”:

Youssif entered the operating room around 6:30 a.m. PT for the three-and-a-half hour surgery.

Just before the surgery began, Youssif began crying.

“I can’t do this. I can’t do this,” he said.

Sedation then set in, he relaxed and Dr. Peter Grossman, the plastic surgeon with the Grossman Burn Center who is donating his services, began to operate.

The writer conjours the image of a poor, injured boy (from a country with medical facilities that rarely has pain medication) crying about how he doesn’t want to do a round of surgery…following that right up by, “Sedation then set in.” For some reason, this seems like it should be followed by, “Dr. Grossman tilted his head back, syringe in hand, and let out a long, slow cackle. “Mwuah-hahahahaha!”

Maybe that’s just me.

Later in the article:

Living temporarily with the balloons is never an easy process for burn survivors because they look much worse — like a “science-fiction creature” in Grossman’s words — before they can get better.

“We try not to traumatize the patients emotionally with this too much,” he said.

It might decrease the emotional trauma if you stopped using phrases, “science-fiction creature” when describing them. Genius.

The topper is from the first article on Youssif from August:

“They dumped gasoline, burned me, and ran,” Youssif told CNN, pointing down the street with his scarred hands where his attackers fled. Photo See photographs of Youssif before and after the attack.

As he sucked his thumb, he repeated, “I was burning.” He tried to put the flames out himself.
…
“He’s become spiteful, I am not sure why,” said his mother, Zainab. “He is jealous of everyone. If I say the slightest thing to him, he cries. He’s sensitive.”

Wow. You don’t know why he’s become spiteful? You’re all heart, Zainab. “Yeah, his face is horribly disfigured and we have very little chance of doing much to change that. But I don’t know why he’s such a crybaby. Maybe that was pansy gasoline they poured on him. Pansy.” I guess we know who’s not going to win the Baghdad Ms. Having-A-Clue contest.

I’m sure this was just a poor Iraqi-to-English translation. And some mediocre, overwrought journalistic stylings. Still…it had to be commented on. Get better, Youssif.