Stalking?..........or Plain Old Bad Judgment

I was sent a link today direct from the New York Times, that featured a story about a new book coming out, called

"In His Sights" (HarperCollins), one of the first full-length memoirs of a stalking victim. She describes a campaign of surveillance, break-ins, severed phone lines and creepy confrontations after her decision to leave "Paul," a charming but distant adventurer with serious relationship issues...."

The author writes under a pseudonym because she fears for her safety......and she does this not after the 'stalker' has quit, not when he's finally locked up......oh no, this fella is still out there....with supposedly vast financial resources, and electronic cunning....

Does this make a LICK OF SENSE TO YOU?



This gal gets my own personal "DUMBASS OF THE YEAR AWARD". (She is a freelance author, btw.)

Now, to my mind- and not by legal definition- a 'stalker' is someone who has a fantasy relationship with someone (usually a celebrity) that is entirely within the stalker's own mind: the stalker has no personal involvement with their target, but is dangerous nonetheless because stalkers are relentless in trying to contact the object of their obsession, and when successful - and when the stalker is rejected, it becomes a potentially deadly situation. Teresa Saldana was a victim of a stalker when her face was horribly disfigured in a slashing incident with her sicko, and just recently- Uma Thurman was able to get her crazy-assed stalker locked up by taking him to court and having his butt incarcerated.

Neither of these women KNEW these men. But frighteningly, the rage that results when reality finally clashes with idealized fantasy is almost always physical.

Kate Brennan (the non-de-plume of said author) not only knew this man, she moved IN WITH HIM- and after his behavior became increasingly bizarre following the brutal murder of his wealthy father. (Hmmmm?? Are we to being led to believe this unsolved murder was....could it be?......Do you have shivers over this implication? ) I believe you're supposed to.

Brennan says she 'understood' his acting out: she is the product of 'an alcoholic home' and was "drawn to 'unbalanced, yet controlling men". Lady.........what happened to you is what I'd call 'bad choice of men'. This is someone you had a relationship with- lived with for 3 years- and then finally ducked out- and admittedly, after the boyfriend became less than enamored and began bringing old girlfriends around. Puh-lease.

Yes yes, the man sounds nuts...but Kate, SO DO YOU.

In ordinary life, women would profoundly regret their own stupidity- and in extreme cases, would take out a restraining order. You've admitted you've never suffered any physical harm from this man-- not since you left him in 1994-- that's fourteen years ago, plenty of time to be strangled if he'd so chosen.

Honey, what you've got...is a 'book', so fine...you're a writer.

Just don't calling it being the victim of a 'stalker'-- what you have is residual and annoying fallout from a poor life decision. If you sincerely felt threatened, I hardly think you'd write a book and then allow an article about it to appear in the New York Times-- not when this threatening fella is so well-connected, and still very much at large.

Is it any wonder the Times chose to stick this story not in the book section-- not in hard news--- but in the 'Fashion' supplement.

('Telling'.....ain't it? )

Enough of this!

If a man is electrocuted due to faulty wiring or because something is poorly or dangerously designed, the family sues for damages, and the company either fixes their product- or more than likely, takes if off the market.

That is what happens in civilian life. In the military, however, SIXTEEN men have DIED as a result of the electrical design of one company who is responsible for the installation of showers for the armed services in Iraq. One death is an 'accident'....

SIXTEEN.....is murder.

And no one is doing a thing about it. The Pentagon has performed their 'investigations'-- and can find no ties between the deadly electrocutions and the responsible party: Houston based contractor KBR, which holds a multibillion-dollar contract to provide basic services such as food and shelter for our troops. (Remember when the Bush administration decided it would be good idea to privatize the non-combatant services over there? Remember when Halliburton became richer than Midas doing just that?) So this is murder with 'accessories to murder'.



Did you notice that the company is from Texas? Is this coincidence? Does this not REEK of the same sort of irresponsible payoff of cronies that resulted in "Great job, Brownie"- that followed the mass-murders that occurred during the Katrina aftermath?

Wanna read something that makes you wanna hit someone?. Read this

Sign Of The Times

The Republican party is going into meltdown mode....

and I couldn't be happier.

