News: Stupid and Stupider

Teh stupid, it burns:

• An idiot-meets-cop story that's actually from some place other than Florida! An Ohio woman walked up to a police officer, asked if there was a curfew, and then asked if there was an open warrant out for her. No and yes! There must be a better way to find out if an arrest warrant exists for you. I wonder if there's an app for that.
• Of course, that doesn't mean the idiot locus has left Florida. This guy got pulled over on a traffic stop. The officer noticed the unmistakable smell of marijuana coming from the car, so he searched the man, and found two baggies of assorted drugs between his buttocks.

  When the bag fell to the ground, Roberts immediately said, according to the report, “The white stuff is not mine, but the weed is.”

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  That just leaves me speechless...
  
• Southern Baptists are not allowed to practice yoga, while "Other Christian leaders have said practicing yoga is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus." You know, I've read the Bible a couple times and I never saw anything along the lines of "Thou shalt not tie thyself into a knot."

FCC (Fuzzy Cat Censorship):

see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Whiteboard jungle action:

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  Can I get some extra spell points while you're at it?
• 
  That guy? The one at the computer? That's totally me. I have said that exact same thing before. Java is a bloat-hog and if you're only going to run your app on one platform ever, WRITE IT IN SOMETHING ELSE.
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  see more Monday Through Friday
  Dude, I need to figure out where they hired their ninjas!

And to end that on a positive note:

Other: Doin' Hard Time For Virtual Crime

Last year, I talked about how peoples' "lives" in on-line games are bleeding more and more into the real world. The July issue of Scientific American¹ has a short article on how current laws cannot address in-game crimes, which can lead to real-life repercussions.

They mention the, well, humorous case of the British couple divorcing because the husband's Second Life avatar was boinking another player in the game (just don't ask), and how the wife had gone on to date someone she met on World of Warcraft. Something I hadn't known was that the husband had countered that he had to seek on-line solace in the first place because his wife was already a WoW addict. ?!

A less funny story I hadn't known concerns a real-life murder back in 2005. Chinese Legend of Mir 3-addict Qiu Chengwei actually killed his friend after that friend borrowed an in-game sword and then sold it for real money. When Qiu reported the virtual theft, the police told him there was nothing they could do about something that happened in a game. Then Qiu was really, really sentenced to death for the murder, although the Chinese authorities later commuted it to life in prison.

A Brussels prosecutor even wanted to charge a man whose avatar raped another player within Second Life. That failed to happen, but it brings up how much of their emotional lives people can invest in these communities, to the point where virtual theft and violence can be traumatic for some.

Obviously, most people look initially to the game companies to police their players, but it's impossible to prevent a determined person from creating another account if theirs is deleted. The article also points out that most companies would rather count their profits than expend time and energy getting rid of paying players, even if those players' antisocial behavior pushes others out of the game.

Yes, I am one to talk about not leaving an MMORPG behind when I log out, as I just admitted to sending a doll to a Puzzle Pirates employee. But the game's owner, Three Rings Design, makes a serious effort to minimize griefing. While most of the game's players are adults, they do welcome anyone who can abide by the terms of service, including teenagers. (In fact, they just opened a new "ocean" aimed at children and families which has extremely strict language filters and has even removed mentions of alcohol from the game.) It certainly helps that it has a much smaller subscriber base than, say, Second Life's one million active users, but they also actively engage the players.

---

¹I will read the August issue before the end of August!

Other: It's Funny 'Cause It Is So True

see more Funny Graphs

And that's also why this bullshit and absurd level of grief pisses me off even more.

