Still Not Cool 11/08/2010
 Do you remember a time when you could drive through and under-pass with your windows down in the summer, without having to worry about a Harley biker revving his engine? Do you remember a simpler time when you can count, on one hand, the number of motorcycle owners is your neighborhood? Do you remember when your friends and family used to get outraged when someone had extra loud exhaust? The good ol’ days right? It feels a little unoriginal to make fun of Harley-Davidson bikers after the South Park episode, “The F Word” did such a thorough job, but I must press on. Things like fanny packs and Crocs didn’t go out of style because of one person making fun of them. It took an applause of facepalms to make them faux pas. So let’s take a look how sub-human Harley riders are, and what we can do to fix the problem. First of all, let me make a distinction. I do not wish that every motorcyclist would die a painful and ironic death, just the ones who piss me off. The ones who piss me off tend to ride Harleys. Why? Mostly because they’re loud as fuck. As a guitar player, I have no problem with loud, but there’s a difference between healthy loud, and loud as outlet for your erectile dysfunction. Ninjas (crotch rockets or whatever they’re called) get loud when they go fast, which is understandable. Harleys, however, are loud the moment your crank them up. Before I get carried away pointing out how insanely retarded it is to own a bike solely because it’s loud, why is a crotch rocket called a crotch rocket? I would argue that name is much better suited for a Harley. When you present your cock to someone, the usual stance is to thrust your pelvis forward, and flex in some way. The only way to ride a Harley is to be in this pose, and let your manhood live vicariously though the bike. Crotch rockets make you lean forward with your arms outstretched, almost like superman.  Unfortunately, one of my friends recently purchased a one-man-fag-train (that’s what they’ll be referred to the rest of this essay because I can’t keep typing Harley without my blood boiling). According to him, the manufactures of the one-man-fag-train recommend getting the loudest exhaust possible so people on the road are aware of your presence. I’ll give you a minute to take that in. ...The reason why they are so obnoxiously loud is for safety reasons. Safety. Safety!? Does that not render all your street cred as a bad-ass, who doesn’t care what the rest of the thinks of you, invalid? Do they give you a lower insurance rate for having a, “more engaging” exhaust system? Out of all the reasons to have loud exhaust, that is the gayest. That’s so gay they may as well start putting decorative tassels on their bikes. Oh wait! They do!  Admittedly, I’m in a better mood demonstrating how much of a punchline these guys are. I know it’s temporary though. I’ll eventually have to drive under a bridge with my windows open, and so will you America (not the “fuck you” America, but the America that reads all the way to this line.) So how do we do protect our delicate ears from this most frequent nightmare scenario? Well, next time someone you know is interested in buying a bike, tell them all the reasons why Hello Kitty is so much cooler. It shouldn’t be hard. 2 Comments Zombies Ate Our Brains 10/20/2010
 The zombies are here. They have infiltrated only a small section of the population, but I fear that it may already be too late. Although they appear to be an unorganized mass of brainless walking dead, they seem to have targeted what they see as the biggest threat to them; males ages 15 -30. Phase 1 of their plan must nearly be completed, because we all seem to have zombies on our brains. It is unclear what their next move is, but by all accounts it is uncanny how they were able to pull off the first phase. Logically, the zombie genre should have jumped the shark on November 15th, 2001 with the release of “Halo: Combat Evolved.” In this game, you not only battle zombies, but super smart, organized, and ancient alien zombies with guns...in space. The most jaded demographic should have seen through what is obviously an overloaded mash-up of things that they would most likely enjoy. Instead, Bungie was able to do what Spider-man 3 and so many other super-hero franchises failed to do. They artfully and tastefully incorporated all these elements that we are prone to relish, and we believed it. We adopted it as one of our favorites without knowing that at the same time it was weakening our bullshit detector. Throughout history, our bullshit detectors have kept not only ourselves safe, but our sisters, girlfriends, daughters, mothers and wives as well. From a very young age we teach ourselves how to be skeptical. We heckle magicians at our birthday parties, and question the legitimacy of cheap toys we’re supposed to like just because it has the Ninja Turtles logo. We practice so that later on in life we don’t fall victims to con-men or duvet covers. We have these skills to warn (mostly to deaf ears) the women in our life that the only reason why they suddenly love vampires is because they’re so gullible. We can’t help them if we can’t help ourselves. We see movies like “Quarantine” on opening night, repeatedly watch our “Zombieland” DVD, and impatiently wait for a new George