McCain's handlers are getting nervous....what's with all this popularity for Obama? And worldwide? Their current ad, set to air on the eleventh, charges that Obama is akin to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, with nothing more than 'celebrity'. LOL!!!

Well.., if either of those two had an I.Q.- I might think that analogy had a slim chance for comment, but it's just desperate times for the GOP, and their nerves are showing.

Must have been a jarring sight to see Obama in Germany with a crowd of two hundred thousand cheering as he said it's time to bring down many walls-- thereby trumping that oft-repeated 'Reagan-to Mr.-Gorbachev-tear-down-this wall' sound byte. (Gees. What'll the red-staters do for a crescendo?)

Even the excretal Bush has used that line over and over-- but Obama turned it on its head and gave it new meaning-- just as Lincoln did with the Declaration of Independence in his short address at Gettysburg.

Their stupid antics with this ad show me the exact depth of current Republican panic. What do you do when up against a man of firebrand rhetoric and a character to match, and have only an old war horse hawk in your pocket? Well, you try and find a reason for his popularity other than inherent intelligence and charisma, and you say- "Hey....the dude is nothing more than part of pop culture, and that's why he commands the attention and respect of millions, not only here but around the world. HE'S A CELEBRITY."

So was Christ.

Look at that cheap grab for attention in his Sermon on the Mount. What a fame hog.

This shows nothing more than they're holding squat in their hands, and it'll be liar's poker from here to November.

It pleases me that the Republican party's in a snit. It does the heart good, it does. :)

Another nutcase from below the Mason Dixon......

In this land of gunslingers where everybody gets shot who disagrees with the cut of another guy's jib- or his sexual preference- or his haircut--- look who's killing people now



this FLO-BEE DO-IT-YOURSELF-ER!

And what a fine specimen of southern manhood he is. Walks into a Unitarian Church during a children's play and starts murdering people- and all because he doesn't like liberal thinking. I mean, look at this critter.....

does he look like much of a thinking man to you?

And Glory Be!--- just look where he's from. Tennessee. (Has that state been in other news recently? How about the lady from the first entry in this blog posted back on July 19th...how about that delicate flower?) You know... the one who twice tried to poison her 4 month old baby boy.

Is it any wonder that it was the Red States that elected Bush? Is it any wonder at all that the majority of those red states fall south of the Mason Dixon?

Those good old boy great-great grandsons of the Army of the Rebellion are still riding high in Mosby's Rangers style.

They're simply trying to restore "sum galdern law 'n order....try'n a git this country back to the path of the righteous by gawd, salute the flag, keep it in the family, 'n f*ck yer sister- cuz she don't mind a'tall."

I am fed up with this kind of vigilantism. It's the KKK without the hoods.

We've had 8 years of KKK thinking in this country- including the anti-Muslim sentiment and the 'kill 'em first!' mentality we've been operating under for close to a decade now, since 911. Everyone was filled with rage immediately after the attack. Only morons continued to indict an entire people, and willingly marched us to war.

It's time the conservatives, the fundamentalists and the real fringe detritus like the character above have their choke-chains yanked. It's time----truly time for a new birth of freedom and it's freedom from fear we need above all else, because without that, there can be no way out of this nightmare.

The Hidden Giant

With all the worry about the prices of both gasoline- and natural gas for heating our homes in winter, nobody's paying a lot of attention to this little guy-



Yep. The very lump we all feared in our Christmas stockings....those sooty chunks that make possible over half of the electrical power production in the United States, and it's skyrocketing in price.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Sunday edition,

"The spot price for northern Appalachian coal -- which includes coal mined in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia -- was $138 a ton last week, more than double the $55-a-ton price of a year ago and four times what it was in 2000."

So what does this mean? Here in Pennsylvania, we've had our electrical utilities deregulated a while back to encourage 'free enterprise' and 'healthy competition'-- that perilous mind set that believes 'free markets will police themselves'......so of course, we're going to 'buy the farm' when rate agreements set in 1996 are lifted in 2011. Estimates of as much as 63% are the current thinking.