Other: Dear CNN.com

Dear CNN.com,

Could you please let me know when I'll be able to go to your site without fear of a dead celebrity's name appearing in one of the top stories? For some completely inexplicable reason, I simply wonder why, with the first coup in Central America in decades, the residual debris from the Iranian elections, the exodus of American troops from Iraq, the planned increase in numbers of American troops in Afghanistan, continued concern over the fate of the economy, what seems like a spate of recent airplane crashes, not to mention more localized concerns, like why the state of California is trying to resume costly criminal executions when it can't even afford to pay its own teachers the monkey spit they usually get, your website seems to find it more important to trace the life of a person whose death would really, if people were sane and had any sense of perspective, affect only his or her family and close friends. So, thanks so much for feeding the monster of celebrity obsession for people who don't seem to know that the exit of someone who didn't even live on the same planet as the rest of us really isn't going to change anyone's life unless they are so focused on something that has nothing to do with them that they miss what really does matter in their lives. And thanks so much for making it impossible for people who realize there's an actual planet out there which is still spinning in the exact same direction and at the same speed as it was before to find actual news that really speaks about the present and future of that planet.

Seriously, either step up to the plate and focus on some real, pertinent news, or just be honest with yourselves and change the name to "Celebrity News Network."

Sincerely,
Karen

P.S. It's not like most of you other news outlets are any better, so you can just shut up, too. Seriously, is there a Michael-Jackson-free news source where I can find out what's actually happening in the world right now?

Metro Journal: March 27 Bowling for Day Passes

Friday was Brad's birthday and he was playing hookey, so we decided to go bowling. It was just afternoon, it was another freaky hot day, but I feel like a dork driving less than 1½ miles, so I decided to take the bus. I was figuring afterward maybe seeing a movie, so I planned to get a day pass.

Well, the first bus was about 10 minutes late, and it only runs every half hour. (I could have walked the ½ mile to my connecting stop in that time, but it was hot just standing in the sun without even moving.) I got on, fed my $5 bill into the machine, and asked for a day pass. Now, since the first time I can remember getting a day pass, about 4 years ago now (when they were still $3), they've been a piece of paper with the date printed on it. It had been about a month since I had gotten my last day pass, and that was what I was expecting. But the driver pulled a stack of the TAP transit cards out of his pocket and handed me one and told me to scan it. I'd seen them before; they act like debit cards. You pre-pay an amount to load it up and then every time you get on a bus or train, you scan it and it subtracts the fare. It's good in multiple participating area transit systems, too, not just the Los Angeles County MTA. I took the card, but I was confused, and the bus was running late already, so I didn't want to interrogate the driver.

It turns out that, yes, Metro started on March 15 the process of replacing the paper day passes with the TAP system. The "day pass" is still good for as many buses and trains you can get your butt on in a day, so using the Tap card doesn't "debit" anything, but just makes sure the card has a valid pass for that day loaded on it. And normally it costs $2 to buy a TAP card, which can then be used and reloaded until you, well, lose it, but until April 11 (or while supplies last) drivers are handing them out for free when you buy a day pass. Wow. I feel so... out of the loop.

The last paper pass I got (still stuffed in my bag over a month later) and my new TAP card (a $2 value, free while supplies last! Or through April 11.)

We waited forever in the hot sun for a connecting bus, after having watched two go by while we were less than a block from the stop. I spoke with the man behind me who was trying to explain the Tap cards. I asked if it would still act like a day pass instead of like I had loaded $5 on it and he said he wasn't sure. We actually managed to talk about a lot of stuff, like lack of public transportation budget, the economy, the mortgage mess, off-shoring of jobs, karma (I brought it up as in, "Well, I hope the greedy people responsible for these messes get theirs, and I hope they get it before they die, so I'll enjoy it more" but I think the man I was speaking to actually believed in reincarnation in Hindu or Buddhist sense. I explained I didn't have that much patience.) We actually talked about a lot of things, because we had to wait over 15 minutes in the hot sun for another bus.

I was so late, Brad had already started a practice game. I got a strike in my first 3 or so frames and, of course, there was nowhere to go but downhill. I hadn't bowled in probably 3 years or so and I never had what might be called good technique. Or any technique. After getting mocked by the computer scoring system for my >50% rate of gutterballs in the first full game, I studied the sign on the wall for the "classic 4-step bowling technique." I also watched someone in the next alley who seemed to hit pins more often than not, and by the end of the second game, I had more than doubled my first game's score. The third game, on almost every frame I seemed to get a 9, although it tapered off near the end. I'll say it was bowler's thumb, and I won't mention how I managed to bruise my pelvic bone (seriously, I'm not saying anything about it). No, I never did break 100, but maybe I'll try to go at least once a week while I'm still not working.

