Terry Shiavo isn’t the only vegetable us tree hugging hippies have been killing. Nope, people like us kill tens of thousands each yeah!

This is what angers me so much about this story. Terry is one of, literally, thousands of people that this happens to every year. And before you say anything about Terry being able to communicate I’d like to know when was the last time you talked to her. From the article:

Doctors said her medical situation and the decision to withdraw life support is far from unusual.

Every day at hospitals and nursing homes, relatives of patients who have been rendered unresponsive by a stroke or Alzheimer’s disease instruct doctors to detach their loved one from a ventilator or remove a feeding tube.

You hear that? “Every day” this happens to someone else. Would you please get off your stack of Bibles and let this woman die in peace? Oh, I forgot, you won’t because she’s the one getting all the press.

I liken this to the pretty white girl in Colorado who was kidnapped. Her case got all of this attention while thousands of other kids who are kidnapped barely get a mention in the local evening news. Can you say “grandstanding”?

For public record here are my wishes if I am incapacitated and unable to speak for myself:

1. If two out of three doctors say I’m brain dead and unable to breath without assistance I want whoever is in charge of me to pull the plug.
2. If two out of three doctors say I’m in a persistent vegetative state and I require assistance eating and am unable to communicate (random blinking and grunts do NOT count as communication) I want the tube taken out.

Lauren, my wife, has beeen informed of my wishes. In fact, I think she’d like to pull the plug on me from time-to-time as it stands. After the plug/tube has been pulled I further instruct everyone around me to throw a huge ass party in my honor. At said party you will remind everyone around you what a kick ass guy I was and how much fun I was to hang out with. Crying is not allowed, however, tasty beverages should be served in abundance.

And, by the way, if you morbid jerks put me on display in some rip-off funeral home I will haunt you forever. I think that’s the most creepy part of dying – being put on public display while others gather around for a last look.

Man, am I so happy that my senators and congressman are working hard at eradicating the evil perils of our society! They’ve been working nights! Weekends! Why? Well, evidently it’s been legal for years for spouses and guardians to remove loved ones from life support and now people are ACTUALLY DOING IT! Holy Crap!!111111

This happens every day to poeple all over the world. So why is this case different? Well, my mother always told me the squeaky wheel gets the oil and that is what this appears to be a case of. The parents want their daughter to “live” (if you call a persistent vegitative state living), while her husband and legal guardian says she wouldn’t want to live that way. Guess who gets to choose? The husband. Pesky laws are getting in the way again!

In other news, Congress has been very busy working to eradicate steroid use from MLB. If this isn’t the biggest waste of my tax dollars I don’t know what is. I’m actually amazed they found the time to tear themselves away from the procedings to try and save Terry Schiavo.

Both of these news stories are PERFECT examples of political grand standing. If you have been buying into any of this shame on you. I, on the other hand, am going to call my representatives and tell them to start using their time more wisely or they’re losing my vote.

Jason Kottke of kottke.org has decided to attempt to try blogging as a full time job. It should be interesting to see how this works out for him. Because I like to try and support the blogs I frequent I PayPal’d him some money and now I get to sport this amazingly cool button. Whatever. At any rate it should be interesting to see how this works out for him.

My father has all sorts of funny quips and sayings about being a hard worker, respect and life. People ask me when he’s going to retire and I usually respond “never”. Not because he can’t, but simply because I’m not sure it’s even a thought that crosses the mind of a man who was working longer hours than I do before he started grade school. At any rate, one of the things he told me was “If you’re going to be a burger flipper, by God, be the best burger flipper there is.”

Well, I think Quiznos has found the best sub makers around. When the store’s owner disappeared in November and distributors stopped giving the store food supplies on credit the manager took matters into her own hands. She bought supplies from other Quizno stores using money from the previous day’s till and began paying employees cash from the till on a daily basis.

Sounds like things are shaping up now, though, that the corporate office of Quiznos caught window of the story. They are now transferring ownership and sending in support staff.

A while back some of the news sites online were running a story about a tattoo artist who defaced his clients by using Japanese symbols that where profain. As a result he’s spending 5 years in jail. Evidently, jail has not been a reason to stop his scheming ways.

Using a tattoo gun fashioned out of a sharpened paper clip, dental floss, and a ballpoint pen taped to a plastic spork, the disgruntled prisoner has drawn Black Panther Party symbols on white supremacists, written CRIPS 4 EVA on rival gang members, and left dozens of hardened criminals with butterflies, fairies, and unicorns permanently etched in their skin.

“I wanted a stack of skulls on my back,” said murderer Jimmy Drake, “and that Asian prick gave me a giant Winnie the Pooh!”

Many prisoners ask for spider webs on their elbows to signify time spent in jail. Sakai’s webs have hidden messages in them such as, “Fuck Cops,” “I Swallow,” and “Salad Tosser.” Sakai got the idea for the cryptic tats after reading Charlotte’s Web in the prison library. “That E.B. White’s a genius, man,” Sakai proclaimed.

To say it’s hysterical is and understatement, but the guy is obviously an idiot who doesn’t care about his own safety. As a result of his escapades he has been put in solitary confinement for the remainder of his prison sentence (for his own safety of course).

Evidently, the freedoms we take for granted in the U.S. are a little too much according to the students here. 36% of students think newsrooms should get approval from the GOVERNMENT before running a story. The utter helplessness and sorrow I feel when I read something like this is undescribable.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get “government approval” of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

Asked whether the press enjoys “too much freedom,” not enough or about the right amount, 32% say “too much,” and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.

Either the teachers really suck at teaching the ideas this country was founded on or they surveyed students from the School of the Americas. This article comes to me a day after watching OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, which is a movie about Fox News and the dangerous game it’s playing with today’s media outlets.

The press is the watchdog of Democracy. They are supposed to be trusthworthy and unbiased. They are supposed to report the news as it happens and not get approval from anyone. The corporate buyout of today’s media outlets and the current consolidation efforts underway will be a bigger part of America’s downfall as a free society than Bush, Cheney or Rove ever will.

If we can’t trust the media to keep leaders in check by reporting blow jobs, illegal arms deals and hotel break-ins then who can we trust? What if those who are reporting the news are best friends with those they are reporting the news on? If your friend did something bad and you had to tell some strangers about it wouldn’t you do all you could to justify your friend’s actions?

Many people outside of Seattle most definitely do not know about a weekly newsmag called The Stranger. It’s a local newsmag about what’s going on, recent news, etc. written by a bunch of liberal hipsters. A great resource for finding fun stuff to do and reading fairly entertaining stories.

At any rate, this month’s issue is all about Ben Exworthy. In fact, it’s called The Ben Exworthy Narcissism Issue.

Back in December, I was reading the Strangercrombie catalog with my girlfriend Brit when she suggested that I buy everything involving The Stranger itself. […] By auction’s end, I’d bought the cover, Last Days, I Anonymous, Savage Love, Celeb I Saw U, rave Chow, Music and Books reviews, Drunk of the Week, the back-page comic, and one page of Stranger editorial space to fill however the hell I wanted.

So for $12,000 this guy bought an entire issue of The Stranger, which I must admit is amazingly hysterical. I’m actually planning on reading the whole issue just because I find it so amusing.

Holy crap. Could you imagine saying the above? Warren Buffet can, because he did just that today when Procter & Gamble bought Gillette. I’d buy suits made of $100 bills if I had that much money. Remy would buy a few light armored units manned with 8 or 9 personnel each.

The Greatest Generation fought WWII over 60 years ago and this week people around the world are remembering the liberation of Auschwitz.

There was a young Polish man in the camp who tattooed the numbers on our arms. He did it with a pen and some ink, dot after dot, like a child doing his homework.

So when he made a mistake, he would cross it out and start anew. A lot of people had this kind of mess on their arms.

When it was my turn I demanded: “Pay attention and do it as well as possible!” And then I began to laugh at my own absurdity, because when you are being gassed, it doesn’t matter if it looks good or not.

My number is still visible, 42646, and beside it, the Star of David.

You all asked for amendments in state constitutions banning gays from marrying and about 12 of you states got it. One of the side effects is that lawyers are paid to find loopholes opened by new laws and they’ve found a huge hole in Ohio’s ban on gay marriage. The new Amendment states the following:

Article XV

Section 11. Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions. This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.

You see that last sentence there? It’s causing a bunch of problems for prosecuters in domestic dispute cases.

In at least two cases last week, the Cuyahoga County public defender’s office has asked a judge to dismiss domestic-violence charges against unmarried defendants. The attorneys in the two cases argue that the charges violate the amendment by affording marriage-like legal status to unmarried victims who live with the people accused of attacking them.

If these defense attorneys win dismissals then you better run for cover, because victim’s rights advocates will be on the war path to get this and similar amendments removed from the books. You see what happens when you try and create double standards? Eventually, in a free country, they can turn on you.