We have another 3 years to address this situation. I'm hoping this becomes a priority with legislators. We've been raped on gasoline, we're being raped in our food markets because of it, and now with coal costs soaring, we may very well freeze to death in the long, dark winters when the rate caps come off. (Yes, I realize that if coal is more expensive to buy, the electrical companies have greater costs in order to generate their power--- but this is a situation that's going on right now, and their corporations are still seeing profits- or by God, they'd be going under like some of our banks.)

Just as the health insurers moan about needing to increase healthcare costs, and yet their top executives make $100,000.00 bonuses while they continue to build state-of-the-art home offices and advertize on every media known. That all takes big, big budgets. TRIM THE F*CKING FAT!

Don't try and tell me the hellacious jump in prices will be merited.

I believe that will happen because the 'play nice and grab customers' restraint will be off, and it'll be back to business as usual: ROBBER BARONS will be able to ride again- right across the backs of middle America....Yeeeeeee- haaah! This needs to be f*king addressed, people...3 years is enough time to legislate, REGULATE, and put the brakes on as they salivate and rub their hands in anticipation of the killings to come.

We all know that cleaner energy sources- solar or wind power, or the yet undiscovered solutions to our problem is the goal of the future, but 3 years is not enough time to do anything about the disaster we're stuck with-- the one that's now hanging over our heads and ready to drop. The only present solution is to take a good hard look at this, get the word out there and talk about it 'talk about it talk about it'-- because it's building right now, nicely hidden under the more apparent emergencies that have already reached critical mass.

This is a BIG ONE, and we need to put regulation back in place inside a very solid framework before we're shivering in our homes, lights out, and wondering where in the hell this came from?

It's coming from right now. Wake up and do your homework.

Shock Troopers

Have you seen a recent change in the type of junk, or spam mail you've been receiving?

In just the past week I've seen what used to be TONS of those annoying and often typically silly sexual ads that most of us never clicked on (because we knew better)- replaced by something subtler, darker, and ultimately much uglier in nature. What I've seen is a stream of 'plausible' though faked headlines whose subject is always something violent or awful, and it's meant to trip your alarm buttons to make you click without thinking about it.



Remember Alex, in 'A Clockwork Orange'?

Remember how that cockney ringleader needed violence blended with sexuality to trip his switch? Is that what this is about-- a marketing marriage of violence and sex-- a way into the labyrinth that sex alone has not be able to achieve for the slugs slinging their slops?

I've observed that where there used to be come-on's about increasing your organ size- or how to drive your mate wild- or any number of dating sites telling you they have the perfect match who's panting just offscreen in chat, waiting to make your acquaintance----- for an eventual fee, now there's these phoney headlines screaming this atrocity or that, hoping your 'Alex factor' is hungry enough to check it out. Do you get stuff like this?

Wildfires strike Arizona. Thousands homeless....

Horse kicks Harrison Ford in stomach, loses legs in freak hospital mishap....

Horses break rider's skull in freak attack...

Boy pokes fork into sister's eye......

These are just four of the 20 or better that I was sent just today. If they're like the sex ads, that's gonna increase. A LOT. Oh, I'm sure some focus group was able to tell the slimebuckets that modern culture has become inured to sexual bombardment and what they now need is another 'hook': Scare 'em! Make 'em CURIOUS. Make them worry enough to click the damn link...

I've never done it, but I'm pretty sure that somewhere hidden in all that Chicken Little claptrap.....is another entrance into the same fee-for-service sites that have always been hawking their wares. It may not look like it, but it'll be there-- if only by placement of distracting flash ads once you click on the link to the phoney headline.

And what does this do over time??? I believe you might ask Alex about that particular amalgam of 'pain/fear/sex/violence'....I think he'd be able to answer right off-- then dance away with his cane and bowler hat, singing lightheartedly as he kicks an old man's brains in as a prelude to raping, then finishing off the dead guy's wife. In other words- just an ordinary evening.

Be smarter than these bastards.....Don't CLICK on their crap. Don't participate in the programming. Delete, delete, delete. And use email with a good spam filter.

They'll separate the grain from the chaff, so you're not tricked into clicking without thinking by assuming the news is real, ferchrissakes.

Arrrrrrrrrrgh!!!

Does this look familiar to you?



It's that little waxy, torture device that is SUPERGLUED to most dry things bought in jars. Do you see a tab of any kind on there? Something to grip in order to peel it back and get it the hell off the jar so you can get some of the stuff you purchased to begin with?