I had been thinking about going to see Watchmen afterward and had looked up the time. When Brad suggested seeing a movie, I mentioned it to him, so we went to the Americana. I had never actually set foot inside it before. There's a train that runs around the thing, more for gimmick value than anything else, and neither of us were sure where the theater was physically located in the place. We finally saw it on the other side of a large, grassy knoll. As there were other people standing in the large, grassy knoll and we could see no signs saying, "Stay off the grass," we started walking across the grass. When he got to the very middle of the knoll, we saw a sign saying, "Please stay off the grass."

I am not making this up.

After the movie, Brad left to go to dinner, and I went to a nearby, non-Americana store. After that, I was waiting at the light to cross Brand to go to a Japanese fast-ish food restaurant when a woman walked up to me, and in what sounded like a Scandinavian accent, told me that a man over "there" (kitty corner from where we were, which had a lot of people on it and none who seemed to be giving me the evil eye) had just told her that he was going to break the neck of the woman with glasses on this corner, and since I was the only woman with glasses on this corner, he meant me. This woman did not seem at all menacing, just, well, not all there, but she seemed alarmed, so I thanked her, and told her I would be sure to stay away from that man. She went on to tell me that serious, permanent spinal cord injuries could result! Damn, this was a long light cycle. I told her I would be sure to avoid him, but she wasn't really paying attention. The light changed, I smiled and thanked her again, then I crossed the street. Fortunately the Japanese place was on the same side of the street so I didn't have to walk near the, um, imaginary weird-o.

After I ate, I came out. The corner the woman had been pointing at was actually the corner where my bus home stopped, and lo and behold, there were actually two police cars stopped there. Well, maybe there had been a total whackjob there and someone had called him in. Or maybe it was Friday night on the busiest corner in the city's commercial district. The policemen just seemed to be chatting with an ordinary female citizen, and after several minutes, everyone left.

Because Brad drove me from the bowling alley to the theater, and because I walked the last ½ mile home because it was nice and cool, I only actually took three rides. Oh, well. A fifth would have been the magic number to make sure the day pass action was working like it should. I'll take their word for it... for now.

Now I'm trying to decide if I should make a TAP card cozy! Don't ask...

Riding the Rails: Day 1 Addendum

A couple things I forgot to mention about the train ride up to San Jose:

• Somewhere past Santa Barbara but still in view of the coast, there was a pen with some grazing horses, and, were those llamas? Alpacas? Or was I just looking at them from an odd angle? Their heads looked too small proportionally to be equine, and their necks a little too long. Either way, they were just hanging out with their horses, neither too disturbed by the other.
• My seatmate Jim told me about an incident on his ride down where the train just stopped in the middle of nowhere. No station, nothing. Apparently some asshole had been trying to put the mack on some woman without either noticing or caring that she would rather eat glass than have anything to do with him. Finally she complained to a conductor (I probably would have kneed him in the groin first, but who knows), and they radioed ahead and the police met them, well, in the middle of nowhere, escorting the asshole off the train.

Metro Journal: Nov 26 Stop Whatever You're Doing!

Because it's probably annoying the hell out of me.

It has finally started raining in Southern California, two weeks too late to prevent or temper several bad wildfires, and just in time to create mudslides in those burn areas denuded of stabilizing plant growth! It also wreaks havoc with traffic, because people in Southern California can't drive in rain. They do the same stupid things they do on dry streets, which are even dumber when you have no traction and longer stopping times. Morons.

