From the Miami Herald:
A central Florida man has been charged with DUI for driving a lawn mower drunk.
Marion County Sheriff's Office spotted Richard Paschen driving the red lawn mower with a cup of beer sitting in the cup holder Friday night. He told Deputy Gary Miller he'd had "a pretty good bit" to drink and had gotten lost on his way home. Paschen refused a breath test.
Paschen has had several DUIs and his driver's license has been suspended.
It's a good thing he didn't hit a Deere.
(
Cross-posted.)
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[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
A CNN investigation has found that a man accused of raping a colleague, both of whom were hired by BP to assist in the Gulf clean-up, was a convicted sex offender who had failed to register for the sex offender registry. Which would have shown up in a background check. If BP had done them.
Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd told CNN he was shocked when he met with the head of BP security for the area several weeks before the alleged rape took place. He said the BP representative told him that only drug screenings, not background checks, were being conducted on the cleanup workers.
"I said, 'You're kidding me.' He said, 'No.' He said, 'There's so many of them, we were told to do drug screens and that was it.' And I said, 'Well, that's not good at all.' "
Byrd said he told the BP official that "you're going to have every type of person coming in here looking for a job, and you're going to have the criminal element in here, and we're not going to know who we're dealing with if we don't do background checks on these people."
"It's sad because you got a victim now by a sex offender, and he's in our jail. Had we have known this, he would have been arrested before the crime could have been committed," said Byrd, who also said that if asked, his department would have done the background checks for free.
The woman who reported the rape has since been laid off. Her attorney, Adam Miller, says: "She gave up her housing where she was living to come here. Now she's been raped, she doesn't have a job, and everybody walked away."
BP issued a statement blaming the subcontractor who failed to do the background check, despite the fact that BP did not make criminal background checks a requirement of the contract.
Hard to believe such a corporation could be so criminally negligent during the clean-up of a massive environmental disaster caused by their criminal negligence.
I wish the survivor at the center of this story peace and justice.
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CNN: Still single? What's the matter with you?
As ever, it's difficult to choose what my favorite part of this masterpiece is, because there are so many priceless, sparkling gems from which to choose.
In the What's Not Said category, I'll vote for the glaring omission of even a cursory mention that many women are single by choice.
In the What's Said category, I'll vote for the requisite "all women suck (and married women are even worse)" passage:
Myriad messages from sundry sources proclaim that, yes, I'm doing it all wrong. ...I feel myself beginning to cave -- who am I kidding? I can't refute this arsenal of why-I'm-dateless data. I guess they're right. It is my fault I'm still single! ... All I have to do is identify and correct the character flaw (or two or three) that repels the good ones, and then I, too, will find Mr. Right, just like all my married friends!
Which is precisely where the logic breaks down.
Think about it. If single women possess imperfections and eccentricities which prevent us from snagging a man, then such personality shortcomings would appear much less frequently in the population of happily married women, right? Sure. Ask any husband -- he'll tell you. Wives show a full range of kinks and idiosyncrasies, just like the rest of us.
Furthermore, many of my happily married girlfriends exhibit extreme versions of the very traits that supposedly stymie my success. If my neurotic nature so utterly repels the fellas, how is it my Xanax-popping neighbor has a husband, 3 children, a garage full of anti-bacterial gel to pacify her OCD? If I'm so horribly controlling, how did my bossy, domineering sorority sister badger her man down the aisle before the age of 24?
Wow.
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This is, for those who have requested it, your bi-monthly reminder* to donate to Shakesville.
Asking for donations** is difficult for me, partly because I've got an innate aversion to asking for anything, and partly because these threads are frequently critical and stressful. But it's also one of the most feminist acts I do here.
So. Here's the reminder.
You can donate once by clicking the button in the righthand sidebar, or set up a monthly subscription here. We first made the Subscribe to Shakesville page available last March, which means most of the subscriptions are running out and have to be renewed if you want to keep your subscription active.
Let me reiterate, once again, that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. Aside from valuing feminist work, the other goal of fundraising is so Iain and I don't have to struggle on behalf of the blog, and I don't want anyone else to struggle themselves in exchange. There is a big enough readership that neither should have to happen.
I also want say thank you, so very much, to each of you who donates or has donated, whether monthly or as a one-off. I am profoundly grateful—and I don't take a single cent for granted. I've not the words to express the depth of my appreciation, besides these: This community couldn't exist without that support, truly. Thank you.
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* I know there are people who resent these reminders, but there are also people who appreciate them, so I've now taken to doing them every other month, in the hopes that will make a good compromise.
** Why I ask for donations is explained here.
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The leading contenders for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination,
according to a new CNN poll. The five dingalings pictured are, from left to right: Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul. Fine choices, all! [Getty Images]
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When a man—Bill O'Reilly, say—does something totally despicable, as part of a long pattern of contemptible things, and people comment on it, they often start their comments like "This asshole" or "This wankstain" or "This diabolical scumbag" or "This nausea-inducing and rage-making human manifestation of pure, unadulterated evil," as in "This jerk wouldn't know an honest statement if it walked up and introduced itself in seven different languages."
But.
When a woman—Sarah Palin, say—does something totally despicable, as part of a long patterns of contemptible things, and people comment on it, they tend to start their comments like "This woman..."
I'm sure that's not reflective of a profoundly misogynist culture in which calling someone a woman in that particular way, spitting it out like venom, is worse than calling her a monster.
Ahem.
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See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
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I've got a couple of Gmail accounts. If you're familiar with Gmail, you've probably figured out that Google uses the power of the internet to display advertisements about what you care most about.
At one point I had an account where I was getting (and sending) tons of mail about roller derby. Oh, and I also get a lot of mail from trans organizations at that account. I'd get ads for videos featuring hot transsexuals with knee replacements or some such nonsense. If that's not precisely what I care about most, I don't know what is.
When I signed on as a contributor at Shakesville, I set up a separate Gmail account. Just now I noticed the latest bit of laser guided marketing:
O HAI, if you LOL @ Shakesville, you'll love Charlie St. Cloud.
What part of Deeky's letter didn't y'all read? Gawd.
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[Trigger warning for sexual violence, misogyny, fat hatred.]
"I find it ridiculously funny that the person crying and getting butthurt is some fat ugly bitch who no one would probably ever rape. Pity the poor man who tried if so, hahahaha!"—One of the many, many trolls in one of the two Penny Arcade threads (one and two), who are deeply invested in defending rape jokes by repeatedly asserting that they don't matter, even as they use rape jokes to try to needle a survivor of rape. (Irony, thy name is the Rape Apologist Troll.)
I, of course, am non-needleable at this point. I have been called variations on a fat, ugly, unrapable bitch more times than I can be arsed to count.
Which is news to me. And the man who raped me.
At this point, I merely find it bitterly amusing that posts criticizing the use of sexual violence in humor inevitably get an influx of people desperate to defend rape jokes, which they assert are meaningless.
Oh yeah? If they're so meaningless, why's it so important to defend them then...?
Prove my point MORE.
[It's truly Fat Princess all over again.]
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Hiya, Shakers, time for another Discussion Thread for the Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report!
This is the thread in which you may offer congratulations or admiration for a teaspoon or teaspooner. If you're posting with just congrats or admiration, though, do take a moment and check the thread to see whether other people have said so a number of times already. Remember that no one is required to read here just because they posted over there, so there's no guarantee you'll get a response to a given comment.
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This seemed a good day for another Teaspoon Report; I think we could all use a reminder of the power of the spoon again.
Leave comments here that describe an act of teaspooning you encountered or committed. They don't have to be big, world-shaking acts; by definition, a teaspoon is a small thing, but enough of them together can empty the ocean.
If you would like to discuss the teaspoons here reported, or even offer congratulations or your admiration to a fellow Shaker, we ask that you do so over here in the Discussion Thread for today's NQDTR.
Shaker bgk has been kind enough to get a Twitter-pated version out there for you young twittersnappers (and by the way, get off my lawn, you meddling kids! *shakes cane*). You can find the details about the Tweetspoons project right here. That runs all the time, as far as I'm aware (*grumblenewtechnologygrumble*), and we encourage you to let other people know that there's at least one tweetstream talking about just going out and doing good things for the human species.
Teaspoons up, let's hear 'em, Shakers!
ô,ôP
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