Since the Tylenol poisonings in the 80's and the very financially damaging lawsuits (and don't kid yourself about altruistic motivation, because in this, as in all things..."follow the MONEY") there has been increasing difficulty in simply buying a thing and opening it.

Does this picture resurrect any old frustrations for you?



Me too. These damn caps that one must SIMULTANEOUSLY press, squeeze, rotate -and pray- have been more the cause of headaches in the years since their creation than a means to a cure. They never WORK the way they're supposed to. Never.

And we've moved beyond merely 'childproof' to TAMPERPROOF- and oh baby, those suckers have seals, arrows-- molded cellophane around the rims to get to the internal glued seal, then the cotton inside-- past the ampule of silicone in its own little capsule, just to find a simple baby aspirin. (I know because each week when I take my 88 year old mother shopping, it's my job to UN-seal and open all her purchases when we get home.) I've spent many a cussing moment in her kitchen with a steak knife, sore fingers- sometimes pliers.

The folks buying the majority of these products are elderly, arthritic, have bad eyesight and very little patience. So the very reason they open these containers in the first place, is to relieve the very symptoms that opening the containers make impossible for them. This is not to say there should be no impregnable packaging out there. No, not at all.

If you have little ones you either do not trust because they're the seriously curious type- or kids for whom Mr. Yuck stickers are simply a 'green light'- (or basically you're just frightened of tempting fate) yes... get the bottles that will still be around intact after the atomic blast. No, really- do that.

But for adult homes or for old folks- or for people like me whose brains turn to liquid trying to open these damn things, give us a f*cking choice.

And forget about the packaging that touts itself as being 'friendly to arthritis sufferers'- they simply aren't. I've watched my mother go at those things like someone trying to crack a safe. It cannot be done without maximum frustration, and yes...pain.

When the elderly customer sued McDonalds for being burned with hot coffee she should've used the brains God gave her to KNOW the thing was hot, and actually won- McDonalds thought it prudent to begin to stamp 'HOT!' on all their coffee covers, and it was a sad, sad day for common sense.

As to 'tamperproof'-- no, I don't want cyanide in my headache pills. But it seems to me a sealed outside carton with a removable seal on the bottle would allow me to feel confident- AND get into the package. Or better yet, encapsulate the bottle itself in a sealed bag of air, such as they use for cushioning and keeping the weight down in parcel posts- so we could just puncture and pull it out. Simple. And completely safe. Is the bag deflated? You know some nut's been in there.

And as to 'childproof' caps- how about more parental supervision and some locked, high cabinets where little ones can't reach to begin with.....how about that? How about the word 'no'? That's how come I'm still around today, and probably a lot of you.

How about 'use your head before you drink'? Shouldn't the steam coming out- or the way the cup feels be a pretty good indication you're probably gonna scald yourself if you spill it?

With these small measures of thought instead of regulations dictated by corporate attorneys, wouldn't this world be a simpler place? But as sure as there's ambulance chasers, the rest of us will be using steak knives, wet wash cloths, sewing needles, scissors- peeling and cutting our way into the next millennium, only worse...by then we'll be be wearing Hazmat suits and using robotics to open our stuff... probably from behind lead...and nobody will sue.

The Enemy Within

Not since the folly that led up to the invasion of Iraq, and remembering the horror I felt that this country was actually going forward by putting 'boots on the ground' in a catastrophic approach to countering terrorism-- knowing absolutely it was ill-advised and rushed, angry with U.S. citizenry for not being able to identify emotionalism and fear and political manipulation as the REAL reasons we were going in, nothing has taken a toll on me as piercingly as watching what is happening to the boys who make it home, damaged either physically or emotionally-- with nowhere to turn. Uncle Sam has skipped out the back door when it comes to healing and caring for these men and women who have done our dirtiest work for us.


This story- the story of war hero Spc. Joseph Dwyer- has gripped me in a way this evening that both breaks my heart, and enrages. How many fine, generous, dedicated and talented people are coming home to the same sort of bureaucratic goose chase? No one understands the visions in their heads as they revisit horrors the rest of us cannot imagine and could no better endure-- with no structure in place to address it. Tell me....why all the paperwork? Why insult these battered psyches by making them prove that their emotional damage is crippling, is the result of having been sent to Iraq and that, NO, they cannot simply 'get on with life'. They need help- real help and right now.