I got off at Hollywood and Western, because with the crap traffic we hit it late, at the same time the DASH would already be leaving at Vine. Waiting at the corner for the next southbound bus, some questionably groomed man starts walking down the street in the right lane and stops under the bus sign, still in the street. I don't know if he had a sidewalk phobia or what. Finally, the 207 came (12-minute stop my ass) and the guy stepped further out into the street, perpendicular to the bus sign, with his arms spread. Ok, this is the first stop for the line, and there were more than a dozen people waiting and they didn't look like they were there for an impromptu family reunion. I'm pretty sure the driver realized that we were, in fact, all waiting for him, and he would have stopped even without the whackjob standing in the middle of the street. I'm sure the driver was especially thrilled when the guy got on and then proceeded to ask a lot of questions. Drivers must always love when total whackjobs get on the bus and then start asking lots of questions, standing near the driver instead of sitting down, preferably all the way in the back.

A stop or two later, some guy got on and sat behind me and then proceeded to act as his own vocal rhythm section. Duh-DUNH! Duh-DUNH! Duh-DUNH! Duh-DUNH! Duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh. Headphones might have tuned that out, but they wouldn't have been able to do anything about the smell.


We got out early for Thanksgiving. There's this health food store/vegetarian restaurant on Los Feliz in Atwater Village that has a "B" health rating from the county. (I've mentioned the ratings before. See this site for details.) I'm wondering if they're really allowed to still call their restaurant "vegetarian" on the chance that cockroaches may be, um, commingling with the food.

I decided to get off at Brand and maybe find a bakery. I ended going down to catch the Glendale Beeline on Colorado. At the stop after I got on, a mother was chasing her son around to try to corral him onto the bus. They have leashes for that, you know. They sat along the back row, and the kid, about 6, started kicking the metal wall. After a dozen times, the mother made a totally ineffectual "Stop that." They make nanny reprogramming shows for that, you know. He kept chanting "We Will Rock You," except somehow it always ended up with someone's nose getting picked. He also kept threatening to pull the stop request cord. They make straight jackets for that, you know.

Metro Journal: Nov 14 Letting It Allllll Hang Out

They were resurfacing Los Feliz at Central this morning, so the driver had to take a detour, along with every other car, down the already-busy San Fernando. Unfortunately, this required trying to make a left turn at a stop sign into cars that were already backed up a couple blocks, and we probably sat there close to 5 minutes. The truly unfortunate part to the wait was the rather zaftig woman in a tracksuit jogging towards us, wearing nothing under the jacket. Ask me how I know that she wasn't wearing anything under the jacket. Go on. Ok, I know because it was unzipped down to her belly and she was seriously hanging out of it. I tried to look away, but I would just have to look up again to see if she had, you know, maybe noticed by now and zipped it up a little.

We finally got merged onto San Fernando and as we were waved by a policeman through the intersection at Los Feliz, we got a good whiff of hot tar.

I just now realized that the woman with the gravity-enhanced zipper was running right toward the intersection with the police officer...

Anyway, the driver seemed to have known about the detour, because he had stopped at a temporary stop before turning off of Central. He didn't seem familiar with the actual detour route, though. Los Feliz is one of the few roads that crosses the train tracks and will also get you across I-5 and the Los Angeles Drainage Ditch a mile or so away, so you have to go a little out of the way in either direction when you can't use Los Feliz. Well, he turned in toward the Metrolink station, maybe thinking he could then make a right turn up one of the dinky side streets before the train tracks and then make a left turn back onto Los Feliz. This route had the benefit of taking me past that garage which had had two International Harvester Travelalls locked in its yard. They were still there! Actually, I don't think they've moved an inch, unless that last earthquake nudged them a little.

Unfortunately the first side street had a sign saying no through traffic, presumably because you still couldn't get on Los Feliz at the other end because of the construction. He started to turn down the second one, which was the last one before the actual train station, and then for some reason I couldn't see (maybe it was also blocked at Los Feliz?), he had to back up to turn around. I mean, these are seriously long buses. The 45' length puts it 10 feet longer than the standard Metro bus size. Ok, they're long, get it?

He finally got the bus onto Glendale Blvd, went up Riverside, and then turned back onto Los Feliz, thus neglecting anyone waiting for the 780 there, because they were on the wrong side of the intersection. I did see a Metro Local bus coming down Los Feliz, so maybe our driver got a little too detoured.