Romero film to come out. When we’re not watching zombie films, we’re playing Left 4 Dead or Dead Rising (An all encompassing gender favorite is going to be in the new Dead Rising game; duct tape. Anyone's bullshit sense tingling?). When we can’t get enough of what’s already out there we make our own like, “I Made a Game With Zombies In It,” or any number of bad made-for-Youtube zombie movies out there. If you haven’t made a zombie movie yet, I will bet with certainty there is a thought somewhere in your brain of making one in the future. What really proves that we’re brain dead is that we basically watch and retell the same story over and over again. A secret entity releases a horrific plague on the population, a small group of people fight to stay alive, and either they all die or only a few survive. It’s as predictable as an episode of Modern Family. I do far more interesting things everyday. For instance, I was at the grocery store during busy hours the other day and all four of the Robo-checker lanes were filled with people who decided that this was the perfect time for them to figure out how to use it. I had to make it through that situation without swearing at anyone, stealing, or shooting anyone. Now that’s a story that pits one man against all odds! Do we really love zombies that much? Are we really going to sit through a version of “Pride and Prejudice” just because it has zombies? I don’t know about you, but I am scared shitless of the thought that zombies are making me willingly sit through a chick flick. Ironically, despite being obsessed with zombies, we seem to be completely unaware of what a real infestation looks like. Remember the Swine Flu epidemic? There was a vaccine almost as soon it started, and it only killed as many people as the normal flu usually does each year. Why such a quick response? Because there’s so many paranoid neurotic moms out there demanding solutions to the slightest of problems. You think they wouldn’t notice a band of half-dead citizens biting people? You think they wouldn’t demand some solutions immediately? (It’s funny how men’s sanity can save women from their paranoia and women’s emotional responses can save men from their over complacency.) I would imagine a real plague would be more like a chirp from a low battery in a smoke detector, or a single light bulb of three being out. There’s something slightly wrong, but sometimes you just learn to live with it unless you do something immediately. We are all entitled to our own opinions and fantasies, and the zombie genre seems to be doing a good job of satisfying the fantasy of being justified in going on a killing spree. What’s disturbing about this is not the possibility that we all seem to have the some latent homicidal tendencies inside of us, but that we all want so much of the same thing. When some asshole in a suit looks at his reports for the day and sees how much we really love zombies, guess what we’re going to be getting for the next ten years. Once they give us what the research says we want, good shows usually get pushed to the side. Shows like Dollhouse and Fringe, which have a sandbox format and are really good at exploring a wide variety of different topics and monsters, inevitably get pushed to the side to give us more of what we “want.” So let’s take it easy on the zombie thing for a while and try to think of new ways of scaring ourselves. After all, being frightened of ever-changing threats that don’t exist is what keeps America moving forward. Will File For Kudos 10/15/2010
 I know why unemployment is so high; employers. It’s their fault I can’t find a good job. I’m pretty sure I’m the first person in history to blame someone else for their problems. Hmmmm. After saying that, I strangely have the urge to go pick up my wealthfare check, create some bastard children, beat them, commit a felony, and scatter car parts on my front lawn. But in all seriousness they are assholes. I realize that on paper my situation looks bleak. I understand that after 8 years of college and the only thing I have to show for it is a certificate in computer animation, which doesn’t exactly put me in the best light. Six years in customer service doesn’t really help me get into the field of graphic design. I understand all of this, so I have acted accordingly by searching for entry level positions. I have been realistic. Week after week, almost every job posting I find reads something like this: ...Data Entry Position: Requirements: Must have 7 years experience. Bachelor's degree required, Master’s preferred... As exaggerated as this may seem, I shit you not, I have seen postings where they asked for 15 years experience for an entry level position. I suspect that one of two things is going on here. Either they don’t know what the term entry level means, or they see the high unemployment rate as an opportunity to get a broader sample of applicants, thereby allowing them to hire the absolute best person they could ever imagine hiring for that position. They are not being realistic. If you don’t know what entry level means, I did the grunt work for you and Googled it (see what a go-getter I am!). “...