Before this toll rises with post-service casualties of the system, we need to treat application for veteran psychiatric and medical benefits immediately. It must be done in the same way we pay our taxes: we fill out a form, we either pay or collect from the U.S. Government-- and afterward- there may be random audits of the veracity of what we claimed or paid. The veteran's impossible snarl of delays and paperwork is unacceptable, and it's killing people. Those who have given so much should never have to wait months or years in order to access what they are desperately in need of right now.




This is a national scandal. It's a ridiculously intricate system designed to postpone or deny aid, and it's being done to the ones who paid the highest price. Whether you believe in the war or not (and I don't, and never did)- the men and women sent there bore the nightmare for all of us. It's time to pay up. It's time to make things right. Joseph Dwyer should not have died. I want to see his brothers and sisters in arms taken care of as they re-enter the civilian world. No more f*cking statistics like this. No more..

If it walks like a duck.....

talks like a duck, quacks like a duck.....chances are it's a f*cking DUCK.


The woman who brought the baby to the emergency room with the umbilical cord attached- the woman whose apartment reeked of a recent corpse--a corpse whose uterus had been cut into, that same woman stabbed another pregnant woman in the stomach 17 years ago, then tried to abduct a newborn from a local hospital.

She was sentenced 3 to 10 years, and was paroled in 1998.


Now I ask you........what happened after she got out? I can't believe she slipped back into society as whole new person, crazy head cured.

What sort of system releases these ticking timb bombs back into the general population and then just forgets about 'em till something worse happens, and then turns around to say, "Oh, yeah. We know that one. Been in jail before for something similar...."


No room in the jails, you say? No money for an extensive overhauling of the system? It seems to me the penal system is mostly filled with people picked up for drug offences- not criminal dealers, but users caught in possession. They clog the entire apparatus, and it allows a far more dangerous class of criminal to get out and walk around- and to repeat ever more violent acts just as we see in this case today.

The prison population is comprised of mostly poor blacks who are the most likely targets to be caught up in drug trafficking and usage, because they're easy marks and easy arrests. They allow police departments get a gold star for locking up bad guys. They're easy marks for the drugs themselves because so many of their young men and women have no prospects, no future- a bellyful of anger, and prefer to blot out reality when they can. A black man or woman is more likely to have the book thrown at them than a more privledged white person -many of whom are college age or young professionals who also take drugs and are sometimes caught- but much less likely to be prosecuted. It's easier to let them walk or do some civil service reparations, pay fines, etc.

Within prisons, offenders grow more calloused and more dangerous, and I can't help but believe that releases happen due to overcrowding and needed space, rather than evidence of true behavioral changes.

So the overhauling is of a much more global nature than simply building new prisons. It starts at its roots: racial profiling and prejudice, a better way of handling drug problems than the simple 'lock em up'- and for right now and until that day that blacks and whites are more evenly matched in privilege in this country, which I would suspect will take another hundred years- more intensive regulations on how released prisoners are monitored, with greater emphasis on accountability for both the parolee and parole officer, and within departments that need mental health workers and counselors, not just watchdogs and baggage checkers.

Prisons are for rapists, murderers- those who have been proven to attempt murder- and true major drug dealers (not those selling to promote their habit) and for all violent offenders only. That is my honest opinion. Thieves should be made to make restitution. Drug addicts given help in other ways. Prostitutes given health screenings and allowed to ply their trade because the johns never go to jail, and it's ridiculous to punish just one party in a two-way transaction.

I guarantee that if these policies were put in place right now, we'd have a better society all round. Almost overnight.

ok........another crazy woman

WTF is going on? Here's another news story of the 'outer limits' variety today, and yes, here in town. This morning while driving to work, I was listening as NPR related a story about a woman who showed up at yet another local hospital, with an infant who had the umbilicus still attached.

Blood work quickly confirmed that she was not, in fact, the baby's mother. She said she'd miscarried, but had bought the baby from a woman she said had sold her the infant for a thousand dollars.