That evening, when Joe the Bear came to my desk asking if I wanted to walk to Vine Station with him, I thought a moment about how I had planned to stay a little longer, then I remembered the bus hell of the night before. "Sure!"

It was already very dark and the sidewalks in Los Angeles are crap, because the city will only fix ones which were damaged by city trees. Seriously. The whole thing is, pardon my French, fucked up. But anyway, when we got to Sunset Blvd without tripping and breaking our necks, I saw that the marquee for the newly-reopened Palladium was all lit up... because Motley Crue are playing there tonight! Whoa!!!! Um, yeah. And even though there were still two hours until showtime when we walked by, people were already lined up for over a block, wearing lots of black and taking pictures of each other's tattoos. I realized I was wearing a black skirt. I feared being mistaken for, um, I don't know what Motley Crue fans call themselves, and I'm not really going to offer my own term up. But the long black skirt, paired with my hot pink Ravelry t-shirt, didn't really scream "Skank!" to the expected degree.

I was grateful that I didn't have to wait for than a few minutes for a 780 tonight. I was less grateful when two women, both with young sons, got on, and then totally failed to attempt to control their sons' screeching. They were sitting half of the 45' bus length from me, and even with my headphones on, I could still hear them. People were constantly turning and glaring, to no effect. Pay attention to your bratty kids already, people!

Some dumbass got all hot under the collar when we didn't stop at Chevy Chase. Um, this is the Rapid. It *never* stops at Chevy Chase. Well, unless the light is red. "Now I have to walk two blocks!" That cannot be a greater burden than being a dumbass who doesn't know what bus he's getting on.

Other: Things I Really Never Needed To Know

As the couple in my previous post about the Second Life divorce was British, I thought the BBC news site might have more details on the meltdown than a wire story would. This may have been a bad idea on my part.

I now know how Second Life avatars have sex.

Apparently the first step requires purchasing genitals. Apparently male genitalia is available with more options than most luxury cars.

But I really should not have read to the end.

And infidelity is not the only thorny ethical issue thrown up by virtual sexual - some players have had sex with animals.

(Huh, the BBC didn't edit that sentence very well.)

While perusing the BBC site, I also ran across a story about a Burmese python that died while trying to eat an alligator in the Everglades. Apparently many of the non-indigenous snakes have been dumped in the swamps over the years by irresponsible dumbass owners. By the way, the alligator didn't survive either.

Even with that story's photograph of the exploding python, the libidinous avatar story has given me more disturbing mental images.

Other: "Second" Life My Ass

This news article reports on a real-life divorce happening after a woman caught her husband cheating online in Second Life. She hired an on-line detective after suspecting her husband, whom she had met on-line, was being, um, virtually unfaithful.

She is now seeing someone she met on World of Warcraft.

This, of course, follows the story of a Japanese woman arrested for computer hacking after she deleted her virtual ex-husband's character on the on-line game Maple Story.

I just wonder how can you have a second life when you apparently never had a first one.

Pandora's Litter Box: At Least I'm a Benign Loony

Unlike some people.

The SPCA of Los Angeles has put a moratorium on black cat adoptions until November 1.

So, in honor of all the black cats out there and in memory of Grim:


Cat pattern from Cute Little Animals by Amy Gaines

Metro Journal: October 14 Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

I got on the 207 at Western and Hollywood. As I was stepping on, this guy behind tells me he's in love with me. This is generally not a good way to start a conversation with me when you are a complete and total stranger, as "stranger" starts to take on multiple meanings. I gave my polite-but-dismissive smile-and-nod and got on the bus.

Of course, he sat next to me. And then proceeded to try to put the mack on me. I quickly wanted to put a Mack Truck on him.