[A] position offered to an inexperienced person, that usually pays low wages but provides training and experience and the prospect of future advancement...” So let’s take a look at this as it relates to you and me. Let’s start with me since I am more important. I take a job that pays less money because of my inexperience. They real payment is what I will be able to put on my future resumé. In return, you get an employee whom you don’t have to pay as much. In addition to a cheap employee, you also get one with fire in his belly. One who is there to learn and make sure the job is done right. One who will make your company better as a residual effect of trying to make himself better. You also get the right to put some sort of tag line that you’re, “bringing America into the future,” or “training the youth for tomorrow,” or whatever feel good line you would like to insert. In these uncertain times, you would prefer to have a more seasoned worker who knows their way around, which is understandable. I’m sure you’ve been burned before with slacker employees. But if you get what you prefer, I would suspect that would not be in your best interest. Have you ever known anyone to get their Master’s with the intention of starting at the bottom, or getting paid just above minimum wage? Right off the bat you’re going to be getting someone who is expecting to be paid more. You also get someone who has already done plenty of grunt work in their days. Answering phones may be beneath them by now. So when the files haven’t been put away properly because your star employee has decided to pursue the more scholarly and profitable aspects of the position, just remember that I’m still here for you, for less. I feel that it’s about time for employers to lower the bar. Lowering the bar is not going to flood the job market with riffraff. Instead, it will allow those who can limbo, to limbo. I’m begging for someone to let my foot in the door so that in 7 years I can apply to another entry level position. I fear that if this goes on for too long, I’ll actually be able to make iratemate.com profitable. I’ll never have to leave my apartment. I won’t gain any real world experience. Then I will be the one who is out of touch with reality, and it will be the fans who suffer after reading the 8th mundane post in a week about how much I hate dirty dishes.  There are many possibilities to consider when hanging up Halloween decorations. One of the most important questions you can ask yourself is, “Am I a giant pussy?” If you answered yes to this question, I’ll save you a lot of time and effort now by telling you, you shouldn’t be putting up Halloween decorations. I realize that this is not something that you would like to hear, because you pussies all love decorating shit, but believe me, the delayed gratification of hanging up Christmas decoration (The day after Thanksgiving and not a day sooner.) will feel so much better than blowing your wad early on Halloween. Now I’m going to go into some specifics here because just as every man in prison claims he is innocent, so too do you pussies claim to be hip. Rule #1: Christmas decorations are not Halloween Decorations: I get it! You fucking love Christmas! You can’t wait for it! But it’s still 3 months out. That’s a quarter of the year. Just because you take Christmas lights and make them all orange or all purple doesn’t make it a Halloween decoration. Neither does making it all green. For Christ sake green is a Christmas color! What boggles my mind to the point of aneurysm is orange Halloween icicle lights. Fucking icicle lights, really!? That doesn’t even make any sense. Refrain from doing this: http://www.komar.org/halloween/halloween.jpg In case you didn’t notice, this gaping vagina snuck in a Grinch decoration into the “Halloween” mix. A Santa outfit is usually a good indication that it’s not a Halloween decoration. http://www.komar.org/christmas/bugville/alligator.jpg Rule #2: Halloween is supposed to be scary. This one is simple enough, but there’s a slippery-slope association that people do which usually results in a lawn littered with shitty blow-up dolls. Vampires, frankenstiens, mummies, and ghosts are scary, right? So since those characters are always scary, they will still be scary if I make them into cartooney blow-up dolls with giant smiles wishing everyone a Happy Halloween, right? I don’t think so, dumb-dumb. Adding a cute element to a Halloween decoration is like multiplying by zero. It will always cancel out. Now some may argue that clowns will always be scary no matter what the context, and there’s a certain truth to that. But I think that my theory of cute Halloween decorations still holds up because there is no way to add a “cute” element to a clown. Another way that people screw this one up is by leaving out the element of surprise. Think of every scary movie you’ve ever seen. The parts that scare you are the parts when they catch you off-guard. It doesn’t even have to be anything that scary, just a sudden loud noise, and a few frames of a scary face. If your decorations can be seen with the naked eye from the International Space Station, there is no element of surprise. Sometimes less is more. I know that you’re in a competition with your neighbor over who can have the most shit on their lawn for each holiday, but Halloween requires different tools. How about trying out quality instead of quantity this year. Rule #3: If a Martha Stewart Decoration is spookier than yours, don’t use it. You should feel ashamed of yourself after witnessing the things Martha Stewart makes. How gay am I for saying that I love this stuff that Martha Stewart makes. She makes us all look like pussies. Let’s just leave it at that. http://lovemanor.com/blog/archives/68 http://www.shoppingblog.com/blog/10050913 So do it right, or don’t do it at all. Each year, every Halloween decoration turns a little bit more into Christmas decorations. The more Christmas decorations I see before Thanksgiving, the more depressed I get. If I keep walking by your house in October and seeing terrible and cute decorations, I may have no other option than to go on a murderous rampage. It’s too bad you won’t be alive to witness how truly terrifying your house will finally look. Wait, Let Me Get My Wallet! 10/08/2010
 I was recently invited to an on-line job interview. I had never heard of such a thing before, but thought, “Why not?” I’m always an advocate for doing more things in the cloud to cut down on annoying things such as having your life risked by someone else trying to get a half-car-length a head of you while driving, and talking to people you’d rather not. So, I accepted the invite. I entered a virtual interview station which consisted of a live video presentation, a chat box, and a list of about 120 other people also interviewing for Staffing and Careers, or Careers and Staffs, or Careers in Staffing... or whatever the highly generic name of the company was. The first 20 minutes was a presentation about how the career of “head-hunting,” is one of the most growing positions available and Rah Rah Rah this careers is so easy to do from home, and you can make 6 figures your first year if you work really hard. Alarms immediately went off in my head because anytime someone spends a good deal of time trying to convince you of how awesome they are without actually doing anything more than talking, they’re usually not. As if I’ve never watched t.v. before, this arrogant charismatic snake-oil salesman was trying to convince me that he could provide me with a better career. I’m sure we’ve all seen the commercials where the company isn’t actually trying to sell you anything, but rather, the ad is a feel good commercial that just keeps talking about how they’re bringing the world into the future without getting into any specifics. Then, two months later you read on page 9 of the paper that the company was involved with some sort of insider trading or price manipulation, fleecing Americans out of millions of dollars. With the story adequately buried and the hearts and minds of most Americans clouded because of the light and cheery music in the background of their damage control ad, the company can then continue to be an asshole. (Although, BP may have recently ruined that whole genre of damage control commercials by making an ad with sandy white beautiful beaches and absolutely no oil and a smile on everyones’ face while their well was still spewing crude oil into the ocean.) The man in the video, Stephen Munson, kept saying the he was going to talk to all of us individually. His definition of individually was pretty funny. After he was done with his presentation he told everyone that if they would like to be a part of this company we had to pay a one-time completely refundable $297 association fee to guarantee one of the 25 open positions in the company. At this point we were supposed to write in the chat box any questions we had, and he did his best to answer them while also giving a countdown of how many spots were left. Silly me, I thought that when being interviewed for a job it was the employer’s responsibility to ask questions to the prospective employee. I guess that just shows you how out of touch with reality I am. Of course, I realized that it was a scam and used the only method we have at our disposal to counter Nigerian princess scams; I wasted his time. At first, I was only wasting his time as payback for wasting so much of mine, but after watching some of the video I recorded (I’m not posting it because it’s 2 hours long and very unrewarding if you weren’t there), I could see that he was starting to get combative because I was asking so many questions without any hint of wanting to give him money. At a certain point I began to wonder, what’s the point? Like I always say about panhandlers, with all the time and effort you spend making clever signs, walking up and down the rows of traffic, soliciting countless number of strangers, putting your life at risk being out in the elements all day, you probably could have gone out and got a real job. A real job that has roof over your head, most likely air-conditioning and heat, steady income, and gives you purpose. Stephen Munson is no different. For all the trouble he spent finding a programmer to make his virtual interview room, coming up with all the scripted elements of the chat to make me believe that there were 120 other people fighting for the open spots, the bandwidth, the hosting, he probably could have made a legitimate website. He could have made a website that doesn’t get him him in trouble with F.B.I. He could have, but instead he decided to dedicate his resources and gumption to create an elaborate ruse in an attempt to cheat me out of three hundred bucks. (He could have also decided to use a phony name so I wouldn’t be able to find his myspace and discover he lives in Orlando, Florida, but he didn’t.) I have a hard time staying mad at bums and people on wealthfare when there are so many more people out there plotting to take much more money from you. And the worst part is, the scammers get away with it most of the time. At least the bums will occasionally entertain me by telling me to ,”Rack ‘em up!” or by sending punks on their way in an “Amber Lamps.” The highest social status that the likes of Stephen Munson will ever achieve is selfish douche bag. So, next time I see a bum on the street, I still won’t give them any money. Hey, I never claimed to be perfect. State Farm Giveth And Allstate Taketh Away 09/24/2010
 Did you know that all State Farm agents are imbued with mystical powers that not only allow them to magically appear when summoned, but also grant every wish for you and your slacker friends? Not only can they themselves be summoned, but they can also make the person whom you are sexually attracted, to suddenly be placed in an awkward situation with you and your buds gawking at them. Then of course, they fall madly in love with you simply because they happen to be in the same room with you. I wanted to just brush this off as a bad commercial at first, and even go so far as to applaud them for not doing the blatant fear mongering that has become the industry standard. I want to, but I think that this is part of a bigger picture. At the same time that State Farm is demonstrating their sorcery, Allstate came out with an eerily similar commercial demonstrating their mastery of the dark arts. Mayhem takes the form of distracted teenage drivers, bank executives, and heavy storms to destroy your property. I not only shit my pants when I saw these commercials, but also built and locked myself up in a panic room. Now that’s some good old fashion insurance commercials! I find it funny that the guy who just ruined your car is also the same guy who’s trying to sell you the insurance. I hope everyone paid their protection money this month so they don’t get a visit from Allstate agent Tommy, who will demonstrate on your car why you need protection. What’s really disturbing about these two sets of commercials is knowing that somewhere down the line no one will believe the narrative they’re selling more than themselves. How do I know this? Well, I’ve seen it happen many times over just the last two years. If you hooked the executives of BP up to a lie detector I bet dollars to doughnuts they truly do believe they’re moving the world “beyond petroleum.” Goldman Sachs still insists that paying their top guys $500,000 a year is worth it because you need to recruit the best talent. McDonald’s probably honestly believes they have healthy food on the menu. Wal-Mart will most likely insist that they help the communities they’re in by providing jobs and livable wages. If they believe hard enough, they will gain the powers that they presented in their commercials. In the spirit of suddenly gaining magic powers, I will now look into my crystal ball and predict what happens next: I see... I see light and dark. I see State Farm and Allstate in an ultimate battle for every soul in America. But wait! Suddenly, they come together for a common goal. They seem to be having trouble selling their products on its merits, so they do what worked for them before. They lobby congress to make their product mandatory. Except, they go a little further this time. They demand congress recognize that they have transcended their worldly corporation status and demand to be recognized as a cross-realm spiritual entity to whom the laws do not apply. Now I see you. You have a happy family, but right now things don’t look so good for you. An agent comes to your door to inform you that your payment is late. Having already sold your cars and cut back on silly things like heat and food for the month you don’t have any more to give him. Now you and your family are being taken from your home as it is set ablaze for not paying them, which is all of course perfectly legal. Now, with nowhere else to go, you’re moving into your neighbor’s house. Despite your feelings of anger and pride, you vow never to put your family through such and ordeal again. So you do what needs to be done. You take out an insurance policy on your neighbors house. Only then is the true irony of the situation realized when your request gets denied because it would give you an incentive to burn down your neighbors house. Problems in Spades (in Space) 09/02/2010
 We are all fucked. There is no hope for humanity, let alone any other species on this planet. War, climate change, depression, oil reserves running out, corporations running your life, and unsustainability are all problems that seem like a cakewalk when you consider that the sun is going to turn into a red giant in about 3 billion years. That seems like plenty of time. Why should you worry? What if I put it this way; 3 gigayears!? Holy shit! Now that thing in the sky isn’t your personal free tanner anymore. It’s a ticking time bomb! We need to come up with a long term exit strategy before we literally have hell on earth. And when that golden ball in the sky finally decides that it wants to pull a plasmatic Jihad and take all of us down with it, we’re only going to have about 8 minutes to react. Suffice to say, that is not enough time to come up with a plan. That’s only enough time to jerk-off one last time. So what do we do, or more importantly, where do we go? The closest planet that can theoretically sustain life is Gliese 581, and it’s about 20.5 light years away. Our current technology allows us to travel at about 17,500 mph. If we leave now we can get there in about 784,388 years. This obviously brings up another problem; we need to figure out how to make babies in space. I’m not going to go into all the details on that, but it does bring up some more problems. How do we feed ourselves in space? How to we make fuel out the vast emptiness of space? How do we simulate gravity in a space ship so we don’t come out as a gelatinous blob? And once we get there (well, not us but our distant children) what the hell do we do? I think we need to do a few test runs of planet-colonization on mars before we go out for the big score. As it stands right now, we can’t even get two robots to drive around a couple of blocks over there. So let’s load up the space shuttle, go to mars, and totally fucking own that shit. Because if we can’t conquer our next-planet neighbors, Gliese 581 is going to make us their bitch when we get there, or whatever is the closest equivalent to a female dog there. We’ve got a long way ahead of us. So if I hear any complaining about North Korea is launching missiles, or that Russia is hacking our mainframe, I’m turning this shuttle around, and no one is going on inter-planetary space travel. So before we get started, I’ll solve all your problems right now. Depleting oil reserves and climate change; stop burning oil. Evil corporations dictating your life; stop giving them money. Planet sustainability; don’t shit where you live. Depression; get a hooker. War; no more killing. Now that I’ve solved all your problems, let’s get back to work before we all get incinerated. My Bleeding Ears Have Healed 08/21/2010
 As I was absorbing the gayness from the Phil Collins song that was being played at my dentist office, I had a sudden epiphony. Despite the fact that my heterosexuality was drowning in the vast array of Woman's Day Magazine articles and Phil Collins telling me, "You can't hurry love. No, you just have to wait," I am very fortunate. Somewhere in the last 10 years, the music playlists at stores, resturaunts and waiting rooms has changed drastically. You would never dream of hearing classic rock songs while buying produce. You would have to bring a walkman to your table if you ever wanted to hear something modern at a resturaunt, and there is no way in hell you would ever hear any form of an electronic beat, loop, or sythesised sound in public. Slow, painful, tortuous light music is what you would hear instead. Blow-hard women, who would hold every note 20 seconds too long, is all I would hear at the grocery store with my mom. At every public outing, I'd hear some over-the-top love song with lyrics so wholesome it made me want to puke. And it would be FUCKING EVERYWHERE. You couldn't escape it. If you didn't like that light station don't worry though. There's another light station that promises to play, "not too light, but not too heavy music." A perfect mix for your work day. Then you finally get the adult in charge of the radio to try the other, "not too light," station and guess what. THEY'RE PLAYING THE EXACT SAME GODDAMN SONGS. Then one day, complete-shit music died. That's not to say that you won't occasionally hear a song you don't like. I don't like Jack Johnson, but I would much rather hear that while waiting in line, than Whitney Houston holding one word and changing the tone hundreds of times all within a span of two minutes and one breath. Thankfully, most public places give you the former. So it is with great pride that I let my gums bleed and my ears be raped at the dentist's office. After all, it is only once every 6 months that I will have to endure 30 minutes of the most awful creation man has ever made. And it is every 6 months, that I get reminded that my teeth are filthy, and that society, at large, is making some small progress. More Blago Blog 08/20/2010
 Things are much worse than I had thought. It appears that my previous solution to a hung jury may not have worked because a new breed out there which Adam Carolla aptly coined ; MRSA cunts. These people are highly resistant to logic, much like a MRSA infection is to antibiotics. The lone juror holdout stated (anonymously), "She did not see it as a violation of any laws. It was politics. It was more of conversations of what-ifs. She wanted to hear [Blagojevich] say, 'I'll give you this for that. " I feel like a crazy old man yelling at the squirrels because her admission of how dumb she is. She brushed it off as politics!? Is that not the most insanely moronic thing you've ever heard? Have you ever heard a juror come out of murder trial after acquitting and say, "Yeah, that guy obviously killed those kids, but I don't see whats wrong with that?" If you don't know what bribery, racketeering, and extortion are please speak up before the trail so you can be sent home to watch court shows you would much better understand like Judge Mathis Lane. Please do so before the federal government wastes millions of dollars on you. It must be nice being that stupid, because you only have to be smart enough to come up with some cliché to magically make everything bad you do go away. Maybe I should rob a grocery store and call it the store's overhead. How about I rape some children and call it a hard life lesson? Or maybe everyone in Illinois can burn down her house and call it fair. As long as I don't explicitly call it armed robbery, rape or arson at any point, I should walk away a free man. Politics....pfff. Isn't the very definition of extortion a conversation of "what ifs?" I wasn't at the trial but I would imagine the tapes they played went something like this: Children's Memorial Hospital: "What if we don't give to your political campaign?" Blagojevich: "Then I will cut your entire budget." How could I be so stupid? That totally IS just a conversation of "what ifs." At no part in any of that conversation did Blagojevich explicitly say, "I Rod Blagojevich do herby extort one million dollars for my political campaign from Children's Memorial Hospital. Failure to comply with said extortion will result in loss of state funding to Children's Memorial Hospital." Chicago wouldn't be that bad of a place to live if 1 idiot out of 12 wasn't constantly being put in a situation to step on your nuts. Have you been deleberating for what seems like months? Are you tired of Juror Number 12 standing on their high horse completely impervious to the most basic of logic? Have you lost your patiances and your sanity? Have you lost all hope in mankind because of one person's lack of coherence? Fear no more, because I have created the ultimate juror ultimatum template to make them see the errors in their ways by focusing on what they care about most; themselves. Just replace the information that is relevent to your case. It's time to address the two ton elephant in the room. Juror Number 12, the other 10 and I are growing weary of your complete lack of specificity on why you think Rod Blagojevich is a model citizen. Moreover, we grow especially weary of your growling like a dog being pet while eating whenever the other 10 and I give you blatant evidence to the contrary. Forgive me if this isn't true, but the other 10 and I are begining to suspect that you are getting some sort of compensation for your troubles (and believe me it is trouble) in making sure Rod Blagojevich goes home a free man. Far be it from me to meddle in your finacial affairs. I understand that times are tough, and you could probably use every cent they may have offered you. But I am not going to go on about how stupid it is to take a bribe, and potentially get arrested on behalf of someone that was soliciting bribes, nor am I accusing you of having no morals for taking tainted money. What I can do for everyone inside this room is take your potential payday out of the equation. If we leave here today with a hung jury on all the counts against Rod Blagojevich, I will make public this very simple letter: Reguarding all counts against Rod Blagojevich Juror #1: Daniel Okonski - Guilty Juror #2: Greg Justice - Guilty Juror #3: Amy Courthouse - Guilty Juror #4: Michelle O'bvious - Guilty Juror #5: James Hedunit - Guilty Juror #6: Patrick Notfulinmie - Guilty Juror #7: David Weavebenhaad - Guilty Juror #8: Margret Comonreally - Guilty Juror #9: Andrew Rediculous - Guilty Juror #10: Amanda Putinjail - Guilty Juror #11: Samatha Thisisgettingoutofhand - Guilty Juror #12: Susie Holdout - Innocent, without an explanation why So, Juror Number 12, by all means vote the way that you feel you must. No one here is stopping your right. Understand, however, that if we leave here today with a hung jury, you do not get the luxuary of anonymity. Go ahead and take what money was promised you for voting not guilty on everything, but trust me when I say that whatever ammount they have given you is not worth it. Whatever ammount they have given you will not cover the cost of all the slashed tires, broken windows, and round the clock security that you will have to provide yourself for pissing off the most disillusioned electorate in Illinois' history by voting not guilty. If by some chance the other 10 and I are completely wrong, and you have not been offered any sort of compensation, but instead are choosing to vote not guilty because of some moral belief that the other 10 and I don't share, be aware of this scenerio. Not only will you have to provide your own security to yourself without any money from Bloagojevich and friends to offset the cost, but you will be putting 11 innocent people in jeopordy. Your problems will seems quaint compared to the problems that the other 10 and I will be facing. As you have no doubt seen from the trial, Rod Blagojevich and his cronies are a much more dedicated, and much more ruthless group than you will ever face with a pissed off electorate. So go ahead and vote not guilty on a moral basis. But can you really vote not guilty on a moral ground knowing that you could potenially put 11 other people's lives at risk? As I've said before, no one here can take away your right to vote how you want, nor can you take away my right to publish everyone's names. | ArchivesNovember 2010 Poleethman |
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