(Wait. It gets worse.) The police were trying to find this mystery woman, and in the process of their search, went to the crazy's apartment and found- yep- the decomposing corpse of an unidentified woman.


Is the moon full??


And yes.......this lady is under 'psychiatric evaluation'. I think I could stamp that ticket pretty easily, don't you? Holy crap. 'Looney Tunes' is what these people are....but deadly, deadly ones.

Keep closing down those mental hospitals, and we'll see more of this. Some folks need to be locked away forever and ever. At least this one's going to jail.

Testing 1,2,3......

to see if this monkey can climb the trees.

Ok. It looks like I was able to get this sucker up using the template of an old blog of mine that I just deleted because it was plum full of horseshit and private nonsense and is now hopelessly outdated. But I'm pleased to say I was able to use the original Blogger formatting (and not this Googled-up crappy and confusing "drag and drop" "widget" malarky.)



In fact, if anyone uses the word 'widget' in my presence, be prepared for a swift smack in the chops. I HATE IT! (I also hate just about all that Google has done to Blogger since it took over and now damn near rules the world.)



As to what I intend to put in here......



well, any old thing that royally pisses me off. (I know, I know... I do a bit of that in my other blog Wired Karisma)- but this baby is for the 10 MEGATON RAGES that possess me at times when I read stuff in the news- or see stuff on 'boards'- or get a real festering burr under the saddle about the state of the world in general, or just a particularly irritating piece of it.



That said, at times I will be sticking poems in here- mainly spouting off about some outrage I've read and it becomes "spout or die", and I prefer to remain sane- and above ground, so where does the fury go? What do you do with outrage? You put it IN HERE. (I'm allowing comments along with spam protecton, so you'll have to retype nonsense letters to let the machine know you're a real person and not a phishing ad posing as a person.) AH! SPAMMERS!- great topic for future reference! --- so feel free to use the comment button if you are so inclined... and I will dish it out as well as take it, I promise you.



Today-(and incidentally, the thing that prompted creation of this 2nd blog)- is the nitwit psychopath from Tennessee who currently has her 4 month old son at death's door at a local hospital as he tries to survive her dosing of SALT mixed with Pedialyte, injected into his FEEDING TUBE- in attempted murder. (She was caught in the act this time right here in Pittsburgh. But sadly, after her successful attempts with the same poisoning technique that had the little fella hospitalized originally in Nashville.)


So let's hear it for 21 year old AMBER...




Post-partum depression, my ass! Mothers who suffer post-partum blues are more likely to fret about 'thoughts of harming their baby'- or worries over being inadequate as a mother- or their lives seesawing so abruptly- that's the sort of obsessive thoughts that go through the mind of a young woman in the grip of hormonal depression....I know because I suffered from just that sort of chemical let-down after the birth of both of my children and over the years havr talked to other mothers who've been through the same emotional 'bends' after childbirth. Believe me- homicide was not on the table. Ever


There is more here than post-partum depression, and you can take that to the bank.


Amber Alert


No.

It's not
a child gone missing
prompted this,
but a mother gone mad
by injecting her 4 month infant
with

salt.

Salt! Can you believe
it,
salt
kills babies

when you inject
it into a feeding tube
while
the baby
is in the hospital trying to recover from the first round
given
in Tennessesse.
From yahoo
land to Pittsburgh, Amber followed him
with Pedialyte
laced with table salt. The grandmother's comment
was

"I don't know
why
she done it.

Did she think the salt might
make
him
better? Maybe that's
the reason
she done it." No, you coonskinner. She

wanted to kill

that child.


(And yes, the grandmother was even more unbelievable than the homicidal mother. My take on it......with an enabler like that...it's no damn wonder how things turn out. What happened in the mother's life before this?-- when she was real small, what allowances- what lies were told and accepted?

This isn't a case of "there oughta be a law", because there is.......and the punishment is 'attempted murder in the first degree'.....but I'm willing to bet this girlie has a good shot a 'get out of jail free card' -courtesy of court-appointed, psychiatric paid experts. My God....I hope not. (And the term "Munchausen by Proxy" is just too 'prettified' a term here. This gal's a stone cold killer--- with a mother in loud and obnoxious denial.