Him: Will you hang out with me?
Me: Um, no, I need to go work.
Him: You?! You don't work! Hey, give me your phone number.
Me: Um, no.
Him: Can I give you mine?
Me: Um, no.
Him: What, you don't like me?
Me: Um, I am not going to spend the day with you and I am not going to give you my phone number.
Him: Aw, come on! Come over to my apartment!
Me: Um, no.
Him: Come on! I'll clean it for you! Want me to clean it first?
Me: Sure, you can clean your apartment, but I'm not coming over.
Him: Why not?
Me: Um, I don't know you.
Him: Get to know me!
Me: Um, no, I don't think so.
Him: You are the most beautiful white girl I've ever seen.
Me: Um, ok...
Him: I got on the bus just to be with you! Why don't you like me? Am I doing something wrong? What am I doing wrong?

Fortunately, the longest mile-long bus ride was finally over.

I was sitting there wondering, does this work??? On anyone? Do I look that desperate/easy/stupid? Do I look like I'm turned on by people who reek of cigarette smoke?

I got off, and thank whatever deities watch over bus riders, but he stayed on the bus. If he hadn't, I would have been calling someone. Someone large. Or gotten really mean.


That morning was our weekly group meeting. We tend to get radically off-topic, which in this case was welcome because the work situation which has been threatening to make me physically ill has not much improved and I am sick of hearing my co-workers bitch about it non-stop. I forget how we meandered there (I was semi-tuned out, in case I needed to wander off to Planet Karen when someone started complaining again), but I ended up mentioning how someone on the bus had been hitting on me in a rather unwelcome fashion. When I said the guy had told me I was "the most beautiful white girl" he'd ever seen, Bob says, "Yeah, and I just got off the boat from Zimbabwe."

This, after I'd given him this monkey the day before:


(He's been extremely stressed about the situation, too. With his diet of cheeseburgers, I fear he will have a heart attack. Someone two floors down actually did have a heart attack on the lot about two months ago and supposedly required bypass surgery.)

Yeah, Bob, you're going down for that one.

Joe-the-Bear, protector of women (in a way that manages not to offend the self-sufficient feminist in me), said he wished he could ride the bus with me to make guys like that back off. I pointed out that I had survived without baring my fangs.

(Joe's been really stressed, too (no one in the group hasn't, really), and after I gave Bob the retroactively ill-deserved monkey, Joe said I should make him a bear. "No, no, just kidding, you don't need to make me anything." (See this entry on why Joe is Joe the Bear. Well, ok, there the picture is labeled "Bob's Big Boy" for reasons I won't get into, but we call Joe "Joe the Bear" because he's a big guy.) (Ok, I've lost track of how many open parentheses I have.) The thing is, I had already planned to make Joe a teddy bear. I even had the yarn for it. I had planned to give them all these things for Christmas, but, well, because people needed pick-me-ups, the schedule got accelerated.

(Joe's Armenian, so I thought I'd make the bear in the Armenian flag colors of red, gold, and royal blue. I found a yarn that had the right fiber content, felt soft and that it would be easy on the hands doing the tight crochet tension necessary, and came in the perfect colors. That night I sat down to start the bear. I was looking at the label to see the recommended crochet hook size, when I see that... I can't use this yarn. It was made in Turkey. Why would that matter? Well, just read about the Armenian Genocide. Yeah, crap. I'm in a self-imposed yarn-buying moratorium as my stash overfloweth, but I had to order more yarn, trying to guess by the monitor which suitable yarns came in the right colors.)


That evening, I got on the 780 at the Vine Red Line station. As soon as we pulled away, some guy started yelling from the back, saying he wanted the next stop because he wanted to get off now. Ok. He started getting kind of ornery about it and walked up to the driver, in front of the yellow line, yelling (which is the only reason I heard him as I was pretty far back) that he wanted off and that the driver couldn't keep him on. I'm pretty sure the driver really wanted him off, too, but the next stop wasn't until Western, which is about a mile from Vine, so he had to wait. He was ranting and raving the whole time. I'm pretty sure that besides himself (and the driver), there were plenty more people who wanted him off the bus.


This is all making you really want to ride the bus in Hollywood, isn't it?

Monkey pattern from Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden