Nightgaunt

WHO SUMMONS ME?! Oh, hey Cherny.

Our society is run by socio- and psychopaths, so the system is set up to favor those kinds of people. The beauty of it is that most people can't believe that their "leaders" could be that amoral or immoral, so everyone keeps slaving away without questioning.

There may be a less-rare-than-a-Spook-TaysteeWonderbunny-sighting-but-nonetheless-fairly-uncommon-these-days-Tszura-Nightgaunt-sighting, as well.

Let's not forget your obsession with Robert Goulet...

The first women I was consciously attracted to (I was 4 or 5 years old) were: 1. Carolyn Jones (Morticia Addams) 2. Lynda Carter Both of which served to cement my predilection for curvy brunettes.

It seems to me that the sole basis of the "Bert and Ernie are homosexuals" hypothesis is the fact that they live together and sleep in the same bedroom. I spent about 5 years of my adult life sleeping in the same room with various male room mates. Would that lead you to assume that I must be gay? Could it be that perhaps what Children's Television Workshop was trying to do was teach children that even people with opposite personalities can learn to get along and be best friends? To me, this smacks of the "Pink Lincoln" debacle in which people claimed that Abraham Lincoln was gay because he would sleep in the same bed with male friends when traveling. Actual historians came back with the fact that this was common practice for the time, due to limited space at inns and for fiscal reasons. Take a look at photos of WWII-era men and their friends. You'll see a lot of hand-holding and arms around each other. This isn't evidence of homosexuality; it's simply how people posed for photos back then. When we stop pointing out the slightest hint of non-heterosexuality and giggling, "Oooooooh look! So gay! Tee hee!" then we can perhaps begin growing the fuck up as a culture. Some people are straight, some people are gay, some people are bi, and some people are transgendered. Get over it. NOTE: This is not aimed at you specifically, Simon. The post just brought up a pet peeve of mine.

We can throw statistics back and forth until doomsday, but I use a simpler approach: follow the money. Al Gore says there's a big problem with the environment! Carbon dioxide, that gas that plants breathe and turn into oxygen is a deadly toxin that's killing the planet! Horrors! Fortunately, he has a solution: a system of "carbon credits" that will force polluters to pay for the privilege of emitting CO2. And conveniently, Al Gore owns the company that sells these planet-saving credits! So convenient! I'm sure he feels really badly about the fact that his inherited fortune comes from his father's involvement with Occidental Oil. Maybe all this new righteous money will offset the old, bad, polluting money.

The police were clearly in the wrong here, but I think it's more important to address this "ADHD" thing. A few years ago, my son was exhibiting all the signs of this made-up illness. He couldn't focus, lashed out physically against adults and other kids, etc. Tszura and I developed a system of clearly defined and simple rules that he had to follow, as well as a consistent disciplinary plan. We set clear boundaries. We worked with him and taught him the skills necessary to focus and explained to him in terms a four-year-old could understand the reasons behind the rules he was being made to follow. I know it's hard to believe, but we actually did our job as parents, and lo and behold: it worked. At the age of 6, he is a well-adjusted and ridiculously well-behaved (not to mention happy) child. All this was accomplished with neither corporeal punishment nor psychoactive drugs. It is my opinion that children are diagnosed as having ADHD (a psychobabble term meaning "rambunctious child"), given drugs, and the parents think that there's nothing that they can do because it's a medical condition. Parents love it, because it absolves them of the responsibility of actually being expected to raise the children properly; teachers love it because the drugs turn the children into passive zombies; pharmaceutical companies love it because it means huge profits; the government loves it because the ramifications of the "disease" gives it more excuses to intrude upon our personal lives. The only losers are the children of intellectually lazy parents and it's a goddamn shame.

The ACLU, while not my favorite organization, has championed the Constitution in several cases. The problem is that they tend to pick and choose, based on political bias.